Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Hindu slavery under Islamic dominion in India: A topic not discussed in history
Monday, March 06, 2023
First Post : Hindu slaves formed an important part in the medieval Central Asian markets and in the empire building efforts made by the foreign Muslim invaders, the Delhi Sultanate and the Timurid (Mughal) dynasties.
India’s post-independence Nehruvian
scholars, in order to impose western theological ideology of secularism
within the arena of Indian history, were focused on glorifying foreign
Muslim invaders and whitewashing their atrocities on Indic kings,
subjects, and their places of worship. In that zeal, they conveniently
overlooked one important chapter:
Hindu slavery under Muslim dominion.
While it is true that slavery was not introduced in India by the foreign
Muslim invaders and had existed in India even in the BCE era,
historically the system was institutionalized and turned into a hugely
profitable business during Muslim rule, which focused on the expansion
of slavery for both commercial and political purposes.
Prior to this, slavery in ancient
India was humanist in nature and slaves were not seen as commodities for
making profit through sale, a major reason why foreigners like
Megasthenes, aware of the fate of slaves in western nations, failed to
see any slaves in India and declared that all Indians were free (Indica of Megasthenes, cited in Om Prakash, “Religion and society in Ancient India,” 1985, p. 140).
While the western world right from
ancient times was well acquainted with slavery, it was Islam that
started the practice of slave trade, taking it to gargantuan
proportions, making it run for profit like any other commercial
activity. Ibn
Ishaq, he had set a precedent by selling few captured Jewish women and
children of Medina in exchange for horses and weapons in Egypt. The Quran also expressly permits Muslims to acquire slaves through conquest.
Slavery and empire-formation tied
in particularly well with iqta and it is within this context of Islamic
expansion that elite slavery was later commonly found. It became the
predominant system in North India in the thirteenth century and retained
considerable importance in the fourteenth century. Slavery was still
vigorous in fifteenth-century Bengal, while after that date it shifted
to the Deccan where
it persisted until the seventeenth century. It remained present to a
minor extent in the Mughal provinces throughout the seventeenth century
and had a notable revival under the Afghans in North India again in the
eighteenth century.
— Al Hind, André Wink (Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, pgs. 14-15)