The origins of the attempt to emasculate Hindus is definitely a post Gandhian phenomenon - a relic of the thought process that saw all violence as equally abhorrent, regardless of the context. https://twitter.com/TiwariNivedita/status/1249895146004480003

Thus, in Gandhian thought, you were not allowed to fight an invading army, or save yourself from a rapist during a communal riot. This thought process was not mainstream at all before the arrival of Gandhi at the political scene.

In fact, we had Anushilan Samitis across Bengal which prided themselves on both the physical and mental training of Hindu youth. Bankim Chandra and Abanindranath Thakur were writing ceaselessly about the valour in Hindu history.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose travelled the entire world to overthrow the British on the battlefield. Countless akhadas dotted the landscape of Bharat where folks chanted the name of Bajrangbali and continued the great tradition of malla yuddha.

Even in the Mahabharata, we find Arjuna, Krishna and many others extolling the virtues of kshatra dharma. The Ahimsa of the Shastras was not blanket non violence. If your non violence led to matsanyaya it was a dereliction of your duty.

But unfortunately, all these nuances were lost under the ham handed morality of Bapu. And worse, these were seized by the deracinated, self loathing intelligentsia to establish the default imagery that a good Hindu was a weak Hindu ashamed of himself.

Fortunately, the spirit of Bharat is far more vast than those in the elite drawing runs can comprehend. So while this imagery got amplified in their echo chambers, the rest of Bharatiyas continued to be devoted to the spirit of Prithviraj and Shivaji and Kumara Kamapanna...

The bellyache that we see today is the elites realising how futile their efforts at brainwashing the common Bharatiya has been, and how stupid they look when they see an useful idiot staring back at them from the mirror

Thanks @TiwariNivedita for inspiring this thread - (shameless plug) I wrote about both Alexander and Ashoka in my upcoming book, Sutradhar