The Blood-soaked Prelude to the Rise of the Vijayanagara Empire is an Age of Hindu Resistance

IF THE STORY OF THE VIJAYANAGARA EMPIRE can be told in just one sentence, it is this: what began as a spirited and coalesced Hindu resistance against alien Islamic invasions birthed a grand civilization that showed the world what true Hindu unity could really accomplish.

But the prelude to the founding of Vijayanagara actually begins about six hundred years earlier. With the first barbaric raid of Sindh by Muhammad bin Qasim. It is the familiar tale of the first brush of Hindus with Islam, known popularly but incorrectly as the Arab “Invasion” of Sindh. It was not an invasion, but a piffling raid, not unlike the raid of Alexander. However, to the Hindus, Qasim’s raid gave a putrid taste of what an Islamic war really means. Temple destructions, forcible conversions, cow slaughter, gang rape of women, mass-enslavement of men, women and children…the Hindu of today who is still unfamiliar with all these stands to suffer the same fate.

Around the same time that Qasim was ravaging Sindh, his Islamic compatriot Tariq ibn Ziyad had shattered the Christian empire in Spain and overwhelmed the Visigoth chief, Roderick. A comprehensive imperial victory of Islam at the southern tip of Europe and a feeble sally of the same Islam in a limited region in Bharatavarsha. The motivation that powered both events was the same but the outcomes were vastly different. In the former case, the newly ascendant Abrahamism, Islam managed to clobber an ancient Abrahamism Christianity. In the latter case, it could only manage to dent a relatively small kingdom run on the foundational principles of Brahma and Kshatra.

Muhammad bin Qasim stayed in the Sindh region for about three years but the real story begins after he left.

The moment he left, Hindus launched a stiff resistance and began to reconquer their lost territories and systematically expelled the alien Muslim “governors” that Qasim had left behind. There is a momentous civilizational significance in this fightback and reconquest, which is noteworthy especially for Hindus today: this was the voluntary return of thousands of Hindus to their Matru-Dharma…what is known as Ghar wapsi today. There was no VHP or allied Hindu organisations that had to convince these forcibly converted Hindus to return.

This brings us to the other great myth of Indian history: that the so-called Islamic conquest of Bharatavarsha was a cakewalk. On the contrary, India was the toughest country for Islam to penetrate. In fact, Bharatavarsha is the only country in which Islam met with its greatest failure. Among other things, one of the intents behind the criminal Marxist project of distorting Indian history on an epic scale was to hide the verifiable truth of this failure. Even after countless wars and incursions and Islamic despotism spread over eight hundred years, this Punyabhoomi is still Hindu majority. A Hindu-majority India is Islam’s greatest failure. For example, how much of their Hindu past do the Yazidis still remember?

We have preserved our ancient Dharma almost intact. And that did not happen by accident or by divine intervention—our ancestors literally spilled their blood and made incredible sacrifices and fought back with the sort of grit and determination that to today’s Hindus will seem like the stuff of fiction. Boys as young as thirteen or fifteen held a sword in one hand and placed one leg in the grave chanting this heroic mantra: if we win, we reclaim and preserve our Dharma; if we lose, we reach that Heaven reserved only for heroes. All of them died in defence of our Dharma. They died so that we could remain Hindus.

The next major and dark chapter in this familiar story is the savage invasion of the barbarian Mahmud of Ghazni. But between Qasim and Mahmud, there is a period of about three hundred years during which no alien Muslim invader dared to look in the direction of Bharatavarsha. Even in this case, the truth that no “mainstream” history book will dare to reveal is this: Mahmud of Ghazni could not establish an Islamic empire within the borders of India. Like a cowardly bandit outfitted with an army, all he could do was plunder and scamper back to the safety of his citadel in Ghazni, Afghanistan. And even after his death, Bharatavarsha largely remained untouched by alien Islamic invasions for another century.

It was only after the second battle of Tarain in 1192 that large parts of north India came under direct Muslim rule.

So, this is the timeline we get: from 712 to 1192…almost five hundred years…it took Islam half a millennium to gain even a foothold in Bharatavarsha. But once Muslim rule was formally established in Delhi, it gradually began to spread its tentacles throughout the country.

But from the Hindu perspective, the establishment of the so-called Delhi sultanate marks the beginning of the Age of Resistance. It was the first time in the history of Bharatavarsha that Hindus lost freedom in their own Mātr̥bhūmi.

But entirely consistent with their perfidious flair, our secular “historians” call this period as the “Medieval Muslim period.” In reality, it must be called the Age of Resistance because till the very end, what is known as the Islamic rule of India was a rule by foreigners who settled in India. It was not a rule by any definition of the term but an all-encompassing oppression of Hindus motivated and guided by the Islamic doctrine.

Another significant factor emerges from this history. Even as Islamic despotism took deep roots in Delhi, Hindus did not give up fighting. The long period from Qutub-ud-din Aibak till Aurangzeb—501 years—is marked by countless stories of incessant freedom struggle waged by our Rajas, chieftains and generals, big and small. There is no Muslim ruler who did not face the brunt of this freedom struggle waged by Hindus both across space and time. Let it be said again that it was not rebellion but freedom struggle.

And the rise of the Vijayanagara Empire is the greatest and the most successful story of this ceaseless resistance on the part of Hindus.

To be continued