11-03-2003, 12:35 AM
I am afraid I dont subscribe to the premise of Cowasjee's article, though i respect him and a man of honor he may be. Cowasjee falls prey to the common malady of the Paki namely the equal equal 'we are bad but so is India' Needless to say such a premise is irrelevant to the study of history. It is the actual acts committed throughout History that count.
I regard Panditji as a very poor almost an incompetent historian. This is understandable because he wrote the books while in prison and did not have access to have a lot of referential material and had to use his memory for the most part. The fact of the matter is that most of what he wrote is just plain wrong and while lapses of memory are to be expected it was outrageous for him to describe Babar as a 'Prince Charming'.
The history of the Muslim period in Bharatiya Itihaas comes to us not from the Brits but from the Islamic Historians/savants of the period like Farishta,Al Biruni, Barani, Utbi and many others. They speak with great pride of the slaughter that successive sultans wreaked upon India and are emphatic that the Koran approves of such behavior.
Is it legitimate to call this period the Islamic period in Bharatiya Itihaas. Most certainly it is, because these historians took great pride in the fact that the sultans followed Koranic injunctions to the letter while carrying out thier massacres and while subsequently conferring second class status to the vast majority of Hindus in the country by imposing jizziya and other indignities such as beheading, rape and plunder. There was no question that Tamerlang was emphatic that the land he was conquering was Dar ul Harb and a prime candidate for massacres as a consequence. Islam may not have invaded India but the Islamic hordes certainly did so invoking the Koran and Koranic injuntions.
Further there is an implied assumption that somehow if we sugarcoat the truth , there will be happiness and peace between the Muslim and Hindu in India. Surely this is a false premise and Gandhiji would have been horrified to see the distortion of history that has been attempted in this country since Independence. It is a laudable goal that there should be harmonious relatons between the 2 major communities in India today. But the premise that such harmony is achieved by falsifying history is most certainly a non-sequitor. At best it will only increase the contempt of a section of the Muslim populace for the Hindu.
I am disappointed that Cowasjee, an upholder of truth for the most part, has forgotten the main reason why he is in Karachi in the first place and not in the land of his forefathers. It is not an accident of history that the Parsees are disappearing from the pages of History and they will soon become a distant memory. Read the passage in Naipauls Beyond Belief where a group of Parsee tourists at the tomb of darius in Iran wept uncontrollably at the fate that had befallen their community.
Quote:On the subject of the Muslim conquest and subsequent ruthlessness of the conquerors, one can do no better than turn to Hindu and Brahmin Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - to his book 'The Discovery of India', and to what he had to say on the expansion of Islam and its arrival in India at the end of the 12th century:
I regard Panditji as a very poor almost an incompetent historian. This is understandable because he wrote the books while in prison and did not have access to have a lot of referential material and had to use his memory for the most part. The fact of the matter is that most of what he wrote is just plain wrong and while lapses of memory are to be expected it was outrageous for him to describe Babar as a 'Prince Charming'.
The history of the Muslim period in Bharatiya Itihaas comes to us not from the Brits but from the Islamic Historians/savants of the period like Farishta,Al Biruni, Barani, Utbi and many others. They speak with great pride of the slaughter that successive sultans wreaked upon India and are emphatic that the Koran approves of such behavior.
Quote:"It is thus wrong and misleading to think of a Moslem invasion of India or of the Moslem period in India, just as it would be wrong to refer to the coming of the British to India as a Christian invasion, or to call the British period in India a Christian period. Islam did not invade India; it had come to India some centuries earlier....
Is it legitimate to call this period the Islamic period in Bharatiya Itihaas. Most certainly it is, because these historians took great pride in the fact that the sultans followed Koranic injunctions to the letter while carrying out thier massacres and while subsequently conferring second class status to the vast majority of Hindus in the country by imposing jizziya and other indignities such as beheading, rape and plunder. There was no question that Tamerlang was emphatic that the land he was conquering was Dar ul Harb and a prime candidate for massacres as a consequence. Islam may not have invaded India but the Islamic hordes certainly did so invoking the Koran and Koranic injuntions.
Further there is an implied assumption that somehow if we sugarcoat the truth , there will be happiness and peace between the Muslim and Hindu in India. Surely this is a false premise and Gandhiji would have been horrified to see the distortion of history that has been attempted in this country since Independence. It is a laudable goal that there should be harmonious relatons between the 2 major communities in India today. But the premise that such harmony is achieved by falsifying history is most certainly a non-sequitor. At best it will only increase the contempt of a section of the Muslim populace for the Hindu.
I am disappointed that Cowasjee, an upholder of truth for the most part, has forgotten the main reason why he is in Karachi in the first place and not in the land of his forefathers. It is not an accident of history that the Parsees are disappearing from the pages of History and they will soon become a distant memory. Read the passage in Naipauls Beyond Belief where a group of Parsee tourists at the tomb of darius in Iran wept uncontrollably at the fate that had befallen their community.