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

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

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

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

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

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