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

Lord Cornwallis at the battle of Shreerangpattam against Tipu, those about his high-level discourses on war-moves and treaties, down to the letters describing the raids of robbers and pilgrimages of devout pilgrims, letters of (Travels and those giving market rates, and also those of Shankaracharya complaining about the ransacking of his ‘Ashram’! 585. But no evidence can be generally found in all this heap of documents to show if anyone was yearning to avenge the Muslim atrocities and their religious victory over the Hindus. No Hindu commander, nor a small troop of soldiers, nor even a group of men, is ever reported to have drawn swords to rescue the converted Hindu women and to cut down the Muslim miscreants. No one is reported to have felt any shame at the humiliation of these unfortunate women and at the Hindu failure to rescue them. These hundreds and hundreds of letters show a lamentable want of realization— not to speak of any anxiety about it on the part of the Hindu society, that day by day, they were losing territory and power so far as their religion was concerned. Howsoever strange and sad it might appear, the fact cannot be gainsaid. Not a word seems to have been breathed or recorded about the retaliation of the Muslim atrocities—let alone its actual execution! 586. We may set aside the whole heap of contemporary documents, but we cannot help referring to one letter of Haripant Phadke in particular. The said letter was written to Nana Phadnavis, informing him of the two sons of Tipu, taken as hostages by the Marathas and the English, to ensure the prompt execution of the terms of the treaty, which was signed by Tipu after his defeat. Writes Haripant Phadke, perhaps casually, to show how they had brought Tipu to such a miserably low condition: 586A. “Lord Cornwallis sent the two sons of Tipu to me. When I saw them, they pleaded they were hungry. I sent them to a neighbouring tent and ordered that they should be well fed. Then after some time, they were returned to the English camp of Lord Cornwallis!” 586B. The incident referred to in this letter and the one we are shortly going to quote here, with reference to the Battle of Kharda hold as it were, to a searching analysis under the X-ray, the perverted sense of virtues, which had permeated, through centuries, to the marrow of the Hindu society, rendering it slovenly and imbecile, and insensible to all sorts of shameful humiliation. 587-588. Haripant Phadke’s genial treatment of Tipu’s two sons reminds us of another incident, which by contrast, will give us a practical illustration

of our discussion of the perverted Hindu sense of virtues in paragraphs 405 to 471. 588A. In the first or the second decade of the seventeenth century, the tenth Guru of our Hindu-Sikhs, Dharmveer Shree Govind Singh found it impossible to continue the war with the Moghuls. He was at last besieged in the fort of Chamkaur along with his sons. Overcome with terror, some of his sworn disciples from the Sikh army conspired to desert their Guruji, renounce their Sikh religion and left the fort secretly. Two elder sons of the Guruji were killed before his eyes in the battle. At last, in the face of such grave danger, the Guruji advised all to leave battle and run for life, wherever they could. Finding a suitable opportunity, he made good his own escape. But in that confusion, two of his sons, of a tender age of 12 or below, missed the way and fell into the Muslim hands. How did the Muslims treat them according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE? 589. The Letter of Haripant Phadke referred to above shows how kindly and sympathetically, according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE, the Marathas treated the two sons of Tipu, when they came into their hands. 590. On the contrary, as soon as the brave cubs of Guru Govind Singh fell into the Muslim hands, they were taken straight to their war council and asked: “Are you willing to be Muslims? If so, you will be given your life and everything you want. Otherwise nothing!” The children answered: “We won’t be Muslims even if our life is not spared!” Immediately, the diabolic Muslim justice decreed that the two small children be forthwith built alive in a brickwall! While they were thus being built in, they were asked, as each brick was placed on the wall, “Do you become Muslims?” The two brave Hindu cubs would reply again and again: “No, we won’t be Muslims!’ The last brick was laid on the heads of both the young martyrs and they ceased to breathe! Then today, a true Hindu enters the vicinity of that scene of martyrdom, he will very likely hear the words reverberating the whole atmosphere there: “I won’t become a Muslim: nay, not at all! I am a Hindu, I am a Sikh! I bravely court death!” 591. Supposing that by an adverse turn of events, two children of our Peshwas were to fall in the hands of Tipu or any Muslim ruler—what then? He would not have fed as the Hindu-hearted Haripant Phadke did, the two tender-aged children and returned them to the Peshwa! Such a behaviour would have been considered sacrilegious and cowardly, according to the Muslim religious belief; they would most probably have been built up alive

in brick-walls or else would have been crushed under an elephant’s foot. The Hindus, on the other hand, would not have avenged such brutality with any hyper-brutal retaliation, even if they had the strength and opportunity to do so. For, the virus the perverted sense of virtues had been flowing through their arteries and veins for centuries together. 592. It should be made clear at this very stage, that the ethics of war, which demanded that a charioteer must fight with another charioteer only, the sword should meet another sword alone, that the armed warrior ought not to fight with an unarmed one, till he has been armed equally, that a fallen senseless warrior was never to be attacked till he had regained consciousness etc. etc., was perhaps quite suitable for the ancient times before Mahabharat. For both the contending parties obeyed the same set of rules: both worshipped the same ethics of war. The Pandawas themselves had violated, at the instance of Lord Krishna, many of these chivalrous rules of war! But the Hindus of these middle ages forgot the lesson taught by the Bhagwat Geeta, of giving due consideration to the time, place and person or persons concerned, while obeying these rules of war. They, on their own part kept on fighting the diabolic Muslim ways of war with the same old— originally sane and civilized, but now outmoded and so highly suicidal— tactics in war. 592A. Besides this incident of Tipu’s two sons, we should like to cite another—equally shameful for the Marathas and the Hindus, inasmuch as it offers another illustration of the perverted sense of virtues of the Hindus of those times! It happened during the Battle of Kharda (1795 A.D.) against the Nizam, the last restlessly writhing remnant of the Muslim power at Delhi! The Nizam was at that time completely at the mercy of the Marathas; he would have been wiped out of existence and saved all further trouble, but for the shameless exhibition of this perverted sense of virtues, by the Marathas! 593. The Maratha forces with their excellent strategic moves had encircled the Nizam at such a desolate and dry place, that his vast army could get no food or water. The scarcity of drinking water was so acute that hundreds of Muslim soldiers drank stinking water from dirty pools, not fit even for animals. Nizam-Ali himself was almost in tears. And at this most critical moment, the big Maratha guns began to rend the skies with their thundering.

594. But at this most crucial moment, the Maratha war cabinet was seized with such a paroxysm of their age-old incurable disease of the perverted sense of virtues, viz. misplaced generosity to withhold the strokes and allow time to even the inveterate fainting enemy to regain consciousness, that had it lasted a little longer, the scales of war would have turned against the Hindus themselves and the Muslims would never have failed to annihilate them completely. At a time when the Nizam himself, the chief enemy of the Marathas, was dying of thirst and when the Marathas luckily had the best opportunity of capturing him alive and of destroying his whole army, the Peshwa, Sawai Madhavrao, was inspired with the grand idea that the true greatness of a warrior was to show mercy to the downcast enemy. He, therefore, sent in consultation with his war-cabinet, a very valuable supply of water enough for the Nizam and his royal family from his own stock of drinking water, which was preserved with no less difficulty. And this was done in the thick of the fray—quite consistently with the maxim: क्षमा वीरस्य भूषणम (Forgiveness is the virtue of the brave). [Remember for a contrast ‘The Battle of Samugad or Shambhugad’ (1658 A.D,) and the siege of Agra by Aurangzeb—Shahjahan was brought to his knees by cutting off the water supply to the fort of Agra.] A fine illustration of self-contradiction!
595. A common belief seems to prevail that the Hindus strictly banned any reconversion of Muslimized Hindus or any conversion of born Muslims, because they dreaded fresh outrages from the Muslims in India and perhaps new horrible invasions of foreign Muslims, resulting in untold monstrocities and consequent horrible retribution.
596. It is purposely to show how erroneous, unrealistic and wholly improbable this belief is, that we have quoted the episode the Maratha war with Tipu, which provides ample historical evidence to support all the points we have made so far.
597. Setting aside that episode of the war with Tipu for a while, it is enough to pose a question: If at all the Hindus were so terribly and incessantly obsessed with the dread of Muslim retaliation, they would have offered no resistance, however slight it might have been! They would never have counter-attacked the Muslims on the political and military fronts and won at great odds. For, it is only in those Hindu states, which the Muslims conquered, that such religious persecution of the Hindus was, or would

have been, possible for the Muslims. If at all the Hindus were to dread anything, they should have dreaded the Muslim armed political aggression first. But barring minor incidents and looking at this gigantic struggle in one broad sweep, the reader can clearly see that in order to protect their states and religion, the Hindus had fought grim and determined battles right from the times of Mahmud of Ghazni's and Ghori's demoniacal raids. They lost their states, they won their states! Defeat and victory, victory and defeat! The fortunes of the fields changed in quick succession! But for more than seven centuries, the Hindus kept on fighting the Muslims throughout the whole of India, fought every inch of it and finally brought the mighty Muslim enemy to his knees in abject surrender! To say that these Hindus would have ever cared a two-pence for the fiercer rage of the Muslim revenge, is in itself, a fine illustration of self-contradiction! 598. Of course, the Muslims had never to worry in the least about the security of their religious domination in India! The Hindus were firm as regards one thing: never to convert any Muslim, not to counterattack the sphere of the Muslim religious influence; nor again to harm them in any way in matters religious; for, all these actions were completely contrary to the Hindu religious faith! The Muslims had only one anxiety as to how to spread the Islamic faith incessantly throughout the length and breadth of India, even if the Hindus had reconquered political power! We have already discussed at different places in this book, the tremendous loss to the Hindu nation this Muslim religious aggression had caused. Only two major points need a brief resume here. Loss of thirty million Hindus 599. Even in those days, the Hindu society was quite aware of this numerical loss! But because of their morbid ban on reconversion, no effective remedy could be found against this drain of its lifeblood. Very like the invalid patient, meekly bearing the death-pangs of an incurable disease, the then Hindu world endured this blood-draining, deadly disease! Loss of Territory! 600. But graver still than this loss of numerical strength, was another: the permanent loss of the vast territory snatched away by the Muslim religious incursions, slowly, bit by bit, but steadily, without the knowledge of the Hindus! THE MUSLIMS THUS SEIZED FAR MORE HINDU LAND THROUGHOUT INDIA BY CONVERSION THAN THEY DID BY CONQUESTS!

601. For, twenty to thirty million Hindu converts and millions of foreign Muslims that flocked to India to seek their fortune, settled permanently in India alone! The land—the cities and towns and particular parts of cities and towns and villages that were inhabited and were to be inhabited by these Muslims and their descendants to come in future—were permanently lost to the Hindus, never to be regained! On these tracts and patches of land fluttered nonchalantly, the green Muslim bands indicating the unimpeded sway of the Muslim religious faith all over! The Hindus, and more particularly the Marathas, wrested away practically all the political power throughout the whole of India from the Muslims towards the end of this epic Hindu-Muslim war. Yet the Muslims retained their hold individually or collectively on the masses and on property too!
602. Again, as the Muslim population grew rapidly because of polygamy popular amongst them, and the spread of their religion by conversion, more and more land was to that extent being gradually but surely occupied by them and was passing for ever into the Muslim hands. In order to give some idea of the actual condition, it is enough to say that even after the establishment of the de facto sovereignty of the Marathas, every little town or village had a separate part known as Musalmanwada or Musalman mohalla! Why, even cities like Poona, Satara, Kolhapur, Nagpur in Maharashtra, Baroda, Devas, Dhar, Indore, Gwalior and Udaypur in Central India and Jodhpur, Jaipur, Amritsar, Lahore right up to Shreenagar in Kashmir in the north, each had a separate section exclusively colonized by thousands of Muslims and known as ‘Muslim-pura’ or ‘Muslim-abadi’. The Muslims not only dominated these separate sections religiously, but practically became their owners!
603. And the fun of it was that this religious domination of the Muslims and their individual right to that land had been constitutionally and legally protected by the Hindu kings themselves, giving them equal civil status as subjects along with the Hindus! Especially, because of open and deep-rooted enmity between the Hindus and the Muslims in those days, and as change of religion was then tantamount to change of nationality, all the land that passed into the Muslim hands, this way or that, was in reality, permanently given over to the national enemy of the Hindus!
604. Thus, throughout the whole of India, in every village and town and city and province, big or small Muslim pockets (Muslimistans) were being created and fostered right from those days. That again means that from that

time, India was being vivisected unwittingly between two parts: the Hindu India and the Muslim India! 605. THESE BIG OR SMALL ISLAMISTANS WERE REALLY THE TIME BOMBS LAID BY THE CONVERT MUSLIM RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE HINDU POLITICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE! 606. Yet neither the Hindu rulers, nor the common people, nor even the historians of the time seem to have apprehended, acutely or even faintly, the instantaneous or the belated consequences of this tremendous loss of numbers and territory. For, nobody else has so far tried, as we are doing here, any bold, lucid and comprehensive historical exposition of this loss of numbers and territory that the Hindu nation had to suffer because of the morbid Hindu religious concepts of various bans and their perverted sense of virtues! If at all there be any such attempt, it is bound to be an exception. 607-608. Moreover, had the Hindus at that time really understood the full significance of the above-mentioned evil consequences of the Muslim religion dominance, the Maratha government would have immediately and definitely launched a counter-religious aggression upon the Islamic faith in the south, the moment its leader, Tipu, was politically vanquished. For, the Hindus had never before had such a completely favourable opportunity as they had it then, to launch such a counter-offensive on the religious front. Throughout the whole of India, there was left no Muslim power at that time, which could even so much as think of opposing the Marathas, as we have already pointed it out, and as our contemporary bard sings in one of his heroic ballads with evident pride for Hinduism— जलचर हैदर निजाम इंग्रज रणकरिता थकसे। ज्यानि पुण्याकडे विलोकिते ते संपत्तिता मुकते॥ [The pirates (meaning the Portuguese), Hyder, the Nizam, the English all were exhausted fighting (with the Marathas). Whoever looked (with enmity) at Poona, lost their wealth!] Devil can be Fought by arch-devil only 609. Suppose, as soon as this propitious time had come, the Maratha Chieftains such as Bhonsale, Holkar, Patwardhan, Raste and others, who had fought against Tipu, the Maratha administrators, the Peshwa and the Chhatrapati, had promulgated, in consultation with the prominent religious

authorities, some such order (if not actually couched in the same words) as the following: 610. “Just as the valour of the Maratha warriors had trampled under their feet the Muslim rule of Tipu, in a similar way, in order to bring to the lowest dust the Muslim religious preponderance under the fiendish Tipu, which has so far inflicted every sort of brutality and humiliation on the Hindus and to chastise those guilty of these heinous crimes, our government had decided to attack in return the Muslims on the religious field. 611. “Faithfully following the interpretation of the religious law and the religious code of conduct by Shree Shankaracharya Vidyaranyaswami, whose authority is considered next only to the Very First Shree Shankaracharya by the whole of the Hindu world, we hereby, for the first time, propose to break the psychological ban on reconversion, which has simply paralysed the Hindu society, so far as the retaliation of the tyrannical Muslim religion is concerned, and we hereby order every single official of whatever rank to make the necessary arrangements to enforce the strict observance of the following instructions. 612. “On learning about the forcible conversion of Hindu men and women in his particular jurisdiction, every village and city-officer shall gather together all such oppressed Hindus in some rescue camp under the government protection, and shall attend to all their needs. 613. “Every several Muslim man and woman in every town and village, in whose house or hut Hindu women, girls and children might be found slaving as oppressed converts, shall along with the whole family, be forthwith bettered and thrown into prison, and the miserable Hindu women and children after being immediately set free, shall be affectionately and courteously taken to the rescue camps. 614. “Similarly the warriors from Tipu’s select company of the direst young Muslim scoundrels, whom he fondled as his ‘sons’, shall be fettered with very heavy shackles wherever they will be found in Maharashtra, Karnatak or elsewhere and locked in jails, and the fairest young and innocent Hindu women, who were given away as reward to those Muslim young rogues from this brigade for their brutal atrocities towards the Hindus, should all be rescued and sent with all civility to the said rescue camps. 615. “Finally, a national reconversion week will be announced by a superior officer, before which all the rescued Hindu converts from the

rescue camps all over the particular region shall be conducted in large groups under military guard to the holy places adjoining their native places or to Dharwar or Badami or other places where the oppressive Muslim armies have been destroyed by the Marathas. At all these places, shall these oppressed Hindu converts be reconverted to Hinduism en masse. At all these places, sacrificial fires should be lit and offerings made for the repurification of all these millions of Hindu converts, and they should all be received in the Hindu Society ceremoniously with chorus-singing of praises for the Hindu religion. All those who are likely to be willingly, lovingly and honourably received by their original families, should be escorted to their original homes and rehabilitated in those families. But the thousands of other repurified and reconverted Hindus, who may not find such a loving reception in their original sub-castes, should all be classed as a new warrior class in the structure of the Hindu society—अग्निकुल—a fire race according to the Rajput legend—and all the political and religious authorities in the land are hereby ordered to concede to them, all rights due to a Hindu as equitably and justly as the other caste Hindus enjoy. 616. “Then, in order, to reward the meritorious services of the choicest Maratha warriors in this Hindu-Muslim war, at least as many young and beautiful Muslim girls should be captured, converted to Hinduism and presented them, as were the Hindu girls distributed by Tipu amongst the daredevil warriors of his select brigade. 617. “Thereafter, the thousands of Muslim rascals and scoundrels, who have, in this Hindu-Muslim war, inflicted harrowing atrocities on the Hindus, raped Hindu women and girls, have broken holy images of Hindu gods and goddesses and have demolished their temples, and who will have been locked as per the above-mentioned order in various prisons, shall be conducted under strong military guard to the four or five chief cities that will be signified later on by the Superior Officers. They should, especially, be taken to Nargund and Kittur—the places where Tipu himself had inflicted inhuman atrocities on the Hindu men and women with the aid of his diabolic army, so that Tipu’s devilish acts might be avenged with equal ferocity and with the harshest punishments meted out to the daredevil soldiers of his Islamic brigade in the very presence of the afflicted people there. On the appointed day, during the reconversion week, these hundreds of Muslim devils should be brought under strong armed guard of soldiers and cannons to the vast parade grounds and after the charge sheets against

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