State and Government in Ancient India c11.24

c11.24

For India or Bhāratavarsha as a whole Indians did feel a great love and patriotism and whenever its religion, culture and independence were at stake, they came forward to lay down their lives in its defence. No body, who studies the opposition offered to Alexander the Great, can deny the existence of true patriotism in the Indians of the age. Brāhamaṇa philosophers were the leaders of the patriotic movement in lower Sindh and were hanged by the score by Alexander, whose task was becoming more and more arduous on account of the patriotic movement inspired by them.¹ One of them, when taken prisoner and condemned to death, was asked just before his execution as to why he had incited the people and the king to revolt. He boldly replied, ‘Because I wished them to live with honour or to die with honour.’² Unfortunately we have no authentic account of the opposition offered to the Śakas, the Pahlavas and the Kushāṇas, but such scanty information as we possess shows that the states like those of the Kuṇindas, the Yaudheyas and the Mālavas continued their resistance movement for decades, till they were eventually able to regain ther independence. Important states in northern India joined their resources in order to oust the Hūṇas. When it became clear that the Muslim conquest was a serious threat to the culture and religion of the country, most of the important states in northern India made a common cause under the impulse of patriotism and offered a united front near Peshawar in 1008 A. D. 50,000 Hindus laid down their lives in the defence of the Somanātha temple before Mahmud of Ghazni could force his entry into it in 1024 A. D. Those who thus died for their religion and country no doubt believed intensely that Bhāratavarsha was so holy a land, that *svarga* and *moksha* is possible only by a birth in it and therefore even gods desire to be reborn within its territory.¹ A proverb states that the mother and the mother-country are even greater than heaven² and the history of the opposition to foreign aggression shows that Hindus did act up to it.