भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

who ultimately became the former’s right hand man. Abdali had accompanied Nadirshah in his above-mentioned raid against India. After his return to Persia, Nadirshah was soon killed in 1747. In the confusion that was caused subsequent to Nadirshah’s death, Ahmadshah Abdali usurped all power and since he was an Afghan, Ahmadshah proclaimed himself an Afghan Emperor making Kabul his capital (1747 A.D.). The Rohillas and the Pathans 1042. Now, there had been an incessant internal rivalry about the acquisition of the imperial throne of Delhi and consequent mutual hatred between the Moghals and the Afghans (Pathans), who chiefly led the Muslim administration throughout the large tracts of India from Punjab, Delhi, Farukhabad to Rohilkhand—sometimes quite openly, at other times covertly! The former Sultanates of Delhi were Afghans. It was after extirpating the last of the Afghan dynasties, that the victorious Moghal conqueror, Babar, had attained the imperial power over Dehli (as has already been shown in this book earlier). Nevertheless, several Afghan Sardars dominated even this Moghal administration. Amongst these Afghans, the Rohillas and the Pathans had their own states of varying sizes. Later on, when the conquering Maratha armies soon began to establish, one after another, Hindu state all over the Northern half of India and reached Delhi and when in the political affairs of Delhi, practically not a blade of grass could move without the Maratha support, all those Muslim factions became absolutely one at least in the early years of the Maratha preponderance in order to subvert it. Yet later, still the dissentient and scheming amongst these Muslim leaders, secretly sought for the Maratha help for the destruction of their co-religionist opponents. The first invasion of India by Abdali 1043. Abdali was closely watching these developments in Delhi. He knew full well that the Pathans over there were highly perturbed lest the hated Marathas might leave a vestige of their own existence, unless in the meanwhile, the Pathans overthrew the Moghal imperial authority over Delhi, and on its ashes raised their own. They could find only one way out of this predicament: to invite the new Afghan emperor, Ahmadshah Abdali who had all along supported their political moves. So, the Pathan-Rohilla leaders sent letters to Abdali, importuning his armed help, if at all Islam in India was to be saved. Abdali, too, had cherished the ambition to strangle the moribund Moghal imperial authority in Delhi and to revive in its place