After winning the final battle, when the Muslims rushed violently, like a stormy wind, through Sindh, they went on beheading these Buddhists even mor… - Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Those who end their lives in a spirit of frustration, dissatisfaction or discontentment and cannot live happily even though they so wish are said to have committed ‘suicide’. But those who happily end their lives with the blessed sense of having fulfilled their life-mission or objective are said to have committed self-sacrifice. Though this changing and evolving earthly world can never be said to have achieved perfection, blessed souls voluntarily end their lives with the realization that they have nothing left to achieve or fulfill. They merge their mortal life into the immortal Universal Life. As the Yoga Vasishta says: ‘An empty pot is in reality filled with the sky, a pot immersed in the sea has sea both within and without; it is hence full within and without.’ With a feeling of self-satisfaction at having largely perfected their life-mission and rather than let their body become a burden to self and society, such souls renounce their bodies by entering a cave or fasting unto death or entering fire or water or enter a state of samadhi. Though their act may be grossly referred to as ‘willful termination of life’, it is only fitting that it should be referred glowingly as ‘self-sacrifice’.

Savarkar is widely reviled in Indian history as an apostle of hate; through a reading of Hindutva I argue that he might better be understood as a spurned lover . . . Hindutva in its time was also a reminder to a Hindu community that even if Gandhi had left the political milieu, there was no need to worry. A political Hindu and a true nationalist was back and ready to lead India, even from behind prison walls. Hindutva was a pugilistic punch thrown against Gandhi in the competitive political ring for national leadership.

No Muslim woman whether a Begum or a beggar, ever protested against the atrocities committed by their male compatriots; on the contrary they encouraged them to do so and honoured them for it. A Muslim woman did everything in her power to harass such captured or kidnapped Hindu women. Not only in the troubled times of war but even in the intervening periods of peace and even when they themselves lived in the Hindu kingdoms, they enticed and carried away young Hindu girls locked them up in their own houses, or conveyed them to the Muslim centres in Masjids and Mosques. The Muslim women all over India considered it their holy duty to do so.