6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

230 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
rapidly to the numerical strength of the enemy of Hinduism
by at least one and a half times or twice as much. Being
brought up from birth under the Islamic influence, this
future progeny of the Hindu converts became the inveterate
enemies of the Hindus and instead of desiring to come back to
Hinduism they cherished, like the -wolf in the 'Aesop's fables',
the fiendish ambition of converting the rest of the Hindus to
islam. They considered it their most sacred duty !
576. If the Marathas had so retaliated, all those two
or three hundred thousand Hindu men and women recently
converted, during those four or five years of the war with
Tipu, would have, in all probability, courted Hinduism most
willingly, because of the love they bore for their original
families and relatives and because of the pangs of separation
that they suffered. Their devotion to and fascination for
their recently lost religion, their love and affection for their
separated Hindu fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,
relatives and friends must have at that time been so acute
and fresh as to cause them many a heart-ache and to make
them shed many an agonized tear at their slightest mention
and recollection.
577. How very simple it would have been, at that time,
to reconvert all those luckless two or three hundred thousand
Hindu brethren and absorb them all in the Hindu society !
578. After Tipu's defeat, the victorious Maratha armies
of Sardar Patwardhan, Holkar, Baste and other great chief­
tains were returning triumphantly to Maharashtra from their
respective fronts and by different routes. Their multiple
infantry, cavalry and artillery brigades were gaily fluttering
their saffron-coloured banners and rending the skies with
their war-cry 'Har Har Mahadev !' And in those very
districts, towns and cities of Mysore, Karnatak and Mahara­
shtra through which these warriors paraded their victorious
exultation, lay rotting and slaving in various Muslim houses',
the thousands of abducted Hindu women while men equally
large in numbers, were leading a miserable life of shame and
remorse for their forced conversion to Islam. The exultant