them, indicating their fiendish acts against the Hindus, have been read out to litem, they should be blown off from cannon-mouth before the joyful eyes of the thousands of Hindu spectators. A National Homage to the Hindu Martyrs 618. “In the end, this reconversion week should be concluded with a national homage to the report of three volleys of guns from every fort and city of Maharashtra, in honour of the thousands of men and women, who courted martyrdom by leaping into the rivers like the Krishna or the Tungabhadra or in some other ways, because they had no other effective means to save their religion and to escape the direct persecution at the hands of Tipu’s soldiers, when thousands of them surrounded and blockaded whole towns, carrying on wholesale conversions with fire and sword.” The Echoes of Religious Retaliation 619. If at all, the Marathas had dealt such a crushing counter-blow on the Muslim religious front, the echoes and re-echoes of the guns, thundering from every fort in Maharashtra, would not have been heard in the valleys of the Krishna and the Tungabhadra alone; they would also have reverberated throughout the Gangetic, the Indus, nay, far beyond it, the Vakshu (Oxus) river-valleys and the whole of the Muslim world. The barest news, that the Hindus too, had been reconverting the millions of converted Hindus, breaking away the fetters of the ban on reconversion, would have shocked the Muslim world far more fiercely than the report of thousands of guns fired simultaneously, and their very existence would have begun to dwindle. This is not mere historical guesswork but a guarantee of historical probability. 620. But this historical probability remained only a probability! The Hindus never broke the ban on reconversion, nor did they allow it to be broken. Naturally, the Islamic religious dominance in India could not be overthrown. 621. The virus of the caste-differences caused by birth had already permeated the whole blood-system of the Hindu society long before any Muslim aggressor could come to India. Perpetual Muslim atrocities aggravated its effects all the more, and the Hindu Society lost its original susceptibility to change, its expansionism, its ability to absorb newer elements and its strong inclination to retaliation even in the religious field. How could the Hindu leaders, then, hit back the Muslim foreigners or absorb them in their Hindu Society?

622. ‘How could a man’, they thought who was a born Muslim, ever become a true Hindu by merely dipping into the Gangetic waters?’ ‘For’, they argued, ‘the caste is decided by birth’.
623. रासभ धुतला महातीर्थामाजीं। नव्हे जैसी तेजी शामकर्ण॥ ‘Even as a donkey washed in the holiest of water can never become a spirited horse...’ How can we then admit these born non-Hindus to our original castes, merely because a certain scented pigment betokening Hinduism is applied to their foreheads? Are we to dine with them? And if that person be a woman, are we to marry her simply because an auspicious kumkum tilak from a Hindu box is applied to her forehead? And that too openly? Impossible! Impossible! Irreligious! Irreligious! 623A. Such were the religious ideas of not only the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas but the Mangs, the Dhors, the Bhils and other so-called ‘low castes’ and wild tribes too! They considered this to be the only true Hindu religion. The main principle underlying these ideas of caste-differences was that whichever Hindu went over to the Muslim fold, willy-nilly—whether by persuasion or by coercion—was polluted and damned—irrevocably damned for life—nay, for all his generations to come! 623B. What wonder then, if hundreds of millions of Hindus who, cherishing such absurd ideas about religious behaviour had stoutly opposed any reconversion of the oppressed Hindus or of the born Muslims! The only Fortunate thing was...
624. The only fortunate thing was that at the beginning of the Muslim onslaughts on India, no couplet in Anusthup metre was interpolated in some smriti by some Brihaspati (wiseacre) or another banning territorial conquests as others were, in respect of bans on food-exchange, inter-caste marriages, reconversion, sea-faring and many other things! If the forcibly converted Hindu could not be reconverted to Hinduism, if a man dealing with a Muslim himself became a Muslim, how could a land or territory once conquered by the Muslims be again a Hindu land? Whoever tried to win back that lost kingdom would himself become a Muslim! The land, however, would never become a Hindu land again! If some learned Hindu fool had argued this way, and promulgated such a ban on reconquering the lost territory, the Hindus would have been rendered as absolutely powerless to overthrow the Muslim political dominance, as they were to overthrow the Muslim religious ascendancy, because it would have become equally

irreligious, and so impossible, owing to such a ban. And like Afghanistan, Iran, Babylonia, ancient Egypt, Turkey and Morocco in the far west, India in the east would also have been completely Muslimized! It would have become both politically and religiously an Islamistan! That would have been the last line written about the Hindu History. But India was at least saved that horrible fate then, and once again was written a new chapter of the rejuvenation of Hinduism, illuminated by dazzling valour of the Hindu warriors. 625. The history of India as also of all the parts of the rest of the world, wherever the Muslims had established religio-political ascendancy, amply proves that not only those several nations that were incapable of overthrowing the Muslim religio-political dominance became completely Muslimized, but even those other non-Muslim nations which smashed the Muslim political might but left their religious hold untouched, could not escape the constant horrible pestilence of the Muslim onslaughts. Only five or six or at the most, ten nations that precipitated the Muslim religious downfall soon after their political and military defeat and rid themselves of every single Muslim, could—these and these alone could—free themselves completely from the Muslim pestilence! For want of space, only one instance of Spain should suffice to illustrate this point. Emancipation of Spain from Muslims 626. Simultaneously with their raids on India, the Arabs under the Omayyads had overrun Spain and had established a powerful Muslim state there. Naturally, as elsewhere, the Muslims began the religious persecution and conversion of the Spanish Christians. Countless Christian men and women were violently and mercilessly converted to Islam at the point of the sword or killed outright. Later on, after some centuries, when there were internecine wars amongst the Muslims themselves, the much too oppressed Christians of Spain rose in revolt against the tyrannical Muslim Government under one of their own old royal dynasties, and with the help of a growing Christian nation in France and with encouragement from the Papal seat of Rome. After many years of bitter warfare during the 11th and 13th centuries, the Spanish Christians delivered most of their country from the Muslim rule and finally with the conquest of Granada in A.D. 1492, they wiped out the Muslim power altogether. But as in India so in Spain too, even after the loss of political power, the Muslims had their firm religious hold unimpaired on the converted Spanish Christians and the land

they had actually inhabited. Nay, this Muslim religious hold was getting more and more explosive and terrible, so as to cut asunder the whole of the Spanish nation at some future date. Those of the Spanish Christians, who could clearly foresee this impending danger and who had always awaited an opportunity to wreak their revenge, decided to root out the Muslim religious influence from Spain, as they did with their political overlordship. Christians were never fettered as Hindus were by any Religious bans on food Exchange, Reconversion and so on 627. The task of reconverting the countless Muslimized Christians was, therefore, so easy as to be readily accomplished, the moment these Spaniards simply willed it. The only difficulty was that of the Muslim political and military might. No sooner was the Muslim army destroyed than the Spanish Christians started the complete rout of the Islamic faith in one holocaust throughout Spain. Thousands of Muslimized Christians began to be rebaptized incessantly and speedily. The sporadic Muslim resistance infuriated the Spanish nation all the more. The Spanish Government, the Spanish Christian Church and the Spaniards at large vowed openly that in their country no person calling himself or herself a Muslim, nor any structure known as a mosque be allowed to remain unimpaired any longer 628. The newly independent Spanish Government gave an ultimatum that before an appointed date, every sundry Muslim—man or woman had either to court Christianity willingly or to leave the country forthwith, with family and friends, bag and baggage. Whoever failed to do either, after that date was to be beheaded mercilessly and unhesitatingly. 629. What? A Christian Government order! How atrocious! But it must be remembered that when the Muslims conquered Spain, they had imposed their faith far more brutally on the Christian populace there and flooded the street with Christian blood. Now the Christians were to rewash the streets with Muslim blood. As soon as the stipulated time elapsed, the Spanish Christians rose violently against the remaining Muslims at various places and put everyone of them—man or woman, young or old—to the sword! The Christian Church of Spain became pure with a Muslim bloodbath. Spain was rid of the Muslims entirely. And so Spain remained Christian! It was not turned into another Morocco!! 630. The same fate awaited the Muslims in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and other Christian nations. They all rid their once Muslim-

dominated countries of every single Muslim! ❑ .

12.

A Resume

631. The various points that have been discussed at length in the foregoing chapters, viz. Ch. V to XI of this book, can now be briefly summarized here into a consistent whole.
632. In the historic past, India, too, like all other great nations, had been invaded by the Ionians, Sakas and Huns and other non-Hindu wild people. But after centuries of violent struggle with them, all the Hindu nations stamped out their political dominance by smashing their armed might on the various battlefields and became independent again and again. Moreover, it converted the millions of the Ionian, Saka and Hun foreigners who settled down here in various provinces during the years of those hard struggles, and taught them the Vedic cult, the worship of the Vedic gods and goddesses, and the Sanskrit civilization and culture, so as to merge them so completely amongst its own people as to leave not a single trace of their original non- Hindu races and names behind.
633. When the unprecedented calamity of the Muslim aggression fell on India, the Hindus kept on stubbornly fighting the aggressors for over a thousand years or so, and ultimately shattered the Muslim power as completely as they did the non-Hindu Saka-Hun empires; and once again, they established their political independence! Yet, they could not recover their tremendous loss of numerical strength, which was brought about by the forcible conversions nor could they regain the Indian areas actually occupied by the Muslim settlers here, nor even could they Hinduise the Muslims as completely as they did the Ionian, the Saka, the Hun and other non-Hindus! Why?
634. The answer to this main vexing question is chiefly and thoroughly discussed with adequate historical proofs in chapters V to XI of this book. The conclusion that one arrives at after evaluating the contemporary events and circumstances is that as soon as the Muslim rule was overthrown, or was in the process of being overthrown, neither the Hindus at large, nor the Hindu rulers ousted the Muslim religious dominance even when proper opportunities presented themselves, and although they were far more strongly armed than their Muslim opponents. They did not convert even a single Muslim to Hinduism by persuasion—let alone by force!

635. Had the victorious Hindu nation instantly broken off all bans on food- exchange, inter-marriages, (re)conversion, seafaring and other refractory social and religious traditions and reconverted all the Muslims—whether converted or original—and absorbed them in the then prevailing caste structure of the Hindu society, of course with due regard for the status and qualifications of the persons concerned (as they had already done with the Saka, Hun and other subjugated foreigners, in the by-gone days), like Spain, India would immediately have been rendered Muslimless! Hindusthan would have been at that very time, the place of the Hindus in the truest sense of the term. 636-637. This treatise deals with the Muslim invasions of India during the period covering over a thousand years from A.D. 700 to A.D. 1800 and the chain of consequent Hindu-Muslim wars. Naturally, the points raised in this discussion apply only to the conditions prevailing during that period. Therefore, while reading such historical dissertations and treatises, the reader must always bear in mind one important fact that the actions and the codes of conduct, which are, or seem to be most proper, beneficial and necessary in the context of the particular conditions obtainable during that period and in respect of persons and places concerned, may not necessarily be proper, beneficial under different conditions or during another period. They might even be highly objectionable, detrimental and so unnecessary at times under different conditions or with different persons. May those actions then refer to religion or politics or other walks of life! Samartha Ramdas Swami, well- versed in religious and political sciences, has succinctly made the same point in the following words: समया सारखा समयो ये ना। नेम कची चालेना नेम धरिता राजकारणा व्यत्ययो पडे। श्री दासबोध दशक 18-6-6 “Conditions are not exactly similar, nor can one rule prevail (for ever)! If one rule is followed (every time) in politics, difficulties arise. [Ramdas—Shree Dasbodh - 18.6.6]

Hindu War Policy on The Religious and Political Front 638-639. It is made amply clear in chapters V to XII of this book that in their religio-political war with the Muslims, which the Hindus fought most tenaciously for centuries together, the Hindu war-policy had not been sufficiently strong to defeat the Muslim on the religious front. Why, it proved to be definitely weak and suicidal in comparison with the diabolically ferocious war-strategy of the Muslims on that front. For, the Hindu nation had completely forgotten, at least in respect of the religious side of it, that a nation has, as a rule, to adopt a war-strategy far stricter, crueller and more unrelenting than that of the unscrupulous enemy it wants to conquer. 640. During the Vedic and the Puranic (mythological) period, the ancestors of the Hindu Nation had to fight the Daityas, the Danavs and the Rakshasas, the cruellest, most atrocious and cunning cannibals of the time. It is because (as the Vedic and Puranik stories show) those of our ancestors, our gods, our emperors, the Vedic Rishis who chanted war canticles, the epic poets of the Puranans and all those who actively participated in the war could become more atrocious, more deceptive and cunning, and far crueller than those enemies like the Rakshasas and others. It is because they could formulate an adequate war policy to meet the ever-changing guiles of the enemy and practise it effectively so that they could always succeed in those various wars, and our nation too became stronger and more expansive than before. 641. It was not on the political front alone, but on the religious front too, that the enemy had to be faced in those times! When Vishwamitra took Shreeram to the forest to protect the Rishis, the latter was told at great length how those Rakshasas destroyed the religious rites of the time, viz. the sacrifices, and how the daughters of the Rishis were kidnapped. Later on in, Dandakaranya, Shreeram came to know what great havoc had the Rakshasa army of Ravan wrought upon the hermitages of the Rishis, who were in a minority there, with their sacrificial rites, with their colonies and even with their lives. Ram was also shown at various places the heaps of bones of those Rishis, whose blood those cannibals had drunk and whose

flesh they had eaten. This will clearly show that this long-drawn mythological war of our ancestors with the Rakshasas was fought not only on the political but also on the religious front. And at that time, those gods and god-like emperors, too, considered it the holiest religious duty to show super-savage cruelty to beat down the cruelty of the Rakshasas, to be arch- devils against the devils! (For a fuller discussion of the point, please refer to paragraphs 460 to 461 of this book). It is enough to mention here that the incarnation of Nursinh, who appeared in the most terrifying form in order to protect the great devotee Prahlad and who tore to pieces his religious enemy, the wicked Hiranya Kashipu with his leonine talons was— A God-Head of our Nation was our leader! The story of Kacha also shows that in the war, our gods followed the policy— 642. व्रजन्ति ते मूढधियः पराभवम्। भवन्ति मायाविषु ये न मायिनः॥ To fight the crafty enemy with super-craft, to destroy barbarism with hyper-barbarity, as the only effective means of annihilating the foe, was the praiseworthy principle of religious warfare of our ancestors till, at least, the close of the Puranic era. 643. However, when gods fought against other gods, or when there were internecine wars like that of the Kouravas and the Pandavas, the war strategy differed completely. No single charioteer was to be attacked by many charioteers; the submissive or surrendering warrior was to be given his life. Such considerations for justice and injustice were to be actually shown on the battlefield. This ethics of war was preached because it was honoured by both the contending parties. 644. But, as we have already pointed out in paragraph 315, the invasions of varying magnitudes of the Persians, the Ionians, the Greeks, the Sakas and the Kushanas and the Huns, which began at the close of the Puranic period and continued during the early part of our historic past, were all made mainly for political ascendancy and not for any religious enmity. Their own religions were more or less like the offshoots of Hinduism itself. Later on, after their defeat by our Hindu ancestors, the millions of these foreign invaders, who chose to settle here, merged into the Hindu society completely. So during this early historical period, in the absence of any religious aggression by these foreigners on our religion, our ancestors

fought pure and simple political wars with them with effective strategical counter-moves and vanquished them completely. As these wars were purely political in nature, the question of religiosity or irreligiosity, of extreme kindness, truth, violence or non-violence or other fine distinctions of principles never arose! Naturally, the tendency to retaliate in the same fashion even on the religious front—to face religious aggression with counter religious offensives—to meet cruelty with supra-cruel blows, craft with super-craft, violence with extreme violence and to consider this war policy to be a highly religious duty of a brave warrior—lay dormant in our national mind, because there was no occasion for them to use such war tactics on the religious front long after the religious wars with the Rakshasas. 645. Moreover, during this intervening period, the different religious sects that were really the offshoots of the Vedic religion, and had a strong propensity to Sanyas (renunciation or asceticism) and extreme non-violence like the Ajivakas, the Jains, the Buddhists and others, preached to the society that true religion meant extreme non-vidence, kindness, love and truth and nothing else. Among the rest of the Vedic population, class distinctions and their development into caste differences and the religious traditions about food-exchange, touchables and untouchables, which cut to pieces the composite life of the society, were growing stronger and these very, really anti-social traditions came to be considered as true religion. Later on, flesh-eating was prohibited even in the sacrificial rites. The fact that the extreme forms and manifestations of truth most often prove to be the harmful vices was lost sight of by the religious ideology of the time, while the excessive inopportune and suicidal use of virtues, which ruined the nation, was itself considered the highest form of religious conduct. Generally speaking, truthful conduct is a virtue. To satisfy a promised gift or word is also a virtue! But when in the heat of extolling virtues to the skies, the Puranas (mythological stories) told the story of Harishchandra, who made good his promise given to Vishwamitra in his dream by presenting him with his kingdom and such other childish stories, they definitely changed the national war-policy into an imbecile, weak and suicidal one. No words can adequately condemn this influence of the Puranas. More respectable than this truthful conduct was considered the practice of non-violence as the highest form of virtue, not only by the Jains and the Buddhists but in some of the Vaishnav texts also, which later on

hastened our terrible downfall as determinedly and as enormously as even our enemies, the Muslims, could not perhaps accomplish. Manliness and valour came to be condemned as the vilest of vices. The unmanly, the imbecile, the valour-lacking coward, not only lacking the ability but even the desire to avenge the national insult and injustice, came to be highly respected in religious circles as the greatest and most magnanimous saint, ripe for an honourable place in heaven. 646. This point has already been adequately discussed with sufficient proofs and illustration in chapter VIII under the caption ‘Perverted Sense of Virtues’ and in other chapters also; and it will be touched again, while we shall be narrating the events on the political front. Here, it has to be remembered that as all the invasions on India after the Puranic times had been political and not religious (at least not of such huge dimensions as those of the Rakshasas so as to shake the very foundation of our religion), we had completely forgotten the old war-strategy to meet such terrible religious aggression. Our very definitions of virtues and religion and their practice had undergone a complete change. The war-strategy of Nursinh of the ancient times, which sought a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye had now become vegetarian, submissive, tolerant and shameless! 647. Naturally, when Islam invaded Hinduism with far more ferocity and bitterness and with more dangerous weapons than the Rakshasas of the Puranic age, our Hindu ancestors of the seventh century had no other war- strategy to face it with than the imbecile, impotent and suicidal—one which offered milk to a venomous serpent. To encounter the wolf, the sheep had preferred its own neck! All this, as also our consequent enormous losses on the religious front, has been clearly shown in the earlier chapters. Hence, we shall now begin a critical study of the political side of this Hindu- Muslim epic struggle.

The Age-Long Relation of the Arabs with India 648. When I first read the word मुसल (Musal) in my student days in ‘Mousal Parva’ in one of the secondary Puranas like the Hariwansh, and wondered how the huge rushes uprooted by the Yadavas from the seashores became big pounding pestles, which crushed their bones as some lethal weapons would, I at once hit upon one probable explanation that perhaps the word, ‘Mousal’, might be an attempt at pun on the word Musal (मुसल) by the Puranic punsters, and that it might have been suggested by the word Musalman given to the Arab traders of the past after their conversion to Islam. But this fanciful explanation could not then be supported by the time-sense and other coordinating historical events. 649. Much later in the Andamans, when I began reading a lot of Bengali literature, I remember to have then perused an essay about the passing away of Lord Krishna either by Shree Madhusudan Datta, the famous Bengali poet, of the narative ‘Meghanad’ and the promoter of the ‘Amitrakshar’ metre, or by Bankimchandra, the poet who sang the national song, Vande Mataram! The said essay tries to offer a plausible explanation of the final exit of Balaram, after the death of Lord Krishna, along with his followers into the sea in his original form of Shesh(शेष), a snake. It meant to say that Balaram entered the Western sea at Dwarka in his ships and went away to some foreign island in a serpentine fashion. I then remembered to have read a parallel instance mentioned by an Arya Samaji traveller in the account of his travels. About fifty years ago, this Arya Samaji traveller had visited Arabia to see the actual condition of the Hindu residents of the place. After enquiry, he found there is a small section of people who grew tufts of hair on the top of their heads (as the Brahmins and other Hindus here did till very recently). They told him that, according to a very sacred legend handed down to them by their forefathers, they were supposed to have gone there from India at some very ancient time. It is believed that at the time of a great war in India, they had left for Arabia and established a colony there, but never got themselves mixed up with the factions of the natives there, nor with their

feuds and wars. That was why they could be seen in their much the same original state. The inference that the said traveller has drawn from this, is that these strange people must have been the same Hindus who had left India at the close of the epic struggle of the Kouravas and the Pandavas in Mahabharat. 650. If we then assume from the foregoing statements that Yadavas led by Balaram had gone to Arabia and formed a big colony there, two more things seem to support such an assumption. The first is that Tamil was originally called अरवी (Aravi). The aborigines of Arabia were mostly Shaivites, worshipping the (Shiv) ling (as most of historians agree) and their priests were called Druids (Dravid द्रविड़) in English, the same class that seems to have existed in Britain and Ireland as per the old legends told by the historians. 651. This is not the place to relate all these and other legends bearing on this topic, but it can be fairly assumed that Arabia and India had very close ties and trade relations from very ancient times, and there must have been Indian colonies established in that peninsula, and we can infer that like those in Java, Sumatra and other lands in the Eastern Ocean, in this land in the Western Ocean too, now known as Arabia and others, there must have once thrived Indian (especially South Indian) colonies, kingdoms and civilization. But we cannot offer it here, as yet, as any proven fact or theory. Only the various details leading to this conclusion have simply been summarized here briefly, so that they might be of some use to some future student of history, who might be attracted to it. 652. It is only pertinent here to write about the relation of India and Arabia during the seventh century when the Arabs had already courted Islam. Islam was born after the birth of Muhammad in A.D. 570, and it took at least forty to fifty years for the Arabs to join it. They had civil wars on the question of adopting this new faith. Yet the Muslim history is believed to start from their Hizri era in A.D. 622 and we might as well accept that belief for the present discussion. 653. Even before these new Arabic Muslim aggressors crossed their borders and fell on their neighbouring Persian empire, the Hindu states had practically spread once again to the very distant borders of Chandragupta Maurya's empire beyond the Indus. The Chinese traveller, Huen-tsang entered India from the north-east about A.D. 629 and has left

an eyewitness account of whatever he saw here. According to him, the Hindu borders had stretched far beyond the Indus to include what are now called Kabul, Ghazni and Gandhar. Almost all the Chinese, who came to India during those years, had to cross these Hindu states and the Indus, before they stepped into India. The Chinese of that era called the Hindus ‘Shintsu’ 654. That is why, they in China are referred to India by its most ancient name of Sindhu, and the Hindu people as ‘Shintsu’. It is quite plain that this ‘Shintsu’ was a Chinese corruption of Sindhu. This is yet another proof on the Chinese side that the word Hindu is derived originally from the word Sindhu. The first Arab invasion of Sindh and their defeat 655. Most of the modern histories refer to the Arab invasion on King Dahir as the first invasion, wherein the Hindu King was completely defeated. But this is a blatant falsehood. The first Arab invasion of Sindh took place in A.D. 640, in which the invaders were completely vanquished and their commander-in-chief was killed by the Hindus (cf: paragraph 324). The second major invasion of Dindh by the Arabs 656. But in A.D. 711, however, Mohammed Kasim marched on Sindh at the head of a fifty-thousand-strong army and while facing it bravely, Maharaj Dahir of Sindh was destroyed (cf. paragraphs 327 to 331). 657. But immediately within fifty years of this fall of King Dahir, the Rajputs and specially their leader, Bappa Raval of Chitod, wrested it away from the Arabs and he and other Hindu kings pushed their boundaries right from the Pariyatra Mountain, i.e. Hindukush mountains, Kashmir, Gandhar (which is now called Afghanistan) straight up to Sindhusagar (which we now shamelessly call Arabian sea). This Hindu sovereignty over the vast region lasted for three hundred years. Three hundred years amount to about seven Generations 658. Even when the Hindus held their sway over such a vast region for more than three hundred years and even when Sindh had been reconquered by the Rajputs within twenty-five years of its loss to Kasim. most of the English, as also the Hindu historians, never so much as mention it. On the contrary, great historians, litterateurs, well-known professors, all the world over as also the school-going children, have all along been repeating blindly that right from the time Kasim conquered Sindh, the Muslims

began their onward march right up to Rameshwaram and for all these twelve hundred years or so from A.D. 711, to the time the British left India in 1947, the Hindus had been rotting in slavery. This assumption is as false as it is insulting to the Hindus. This is an unbearable perversion of facts. 659. Hereafter, at least a truth-loving writer of history should scrupulously avoid this falsehood, this perversion of facts from school or college textbooks as also from those of a greater worth and importance. These three hundred years 660. For during these three hundred years i.e., up to A.D. 1000 or so in the whole of India, right from Hindukush to Ceylon and to Burma in the east, the Hindu Sovereign states ruled proudly. At such an early date as that, the Hindu kings in the south such as the Cher, Chowl, Pandya, Rashtrakut and others, sometimes the one, at others the next, ruled the vast southern seas so powerfully as to call themselves Trisamudreshwar. To say that the whole of India sweated in slavery under the Muslims or some other rulers, ignoring its prosperous and independent sovereign status, is to belie history. From A.D. 1000 To A.D. 1030 661. All of a sudden, like a comet, rose Mahmud of Ghazni at this time. At his accession to the throne, he vowed to Muslimize the whole of India and as has been already described in paragraphs 365 to 375, carried on a series of depredations and arson, religious persecution and rapes, and pollution and conversion, throughout the vast tract from Multan in Punjab to Someshwar in Sourashtra. 662. But it is because, at such cataclysmal times, the Hindus showed exemplary valour and perserevence and forbearance in facing all these calamities, never losing self-respect or courage, that Hindu states could again raise their banners overthrowing the Muslim ascendancy hardly within twenty-five to thirty years of Mahmud Ghazni's death in A.D. 1030, with the sole exception perhaps of the northern part of Punjab beyond the Indus. This can surely be cited as the astonishing illustration of the tenacity of any nation for that matter. 663. Secondly, it must be remembered that during the thirty or forty years of the political havoc wrought by Mahmud of Ghazni in the north, the whole of South India had been displaying daring and adventure while enjoying independence, prosperity and the mastery of the three seas as nonchalantly as before.

664. This is why even during those thirty or forty years of Ghazni’s raids, India as a whole can never be said to be slaving under the foreign heels. Of course, we do not deny that a small part of the north-western Punjab was annexed by Ghazni, establishing political as well as religious ascendancy firmly over there. However, it must also be borne in mind that even at that time, Kashmir was a Hindu state. Hundred-and-Fifty years after the death of Mahmud of Ghazni in A.D. 1030
665. A hundred-and-fifty years, i.e. about five generations after A.D. 1030, the whole of India, right from Kashmir to Assam and Burma in the north and Rameshwaram in the South, was politically independent, powerful and prosperous as before. Great preachers, saints and mahants and priests following the path of Shree Shankaracharya were, along with Smritikars Deval and Medhatithi, leading the cultural life of the whole of India and its overseas colonies. Sanskrit was the Indian priestly language throughout. Kashi was the cultural centre of the whole Hindu nation. The great wounds suffered by our Hindu nation on the political front during the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni were healed up by rulers dining these years. If the temple of Somnath was rebuilt on this side, new sky-high temples like that of Bhuvaneshwar and religious centres in Orissa and Assam rose to their full glory. The Hindu mastery of the Eastern, Western and the Southern seas, their trade and commerce, to-and-fro movement of thousands of their troops, their royal visits and return visits up to Maxico in the far east and to Africa in the west, continued unhampered and, therefore, the Indians overseas could keep constant contact with their motherland, and thereby prospered materially as well as culturally.
666. Can any Hindu-hater dare say, therefore, of this period at least, that the whole of India was rotting in abject slavery?

From the 12th Century A.D. to the end of the 13th Century A.D. 667. After the death of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Muslim power there grew far too weak because, in the first place, the population there consisted mainly of the aboriginal tribe converted quite recently by craft or coercion to Islam and secondly, because the Arabian Muslim States were being destroyed completely by the Mongols and the Turks, the two great Asian tribes that had not yet sworn allegiance to Islam, during their sweeping raids through the vast tract of Central Asia right up to Europe. 668. As has already been pointed out, many big and small Hindu communities and royal families ruled this region for a long time. Ghuri was one of these Hindu communities round about Ghazni, which was wholly converted to Islam during the Muslim religio-political aggressions. Being forced to follow the Muslim socio-religious practices for generations, this originally Hindu community of the Ghuries became too staunch and bigoted in their faith, that they ardently desired to rule the other Muslims in Ghazni. From the same Muslim (yet originally Hindu), Ghuri community rose to power one Mohammad Ghori, who, subjugating all the warring tribes during the internecine battles that broke out after the death of Mahmud of Ghazni, finally proclaimed himself, the Sultan of the State. In order to enlist the loyal support of all the Muslims, he made everywhere the stock-in-trade proclamation, which reverberated throughout that region and the northwest region of Hindusthan, that he would force all the kafirs (meaning Hindus) in India to accept Islam and would found an empire there. 669. However, in spite of his ambition, he could not do anything of the kind Mahmud of Ghazni had done before him in his seventeen horrible predatory raids because of the adverse circumstances. In A.D. 1176, Mohammed Ghori first captured the strong fort of Ooch near the confluence of the Panchnad with the Indus. Enraged at the weakness of her husband, the queen in the fort killed him and married her daughter to the victorious Mohammed surrendering the overlordship of the region at the same time.

670. Then in order to size up the Hindu kingdoms, Mohammed Ghori marched on the weakest one of Gujarat by proceeding stealthily along the borders of Rajasthan. For, the King of Gujarat having died, the Queen and her military chief enthroned a minor. This led Mohammed Ghori to think that it was weak enough to be attacked. But he was misled by appearances. For, in learning of Ghori's ensuing invasion, the Hindu army of Gujarat, augmented by those of other sympathising Hindu Kings, marched forward to the mountain-ranges of Abu. The Queen herself fought in the battle most valiantly, urging all the soldiers to defend the infant king whom, she said, she had delivered to their care. Inflamed by her words, the whole Hindu army fought so furiously that the Muslims were routed completely in all directions. Mohammed Ghori himself escaped narrowly and fled straight to his domain beyond the borders. Second major defeat of Mohammed Ghori by the Hindus
671. Mohammed Ghori, however, was not to be daunted by adversities. So, without being discouraged by his recent defeat at Abu, he once again marched on India in A.D. 1191, invading this time the territory of Prithviraj Chouhan, whereupon that gallant monarch of Delhi along with as many Hindu rulers as he could then gather, advanced against Ghori and joining battle at Tarayan to the north of Karnool near Panipat, dealt a crushing defeat on the invader after a bloody day. Mohammed Ghori himself was captured alive by Prithviraj. This battle is known as the Battle of Talavadi.
672. Emperor (Samrat) Prithviraj and his feudatory princes were after all Hindus by birth and belonged to the topmost Rajput ranks. Hence, they sincerely believed that to let go the captive national enemy alive, however treacherous he might be, to give back his kingdom with all pomp and show, was the highest form of religious conduct, conducive to heavenly bliss as regards a true warrior was concerned.
673. सांप बिखारी देशभूमिचा ये घेउं चावा। अवचित गांठुनि ठकवुनि भुलवूनि कसाहि ठेचावा॥ Were a serpent (an inveterate national enemy) to come with a view to biting the motherland, he should be smashed to pieces with a surprise attack, deceit or cunning or in any other way possible. Although this war- strategy of Shree Krishna and Chanakya was taught to the Hindus long ago, at that time, it appeared to them like one of the five deadliest sins. For, as we have already shown in paragraphs 397 to 454, the whole of the Hindu

nation was at that time utterly infatuated with the perverted sense of virtues. But the Muslims, however, followed this very war-strategy most scrupulously. 674. See how: Had Prithviraj Chouhan, instead of Mohammed Ghori, invaded Ghazni and had the Muslims defeated the Rajputs (as the Rajputs had actually done with Mohammed Ghori), they would have not only killed Prithviraj but would also have converted, by using force and cunning, all the captive Rajputs to Islam, would have made them their wives and children slaves for the whole of their lives in their houses, and the beautiful among the Hindu captive women Ghori himself might have taken into his harem and ravaged. To such a damned, demoniacal enemy of our religion like Mohammed Ghori, was mercy shown by Prithviraj and the other confederated Rajput rulers, following sheepishly the textual maxim क्षमा वीरस्य भूषणम् (a maxim to be used only in the case of some noble and magnanimous enemy!) without the slightest consideration being given to the propriety of time, place and the circumstances and persons involved! Nay, they showed mercy not only to Mohammed Ghori but even to the whole Muslim army, only to respect the noble Rajput tradition of assuring full protection from fear to those who surrendered meekly. Only an oral promise was obtained from Mohammed Ghori that he would not again invade India and he was allowed to go alive. His domain of Ghazni, too, was returned to him and proud, more of their suicidal and credulous generosity than of their having defeated the Muslim army of Mohammed Ghori, those Rajput warriors marched triumphantly to Delhi and celebrated their victory! But what did Mohammed Ghori do on Reaching Ghazni? 675. Did Mohammed Ghori forget his enmity to the Hindus because of this generosity of Prithviraj Chouhan? No! On the contrary like a snake, provoked by a slight injury, Mohammed Ghori and all the Muslims in his kingdom, without any sense of gratitude for the Hindu imbecile generosity were all the more embittered, and resolved to crush the Hindus altogether. And with a huge army, Mohammed Ghori once again attacked Prithviraj in A.D. 1193. The Rajput ‘rasos’ and the best among them the ‘Prithviraj Raso’ of Chand Bhat 676. In fact, it is impossible and improper to write any trustworthy history of the Rajputs without closely studying the contemporary historical

accounts written by the Rajput Bhats, Charans in their heroic and, to some exent, poetic style and known in that region as ‘Rasos’. But it is doubtful whether amongst our historians, there be five or at the most ten such as have read them with any scientific curiosity! That is why none of the histories written of the Rajputs of the times or, for that matter of the whole Hindu society of that age, with the solitary exception of that of Col. Tod, really deserves to be truly called histories. They are mere translations or transliterations of stray incoherent remarks and disconnected and perverted accounts of the Muslim or the English writers. Independent ‘Rasos’ seem to have been composed on valiant Rajput Ranas, proud of their religion (Hamir Raso, Chhatrasal Raso, etc.). The ‘Rasos’ are not pure, unadulterated histories! But the forceful and vivid descriptions of the various events, their high fervour and the fact of their authors’ participation to a lesser or greater degree, in those particular historical events, make those grand incidents live, as it were, before the imagination of the reader, as the above-mentioned sketchy outlines of chronological accounts can never do. ‘Prithviraj Raso’ by the famous Chand Bhat, who was in the pay of Prithviraj, bears out the above remark by its epic serenity, calm dignity and moving pathos in the descriptions of the Hindus of the time and of its account of the first Muslim raids from the north-west. 677. The Story of the fire race (अग्नि-कुल) 678. The Nagari Pracharini Sabha had undertaken to republish this ‘Prithviraj Raso’ in 1922-23, when 1 was in prison at Ratnagiri, where some parts of it were sent to me on request by my brother for my essay on Hindutwa. I do not know, however, whether this whole book was ever published. These non-Hindus are Shameless, we Hindus, fight shy! निर्लज्ज म्लेच्छ लजै नहीं, हम हिन्दू लजवान् 679. The ‘Prithviraj Raso’ describes the Hindu-Muslim skirmishes and frays in the epic style of Mahabharat, and the poet has praised the Hindus highly for vanquishing Mohammed Ghori again and again and then setting him free to go alive, because this noble act of the Hindus, he thought, added to their glory! But when Mohammed Ghori again attacked Prithviraj in A.D. 1193, violating his promise that he would never again invade India, Chand Bhat wrote wrathfully, “We Hindus are scrupulous about religious