Swift Horses Sharp Swords: Medieval Battles Which Shook India

This is an excerpt from the book “Swift Horses Sharp Swords” authored by Amit Agarwal. The book is aimed to provide adequate information to readers who have less or no knowledge about the Indian ancient history of hindu warriors who bravely defended the motherland. In the book, the author points out the vastness of India’s wealth during the ancient and medieval period, also the historical and geographical significance of the Hindukush Mountain pass of ancient India.

Initial chapters deal with the concept of Dharmayuddha and rise of Hinduism etc., author also throws light on the glory of ancient India. In the second part, the invasion by Arabs and Turks especially by Mahmud Ghazanawi and Ghori has been described, strengths of Arabs and Turks and use of Islam in subjugating Hindus. The book also dwells on our past mistakes and how they are still being repeated. There are lots of lessons to be learnt.

Apart from this, a review of same book authored by Munishwar Gulati has also been published, which will help the readers to know a lot more about the book. Everyone is advised to read it in its entirety to understand the subtleties of Indian history of that period.

The book is self-published, is listed on Amazon in both the Kindle version and paperback format. https://www.amazon.in/dp/B08KH3R4MN/

An excerpt from the book ‘Swift Horse Sharp Swords’ on Indian History

BY AMIT AGARWAL

In the North-west of India are the Hindukush Mountains wherein lies the infamous Khyber Pass (now in Pakistan and Afghanistan). Most of the invaders used this narrow and cold pass to invade India. This geographical characteristic of the Khyber Pass influenced the history of India the most. After crossing the Pass and from Sindh/Punjab to Bengal, the region is largely a vast plain to the extent that over a distance of 1300 miles, there exist only a few hundred feet of elevation in the terrain. The fertile plains attracted migrants from everywhere leading to a tremendous increase in population, whereas in the mountains and other remote places, the population remained sparse. These remote regions, not being low-hanging fruit, largely remained out of bounds for the invaders. That is the reason why Buddhists fled to the regions of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet when they were attacked by the Islamic invaders.

The Sikhs under Ranjit Singh were the only indigenous community who realised the importance of the Khyber Pass, a vital strategic military choke point and hence captured it from the Islamic rulers in 1834 CE and made it a part of Bharatvarsha again. In contemporary popular lingo, Bharatvarsha was described as ‘Khyber se Kanyakumari’ to describe the vastness of the country which reduced to ‘Kashmir se Kanyakumari’ after the partition.

This apparent security largely arising out of the geographical isolation, however, had made Indians complacent about security matters in the medieval era. This weakness of defence could be assessed correctly by the invaders, unfortunately, who exploited it to the hilt. On the other hand, Hindus never learnt lessons from their mistake and continued repeating the same.

Mahmud Ghaznavi and other invaders captured and regularly took Hindu slaves, both males and females, across Hindukush to Central Asia. They had to cross high mountain passes in a 500 miles long mountain range with some of the passes situated at the height of 4,000-7,000 meters with sub-zero temperatures. Many of the slaves while traversing through these passes could not withstand the cold and died agonizingly. At one count, at least 10 lakhs Hindus died on these mountains over the years. The survivors fared even worse when they were sold in Bukhara and Samarkand Bazaars for as low as 10 dinars. The erstwhile kings had to work as domestic help while the queens were employed in the brothels.

After reading about the massacre of lakhs of Hindu slaves, Ibn Battuta, a renowned 14th-century Moroccan traveller named this mountain range “Hindukush” (the killer of Hindus).

(The author is an Engineer from IIT-Roorkee.  Presently, he is working as General Manager in a reputed Maharatna Oil PSU. He has already commenced his second book, which is a compilation of unknown Bharatiya historical tales since ancient times. Apart from being an enthusiastic writer, he is also an avid marathoner and mountaineer. So far, he has run 7 full marathons and 20 half marathons. He has partaken in numerous treks in Garhwal, Kumaon, Himachal and the Western Ghats, including a trek to the Everest base camp).

“Swift Horses, Sharp Swords”: A Review

BY MUNISHWAR GULATI

A well-researched book on Indian medieval history titled “Swift Horses Sharp swords: Medieval Battles which Shook India” is penned by Mr. Amit Agarwal. This is his first book on a subject he is passionate about.

As the author mentioned in the preface that most of the history books he has come across were written in a left-liberal narrative which more often than not, failed to depict the true picture of Indian history. Hence, he was driven to author such a book that aptly described events from a Hindu perspective in an engrossing manner.

Indian history has so far been intentionally depicted with its fulcrum on the Arabs, Turks and Mughals in the medieval period.  Incidentally, this has become a very controversial topic of late as the people are demanding for the modification in NCERT history books to correct the glorification of the invaders. It was always portrayed as if invasion was a cakewalk for them but the book brings out the fact in no uncertain terms that warriors of that time were not easy prey.

It delineates the historical time zone from the 7th century till the 13th century and analyzed the conditions encompassing all the social, economic, religious, technological, and geographical factors of that era and their interplay.  The book has the microscopic analysis of history without overlooking the larger world view. Consequently, we now have an amazing historical compilation of intense bravery though hardly remembered and frugally told before.

The book presents a comprehensive integration of history with engineering, mathematical, and management fundamentals. It relates the historical events with contemporary knowledge of game theory, chaos, scatter/randomness, network theory, bell & sinusoidal curves and Maslow pyramids etc. and their correlation and causation is a key takeaway for this unique version of history. The book also has an unusual chapter that clearly describes that homogeneous societies excel on the most parameters.

The inverse relationship between ethnic diversity and economic and social progress is clearly established in the book. Hence, all the advanced and rich countries like Japan, China, European nations and the USA to some extent are homogenous, while the heterogeneous countries including India remain slacker. This theory has suitably been strengthened with the authentic tabulated data. It has also tried to prove why our progress has been lukewarm even after independence and at the same time, why our religion and culture is still intact despite such horrific onslaught over the centuries.

The book has three distinct parts. First part deals with ancient India and its glory.  It also has chapters on the rise of Hinduism and Buddhism and how India had tremendous influence over the Silk Road and South-East Asia.

A chapter was devoted to the history of Swastika and Aryan migration theory. He could have elaborated more on Aryan theories as they are such controversial topics nowadays. Maybe this book is about the medieval era, so the author might not have wanted to devote much space on this issue.

Second part deals with Islamic invaders and why Indian kings and warriors were defeated despite their bravery. These factors and underlying conditions are examined in detail.

Third part primarily deals with the overall analysis and interesting anecdotes. One chapter delineates the penchant of Islamic invaders to create pyramids of the human heads with horrific details.

Further, how polytheistic societies recognize other gods without any malaise and why the concept of Karma is built in every such society is thoroughly explored.  It also tries to find out why all polytheistic communities are paragons of tolerance.

The book is also full of such heroes who fought bravely against them but lack of technological prowess had done them in. It correctly brings out this aspect of technology by which sturdy Chainmail armour, solid tree saddle and the metallic stirrup were designed and developed in Central Asia. Due to this Turks could accurately fire 6 arrows per minute while galloping on the horse.

Few other facts are also eye-opening like Turks could travel 100 kilometers per day which meant they could come to Delhi in a flat 10 days from Ghazni in Afghanistan.

The book has also brought out the follies committed by the Indian warriors in that period. Despite being super rich, somehow innovation in military strategy, technology, and tactics could not keep pace with that of the Turks.

The overemphasis of Dharamyuddha was another huge factor in the recurring defeats. Just to quote an example: Ghori was lying on the battlefield unconscious with injuries and Rajputs had all the time to kill him.

Yet they did not find it morally right to kill an injured and unarmed warrior. Consequently, His soldiers managed to take him back to Ghazni.  He then practiced with the dummy mud elephants as the Indian elephants were his chief nemesis in the battle. Within a year, Ghori came back to rule over India for centuries.

The key takeaway of the book is to make the current Indian generation proud of their brave ancestors who lost primarily because of their lack of unity and other myriad reasons and certainly not due to any cowardice which resulted in the Turkish conquest of India.

There were numerous instances when invaders were defeated squarely, however, these warriors are largely missing from the NCERT textbooks who only tried to portray Hindus as a bunch of losers.

The book correctly bemoans the fact that many of the cities and stations in India are named after the brutal invaders. To quote an example from the book: Railway station of Nalanda is named Bakhtiyarpur after Bakhtiyar Khilji, who burnt the university and left it in ruins. Any attempt to change such names usually results in vociferous protests by secular Hindus first. The current opposition to rename Aurangabad in Maharashtra can be seen as an appropriate example of this malaise.

Author has given a few references of the battles in Europe and elaborated that with little ingenuity Europeans were able to defeat Arabs squarely. There is also a mention of Greco-Persian war in 5th century BCE where Spartans were able to check the Persian invasion for days with only 300 soldiers. Author wished that our warriors too were able to check the invaders at narrow Khyber Pass.

The book is a study, written in simple English fathomable to all Indians.  It is crisp, concise, fast-paced and targeted towards those who know little about this dreadful chapter of Indian history but want to know the complete history in a nutshell.  It is also littered throughout with the interesting historical anecdotes which makes it a light read.

However, the book is a little long read consisting of more than 500 pages, which could have been easily split into two volumes and hence, would have made it more enjoyable. Better print quality could have certainly made it more attractive. There were some repetitions in the book which could have been avoided with a little more tight editing.

Finally, the book has the potential to make the Hindus proud of their roots, traditions and culture and if it could convert few seculars into Sanatani, it would be a huge success for the book!

(The author, an alumnus of IIT-Roorkee, is a graduate of engineering and law and has about 30 years’ information technology experience. He is a Founder Director of a couple of IT firms and mentors celebrities and startups. He has written and published over 150 books on Information Technology since 1992.)