6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

m SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
enemies, millions others leapt into rivers, lakes and wells, all
over the country and destroyed themselves along with their
small children at their breasts. Most bravely did many
others die defiantly refusing to be converted to Islam, like
Chhatrapati Sambhaji, Guru Teg Bahadur and many of our
Sikh gurus like the martyr Bairagi Baba Banda, who kept
on defying the Muslims till the last even when his body was
being cut off limb by limb. How can we ever forget this
unprecedented martyrdom, unless we are ungrateful to them ?
Few other communites in the history of the world could have
sacrificed their lives on such a vast scale or with such severety
as did the Hindus ! This martyrdom of the Hindus was not
altogether futile in respect of saving their religion from the
Muslim onslaught. The heroic tales of their martyrdom have
been inspiring generations of the nation to offer their life
for protecting the religion—and this is not altogether
insignificant.
464. Although highly detrimental to the interests of
the nation as a whole, and as such deserving the severest
of criticism, these various bans, like those on exchange of
food and sea-voyage and the custom of social ostracism,
were all imposed by the Hindus of that period—let it not be
forgotten—with the sole noble object of protecting the purity
of their caste and creed. Millions of Hindus, who, for
generations, suffered unimaginable pangs, did so with
unswerving loyalty to their accepted creed. Were they ever
happy to boycott an individual for having—although unwill­
ingly and through force—taken water from a Muslim hand or
for other such reasons ? How can one describe the agonies
and pangs of the parents and other relatives at the unavoid­
able separation of their sons and daughters, of husbands
and wives, of brothers and sisters ? How many of them might
have courted death, owing to this extreme grief when they
closed their doors on them, simply because they were,
although unwillingly and forcibly, converted to Islam ? But