Swift Horses Sharp Swords: Medieval Battles which shook India

Swift Horses Sharp Swords is the first book by Amit Agarwal which explores the Indian medieval history from an indigenous perspective. This book covers a large canvas of 5500 years of Indian history, right from Indus Valley but dwells mainly on the Medieval period from the 6th to 13th Centuries. It takes a 360-degree view of the then-prevailing ecosystem and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Hindus and the invaders.
The book has also been translated to Hindi and launched with the same name in 2021. His second book A Never Ending Conflict - Episodes from Indic Resistance is due for launch on 11th July 2022 by Garuda Prakashan.
The title of the book was drawn from the twin assets of Turks which did India in.
About the book
The book starts with a glimpse of ancient India's rich socio-economic and cultural life, from the Indus valley civilization to the rise of Vedic Hinduism to the golden age of India during the Gupta dynasty. It also covers religious symbolism like the swastika; the caste system that was a professional division of labour before it degenerated; idol worship and temples. The book then graduates to cataloguing the waves of invasions from Western and Central Asia, which were instrumental in establishing the Islamic Sultanate in Delhi.
It also examines the resultant Hindu slavery, which scarred their psyche deeply, evident even today. It also deals with the consequential long-term religious, social, political and economic effects on India. It concludes with the epilogue, stating that those medieval conditions still exist today in India and how Hindus are unable to cope with them.
About the author
Agarwal is a mechanical engineer from the University of Roorkee (now IIT-Roorkee) and is currently a manager in an oil company. He keeps writing columns on history for various Indic portals.
Many chapters of his books seem to use the concept of purva paksha. He liberally used maps, tables, graphs, theories like chaos, game, scatter/randomness, network and Maslow and even bell and sine curves in the book.
Reception
Manoshi Sinha, the author of the book series Saffron Swords, wrote in the foreword of the book: I applaud his engaging style, crisp and sharp walking through the details of history and relating the historical events with contemporary knowledge. The author quoted first-hand sources, which gave the book an authentic feel. Further, he has interwoven the European battles of the medieval era and how they repelled Islamic forces. A glaring mistake of not taking the battle to the enemy’s home is persisting and ironically, our leaders do not cease to mention this proudly. Another good element of the book is that it has not minced the words about the mistakes committed by the Hindu kings and warriors and this makes the book balanced and thought-provoking.
Ratan Sharda, the celebrated author of numerous books on RSS, wrote in the foreword of his second book: His first book ‘Swift Horses sharp Swords’ was an outpouring of years of learning and imbibing history from the western as well as Indian historians. He didn’t depend only on historians like R.C. Majumdar and Jadunath Sarkar, who have been banished from university shelves in India or considered ‘communal’ now. This book was not just a linear view of history but an integrated look at history with sociological, scientific, and strategic observations. It is an unconventional way of narrating history and happily so. It pulsates with life.
Vishnukant Saxena in News Bharati agrees with the author's proposition that backwardness in military technology was the main reason behind the debacle, while other historians normally blame disunity among the Hindu rulers.
Himanshu Narayan, Dean-Academics at Usha Martin University, Ranchi reviewed the book and found it interesting to see the analyses based on Game Theory and Networking in the discussion of “Survival of Hinduism”.

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