6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

6TH GLORIOUS EPOCH 191
thinking that these Hindu children increased their number,
gladly accepted them. The simple god-fearing Hindus on
the other hand never for once understood that their own
number decreased to that extent. It is quite evident that
this Bengali custom must have been popularized by some
Smriti like the Deval Smriti.
481. The basic cause of this cowardly arrangement
made by even those reformers who condemned the caste
division, ban on repurification of the 'fallen', and favoured
reconversion, was the deep-rooted silly belief of the Hindus
that the purity of the caste was to be preserved at all costs
and even at the risk of caste-extinction. But the Hindu
society of those days never understood that the very same
purity of their caste was lost when lakhs of their women
fell into the hands of the Muslims, and that if those prohi­
bitions on reconversion were to continue the whole of the
Hindu society would perish.
482. Another thing to be noted is that the portion,
now extant, of the Deval Smriti does not provide for the
conversion of the original Muslims to Hinduism as it did
for the conversion of the unfortunate Hindu converts. The
reason probably is only this that the Hindus considered it
a great sin to admit another community into their own fold.
Even the religious law-givers up to the writer of the Bhagwat
Geeta* seemed to be extremely worried how to keep off the
intermingling of the castes and subcastes within the Hindu
Society itself.
483. In fine, we can say, the daring reformers in the
Ashram of Maharshi Deval made at least some provision for
admitting the forcibly converted Hindu men and women to
the Hindu society. But it seems that the writers of Smritis
and the warriors of the time dared not use at every stage more
violent means to beat down the monstrously violent Muslim
aggression. Nevertheless under the adverse circumstances,
when the Muslim power had established itself firmly in the
land, this religious revolt of the hundreds of Hindu leaders
like Deval and others was not a small thing.