Aryan invasion myth continues
Second Opinion: RN Chawla
This refers to Kanchan Gupta's article "Aiyya, berating Ram is passe" (Coffee Break, September 20). Ever since the eruption of the Ram Setu controversy, leaders of the DMK have been using derogatory language against Sri Ram. The Dravidian movement launched by Periyar is known for its Hindu-baiting based on the discredited Aryan invasion theory.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has once again invoked the same discredited theory to assault Hinduism. It will do Mr Karunanidhi a lot of good if he read page 63 of AL Basham's The Wonder That Was India. Basham's account of ancient Tamil is something like this: "In the earliest stratum of Tamil literature, which was probably composed in the early centuries AD, we find the three kingdoms (the reference is to Cola -- the Coromandel, Kerala or Cera -- Malabar and Pandya -- the southern tip of the Peninsula) in a state of continual warfare. Their kings and the many lesser chieftains who are also mentioned seem to have been more blood-thirsty than those of the North and the literature contains hints of massacres and other atrocities such as are rarely heard of in Sanskrit literature. One passage even suggests cannibal feasts after battle. The ancient Tamil by no means perfectly Aryanised, was a man of very different stamp from gentle and thoughtful descendent. Wild and ruthless, delighting in war and drink, worshipping fierce gods with bacchanalian dances, passionate in love, he compares strikingly with the grave and knightly warriors of Sanskrit epics, which were probably receiving final form at the time when the poems of the Tamil anthologies were being written. A few centuries were to alter the picture somewhat and the next stratum of Tamil literature shows a much deeper penetration of Aryan ideals and standards but a streak of ruthlessness and disregard for individual life is evident in Dravidian character down to the fall of Vijayanagara."
Instead of being carried away by the myth of Aryan invasion, the readers can now draw appropriate inference. Was it exploitation by an invader or humanisation of a pre-existing culture? Basham writes: "Very early the Tamils took to the sea... they twice invaded Ceylon. First soon after the death of the great king Devanampriya Tissa and the second a little later." This shows that ancient Tamils have themselves been invaders with their historicity established.
âKnow global history for a broader perspective of important eventsâ
Staff Reporter
History learning in the country is India-centric, says Chairman of ICHR
Photo: R. Ashok
FOR POSTERITY: Vice-Chancellor of Bharathidasan University M. Ponnavaikko (right) handing over a CD to ICHR Chairman Sabyasachi Bhattacharya in Tiruchi on Thursday. â
TIRUCHI: Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Sabyasachi Bhattacharya has advocated inclusion of global history in syllabus.
<b>
History learning in the country is India-centric and students must know global history for a broader perspective of important events, Prof. Bhattacharya said inaugurating the ICHR National Seminar on âEarly Resistance to Colonial Rule in Tamil Nadu: From Polygars to 1857 Revoltâ, organised by the Department of History, Bharathidasan University, on Thursday.</b>
Explaining why the country could not obtain moral and material support from other parts of the world at the time of 1857 uprising of an unprecedented scale when people, cutting across religions, took a conscious political decision to revolt against the colonists, the ICHR Chairman said that despite the rivalry among England, France, Germany and Russia, all were imperialist powers with an ultimate objective of expanding European domination â sometimes in complicity or conflict â on Asian people.
Yet, the political ideologies that arose from the French revolution and other revolutions that the imperialist European countries witnessed since late eighteenth century, coupled with the mid-nineteenth century romanticism, created a strong nationalist streak.
The middle class Europeans among whom the idea of national self-determination as an extension of individual self-determination erupted sympathised with Indian people. The United States watched the happenings in India with interest, but had no sympathy towards Indian subjects, he said.
Presiding over and presenting the first CD containing digital documentation on the seminar topic to Prof. Bhattacharya, Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko spoke of the need to record real history based on facts from various proofs. History should not be left for political surmise, he emphasised, committing the required facilities to the History Department to start a Museum for depiction of important happenings in the world right from the first century through charts.
Seminar Director N. Rajendran, Professor and Head, Department of History, regretted that though Pulithevan, Kattabomman and Marudhu Brothers undertook anti-colonial struggle during the mid-eighteenth century, the role of Tamil Nadu in the freedom struggle has been bypassed or marginalised.
He disputed the generalisation that Madras Presidency was calm at the time of 1857 uprising, citing its invocation of repressive laws as hypothesis.
Though on a lesser scale compared to 1857 uprising, the Vellore Mutiny was a major uprising of the sepoys of the British army, he said.
Colonial documents on these events available at the Archives at Chennai; National Archives, New Delhi; and India Office Library, London, have been digitised on CD.
An interesting article !!
http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/colItems...C20030201075235
Columns by Nanditha Krishna
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Creations
The itihasa tradition
Modern Indian historians have, unfortunately, thrown out the baby with the bathwater. While they rightly reject the âfableâ element in earlier histories, they have also discarded the historical element in our oral literary traditions, thereby losing an important source of information
At a recent seminar in Chennai on âWriting Historyâ, apolitical historians â those who are genuinely interested in the past, and not as a tool of political control â defined their vision of history. The seminar brought together primary, secondary and tertiary teachers of history, besides writers of history and of history textbooks, and other historians of a high academic calibre.
History must be based on fact, they all averred, not on individual reading of events: ââFacts are sacred, comments are freeââ. It should be objective, not motivated. It should be interesting, brief and crisp, with less names, dates and laborious information that have to be âmuggedâ.
The focus should shift to social, cultural and scientific developments, which are more interesting than the political, with greater emphasis on contemporary events. It must include local, state and national histories. Textbooks should be updated regularly to include new discoveries.
Good communication skills are essential for producing material that is both factual and interesting. Historical methodologies must be established, with the story element to create awareness and knowledge linked with analysis, utilizing computer simulation methodologies: âwhyâ and âhowâ must be answered. If a student learns to analyze history, it will be a useful tool all his life.
Fifty years of motivated history made me wonder whether unbiased history is possible in India. Further, while Indian historians use literature as source material for social and economic systems, they do not accept the same literature as source material for events.
Although history started as a discipline in seventeenth century Europe, the Greek Herodotus is described as the first historian. However, in what seems like déjà vu, his contemporaries called him the ââFather of Liesââ, believing that one could not write truthfully of contemporary events, till Cicero anointed him the ââFather of Historyââ.
Medieval European mathematicians challenged history as having no methodology and therefore no knowledge base, lying in the ârealm of imagination and memoryâ. But maths, after all, starts with assumptions, which are not limited to history. Different schools of historiography also appeared, such as the Annales and Marxist, right and left. History became open to interpretation, to be seen as the writer chose.
Contrary to popular belief, ancient India did have historical traditions. The Rig Veda refers to eulogies of rulers and sages â gathas (songs) and narashamshis (praises/genealogies of rulers and sages) sung during ceremonies. By the later Vedic period, three more historical genres had been added: akhyana (historical narratives), purana (ancient events) and itihasa (ââthus it happenedââ).
Being oral traditions sung by priest-poets, the religious aspect invariably crept in. According to the Upanishads, three clans â the Angirasas, Bhrigus and Atharvanas â combined to develop the itihasa-purana tradition of historical writing, as opposed to drama and poetry which were regarded as the result of creative imagination.
The Ramayana and Mahabharata were also composed in the itihasa tradition, but it was the Bhrigu-angirasa contribution to the puranas that is considerable. The other historian group was that of the Sutas, court minstrels or bards, well versed in Vedic lore, of whom the most famous was Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata. They used dance to narrate their stories, a fact mentioned by Bana and sculpted on a Sanchi bas-relief.
Historical narratives of ancient India consisted of important events arranged in the form of a story, to illustrate moral, spiritual and social truths. Royal glory is developed as the efforts of the king, with chronology used to order the sequence of actions rather than dates. The best example of the akhyana is the famous Harshacharita of Bana, who also praises the Mahabharata as the ideal itihasa.
To the historian of ancient India, history was more than a succession of events. The fulfillment of the purpose of human existence, the vagaries of destiny and the meaning of events in terms of the aim of life were paramount. Political intrigue, war and familial discord were impediments in the life of an individual who had to achieve a higher goal.
History was generally conveyed through biography. The Ramayana of Valmiki, Mahabharata of Vyasa, Harshacharita of Bana, Vikramankadevacharita of Bilhana, Rajatarangini of Kalhana, Mudrarakshasa of Vishakhadatta and Prithvirajavijaya (the story of Prithviraj Chauhan) of Jayanaka are some important biographical histories belonging to this genre. Rajasthani folk songs, describing the lives and achievements of local Rajput rulers (who are also given divine genealogies), also belong to this tradition. The books themselves give an idea of where fact ends and creativity begins. The Ramayana starts with Valmiki asking Narada to describe the perfect man. Narada narrates the story of Rama in four pages. Valmiki fills seven books!
The British, who first ââwroteââ and interpreted Indian history as we know it today, used Megasthenesâ Indica, or Alexanderâs invasion, as the marker for the beginning of Indian history. To study Indian historical works from the European point of view presents several problems. European history is based on material culture and achievements, representing a total break with the earlier tradition. It is essential to understand the ancient Indian historianâs idea of history from the perspective of his environment and the world he lived in, and to translate it, thereafter, into contemporary language.
Unfortunately, the modern Indian historian threw out the baby with the bathwater. While he rightly rejects the ââfableââ element in earlier histories, he also discards the historical element, thereby losing an important source of information. Indian tradition has always distinguished between the philosophical and spiritual shrutis, the socially binding smritis, the literary kavyas and the historical itihasas, never crossing the line. Kalidasaâs works, for example, are never considered to be itihasa in spite of heroes and heroines taken from history.
Indian itihasa must be understood in the larger context of Indian culture, in that kings were expected to fulfill a divinely ordained role, and their lives interpreted in that tradition. By overlooking the historical process in the development of tradition, there is the danger of losing its significance. The modern historian celebrates historical consciousness, while the ancient and medieval historian lived in an ideal world, steeped in Vedic culture and based on the authority of the âârevealedââ word. Historical events of the past were located with reference to their contemporary values. Few contemporary historians read original sources, lacking knowledge of Sanskrit and Tamil, both essential for the study of ancient India.
An older tradition need not necessarily be more authentic than a later one, although it would definitely recall more ancient traditions. The Vishnu Purana may be much later than the Mahabharata, but its descriptions of the events of Krishnaâs life are no less authentic.
Contemporary Indian historians have neglected to study the process that transmutes fact into myth and, thereby, to separate myth from fact, history from fable. The historical process reveals itself through the haze of myth and legend. For example, tales of animal incarnations and battles between man and animal would reflect an age of totemic wars, while divine origins were created to establish legitimacy to rule.
We need a history of India that is not constantly attacked for its authenticity or interpretation. We have to understand that a different age produced a different type of history, but facts do not change. The divinity of Rama may be based on faith, but his existence is based on the literary evidence of itihasa. We have a strong literary tradition; if we cannot trust that, what do we have left?
Archaeological discoveries are changing perceptions, but few historians are studying them. We must produce one single, consistent history. While students must appreciate the wonder that was India, they must also criticize the inadequacies and mistakes. We must not end up with textbooks that praise a crook like Robert Clive, yet doubt the existence of Rama, King of Ayodhya.
Nanditha Krishna is Director, C P Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation and can be reached at nankrishna@vsnl.com
11-04-2007, 11:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-05-2007, 12:04 AM by Bodhi.)
<b>Hauma Hamiddha Ji, (and Ashok Kumar Ji if he reads it,)</b>
While the leanings and views of Rahul Sankrityayan are nothing secret, what is your opinion on his quality of scholarship?
More I read him, the more clear it becomes that he does not hesitate to compromise with truth (as he knows) for the 'cause'. Also, it becomes painfully clear, how, just like modern left scholars like DN Jha, Srimali or RS Sharma, he had no problems using history-writing for pushing the ideology forward? Please tell me I went somewhere terribly wrong.
I referred to Jaya Yaudheya. His objective seems, not the lofty aim of unearthing the lost tradition of Yaudheya-s, but even more to show the Gupta-era as suppressive and tyrannic. Gupta era about which even hostile european authers have to admit about, being the 'happiest period anywhere in the world'. But, well, Sankrityayan has to prove with history, that "suppression has been the foundation of economic progress in history". How could the peoples of that era have been happy if the "kingdom" was prosperous! How could a kingdom tolerate a people's republic that were Yaudheya-s! So Yaudheya-s become his laboratory. For RS, less mantrashalinah, and more jana-gana. Characters even blame Kalidasa to have ignored them thereby helping suppress their narrative! It does not cross him, or he choses to ignore, that Kavikulguru may have pre-dated the events he is mentioning in his novel? Same zeal on display which can be seen in the writers of "People's History" elsewhere.
I then referred to, let me confess - with some particular expectations from a scholar like him - to his another and less known work - 'Islam Dharma Ki Rooparekha'. It took the librarian a couple of hours to look for it. And finally, the book was found in a pitiable condition - literally tied with roaps to hold that only copy together. And well, the book is probably the most sympathetic account of Islam, a "Buddhist" scholar can ever come up with. As per this book Islam is a wonderful religion of peace, and mahatma muhammad is a peace-messanger. Almost everything that will make islami-s having hard time to explain, are easily and very schoilarly explained away - including Kafir, Jihad, Muhammad marrying wife of his adopted son ... Same auther who has hard time living with the fact that a certain bhakt-acharya in ayodhya "behaves like a woman, and considers rama 'her' husband" (in another work - 'Dimagi Gulami')!! I looked to confirm that the book's author is indeed our Sankrityayan - who is known for seeing things which other can not see - particularly in the suppressed narratives and comparative religion, that too someone who was formally trained in the pathashala-s of Arya Samaj on the folly that is Islam. And he also wrote this particular one in Sanskrit!! In sanskrit first then in Hindi. Allah-upanishadam type!
In 'Manav-Samaj', some chapters seem like a DN Jha writing in Hindi, with 50 year old facts and style of course. The same obsession with Aryans, and same obsession with Beef-Eating.
So I still wonder. I can not beleive a 'scholar' like him - could he have genuinely beleived in what he wrote - or was it only his political-ideological compulsion?
Was browsing the net when I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6NoZteIdBc
Looks more professional than the tons of crappy videos out there,
hopefully the site will be just as good.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Enlightener of true Bharat's history Shri. Oak passes away!</b>
December 5, 2007
Shri. P.N. Oak
Pune - Shri. P.N. Oak, a senior historian who painstakingly researched and proved to the world with evidence that âAll Islamic structures in India originally belonged to Hindusâ passed away at 3.30 am on 4th December at his Pune residence due to old age. He was 90 years old. His family comprises of his wife, a son, two daughters and grandchildren.
Shri. P.N. Oak was born in the year 1917. He served the military forces for some years. He dedicated his entire life for his goal of researching Indiaâs true history. His literary works, which have stemmed from his research, are a valuable token for Hindutva. His famous literary works include âMoglaicha Udayaastâ and âTaj Mahal navhe Tejomahalayâ. (Taj Mahal no Tejomahalay)<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
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Condolences to the family of this true hero and Dharmic man.
01-19-2008, 04:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-19-2008, 04:28 AM by dhu.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b> Joining a civilisation</b>
Nayanjot Lahiri
January 04, 2008
Â
New Delhiâs National Museum houses an outstanding Harappan gallery, one that unfailingly attracts visitors. Not many, though, stop to wonder about the objects from Mohenjodaro and Harappa displayed there. If India â as we have been told â had lost her Indus heritage because most Indus sites in 1947 fell within the national boundaries of Pakistan, how has she retained such a superb collection of Indus artefacts from those âlostâ cities?
An answer to this can be excavated out of the treasure trove of files in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This is because the ASI was centrally involved in tortuous negotiations through which undivided Indiaâs past was partitioned.
Why, though, were these negotiations so twisted and prolonged? The Partition Council itself, in October 1947, had resolved that museums would be divided on a territorial basis. This Council had been set up to deal with the administrative consequences of Partition, and decided on a wide range of issues, from revenue and domicile to records and museums. In addition to its decision concerning a territorial division of museums, the council also stipulated that when the territory of a province was partitioned, the museum exhibits of the provincial museums would also be physically divided. On this basis, the exhibits in the Lahore Museum which belonged to the united Province of Punjab before Partition, were to be split between East Punjab and West Punjab. This was straightforward enough.
More complicated though was the fate of objects that had been sent on temporary loan to places which, on August 15, 1947, happened to be on the wrong side of the border, far away from the original museums to which they belonged. On that date, we know that there were objects from Harappa, Taxila and Mohenjodaro in India, and in London as well. These were on loan to the Royal Academy of Arts. In its wisdom, therefore, the Partition Council ruled that all objects that had been removed for temporary display after January 1, 1947, were to be returned to the original museums.
For Pakistan, this did not pose any problems in relation to most museums, since nothing had been removed from their precincts after January 1. At Harappa, some antiquities had been taken out of its site museum in July and September 1946, and these they were willing to treat as belonging to India. The real problem, though, revolved around the antiquities of Mohenjodaro.
This is because, on the day of Partition, as many as 12,000 objects from Mohenjodaro were in Delhi. Since Mohenjodaro fell within the territory of Pakistan, the objects should have fallen in their share. However, Indiaâs negotiators maintained that these rightfully belonged to India because they had not been removed for after January 1, 1947 from the original museum (which was at Mohenjodaro) but came from Lahore. Similarly, they had not been removed for the purposes of temporary display but because, as early as 1944, the Director General of Archaeology, Mortimer Wheeler, had wanted to concentrate all the best Indus objects in a Central National Museum. It was in the absence of such a museum that it had been decided that Lahore Museum would act as a substitute, pending the establishment of a Central National Museum. Wheeler had continued to reiterate that âall objects from Mohenjodaro now on exhibition at Lahore are deposited by the Central Government on loan, and the Punjab Government has no lien upon them.â
It was this â the question of intention about the future disposal of the objects in a Central National Museum â that was central to the contentious dispute around how the antiquities were to be divided. Several formulae were suggested and rejected, pressure tactics were used by both parties. In order to make things difficult, the West Punjab government postponed the actual handing over of East Punjabâs share of the Lahore Museum holdings till such time that India had handed over to Pakistan their share from the central museums. And a final decision on the central museums remained pending till the Mohenjodaro matter was sorted out.
That India considered Indus objects to be an integral part of its own heritage was equally an issue. N.P. Chakravarti, who succeeded Wheeler as Director General in 1948, said it in so many words when he declared that âThe Indus Valley Civilisation as such does not merely represent the civilisation of Pakistan but has a direct bearing on the civilisation of the whole of India and Pakistan and certainly the 300 million in India have quite a large interest in that civilisation, particularly as India has no longer any jurisdiction over these sites.â As it turned out, Chakravarti was prescient â over the past five decades hundreds of Indus civilisation sites have been discovered and several excavated across the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. When Chakravarti wrote though, such sites could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Gujarat has more than a hundred Harappan sites today;Â around 1947, Rangpur was perhaps the only site which had been reported and studied.
In any case, eventually, after many rounds of negotiations and a massive exchange of correspondence, the Indian representatives on the Museum Committee in 1949 agreed to a division down the middle. As they put it, in order to âprovide a firm foundation for future good-will and collaborationâ, they were willing to oversee the division of antiquities from Mohenjodaro, and two other Indus civilisation sites (Jhukar and Chanhudaro), between India and Pakistan on a 50:50 basis. This physical division, as it came to be implemented, covered all kinds of Indus objects ranging from seals and statuary to ordinary artefacts of stone, clay and metal. Even potsherds were equally apportioned, although Pakistan waived all claims to any share in the skeletal material from Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Pakistan was also expected to give India as comprehensive a duplicate collection as possible from Taxila.
Tragic, however, was the fate of four articles whose form was fragmented because this formula was foisted unthinkingly on everything that could be divided in this way. These were two gold necklaces from Taxila, a carnelian and copper girdle of Mohenjodaro, and a magnificent Mohenjodaro necklace made up of jade beads, gold discs and semi-precious stones. They were broken up and divided down the middle. So, for example, India and Pakistan agreed to break up the Mohenjodaro girdle, each receiving one terminal, 42 elongated carnelian beads, 72 small globular beads and 6 spacers. Oddly enough, nowhere in the correspondence is there a sense that the character of these objects was being destroyed forever. There is only anxiety about carefully adhering to the arithmetic of division.
Some 60 years after those turbulent years, is it possible for our nations to be self-reflexive? Can these beads and terminals be brought together again? Can we create a unified Indus exposition and exhibition which will travel to and give the younger generation of both nations a fuller sense of its shared heritage? While this cannot change the principles on which our pasts were partitioned, it will certainly restore â if only temporarily â some integrity to those sundered objects and collections.
Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology at the University of Delhi<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. It will end in TSP stealing the other half or substituting a fake. Enough of this == business.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> 'Sir Vidia Gets It Badly Wrong'
OUTLOOK India, March 15, 2004
William Dalrymple grants Naipaul his eminence, but challenges his jaundiced notions of Indian history <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Rather than the 60,000 looted temples of RSS myth, Eaton writes that he can find evidence for around 80 desecrations "whose historicity appears reasonable certain", and that these demolitions tended to take place in very particular circumstances: that is, in the context of outright military defeats of Hindu rulers by one of the Indian sultanates, or when "Hindu patrons of prominent temples committed acts of disloyalty to the Indo-Muslim states they served. Otherwise, temples lying within Indo-Muslim sovereign domains, viewed as protected state property, were left unmolested".
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Eaton sees the attacks on temples not so much as the introduction to India of a new spirit of iconoclasm, so much as the continuation of the existing pre-Islamic practice of destroying or abducting the protecting state deity whose power was politically linked to the sovereignty of the defeated ruler: "Early medieval Indian history (of the pre-Muslim period) abounds in instances of temple desecration that occurred amidst interdynastic conflicts," he writes. "In AD 642...the Pallava king, Narasimhavarman I, looted the image of Ganesha from the Chalukyan capital of Vatapi. Fifty years later, armies from those same Chalukyas invaded North India and brought back to the Deccan...images of Ganga and Yamuna, looted from defeated powers there. In the eighth century, Bengali troops sought revenge on King Lalitaditya's kingdom of Kashmir by destroying the image of Vishnu Vaikuntha, the state deity."
And so on. Paradoxically, by destroying royal temples intimately linked with the protection of Hindu kings, and by abducting the tutelary state deities, Muslim rulers were in fact acting in accordance with Indian tradition, just as they were when they claimed descent from the Pandava heroes of the Mahabharataâas did the Muslim ruler of Kashmirâor portrayed themselves as supporters of the Ramrajya, as was the claim of the Mughals.
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In the above article, WD openly challenges Naipaul as a closet Hindutvavadi, and a non-scholar. Doing so, he relies upon all the debunked theories like Vijayanagaram was not what it used to be thought as - a "Hindu kingdom in face of Islamic onslaught", and its destruction was not at all the work of an Islamic zeel, but pure politico-economics etc., and that iconoclasm displayed by Islamic Rulers in India was but a continuation of the same practice by the earlier Hindu kings themselves and so on.
The above bull***t from Eaton was so brilliantly demolished by K Elst, in one of the articles in his book "Problems with Secularism". That article had appeared in Outlook too, but I can not find online resource of that article.
Massa Dalrymple:
Sah, it appears you did not get the memo: Indians are no longer going to be fooled by doctored history written by old school white guys. I emphasize "old school", because there are several intelligent white people who are interested in the truth and nothing but the truth. So go pop your pimple, Massa Dalrymple.
<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Jan 29 2008, 05:41 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Jan 29 2008, 05:41 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->is this the article refuting eaton.
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...dhya/eaton.html
[right][snapback]77794[/snapback][/right]
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Massive Evidence of Temple Destruction:
One Western author who has become very popular among India�s history-writers is the American scholar Prof. Richard M. Eaton. Unlike his colleagues, he has done some original research pertinent to the issue of Islamic iconoclasm, though not of the Ayodhya case specifically. A selective reading of his work, focusing on his explanations but keeping most of his facts out of view, is made to serve the negationist position regarding temple destruction in the name of Islam.
Yet, the numerically most important body of data presented by him concurs neatly with the classic (now dubbed �Hindutva�) account. In his oft-quoted paper �Temple desecration and Indo-Muslim states�, he gives a list of �eighty� cases of Islamic temple destruction. �Only eighty�, is how the secularist history-rewriters render it, but Eaton makes no claim that his list is exhaustive. Morover, eighty isn�t always eighty.
Thus, in his list, we find mentioned as one instance: �1094: Benares, Ghurid army�. Did the Ghurid army work one instance of temple destruction? Eaton provides his source and there we read that in Benares, the Ghurid royal army �destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations�. This way, practically every one of the instances cited by Eaton must be read as actually ten, or a hundred, or as in this case, even a thousand temples destroyed. Even Eaton�s non-exhaustive list, presented as part of �the kind of responsible and constructive discussion that this controversial topic so badly needs�, yields the same thousands of temple destructions ascribed to the Islamic rulers in most relevant pre-1989 histories of Islam and in pro-Hindu publications.
That part of course is not highlighted in secularist papers exploiting Eaton�s work. Far more popular, however, is the spin which Eaton puts in this data: Islam cannot be blamed for the acts of Muslim idol-breakers, the blame lies elsewhere....
Apparently in good faith, but nonetheless in exactly the same manner as the worst Indian history falsifiers, Eaton discusses the record of Islam in India while keeping the entire history of Islam outside of India out of view. This history would show unambiguously that what happened in India was merely a continuation of Prophet Mohammad�s own conduct in Arabia and his successors� conduct during the conquest of West and Central Asia.
That the Arabian precedent is ignored is all the more remarkable when you consider that the stated immediate objective for Eaton�s paper was Sita Ram Goel�s endeavor to �document a pattern of wholesale temple destruction by Muslims in the pre-British period�. Goel�s elaborately argued thesis, telling left unmentioned here by Eaton, is precisely that Islamic iconoclasm in India follows a pattern set in the preceding centuries in West Asia and accepted as normative in Islamic doctrine. Eaton�s glaring omission of this all-important precedent makes his alternative explanation of Islamic iconoclasm in India suspect beforehand.
Hindu Iconoclasm?
<b>
Instead of seeking the motives of the Islamic idol-breakers in Islam, Eaton seeks it elsewhere: in Hinduism. He admits that during the Hindu re-conquest of Muslim-occupied territories: �Examples of mosque desecrations are strikingly few in number.� Yet, in his opinion, Hindus had been practicing their own very specific form of iconoclasm in earlier centuries. Though they themselves seem to have lost the habit by Shivaji�s time, it was this Hindu tradition which the Muslim invaders copied: �The form of desecration that showed the greatest continuity with pre-Turkish practice was the seizure of the image of the defeated king�s state deity and its abudction to the victor�s capital as a trophy of war.�</b>
One of the examples cited is this: �When Firuz Tughluk invaded Orissa in 1359 and learned that the region�s most important temple was that of Jagannath located inside the raja�s fortress in Puri, he carried off the stone image if the god and installed it in Delhi �in an ignominous position�.� And likewise, there are numerous instances of idols built into footpaths, lavatories and other profane positions. This is not disputed, but can any Hindu precedent be cited for it?
<b>
The work for which Indian secularists are most grateful to Eaton, is his digging up of a few cases of what superficially appears to be of Hindu iconoclasm: �For, while it is true that contemporary Persian sources routinely condemn idolatory (but-parasti) on religious grounds, it is also true that attacks on images patronized by enemy kings had been, from about the sixth century A.D. on, thoroughly integrated into Indian political behavior.� Because a state deity�s idol was deemed to resonate with the state�s fortunes (so that its accidental breaking apart was deemed an evil omen for the state itself), the generalization of idol worship in temples in the first millennium A.D. oddly implied that �early medieval history abounds in instances of temple desecration that occurred admidst inter-dynastic conflicts.�</b>
If the �eighty� (meaning thousands of) cases of Islamic iconoclasm are only a trifle, the �abounding� instances of Hindu iconoclasm, �thoroughly integrated� in Hindu political culture, can reasonably be expected to number tens of thousands. Yet, Eaton�s list, given without reference to primary sources, contains, even in a maximalist reading (i.e., counting �two� when one king takes away two idols from one enemy�s royal temple), only 18 individual cases. This even includes the case of �probably Buddhist� idols installed in a Shiva temple by Govinda III, the Rashtrakuta conqueror of Kanchipuram, not after seizing them but after accepting them as a pre-emptive tribute offered by the fearful king of Sri Lanka.
In this list, cases of actual destruction amount to exactly two: �Bengali troops sought revenge on king Lalitaditya by destroying what they thought was the image of Vishnu Vaikuntha, the state deity of Lalitaditya�s kingdom in Kashmir�, and: �In the early tenth century, the Rashtrakut monarch Indra III not only destroyed the temple of Kalapriya (at Kalpa near the Jamuna river) patronized by the Rashtrakutas� deadly enemies the Pratiharas, but took away special delight in recording the fact.�
The latter is the only instance of temple destruction in the list, even though rehotical sleight-of-hand introduces it as representative of a larger phenomenon: �While the dominant pattern here was one of looting royal temples and carrying off images of state deities, we also hear of Hindu kings engaging in the destruction of royal temples of their adversaries.�
So, what is the �dominant pattern� in the sixteen remaining cases? As we saw in the case of the Lankan idols in Kanchipuram, the looted (or otherwise acquired) idols were respectfully installed in a temple in the conqueror�s seat of power, e.g., a solid image of Vishnu Vaikuntha, seized earlier by the Pratihara king Herambapala, �was seized from the Pratiaharas by the Candella king Yasovarman and installed in the Lakshamana temple of Khajuraho�. So, the worship of the image continued, albeit in a new location; and the worship of the old location was equally allowed to continue, albeit with a new idol as the old and prestigious one had been taken away. In both places, the existing system of worship was left intact.
This is in radical contrast with Islamic iconoclasm, which was meant to disrupt Hindu worship and symbolize or announce its definite and complete annihilation. There is no case of an Islamic conqueror seizing a Hindu idol and taking it to his capital for purposes of continuing its worship there. Hindu conquerors did not want to destroy or even humiliate or disrupt the religion of the defeated state. On the contrary, in most cases, the winning and the defeated party shared the same religion and were in no mood to dishonor it in any way. The situation with Islamic conquerors is quite the opposite.
That is why Eaton fails to come up with the key evidence for his thesis of a native Hindu origin of Muslim iconoclasm. He can show us not a single document testifying that a Muslim conqueror committed acts of iconoclasm in imitation of an existing local Hindu tradition. On the contrary, when Islamic iconoclasts cared to justify their acts in writing, it was invariably with reference to the Islamic doctrine and the Prophet�s precedents of idol-breaking and of the war of extermination against idolatry.
No advanced education and specialist knowledge is required to see the radical difference between the handful of cases of alleged Hindu iconoclasm and the thousands of certified Islamic cases of proudly self-described iconoclasm. It is like the difference between an avid reader stealing a book from the library and a barbarian burning the library down. In one case, an idol is taken away from a temple, with respectful greetings to an officiating priest, in order to re-install it in another temple and restart its worship. In the other case, an idol is taken away from the ruins of a temple, with a final kick against the priest�s severed head, in order to install it in a lavatory for continuous profanation and mockery. Of the last two sentences, a secularist only retains the part that �an idol is taken away from the temple�, and decides that it�s all the same.
For Prof, Eaton�s information, it may be recalled that an extreme willful superficiality regarding all matters religious is a key premise of Nehruvian secularism. While such an anti-scholarly attitude may be understandable in the case of political activists parachuted into academic positions in Delhi, there is no decent reason why an American scholar working in the relative quiet of Tuscon, Arizona, should play their game.
Temples and Mosques as Political Centers
Prof. Eaton develops at some length the secularist theory that temple destruction came about, not as the result of an �essentialized �theology of iconoclasm� felt to be intrinsic to the Islamic religion�, but as an added symbolic dimension of the suppression of rebellions. In some cases this has an initial semblance of credibility, e.g., �Before marching to confront Shivaji himself, however, the Bijapur general [Afzal Khan] first proceeded to Tuljapur and desecrated a temple dedicated to the goddess Bhavani, to which Shivaji and his family had been personally devoted.�
Yet, the theory breaks down when the fate of mosques associated with rebellion are considered. Eaton himself mentions cases which ought to have alerted him to the undeniably religious discrimination in the decision of which places of worship to desecrate, e.g., Aurangzeb destroyed �temples in Jodhpur patronized by a former supporter of Dar Shikoh, the emperor�s brother and arch rival�. But Dara Shikoh surely also had Muslim supporters who did their devotions and perhaps even their intrigue plotting in mosques? Indeed, as a votary of Hindu-Muslim syncretism, he certainly also frequented mosques himself. So why did Aurangzeb not bother to demolish those mosques, if his motive was merely to punish rebels?
Eaton describes how a Sufi dissident, Shaikh Muhammadi, was persecuted by Aurangzeb for teaching deviant religious doctrines, and sought refute in a mosque. Aurangzeb managed to arrest him, but did not demolish the mosque. This incident plainly contradicts the secularist claim that if any temple destructions took place at all, the reason was non-religious, viz. the suppression of rebellion located in the temples affected. As per Eaton�s own data, we find that intrigues and rebellions involving mosques never led to the destruction of the mosque.
Once people have interiorized a certain framework of interpretation, they become capable of disregarding obvious facts which don�t fit their schemes. In this case, when explaining Hindu non-iconoclasm, Eaton insists in the contrived and demonstrably false theory of the political irrelevance of mosques even though a far simpler and well documented explanation is staring him in the face: unlike Muslims, Hindus disapproved of iconoclasm and preferred universal respect for people�s religious sensibilities.
Raj Bhoja�S Temple:
Contrary to the impression created in the secularist media, Prof. Eaton has not even begun to refute Sita Ram Goel�s thesis. He manages to leave all the arguments for Goel�s main thesis of an Islamic theology of iconoclasm undiscussed. Of Goel�s basic data in the fabled list of mosques standing on the ruins of temples, only a single one is mentioned: �an inscription dated 1455, found over the doorway of a tomb-shrine in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh� which mentions �the destruction of a Hindu temple by one Abdullah Shah Changal during the reign of Raja Bhoja, a renowned Paramara king who had ruled over the region from 1010 to 1053.�
In the main text, Eaton seems to be saying that Goel is an uncritical amateur who �accepts the inscription�s reference to temple destruction more or less at face value, as though it were a contemporary newspaper account reporting an objective fact�. But in footnote, he has to admit that Goel is entirely aware of the chronological problems surrounding old inscriptions: �Goel does, however, consider it more likely that the event took place during the reign of Raja Bhoja II in the late thirteenth century rather than during that of Raja Bhoja I in the eleventh century.�
So, at the time of my writing it has been twelve years since Goel published his list, and exactly one scholar has come forward to challenge one item in the list; who, instead of proving it wrong, settles for the ever-safe suggestion that it could do with some extra research. Given the eagerness of a large and well-funded crowd of academics and intellectuals to prove Goel wrong, I would say that that meager result amounts to a mighty vindication. And the fact remains that the one inscription that we do have on the early history of the Islamic shrine under discussion, does posit a temple destruction. So far, the balance of evidence is on the side of the temple is on the side of the temple destruction scenario, and if evidence for the non-demolition scenario is simply non-existent.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mundeshwari Temple in Bihar â Is it the oldest functional Hindu Temple in the World?
<img src='http://bp0.blogger.com/_OrPiYD1RcAs/R5bmIHAAYeI/AAAAAAAABZM/JN-xnOA-XSM/s320/Mundeshwari+Temple+Kaimur+Bihar.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Ma Mundeshwari Temple in Kaimur District of Bihar was recently in news due to the planned renovation and restoration by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Newspaper reports suggested that Mundeshwari Temple was built in 108 A D. Since then rituals and worship have been taking place at the temple without a break. Thus making it the oldest functional temple in the world.
The use of the term âoldestâ is a bit risky when talking about temples associated with Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Simply because no one has been able to clearly state how old Sanatana Dharma is. Say this temple is the oldest and immediately another person will be come with something much older.
So the safest option is to say that Ma Mundeshwari Temple in Kaimur District of Bihar is one of the oldest Hindu temples in the world.
Ma Mundeshwari Temple is situated atop the Kaimur Hill (608ft). The temple is in an octagonal shape. The sanctum sanctorum of the temple has an idol of Devi â Mundeshwari. There is also a âChaturmukha Shivlingâ in the sanctum sanctorum. A clear indication that Shiva and Shakti were worshipped here. Also an indication that the temple might be part of the Tantric cult which is quite popular in the Eastern part of India.
Apart from Shiva and Shakti, the temple also has idols of other popular gods in the Hindu pantheon including Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu and Mother Goddess. Temple materials and idols can be found scattered near this very rare octagonal shaped temple.
Experts believe that the temple was built during the Shaka Era.
Interestingly, the present caretaker of the temple is Muslim, yet another example of the religious harmony at the grassroots level in India. The temple attracts devotees during festivals like Ramnavami and Shivratri.
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02-03-2008, 02:32 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-04-2008, 12:26 AM by dhu.)
Upholding scientific principles of historical writing
C. Gouridasan Nair
<b>
âNCERT textbooks are used only in 3 per cent of schools in the country. The remaining 97 per cent of schools use textbooks that are much more communal.â</b>
â Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar
Professor K.N. Panikkar.
Professor K.N. Panikkar, the eminent historian who was recently elected General President of the Indian History Congress (IHC), talks about the tasks before historians today, and related issues. He says the Sethusamudram controversy underscores the need for historians to continue to invoke and reaffirm scientific principles of historical writing and interpretation. Excerpts:
As the general president of the Indian History Congress (IHC), how do you think its academic work and organisational practice could be further advanced?
The IHC has a well-established tradition of organising its work through annual conferences. Its strength lies in the large number of historians who come together on its platform. Paradoxically, that is also its weakness.
Given such large participation, it is unable to find enough time for what it is primarily meant for: reporting and discussing the ongoing research by its members. An unfortunate consequence of this paucity of time is that research pursued outside the main centres fails to get adequate attention.
One possible solution is to give freedom to scholars to organise panels on the areas of their interest â as is done in the International History Congress. Such an opening up may be particularly attractive to young historians who are grappling with new thematic and methodological issues.
Generally, what would you consider to be the main tasks before historians in India today?
The main task is to preserve, pursue and promote the basic tenets of history as a discipline, which has been facing methodological and interpretative challenges in recent times. Some of these challenges go against the grain of objective historical investigation and interpretation.
Among them, the threat to secular historiography from the communal camp has been the most serious one. However, it did not succeed in its mission because of resistance from within the discipline, of which the IHC has been at the forefront. Yet, the influence of communal interpretation has persisted.Therefore it is necessary to continue to invoke and affirm the scientific principles of historical writing.
The second task is related to the production of historical knowledge which is contingent upon the unearthing of âprimaryâ information about historical processes. The interpretative history is possible only when basic knowledge about historical events is available. Therefore the collection, documentation and systematisation of sources deserve particular attention. Thirdly, history should be brought closer to the social sciences through interdisciplinary research and analysis.
These three appear to be the most pressing tasks, among many other engagements, both theoretical and thematic, which demand the attention of historians.
History is being invoked by certain political forces to secure legitimacy for their unscientific positions. In the process they discard the rigour of historical inquiries, in favour of emotional appeal. How do historians meet this challenge? The Sethusamudram issue may be an example.
Historians should face such situations by scrupulously separating myth from history. In the popular imagination they are often seen as interchangeable. While myth may help to unravel some riddles of history, myth is not history. There is also the question of evidence without which history cannot be constructed. In the Sethusamudram issue what is important is to respect this separation. The controversy is a result of its possible potential for religious mobilisation. It has happened in the past in the case of Ramjanmabhoomi. Historians then played an important role in bringing out the historical evidence, or the lack of it, regarding the temple.
They have not done it sufficiently in the case of Sethusamudram. It would be good if those who decide these matters pay heed to the professional opinion of historians.
There is increasing interest in micro-history. Is there a deflection of attention from the larger issues as a result?
There is such a tendency, particularly with the influence of post-modern theories. In a way it is a global phenomenon. But the focus on micro-history need not necessarily dissociate the micro from the macro. As Eric Hobsbawm observed, âmore historians find the microscope useful at present, but this does not necessarily mean that they reject the telescopes as out of date.â In Indian historiography, micro-history has not had many practitioners and therefore methodological issues have not been adequately debated. For a long time mega-narratives have held centre stage.
However, micro-history is now gaining ground, particularly in the writing of regional history. The history of smaller localities is being written, which has brought to the fore a variety of methodological and conceptual questions. Micro-history would unearth new types of evidence and highlight new dimensions of social and cultural diversity. The multiplicity of voices it would recover would enrich the quality of historical assessment. However, they cannot be addressed by dissociating the micro from the macro. [This can be done] only by exploring their integral connection.
There is a kind of fast-forwarding taking place in life, with technology intervening tremendously in our lives. Do you think these processes in contemporary life impinge on historiography?
I think it does. The way history is now being approached is a direct reflection of the larger changes in society. Consider, for instance, the current interest in global history. It is not the old World History. It is directly influenced by what is happening around us today, in technology, in politics and in economy. In fact, the opening session of the International Conference of Historians in Sydney two years ago was devoted to Global History, in which historians reflected on the emerging tendencies. They were really looking at the future through the past. Their opinions were an indication of the way history as a discipline is responding to changes today. But in India there is very little interest in contemporary history.
Whatever little we have written does not attempt to locate our history in the global context, without which contemporary history makes no sense.
In Asia, or at least in South Asia, we have had a common historical experience. Has there been enough work to link the experiences of at least the South Asian countries and to trace the processes that have brought us to the present stage and the way things have evolved in these countries?
Very little, perhaps none. A few years ago some of us did make an attempt to initiate a project to write a history of South Asia. The idea emerged out of a dialogue with Pakistani historians while I was in Lahore as part of a cultural delegation. It was generally welcomed in both countries, but for some logistical reasons that could not be accomplished.
Even recently, during the â1857â celebrations, a suggestion was mooted by some of us for writing the history of the event from a South Asian perspective because other countries in South Asia were also involved in the Revolt. I thought such a perspective and collaboration between historians would be useful, but unfortunately what has happened during the last few years is the further isolation of historians of the subcontinent. I do not think the IHC receives a delegation of historians from Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka at its annual conference. Nor are we able to exchange or market publications. It is a pity because we have so much to share in terms of common historical experience.
Detoxifying textbooks was a proposition advanced after the last election. Almost four years of UPA rule are over. Are you happy with the way that process has progressed?
Not at all, if you are talking about history in the larger context. The government took some positive steps to change the textbooks published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). But NCERT textbooks are used only in 3 per cent of schools in the country. The remaining 97 per cent of schools use textbooks that are much more communal than the NCERT textbooks concocted by the BJP dispensation. If detoxification were to be effective, this large segment had to be cleansed of communalism. A suggestion was to set up a National Commission, which could keep vigil over the quality of textbooks used for all subjects and take cognisance of communal or anti-secular views in them. The commission should have enough teeth, judicial powers, like the Minorities Commission or the Womenâs Commission, so that whenever there are departures from secular norms it would be able to take action. But the government did not undertake an all-out fight against communal ideology. As a result, communal interpretation of history continues to be present in an overwhelming majority of the textbooks.
After your well known work on the Mappillas, you seem to be concentrating on intellectual and cultural history, as is evident from your latest publication, Colonialism, Culture and Resistance published by Oxford University Press in 2007. What lies ahead? What happened to the controversial Towards Freedom volume, which the BJP government withdrew?
Hopefully it would be published this year. About 1,500 pages of the manuscripts which were âlost,â according to the ICHR, have now been restored from my copy. That sordid story is over. Currently I am engaged in a couple of other projects. First is a cultural history of Colonial India, which is mainly an attempt to explore the evolution of the public sphere in terms of the cultural contexts within it. Simultaneously I am working on a social history of Kerala which focusses on the complexities and contradictions in the evolution of modernity. I am also in the final stages of putting together my popular writings on communalism and secularism. A couple of books in Malayalam are also in the pipeline. That is a handful, isnât it? http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/25/stories/...731100.htm
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<b>Whitewashing of Indian History â 3 washes: Nithin Sridhar (May 1, 2008)</b>
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, "Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truthâ¦. The Marxists' contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists."1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Footnotes:
1 Indian Express, January 15, 1989, quoted in book "Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1" by Sita Ram Goel
2 For example, JNU historian Romilla Thapar.[Article titled "Romila Thapar Defends the Aryan Invasion Theory!" by Vishal Agarwal published here- http://www.india-forum.com/articles/60/1 ]
3 In letter published in The Times of India dated October 2, 1986, Romilla Thapar had stated that handing over of Sri Rama's and Sri Krishna's birthplaces to the Hindus, and of disused mosques to the Muslims raises the question of the limits to the logic of restoration of religious sites. How far back do we go? Can we push this to the restoration of Buddhist and Jain monuments destroyed by Hindus? Or of the pre-Hindu animist shrines? [ Quoted in book- Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence by Sita Ram Goel]
4 In his book Medival India [NCERT 2000], Satish Chandra writes- "The raid into India (by Timur) was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years⦠Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy, large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children losing their lives.", but Timur repeatedly states in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Timuri, that he had a two-fold objective in invading Hindustan. "The first was to war with the infidels," and thereby acquire, "some claim to reward in the life to come." The second motive was "that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels." He further says "Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the ulema and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked."
Read more...
http://hindutva97.blogspot.com/2008/05/whi...y-3-washes.html
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On âAITâ, Islamic Invasions and âWhitewashing Historyâ
Posted on May 18, 2008 by B Shantanu
I recently came across The Whitewashing of History, by Nithin Sridhar. Nitin has kindly agreed to let me reproduce the article on this blog. Those of you who are interested in history will find here a devastating critique of current studies and interpretation of Indian History - which has largely been driven by leftist-leaning scholars steeped in their prejudices and with varying agendas.
The article looks at the now thoroughly discredited âAryan Invasion Theoryâ (AIT), the impact of Islamic invasions on India and the red-herring of âHindu vandalismâ.
I have also included a selection of comments at the end.
*** ARTICLE BEGINS / LONG POST ***
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, âMarxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truthâ¦. The Marxistsâ contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists.â1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Let us examine the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, âMarxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truthâ¦. The Marxistsâ contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists.â1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Let us examine the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT was introduced to justify the presence of the British among their Aryan cousins in India as being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview: âThe dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives and established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives; they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness; some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent; hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.â5
Dr. Koenraad Elst, in âThe Vedic Evidence,â6 after examining the Vedic corpus for any evidence of Aryan invasion theory proposed by the Marxist school, concludes, âThe status question is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Central Asiaâ¦.â He further provides astronomical and literary evidence against the AIT in his other essays.
Jim Shaffer in âThe Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,â wrote, âCurrent archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periodsâ¦â7 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal remains, observes, âBiological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.â8
David Frawley, while commenting on the political and social ramifications, asserts, âFirst it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other⦠Second, it gave the British an excuse for their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. This same justification could be used by the Muslims or any other invaders of India. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from the Middle Eastern⦠Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis⦠Fifth, it gave the Marxists a good basis for projecting their class struggle model of society on to India, with the invading Brahmins oppressing the indigenous Shudras (lower castes).â He further concludes, âIn short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious, that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.â9
Archaeological evidence in no way contradicts Indian tradition, rather it broadly agrees with it (except for its chronology). Whether from North or South India, tradition never mentioned anything remotely resembling an Aryan invasion into India. Sanskrit scriptures make it clear that they regard the Vedic homeland to be the Saptasindhu, which is precisely the core of the Harappan territory. As for the Sangam tradition, it is equally silent about any northern origin of the Tamil people. These show that AIT which Marxists have been propagating is based on assumptions and pre-conceived notion, rather than hard evidences.
About the alleged destruction of Buddhist and Jain temples by Hindus, Sita Ram Goel observes,10 âIt is intriguing indeed that whenever archaeological evidence points towards a mosque as standing on the site of a Hindu temple, our Marxist professors start seeing a Buddhist monastery buried underneath. They also invent some Saiva king as destroying Buddhist and Jain shrines whenever the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples by Islamic invaders is mentioned. They never mention the destruction of big Buddhist and Jain complexes which dotted the length and breadth of India, Khurasan, and Sinkiang on the eve of the Islamic invasion, as testified by Hüen Tsang.â He asks the historians to produce epigraphic and literary evidences to suggest the destruction of Buddhists and Jain places by Hindus, the names and places of Hindu monuments which stand on the sites occupied earlier by Buddhist or Jain monuments. Yet, till today no concrete evidence has been given by historians to substantiate their claim.
But, there is enough evidence to show that Buddhist and Jain temples and monasteries at Bukhara, Samarqand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Kabul, Ghazni, Qandhar, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Charsadda, Ohind, Taxila, Multan, Mirpurkhas, Nagar-Parkar, Sialkot, Srinagar, Jalandhar, Jagadhari, Sugh, Tobra, Agroha, Delhi, Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramasila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantapuri, Bharhut, Champa, Paharpur, Jagaddal, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Devagiri, Bharuch, Valabhi, Girnar, Khambhat Patan, Jalor, Chandravati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Ajmer, Bairat, Gwalior, Chanderi, Mandu, Dhar etc were destroyed by the sword of Islam.11
It should be noted that though Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain sects and sub-sects had heated discussions among themselves, and used even strong language for their adversaries, the occasions when they exchanged physical blows were few and far between. The recent spurt of accusations that Hindus were bigots and vandals like Christians and Muslims seems to be an after-thought. Apologists, who find it impossible to whitewash Christianity and Islam, are out to redress the balance by blackening Hinduism.
The Islamic conquest has been described as the âBloodiest,â12 âmonotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions,â13 as well as âbigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.â14
Irfan Husain in his article âDemons from the Pastâ observes, âWhile historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistanâ¦The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster. Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful. These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillageâ¦â
Dr. Koenraad Elst, while summarizing the Hindu losses at the hands of Muslim invaders, concludes,15 âThere is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-152 8) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like âpunishingâ the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.â
From Mohamud Quasim to Tipu Sultan, every Mohammedan invader killed, converted, took as slave or put Jiziya on Hindus. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. While describing the conquest of Kanauj, Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni, sums up the situation thus: âThe Sultan[Ghazni] levelled to the ground every fort, and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him. In short, those who submitted were also converted to Islam. In Baran (Bulandshahr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Rajaâ. The conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated.
About the conversion of Hindus to Islam, K.S.Lal observes, âThe process of their conversion was hurried. All of a sudden the invader appeared in a city or a region, and in the midst of loot and murder, a dazed, shocked and enslaved people were given the choice between Islam and death. Those who were converted were deprived of their scalp-lock or choti and, if they happened to be caste people, also their sacred thread. Some were also circumcised. Their names were changed, although some might have retained their old names with new affixes. They were taught to recite the kalima and learnt to say the prescribed prayersâ.16
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive [This figure is given by Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni]. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, the Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives [Tarikh-i-Farishtah, I, 28]. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000. In 1195, when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak, 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. Sultan Alauddin Khalji had 50,000 slave boys in his personal service and 70,000 slaves who worked continuously on his buildings. In the words of Wassaf, the Muslim army in the sack of Somnath took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes. Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India. To the Chinese emperor Muhammad Tughlaq sent, besides other presents, 100 Hindu slaves, 100 slave girls, accomplished in song and dance and another 15 young slaves. Firoz Tughlaq collected 180,000 slaves.17
About the destruction of Hindu Temples, Sita Ram Goel writes -âMahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Ganga-Yamuna Doab and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbuâd-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. âAlî I âÃdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that âmany strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãmâ.18
Some of the Temples converted into Mosques are:19
Epigraphic evidences:
1. Quwwat al-Islam Masjid, Qutb Minar, Delhi by Qutbud-Din Aibak in 1192 A.D.
2. Masjid at Manvi in the Raichur District of Karnataka, Firuz Shah Bahmani, 1406-07 A.D
3. Jami Masjid at Malan, Palanpur Taluka, Banaskantha District of Gujarat: ?The Jami Masjid was built? by Khan-I-Azam Ulugh Khan, The date of construction is mentioned as 1462 A.D. in the reign of Mahmud Shah I (Begada) of Gujarat.
4. Hammam Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, Its chronogram yields the year 1567 A.D. in the reign of Akbar, the Great Mughal
5. Jami Masjid at Ghoda in the Poona District of Maharashtra, The inscription is dated 1586 A.D. when the Poona region was ruled by the Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar
6. Gachinala Masjid at Cumbum in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh, The date of construction is mentioned as 1729-30 A.D. in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.
Literary evidences:
7. Jhain[name of the place], Jalalud-Din Firuz Khalji went to the place and ordered destruction of temples, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
8. Devagiri, Alaud-Din Khalji destroyed the temples of the idolaters, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
9. Somanath, Ulugh Khan, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
10. Delhi, , Alaud-Din Khalji , Tarikh-i-Alai
11. Ranthambhor, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
12. Brahmastpuri (Chidambaram), Malik Kafur, Tarikh-i-Alai
13. Madura, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
14. Fatan: (Pattan), mentioned in Ashiqa
15. Malabar: (Parts of South India), Tarikh-i-Alai
16 The Mosque at Jaunpur. This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi
17 The Mosque at Qanauj it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi
18 Jami (Masjid) at Etawah. it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans
19 Babri Masjid at Ayodhya . This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya
20 Mosques of Alamgir (Aurangzeb)
According to the reports of Archeological survey of India:
21 Tordi (Rajasthan)- early or middle part of the 15th century
22 Naraina (Rajasthan)- The mosque appears to have been built when Mujahid Khan, son of Shams Khan, took possession of Naraina in 1436 A.D
23 Chatsu (Rajasthan)- At Chatsu there is a Muhammadan tomb erected on the eastern embankment of the Golerava tank. The tomb which is known as Gurg Ali Shahâs chhatri is built out of the spoils of Hindu buildings. The inscription mention saint Gurg Ali (wolf of Ali) died a martyr on the first of Ramzan in 979 A.H. corresponding to Thursday, the 17th January, 1572 A.D.
24 SaheTh-MaheTh (Uttar Pradesh)
25 Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh)- the inscriptions found there extending to the twelfth century A.D
26 Vaishali (Bihar)
27 Gaur and Pandua (Bengal)- The oldest and the best known building at Gaur and Pandua is the Ãdîna Masjid at Pandua built by Sikandar Shãh, the son of Ilyãs Shãh. The date of its inscription may be read as either 776 or 770, which corresponds with 1374 or 1369 A.D? The materials employed consisted largely of the spoils of Hindu temples and many of the carvings from the temples have been used as facings of doors, arches and pillars
28 Devikot (Bengal)- The Dargah of Sultan Pir, The Dargah of Shah Ata are the Muhammadan shrines built on the site of an old Hindu temple
29 Tribeni (Bengal)
This whitewashing of history, the policy of âSuppresio Veri, Suggestio Falsiâ followed by âeminent historiansâ of India is not only dangerous to national integration but also the future of the entire nation. It is time that the self interests are kept aside and the facts of history is made known to the masses.
Footnotes:
1 Indian Express, January 15, 1989, quoted in book âHindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1â by Sita Ram Goel
2 For example, JNU historian Romilla Thapar.[Article titled âRomila Thapar Defends the Aryan Invasion Theory!â by Vishal Agarwal published here- http://www.india-forum.com/articles/60/1 ]
3 In letter published in The Times of India dated October 2, 1986, Romilla Thapar had stated that handing over of Sri Ramaâs and Sri Krishnaâs birthplaces to the Hindus, and of disused mosques to the Muslims raises the question of the limits to the logic of restoration of religious sites. How far back do we go? Can we push this to the restoration of Buddhist and Jain monuments destroyed by Hindus? Or of the pre-Hindu animist shrines? [ Quoted in book- Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence by Sita Ram Goel]
4 In his book Medival India [NCERT 2000], Satish Chandra writes- âThe raid into India (by Timur) was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years⦠Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy, large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children losing their lives.â, but Timur repeatedly states in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Timuri, that he had a two-fold objective in invading Hindustan. âThe first was to war with the infidels,â and thereby acquire, âsome claim to reward in the life to come.â The second motive was âthat the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels.â He further says âExcepting the quarter of the saiyids, the ulema and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.â
5 Koenraad Elst, in âThe Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debateâ
6 âThe Vedic Evidence - The Vedic Corpus Provides no Evidence for the so-called Aryan Invasion of Indiaâ by Koenraad Elst
7 Jim G. Shaffer, âThe Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,â in Michel Danino âThe Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Questionâ
8 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, âHave Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from
South Asia ?â in Michel Danino âThe Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Questionâ
9 David Frawley, in âMyth of Aryan Invasion Theory of Indiaâ
10 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2-the Islamic Evidence
11 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 -the Islamic Evidence
12 Will Durant in âStory of Civilizationâ observes- âThe Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.â
13 âHistoire de lâ Indeâ - By Alain Danielou; he notes- ââFrom the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of âa holy warâ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.â Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, âwas an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.â Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined.â
14 Francois Gautier
15 Dr. Koenraad Elst in âWas There an Islamic âGenocideâ of Hindus?â
16 K.S. Lal in âIndian Muslims Who Are Theyâ
17 K.S. Lal in âMuslim Slave System in Medieval Indiaâ
18 Sita Ram Goel, in âHindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidenceâ
19 It is taken from the large list of places documented by Sita Ram Goel in his magnum Opus âHindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1- The Preliminary Surveyâ
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Need to Rewrite Indian History
History is Always Being Rewritten
In recent years, the government of India and several state governments have decided to revise history books, particularly relative to the ancient period, bringing up recent data that calls into question the Aryan invasion and the many theories that have arisen from it. Over the past few decades numerous archaeological finds have been made throughout North India, considerably widening the civilization of the region and uncovering its continuity through time, rendering the Aryan Invasion idea obsolete.
Quite predictably, leftists in India raised a cry of tampering with history, as if history is a fixed science that cannot be adjusted. The fact is that history books in India still largely teach the British view of India from the colonial era and have not changed much since the independence of the country over fifty years ago. The only exception is history books in Marxist states like Bengal that have been rewritten in a communist slant, which is even more against the traditions of the country than the British view.
History books are always being rewritten and they should be, as new information comes in and our understanding of culture widens. This does not mean that history should carelessly be rewritten to suit an ideology, as in communist Russia or in Nazi Germany, but that we must not turn old accounts of history into an unalterable dogma. History is not a material science like physics that deals with hard facts and even physics textbooks are continually being updated. The West has often tried to give its version of history the finality of science, but political changes since the end of the colonial era have revealed the biases behind its accounts, particularly of Africa and Asia. The western account of history cannot be given the finality of the physical sciences and should be expected to change radically over time.
Colonial Distortions of History East and West
Up to two decades ago, the history of America was taught as the wanton aggression of the Native Americans, the so-called Red Indians, on the gentle white settlers who simply wanted to farm and raise their families in a wide land that had room for many people. This was the predominant view of Christians and of educated Europeans in America. The real history was one of the genocide of native peoples and their cultures in a greed for land and power. The so-called savages honored all treaties. The so-called civilized white man didn't honor any.
The European history of Africa followed similar prejudices, with the native blacks as uncivilized barbarians that had to be civilized by the white Europeans. That the blacks did have venerable and rich old cultures and were really the target of exploitation and genocide was covered over. The same phenomenon occurred throughout the colonial world, including Asia, where native peoples were subjugated and their cultures denigrated. Like the blacks, some Asians were turned into slaves or serfs, uprooted from their land and taken to foreign countries and commercially exploited. This was also done in the name of civilizational advancement through Christianity and European culture. That is how over a million Indians ended up in the Caribbean in Trinidad and Guyana.
The European treatment of India was the same as that of America and Africa, starting with the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, who brought the cruel ways of the Inquisition to India. The Indian mutiny of 1857 occurred because the British brought in aggressive and intolerant missionaries and had the country in the grip of a cruel economic exploitation. Yet such oppression has been left out of the history of India as told by the Europeans and independent India has not rewritten the record adequately. Similarly, the destruction wrought during the Islamic period, which was worse than the British period in terms of religious and economic exploitation as well as genocide, has been similarly ignored or downplayed so as not to offend minority communities.
Yet can one seriously imagine given all the colonial distortions of history worldwide which are only slowly being removed today that no real revision of the history of India needs to be made? Can we believe that somehow by luck, in spite of their prejudices, that colonial and European scholars got the history of India right and wrote it without any distortion or bias in their favor, though they failed everywhere else?
Liberals and leftists in America sympathize with the native cultures of Africa and America and their need not only for correcting historical accounts but also for restoration for historical wrongs. But, strangely, leftists in India still vaunt the colonial view that India was uncivilized before the British and denigrate their own native traditions!
When ancient historical finds are made in China, as with the uncovering of the tomb of the first emperor dating to the third century BCE, there is great national pride even among the communists. But all the massive finds of the Harappan/Sarasvati culture, as well as the retracing of the once great Sarasvati River, bring no pride to the leftist-secular intellectuals of India. They would ignore these, dismiss them as an invention of Hindu communalists, or imagine that they represent an unknown civilization that vanished mysteriously with no real connection to the later traditions of the region! Though the Vedic literature is the largest of the ancient world by all accounts, Indian leftists will have no pride in it and seek to denigrate it as best they can. Though the Mahabharata at over two thousand years old is the world's oldest and longest national epic, Indian leftists don't even want it taught in the schools (even when the common people find great pride in watching the Mahabharata on television).
In this regard, we should remember that Marxism and communism in India are largely anti-national movements. Marxists in India sided with China against India during the Indo-Chinese war of 1962 and raised no criticism of China for its attack. They sided with the British during the independence movement. This is a stark contrast to communism in Russia, China and Vietnam in which were part of larger nationalistic movements. This is because Indian Marxists came mainly from a British Marxist background and did not participate in anti-colonial struggles, as did the followers of Mao and Ho-chi-minh. They were largely intellectuals from wealthy families, educated in England, not workers in the field, much less freedom fighters.
Actually the distortion of history has been done intentionally by many modern Indian historians, particularly covering over historical wrongs against Hindus. They believe that by correcting history that the present can be changed. They pretend that the generally cruel Muslim rule in India was benign and secular so that this account will serve to make modern Hindus and Muslims more benign and secular and help them bury the past. But the opposite is true. If a nation does not face its true history, it has no future and its present remains confused. This would be like American historians pretending that Native Americans (Red Indians) were treated well through history and that accounts of their oppression and genocide were false or exaggerated, so as to bring harmony to the two communities today. This would only allow old prejudices to continue.
India has not faced its past in order not to offend certain minorities in the country who may still harbor anti-nationalist sentiments. It has also been intentionally done in order to prevent the majority community from awakening to its colonial and religious oppression, fearing this would increase communal disharmony, even though distortions caused by this, like the image of Hindus as barbaric idolaters, continue in the world media today. The result is that the country lacks a genuine national pride and a sense of its continuity to ancient times.
History and Nationalism
One of the main purposes of history books, as taught in different countries in the world, is to instill a sense of national pride and honorin short to inculcate a sense of patriotism and nationalism. Whether it is the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Germany or China, this is certainly the case today and has been so as long as these countries have existed as modern nations. The lives of great leaders, particularly the founders of the country are highlighted, the continuity of the nation's history is emphasized, and the importance of the nation in the history of the world and the greatness of the national culture are stressed. Students are expected to come away from reading accounts of their history with a sense of national greatness and purpose, not only for the past but also for the future.
However, India is a strange and unique country in which history books are often anti-national in nature. India has largely kept in tact the British approach to Indian history devised in the colonial era. Students of such textbooks come away apologetic or confused about their country and its traditions. Textbooks in Marxist ruled states of India like Bengal and Kerala leave their students with a sense of the greatness of communism and communist countries like China or even Russia which is no longer communist, rather than any real regard for India and its great traditions.
History books in India try to ignore the dominant Hindu ethos of the country and its history before the Islamic period. India's greatest historical and cultural document, the Mahabharata, is hardly given any attention in the schools. So too, the Vedas, Ramayana, Puranas, Buddhist Jatakas and other prime historical and cultural documents of the country are ignored because of their religious overtones. If they do address India as a nation, it is only India of the independence movement that they acknowledge, as if prior to 1947 India did not really exist. While Nehru is made important, older kings from the Rig Vedic Bharatas to Yudishthira of the Mahabharata period to the Marathas of the eighteenth century are hardly mentioned. There is no real sense of any historical continuity to the culture, much less to the country. While Mahatma Gandhi is emphasized, the greater spiritual traditions of India and its great teachers from the Vedic rishis, Vedantic, Buddhist and Jain sages to modern savants like Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi is not given much attention.
It is true that history should not be a mere instrument of a destructive nationalism and should avoid instilling aggression against other lands and peoples, even when upholding what is valuable in a nation's history. But this does not require that the national value of historical studies is negated altogether.
The question, therefore, is how the history accounts in India can be made to reflect and instill a genuine nationalism and sense of the country's history and destiny. India, after all, is one of the great civilizations of the world, with cultural traditions that have much value for humanity. Such historical accounts must reflect the richness and diversity of Indic civilization, but they cannot ignore its unity and continuity either.
The fact is that you cannot build a nation without creating history books that instill a positive nationalism, particularly in the youth. The real danger in India is not the arising of a chauvinistic nationalism like that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy which are foreign to the mentality and ethos of the country but a lack of national spirit and historical consciousness that keeps people alienated from their roots and the country divided.
India needs a real nationalism and for this a national sense of history, pride and purpose is required. A true Indian nationalism will be rooted in an Indian ethos of dharma, spirituality and pluralism, but this does not mean there can be no national or historical pride without encouraging communalism in the country. On the contrary, a greater sense of national identity would be the best thing to counter the disintegrating influence of religious, castist and regional interests that are bringing the country down.
Therefore we must ask: Why can't Indians connect India's traditional ancient literature, the Vedas, with its archaeology through Harappa and the many Sarasvati river sites? Why can't Indians find national pride in their own history both on literary and archaeological levels? Why should history in India be used for national shame, rather than national pride? Why should the history of India place Indic civilization out of India? These are questions that must be answered.
Western and Indic Views of History
The subject of history in the western context is a very different than in the Indian context. In the western view, history is mainly an account of political events and economic progress, a purely outward affair. In the Hindu view, history is a means of teaching detachment, showing how great kings and kingdoms come and go in the course of time. It has an inner value as a spiritual teaching about the nature of human life and the need for liberation from worldly concerns. In the western view, history is progressive from the crude beginnings of agriculture and village life moving forward to the present day urban culture. In the Hindu view, history is cyclical, with various cultures coming and going over time as the soul seeks liberation from the phenomenal world.
The western progressive account of history is quite flawed. For example, the first civilizations of the ancient world that we can document including Egypt, Sumeria, India and China did not regard themselves as the first but were aware of many cultures and kingdoms before them, particularly prior to a great flood. The civilizations that we regard as the first saw themselves as very old with many antecedents! Yet we pretend that there was nothing before them! In addition, the civilizations of the Third Millennium BCE, like those of Egypt and Harappan/Sarasvati India, had better urban and architectural achievements than those that followed for many centuries. Even Europe had its Dark Ages after the Roman period in which much knowledge was lost. This idea of history as linear progress is clearly not the case. While humanity has progressed scientifically, this is mainly over the past five hundred years. On the other hand, we see a spiritual decline since ancient times, and over the last century we can note a decline in culture, art, music and philosophy in Europe itself, coinciding or even caused by great advances in science.
As India is the only civilization of antiquity to survive the onslaught of time, it is the special responsibility of Indians to discover not only their history but also that of the entire ancient world. Just as there are unquestioned distortions of ancient India, similar distortions of other ancient cultures also exist. For example, the religion of ancient Egypt, which like that of the Vedas demonstrates much occult and spiritual significance, is similarly dismissed as polytheism, idolatry or henotheism (worshipping different Gods as the supreme God), exactly like the Vedas. Revamping the way history is taught in Indian schools would be a major step in the direction of a more authentic and spiritual sensitive history of the world. It is a scientific and spiritual imperative, not only for India but for all countries.
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