Today we do not have an idea of how a merciless Islamic Jihad forcibly
transformed the Hindu and Buddhist society of Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Bangladesh into a Muslim one with a merciless tyranny of over one thousand
years. While in the erstwhile Indian territories of what is today Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Bangladesh; Hinduism was supplanted entirely by Islam, but in what
today is called India; the Muslim tyranny succeeded only partially in converting
a part of the population to Islam.
In fact those parts of erstwhile Hindu and Buddhist India, where a majority
of the Hindus and Buddhists were converted to Islam have become distinct Muslim
nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh today. These countries were
parts of India, before the Muslims invaded that part of the world.
We shall see at the end of this article the methods used by the Muslim
tormentors to convert a large part of the Hindus and Buddhists to Islam. Many
Muslims today raise a canard about an alleged tolerant nature of Muslim rule in
India because of which a majority of Indians today have remained Hindus. They
try to pull wool over your eyes, and are supported by the unabashedly
pro-Jihadi, pro-terrorist communist anchors in Indian electronic media like
NDTV, CNN-IBN and in the English print media in India like the Muslim managed
“Asian Age”, and the pro-terrorist commie controlled “Hindu” and Hindustan
Times, along with the pink-tinted Times of India, Indian Express, and many other
leading (rather misleading) national dailies in India.
These pro-terrorist scoundrels from the NDTV and IBN often pose (rather
impose) a question as to how only eleven percent of the population of India is
Muslim if the Muslim rulers were tormentors who made Hindus accept Islam at the
point of the sword?
The issue here is that in historic times when we refer to India we include
all those parts that were inhabited by Hindus and Buddhists before the Muslim
aggression. So what is today Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as
India, are parts of historic India. And so when we consider this geographic
entity as one whole, the population of Muslims (in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Bangladesh together accounts for fifty five percent).
The fact that Hindus still account for forty five percent of the population
is due to the fact that in Punjab, Rajputana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh, Orissa, Nepal, Assam and South India, the Hindus defeated and rolled
back the Muslim aggressors, so its was these parts that remained predominantly
Hindu. In other erstwhile provinces of India, like Herat, Bamiyan, Zabul, Kabul,
in Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, Paktoonistan, Sindh, Western Punjab in Pakistan
and in Eastern Bengal (i.e. today Bangladesh) which were under Muslim rule for
an unbroken period of one thousand years, the Hindu population was decimated to
almost zero. Today we do not realize that while talking about areas such as
Gandhara (Kandahar), Kubha (Kabul), Makara (Makran), Sakastana
(Siestan/Balouchistan), Sindh, West Punjab, Paktoonistan, East Bengal
(Bangladesh) we are in fact talking of India and Indian provinces which were
formerly wholly Hindu and Buddhist majority parts of India up to the 7th century
and between the 7th and 16th centuries their Hindu and Buddhist population was
decimated through slaughter and force conversion. And even today in the
surviving Indian provinces like Uttar Pradesh (formerly United Provinces),
Bihar, Kerala and West Bengal, the population of Muslims is around thirty
percent and is growing fast due to Islamic polygamy and accelerated breeding
rates and exfiltration from Bangladesh.
Today this process of Islamization is still on in Kashmir through the use of
terror for the forced migration of the population of Hindu pandits from the
Kashmir Valley. In other parts of India where these tactics would be fiercely
resisted by the Hindus, the process of using the womb bomb to increase the
Muslim population is being used to the hilt by the mushrooming of high fertility
rates among Muslim who can have four wives at one time, with women being treated
like baby producing factories. The Muslims inhabit the mushrooming slum areas in
and around all major Indian metros such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Patna, Lucknow, Ahmedbad and many other semi metropolitan towns.
This Muslim baby boom is significantly happening in the Terai region of
Uttaranchal, northern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Assam, parts of Andhra Pradesh
(Hyderabad) and Kerala. There are many districts in India which today are Muslim
majority areas. According to unofficial estimates the Muslim population in India
is today at 25 percent. Thus if we look at historic India those parts which were
under Muslim tyranny the Hindu population was decimated to nil. And in the rest
of the country, it was the fierce Hindu resistance and counter attack that led
to the Hindu character of some Indian provinces to be salvaged in spite of the
merciless Muslim tyranny.
In the following paragraphs we shall see the fierce resistance put up to
Muslim tyranny by Hindu rulers like Man Singh Tomar, Maharana Sangram Singh
(Rana Sanga), Maharana Pratap, Harihara Raya, Krishna Deva Raya, Narsimhadeva,
Lachit Barphukan, Guru Govind Singh Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj and other Hindu
bravehearts.
It was after repeated unnerving experiences of Muslim treachery, subterfuge,
deceit; that wisdom finally dawned on some of the Hindus that enabled some of
them to launch a successful counter attack on their Muslim tormentors.
The Maratha Hindu warrior King Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj was the epitome of
this successful Hindu counter-attack on Islam which turned the patented Muslim
techniques of deceit and subterfuge on the Muslims themselves.
The Hindu Counterattack on Muslims
The Hindu counterattack against Islam does not have any fixed date. From the
very first battles of the Rajas of Makara (Makran) and Sindh in 638, till the
final elimination of Muslim rule by the Marathas, Jats, Rajputs, Gurkhas and
Sikhs in the 18th and early 19th centuries, this constant Hindu-Muslim war did
not stop. So we can only define the counterattack as that period when the Hindus
started turning the tactics of their Muslim tormentors on the tormentors
themselves. The first Hindu king to do that was the King of Orissa -
Narasimhadeva.
How Narasimhadeva defeated Tugan Khan in 1248 C.E.
After the easy victories over North India from Punjab, through Bengal, the
Muslims turned to attack Orissa. Here the Muslims met their match. The people of
Orissa were hardy fighters. (In ancient and medieval times, Orissa was also
called Kalinga or Utkal – from Uttam Kala which means ‘Excellent Art’ that
reflects the artistic tradition of sculpture of that region) The bravehearts of
Orissa had given a hard time to Samrat Ashoka Mauya, when in the 3rd century
B.C.E. Kumara, the king of Kalinga, gave a tough battle to the Mauryan invader,
before Orissa could be annexed to the Maurya Empire.
Now in the 13th century, when Tugan Khan attacked Orissa, the then ruling
king of Orissa, Narsimhadeva, decided to use subterfuge against the Muslims. He
sent word to the invaders that he wanted to surrender without a fight, as had
Lakshmansena, the ruler of neighboring Bengal.
Tugan had easily conquered Bengal a few years before attacking Orissa. He
found Bengal to be easy meat as the king of Bengal instead of fighting, fled
from the advancing Muslim armies and Begal fell without a fight. Having tasted
blood in Bengal, Tugan thought that the conquest of Orissa would also be a
cakewalk.
______________________________
The victorious King of Orissa, Narasimhadeva erected a victory pillar
designed as a war chariot. This temple was dedicated to Surya the Sun god, at a
location near the temple town of Puri. He named this place Konark which means
“Essence of the Corners” While the structure commemorates the victory in the
battle against the Muslims, the name Konark commemorates the science of
astronomy of which the King was an avid student.
__________________________________
Tugan boasted that he had put the fear of death in the heart of the Hindus
and could overrun the entire country in a single campaign. But Narasimhadeva had
other ideas. He decided to use the Muslims’ patent tool subterfuge against the
enemy. He sent word to Tugan that Orissa was ready to surrender to the Muslims
without a fight, as had its neighbor Bengal. Tugan accepted Narasimhadeva’s
surrender proposal and asked for the surrender of the major city of Puri that
was an important Hindu Pilgrim center (Narasimhadeva had his capital elsewhere
at Jajanagara). Tugan’s other conditions included handing over all weapons to
the Muslim army, the embracing of Islam by the entire population in the central
square in front of the Jagannath Temple or agreeing to pay Jazia and to convert
the Jagnnath temple at Puri into a Mosque as an acknowledgement of submission.
To the delight of the Muslims, all these terms were accepted and the Muslims
advanced into the city, blissfully unaware that the shrewd Hindu king had laid a
trap for them. On the orders of Narasimhadeva, the bustling city had been
completely evacuated of its pilgrims, the aged and children; and professional
soldiers from all over the kingdom had occupied every nook and cranny of the
city, hidden away inside the closely built houses across the narrow winding
lanes.
Once the Muslim army was inside the city, it had to disperse itself into the
maze of narrow lanes and bylanes with which they were not familiar and where
they had to dismount from their horses and advance single file.
Unaware of the danger lurking they advanced cautiously and slowly towards the
central square where the surrender ceremony was to take place.
When the Muslim army was so dispersed, at a prearranged signal from one of
lookouts from the temple spires, the temple bells started ringing, and this was
the signal for the Hindus to pounce on the Muslims. The pitched battle lasted
one whole day and went into the night pierced by the cries of wounded and dying
Muslim and Hindu soldiers. While the Hindus took many losses, the entire Muslim
army was caught like as in a mousetrap, and annihilated. Very few Muslims could
escape this trap.
This bold and unorthodox idea succeeded, and it caught the Muslims totally
off-guard as it had never been used till then, by any Hindu king, as it went
against the Hindu rules of warfare based on fair-play and fighting a noble war.
But precisely because of it being totally unexpected, the Muslims had to
suffer a bloody nose and the Hindus emerged victorious. Consequently Orissa was
to remain a Hindu bastion for many centuries and this accounts for the very low
percentage of Muslims in Orrisa even today, unlike Bengal, where the eastern
part (known today as Bangladesh) has been totally Islamized, and the Western
half of Bengal is undergoing the process of Islamization especially in the
district of Murshidabad and the metropolis of Kolkata which abound in slums
infested by local Muslims and those infiltrating from Eastern Bengal
(Bangladesh).
The victorious King of Orissa, Narasimhadeva erected a victory pillar
designed as a war chariot. This temple was dedicated to Surya the Sun god, at a
location near the temple town of Puri. He named this place Konark which means
“Essence of the Corners” While the structure commemorates the victory in the
battle against the Muslims, the name Konark commemorates the science of
astronomy of which the King was an avid student.
Although some Hindus, such as the Marathas of Pune, displayed this shrewdness
against the Muslims; in most others such as the kings of Vijaynagar and the
Rajputs continued to wage a noble war with the ignoble Muslims and lost out. It
was for the shrewdness of the Marathas led by their astute king Shivaji, that
the Muslims could never entirely subjugate the Southern half of India (Dakkan or
Deccan from Dakshin which means south in Sanskrit) as they did with North India.
But relatively speaking, it was also the Hindus of Vijayanagar in Karnataka
who gave a tougher time to the Muslims as compared to the Rajput Hindus, and
held back the tide of Muslim aggression at the Krishna river. And it was the
Maratha Hindus who finally threw off the Muslim yoke and marched northwards to
liberate North India. The Marathas marched in to Delhi in 1720, and then onwards
in to Punjab and beyond up to Attock in Paktoonisthan in 1756. The Sikhs carried
the Saffron flag further ahead in to Afghanistan and again made Kabul in to an
Indian province in 1823 – a province that had been lost to the Hindus in 980,
when its last Hindu king Jay Pal had been treacherously defeated by the Muslim
raider Subuktigin.
______________________________
Statue of a Hindu god of war – Narasimha who was the patron deity of the
Kings of Vijaynagar who led the Hindu resistance to Islam in South India.
__________________________________
How Vijaynagar survived for two hundred years all through battling the Muslim
Aggressors from 1331 up to 1565
Vijaynagar, was the first Hindu kingdom which gave up the Hindu practice of
not molesting non-combatants. Thus they started paying the Muslims with the same
token. Whenever the armies of Vijaynagar overran any Bahamani town or village
they torched it. With this they put the fear of death into Muslim minds and
soon, the Adilshahi and Nizamshahi sultans sued for a treaty with Vijaynagar
that would proscribe the killing of civilians by either side.
From then on this treaty was adhered to by both the Hindus and Muslims, till
Vijaynagar was finally defeated at the battle of Talikotai and dramatically and
savagely destroyed by the Muslims immediately after the battle! But with the
final defeat of the Hindus at Talikotai, the Muslims repudiated this treaty, as
their founder Mohammed-ibn-Abdallah had repudiated the
treaty of Hudaibiya, and so after
the battle of Talikotai the truculent Muslims indulged in a gory slaughter of
all the Hindu inhabitants of Vijaynagar, they murdered everyone they could lay
their hands on. Not a single person was allowed to live in that beleaguered
city. The city itself was reduced to rubble, after six months of ceaseless
pillage and wanton destruction. Start from here
Lessons from the Muslims’ massacre and destruction of Vijaynagar in spite
of treaty prohibiting the molesting of non-combatants
This teaches us two lessons. One that only when you pay back the Muslims with
the same barbaric token, that they can come temporarily to their senses. But
never ever trust the Muslims for their word, since the word of a Muslim is given
only as matter of expediency. Whenever fortune favors them, they would go back
on their word! In fact, their founder Mohammed-ibn-Abdallah has set an example
for them with his repudiation of the
Treaty of Hudaibiya that he signed
with his clansmen the Quraish of Makkah. And all Muslims have to follow his
“illustrious(sic)” example in their dealings with all Kafirs (non-Muslims).
Likewise, when all non-Muslims should enter into any agreement with Muslims
only if the Muslims cannot be beaten militarily, and when the fortune favors the
non-Muslims, they should repudiate any treaty with the Muslims and resume
hostilities with the one single aim of destroying Islam. There is no other way
of salvation for humankind, from this vile creed of the Islam.
Returining to India, while the Hindu kings of Orissa and of Vijaynagar,
successfully defended themselves and arrested the Muslim aggression, it was the
Marathas under their shrewd and visionary leader Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj who
not only liberated their province of Maharashtra from Muslim tyranny, but took
the flame of independence from Muslim tyranny all across Central, Northern India
and to parts of Southern and Eastern India.
Shivaji epitomized this successful Hindu counter-attack on Islam where he
outdid the Muslims in their games of deceit, treachery, subterfuge, all
gift-wrapped with the technique of guerilla warfare that gave the Muslims
sleepless night and nightmares to the Muslim tyrant Aurangzeb, who thought that
he had begun too see the demise of Muslim power in India.
With the Marathas it seemed that wisdom had finally dawned on some of the
Hindus on the only effective way to counterattack the Muslims successfully.
Using deceit and cruelty as a rule against the Muslim enemy, the Hindu Marathas
seemed poised to dislodge Muslim power from India. But that was not to be as we
shall see at the bottom of this article.
Hemu Vikramaditya and Khusro Khan – Hindus who came close to liberating
India from its Muslim tormentors
In the one thousand years of the gradual Muslim occupation of North India
from 715 to 1720 many Hindus aspired to overthrow the tyrannical Muslim
occupation of their fatherland.
Khusro Khan – A Hindu convert briefly overthrows the Khilji dynasty in
1320
In the early 14th century (1312) Gujarat was overrun by the Muslim tyrants of
who had a century earlier occupied Delhi. As was customary, the Muslims
slaughtered countless Hindu victims after every victory. They also carried off
many beautiful women and handsome young man as captives, to be used as sex
slaves. One such handsome child was Khusro Khan. This was not his original name
when he was carried off as a prisoner at the age of eleven. Even at that tender
age, he had chiseled features and was fair complexioned. He belonged to the
Makwana sub-caste of North Gujarat.
As was the custom, all captives were forcibly converted to Islam and brought
up as slaves. After nearly fifteen years in captivity Khusro Khan forgot what
his original name was. He only faintly recollected that he had a different
childhood which he shared with the other captives from Gujarat.
His stunning features and fair complexion evoked the perverted lust of his
captor Sultan Allaudin Khilji’s perverted son, Qutbuddin Mubarak Khalji. He like
his more notorious father Alauddin Khalji, were in love with their young male
slaves. Qutbuddin Mubarak had a particular fondness for his slave Khusro Khan
and as a teenager, Khusro was sexually abused by Qutbuddin Mubarak for eight
years.
Khusro seethed for revenge against this barbarity that robbed him of his
childhood and early youth.
In 1320, Qutbuddin murdered his ageing father Allaudin and crowned himself
emperor. By then Khushro had acquired a position of influence over Qutbuddin.
Khusro had also used this influence to gather other captives like him and had
arm them to make up Qutbuddin’s bodyguard. Khusro often wanted to put a sword
through the Sultan and kill him while he was doing the immoral act of publicly
kissing him. All through his teens, Khusro was forced to publicly offer his body
to the Sultan like a prostitute. He did this apparent cheer, but within himself
he was seething with rage and had been choking up with a desire for revenge at
the way the Sultan forced himself upon him and took advantage of him.
During the struggle for power in 1320 when Qutbuddin murdered his ageing
father, Khusro got his chance. Qutbuddin had put his trust in his partner in
perverted sex, Khusro and put him in charge of guarding his royal quarters.
Qutbuddin Mubarak excluded all his father’s men from important duties in the
palace and the army.
Taking advantage of his position and the general resentment for Qutbuddin,
Khusro murdered Qutbuddin Mubarak Khilji, and crowned himself king and assumed
the title Khusro Khan. And what was a shock to the whole of India, especially to
the Muslims occupying Delhi was that Khusro declared himself to be a Hindu
again!! When he ascended the throne, Khusro Khan was only nineteen years of age.
The Muslim nobility was shell-shocked, but with the strong contigent of Gujarati
converts around Khusro Khan, they were momentarily stunned into inaction.
However, they began plotting the overthrow of Khusro Khan – who in their eyes
was a Murtad who had abjured Islam.
Eventually, after a year, a Muslim General Ghazi Malik (who later took on the
title Giyasuddin Tughlak) murdered Khusro and re-established the rule of Muslims
in Delhi. After a brief interlude of Hindu rule, Ghazi Malik founded the Tughluq
dynasty. But this event proved that if the Hindus had the determination grit and
shrewdness, they could overturn Muslim rule in India. A dream that was to be
realized later by the Marathas when they marched in to Delhi in 1720.
Hemu Vikramaditya came close to overthrowing the Mughal dynasty at the 2nd
battle of Panipat
On 24th January 1556 CE the Mughal ruler Humayun slipped while climbing down
the steps of his library and fell to his death. The heir to the Mughal throne,
13 year old Akbar was then campaigning in Punjab with his chief minister Bairam
Khan. On February 14, 1556, in a garden at Kalanaur, Akbar was enthroned as
emperor. The other rivals for the throne of Delhi were the three Afgan princes
of Sher Shah. However the main threat to Akbar's future came not from the Afgan
princes but from a Hindu anmed Hemu. Hemu was the Hindu chief minister of Afgan
prince Adil Shah and he led a surprise attack on Delhi in October 1556.
The Mughal forces under its governor Tardi Beg Khan panicked and went into a
sudden ignominious flight. This was Hemu's twenty second consecutive victory in
successive battles. After the capture of Delhi, Hemu set up himself as an
independent ruler under the Hindu title of 'Raja Vikramaditya'. At this juncture
against the advice of most nobles, Akbar and Bairam Khan took a courageous
decision, to press forward against Hemu's undoubtedly superior forces. On
November 5, 1556 the Mughul forces met the Hemu’s army at Panipat.
In this second battle of Panipat, the Mughals were saved by a lucky accident
after a hard fight which looked more than likely to go against them. Hemu who
was leading the battle from atop an elephant, veered too close to the enemy
ranks, and a archer from the Mughal army used this opportunity to attack him. An
arrow hit Hemu in the eye and although it did not kill him it had pierced the
cerebral cavity enough to make him unconscious.
In any battle of this period the death of the leader meant an end of the
fight, and the sight of Hemu slumped in the howdah of his famous elephant Hawai
was enough to make his army turn tail. Akbar’s General, Shah Quli Khan captured
the Hawai elephant with its prize occupant, and took it directly to Akbar.
Hemu was brought unconscious before Akbar and Bairam. Bairam advised Akbar to
perform the holy duty of slaying the infidel and earn the Islamic holy title of
'Ghazi'. Among much self-congratulation Akbar then severed the head of
unconscious Hemu with his saber. Some historians claim that Akbar did not kill
Hemu himself, but just touched the infidel's head with his sword and his
associates finished the gory 'holy' work. However the latter version seems
inconsistent with the events that followed. After the battle Hemu's head was
sent to Kabul as a sign of victory to the ladies of Humayun's harem, and Hemu's
torso was sent to Delhi for exposure on a gibbet.
Iskandar Khan chased the Hemu's fleeing army and captured 1500 elephants and
a large contingent. There was a bloody slaughter of those who were captured and
in keeping with the custom of his ancestors Tamerlane and Chengiz Khan, Akbar
had a victory pillar built with the severed heads of his fallen Hindu enemies.
Peter Mundy, an Englishman travelling Mughal empire some 75 years later
(during Jahangir and Shah Jahan's rein), found such towers were still being
built.
Hemu's wife escaped from Delhi with the treasure and although Pir Mohammad
Khan's troops chased her caravan they could not lay their hands on her or the
treasure. Hemu's aged father was captured and on refusing to accept Islam, was
executed. This is the 'glorious' history of Akbar's victory at the battle of
Panipat.
Later on Akbar displayed his “chivalry” once again when he ordered the cold
blooded slaughter of thirty thousand Rajput soldiers who had surrendered to him
after the battle of Chittod.
How the Ahom (Assamese) General Lachit Borphukan annihilated the Muslim
Mughal army at the battle of Saraighat on the Banks of the Bramhaputra
river
The Muslims had made many attempts from the time of Mohammed Bin Tughlak to
swallow Assam. But the Ahom kings of Assam stoutly and shrewdly defeated each
Muslim incursion in to Assam. Finally the Mughals during the reign of Aurangzeb
attacked Assam with a huge force. The shrewd Assamese king laid a trap for the
Muslim army at a place named Sariaghat on the Bramhaputra river.
The Battle of Saraighat was fought in 1671 between the Mughals (led by the
renegade Rajput Hindu traitor Kachwaha king Raja Ramsingh I), and the Ahoms (led
by Lachit Borphukan, the Ahom governor of Guwahati) on the Brahmaputra river at
Saraighat near Guwahati. Although considered to be the weaker force, the Ahom
army defeated the Mughal by using a combination of guerrilla tactics,
psychological warfare and military intelligence.
In a surprise night attack, Lachit Barphukan dramatically captured the Mughal
post in north Guwahati and, later, their fort in south Guwahati. The present day
Kamrup Deputy Commissioner's bungalow is now situated on this site. The greatest
threat to Lachit's army were the many Mughal cannons. In another secret mission
executed the night before battle the cannons were disabled by Bagh Hazarika, a
subordinate of Lachit's, During the night, Hazarika poured water into the
cannons' barrels, soaking their gunpowder. With the Mughal cannons disabled, the
Ahoms bombarded the Guwahati fort with their cannons. After a heavy cannonade
and then a determined charge, the Mughals were defeated and the fort captured.
After this the Mughals abandoned Guwahati.
Now Lachit Barphukan anticipated a larger retaliatory attack by the Mughals
and he started arranging defenses, obstacles and garhs (earthen walls) around
Guwahati, relying upon the hillocks around Guwahati and the Brahmaputra River as
natural barriers against an invading army. Lachit was thorough and ruthless in
preparing for the defense. He even beheaded his own uncle for neglecting his
duty. When Lachit asked his uncle why the work was not progressing as expected,
his uncle complained of boredom. Lachit in a fit of fury cut off his uncle's
head and said "my uncle is not greater than my country."
The Mughals struck back in March 1679. The Mughal commander-in-chief of the
advancing Mughal army had at his disposal 30,000 infantry, 15,000 archers,
18,000 Turkish cavalry, 5,000 gunners, more than 1000 cannons and a large
flotilla of boats. Portuguese and other European sailors were employed to man
the fleet. These forces moved up the Brahmaputra from Dhaka to Guwahati.
Lachit's spies kept him informed of the progress of the Muslim advance. The
Mughals laid siege to Guwahati that lasted for more than a year.
Lachit fought from within the barriers knowing that his small cavalry would
not stand against the Mughal cavalry on open ground. His guerrilla attacks
against the Mughal caused them to suffer many casualties. Although the Mughals
made many efforts, including one attempt to bribe Lachit with power position and
money, as they had done successfully with some Rajputs, but with Lachit the
Mughals failed to tempt him to betray his country. Every attempt to bribe him
was replied with scorn. In spite of repeated desperate attempts they failed to
defeat Lachit and capture Guwahati.
But now the Ahom king, however, became impatient and ordered Lachit to attack
the Mughals on open ground. Lachit reluctantly obeyed this command, and attacked
the Mughal army in Allaboi. After some initial success, in which the Ahoms
captured the local Mughal Commander, Mir Nawab, the Ahoms drew the full force of
Mughal cavalry.
The Ahom army was decimated by the Mughal cavalry on the open plain losing
some 10,000 troops. Lachit had taken the precaution of digging a line of defense
at the rear of his advancing columns, to which they could fall back to if forced
to do so. In doing so, he managed to save the remainder of his forces and
retreat into his prepared defenses.
The Mughal could not penetrate these defenses and ultimately launched a
massive naval assault on the river at Saraighat. They had large boats, some
carrying as many as sixteen cannons. The Ahom soldiers were demoralised after
their losses at Allaboi and their commander-in-chief, Lachit Borphukan, was
seriously ill. At the sight of the massive Mughal fleet, they began to lose
their will to fight, and some units commenced retreat.
Lachit had been observing this development from his deathbed. Despite having
a high fever, he had himself carried to a boat and, along with seven other
boats, advanced headlong against the Mughal fleet. His bold advance inspired his
retreating army to rally behind him. A desperate battle ensued on the
Brahmaputra. The Ahoms in their small boats outmaneuvered the larger, more
sluggish Mughal boats, and the river became littered with clashing boats and
drowning soldiers.
The Mughals were decisively defeated and they were finally forced to retreat
from Guwahati, and also from other Ahom territory, up to Manas River. Thus ended
the Battle of Saraighat, giving Lachit Barphukan the legendary fame in Assam.
This battle is remembered as a glorious Ahom victory, despite seemingly
insurmountable odds.
Lachit Borphukan, like Lord Nelson, died in the lap of victory; and the
battle of Saraighat was Assam's Trafalgar.
The study, undertaken as part of the "Branding Israel" project, looked at what it calls the world's 13 most important countries and included 5,215 interviewees. Asked a series of questions, participants graded their sympathy for Israel on a 1-to-10 scale. Some results, given in terms of percentage expressing sympathy to the Jewish State:
