HOW VIJAYNAGAR SURVIVED FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS ALL THROUGH BATTLING THE MUSLIM AGGRESSORS FROM 1331 UP TO 1565
Statue of a Hindu god of war %u2013 Narasimha who was the patron deity of the Kings of Vijaynagar who led the Hindu resistance to Islam in South India.
Vijaynagar, was the first Hindu kingdom which gave up the Hindu practice of not molesting non-combatants. Thus they started paying the Muslims with the same token. Whenever the armies of Vijaynagar overran any Bahamani town or village they torched it. With this they put the fear of death into Muslim minds and soon, the Adilshahi and Nizamshahi sultans sued for a treaty with Vijaynagar that would proscribe the killing of civilians by either side.
From then on till Vijaynagar was finally defeated at the battle of Talikotai and dramatically and savagely destroyed immediately after the battle, was this treaty adhered to by both the Hindus and Muslims. But with the final defeat of the Hindus at Talikotai, the Muslims repudiated this treaty, as their founder Mohammed-ibn-abdallah had repudiated the treaty of Hudaibiya, and after so after the battle of Talikotai the truculent Muslims indulged in a gory slaughter of all the Hindu inhabitants of Vijaynagar, they murdered everyone they could lay their hands on. Not a single person was allowed to live in that beleaguered city. The city itself was reduced to rubble, after six months of ceaseless pillage and wanton destruction.
HOW NARASIMHADEVA DEFEATED TUGAN KHAN IN 1248 C.E.
The victorious King of Orissa, Narasimhadeva erected a victory pillar designed as a war chariot. This temple was dedicated to Surya the Sun god, at a location near the temple town of Puri. He named this place Konark which means %u201CEssence of the Corners%u201D While the structure commemorates the victory in the battle against the Muslims, the name Konark commemorates the science of astronomy of which the King was an avid student.
After the easy victories over North India from Punjab, through Bengal, the Muslims turned to attack Orissa. Here the Muslims met their match. The people of Orissa were hardy fighters. (In ancient and medieval times, Orissa was also called Kalinga or Utkal %u2013 from Uttam Kala which means %u2018Excellent Art%u2019 that reflects the artistic tradition of sculpture of that region) The bravehearts of Orissa had given a hard time to Samrat Ashoka Mauya, when in the 3rd century B.C.E. Kumara, the king of Kalinga, gave a tough battle to the Mauryan invader, before Orissa could be annexed to the Maurya Empire.
Now in the 13th century, when Tugan Khan attacked Orissa, the then ruling king of Orissa, Narsimhadeva, decided to use subterfuge against the Muslims. He sent word to the invader that he wanted to surrender without a fight, as had Lakshmansena, the ruler of Bengal.
Tugan had easily conquered Bengal a few years before attacking Orissa. He found Bengal to be easy meat as the king of Bengal instead of fighting fled the advancing Muslim armies and Begal fell without a fight. Having tasted blood in Bengal, Tugan thought that the conquest of Orissa would also be a cakewalk.
Tugan boasted that he had put the fear of death in the heart of the Hindus and could overrun the entire country in a single campaign. But Narasimhadeva had other ideas. He decided to use the Muslims%u2019 patent tool subterfuge against the enemy. He sent word to Tugan that Orissa was ready to surrender to the Muslims without a fight, as had its neighbor Bengal. Tugan accepted Narasimhadeva%u2019s surrender proposal and asked for the surrender of the major city of Puri that was an important Hindu Pilgrim center (Narasimhadeva had his capital elsewhere at Jajanagara). Tugan%u2019s other conditions included handing over all weapons to the Muslim army, the embracing of Islam by the entire population in the central square in front of the Jagannath Temple or agreeing to pay Jazia and to convert the Jagnnath temple at Puri into Mosque as a acknowledgement of submission.
To the delight of the Muslims, all these terms were accepted and the Muslims advanced into the city, blissfully unaware that the shrewd Hindu king had laid a trap for them. On the orders of Narasimhadeva, the bustling city had been completely evacuated of its pilgrims, the aged and children; and professional soldiers from all over the kingdom had occupied every nook and cranny of the city, hidde
The Hindu counterattack against Islam does not have any fixed date. From the very first battles of the Rajas of Makara (Makran) and Sindh in 638, till the final elimination of Muslim rule by the Marathas, Jats, Rajputs, Gurkhas and Sikhs in the 18th and early 19th centuries, this constant Hindu-Muslim war did not stop. So we can only define the counterattack as that period when the Hindus started turning the tactics of their Muslim tormentors on the tormentors. The first to do that was the King of Orissa - Narasimhadeva.
THE REASONS FOR THE MUSLIM CHARACTER OF THE LANDS KNOWN TODAY AS AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN AND BANGLADESH
Today we do not have an idea of how a merciless Islamic Jihad forcibly transformed Hindu society of Pakistan and Bangladesh into a Muslim one with a merciless tyranny of one thousand years. While in the erstwhile Indian territory of what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Hinduism was supplanted entirely by Islam, in what is today India; the Muslim tyranny succeeded only partially in converting a part of the population to Islam.
In fact those parts of erstwhile Hindu and Buddhist India where a majority of the Hindus and Buddhists were converted to Islam have become distinct Muslim nations of Afghanistan Pakistan and Bangladesh today. These countries were parts of India, before the Muslims invaded that part of the world.
We shall see at the end of this article the methods used by the Muslim tormentors to convert a large part of the Hindus to Islam. Many Muslims today raise a canard about an alleged tolerant nature of Muslim rule in India because of which a majority of Indian today have remained Hindus. They try to pull wool over your eyes, and are supported by the unabashedly pro-Jihadi, pro-terrorist anchors in Indian electronic media like NDTV and IBN and in the English print media in India like the Muslim managed %u201CAsian Age%u201D, and the communist controlled %u201CHindu%u201D along with the pink-tinted Times of India, Indian Express, and many other leading (rather misleading) national dailies in India.
These pro-terrorist scoundrels from the NDTV and IBN often pose (rather impose) a question as to how only eleven percent of the population of India is Muslim if the Muslim rulers were tormentors who made Hindus accept Islam at the point of the sword?
The issue here is that in historic times when we refer to India we include all those parts that were inhabited by Hindus and Buddhists before the Muslim aggression. So what is today Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as India, are parts of historic India. And so when we consider this geographic entity as one whole, the population of Muslims (in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh together accounts for fifty five percent).
The fact that Hindus still account for forty five percent of the population is due to the fact that in Rajputana, Maharashtra, Orissa, Nepal, Assam and South India, the Hindus defeated and rolled back the Muslim aggressors, so its was these parts that remained predominantly Hindu. In other parts of India, like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh which were under Muslim rule for an unbroken one thousand years, the Hindu population was decimated to almost zero. This holds true for the former Indian provinces of Gandhara (Kandahar), Kubha (Kabul), Makara (Makran), Sakastana (Siestan/Balouchistan), Sindh, West Punjab, Paktoonistan, East Bengal (Bangladesh). And in the Indian provinces like Uttar Pr
THE BETRAYAL AND BLINDING OF PRITHVIRAJA, AND HOW HE AVENGED HIS HUMILIATION
The battle scarred ramparts of Chittod fort witnessed many treacherous attempts by the Muslims to conquer this fort. And although they did capture it with trickery a couple of times, they could never hold it for long
When Prithviraj was presented in chains before Mohammed Ghori, he reminded Mohammed how Ghori was himself presented before Prithviraja in chains and how Prithviraja had honorably released him. On hearing this Mohammed and his courtiers laughed derisively at Prithviraja. When Prithviraja glared back at Mohammed and his courtiers, Mohammed ordered him to lower his eyes as he was now a captive. When Prithviraja told him that a Rajput%u2019s eyes are lowered only after death, Mohammed in a fit of rage ordered that Prithviraja%u2019s eyes be pierced with red hot irons. He kept the blinded Pritiviraja in solitary confinement and had him occasionally hauled to his court for being made fun of as the %u201CLion of Delhi%u201D.
During this period of humiliating captivity, Prithviraja was joined by his friend and biographer Chandra Vardai (Chand Bardai) who joined his master in prison, after offering himself as a prisoner to Mohammed. It was in prison, that Chandra Vardai told Prithviraja of a plan to avenge his betrayal and humiliation. Before an annual event of Buskhazi (a kind of wild sport in which the Afghans indulged), Chandra Vardai told Mohammed, that Prithviraja would like to show his skill in archery, but he would accept orders only from a king who had defeated him. And as Mohammed was the only king who had done that, Mohammed Ghori himself would have to order Prithviraj to shoot!
Mohammed%u2019s ego being rubbed the right way, he readily agreed. On the said day Prithviraja was brought to the assemblage. And when Mohammed gave the order for Prithviraja to shoot, Chandra Vardai in the following poetic stanza %u201CChar bans, chaubis gaj, angul asta pramaan, Ete pai Sultan hai, Ab mat chuko Chouhan." (Ten measures ahead of you and twenty four feet away, is seated the Sultan, do not miss him now, Chouhan). On hearing these words Prithviraja whirled in the direction of Mohammed and shot three arrows one after the other and wounded Mohammed fatally. Thus Prithviraja had his justice, although due to his folly in pardoning the ghoulish fiend Mohammed, he lost his kingdom and India lost its sovereignty.
MOHAMMED%u2019S USE OF SUBTERFUGE TO DEFEAT PRITHVIRAJA
In the following year, Mohammed broke his deceptive promise to Prithviraja and attacked India once again. The two armies again gathered at the same battlefield at Tarain. The Rajput army had camped near a river so as to do their morning ablutions before the war could be joined on the next morning, as was decided by the two commanders. But violating convention, the Muslim army attacked at 3 A.M. before dawn, as had the army of Sabuktgin in the year 980 (a fact which the Hindus had foolishly forgotten).
When the Muslims unexpectedly broke into the Hindu camp, Prithviraj%u2019s soldiers had begun their morning ablutions and some were still asleep, and so were totally unprepared for the assault. But they did their best to group their forces and resist the Muslims. The Muslims had the advantage of surprise which they had gained by deceit.
The uneven battle continued till noon, by when the Muslims had slaughtered many of the Rajputs. But the Rajputs did not yield and slaughtered many of their treacherous Muslim enemy too and gradually gained the upper hand. By Midday, it looked like the second battle of Tarain would also go the way the first had gone. Mohammed saw victory slipping from his hands once again.
So he resorted to another patented Muslim subterfuge of single combat %u2013 called Mard-o-Mard in Farsi (Persian). This is a technique which Muslims had used quite cunningly against the Zoroastrian Persians, some six centuries earlier when the barbaric Muslim hordes first burst out of Arabia.
In order to humiliate Prithviraj, Mohammed sent word that he would call off the battle, if Prithviraja came and fought his champion Qutub-ud-din Aibak in single combat. To save the lives of his soldiers, and to conclude the war quickly Prithviraja agreed. The rule in single combat was that when one combatant is either pinned down or killed, the army to which he belongs concedes defeat retreats. No other combatant is allowed to participate in this combat, hence the name single combat.
But with the insidious Muslims, this rule did not hold. So at the battle of Tarain, when the two met and Prithviraja%u2019s sword felt heavy on Qutub who risked losing his life, Qutub resorted to a feint and by whirling below his saddle he cut off the feet of Prithviraja%u2019s horse, before Prithviraj could realize what he was up to. This made Prithviraja trip and fall of his horse.
This was a foul move, and it would have been fair, had Qutub, also dismounted and fought Prithviraja on foot. Instead at a pre-arranged signal from Qutub, a band of truculent Muslim soldiers, who had till then stood aside in the grab of horse-tenders, jumped on Prithviraja, pinned him down, pressed on his face a dose of hashish (that grew abundantly in the poppy farms of Afghanistan as they do till this day) bound the drugged Prithviraja in chains and galloped away with him as a prisoner into their ranks, before the Rajputs could realize what had happened.
The Muslim immediately carried away the captive and drugged Prithviraj and hoisted him on one of the elephants that Prithviraj had gifted to Mohammed Ghori when he had released Ghori. The Muslim spread a rumor in the Rajput camp that Prithviraj was dead and that they were holding aloft his dead body to show the Rajputs the futility of fighting further.
When the Rajputs evidently saw that they their Maharaj (King) was dead with his corpse in the hands of the enemy, they lost nerve and through enraged, fell back against Pithoragarh, their fortified capital at Mehrauli near Delhi.
HOW PRITHVIRAJA FOOLISHLY PARDONED MOHAMMED GHORI WHOM HE HAD DEFEATED AND CAPTURED IN 1191
The fortress town of Chittod was the site of many seminal battles between the Hindus (Rajputs) and the Muslim aggressors. In these see-saw battles ultimately, after a struggle over thirteen centuries, the Hindus prevailed over the Muslims in spite of Muslim deception treachery and cruelty.
When the captured Mohammed Ghori was brought before Prithviraja as a captive bound in chains, he pretended to be repentant, while internally he was seething with rage at being humiliated for having been captured by a Kafir king. This rage proved itself a few years later when their (Prithviraj%u2019s and Ghori%u2019s) roles were reversed.
But for now as a prisoner in chains before Prithviraja, Mohammed Ghori begged for mercy and promised that he would never lift his eyes toward India.
This foolishly melted the innocuous Prithviraja and he ordered that Mohammed%u2019s chains be removed. In his feigned gratitude Mohamed told Prithviraja that he was like his brother. This statement floored Prithviraja even further. Going against the advice of his friend Chand Vardai, his generals Hammira, and the brave warrior twins Aalaa and Uddhal, he ordered Mohammed to be released and as a token of his generosity, he also gifted his captive five hundred horses and twenty elephants and honorably released him!
Once freed, the vengeful Mohammed who was seething for revenge made his way back to Ghori and planned his next attack on Prithviraj!
On reaching Ghor, Mohammed reneged on his sham promise to Prithviraj and promptly murdered the escorts and envoys that Privithraja had sent to accompany Mohammed to Ghor and sent their severed heads as token of his %u201Cgoodwill%u201D to the astonished Prithviraj. Mohammed Ghori also immediately started preparing for another assault on India. Going by the experiences of his two defeats at the hands of the Solankis and Chauhans, Mohammed Ghori decided to go by subterfuge, the patented mentality of the Muslims that has given them victory over more powerful, but less scheming and treacherous adversaries.
Mohammed%u2019s spies told him that whenever the Hindus battled each other, the armies fought from sunrise up to sunset. There was no warfare before Sunrise and after sunset (in the hours of darkness).
In face of the repeated onslaughts of the Rajput cavalry, the Muslims broke ranks and fled leaving their king Mohammed Ghori a prisoner in Prithviraja%u2019s hands. Their defeat by the Solankis of Anahilwada had given the Muslims a foretaste of Hindu valor. But in that retreat they had to leave behind many of the best steeds in their cavalry which fell in to the hands of the pursuing Solanki army.
To prevent this from happening again this time, the Muslims resorted to a trick. Once the fortunes of the battle turned against them at Tarain, and their king Mohammed Ghori himself was captured by the Rajputs, the Muslims broke into retreat, with the Rajputs in hot pursuit, the fleeing Muslim general Kutub-ud-din Aibak let loose a large herd of cows chained to each other to block the path of the pursing Hindu army. Thus with their path blocked by bovines, whom the Hindus looked upon as a deity, it was impossible for the Hindus to cut down the cows blocking their path, and the Muslim army shrewdly made its escape, reducing its losses and preventing many Muslim soldiers from being taken as captives by the victorious Hindus.
HOW THE MUSLIMS COVERED THEIR RETREAT BY USING A HERD OF COWS TO PREVENT THE HINDU ARMY FROM PURSUING THEM
Returning to the 12th century when Mohammed Ghori was defeated by the Solankis and had to retreat from the western edge of the Thar, he tried invading India from another route. But on the other side of the Thar lay the domains of the Maharaja of Sambhar (Shaka-ambara) Prithviraj Chauhan, who was known for his bravery and chivalry.
Mohammed having tasted defeat at Hindu hands once, decided to make use of subterfuge. He studied Hindu warfare, as had been done by Sabuktgin two hundred years before him. Thus, fully prepared to invade India, he advanced through West Punjab and laid siege to the fortress of Bhatinda in East Punjab, that lay on the borders of Prithvitraja%u2019s domains. Soon, he had to face the wrath of the Rajputs, and at Tarain (also known as Taraori) in today%u2019s Haryana, the two armies clashed furiously.
SOLANKIS OF ANAHILWADA UTTERLY DEFEAT MOHAMMED IN 1187 AND FORCE HIM TO FLEE
After overcoming the Ghaznivid governor of Punjab, Mohammed Ghori found his way into India proper blocked by three powerful Hindu kingdoms %u2013 the Solankis (Chalukyas) of Anahilwada in Gujarat, the Chahmanas (Chouhans) of Delhi, Ajmer and Sambhar; and the Rathods (Gahadwals) of Kannauj (Uttar Pradesh).
Mohammed allied himself with the Muslim governor of Sindh and in 1187, unleashed the full fury of his aggression on Gujarat. But to his misfortune, the Hindu Solankis (Chalukyas) of Anahilwada, defeated him utterly at the battle on the plains below Mount Arbuda (Abu) and forced him to retreat across the Thar desert.
Thus the S9olankis of Gujarat once again lit the bright flame of Hindu valor in Gujarat in repelling a Muslim attack. The next time this flame in Gujarat was to be lit while resisting a Muslim barbarity was in March 2002, when the Hindus of Gujarat, retaliated massively against the Muslims who had roasted alive 58 Hindu pilgrims in a Railroad coach near Godhra Railway station when they were returning from a pilgrimage to a Hindu holy town Ayodhya.
It was at Ayodhya where Babar another Muslim invader had demolished a major Hindu temple dedicated to Rama, an ancient Hindu king, who has been deified as a god by the Hindus and is a popular deity in India. This is the present Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue between the Hindus and Muslims in India. He dynasty founded by Babar literally took their mindset after his name and should aptly be called %u201CBabarians%u201D as they demolished temples (as was done by Aurangzeb at Varanasi, Ayodhya, Mathura and many other places), they also slaughtered soldiers who had surrendered (as was done by Akbar at Chittod where he slaughtered thirty thousand Rajput soldiers who had surrendered to him good faith.)
