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

upon her people, and which sadly lacks the armed might to ward off this disastrous situation), has no other go than to forbid her people, of course, for self-preservation alone, from going to the enemy lands. Self-imposition of the ban on crossing attock or the seas 536. The greatest mistake made was that when these various bans were interpolated in the older smritis, as the best means of serving the needs of the particular hour, the spurious verses dealing with these bans were also given the same sanctity, the same authenticity and the same inviolability by stamping them with the old authoritative seal of एष धर्मः सनातनः ‘This is the old tradition’, as was given to the genuinely old verses. That is why even after the particular adverse times, for which these bans on crossing Attock or the sea were originally designed, had passed off and more favourable times prevailed, inasmuch as when the Hindu military might under the Peshwas and Ranjit Singh was powerful enough not only to cross Afghanistan but even attack Persia, this anti-national blind faith in those bans, however, did not vanish. It was still boulking the credulous Hindu Society with the fear of committing a sin in crossing Attock. That means even when the once beneficial religious tradition had grown harmful to the nation, the Hindu Society was not prepared to give it up immediately for fear of the religious injunction. Even when to break that tradition would have definitely proved greatly advantageous to the nation and holy from the religious point of view, the blind faith in the old tradition that to break the old custom was to commit a sin was still maintained. It is, therefore, the sea, एष धर्मः सनातनः that the modern writers of smritis affixed to these later interpolations, which acted as a bugbear, that played the greatest mischief. 537. Take for instance, the ban on seafaring! Had these writers of smritis of later times specifically mentioned that in old ‘Krit yug’, our Arya nation was mighty enough to cross the (seven) seas and rule over other islands and archipelagos, that even up to the time of Rajendra Chola, we were the lords of the three seas (त्रिसमुद्राधीश) and that, as such, crossing the seas was essential for the spread of our religion and empire and was holy, but as the naval power and the lordship of the seas had now been unfortunately lost, crossing the seas and going into the enemy land in the helpless humble way, was highly injurious to our nation, and so sinful, and that it was, therefore, banned till we regained that lordship of the seas. Had they but said so in so

many words! युग हासानुरूपतः should really be construed as शक्तिहासानुरूपतः ‘because of the loss of might.’ The bugbear of एषधर्मः सनातनः should be truly held up only to that extent. Had (once again we repeat) the writers of Smritis of that time announced this clearly, the tremendously harmful consequences of these bans on crossing Attock and the seas, which the nation had to suffer, could have been avoided to a large extent. 538. But because the new precepts about the various bans on crossing Attock and the seas and others, which were really introduced in the chapter on कलिवर्ज्य things by the new religious lawgivers of later days, were published under the name of the old writers of smritis, they were to remain in force till the end of the कलियुग (Kaliyug), i.e. permanently. Although, later on, breaking these bans itself would have proved advantageous to the Hindus, and although the Hindus had become strong enough to break them, it was impossible that the credulous Hindu Society would ever have been prepared to break them till the doomsday प्रलयकाल (the end of कलियुग), because of the specific Smriti order ‘these five should be abandoned in Kaliyuga’ (क्लौपंच विवर्जयेत् ) Again, when did the (कलियुग) Kaliyug begin? How long was it to last? And when was it to end? And after its end, when was the Age of Truth (सत्ययुग) to commence once again? The different opinions held on these points by many of our religious lawgivers made the confusion worse confounded. The Christian Religious offensive against the Hindus! 539. In paragraph 399 of this book, is mentioned the antiquity of the first Hindu contacts with the Christians. According to the Christian mythology, when in the first century A.D. the Christian religion began to be preached in Syria, the very Jews who had crucified Jesus of Nazareth began to persecute these handful of Christians. At that very time, some of the Christians, who knew the way to India, fled in groups to seek shelter with the Hindu King of Malabar Zamorin (the corrupt form of Samudriya). As a matter of fact, that Hindu King ought not to have unconditionally allowed these alien people to

land on his sea-coast. But being afflicted by the disease of the morbidly erroneous conception of virtues, that Hindu king offered shelter to those Syrian Christians, and allocated a separate tract for their habitation. He even went to the length of offering a copper-plate (ताम्रपट) inscription recognizing their equality of right as a separate caste in the gram-panchayat (town-council). But, later on, when these Syrian-Christians came to know that even if the Hindus were forced merely to eat or drink with them, they would be polluted and could become Christians, these ancient Syrian Christians made an inauspicious start of the spread of Christianity in India, whereas during the first Christian century (1st Century A.D.), not a trace of Christianity could be found in England itself, in India, Hindus had already been begun to be forcibly baptized and made Christians! (It is worthwhile for every Hindu to read the history of the spread of Christianity in those days. Moreover, it seems that the customs and codes of conduct that were likely to facilitate the enemy in the work of proselytization, were firmly rooted in us as the basic religious conduct even as far back as the first century A.D. But we will leave this topic alone for want of space at our disposal, and because it has little bearing upon the subject in hand. 540. However, we should like to refer to one pregnant instance here. On seeing that a number of Hindu people in a town used to bathe in a holy lake, some of those Syrian-Christian missionaries thought that even here, they could try the device of polluting and Christianizing the Hindus, who considered themselves polluted by merely eating food or drinking water with the Christians. With this intention, these Syrian Christian missionaries stealthily went to big lakes where Hindu people used to go in large numbers for a bath and for carrying drinking water home. They bathed there along with all and drank its water. Then, after some days, these very missionaries themselves declared loudly in their congregations, “O you Hindus! We are Christians, the followers of Jesus! We are not Hindus! We have been bathing in your lakes along with you. After worshipping our Christian god, we drink the holy water of the Christian religion and have been giving you the same water all these days and you drank it devoutly. As per your Hindu religion, whichever Hindu drinks the Christian water becomes a Christian for life. This is your religious injunction, so you all have become Christians. That your other brethren may not be deceived, we pious people are publishing this truth!’ This news spread among the Christians and the Hindus of several villages in no time. There was a great havoc everywhere!

All those Hindus became impure and so they began to be boycotted. In the usual way, all those villages and towns in course of time, were socially ostracized and became Christian villages and towns! 541. Now we shall cite just for fun—but fun that kills—another incident, showing how all the human races at that time were fanatics in the extreme. 541A. The early Syrian Christian migrants to India were also divided into different sects. They vied with one another as to which of them disseminated the Christian doctrine more truly in foreign countries. So the sects other than the one that had Christianized Hindu villages, protested against the latter and out of malice, informed the superior religious authorities in Europe that sect had converted the simple and foolish Hindu to Christianity by abominable lies and deception, and collected contributions, but had never preached any Christian doctrines, as such. Therefore, they pleaded, that the number of the converts should not be taken into account, and that they should be stopped from damaging the prestige of the Christian propagandists. Because of the incessant protests of these other Christian sects, those Hindu converts to Christianity had for a long time no legal status as Christians, although they thought themselves to be such, and their subscriptions to the church were not accepted, nor were they allowed entrance into the church. In the end, the knotty problem seemed to have been solved by way of sumptuous subscriptions. For, after some days, a directive was received from Europe that all the Hindu converts were now to be called Christians and subscriptions from all of them were necessarily to be collected. Later on, all the Christian missionaries, to whatever sect they belonged, declared it to be their religious duty to convert the Hindus not only by hook or by crook or by sly means, but even by force and armed force. Naturally, the elementary ways of conversion like making the Hindus eat or drink with the Christians, were beyond all range of dispute and doubt. 542. Thereafter, the Syrian and other Christians fell out in their own country, and there were fierce battles fought amongst the various Christian sects. Therefore, for two or three centuries, thereafter, the work of the Christian missionaries in India had practically stopped. But one thing must be remembered in this context, that because there was no attempt whatsoever on the part of the Hindus to reconvert the Christianized Hindus (Indian Christians), the latter kept on calling themselves Christians and ceased to have any relation whatsoever with the Hindus.

543. In this brief account, one great proselytizing movement in the fifteenth century deserves some slight reference. That is the rigorous proselytizing movement carried on by the Portuguese missionaries after the passing of Gomantak into the Portuguese hands, and the opening of the centres of Christian propaganda on the Malabar coast. Their first energetic and determined archbishop to convert the Hindus by means of any horrible atrocities was Saint Xavier, who came to the land of Gomantak by about A.D. 1540. After moving heaven and earth for the spread of Christianity (of course in his horrible way), he wrote several letters to the Emperor of Portugal about the obstacles in his way of proselytization.
544. In one of his letters to the Portuguese King, he complains that the Portuguese officers in India, in spite of the fact that they were Christians themselves, irreverently set at naught, his orders in respect of the propagation of their faith. They were entirely given to lustful pleasures and a life of luxury, and were always on the lookout for every means to grow rich. Money was their God. To the service of the true God, to which the missionaries like himself had dedicated their lives, those officers, never did lend any helping hand. “The Second necessity for the Christians”, he wrote in his letter addressed from Amboina (Moluccas) to D. Joao III, King of Portugal on May 16, 1545, “is that your Majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law and according to the Mohamedan sect, without any fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many, who are spread all over the fortress, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition and of many preachers.” In one of his letters to the Society at Rome, he wrote, “If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.” These Brahmins were alleged to hinder the progress of the Christian proselytizing movement. While the Christian missionaries went on converting thousands of Hindus to Christianity, these ‘wily’ Brahmins were found to be secretly taking them all to the banks of the Mandvi river and bluffed them into bathing in the river; after reciting some verses, in order to wash off all sins of being converted to Christianity, they were declared to be original Hindus. Thus, with these and various other blatant lies, these Brahmins were alleged to be purifying a number of Hindu converts to Christianity. In spite of all attempts to intimidate and terrorise these Brahmins, they were said to be carrying on their activities nonchalantly. Xavier complains that the Portuguese officers in India did not

inflict on these Brahmins such severe punishments, as he would have liked them to do. 545. Tired of these incessant complaints of the Christian missionaries like St. Xavier, the Portuguese Emperor issued stern orders to his Governors and other officers, that they should not neglect help in any way in the sacred (?) cause of the spread of Christianity, otherwise their whole properly would be confiscated. Even then not satisfied, St. Xavier went on complaining against the Brahmins. He, nevertheless, gloated at the tremendous success his proselytizing efforts had achieved. At the very sight of a Christian missionary, Hindu villages were taken alright and people there were said to be running away helfer skelter, for most severe were the measures taken against those of the Hindus, who did not court Christianity. Let alone the common Hindu villagers, even the high priests of big Hindu temples, the heads of Hindu monasteries and the rich in the cities, were all put into prisons and were subjected to so much physical torture, that the priestly class at many places is said to have made good their escape to places outside Goa, carrying their sacred idols with them. “Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship”, wrote St. Francis Xavier to the Society at Rome in 1543 A.D. “I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse, than he has lately received of honour and worship from his parents, relations and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about and, in short, heap on them every possible outrage.” He further wrote to the same society at Rome from Cochin on the 27th Jan, 1545, “When all are baptized, 1 order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken into pieces. “The cruelties’, writes a Goan Historian, J.C. Barreto Miranda, which in the name of religion of peace and love this tribunal (of Inquisition) practised in Europe, were carried to even greater excesses in India.... Every word of their’s (of the Inquisitors) was a sentence of death, and at their slightest nod, was moved to terror the vast population spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands and who, on the most frivolous pretexts, could have been clapped for all time in the deepest dungeons or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.” The harrowing atrocities of St. Xavier and his successors on the Hindus of his and later dates, cannot be described here for want of space.

546. In all the provinces in north India, the Hindus in general had to bear the brunt of the Muslim religious persecution only. But the Hindus to the South of Vindhyadri right up to Rameshwaram, had to suffer such horrible persecution not only from the five independent Muslim states, then ruling in the Deccan, but also from the even fiercer Portuguese, whose brutal treatment of the Hindus in order to force them to swear allegiance to the Christian faith, seems to have no parallel. Whoever wishes to understand the whole harrowing story should read [‘Os Hindus De Goa Republica Portuguesa’, by Dr. Antonio Norohna]. Although many great and small volumes of histories describe the horrible religious persecution of the Hindus by these Portuguese missionaries, before which the Muslim atrocities pale into insignificance, this book is particularly mentioned because the writer Dr. Antonio Norohna happened to be a judge of the Portuguese High Court in Goa. The Portuguese happily have the honest habit of preserving all the favourable and unfavourable documents regarding their history, right from the ancient to the modern times, and it is their ancient tradition to make all these available for study to any interested scholar. Naturally, he got every facility to read all those documents and books thoroughly, completely and publicly. That this Portuguese judge of the High Court should write this book after thoroughly studying all the documents, including the original letters of the then ruling Portuguese Emperor, the Portuguese Christian missionaries at that time in India, and the then Pope of Rome, deserves the special merit of this book!
547. Besides this book of Dr. Antonio Norohna, one is also recommended to read ‘The History of Reconversion in Gomantak in Marathi’. It was written under the supervision of the late Shree Masurkar Maharaj, who reconverted more than ten thousand Hindus, formerly made Christian under great coercion. The present book ‘Six Glorious Epochs’ is not really a history of India but a critical treatise, so the detailed account of this Portuguese religious persecution and forcible conversion of Hindus, cannot be given here at length. It is enough to say that the detailed discussion (which has here been recorded in the earlier chapters) of the thousand-year- old unprecedented and bitter Hindu-Muslim war since the invasion of Sindh by the Muslims, and the suicidal consequences of the various harmful and anti-national bans self-imposed by the Hindus on eating, drinking, touching, intermarrying and especially, that on re-purification and reconversion of the polluted Hindus, and many other foolish religious concepts of the Hindus of

the time, is applicable, almost word-by-word to the various acrimonious battles of the Hindus with the Portuguese, after their arrival in India and the Christian missionaries in general, and the Christian nations also. 548. It must also be remembered here that at this very time, the Arab and the Christian nations established their rule over the South Sea (the Indian Ocean). They attacked our old Hindu-Buddhist states, that had spread far and wide up to Indo-China and deprived millions of Hindus of their religion, causing the Hindus, indirectly, to fetter themselves with the new shackles of the ban on sea voyage. This not only worsted the Hindu political and religious authority, but caused a great loss to them of their grand aspiration for the naval empire and foreign trade. They lost their whole navy and naval trade. Not only did the ship-building industry of the Hindus perish, but to maintain such seafaring naval force itself became sinful. Hindu religion and Hindu nation became literally narrow-minded because of its own blunders. Even if any daring Hindu tried to break this shell of narrow-mindedness on the Eastern, Western and Southern oceans, there was the prohibitive placard “समुद्रयातुः स्वीकार - कलौ पंच विवर्जयेत्” — This was inviolable. 549. Heretofore, we have mentioned only some of the chosen events, violent or non-violent, regarding the Muslim-Christian two-fold political and religious armed aggression against the Hindus, and the way in which they faced it, and even of the revenge that the Hindus also took of those atrocities and humiliations during this violent thousand year-old Hindu- Muslim war. They can easily show according to the ‘स्थाली पुलाक न्याय’ (judging cooked rice by testing one cooked grain only), the enormity of the struggle. 550. Truly speaking, while religious leaders like Shankaracharya Vidyaranyaswami, national heroes like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Durgadas Rathod Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur and saints and sages like Ramanand, Shree Chaitanya and others gave the lead in carrying on counter-offensives on the religious front by individual or mass conversions, the Hindu society as a whole ought to have rocked the skies by effecting unceasing mass conversions of the Muslim men and women to Hinduism and reconversion of Hindu converts, who had fallen victim to the violence

or guile of the enemy. They should have thrown to the winds, the old traditional views and customs. They ought to have made it the religion of the day! 550A. The Hindus were not averse to idolatory. Many of the Hindu seats and many of the Hindu religious tenets had been established by great personalities, and the Hindu society as a whole, had recognized them and adapted them to the framework of their religious code, at least so far as they concerned their followers. In their own individual capacity, the followers of those particular religious heroes, obeyed those particular codes of conduct. But the otherwise, highly idolatrous Hindu society did not follow these new idols—the new heroes—who effected individual and mass conversions and reconversions, carried on equally violent religio- political counter-offensives. They avenged the humiliation and persecution of the Hindu women on the Muslim women by similar treatment. The national heroes, who did all this, have all along been highly honoured and worshipped as idols among the Hindus, yet the way they showed as the most suitable for the age was not actively and enthusiastically followed, after they had passed away. As soon as those heroes died, their particular followers relegated to oblivion their practical lessons of violent or non- violent religious counter-aggression and their teaching in this respect. Why, while the particular sects of Chaitanya and others have been still alive so far as the other aspects of their teachings are concerned, and their eulogistic biographies like the भक्ति विजय have been written and read most devoutly, not the slightest mention of the armed revenge these very heroes took against the Muslims is to be found in them. Does it not sound very strange? Nor is any heroic ballad seen to have been composed on their counter-aggression or on their mass reconversions by any of the minstrels or bards or ‘Charans’ of those days! The Hindu society in general felt no urgency of handing down to the later generations, the anecdotes and legends of those heroic deeds. 551. FOR DEEP DOWN, THE MODERN HINDU MIND IS TOLERANT, WHICH IN THE VULGAR MEANS SHAMELESS OR CALLOUS! THE MODERN-MOST EVENT OF THOSE TIMES, WHICH LENDS THE STRONGEST HISTORICAL PROOF AND SUPPPORT TO ALL THE STATEMENTS AND REMARKS THAT HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED SO FAR IN THE EARLIER CHAPTERS OF THIS BOOK.

552. Whatever instances we have quoted of the Hindu religious counter- aggressions so far in this chapter are, of course, only exceptions, considering the many centuries of the Hindu-Muslim epic war. They were inadequate attempts to patch up the shattered firmament. But it is because some Hindus performed brave deeds, befitting the valour of the Hindu nation, of retaliation to the Muslims on the religious front, that the Hindu side was not completely overthrown. The Muslim enemy always feared that even the Hindus also could avenge religious persecution on occasions. If without losing any time, the whole Hindu society had adopted the same military strategy on the religious front as these exceptions of Hindu heroes did in launching counter-offensive, not a single Muslim could have remained as a Muslim in this country—at least at that time. This, we have often shown in earlier chapters of this book.
553. But then why didn't all the other Hindus dare do so? Why were they afraid? Why did they feel it to be against their Hindu religion itself, to launch such armed counter-offensive against the Muslims? Why did they come to consider the various bans on repurification, sea voyage, eating and drinking and others, as the true religious codes of conduct for the Hindus? The answer to all these questions—the justification of their conduct—the Hindus of those times offererd, was that such an armed retaliation would not have been beneficial to the best interests of the Hindus, nor did it become the Hindu civility—Hindu culture! They meant to say that in those times of repeated terrific Muslim onslaughts if the Hindu kings and society had reconverted their unfortunate brethren, who were converted to Islam, or would have launched counter-attacks on the religious front and again, as we have suggested, converted the Muslim men and women to Hinduism, the Muslims would have been still more enraged and again-and-again in their fresh attacks, they would have wrecked far more appalling vengeance on the Hindus. It was this fear, they said, that prompted the Hindus to accept, as an exceptional code of conduct suitable for the adverse circumstances, those various bans and the morbidly perverted concept of virtues, which amounted really to abject surrender. 553A. So, in order to refute these and other illogical arguments, and to support our arguments and opinions and the various references we have made in the foregoing discourse, we shall cite another event, which will go to prove conclusively our inference that the HINDUS HAD THE ABILITY AND STRENGTH TO LAUNCH ARMED COUNTER-OFFENSIVES

EVEN ON THE RELIGIOUS FRONT BUT THEY HAD NOT THE WILL TO DO SO! 554. That event is the Maratha war with the Muslims in the South, that destroyed Tipu Sultan! ❑ .

Tipu Sultan, The Savage 555. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the Maratha Empire had become so expansive and so powerful as to have brought about the de facto overthrow of the Moghul Empire at Delhi. The Hindu power had no Muslim rival state to oppose it effectively throughout the length and breadth of India, right from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari. But at this very time, Hyder Ali, an ordinary Muslim soldier, had been gradually rising to power in the army of the Hindu State of Mysore and had already become quite indispensable. Even after the sad experience of centuries together how the very Muslim servants, in whom the Hindu kings had placed complete confidence and whom they had brought to prosperity and power, had betrayed those very Hindu masters most treacherously ever since the times of Mahmud of Ghazni and Ghori, this Hindu King of Mysore committed the same blunder. Because of his usual artless, and almost unwise attitude of equality to all religions, which was imbibed assiduously amongst the Hindus in general, King Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar or more particularly his Chief Minister, Nanjeraj, entrusted the supreme military command to this fanatical Muslim adventurer, Hyder Ali. The consequences were inevitable. Hyder Ali set aside Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar, with a little pension and usurped the throne of Mysore. He once marched against the Marathas also but was so sorely beaten by them on the battlefield that he dared not give it a second trial again. He had also once attacked the English at Madras successfully. But as we are not concerned here with the other activities of his, it would be sufficient simply to add that after his death in 1782, he was succeeded to the throne of the Hindu State of Mysore by his equally unscrupulous adventurer of a son, Tipu Sultan-1. 556. As soon as he came to the throne, Tipu wiped out even the name of the original Hindu King and proclaimed himself the Sultan of a Moslem state. Tipu was the last of the Muslim rulers to establish a new independent state, and style himself a Sultan during the millennial Hindu-Muslim war. 557. True to the usual Muslim tradition, Tipu performed his first duty as a Sultan of announcing publicly in the very first session of his court (Darbar), that he would see to it that all the kafirs were made Muslim willy-nilly. He commanded all the Hindus in his state to embrace Islam. He ordered his various officers of high and low ranks in every city, town and village to

convert every Hindu to Islam. If the Hindus did not willingly take to Islam, they were to be forced to do so, or else the men were to be slaughtered and the women were to be distributed as slaves among the Muslims. 558-560. This campaign by Tipu of pollution and proselytization of the Hindus was so thorough and ruthless, and it was carried to such vast dimensions, that there was universal wailing and a sense of unimaginable horror throughout the Hindu community in the State. Not only the soldiers in his army but even the Mullah-Maulvis in the meanest of villages too, with the Muslim hooligans and ruffians to help them, began a systematic persecution of the Hindus! At a later date, Tipu invaded Malabar and at the first stroke, converted a hundred thousand Hindus in that one single coastal district. Then overtaking the Karnataka, he even marched on the Maratha territory. Millions of Hindus from Dharwar to Travancore were horror- stricken, and hundreds of men and women from all castes and sects of the Hindu society feeling thoroughly incapable of facing its armed attack of the Muslims, preferred death by drowning themselves in the Krishna and the Tungabhadra to all the indignities and atrocities of Muslim vandalism. Hundreds of others leapt into the fire but did not become Muslims! Tipu’s Arrogant Proclamation! 561. Puffed up by the speedy success of his atrocious aggressions upon the Hindus and diabolically elated at their miserable plight, Tipu once proudly declared in his court that his campaign of mass conversion of the Hindus was accomplished beyond all expectations. On one occasion, he said fifty thousand Hindus in his kingdom were converted hardly within twenty-four hours! No other Muslim Sultan before him, he proudly stated, could have achieved that stupendous success, but that by the grace of Allah, he had been able to perform that amazing task of the spread of Islamic faith and the total annihilation of the kafirs! 562. In order to carry on this prodigious task, Tipu formed a special division of his army, which surpassed all other Muslim soldiers in enormity and vandalism. He manned it by the pick of the bitterest enemies of the Hindus and most lovingly called them his own sons. Whoever of those loving sons of his did some exceptionally brutal act of ravaging Hindu women, of forcibly converting Hindu families, of plunder and arson, or of wholesale massacre was rewarded with the youngest and most beautiful of the thousands of Hindu girls captured from different parts of the State.

563. The whole of the Muslim world was, no doubt, overcome with the highest gratitude to Tipu Sultan for his unprecedented success in the violent propagation of the Muslim faith. He was honoured as Gazi, the hero of the Islamic faith by his Muslim brethren all over. Naturally, the whole of the Muslim community was, thus, a party to this fanatical persecution of the Hindus by Tipu. Especially, the whole of the Muslim society from Karnataka to Travancore, which had collectively but actively participated in these artrocities, richly deserved punishment from the Hindu standpoint. Now at Poona
564. Now on hearing the piteous cries and heart-breaking screams of the persecuted Hindus of Mysore, there arose a violent surge of fury at Poona, the capital of the Maratha Empire, which was duty-bound to defend Hinduism. The Maratha diplomats and warlords decided forthwith to invade Mysore in order to crush this new demon of a Sultan in South. The Chief Administrator of the Peshwas, Nana Phadnavis issued an instant order to all the available Maratha chieftains to march on Tipu from all sides with huge armies. War with Tipu
565. Tipu was extremely annoyed to learn that the Maratha forces were proceeding against him. So, before the main Maratha battalions could arrive to their rescue, he maliciously attacked Nargund and Kittur in quick succession. These two very small Hindu states were very close to Mysore and far detached from the Maratha territory.
566. Tipu hated all the Hindus, yet more vehemently the Brahmins, who were foremost in trying to kindle in the Hindu Society, a burning pride for their religion and self-respect. He had reached the limit of his brutality in persecuting the Brahmins more than any other caste of the Hindus. The great historian Sardesai writes: 'Brahmins were singled out for special indignities by Tipu.' The rulers of Nargund and Kittur were both Brahmins and both of them had spitefully declined his demand for immediate surrender. Furiously, therefore, did Tipu march first on Nargund and then on Kittur at the head of a very powerful army. The ruler of Nargund Bhave fought bravely to the bitterest end but for want of any timely assistance from Poona, his small army was easily vanquished. The moment the city of Nargund fell, Tipu, like a hungry wolf, rushed straight to the ruler's palace, his Muslim army burning and plundering the citizens and their houses. There he arrested the ruler Bhave himself and his valiant minister Pethe,

and put heavy fetters on their hands and feet. They and their relatives, their families and friends were all subjected to unbearable torture. The brutal humiliation Tipu himself inflicted on the royal ladies in the palace and caused his followers to perpetrate elsewhere in the city, is beyond all description! The young and fair ones of the royal ladies were first put to inhuman torture and then brutally ravished. Tipu locked in his harem, the exceptionally beautiful young lady from the royal family and took her to his capital. The sight of the inhuman and disgraceful treatment meted out to her daughters and daughters-in-law, nieces and grand-daughters broke the heart of Pethe's grand old mother and she died instantaneously. 567. Tipu's army too spared no pains in torturing and violating the Hindu men and women in the city of Nargund and plundered to their fullest satisfaction, the palatial residences of the wealthy Lingayats as also every single house of the commonest of Hindu citizens. Finally, setting fire to their houses, Tipu carried away the select Hindu men and women as abject slaves. 568. Tipu next fell violently on the other Hindu state of Kittur and stamped it out of existence in the like manner. He himself repeated and made his army repeat to the letter all the infernal outrages, which were performed at Nargund, on the Kittur ruler, his family, all the men and women in his pay and all the people in the city. 569. By this time, the main body of the Maratha army was advancing rapidly, reconquering the regions and cities formerly subjugated by Tipu. Skipping over the other details of this campaign on Tipu, which are not quite pertinent to the topic in hand, we think it quite sufficient to say that in the end, Sardar Patwardhan Phadke, Behare Holkar, Bhonsale and other Maratha Chiefiains routed the Muslim armies of Tipu on various battle, fields and after rescuing the whole of Karnatak, pressed him back up to Mysore and there, encircled him into a tight grip! Snatching this opporutunity of Tipu's distress, the English at Mudras too marched on him. As the strokes of the Maratha swords and the thrusts of their spears began to make bloody incisions on the back of Tipu's religious fanaticism, the devil in him began to relent and his haughtiness began to temper down. Tipu grew despondent. And then Tipu fell at the feet of Hindu Gods 570. Whether to appease the Marathas or to win back the millions of Hindus groaning sorely under the yoke of his religious persecution, Tipu,

all of a sudden, began to make munificent grants to Hindu temples. He even had new idols ceremoniously installed in the big temples, formerly smashed to pieces by his own Muslim hirelings. He requested the Hindu Brahmins lo pray to their gods in various Hindu temples that he might get success in this war with the Marathas. In order to please the very Brahmins he hated most bitterly and tortured mercilessly, he now paid them large sums of money. He had ceremonial prayers made. He himself paid great homage to Shree Shankaracharya (of Shringeri), to avert the imminent calamity and asked for his blessings, which the great man readily gave. Tipu not only attended the Chariot-festival of certain Hindu gods at Kanchi, but he himself walked in the festive procession. With his own hands, he ignited the fireworks to heighten the festive spirit of the occasion. Demons Worship Gods 571. It is said that even devils start worshipping those gods, who have the weapons powerful enough to destroy the enemy. But neither God nor Devil came to save the wicked Tipu from that calamity and at last, after two or three expeditions, the Marathas and the English forces subjugated the whole of his kingdom. Tipu himself was killed in 1799 and his dominions were divided. The small portion formerly belonging to the Hindu King of Travancore was returned to him, and the original royal family of the Vodyars was reinstalled at Mysore. Some of the remaining territory was taken over by the English, while the large tract from Karnataka to the Tungabhadra river was annexed by the Marathas to their empire. All the Hindu states, which he had vowed to wipe out at the time of his accession to the throne, began once again to rule peacefully in their own places. If any one was totally ruined, it was Tipu himself with all his Muslim territory. Hindus’ Success 572. Thus, the violent religious aggression under Tipu’s leadership, which the Muslims in South India had launched and perpetrated with a crescendo against the Hindus during the two decades or so immediately preceding the year A.D. 1790, was heroically and successfully put down by the Hindus politically, as well as, on the battlefield. Muslims Gain 573. Maratha warriors, claiming to defend Hindu religion, smashed the Muslim military and political might, as has been already described. But they did not simultaneously deal any counter-blow to their religious front,

in order to repulse and avenge their all-out attempt to disrupt Hinduism, their mass conversions of Hindus, their most heinous attacks upon the chastity of thousands of Hindu women. They did not severely penalize the perpetrators of these crimes. No, they did not do anything of the kind to attack the Muslim religion in return! The Result 574-575. The inevitable consequence was that the two or three hundred thousand forcibly converted Hindu men and women and children remained groaning with agony in the clutches of the Muslim community in South India. Although Tipu’s political power perished completely under the heavy counter-blows of the combined Maratha-English swords and spears, the religious domination he forced on the millions of Hindus grew ever stronger and stronger in the absence of any counter offensive. The future generations of these converted Hindus, in the absence of any immediate reconversion, went on adding rapidly to the numerical strength of the enemy of Hinduism, by at least one and a half times or twice as much. Being brought up from birth under the Islamic influence, this future progeny of the Hindu converts became the inveterate enemies of the Hindus, and instead of desiring to come back to Hinduism, they cherished like the wolf in the ‘Aesop’s fables,’ the fiendish ambition of converting the rest of the Hindus to Islam. They considered it their most sacred duty! 576. If the Marathas had so retaliated, all those two or three hundred thousand Hindu men and women recently converted during those four or five years of the war with Tipu, would have, in all probability, courted Hinduism most willingly because of the love they bore for their original families and relatives, and because of the pangs of separation they suffered. Their devotion to and fascination for their recently lost religion, their love and affection for their separated Hindu fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, relatives and friends, must have at that time been so acute and fresh as to cause them many a heartache, and to make them shed many an agonized tear at their slightest mention and recollection. 577. How very simple it would have been, at that time, to reconvert all those luckless two or three hundred thousand Hindu brethren and absorb them all in the Hindu society! 578. After Tipu’s defeat, the victorious Maratha armies of Sardar Patwardhan, Holkar, Raste and other great chieftains were returning triumphantly to Maharashtra from their respective fronts and by different

routes. Their multiple infantry, cavalry and artillery brigades were gaily fluttering their saffron-coloured banners and rending the skies with their war-cry ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ And in those very districts, towns and cities of Mysore, Karnataka and Maharashtra, through which these warriors paraded their victorious exultation, lay rotting and slaving in various Muslim houses, the thousands of abducted Hindu women, while men equally large in numbers, were leading a miserable life of shame and remorse for their forced conversion to Islam. The exultant war cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev’ of these Hindu warriors, following closely the glad news of victory and the downfall of the Muslim state of Mysore, must have informed them of the triumphal march of the Maratha conquering armies through their own towns, villages and cities. How eagerly these unfortunate Hindu converts— and especially the women—must have hastened to crowd the windows, doors, fissures and small openings of those Muslim prison-like houses and cottages, to have, at least, a fleeting glimpse of those martial processions! And how keenly must their sorely afflicted hearts have felt the happy yet acutely painful pangs of intense expectation of imminent deliverance from those satanic Muslim dungeons and confines! ‘At last—at long last—they have come! ’They might have said to themselves, “Our/my Hindu brothers have come trampling down the wicked hearts of the Muslim tyrants to deliver us from their abject servitude!’ On occasions, some of them might have very probably seen their own fathers or brothers or husbands or relatives or at least some neighbours proudly strutting through the streets in their triumphal marches! The lack of will 579. On such occasions, if only these proudly marching military detachments of Hindu warriors had simply willed it, they could have in no time set free those thousands of miserable Hindu men and women rotting in Muslim bondage. They could have simply gone on doing it just as they passed along the streets! So simple the whole thing really was. But...! 580. For, at that time, the Muslims, neither individually nor collectively, had any courage or strength left in them to oppose the triumphant Hindu army. At the approach of the Maratha soldiery, the Mullah-Maulvis and the rogues, knaves and brigands were at great pains to hide their faces into whichever nook or ditch they could find, in order to save their lives. 580A. If only one gay blast from the Maratha bugle had rung out and reverberated through every town and every village, assuring the people in

some such manner! “Come, O you, Hindu mothers and sisters, come! You, who have been wickedly polluted and forced to do all sorts of menial and dirty wretched work in the Muslim household, come out, come under our protection! We, your foster-brothers, have come lo your doors in order to rescue you and take you to your respective families. Whichever Muslim comes to obstruct you, dies instantly. May that Muslim be then a man or a woman of high rank or low! Similarly, O you helplessly converted Hindu brethren come, join us when and where you can; join our conquering brigades! The moment you gather under this Saffron-coloured Hindu banner, you will have every sort of protection.” 580B. If only such a reassuring blast was heard and echoed through towns and villages, thousands upon thousands of those ill-fated Hindu converts, men and women, mothers and sisters, would all have rushed most willingly, and of their own accord to join those Maratha warriors, and they all could have been most easily purified and reconverted to Hinduism, and the Muslim religious victory under Tipu’s leadership would have been totally nullified. But alas! Nobody ever thought of this! 581. Neither those Maratha warriors, nor their commanders, nor the Sardars and Chieftains nor the Shankaracharyas, nay not even the Peshwa at Poona, nor the Chhatrapatis of Satara and Kolhapur—alas! not a single Hindu soul ever dreamt of this simple way of reconversion of those ill- starred Hindus! Nobody of them ever felt ashmed of marching straight ahead, without casting so much as a sympathetic glance at the thousands of the brutally ravaged Hindu mothers and sisters! Their martial drums and pipes proclaimed to the world their military and political victory! The Maratha companies and battalions proudly paraded through the villages, towns and cities, supremely unconcerned about the two or three hundred thousand of their miserable Hindu brethren in Muslim bondage. No, no! not a single miserable soul was at that time reconverted to Hinduism! 582. The natural consequence of it all was that, those thousands of our brutally converted Hindu mothers and sisters anxiously waiting for the victorious Hindu armies to set them free from those hellish tortures and death-like humiliation in the Muslim prison-like homes, must have most probably turned away from the doors and windows in utter despair! To see none of the soldiers ever caring to recognize and pity them—let alone to rescue and reconvert them—must have rent their hearts in two! They must

have resigned themselves helplessly to the Muslim bondage and rotted till death, bringing forth Muslim offsprings! What wonder if they might have borne the bitterest grudge against these unavailing Hindu brethren! 583. On the other hand, the Mullah-Maulvis and the Muslim hooligans and rogues, who had so far disappeared underground for fear of death, very soon came to know that neither those victorious armies, or their chiefs, nor even the rulers and administrators of Hindu states, were going to punish them individually or collectively for all the wrongs they had perpetrated against the Hindus. Being thus assured of safety, they came out boldly and began to move about freely and enjoy, as their legal right, the abducted Hindu women and the plundered Hindu property as their own. It also might have happened that many Hindus had the misfortune to witness meekly with their own eyes, their own daughters and nieces and daughters-in-law slaving as wives or maids in Muslim houses in their own villages and towns. But, strangely enough, neither the Hindu population there nor the Hindu administrators nor again the officers at those places, ever thought of freeing any of those luckless ladies! Hardly any such instance is recorded in history. For, the Hindus had cultivated a shameless religious conceit for over centuries together, to suffer all the heart-rending humiliation without a prick of conscience. Nobody, as a rule, is ashamed of a thing that is not considered blameworthy by the society. Because of the one ban on reconversion, what was this shameless perversion of ideas and emotions to which the Hindu society had brought itself! A heap of Contemporary Documentary Evidence 584. Abundant information in all details is now available about this war with Tipu. Histories written in English by Marshman and others, those in Marathi by Rao Bahadur Sardesai and the contemporary correspondence of the then English diplomats, administrators and political agents and ambassadors have been published. Research scholars such as Rajwade, Parasnis and Khare have brought to light heaps of letters by the Chiefs of the Maratha States, their subordinate officers and ambassadors and agents, of merchants and men of rank in the society, of various people in political, religious and social walks of life. A clear picture paints itself of the daily routine life of the Hindu Society of the time, its habits and customs, its codes of religious, political and social conduct, its ethics and philosophy, if one cares to read the dispatches of the great personalities of the times such as Haripant Phadke to Nana Phadnavis at Poona about his association with