Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c28.s2.18

v2.c28.s2.18

Repression of Islām.—During his three years of sovereignty, Bakhta had found both time and resources to strengthen and embellish the strongholds of Marwar. He completed the fortifications [119] of the capital, and greatly added to the palace of Jodha, from the spoils of Ahmadabad. He retaliated the injuries on the intolerant Islamite, and threw down his shrines and his mosques in his own fief of Nagor, and with the wrecks restored the edifices of ancient days. It was Bakhta also who prohibited, under pain of death, the Islamite’s call to prayer throughout his dominions, and the order remains to this day unrevoked in Marwar. Had he been spared a few years to direct the storm then accumulating, which transferred power from the haughty Tatar of Delhi to the peasant soldier of the Kistna, the probability was eminently in favour of the Rajputs resuming their ancient rights throughout India. Every principality had the same motive for union in one common cause, the destruction of a power inimical to their welfare : but crimes, moral and political, rendered an opportunity, such as never occurred in their history, unavailing for their emancipation from temporal and spiritual oppression.