Perversion Of Indian History And Setting The Record Straight — Part II
As noted in Part I of this article, an impartial and honest examination of Indian history from original and indigenous sources throws up the stark fact that Islamic invasions of India were no walkover and that the kind of continuous, prolonged resistance the marauding Islamic armies were forced to confront in India was not faced by them in any other land.
Omission Of Indigenous Evidences
While motivated colonial and leftist historians have emphasized and focused only on the collapse of Indian resistance to Islamic invasions, they have categorically, even deliberately failed to highlight a major fact that “the political and military resistance was spread over more than five and a half centuries till its final collapse in northern India in the last decade of the 12th Century A.D.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, P 3 — Sita Ram Goel] Their “version of medieval Indian history is, at its best, only an interpretation based on preconceived premises and propped up by a highly selective summarization, or even invention, of facts.” [The Story Of Islamic Imperialism In India — Sita Ram Goel]
The most telling transgression on the part of these colonial and leftist historians is that they have deliberately disregarded or suppressed indigenous evidences, especially Sanskrit inscriptions, and relied heavily on Islamic historical sources. “Exclusive dependence on Persian and Arabic sources, for an account on Muslim invasions, is apt to produce an unbalanced view. The basic prejudices of Muslim historians, who mostly belonged to the Ulema class, against other religions, made them reject any other account, however authentic, if it tends to subvert their basic belief in the might of Islam. The victories of the arms of Islam have been elaborately described while the reverse have either been conveniently omitted or painted as having ended in negotiations and tribute. Even when described, only minor details are made available.” [Indian Resistance To Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., P 84 — Dr. Ram Gopal Mishra]
Hindus — Second To None In Fighting For Their Dharma And Their Motherland
The importance of indigenous Sanskrit records in telling the authentic history of India has been underlined by British historian, Alexander Dow, “perhaps the earliest British historian of India, (who) wrote in his work of the eighteenth century, ‘The Sanscrita records of Western Asia and Ancient India, will appear to be more authentic and of greater antiquity than any of the writings of the Arab and Persian historians.’” [Indian Resistance To Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., P 84 — Dr. Ram Gopal Mishra]
These indigenous evidences inform us in no uncertain terms that “Hindus were second to none when it came to making sacrifices for their motherland.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, P 7 — Sita Ram Goel] Hindus not only put up a tough fight in the face of an adharmic and diabolical enemy, in fact they fought tenaciously to protect every inch of their homeland. “It is a fact of history that such sustained resistance as encountered by the Muslim armies in India was not faced by them in any other land conquered by them.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, P 4 — Sita Ram Goel]
A major fact ignored by the leftist historians is that the Hindus fought resolutely to preserve their religious and cultural identity. Fighting in defence of something they valued over their lives, Hindus made unimaginable sacrifices to protect their Dharma and their Motherland.
The Hindu concept of Dharma or “the Hindu way of life, symbolised by high moral values of tolerance, truthfulness and justice” [The Story Of Islamic Imperialism In India — Sita Ram Goel] was so deeply ingrained in the Hindu psyche, that while country after country from the straits of Gibraltar to the banks of the Indus fell to the sword of Islam within less than 80 years of Prophet Mohammed’s death, the sword was blunted in India, for it took the Arabs 70 long years to gain even a tiny foothold on the soil of India. The “eternal and moral values of life which constitute the core of Hinduism were to sustain it in the next five centuries of Muslim and another two centuries of British rule.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, P 7 — Sita Ram Goel]
To understand the magnitude and forcefulness of Indian resistance to early Islamic invasions, it is imperative that we examine the spread of Islam elsewhere first.
After the death of their Prophet in 632 A.D., the invading armies of Islam made rapid conquests within a decade. The first to fall after a six-month long campaign were the Byzantine provinces of Palestine and Syria, which fell in 636–637 A.D. Next was the Sassanid empire of Persia which included Iran, Iraq and Khorasan and which fell in 637 A.D. “By A.D. 643 the boundaries of the Caliphate touched the frontiers of India.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invasions, P 9 — Sita Ram Goel] While the Byzantine province of Egypt fell in 640–641 A.D., the Turkish speaking territories of Inner Mongolia, Bukhara, Tashkand and Samarkand etc. fell in 650 A.D.
The rapid Islamic conquests continued unhindered as the Arab armies reduced the whole of Northern Africa and crossed the Atlantic into Spain in 709 A.D and conquered it by 711 A.D. These astonishingly easy and rapid conquests were not merely territorial victories but also religio-cultural victories. A large number of different creeds and races — Syrians, Berbers, Persians and Turks “were rapidly Islamised and their language and culture Arabicised.” [Indian Resistance To Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., P 10 — Dr. Ram Gopal Mishra]
It is in the light of these swift victories of Islamic invaders that we must examine and assess the stiffness of the heroic Indian resistance, for “the same Islamic armies had to struggle for 69 long years to make their first effective breach in the borders of India.” [Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, P 9–10 — Sita Ram Goel]
It is in the light of these victories that we must examine the tenacity of the heroic Indian resistance, for it took three waves of Islamic invasions over a period of nearly four centuries to carve out the first proper dynasty in the central plains of India.
“Reviewed as a whole, the period between the last decade of the 12th century and the first quarter of the 18th — the period which is supposed to be the period of Muslim empire in India — is nothing but a period of long-drawn-out war between Hindu freedom fighters and the Muslim invaders. The Hindus lost many battles, and retreated again and again. But they recovered every time, and resumed the struggle so that eventually the enemy was worn out, defeated and dispersed in the final round which started with the rise of Shivaji.” [The Story Of Islamic Imperialism In India — Sita Ram Goel]
From early Arabs to Turks, Ghaznavids and Ghurids, Mamluks, Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Sayyids, Lodis and finally Mughals, they all faced stiff, relentless and persistent resistance from the Rais, Shahiyas, Chaulukyas, Gurjar-Pratiharas, Gahadvads, Rajputs, Jats, Gakkhars, Chahamanas, Chandelas, Guhilots, Chauhans, Paramaras, Yadavbhattis, Katehars, Sisodias, Ahoms, Hoysalas, Sangamas, Kakatiyas, Marathas, Sikhs and many, many others.
“It is, therefore, a travesty of truth to say that Islam enjoyed an empire in India for six centuries. What happened really was that Islam struggled for six centuries to conquer India for good, but failed in the final round in the face of stiff and continued Hindu resistance.” [The Story Of Islamic Imperialism In India — Sita Ram Goel]
Perhaps, the most fitting ode to the heroic Hindu resistance to Islamic invasions comes from the Islamic poet Maulana Khwaja Altaf Hussain ‘Hali’, whose woeful lament gives away the pitiful defeat of the invaders and the indomitable resistance of heroic Hindus:
That invincible armada of the religion of Hijaz
Whose insignia reached every corner of the world
Which could not be obstructed by any fear
Which neither balked in the Gulf of Amman nor faltered in the Red Sea
Which valiantly swept over all the seven oceans
Oh, drowned was that armada (of Islam) when it reached the mouth of Ganga!
