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January 7 - January 13, 2022
Dedicated to the nameless warriors who throughout the ages fought for their ancient Dharma till the end. It is because the blood they shed and the sacrifices they endured that India still retains her original name: Bharatavarsha
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Perhaps no other people have fought as hard and for so long and endured centuries of humiliation and tyranny under alien despotisms and finally emerged victorious as the Hindus.
The study of Hindu history is also a study of values and inspiration and a profound spiritual yearning that subconsciously continues to guide Hindus.
Munja was succeeded in 1000 CE by his fabulously renowned nephew, the indomitable warrior, encyclopaedic scholar, and immortal poet Paramara Bhoja Raja.
Among their multifaceted accomplishments, they upheld the fine and timeless Sanatana tradition that scholarship and learning presides over royalty.
Paramara Bhoja’s beloved capital, Dhārānagara (today’s Dhar city in Madhya Pradesh), which once housed a grand Saraswati Temple is now bereft of Her. The mūlamurti of the temple was befittingly named Vāgdevī, the Goddess of Speech, Articulation and Learning. This Vāgdevī continues to languish as an “artifact” in the British Museum. The enormous Saraswati Temple complex also served as a mini-university until it was spotted by a pious Sufi fakir named Kamal Maulana, who stayed in Malwa for three decades, collected intelligence and faithfully transmitted it to the super-bigot Ala-ud-din Khalji.
Royal patronage had stopped and staging of plays and such intellectual pastimes had become old history. From the 12th century onwards, we do not find any original work of great merit coming from this region and Sanskrit was getting much greater patronage in the southern states as compared to Northern India… The whole of Northern India had been under the rule of Muslim conquerors of Turkish, Afghan and Mongol origin… One can only speculate on the magnitude of the loss suffered during this period when a foreign language like Persian became accepted as the official and court language.
The loss of such remarkable stories counts as a civilisational and cultural loss. Telling and retelling such stories is how we transmit and preserve our unparalleled cultural values and our civilisational memory to succeeding generations.
In a sense, Bharatavarsha lost her independence the day one of her most sacred cities, the ancient Tirtha-Kshetra, Mulastāna brutally got the taste of what a pious Jihad looked like on the ground. Woe betide the city, town, village, and locality that undergoes a name change like how Mulastāna became Multan.
Muhammad bin Qasim erected a massive Jama Masjid and some minarets, thus planting the victorious flag of Islam in Multan. The original Mulastāna was largely a thing of the past. This ancient sacred Kshetra whose air was made mellifluous by the incessant chants of the Veda and other Sanatana hymns is today fabled for a proliferation of mosques, minarets, and a vast collection of Islamic structures. It is also home to the largest collection of Sufi shrines in a single place, a telling and living proof of the true nature of the “mysticism” of the Sufi tradition.
Muhammad bin Qasim’s destructive raid on Multan was a civilisational impasse as far as Sanatana Dharma was concerned, but an enduring one at that. The city was permanently transformed as a strong outpost of Islam on the frontiers of Bharatavarsha. The successive waves of Muslim invasions in the general region of both Punjab and Sindh were singularly ineffective and short-lived. The moment the Muslim hold slackened, the Hindu kings and chieftains either reconquered their previously-held territories or drove away the Muslim garrisons there or did both.
a legion of extraordinary kings and doughty warriors including the Chalukyan “Avanijashraya” Pulikeshi, Yashovarman of Kanauj, Lalitaditya Muktapida of Kashmir, and the Pratihara Nagabhata harassed the “cow-eating Mlecchas” so horribly, so splendidly
it was not magic or voodoo that sustained it but something that was rooted in the Sanatana DNA: the superb, original and inimitable fusion of the evocative and inspiring spirit of Brahma (Spirituality) and Kshatra (Valour) that played out so gloriously on battlefield after battlefield for centuries on end until the barbaric sword of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s soul-snuffing and civilisation-shattering nonviolence killed it.
If there was one thing that the successive waves of alien Muslim invasions and the protracted regime of pious Islamic oppression could not snatch away from the Hindus, it was this: their unwavering faith, conviction and indomitable pride in the exalted nobility of their ancient, ancestral Sanatana Dharma. That vile task of inducing self-shame, the logical consequence of which is deracination was completed by two forces: (i) the British through “education” and (ii) Mohandas Gandhi through his death cult of non-violence and Satyagraha of which the worst and the most representative example is
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Only two slim volumes have shone light in this direction: Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders by Dr. Ram Gopal Misra, and Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders by the intrepid Sita Ram Goel.
Mahmud of Ghazni turned his attention to India. Jayapaladeva was among the first of his targets. As a teenager, Mahmud had fought against the ferocious armies of Jayapaladeva as a commander under his father, Sabuktigin. That experience would now prove valuable because among other things, he had learnt an important secret about the Hindus. In that battle, he had found that Hindu soldiers would recoil in disgust when foul and vile tactics were used on the battlefield. For example, the use of faeces mixed in water and splashed liberally on the fighting Hindu warriors yielded a rich military
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Jayapaladeva’s end was truly befitting his life as an unsullied warrior of Sanatana Dharma: fearless, courageous, proud, relentless, determined, uncompromising and honourable. After his release from Mahmud’s bondage, he wrote to his son Anandapala and publicly declared to his citizens that he was unfit to rule any longer. He had let them down and he himself had been degraded by this cow-eating, Murti-breaking Mleccha.
the victory of Dharma was guided, complemented, and sustained by Kshatra or the spirit of valour. One of the core elements or qualities of the spirit of Kshatra is to maintain equilibrium at all levels: political, social and individual. The quality of civilisational stability and sustenance is also built into this spirit of Kshatra.
Liberty and law were synthesized to achieve spiritual freedom.
For a fuller discussion, see for example: Hindus beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 12: C Scott Levi, 2002 Foreword by K.M. Munshi to The History and Culture of the Indian People: Vol 5: R C Majumdar: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2015: p viii. Vishnupurana: II, 3, 4. Paraphrased by the author. Medhaithi’s commentary on Manusmriti: II. 22 Foreword of K.M. Munshi to The History and Culture of the Indian People: Vol 5: R C Majumdar: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2015: p x
For a detailed and in-depth discussion on Kshatra from the Vedic era up to the modern times, see: The Tradition of Kshaatra in India at Prekshaa Journal. https://www.prekshaa.in/. This is the English translation of the Kannada original, Bharatiya Kshatraparampare by Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh. Geopolitcs of India and Greater India: Dr. S Srikanta Sastri: Madhu Publishers, 1943. Emphasis added. See the Foreword by K.M. Munshi to The History and Culture of the Indian People: Vol 3: R C Majumdar: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2015. Foreword of K.M. Munshi to The History and Culture of the Indian People:
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“Little Finger” Qutub-ud-din Aibak was born of humble origins in remote Turkistan to Turkic parents. As a boy, he was bought by a slave merchant and sold to a Qazi named Fakhr-ud-din at Nishapur. The Qazi took pity on him and educated him along with his sons in reading the Quran, horse riding and archery. When the Qazi died an untimely death, his sons sold Aibak to a wealthy merchant who in turn sold him to Muhammad of Ghori in the city of Ghazni.
They’re derived mainly from the entertainment, fashion, business and sports streams. Equally, the widespread (primarily Marxist) notion that all people–no matter what their genuine achievements are–are “subjects” to be “analysed,” has also contributed greatly to this erosion. Thus, when you have no one towering person or hero to look up to, your value system will emanate from corporate and fashion-of-the-moment slogans and maxims that pass off as “values” and so on.
The average urban, English-educated Indian Hindu since Independence is a stranger in his own land and has today brought to fruition Ananda Coomaraswamy’s prophetic warning that this Hindu is “a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots, a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future.”
Macaulay was also accurate when he identified Bengal as the prime target for said English education: apart from this state being one of the foundational British military conquests in India, it also had rich and vibrant traditions and practices of Hinduism in the intellectual, scholarly and philosophical realms, which the British could never really break despite establishing their military and political control. But this was eventually broken by the Bengali Hindus themselves when sections of their elite began embracing British education, social mores and outlook.
classical traditions were entirely pre-Christian in spirit, character and expression. And it makes sense that they were revived during the Renaissance period because this period was singularly characterised by a rejection of and rebellion against the stranglehold of the Church that had pushed Europe into the Heart of Darkness for at least a thousand years.
By 1370 CE, a determined Kumara Kampana had succeeded in annihilating the sputtering vestiges of the infamous Madurai Sultanate by routing Nasir-ud-din, the so-called Sultan who ruled Madurai.
…the very grandeur of the Mogul buildings is oppressive.
In India these endless mosques and rhetorical mausolea, these great palaces speak only of a personal plunder and for a country with an infinite capacity for being plundered. The Mogul owned everything in his dominions; and this is the message of the Mogul architecture.
Shah Jahan himself made a triumphal entry into Orchha, the capital of the Bundelas, demolished the lofty and massive temple of Bir Singh Dev, and raised a mosque in its place.
this is apart from Shahjahan’s reintroduction of the extortionist pilgrimage tax on Hindus, prohibition against Hindus rebuilding their destroyed or damaged temples, making apostasy a crime punishable by death, incentivising Hindus to convert to Islam, and his attempted persecution of the great Sikh Guru Hargobind Singh.
Shahjahan followed the same definitive trajectory of almost all Muslim despots who imposed their tyranny from Delhi: rebelling against or overthrowing their respective biological fathers or benefactors. From Ala-ud-din Khilji who backstabbed his own uncle to Muhammad Bin Tughlaq who staged his father’s murder to Jahangir who unsuccessfully rebelled against Akbar, and to the selfsame Shahjahan who followed his father Jahangir’s footsteps only to meet the same fate at the hands of his ultra-bigoted son, Aurangzeb. This ungrateful phenomenon applies equally to various Nawabs, and petty Muslim
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It’s not the Taj Mahal but the mindset of these distortionists that’s the Eighth Wonder of the world. It’s almost as if these eminences have an incurable carnal lust for unmitigated tyrants and imperial debauches like Shah Jahan. The crueller the despot, the greater the lust. Latest case in point: the newly-minted Redeemer of Aurangzeb’s Savagery: Audrey Truschke.
She who was betrothed at 13, married at 19 as the fourth wife following which Shahjahan married more women, bringing the grand total to seven wives apart from the uncountable number of concubines and females he acquired as booty. She whose incredibly fecund womb bore him fourteen children. She who died after delivering the fourteenth child.
Which is entirely consonant with a key Communist goal: memory is a crime against history.
places like the Ajmer dargah are living sites — the visitor whether a Muslim or no, must show reverence. On the other hand, it is common to spot even Hindus wearing footwear at say, the Kailasanatha and numerous other Hindu temples. These sites have been effectively de-sanctified in the Hindu cultural and civilisational consciousness and are now mere tourist spots.
Shreemant Peshwa or Madhava Rao Peshwa I ascended the imperial Maratha throne and fastidiously began to reassert the Empire’s shattered prestige and prowess. In February 1762, he embarked on a twofold mission of sorts: first, to conquer Mysore from the usurper Hyder Ali and next, to wrest the Hyderabad Nizam’s dominions.
Hyder Ali’s military successes owed to a combination of treachery, bribe, cowardice, sheer unscrupulousness, military prowess, and most of all, luck.
violence is sanctified in Islam if it is carried out against infidels or heretics ‘in the path of Allah.’
The faithful live, at least in theory, in a permanent state of war with the non-Islamic world,
Walter Laqueur in his brilliant work, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction.
[if the British left India], then the rule of India would pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four times as large as ourselves … Then, our life, our property, our honor, and our faith will all be in great danger. … woe betide the time when we become the subjects of our neighbors, and answer to them for the sins, real or imaginary of Aurangzeb… and other Mussalman conquerors and rulers who went before him. [Emphasis added] That was Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh alias Mushtaq Hussain Zuberi, one of the founders of the All India Muslim League along with that other fanatic, Nawab
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Communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than communalism of the minority… When the minority communities are communal, you can see that and understand it. But the communalism of a majority community is apt to be taken for nationalism.
Jawaharlal Nehru emphatically endorsed the rabid Mushtaq Hussain (and several others of his ilk) decades later, by concocting an unofficial political religion called secularism, which neither had a concrete definition nor the sanction of popular will.
Secularism was that exact gift that helped the fanatical Ulema in India to lie low for a while and use time and patience to regroup, re-strengthen, and create another Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Almost the entire Muslim community underwent a massive sense of collective guilt thanks to Partition. There is a fundamental reason why Muslim actors and artists in Hindi cinema adopted Hindu names: remember Muhammad Yusuf Khan? Hamid Ali Khan? Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi? Mahjabeen Bano? They are respectively, Dilip Kumar, Ajit, Madhubala, and Meena Kumari. From that era to the steady but sure transformation and near-total takeover of Bollywood by Dawood Ibrahim, there is a direct parallel to the dominance of secularism in Indian politics and public discourse.
The contemporary equivalent of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in many ways is Asaduddin Owaisi.
In “independent” India, these forces were also effectively aided and abetted by Communists, now masquerading as Liberals. One of the signal services that these Liberal traitors have rendered to the Jihadi forces is the whitewashing of bigoted mass murderers like Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan.
there is a direct correlation between secularism (as practiced in India under successive Congress regimes) and communal riots.
A painstaking study undertaken by RNP Singh shows that a staggering 8175 communal riots occurred between 1950 to June 1992.