March 25th, 1656
Dakshin Bharatiya Empire, Region of Gujarat, The City of Karnavathi.
As the news of some of the major temples being attacked by terrorists from the Mughal Empire spread, the people were furious. Men began to simultaneously arrange pictures of Muhammad and take them to the streets, while the women, who were equally enraged, took out brooms and slippers from the house and started hitting the pictures of Muhammad. They began to demonstrate their anger in the streets.
"@#%@ The Mughal Empire! How dare you! @!#@"
"We want war, we want to end that !$#$@# empire!"
"If the military does not act, we #!$!Q# will!"
"Hey, look! It’s that #$@#$ bastard! It’s their people who committed these atrocities. Get him!"
Even though this produced an intense spread of nationalism and a momentarily palpable cohesion within the empire, it was also unfortunately detrimental to the Muslims, even the ones who were Dharmic in nature.
Whenever something major like the destruction of a temple happened within the Mughal Empire, the nobles did their best to control the spread of the news within their circles so that the people wouldn’t catch wind of it and start riots.
This is also true for the Hindu nobles, as even though they have the channels to know about the atrocities committed by the Mughal nobles, they would not divulge the news since it goes against their status quo. If riots start in their territory, they would be the ones tasked with putting them out, so why bother even spreading the news in the first place?
This situation is not the case in the Dakshin Bharatiya Empire, where the ruling class of nobles are non-existent and the crown is very willing to see the spread of information. Hence, the news of the terrorist attack and the people responsible for it spread like wildfire without anyone to control it, producing an extremely militant aspect of society.
In Hindu terms, the Kshatriya spirit among the people, which had been pushed down due to repeated setbacks after facing the invaders, is beginning to recover.
While The majority took to the streets and only demonstrated, there were also a small number who went around looking for Muslims, be they Dharmic or otherwise. Some Muslims, unfortunately, were beaten until their last breath.
The Muslim society became panicked and started to gather together to hide in one community.
Fortunately, noticing this societal change and aggression towards the Muslims, the government quickly acted and sent police officers to monitor the demonstrations on the streets and to stop any behaviour of deliberately targeting Dharmic Muslims.
Inadvertently, this made the people who refused to convert to the Dharmic faith convert to the Dharmic faith of Islam immediately in order to protect themselves since the police strictly provided absolute protection to the Dharmic Muslims and only ensured that traditional Muslims would not die. As for what would happen to the property, that was not the government’s consideration.
Vijay, who made this decision, had complex emotions in his mind. In the beginning, he did not want to use force to change the way the people of Islam did things, and he was happy with the gradual Dharmaization of the Islamic faith.
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But he only now realized that the people who wanted to happily coexist had already embraced the Dharmic belief system, and those who did not want to coexist but wanted to dominate, stubbornly clung to the traditional system, It is these traditional Islam followers that helped the terrorists kidnap the families of security personnel in various temples, and it is also they who helped in smuggling the explosives.
So Vijay decided to be ruthless this time. He would deliberately pressure the Islamic community to accept the ways of the subcontinent and move with the tide, or else he was demonstrating that they would be uprooted.
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Societal changes aside, preparations for war were going in full swing.
The military-industrial complex of the Dakshin Bharatiya Empire had gone into overdrive. All the smaller machinery companies built on the banks of small streams and tributaries immediately sprang into action. The 12-hour shifts were replaced by three eight-hour shifts. The machines were running at full capacity all the time, pumping out iron and steel products to contribute to the war effort.
Although this caused the machines to wear out faster, such concerns could no longer be considered, as the time to decide the fate of the empire had come to light.
Due to this do-or-die situation, More assembly plants were immediately put into action, and women’s participation in the workforce increased by several hundred per cent. Now, in the total workforce of the empire, women occupied 4%. Although it is still a long way from the theoretical 50%, it is progress from the sub-1% in 1653.
This caused the agricultural minister, Narasimha, to become immediately panicked, as what he had exaggerated to His Majesty before had unknowingly come to fruition, especially after the orders of His Majesty passed through the empire.
To appease Narasimha and to truly improve mechanization in agriculture, Vijay ordered research on animal-powered harvesters using gear mechanisms to be conducted by all the BIT institutes in the empire as well as the Academy of Sciences.
Understanding the seriousness of the matter, all the BIT academies and the Bharatiya Academy of Sciences, both civilian and military, worked together to start multiple project groups to hasten development. Teams were quickly formed because of the large talent pool that was now available by integrating all the scientific forces in the empire.
There was an atmosphere of war in various research teams as they competed with each other to produce faster results than the other teams.
Seeing the effectiveness of the model, after Vijay’s approval, multiple research teams were formed for the full-scale standardized improvement of machine tools. Due to some prior accumulation in this research, the work started quickly, and with the integration of various research from various institutes, some machine tools could already be upgraded.
Due to the drastic change in the economy that was already a little skewed, The civilian-driven economy almost immediately came to a standstill as the military economy took over. Workers in various factories, whether private or state-owned, started wearing military clothes, almost as if they were also preparing for war.
Due to the logistics department of the military directly taking control of the traffic situation, military logistics received priority everywhere, boosting the speed of transport. Due to this, Guns, artillery pieces, ammunition, medical supplies, grain, and grass immediately reached the frontline.
Hundreds of thousands of carriages set off immediately toward the frontier, carrying supplies like roots carrying nutrients to a plant. The true might of Bharat’s war machine began to show its edge.
The empire and its people were working hard, and Vijay was no different.
He formed a war room in the city of Karnavathi to deal with the upcoming battle, a battle on a scale that had never been fought in the world before.
Military officers came and went from the war room, and the analysts from the research and analysis wing he had recently formed were constantly sifting through data and scavenging useful information.
Scientists and soldiers alike worked together to produce any possible advantage for the empire.
The war room, full of activity, resembled a den of sweaty gamers trying their best to win a tournament. However, the tournament that the Bharatiya Empire was currently facing was one where defeat meant the disappearance of the whole empire. They couldn’t afford to lose.
"Roshan, do you have the detailed data now?" Vijay asked as he saw Roshan approaching with a document.
Roshan nodded with a serious expression and handed over the document to Vijay.
He explained as His Majesty started to read:
"Your Majesty, from the region of Punjab there are 300,000 troops, from the region of Rajasthan there are 200,000, from the region of Madhya Pradesh there are 600,000, from the region of Lahore there are 200,000, from the region of Nepal and Bhutan there are 50,000, from the region of Bengal there are 400,000, and finally, from the region of Uttar Pradesh there are 800,000 troops."
"In total, we can estimate 2,500,000 troops equipped with 20,000 or more artillery pieces and 500,000 or more flintlock and musket rifles of various calibers."
"This army is divided into four battle groups, each comprising 25% of the total forces. That is, each battle group has 635,000 troops equipped with 5,000 artillery pieces and 136,000 rifles."
"The first battle group, attacking from the western part of Madhya Pradesh, is confirmed to be commanded by Feroze Jung, the man responsible for the fall of Nepal."
"The second battle group, from the eastern part of Maharashtra, is commanded by Shahzad Khan. He is a descendant of the Dost Dynasty."
"The third battle group, from the region of Jharkhand, is commanded by Ammar-Ul-Pasha, a prominent Mughal commander with multiple victories under his belt and also a prominent noble."
"The fourth battle group is commanded by Mohammad Azlan, coming from Bengal, a descendant of the Murshidabad Nawab Dynasty."
Vijay was thoughtful but then he noticed something and asked, "Are all these four battle groups targeted towards our frontier? Is there no battle group going towards the Ahom kingdom or Baluchistan?"
Roshan shook his head and replied, "No, Your Majesty. It seems that the Mughal Empire is going all out and putting all its eggs in one basket."
Vijay: "Hmm, it makes sense. If we fail to defend our homeland, the rest of our territories are also going to fall consecutively, and with our fall, the Ahom kingdom will be nothing but a fish on the chopping board.
I can imagine what Muhammad’s plan is." "Then I assume there are reserve forces stationed on the northeastern front in Bengal against Ahom, and the forces in Sindh are positioned against Baluchistan?" Vijay asked, figuring out the rest of the details.
Roshan: "Yes, Your Majesty. Just as you said, there are 100,000 reserve forces stationed against the Ahom Kingdom and 40,000 soldiers stationed against the region of Baluchistan."
Vijay: "Well it Makes sense. Baluchistan is very isolated and there are only a few places for entry and exit after all, so too many troops are not required to defend against it," Vijay nodded as he managed to sort out the reasons for the low number of troops in Sindh.
With all the details confirmed, Vijay took a deep breath and immediately let it out, changing his mindset to the most favourable condition. His mind went into battle mode and his eyes became sharp, as if ready to cut down anything in his way.
He wore his pitch-black armour along with shin guards, knee guards, shoulder guards, and a breastplate. Finally, he picked up the helmet that was shaped like a demon. This was worn by him to cover his identity and also to boost the morale of his troops since his identity was famous as the Crimson Knight, Rakhta Bija.
Finally, he picked up his beloved weapon, Rakta Astram, placed it in its holster, and was ready to enter the battlefield.
Before he left, he looked back at Roshan and inquired, "Are my orders being implemented accordingly?"
Roshan, who was in a daze, immediately woke up and replied without any delay, "Yes, Your Majesty. They are going according to your orders. All 2,300,000 militia soldiers have been contacted and are now on their way as we speak. All the 25,000 militia branches immediately responded, and 92 troops from each branch on average are being sent."
Vijay: "Good, good." " It looks like Training them for the last six months is paying off," he thought
Vijay: "Well then, what about the pathogen plan?"
Roshan: "It is going according to plan, Your Majesty."
Vijay didn’t say any more. He wore his helmet and left the war room, hoping that he would get a chance to witness the birth of his child in a few months.