PANDURANG VAMAN KANE has written a highly learned commentary on the priceless value of the Dēvala-Smriti and lauds it as an instructive work providing lasting guidance to the present and the future of the Hindu society. When we recall the timeline of its composition, we can’t but help marvel at how pathbreaking it was. It was composed at a time when even the notion of forcible conversions did not exist in the Hindu mind before the barbaric advent of Islam.
From a limited perspective, the Mlēccita-Śud'dhi chapter can be regarded as a standalone work, which eventually became a foundation for future Dharmasastra treatises, digests and commentaries, which invariably included Parāvartana as a component.
D.R. Bhandarkar shows how the purification procedure for forcibly converted Hindu women (who were also raped and impregnated) mentioned by Devala Muni is also included in the Atri-Smriti and Atri-Samhita.
In fact, a more telling evidence for the Dēvala-Smriti’s endurance is available in the legendary Vijnaneshvara’s commentary on the Yājñavalkya-Smr̥ti, dated 12th century CE. It expressly deals with the Shuddhi of Hindu women raped and impregnated by Muslims. It is notable that Vijnaneshvara lived in the court of the Kalyana Chalukya King Vikramaditya VI — that is, more than a century before Ala-ud-din Khalji and Malik Kafur’s maiden Jihads into Dakshinapatha. The fact Vijnaneshvara found it pertinent to include the Mlēccita-Śud'dhi topic in his commentary shows how vigilant the leaders of the Hindu society were to the Mleccha threat.
Next we have Vidyaranya Swami, the spiritual inspiration for the founding of the Hindu Empire of Vijayanagara. He arrived a full century after Vijnaneshvara at a time when repeated Islamic invasions had pushed Dakshinapatha into total disarray. In his celebrated Pancadasi, Vidyaranya Swami declares as follows:
“...just as a Brahmana [read: Hindu] seized by Mlecchas and afterwards undergoing the appropriate prāyaścitta does not become confounded with Mlecchas ( but returns to his original status…), so the Atman is not really to be confounded with the body and other material adjuncts.”
P.V. Kane adds an approving note to Vidyaranya Swami’s precept:
This establishes that the great Vidyaranya, who after Samkaracarya, is the greatest figure among acaryas, approved of the view that a brahmana even though enslaved by Mlecchas could be restored to his original status.
TO RECALL an earlier point, Parāvartana or Shuddhi went on continuously almost throughout Bharatavarsha since Qasim’s virgin raid. In the early centuries of incessant alien Muslim aggressions, Shuddhi was rather swift and relatively easier because no raider had the capacity to establish, much less, sustain an independent Muslim empire on the soil of Bharatavarsha.
This situation permanently changed with the founding of the so-called Delhi Sultanate. Ever since, as Muslim conquests spread wider and penetrated deeper and Hindu kings kept waging defensive wars, it became progressively tougher to undertake Shuddhikarana. We continue to harbour this deep-seated mentality of civilisational defensiveness.
Thus, with each defensive war, the toll of forcible Hindu conversions kept increasing. By the time of Akbar, the Hindu society had become so stratified that it resembled a complex honeycomb of varṇas, upavarṇas, jātis, upajātis, upopajātis, kulas, etc, each desperate to preserve the traditions and customs of their individual groups. This situation was further exacerbated by the introduction of a slew of undesirable rules and practices such as the prohibition against sea voyage.
Perhaps the most dangerous of them all was the rise of an unfounded belief: that one can only be born a Hindu, and anyone who left the Hindu fold either voluntarily or by force or fraud was debarred from returning home. Ever since, the Hindu societal story is a continuous saga of missed opportunities. We can cite just two prominent examples in this regard.
The first is the tragic story of the ancient Mewati Hindus in the general region of Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Hailing from a branch of the Rajputs, they had, at various points, served as the vassals and commanders of the later Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Pratiharas and the Chahamana rulers. Once Balban became the Sultan, he carried out a genocide of these Mewati Hindus, massacring about two lakh Mewatis in the vicinity of Delhi in a space of about three days. Undaunted, they kept their struggle alive over the centuries but were eventually converted by force. Today, they are known as Meos and almost the entire community has become Muslim with zero ancestral memory. This memory loss was accelerated in the early part of the 20th century by a nascent missionary Islamic movement called the Tablighi Jamaat.
The second example is rather more well-known. It concerns the Muslim Malkana Rajputs. In this context, we can cite the report of D.R. Bhandarkar dated July 1933.
"A few years ago, when the celebrated Arya Samaj apostle, Swami Sraddhananda was living, the Hindu world was taken by surprise when the news spread that villages after villages which had been inhabited by the Muhammadan Malkana Rajputs were being reconverted to Hinduism…It is true that the Malkana Rajputs were originally converted to Muhammadanism by compulsion, that they were all along following their original Hindu customs and practices inspite of their outward change of faith, and that they were always willing to come back into the Hindu fold provided they were allowed to do so."
The Islamic clergy was naturally outraged by this apostasy but the Hindu orthodoxy was equally outraged. Bhandarkar continues:
"The Sanatanists and the orthodox Hindus began to shake their heads and question whether such a step was in consonance with the scriptures as it certainly was not in consonance with the practice… Although…things were highly in favour of the Malkana Rajputs, their actual reconversion to Hinduism shocked the orthodoxy of the Sanatanists and the High Priests of Hinduism who maintained that a Hindu to be a Hindu must be born a Hindu and that no religious rite could purify the fallen and re-admit them into the Hindu fold…When the Malkana Rajputs were being taken back into the Hindu fold, it created a great furore in the Hindu society."
This is what I alluded to when I mentioned the introduction of this prohibition against Shuddhi at some point in the medieval period. This self-destructive stricture is at the root of why many Hindu communities of the lower strata who even today, threaten to convert to Islam en masse if some demand of theirs is not met. As a civilisation and society, we have clearly paid a steep price thanks to such myopic, unreasonable and asastric strictures.
Our downfall evokes tears of blood. What have we become? From alien Greeks who joyously became Bhagavatas to reaching this pathetic nadir.
To be continued
The Dharma Dispatch is now available on Telegram! For original and insightful narratives on Indian Culture and History, subscribe to us on Telegram.