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

religious code of every Muslim Emperor. In order to make it suit his dignity, he even fumed and fretted at the slightest pretext and ordered a horrible general massacre of the citizens of Delhi, so that they might submit meekly to his rule over Delhi. Within a few hours, ‘true and high-born’ and ‘thorough-bred’ Afghans beyond the Himalayas slaughtered more than eighteen thousand people, and according to the second universally acknowledged notion of the time, regarding the regal function in accordance with the Muslim religious code, he proclaimed forthwith that as an humble and royal adherent of Islam, he would completely destroy all the Kafirs and their temples and all religious institutions throughout India! 1059. Without any loss of time, he brought his horrible announcement into action. Under his orders, the Hindu temples, shrines, idols and their houses began to be pulled down and set ablaze. Emperor Abdali was particularly infuriated against the several Hindu holy places like Mathura and Prayag, which the Marathas had rescued from the Muslim hands. So he began to defile them all, one after another. On such occasions, Mathura, which is very close to Delhi, was the first to fall a prey after Delhi, to all sorts of vandalism of the monstrous aggressors and stoically enough, did that holy city offer itself, time and again, as sacrificial oblation, as any brave lady in the famous immolation (Johar) of Chitod or the very city of Chitod itself. But this time, it did not merely submit itself to the Muslim religious persecution, without fighting, as it had been doing till this time. Although detailed description is not possible here for want of space, it must be told here that nearly five thousand Hindu Jat citizens fought to the last drop of blood left in them that innumerable and well-organized Muslim army. Every brave Hindu, who died, did so only after killing as many of his Muslim foes as was possible for him to kill. After bathing Mathura in blood and burying it under heaps of the rubble of its demolished temples and shrines and idols, Abdali attacked another neighbouring holy place of the Hindus, Gokul Vrindavan. This also had been the object of Abdali’s fury for the simple reason that the Marathas had recently snatched it away from the Muslims. In order to halt this monstrous attack, more than two thousand valiant ‘Gosavees’ (Monks), from the famous gymnasium of ‘Nanga Gosavee’, suddenly fell upon the Muslim army with a grim determination to fight unto death. This assault of the Gosavees was so sudden, so well organized and so ferocious that Abdali’s forces reeled back all of a sudden at the first knock. Thousands of Muslim soliders were killed outright, and