The Mohammedan attacks against the Hindu rulers was not merely directed at their male warriors but against the womenfolk as well. This was the great threat and the result was the mass self-immolation of Rajput women in the fire of the Jauhar.
When Allauddin Khilji attacked Chittaur, 74500 Rajput women entered the fire of the Jauhar to save their honour. Legend has it that the beauty of Rani Padmini had so enamoured the Delhi Sultan that in his failed bid to obtain her as his queen, he laid the siege on Chittaur that eventually precipitated the mass suicide of honour by the Hindu women. Even today this crime so rings in the memory of men that it is said that whosoever opens a private letter addressed to someone else, commits the equivalent crime of the defiling of the privacy and honour of those 74500 brave Rajputanis. Thus is [74 and 1/2], signifying the 74500 self-immolated ones that day seven centuries back, written on the sealed envelope of the letter, warning the potential intruder against defiling the scared space of its sender and its receiver in wait.
In this way the Mohammedan invaders had lowered the culture of conquest in India and molested our womenfolk and carried them off to their copious harems after defeating and killing the menfolk in war. This was not the Hindu culture of war but was the import from beyond the north-western borders of India whence a savage culture swept over India in the wake of the terrible infighting and disunity among the Hindu rulers. India, long isolated from the rest of the world by self-imposition of unnecessary social restrictions and consequent complacency from remaining cocooned within geographical barriers which she considered sacrosanct and not to be transgressed, was caught unawares by the barbaric invasions of these north-western tribes and the Middle-eastern races with their aggressive instincts and uncivilised attitude towards women who the Hindus revered as embodiment of the Divine Mother. Thus was dealt the deathblow to our culture from which we are still recovering.
But the damage had been done. The motherland had been defiled as our sisters and wives and mothers and daughters were no longer safe from post-conquest tyranny which had thus far been alien in the motherland of supreme spiritual sanity. The Rajputs suffered the worst ordeal for they were the protectors of the motherland, the defenders of the dharma and the bearers of our national honour. Our Hindu rulers in conquest of the Mohammedan rulers never treated their womenfolk in any manner but that of honour. This was the essential difference between the two cultures.
Today, we are free but we need to reflect how far we have been able to live up to that glorious kshatriya tradition of eternal India which but lays down life to defend the motherland and her heritage, careless of return, for it is the dharma of the kshatriya to do so. Upon our reformation and return to roots depends the resurgence of our sublime spiritual culture which rested once not merely on brahmanical spiritual insight but on kshatriya valour as well. Ours is to revive this ancient admixture of valorous spirituality for the recovery of our nation and for leading the world to a higher plane of human evolution where the predator-prey relation among men will have given way to cooperative living along lines of truth and love and peace. India can and must show the way. The world waits on for its delivery from barbarism that has now lasted for ages.
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
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