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

away. She was confined and tortured, dishonoured and outraged, but she refused to give her consent to live with them as a Moslem. She once got an opportunity, effected her escape and reaching a railway station, was on the point of leaving the place. But the Daroga there happened to be a Mohamedan, he intervened and handed back that helpless girl into the hands of those Mohamedan miscreants who had abducted her. At last, the whereabouts of the girl being known, the police arrested those Moslem criminals along with that Daroga and the case was tried before the Magistrate of Rangpoor. The miscreants were punished but an important side-issue brought to light in an authoritative way the evil that is corroding Hindu life in Eastern Bengal not only now—now that it is brought to light —but for decades and decades in the past. The accused in this case wanted to get their case transferred from Rangpoor to some other court on the ground that the popular feeling at Rangpoor was so excited against them as to affect the decision of their case. The Magistrate set aside and refused to grant their petition, observing with silent eloquence that cases of Hindu women being similarly abducted and ill-treated have become such a common occurrence in Eastern Bengal, that people have ceased to take any special notice of them and so they could never excite the popular feeling there. These words of a magistrate are so plain and yet so dreadful that the ‘Agrasar’ is made to observe that no stronger remarks could be passed in condemning the effeminacy that has overtaken the Hindus of East Bengal and the criminal negligence, with which West Bengal passively witnesses all this, without so much as raising a word of protest against this Moslem rowdyism that has such a fanatical method in its monstrous madness. A breath of Lord Lytton has shocked our sense of chivalry, but the rude and indecent clasp of the garlic-smelling Moslem gunda may be silently borne. From Badan, the sad tale of the oppression of Mohamedan Zamindars informs us that one Devi Bhavani, a Hindu Chambhar, was the latest victim of religious fanaticism. He was all of a sudden attacked by half a dozen Moslems, under the protection of Zamindars, and was forcibly fed with unclean food at the hand of Mohamedans; the whole society of the Chambhars is being intimidated and oppressed with a view to forcing them to embrace Islam. The Zamindars have ordered washermen, barbers and other castes not to render services to the Chambhars unless they leave the Hindu fold. The Mohamedan police too is passively witnessing this dreadful and criminal campaign of religious persecution. The villages of