Part one: Mahmud of Ghazni
It was 1007 A.D. and Mahmud of Ghazni was preparing to raid Hindustan once again. Hindustan, which the British with their inability to curl their occidental tongues around alien consonants, and their arrogance as makers of history, would later rename India.
And Christopher Columbus would set sail looking for it and rename Native Americans β Indians.
But back to Mahmud.
His forays were well planned. Crossing over the mountains as the winter snow melted, he would return to Afghanistan before the monsoon made it impossible to ford the rivers that made Hindustan so fertile and wealthy. His strategy was simple β attack, conquer, plunder and then move on. Not for him the administrative and political quagmire of ruling these Hindus. That would be left for the Mughals and the British to do. Pretending to superimpose law and order over anarchy, the British would prove to be the biggest plunderers. They would systematically denude the region of its wealth for two hundred years and leave behind as their legacy a political and bureaucratic mess that would ensure future generations remained ensnared in poverty.
But back to Mahmud.
On his first incursion he had met severe resistance from a disciplined force led by a powerful king. He had been able to subdue the king's forces with better tactics and the sheer ruthlessness of his men. On the next expedition he had met with even more resistance from the son of the now dead king. This time around Mahmud was on the verge of defeat. The tide of battle and the course of history were changed when the king's elephant for no clear reason bolted from the battlefield. The king's men thinking that their leader was fleeing had capitulated easily.
On subsequent incursions he had been able to run rampant at will through a series of kingdoms with little or no resistance. He had now pillaged most of the kingdoms in the area of Hindustan called the Punjab. Kashmir had been impossible to subjugate and he had given up after a few attempts; besides who cared, there was enough booty to be had elsewhere! He had left behind puppet rulers with the specific task of raising revenues for him. On this expedition he was looking forward to collecting their tribute before moving on to plundering other kingdoms.
It never ceased to amaze him how quickly these Hindus accumulated wealth. No matter how many times he ransacked their kingdoms, they always seemed as rich the next time. Ready to be plucked like ripe mangoes!
Ordinary citizens appeared to be well off and some of their houses were worth looting. Even more rewarding was sacking the houses of rich merchants and landlords. But by far the greatest treasure-troves were palaces and temples. Here the accumulation of wealth was at times mind boggling. He remembered one kingdom where the king would weigh himself in gold on his birthday and put that gold away in the palace treasury and when Mahmud raided it he found gold bars stacked to the ceiling! And as to the temples, he remembered a particular one with breathtakingly exquisite life size statues of gods and goddesses with multiple limbs. These statues were made of precious metals and heavily encrusted with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Being a True Believer, he could not allow these symbols of idol worship to exist. He had the gems carefully removed and the metals melted into bars. And of course he had to take the whole lot back with him to Afghanistan for safe keeping.
But it was not just the loot that brought him back. It was sex as well. Yes, sex and material wealth. The oldest and most dependable motivating forces to make the male Homo sapiens get off his butt and do stuff.
To Mahmud, sex was not synonymous with rape. He was a fighter and a lover. To him rape was disgusting. Taking a woman by force, against her will, was to him an act of cowardice. It was an admission that the perpetrator lacked the skills and the confidence to woo a woman and then fuck her with her full consent, to ecstasy and beyond.
Some of the best sex could be found in Hindu temples. There were women here, called Devdasis or servants of God. Their sole purpose ostensibly was to serve God in whatever capacity. In some kingdoms this included servicing the priests and the wealthy and powerful people of that area under the pretext of 'healing' them.
He had experienced the 'healing' touch of these sensuous creatures on many an occasion. These women knew how to screw the life out of you - all three orifices, all night, over and over again in numerous positions and various techniques. Two of them in one night could leave you so depleted that for days afterwards you had an idiotic smile on your face and looked at all women as sisters, mothers and daughters, not as sex objects.