हिंदूंचा छळ

Barely three hundred years had passed since Shivaji walked this earth, and yet his tercentenary was being celebrated everywhere with great fanfare. Such celebrations exist to keep alive the memory of a person's valor, and the greater the obstacles and dangers that valor had to overcome, the greater the worth people place upon it. This is exactly what happened with Shivaji's story. Just as Rama had his Ravana, and Krishna his uncle Kansa, so Shivaji's great tormentor turned out to be none other than Aurangzeb — how formidable a name that is. Names such as Afzal Khan and Shaista Khan loom just as large; it is set against such towering, fearsome adversaries that Shivaji's valor stands out. Wherever one turns in Hindustan and speaks the word "Muslim," one finds tales of atrocities visible on every side. For century upon century these Muslims persecuted the Hindus, and it fell to Shivaji alone, in more recent times, to put a check upon that persecution. Aurangzeb tore down Hindu temples. Kashi was among the most renowned of all pilgrimage sites, and its ancient temple of Kashi Vishweshwar was razed to the ground by this same Emperor Aurangzeb, who then raised upon its site an immense mosque — one still visible from a great distance to travellers passing by rail. Though it was not given to Shivaji to rebuild that temple, he did wrest the fort of Sinhagad from Aurangzeb's grip, and this may fairly be reckoned as a measure of revenge taken on behalf of Kashi Vishweshwar. Every child in every household in Maharashtra knows the story of how Tanaji Malusare gave up his life to capture that fort. The Muslims nursed a particular hatred for Hindu idols. Mahmud of Ghazni broke the idol of Somnath with his own hands. Year after year, for twenty-five years running, he invaded Hindustan, plundering its great temples and its wealthy cities, carrying off the ornaments of the gods and the riches of the wealthy, hauling it all back to his own country, and swelling his own numbers by forcibly converting the local population. Married Hindu women and unmarried girls alike were abducted and carried into the households of these invaders. That a people should labor day and night to build up their wealth, only to have foreign raiders descend upon them and seize it all in an instant, was a state of affairs that persisted for centuries on end, and the Hindus were left with no one they could call their protector. It was into such an age of darkness that Shivaji took his avatar and put a stop to these wicked outrages — an episode that has rightly become one of the most memorable in our history.

संतवाङ्मयातील छळाचे वर्णन

The record of this persecution at the hands of the yavanas is found in abundant measure throughout the literature of the Maharashtrian saints. Indeed, one might almost say that the very advent of saints such as Eknath arose as a form of resistance against these very wrongs. Travelling on foot across the length and breadth of the land, these saints had witnessed with their own eyes the atrocities the Muslims committed. Almost every day some fresh act of destruction would reach their ears. Their hearts would be torn by it, and they would turn to their gods in prayer, crying out: "O Lord, once before you took avatar yourself to put an end to the persecution wrought by Ravana and his kind; the very same state of affairs prevails again today — why, then, do you close your eyes to it? Why does our suffering not move you to compassion? Do not, now, let us come to such an end!" This pitiable condition of the people — current, as it happened, from the very time Shivaji lay in his mother's womb — is recorded abundantly in the writings of that age. In Sanskrit, in Marathi, in Persian alike, one finds excellent expression of this shared sentiment of the era. It runs in the very blood of us Aryan people that, when trouble comes, one turns to God with single-minded devotion, trusting that he who removes trouble is ever the refuge of the helpless. Consider, for instance, the poignant story of Jijabai's own condition during her pregnancy: once that story is firmly fixed in mind, what follows reads almost as though it were spoken directly from her own lips. Take, as an example, what Raghunathpant Hanmante — Jijabai's devoted and loyal servant — records in the preface he wrote to the Rajvyavaharkosh.

जिजाबाईची प्रार्थना व यवन-म्लेंच्छ शब्द

Raghunathpant there sets down a Sanskrit invocation whose sense runs thus: "O Lord of Lords, these yavanas are inflicting grievous suffering upon the earth; cut them down and relieve the people of their distress! Behold: Shahajiraje's virtuous wife, the chaste Jijabai, is as it were a second Sudakshina, wife of King Dilip of old. Take birth now, O Lord, in her womb, so that by destroying the yavanas you may restore the dharma of the varnas and bring peace once more to this earth." This, Sardesai notes, describes the very moment when the people, worn down by the persecution of the yavanas, turned to their gods and cried out for mercy — and he adds that there is no harm in taking these very words as the prayer Jijabai herself may have offered to the goddess Shivai atop the fort of Shivneri. He goes on to explain the words yavan and mlenchha, which the writings of that period use interchangeably. In truth, in ancient times Indians applied the word yavan — derived from "Ionian" — to the Greeks; Alexander, when he invaded, was the first yavan India knew. Thereafter, as other foreign peoples arrived in turn, the same name came to be applied to them as well, and in this way the custom grew up of using "yavan" simply to mean "Muslim." Genuine foreign-born Muslims who actually came to India were, in fact, few in number; the great bulk of India's Muslim population today descends from Hindus who were converted. Many proud Kshatriya royal houses — the Paramars of Dhar, the Yadavs of Devagiri, the Kakatiyas of Warangal, the Nimbalkars of Phaltan, among others — were overthrown and extinguished by the Muslims. Jijabai herself descended from the Yadavs of Devagiri; in later usage, the word "Yadav" was transformed into "Jadhav." In the fullness of time, Shivaji was born of Jijabai and put a check upon the Muslims, and it was then that people came to feel that God himself had taken birth in Jijabai's womb — for it is the settled belief among us Aryans that whenever an extraordinary feat of valor comes to pass, it must be the working of divine providence. A later Sanskrit verse gives voice to this very belief, declaring that this was a new avatar taken by God expressly to protect the people, terrified as they were by the persecution of Aurangzeb, lord of the yavanas — showing how firmly later generations came to regard Shivaji's birth as providential, a direct answer to the very suffering traced through this chapter.