A very interesting article...
November 02, 1999, www.organiser.org
By V.P. Bhatia, THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY
Motivated distortions in history books have clouded the glorious saga of Hindu struggle against Muslim invaders.
A FEW months ago, I had mentioned in this column a rather strange fact—that the street in which our family lived in our birth place of Pind Dadan Khan, an important tehsil town in Jhelum district of Pakistan, was called the Mohyal Street wherein almost half the houses were those of Bhatia Rajputs and half of Mohyal Brahmins. No other caste lived there. It was also called the Mehta Street, as Mohyals are branch of Mehtas.
The Mohyals were militant Brahmins who had taken to the professions of Police and the Army and owned lands generally allotted to them in lieu of their military service by successive rulers, Hindu, Muslim and the British.
The Mohyals claimed to descend from Sapt-rishis of the Mahabharata times and consequently are divided into seven castes–Bali (Parashar), Bhimwal (Koshal), Chhibber (Bhargava), Dutt (Bhardwaj), Lau (Vashishtha), Mohan (Kashyap), Vaid (Dhanvantari).
In our street mostly Chhibbers lived. The local SHO was a Chhibber, bearing the title of a Bakshi also. One of my close friends whose father was a high Police officer elsewhere in Punjab was also a Chhibber. One of the Mohyals' patron-saints was Parshu Ram, who was the first Brahmin to bear arms. He fought 21 wars against Kshatriyas. It is said that after the Mahabharata War, Ashwatthama, the son of Guru Dronacharya left Bharat in disgust and settled in Arabia along with his followers and gave Hindu cultural character to pre-Islamic Arabia. His progeny later appeared as Husseini Brahmins who took part in the battle of Karbala on the side of Imam Hussein. They later ruled over Afghanistan. Raja Dahir of Sind and Raja Jayapal of Punjab as well as Pushyamitra who established his suzerainty upto Kabul and Swat valley after finishing his treacherous King was a Brahmin. So were the famous Porus and Chanakya. It means they had a spotless military spirit to defend the integrity of the country. This is but only a brief account of the Mohyal's military services as sentinels of our frontiers alongwith Rajputs.
Veer Savarkar's view
As Veer Savarkar points out in his Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, according to the history books taught in our schools and colleges, the relentless fight put up by Hindu Kings to stem the Muslim tide in the North-West part of India is grossly under-rated. The impression generally given is that the Muslim invaders had an easy walkover after the conquest of Sind in 712A.D. whereas fact is that the Hindu Kings held the Muslim marauders' waves in check for 300 years, whereas the entire West Asia including Iran was completely subdued by the Islamic tide in just 50 years. Similarly, North Africa and Europe upto Spain fell in just 15 years. On the other hand, the Hindu Brahmin and Rajput Kings, including Jayapal and his son Anandpal put up a solid wall of united resistance from Kathiawar to Punjab and Kashmir for 300 years to beat back the invaders. The martial spirit and prowess of Jayapal and Anandpal's ‘Hindu Shahi’ has come for high praise even in a research work submitted by a Pakistani scholar of Islamabad University, according to veteran journalist, Jamna Das Akhtar, who has seen the book.
The problem of Mohyal-Bhatia closeness was recently solved by me in a book named History of the Rajputs by J.N. Asopa in which it is mentioned that a Bhatia King, named Gajsimha III married the daughter of King Jayapal of Delhi whose Kingdom extended upto Kabul. Jayapal's confrontation with Mahmud Ghaznavi ended in disaster for the same reason that Nepoleon's and Hitler's expeditions failed against Moscow. They were defeated by ‘General Winter’—that is extreme cold weather. Another wonderful fact that I discovered was that according to E-Thomas, four last Kings, of Kabul before the Ghaznavis were Bhatia Rajputs. Moreover, the last King of Ghazni before the Turkish occupation of Ghazni by Mahmud Ghaznavi's grandfather was a Bhatia Rajput.
According to this account Bhatias or Bhatti Rajputs had Bhera (on the East Bank of Jhelum opposite Pind Dadan Khan) which is encircled by river Jhelum from two sides were Bhatti Rajputs. Their Kingdom extended upto Bhatinda and was further extended to Bhatner, present Sriganganagar. Mahmud Ghazni and Ghori's relentless invasions pushed them further into Rajputana desert and ultimately Jaisalmer became capital of their new state, mostly sandy territory. Those were really bloody battles they fought. Firstly under Jayapal and Anandpal and then on their own with the help of local tribes like Gakhars. Most Bhatias trace their ancestry to the house of Jaisalmer.
They went upto the Central Asia to establish their Kingdoms and propagate their religion. In Kafiristan, the only non-Muslim area of Pakistani bordering Afghanistan there are still Bhutani Rajputs, obviously remnants of Bhatia or Bhatti Rajputs, according to the same author. So did the Brahmins cover thousands of miles to spread their religion in far off lands. In a book of trekking through icy Karakoram named Continents in Collision by Keith, Miller I found the picture of a huge glacier named as ‘Batura’, which is the name of a Brahmin subcaste, as our former Associate Editor, Shri R.C. Batura told me, when I showed him that book by an American mountaineer. Kalidasa in his Meghdoot has included the northern Himalayans in the boundaries of India, as I wrote in an article on Kalidasa's view of India, a few years ago. The point is that in the Hindu Mind the view of Greater India is still the same as in days of Kalidasa, despite secularists' bid to make us forgetful of our past history and geography. Even Z.A. Bhutto has said so in his memoirs.
Jayapal attacked Ghazni. He burnt himself to death when defeated by Mahmud's forces in a fierce fight. His son too was a victim of ill luck when a burning arrow hit the feet of his elephants and it ran amuck and started trampling down its own army.
Ghazni was found by Guj, the legendary founder of Jaisalmer state
In a recent book, a military expert has mourned the fact that the Hindus learnt nothing from past military experience. For instance, this use of elephants in war against horse riding enemy. Porus suffered because of his elephants, Anandpal also and then Hemu (Hemchandra Vikramaditya) against Akbar. The trouble was the Hindu Kings commanded from the front, not likes muslim generals such as Ahmed Shah Abdali who remained in the middle of his army formations. So the Hindu generals had to be visible constantly to their soldiers, so that the enemy targeted them easily as they sat high on elephants.
Coming to the Mohyals and Bhatia Rajputs again, the Mohyals stuck to military service, under any King, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Dogra or British. They rose to great positions as subordinates to serve India even under foreigners. That was the call of patriotism in those difficult times. But as the Bhatias' Kingdom went on squeezing, they were driven to the desert territory of Jaisalmer where the Bhatti Kings built a two-tier mud fort. However, more attacks and slaughter in wars against Ghazni and Ghori depleted their numbers and made some of them leave the fort and die fighting or spread in groups in the surrounding areas. They left in waves, selecting various places for collective group living. But they gave up fighting and took to business and non-military professions as a way to penetrate the foreign rulers' administration.
Describing their origin, J.N. Asopa, the author of History of Rajputs describes their lineage from the Yadu or Somavansi (Chandravanshi) Rajputs. They were descended from two sons of Hari Krishana (Lord Krishna) who left Hindustan after Sri Krishna's death and settled beyond Indus. When one of them was killed in a tribal battle, they were driven southward toward Punjab. It is also said that Salbahan, son of Guj, the legendary founder of Jaisalmer, also founded Ghazni after his name.
His grandson was named Bhatti who conquered many of neighbouring princes and made a big state. Their original country around Bhatinda was called Bhatiya from which the caste took its name. At the time of Mahmud Ghazni's attack for failure to help him against Jayapal. They were entrenched in Bhera. Their Kingdom extended from Alwar to Multan.
The same author mentions that after constant fighting both the Bhatias and the Mohyals suffered conversions to Islam. After Mahmud, Taimur attacked Bhatner in 1004-5 A.D. Thus the war was continuous for Hindu superiority and is still continuous. Partition was but a brief interval. It is a fight to the finish by Islam which few people seem to realise.
(Anwar Shaikh's latest book The Vedic Civilisation is available free of charge on application to Principality Publishers, P.O. Box 918, Cardiff, United Kingdom.)
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17th century India, The Masters of the Oceans...
