12-31-2003, 03:12 AM
Hindu Masjids
(Masjids...Hindu?!)
346 pages
By: Prafull Goradia
Published by: Contemporary Targett, Delhi.
About | Reviews | Excerpts
About the book
Read about and see vivid photographs of how the Hindu legacy has been trampled upon by iconoclasts.
Hindu Masjids: Symbolises the longstanding conflict between Hindus and Muslims, and tries to offer a solution. From Emperor Akbar to Rajiv Gandhi, many have tried to build bridges of friendship between the two communities but all of them, including Mahatma Gandhi, have failed. As the last five decades have proved, the partition of 1947 did not solve the problem.
Is it to escape facing the truth about the past? Or is it to placate Muslim sentiments? Is it to avoid a controversy which might adversely affect one or more electoral verdicts? But how can all the political parties have a vested interest in the suppression of the same facts? Surely, if some party might lose out by the facts coming to light, another should gain as a result. Ruling parties at the centre as well as in the state change from time to time. Yet, no party has shown any real inclination in letting the people of India know facts of their collective past? Is the reason then, a countrywide fear of a community's wrath? If it be so, how can there be friendship between one community being the cause and the other the casualty of fear?
Several scholars have, over the years, listed hundreds of temples and described their desecration but none before the author has drawn a clear distinction between a mandir converted into a masjid in contrast to a mosque built with the rubble of a demolished temple. Even Cunningham, who toured North India extensively in the course of 1838-1855 and published his surveys in 23 voluminous reports, did not make the distinction.
Prafull Goradia has visited every masjid or dargah that has been discussed. Not alone, but accompanied by a research scholar as well as an excellent photographer. He now appeals to Muslims to abandon and not use these ill-gotten or looted edifices for praying to their one and only god, Allah.
Reviews
Prafull Goradia. s bombshell book Hindu Masjids, is a study of Hindu temples converted into mosques from the medieval ages. According to him, praying in such edifices is like holding on to stolen property in full and continual public view.
- Balbir K. Punj, The Asian Age
This book is on Hindu temples that were deserted and converted into mosques. The best part of the book is the photographs.
- Bibek Debroy, The Financial Express
Hindu Masjids is photographic evidence of Muslim iconoclasm on Hindu-Jain-Buddhist temples summarily converted into mosques. This is certainly an antidote to the propaganda machinery which propagates that Muslims have never committed any wrong.
- Priyadarsi Dutta, The Pioneer
No book in recent times has brought out in such vivid - and well-researched-detail the havoc caused against Hindu temples in India by Islamic forces from ancient times right up to the twenty first century as Prafull Goradia's Hindu Masjids.
- M.V. Kamath, Organiser
Excerpts
Yet nowhere else is the hatred as chronic and deep rooted as in India. Why? Because here, like did not oppress like. The Hindu psyche is entirely different from the Muslim assumption. In Hindustan there was a clash between coexistence and domination, two radically different mentalities. Not merely the Muslim but Judaic peoples generally are born and bred on the assumption that it is Legitimate to dominate others. Whereas the Hindu thrives on accommodation and coexistence.
The Jews and the Muslims clash and kill each other in West Asia. They get hurt but neither is traumatized. The Christians and Muslims fought the crusades no less ruthlessly. They maimed or bled one another and destroyed churches and mosques, and it was like battling like. Hence there was no injury but no real trauma, no ultimate surprise. Everyone spoke, as it were, the same language of combat and understood the legitimacy of one trying to dominate the other, depending on who was stronger. Not so the votary of co-existence, the Hindu.
Jehovah to the Jew, Jesus to the Christian and Allah to the Muslim are well known. Each is omnipotent, omnipresent and only one supreme divine or the ultimate in domination; the Almighty to his followers. The Judaic faith begins here. It is legitimate for the followers of Jehovah to displace those of Jesus or of Allah in the race for winning more followers. A devout Christian would be happiest if all the world's people prayed to Christ. As a pious Muslim would have done his ultimate duty to Allah if he could get every human being to tasleem or accept His will. In the process, he might have to desecrate, fight or even kill.
(Masjids...Hindu?!)
346 pages
By: Prafull Goradia
Published by: Contemporary Targett, Delhi.
About | Reviews | Excerpts
About the book
Read about and see vivid photographs of how the Hindu legacy has been trampled upon by iconoclasts.
Hindu Masjids: Symbolises the longstanding conflict between Hindus and Muslims, and tries to offer a solution. From Emperor Akbar to Rajiv Gandhi, many have tried to build bridges of friendship between the two communities but all of them, including Mahatma Gandhi, have failed. As the last five decades have proved, the partition of 1947 did not solve the problem.
Is it to escape facing the truth about the past? Or is it to placate Muslim sentiments? Is it to avoid a controversy which might adversely affect one or more electoral verdicts? But how can all the political parties have a vested interest in the suppression of the same facts? Surely, if some party might lose out by the facts coming to light, another should gain as a result. Ruling parties at the centre as well as in the state change from time to time. Yet, no party has shown any real inclination in letting the people of India know facts of their collective past? Is the reason then, a countrywide fear of a community's wrath? If it be so, how can there be friendship between one community being the cause and the other the casualty of fear?
Several scholars have, over the years, listed hundreds of temples and described their desecration but none before the author has drawn a clear distinction between a mandir converted into a masjid in contrast to a mosque built with the rubble of a demolished temple. Even Cunningham, who toured North India extensively in the course of 1838-1855 and published his surveys in 23 voluminous reports, did not make the distinction.
Prafull Goradia has visited every masjid or dargah that has been discussed. Not alone, but accompanied by a research scholar as well as an excellent photographer. He now appeals to Muslims to abandon and not use these ill-gotten or looted edifices for praying to their one and only god, Allah.
Reviews
Prafull Goradia. s bombshell book Hindu Masjids, is a study of Hindu temples converted into mosques from the medieval ages. According to him, praying in such edifices is like holding on to stolen property in full and continual public view.
- Balbir K. Punj, The Asian Age
This book is on Hindu temples that were deserted and converted into mosques. The best part of the book is the photographs.
- Bibek Debroy, The Financial Express
Hindu Masjids is photographic evidence of Muslim iconoclasm on Hindu-Jain-Buddhist temples summarily converted into mosques. This is certainly an antidote to the propaganda machinery which propagates that Muslims have never committed any wrong.
- Priyadarsi Dutta, The Pioneer
No book in recent times has brought out in such vivid - and well-researched-detail the havoc caused against Hindu temples in India by Islamic forces from ancient times right up to the twenty first century as Prafull Goradia's Hindu Masjids.
- M.V. Kamath, Organiser
Excerpts
Yet nowhere else is the hatred as chronic and deep rooted as in India. Why? Because here, like did not oppress like. The Hindu psyche is entirely different from the Muslim assumption. In Hindustan there was a clash between coexistence and domination, two radically different mentalities. Not merely the Muslim but Judaic peoples generally are born and bred on the assumption that it is Legitimate to dominate others. Whereas the Hindu thrives on accommodation and coexistence.
The Jews and the Muslims clash and kill each other in West Asia. They get hurt but neither is traumatized. The Christians and Muslims fought the crusades no less ruthlessly. They maimed or bled one another and destroyed churches and mosques, and it was like battling like. Hence there was no injury but no real trauma, no ultimate surprise. Everyone spoke, as it were, the same language of combat and understood the legitimacy of one trying to dominate the other, depending on who was stronger. Not so the votary of co-existence, the Hindu.
Jehovah to the Jew, Jesus to the Christian and Allah to the Muslim are well known. Each is omnipotent, omnipresent and only one supreme divine or the ultimate in domination; the Almighty to his followers. The Judaic faith begins here. It is legitimate for the followers of Jehovah to displace those of Jesus or of Allah in the race for winning more followers. A devout Christian would be happiest if all the world's people prayed to Christ. As a pious Muslim would have done his ultimate duty to Allah if he could get every human being to tasleem or accept His will. In the process, he might have to desecrate, fight or even kill.