Showing posts with label KINGS OF INDIA SAVED FROM ISLAMIST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KINGS OF INDIA SAVED FROM ISLAMIST. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Saviors of Hindu Dharma in South India – Part 1

It is assumed that south India did not get as much barbaric attacks and conversion by INVADERS ISLAMIC MUSLIMS but on contrary it is half truth. Many Hindu kingdoms were destroyed, many conversion took place. Tipu Sultan sent army to either convert or slaughter in Kerala and all south India. Even Sword of Tipu Sultan say:
Sultan Tipu's favorite sword reads in Arabic "Slaughter Hindu Get Victory With Allah's Help" displayed in his shrine. And Hindus are as stupid as 2000 years before.


Peaceful brave Hindus ruled for several centuries before and had nurtured the flowering of Dharma in various forms such as literature, philosophy, art, and architecture in Southern India.
These kingdoms were among the most prosperous kingdoms in the world, as can be seen in references given to them in numerous chronicles and testimonies. This Article will make all of you to learn from history and wake up before another Bangladesh, Pakistan or Iran or Iraq or middle east created from present India. It is time to get together and help BJP under MODI to grab all India and create old SANATAN DHARMA back in India and forget CASTE and Religion for sake of country.
It is important to bear in mind that the Islamist invading armies were aided via espionage and subversion by several Sufi ‘saints’ who had traveled into the South for preaching. In many cases as with the Yadavas at Deogiri and Pandyas at Madurai, the very Sufi preachers they had patronized acted as spies providing intelligence to the foreign invaders.
It was topography of the South, which would have presented a greater challenge for any invader.
You all must know that your forefathers have shed their blood in the millions to defend the very land we walk upon, several great heroes from the Southern realms of Bharatavarsha have been lost in history by Nehru Gandhivian philosophy and terrorist like Akbar and Tipu Sultan was told that they were freedom fighters. Time is now to re learn truth of false history we were told and bring back our heroes like Pritviraj Chouhan, Rana Sanga, Maharana Pratap, Shivaji , Great Asoka etc.
There was a motivated effort to deliberately erase them from our consciousness to either erase history of Hindus or convert them to either Muslim or Christianity. Thanks to the inscriptions and records they left behind in the ruins of the great empires they raised, or from the accounts of the scribes and historians affiliated to invader hordes. This is a story retold about south Indian kingdoms-
Four Kingdoms


In 11th and 12 centuries AD, the Cholas of Tamil region ruled over a vast  territory  from East Central India to present SriLanka and Malaya and were among the world’s mightiest kingdoms of the time. There was abundance prosperity, good  governance and taxation systems and promotion of trade, culture and stability for  sea trade routes.
They were also master architect who built  temples and monuments that still stand today rank among the greatest examples of Hindu architectural story. Their decline in the latter half of the 13th century lead to the resurrection of the fortunes of the Pandya Dynasty of the same region, who were formerly subordinate to the Cholas.


The Pandyas were among the 4 ruling kingdoms of Peninsular India of that time and ruled in an area encompassing most of modern day TN and Kerala. The Hoysalas ruled over most of what’s now Karnataka, while the Kakatiyas ruled over the lands of Telangana and Andhra. The 4th kingdom of the Yadavas ruled over most of the upper bounds of Peninsular India, in an area from Goa to Maharatta country right up to the Vindhya Mountains.
The last great Pandyan king Maravarman Kulasekhara Pandya I ascended the throne in AD 1268 and ruled for 42 years, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity. After his death, the infighting between his 2 sons, who sought to rule over his kingdom, lead to conditions precipitating the first Muslim invasion of Southern India.

First Blood

Meanwhile, in the year AD 1292, in faraway Karra (now known as Allahabad, UP), the newly appointed governor Ghazi Alauddin Khilji heard an exciting news from his spies. They told him of a rich prosperous Hindu kingdom that lay just over South of the Vindhyas that was ruled by an aging ruler who was busy fighting wars in his Southern frontiers with his son leading bulk of his army.


Alauddin marched across the Vindhya mountains with a force of 8000 cavalry, concealing his actions from the knowledge of his Uncle, the Sultan in Delhi. En route to Deogiri, the capital of the Yadava empire, he circulated the rumor that he’s only the advance guard of a much larger cavalry force before laying siege to the city.
The Yadava King Ram Deo offered ransom while letting Alauddin know his son Shankar Deo was due to return along with the main army anytime. While Shankar Deo did in fact return with his army, Alauddin deployed a clever ruse, to make it appear that the much larger rumored Muslim cavalry force is attacking, causing Shankar’s army to flee in alarm.
Under cover of darkness, Alauddin then pressed on with the siege of Deogiri’s main citadel, slaughtering several hundreds of its inhabitants, including many men of the Brahmana caste. The beleaguered King Ram Deo then offered an enormous ransom of gold, silver, diamonds, and elephants, and yearly tribute to Alauddin Khilji ‘s state. Thus satisfied, Alauddin marched back into Kharra and into history as the first successful Muslim invader of the Deccan, paving way for the invasions of wealthy Southern India.
News of Alauddin’s exploits reached the Sultan’s court in Delhi and the worried Sultan Jalaluddin Feroz visited his nephew in Kharra, where in familiar Sultanate tradition, he was promptly murdered right in front of Alauddin in the middle of dinner service. Jalaluddin’s sons were fighting at distant frontiers while a victorious Alauddin made his way to Delhi to ascend the throne of the Sultan in AD 1296, buying support with the massive wealth he plundered from the Yadavas of Deogiri.


Jihad Further South

The celebrated Sufi Muslim bard Amir Khusrau, who was employed at the court of Alauddin Khilji, records with unconcealed delight in the Tarik i Alai–
The great Ghazi Alauddin Khalji, who had successfully extinguished the depraved Satanic ways of Hindus with his sword from the mountains of Ghazni to mouth of the Ganges, by destroying their temples and putting to death their holy-men (Brahmans), was possessed by a zeal to spread the light of the Mohammedan faith to hitherto untouched regions, namely the Deccan and Southern India.’
Malik Kafur, Alauddin Khilji‘s best general, was originally an attractive slave boy sexually exploited by Alauddin . After successful expeditions in Gujarat and Rajputhana, Malik Kafur in the years AD 1307 and 1309 respectively, conquered and extracted, rich tribute from the Yadava kingdom at Deogiri and Kakatiyas at Warangal.


After a protracted bloody siege of Warangal, under threat of a mass slaughter, Malik Kafur extracted from the Kakatiya King Rudra Deva, almost his entire country’s wealth in diamonds, gold, silver, gems, horses, and elephants. The last was a particular attraction for the Delhi sultans in Southern India, given the importance that the elephant had as a war machine during that time. Malik Kafur then returned to Delhi with the loot of Warangal burdening a ”1000 camels under the weight of treasure”, according to Aamir Khusrau’s excited testimony.
With Deogiri Yadava and Warangal Kakatiyas looted and denuded of their riches and dignity, the Hoysalas of Karnata and Pandyas of Tamil country were the only 2 major Hindu kingdoms in the entire Indian mainland, who remained untouched by the sword of Islam in the year AD 1310.

Next wave of Southern Jihad 

Having brought the Yadava and Kakatiya kingdoms into submission, Alauddin Khilji set his sights further southwards to the regions of Ma’bar (present day Tamil Nadu and Kerala), which as Aamir Khusrau sagely informs us, were so distant they could be reached only after a 12 month march from Delhi and ‘‘never saw the arrow of a Holy warrior”.


The army of Islam, led by Malik Kafur, arrived at the gates of Dwarasamudram (Halebidu), capital of the Hoysalas few months later, leaving behind a trail of destruction and demanded that the ruler convert to Islam or pay an enormous amount as Jaziya or die. The Hoysala ruler was then forced to part with nearly all of his treasure (except his sacred thread as Khusrau gleefully records) and was made to agree to pay an annual tribute to the tyrant in Delhi.
Having humbled the Hoysalas thus, Malik Kafur pressed southwards, setting his sights on Ma’bar, where following the death of the great Pandyan King Maravarman Kulasekhara, his sons Sundara and Vira Pandya were locked in a fratricidal war over their right to rule as successor. Malik Kafur pressed his army to the Pandya capital, leaving behind an enormous trail of massacres and destruction, the likes of which had never been witnessed before in the entire history of Southern India.
The great temple cities of Kanchipuram, Chidambaram, Madurai, Srirangam, and Rameshwaram in the Tamil country were completely devastated by the Mohammedan onslaught. As our genteel Sufi Bard Aamir Khusrau triumphantly records:
”the holy places of the Hindus, which the Malik Kafur dug up from its foundations with the greatest care… and the heads of the Brahmans and other idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the floor with torrents of blood. The stone idols called Ling, which had existed for a long time and until now, the kick of the horse of Islam hadn’t attempted to break… the Mussalmans destroyed all the idols”.
Khusrau also records that Malik Kafur seized over 500 elephants, 5000 horses, and over 500 mounds of gems of every imaginable manifestation (rubies, pearls, diamonds, emeralds etc.).The warring Pandyan brothers, meanwhile, upon hearing the fate that befell the Hoysala King, set their differences aside, went into hiding and continued to wage guerrilla war against the invading Jihadi army.
While Malik Kafur was ultimately unsuccessful in forcing the Pandyas to pay tribute, he did return to Delhi with a loot in the South, in addition to leaving behind a garrison of soldiers in Madurai, the Pandyan capital. This would later lead to the genesis of the first Muslim ruled state in Southern India.

Turmoil in Delhi

While his confidant General Malik Kafur was causing a green Holocaust in the previously un-despoiled Holy land of Dakshina Bharata, the tyrant Sultan Alauddin Khilji, was being consumed by a kind of putrid hate and madness that comes only at the end of a lifetime of violence and rape. Paranoia combined with the Sultan’s zeal for repression was suffocating a large section of the population, especially the Hindus. Even Muslims born into other ethnicities weren’t spread of the mad King’s wrath. Upon Alauddin’s orders, over 30,000 newly converted Mongol origin Muslims, who had settled in Delhi, were massacred on the streets and their women and children sold into slavery. This incident sent shockwaves throughout India. Revolt was brewing and it was into this quagmire that Malik Kafur returned with the colossal wealth he had brutally looted from the Southern realms, vastly increasing the Sultanate’s fortunes.
Alauddin Khilji, died in the month of January in 1316. Malik Kafur, the most powerful figure in Delhi post the Sultan, then wasted no time in decimating the entire Khilji clan. However, in a stunning twist of fate, the assassins he had paid to kill one of Alauddin’s sons, turned against him and dispatched him to hell, bringing an abrupt end to his fantastic career as of one the greatest Ghazis of all time.
Mubarak Shah, Alauddin Khilji’s son succeeded him on the throne in AD 1317. He appears to have inherited his father’s taste in drinks and handsome boys, and thus had taken a Gujarati Hindu sex slave (born into a deprived caste) and christened him Khusrau Khan. Like Malik Kafur before him, Khushrau ascended the ranks quickly and became a Vazir in the service of the Sultan.

Hindu Kingdom fight back

The confusion in Delhi gave the Deccan and Southern Kingdoms a reprieve and they stopped sending tribute of treasure and elephants to Delhi. The distant Hoysala Emperor Raja Veera Ballala III rebuilt his ruined city and consolidated his hold over his empire and parts of Tamil country.  In Devagiri, the Yadava King Harapala Deva ascended the throne and stopped sending tribute over to the Delhi sultanate. The Kakatiya Raja Pratap Rudra did the same and strengthened his hold over the frontiers of the old Kakatiya realm. While further down south the estranged Pandya brothers, Vira and Sundara began their fratricidal war again.
This enraged the new Sultan Mubarak Shah and he descended upon Devagiri with his huge army in AD 1318, while KhusraWarangal, the seat of the Kakatiyas to teach Pratap Rudra a lesson. The brave Harapala Deva put up a spirited defense, but was defeated, captured, and in typical barbarous Sultanate fashion killed, flayed, his skin stuffed with straw and displayed from the gates of Devagiri. Thus passed the end of the last great ruler of the Yadavas, who had ruled for nearly 600 years over the Deccan, claiming descent from Lord Krishna himself.

Mubarak Shah then partitioned the Maratha countryside to various Mohammedan governors, bringing the Deccan under the direct Muslim rule for the first time. The Sultan then ordered the main temples of Devagiri (city of the Gods) demolished and erected a huge Mosque with the pillars of the smashed temples, the first ever masjid in the Deccan. This domed monstrosity was a replica of the Qutub Minar’s masjid, similarly ‘decorated’ with Hindu temple parts. The Sultanate sought to reimagine Delhi in the Deccan.

Meanwhile, Khusrau Khan successfully waged war upon the Kakatiyas in Warangal and forced them to submit and pay tribute. He then turned to meet his Sultan in Devagiri, who by then had grown suspicious of rumors emanating from Delhi and left for it.

Mayhem in Delhi

In typical Sultanate fashion, Khushrau Khan gained power over an increasingly mad Mubarak Shah and finally gets him killed. Remarkably then, Khusrau Khan, to the consternation of the Muslim Ulema and nobility at Delhi, begins a process of Hinduization of the administration, appointing Hindu ministers and generals and banning slavery of Hindus.
The anguished Ulema and the Muslim nobility then select Ghazi Malik, Governor of Deobalpur (in modern day Pakistan Punjab) to intervene on their behalf. The Ghazi Malik raises a huge army and attacks Delhi. Khushrau Khan empties his treasury to pay his Muslim soldiers to defend the city, but they decamp after taking the money from him to join the Ghazi. Khusrau is subsequently captured, tortured and killed and Ghazi Malik ascends the Throne as the first Tughluk emperor, Ghiyasuddin Tughluk in AD 1320.

The renewed Jihad

The Tughluk Sultan then turned Eastwards on a campaign of terror and destruction, launching invasions of Bengal and Odisha, which proved to be partly unsuccessful. Meanwhile, his favorite eldest son and heir apparent, Ulugh Khan, in the year AD 1322, launched an invasion of the Kakatiya empire, laying siege to the Kakatiya King Pratap Rudra‘s fort at Warangal. The Hindus, under Pratap Rudra, offered brave resistance withstanding the siege, in a cat and mouse game.
Some rumors were spread in the Tughluk camp saying that the Sultan in Delhi had died and that Ulugh Khan was planning to execute his generals, plummeting the morale and adding confusion amongst the ranks. The Hindus of the Kakatiya army then took advantage of the chaos and attacked, routing the army of Islam, which was at their gates. Ulugh Khan, then retreated to the Sultanate’s bastion at Devagiri (rechristened Daulatabad), waited for reinforcements to arrive from Delhi and re-launched the attack upon Warangal.


King Pratap Rudra committed the folly of thinking that the Muslim invaders had left and opened his fort granaries in celebration. But, despite this folly, Pratap Rudra and his brave soldiers managed to withstand the siege for another 6 months, when Ulugh Khan arrived with an enormous army.
Ultimately, the starving Kakatiya army was routed, most of Pratap Rudra’s family killed or enslaved, and the Kakatiya Raja himself was bound and taken to Delhi. Pratap Rudra then committed suicide en route in AD 1323, ending the old Kakatiya dynasty forever.
In a curious twist of events, Prince Ulugh Khan contrived to get his father, the Sultan killed in a bizarre accident and then ascended the throne as Muhammad Bin Tughlak in the year AD 1325. He then launched a series of Jihads across the country, which were very successful and placed him at the head of the largest Muslim Empire ever to rule over Bharata, whose frontiers extended from Gujarat to Bengal and from Punjab to Tamil Nadu.
Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughlak sought to rule over such a vast empire through a policy of repression and political intrigue. The follies and horrors he committed would constitute several separate books by itself, such as his ruinous attempt at conquering China or introducing paper money or changing his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad, forcibly moving the entire population southwards, to name a few. But, it is suffice to say that the condition of the lay Hindus became so dire in his rule, that ‘they were forced to flee to the jungles after abandoning their farms, a move done only in times of great distress’, as the Mohammedan chronicler Ziauddin Barani notes.

Southern Hindu struggles

The chaos and mayhem brought about by the Mad Sultan in Delhi did not escape the attention of the Southern Kings. His nephew Bahauddin Garshap, the governor of Gulbarga province (in modern day Karnataka), was apparently a moderate Muslim, who retained cordial relations with his neighboring Hindu rulers. In the year AD 1326, he declared himself as an Independent. He then entered into an alliance with his neighboring Hindu chieftain Kampili Deva, then a vassal of the Hoysala emperor. The enraged Sultan Muhammad sent a huge army under the leadership of Mujir Al Din Abu Rjia, the Mushriff of Deogiri, who then attacked Garshap causing him to flee and take refuge with Kampili Deva.
Rija, then attacked Kampili at Hosadurga, but the latter’s brave resistance and ingenious battlefield tactics caused the former to flee and return with a larger army. In the clash that followed, the Kampili raja enabled Bahauddin to flee to Dwarasamudra, the capital of the Hoysala state and prepared for a siege at his fort in Hosadurga. Facing a huge army with dwindling supplies, the resolute and brave Raja Kampili died fighting the enemy.
The Tughlak armies, then gave chase to Bahaduddin Garshap right up to the gates of Dwarasamudram, the capital of Hoysalas and launched a catastrophic attack, despoiling the numerous temples and palaces of the ancient city, including the grand temple of Shiva (Hoysaleeshwara), the ruins of which can be seen even to this day. Never again would Dwarasamudram regain a shadow of its former glory, as it was abandoned in AD 1327 forever following the attack of the army of Islam under the leadership of Tughluk.

The Hoysala King fled and took refuge at Thiruvannamalai, his outpost deep within Tamil country, avoiding the barbaric fate that befell Bahauddin Garshap. The Sultan’s nephew was tortured, killed, flayed, and stuffed with straw and displayed for all to see. Then, his flesh was cooked with rice and sent over to his wife and children.
In AD 1330, with the ancient Yadavas, Kakatiyas, and Kampilideva dynasties all dead and gone and the Pandyas having degenerated into numerous petty feuding chieftains, the Hoysala Monarch Veera Ballala III was the last remaining major Hindu ruler in the Deccan and Southern India. A calamity had been unleashed upon the South by the invasions of the Muslim Sultanate over the previous 30 years, resulting in the wiping out of several ancient Southern dynasties, demolition of countless ancient temples, and death and displacement of thousands of Hindus.


Madurai Sultanate

Meanwhile, in Madurai, the erstwhile capital of the Tamil Pandya rulers, the local Muslim governor Ahsan Shah after having observed the events in Delhi and around him, decided to throw off Delhi’s yoke and crowned himself the Sultan of Madurai in AD 1335. A force was then promptly dispatched by Sultan Tughlak to teach Ahsan Shah a lesson, but ended in failure. Madurai Sultanate quickly achieved immense notoriety in the 50 years of its brutal existence by the barbaric treatment it meted out to the native Tamil Hindus.
Among the numerous sultans of Madurai, the most notorious Sultan for his cruelty was Ghiyasuddin Al Damaghani, who crowned himself the Madurai Sultan after murdering Ahsan Shah’s son. A particularly blood curdling eye witness account of his cruelty by the famed Mohammedan traveler and chronicler Ibn Batutta (who was touring India then) is as follows,
”…The next morning, the Hindu prisoners were divided into four sections and taken to each of the four gates of the great catcar. There, on the stakes they had carried, the prisoners were impaled. Afterwards, their wives were killed and tied by their hair to these pales. Little children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers and their corpses left there. Then, the camp was raised…
“This is shameful conduct such as I have not known any other sovereign guilty of. It is for this that God hastened the death of Ghiyath-eddin [Ghiyath-ud-din]. One day whilst the Kadhi (Kazi) and I were having our food with [Ghiyath-ud-din], the Kazi to his right and I to his left, an infidel was brought before him accompanied by his wife and son aged seven years. The Sultan made a sign with his hand to the executioners to cut off the head of this man; then he said to them in Arabic: ‘and the son and the wife.’ They cut off their heads and I turned my eyes away. When I looked again, I saw their heads lying on the ground…
“I was another time with the Sultan Ghiyath-eddin when a Hindu was brought into his presence. He uttered words I did not understand, and immediately several of his followers drew their daggers. I rose hurriedly, and he said to me: ‘Where are you going?” I replied: ‘I am going to say my afternoon (4 o’clock) prayers.’ He understood my reason, smiled, and ordered the hands and feet of the idolater to be cut off. On my return I found the unfortunate swimming in his blood…”
Needless to say, this was the general character of rule of the Madurai Sultanate and Islamist rulers of the South, though Ghiyasuddin Al Damaghani ranks amongst its most depraved. The piteous condition of the Hindus in Tamil country was later immortalized in words of the Goddess of Madurai in the famous poem Maduravijayam composed by a Vijayanagar Princess.

Hindus Fight Back

The aging Hoysala Raja Veera Ballala III was a battle hardened veteran. Having ascended the throne in AD 1292, he had made his mark suppressing numerous revolts in his kingdom and fended off a Yadava invasion in AD 1303. He had also dabbled his hand in siding with one of the warring Pandya brothers of the Tamil country. But it was against the Muslim conquerors starting from Malik Kafur to Khusrau Khan to Muhammad Bin Tughlak, that he proved his real mettle as the sole torchbearer of the Southern Hindu resistance of to the Jihad of the Delhi Sultanate.
Taking advantage of the chaos in Delhi post Alauddin Khilji’s death, he had swiftly re-established his control over the Kingdom and ventured into Tamil country, building outposts setting up a strong chain of defense against invasions from the North. With deft strategic skills, he prevented a Muslim garrison being set up within his territory. He ruled from three capitals, two of them in the present Tamil country after his main capital in Dwarasamudram (Halebidu). He managed to create a strong Hindu resistance to the Islamist depredations that had ravaged the South.
After hearing about the atrocities meted out to Hindus in Madurai by Al Damaghani and troubled by the Madurai Sultanate’s repeated attacks on his territory, in AD 1342 the 80 year old King Veera Ballala III assembled a large army of over 100,000 soldiers to launch an attack on Madurai. He had one of his capitals in Kannur (nearby present day Srirangam, in Tiruchirappalli district, TN), which was strategically located towards the North of Madurai, en route to the core Hoysala territory. This was to prevent reinforcements from reaching the Madurai sultanate from the former Kakatiya regions, which had become part of the Sultanate in Delhi.
In Kannur, the Sultanate army numbered a mere 6000 of which as Ibn Batuta remarks, ‘over half of them were worthless’. This was quickly crushed by the far larger Hoysala force under Veera Ballala III. In an inexplicably stupid move, however, Al Damaghani was allowed to retreat to Madurai as Veera Ballala III made his way to the ancient city, intending to seize it and end the first Muslim state in the South for good.
The old King Veera Ballala III then gave an ultimatum to Sultan Al Damaghani to surrender, which was read out in the prayer congregation of the main mosque in Madurai. The Sultan knowing that his end was near resolved to not surrender and decided to give one last desperate attempt to fight.
Under the cover of darkness, as the Hoysala camps slept around the walls of Madurai, Al Damaghani and a small force of loyal Muslims set out and fell upon the sleeping Hoysala army. In the panic and confusion, the aged Hoysala Monarch Veera Ballala III attempted to mount a horse and flee but was captured by Al Damaghani’s nephew Nasiruddin near the gates of Madurai. This was a turning moment in the history of South India.
The elderly king was then taken to Sultan Al Damaghani. In apparent consideration for his status, the Hoysala Monarch was treated kindly by the Muslim ruler while being asked to give his riches and elephants in return for his safe release. After his wealth was extorted from him, the 80 year old Hoysala Raja Veera Ballala III, the last great Hindu ruler of the South, was murdered, his skin stuffed with straw and displayed on the gates of Madurai for the whole world to see. Thus, passed the last great torchbearer of Hindu resistance to the Islamic Jihad in the entire Indian subcontinent.
When apparently the last hope of Dharma was killed and displayed on the gates of Madurai, a new revolution was brewing on the banks of the Tungabhadra River further up North, deep inside Karnata country, where two brothers Harihara and Bukka would forever change the fate of South India and Dharmic civilization across the subcontinent.
To be continued.

Bibliography

  1. South India and Her Muhammadan Invaders – by S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, published 1921.
  2. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History – by Peter Jackson, published 1999.
  3. Tarikh i Alai – by Syed Aamir Khusrau, contemporary Moslem historian scholar at Alauddin Khilji’s court in 14th century.
  4. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi by Ziauddin Barani, contemporary Moslem historian scholar at Muhammad Bin Tughlak’s court in 14th century Delhi.
  5. Ibn Battuta’s chronicles of travels in Southern India, 14th century.
The article is Originally published in  blog .
Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. 

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Prolaya Vema Reddy : Rise of the Warrior King

Often Hindus say that Hinduism is resilient and it will survive whatever happens giving an impression that it’s ok don’t worry about the attacks on Hinduism but just go on with your life and somehow Hinduism will miraculously survive anyway. So did our forefathers just go on with their lives while foreign invaders indulged in plunder and destruction? Historically the answer to that question shows that Hindu resilience was expressed in warfare on every level for nearly a thousand years. Where A stream of Hindu Sages and Warriors combined to keep the flame of Sanatana Dharma alive through the ages .This is probably the longest war that’s ever taken place on Mother Earth and is still continuing in some form or another.
If we are Hindus today it’s because someone somewhere in the past sacrificed his or her life to defend the Hindu way of life but unfortunately most Hindus of today are not even aware of what took place back in time.There’s no celebration or remembrance or even any awareness kept for so many sacrifices , bravery and courage that took place in the history of the Hindus . All across the Hindu civilisation there is a story to tell like the following one ..

Alauddin Khalji
In 1311 Alla-ad-din Khalji sent his lover and general Maliq Kaffr to devastate the Telengana region with his ferocious army of Islam. The invasion was savage and Hindu kshatriyas of the Kakatiya, Chalukya and Chola clans fought with great valor but were routed in the battles around Warangal. The survivors took shelter in the fort of Kondapalli and held out against the Mohammedan blizzard.
However, in 1316 Alla-ad-din died and the tumultuous events in Delhi triggered by the Gujarati rebellion prevented the Mohammedans from consolidating their grip over Telangana. As result there was severe local unrest and Kakatiyas under Prataparudra started re-establishing themselves. The veteran Ghazi from Afghanistan, Ghazi al Maliq Tughlaq, soon set matters right for the Mohammedans in Delhi and decided to consolidate the flagging Jihad in peninsular India.
He sent his able successor Mohammed bin Tughlaq to prosecute the Jihad with unrelenting vigor in South India. M b Tughlaq charted elaborate plans for the invasion of Pune, Devagiri, Telengana and Tondaimandalam and set them rolling in 1321. After having sacked Pune in course of a year long siege of Kondana which was valiantly defended by Naga Nayaka he plowed through Devagiri and turning south east arrived in Telengana in 1322.
After a prolonged, fierce see-saw encounter in which the Mohammedans constantly receiving supplies from Devagiri and Delhi the Kakatiya army of Prataparudra was vanquished at Warangal.
They were forced into the defensive as the army of Islam mounted a massive encirclement attack on the fort of Rajamahendravaram. They held out for 6 months but at the end of it the Mohammedans stormed the fort and massacred the defenders to man. Prataparudra and his family was captured and sent to Delhi, but on the way he killed himself rather than go through the ordeal of converting to Islam. The grand Shri Venugopala Swami temple built by the Chalukyas was demolished by Tughlaq and he erected a mosque using the material from the temple. With that the kshatriya presence in Telengana had been smashed the the oppressive crescent banner terrorized the land.
In 1325 the responsibility of organizing defense of the dharma was taken up by the valiant shudra warrior Prolaya Vema Reddy. Son of local warlord, he describes himself “as one of the 4th varna that emerged from the feet of mahavishnu” who decided to rid the land of the wicked Turks after kshatriyas had all been killed for the protection of the agraharas and brahmanas.
Vema Reddy drawing inspiration from his deity ga~nga, who had also apparently emerged from the feet of vishnu as the fourth varna, and the warrior god kumara assembled a large army drawn from the peasants and herdsmen of the ravaged land. His clan had long excelled in cattle raids and honed the skills of the the rapid hit and run methods. He joined hands with two other major local landowners like Prolaya Nayaka and Kaapaya Nayaka and they formed a coalition with at least 75 other local strongmen and warlords. Reddy assembled his Hindu armies at Addanki and marched on the Tughlaq army.
The Reddys apparently used biological warfare in this conflict and contaminated the water supplies leading to the Mohammedans with sewage resulting a raging dysentry which decimated the Tughlaq army. Tughlaq himself fell ill and retreated. As the Moslems were in disarray the Hindu army fell upon them and crushed remanants in pitched encounter at Kaapaya Nayakthe outskirts of Warangal. The Vema Reddy realized that even though the army had departed the local Moslem Amirs and merchants were a major obstacle in restoring Hindu rule. So he conducted a series of raids destroy their trading networks and militias and extirpating the pockets of Islamic garrisons distributed over the country. In the process they were aided by the Hindu king Vira Ballaala of Dwarasamudra, who staved of attacks by the army of Islam from its head quarters in Devagiri.
In 1335 M b Tughlaq sent a large force under Maqbool Iqbal to smash the Hindu revival in Telengana. However, the Reddy and Nayaka army aided by auxillaries sent by Vira Ballaala inflicted a massive defeat on them, killing 15 Moslem Amirs on the field. Vema Reddy chased Iqbal into the Warangal fort and seeing that he was hard-pressed to defend it Kaapaya Nayaka stormed the fort.
Vema Reddy then moved on the fort of Kondvidu and stormed it by hacking off the head Maliq Gurjaar, the Moslem commander. Then liberated Nidadavolu, Vundi and Pithapuram after pitched battles. He then massacred an army of Jalal-ud-din Shah in a raid on Tondaimandalam even as Ballaala engaged the sultan himself.
Kondaveedu Fort However, after a long struggle with the Sultans of Madhurai and Delhi, Ballaala finally fell into the hands of the Moslems. He was skinned alive and his dry skin was pegged on one of the wall of Madhurai (seen later by ibn Battuta). Undaunted Vema Reddy launched a series of daring attacks on the Moslem garrisons in the forts of Bellamkonda, Vinukonda and Nagarjunakonda and captured all of them after slaughtering the defenders.
He raised his flag in Kondavidu and declared himself a Raja. His famous inscriptions from this period state:
” I restored all the agraharas of Brahmins, which had been taken away by the evil Moslem kings”. “I am indeed an Agastya to the ocean which was made of the Moslem”.
To restore the dharma he instituted major repairs to the Shrishailam rudra temple and built a flight of steps from the Krishna river to the temple on the mountain top. He also repaired the vishnu temple at Ahobilam. He also built a palace in Kondavidu for housing the women he had acquired. This became the harem for all the other subsequent Reddys. His restoration of the dharma also caused a major revival of local literature, especially under the auspices of the Telugu author Erranna, a vatsa bhargava brahmana of the middle migration of the bhargavas. His ramayana was supposed to have been a master piece.
His successor was Anavema Reddy continued the struggle against the army of Islam. His began by liberating Rajahmahendravaram and demolished a Mazar which had been built there on a Hindu shrine. He then scaled the fort of Korukonda with a small force at night liberated it from the Moslem garrison. Next he conquered Simhachalam fort and parts of the Kalinga kingdom.His inscription states “I the valiant member of the 4th varna destroyed the throngs of Moslems and gathered learned brAhmaNas at this court”. He built the vIra shiromanDapam in the Shrishailam temple. The Shrishailam temple was also renovated by two other great Hindu fighters, Krishnadeva Raya and Shivaji Chatrapati at a later time.
The war of independence in Telengana is one more of those largely forgotten stories of the provincial Hindu resistance in the aftermath of the Khalji-Tughlaq years.

Kondaveedu Fort English Documentary