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The Negationists’ second front - Of the Marxist Historians of India
Frozen in Denial
The troubling feature of India is the growing chasm between
popular historical memory and the
officially endorsed 'nation-building' history.
In the popular perception, there was widespread medieval vandalism and India is
dotted with physical evidence of a shrine that was either destroyed or whose
denominational character was changed. Yet, since the
early-1970s, historians whose works are deemed 'respectable' have wilfully
glossed over themes that apparently run counter to an idyllic syncretic or
composite culture. In schools and universities, narrative history has been
junked in favour of a crude economism. It is somehow felt that 'nation building'
will be better served by focussing on the economic intricacies of feudal
societies rather than the bigoted excesses of Aurangzeb.
Outright denial or obfuscation has become hallmarks of
a country with a rich history and poor historians.
Unfortunately, the experiments with disingenuity haven't really worked.
(source:
India is a country with a rich history and poor historians -
By Swapan Dasgupta - telegraphindia.com).
Not satisfied with denying the crimes of Islam the
negationists have recently made a big effort to spread the notion
that Hinduism itself is guilty of just the same things of which it
accuses Islam.
For example, in the Indian media
you regularly come across the contention that “the Hindus
destroyed Nalanda Buddhist university”. This is a plain lie:
under several Hindu dynasties, Nalanda flourished and was the
biggest university in the world for centuries; it was destroyed by
the Muslim invader Bakhtiar Khilji in 1200. But if you repeat a
lie often enough, it gains currency, and not many Indians have
come to believe that Buddhism had been replaced by Hinduism as
India’s chief religion in a most violent manner.
It is not “Brahmanical onslaught” but Islam
that chased Buddhism out of India. In Central Asia, it has wiped out
Buddhism together with Nestorianism, Zorastrianism, Manicheism, and whatever
other religions it encountered.
The Persian word for
“idol” is but, from Buddha, because the Buddhist with their Buddha-statues
were considered as the idol-worshippers par excellence. The Buddhist
drew the wrath of every Muslim but-shikan (idol-breaker), even where they
hadn’t offered resistance against the Muslim armies because of their doctrine
of non-violence. As a reminder of the Buddhist past of Central Asia, the city
name Bukhara is nothing but a corruption of vihara, i.e. a Buddhist
monastery.
(source:
Negationism
in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam - By Koenraad Elst Voice
of India p.
63-64).
Afghanistan
was a full part of the Hindu cradle up till the year 1000,
and in political unity with India until Nadir Shah separated it in
the 18th century. The mountain range in Eastern Afghanistan where
the native Hindus were slaughtered, is still called the Hindu
Kush (Persian: "Hindu Slaughter"). It
is significant that one of the very few place-names on earth that
reminds us not of the victory of the winners but rather of the
slaughter of the losers, concerns a genocide of Hindus by the
Muslims.
(source:
Ayodhya
and After - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India SKU: INBK2650 p.278).
Refer
to Ignore
this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan -
rediff.com). Refer to
chapter on Survarnabhumi
and Sacred
Angkor
Terrorizing
Hindus in Afghanistan
Despite
its long history in the country,
Afghanistan
's Hindu minority has been pushed to the fringes of society
. Perhaps Radha wasn't the most beautiful girl in
Afghanistan
. But such were this Hindu girl's looks and kindness that all of
Kabul
's bachelors fell in love with her. Her fame was such that the
people of
Kabul
composed a famous song for her. The song says: "We have made
Lala promise not to cremate Radha". Nearly 80 years later,
this song is still sung in
Afghanistan
. Lala, meaning brother, is the term Afghans use to refer to
Hindus. In the song, the people ask Lala not to cremate Radha's
beautiful body after her death, as is required by Hindu tradition.
During the
reign of King
Amanullah Khan (1919-1928) Radha's father, Ranji Das, was
finance minister, a role that had long been filled by the Hindus
of Afghanistan. But the growth of religious fundamentalism has now
pushed the Hindus out of government offices, forcing them into the
bazaars. It is now many years since a Hindu held a government post
in the country. But they are still running a major part of the
Afghan bazaars, and come second in trading medical products.
Overlooking
Kabul
is a mountain called Asmayi. The name is apparently a Hindu term,
deriving from the goddess Asha. Today, the mountain has become the
largest pilgrimage centre for Hindu worshippers. According to a
Hindu tale, an eternal fire burns at the summit of Asmayi, a fire
which has refused to die out for 4000 years. There are two other
centres of worship in
Kabul
, the Harshari Natha temple in
Kabul
's Baghban Kucha, and the
Shorbazaar
Temple
. These are
Kabul
's oldest temples, where Hindus celebrate divali and naradatar.
They are also the meeting places of the Sikh and Hindu religious
associations. In addition to these,
Kabul
today has many other newer and larger temples scattered in
different parts of the city.
According to
Professor Rajesh Kochhar's book, The Vedic People,
Afghanistan
is one of the oldest Hindu centres of the world. Kochhar says that
a large part of Rigveda
was written in
Afghanistan
, with
Helmand
and Arghandab being mentioned as sacred rivers in both the Rigveda
and Mahabharata. The Surya
temple, dedicated to the god of sun, and the Yogi of
Panjshir, which represents a worshipper turned into stone, north
of
Kabul
, are both ancient Hindu sites. And yet, if foreigners were to
travel to
Afghanistan
today, they would encounter so few Hindus that they would assume
the Hindus are either from elsewhere or recent immigrants. They
would encounter a community that is neither playing its part in
politics nor getting involved with the rest of the world.
Hindus
are clearly among the oldest inhabitants of
Afghanistan
. They are the native people, whom Islamic
fundamentalism has turned into unprotected strangers. Strangers,
who this year found themselves forced to argue for days with
Muslims in the centre of
Kabul
in order to be allowed to cremate their dead in line with their
tradition. Strangers who never dare to send their children to
school for fear of mockery.
In
February 2001, during the Taliban's
reign, Hindus found themselves forced
to wear a distinguishing yellow stripe on their arm. The
Sikhs and Hindus of Afghanistan are considered part of the dhimmi
in line with sharia law. The
government has an obligation to protect them but they are required
to pay a poll tax. They can hold civilian occupations, such as
doctors, but they cannot be in charge of a governmental body or
office. Upon meeting a Muslim, a Hindu is required to greet the
Muslim first. If a Muslim is standing and there is a chair, the
Hindu is not allowed to sit down on the chair.
Friends
of Afghanistan's cultural heritage increasingly fear that these
ancient inhabitants of the country might one day meet with the
same fate of other peoples of Afghanistan, including Jews and
Buddhists, and so vanish from the the country altogether.
(source:
Afghanistan
's
marginalised Hindus - By Reza Mohammadi -
guardian.co.uk).
Ancient
Gandhara
Afghanistan's
epic history starts when it was an important region of ancient India called 'Gandhara'.
Gandharvas
are first described in the Vedas as cosmic beings. Later literature describes
them as a jati (community), and the later Natyasastra refers to their system of
music as gandharva. During the Mahabharata period, the
Gandhara region was very much culturally and politically a part of India. King
Shakuni, brother of Gandhârî, fought with Pandavas in the famous epic Mahabharata.
The battle was fought in Kurukshetra, in the heartland of India. Gandhârî was
married to King Dhrtrastra. Exchanges between Gandhara and Hastinapur (Delhi)
were well established and intense.
Gandhara
was the trade crossroad and cultural meeting place between India, Central Asia,
and the Middle East. Buddhist writings mention Gandhara (which included
Peshawar, Swat and Kabul Valleys) as one of the 16 major states of northern
India at the time. It was a province of the Persian king Darius I in the fifth
century B.C.E. After conquering it in the 4th century B.C.E., Alexander
encountered the vast army of the Nandas in the Punjab, and his soldiers mutinied
causing him to leave India. Thereafter,
Gandhara was ruled by the Maurya dynasty of India, and during the reign of the
Indian emperor Ashoka (3rd century B.C.E.), Buddhism spread and became the
world's first religion across Eurasia, influencing early Christianity and East
Asian civilizations. Padmasambhava, the spiritual and intellectual founder of
the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, was from Gandhara. Greek historian Pliny wrote that
the Mauryans had a massive army; and yet, like all other Indian kingdoms, they
made no attempt at overseas conquest.
Gandhara
and Sind were considered parts of India since ancient times, as
historian Andre Wink explains:
“From
ancient times both Makran and Sind had been regarded as belonging to India… It
definitely did extend beyond the present province of Sind and Makran; the whole
of Baluchistan was included, a part of the Panjab, and the North-West Frontier
Province.”
“The
Arab geographers, in effect, commonly speak of 'that king of al-Hind...
“…Sind
was predominantly Indian rather than Persian, and in duration the periods that
it had been politically attached to, or incorporated in, an Indian polity far
outweigh Persian domination. The Maurya empire was extended to the Indus valley
by Candragupta, laying the foundation of a great Buddhist urban-based
civilization. Numerous Buddhist monasteries were founded in the area, and
Takshashila became an important centre of Buddhist learning, especially in
Ashoka's time. Under the Kushanas, in the late first century A.D…
international trade and urbanization reached unprecedented levels in the Indus
valley and Purushapara (Peshawar) became the capital of a far-flung empire and
Gandhara the second home of Buddhism, producing the well-known Gandhara-Buddhist
art. In Purushapara, Kanishka is supposed to have convened the fourth Buddhist
council and to have built the Kanishka Vihara, which remained a Buddhist
pilgrimage center for centuries to come as well as a center for the
dissemination of the religion to Central Asia and China… in conjunction with
Hinduism, Buddhism survived in Sind until well into the tenth century.”
“Hiuen
Tsang… was especially impressed by the thousand Buddhist monks who lived in
the caves of Bamiyan, and the colossal stone Buddha, with a height of 53.5 m,
then still decorated with gold. There is also evidence of devi cults in the same
areas.”
Shaivism
was also an important ancient religion in this region, with wide influence.
Andre Wink
Professor of
History at University of Madison, Wisconsin writes:
“…Qandahar
[modern Kandahar]…. was the religious center of the kingdom where the cult of
the Shaivite god Zun was performed on a hilltop…” “…the god Zun or Zhun
... shrine lay in Zamindawar before the arrival of Islam, set on a sacred
mountain, and still existing in the later ninth century …. [The region was]…
famous as a pilgrimage center devoted to Zun. In China the god's temple became
known as the temple of Su-na. …[T]he worship of Zun might be related to that
of the old shrine of the sun-god Aditya at Multan. In any case, the cult of Zun
was primarily Hindu, not Buddhist or
Zoroastrian. “[A] connection of
Gandhara with the polymorphic male god Shiva and the Durga Devi is now
well-established. The pre-eminent character of Zun or Sun was that of a mountain
god. And a connection with mountains also predominates in the composite
religious configuration of Shiva, the lord of the mountain, the cosmic pivot and
the ruler of time… Gandhara and the neighboring countries in fact represent a
prominent background to classical Shaivism.”
(source:
How
'Gandhara' became 'Kandahar'
- By Rajiv Malhotra and The
Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval India and the
Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries
- By Andre Wink. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1999. p.112
-193).
Grim Reminders of
Islamic Barbarity
The
gigantic Bamian statues of Buddha in Afghanistan now in ruins. Afghanistan
was a full part of the Hindu cradle up till the year 1000.
(image source: http://www.unesco.org/bpi/eng/unescopress/2001/taliban-crisis.shtml).
Refer
to Romila
Thapar’s Kluge Prize – By Dr. Gautam Sen - vigilonline.com.
Refer
to Muslim
Militants
blow up Buddha statue in Swat
(Pakistan).
Refer
to Religion
of Peace
, Islam Watch
and
In the Name of Allah
Watch
And
the world remained silent – By Ashok Pandit
. Watch
video - About Islam – Dr.
Wafa Sultan,
a Syrian-American psychiatrist
UPA
Government of India like the Taliban is destroying India World Heritage site - Watch
Video on Save
Ramsetu
Holocaust of Indian heritage:
Fanatic iconoclasm.
(image
source:
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~iany/photos/bamian_buddha_caves.jpg)
Refer
to Misinterpretation
of the Gita by Dr. Zakir Naik - By Dr. Alok K. Bohara.
"Why
are there absolutely no Buddhist temples in Afghanistan, in Turkestan? Nor Hindu
or Zorastrain or Manichaen temples, for that matter?"
(source:
Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst p. 103).
***
 Long
before the Arabs came here with their new religion of Islam,
Buddhist monks lived in Central Asia, the conduit through which
Buddhism traveled from India to the East.
The
giant Buddha statues at Bamian in Afghanistan lay on the same
road.
They
have been destroyed, but a wonderful sleeping Buddha, 16m long,
still lies peacefully in Tajikistan.
And near
Kampyr-Tepe, we were invited to the site of a Buddhist lamasery,
where the mendicant monks lived underground in a labyrinth, to
protect them from the terrible heat and cold of the plain.
(source:
Uzbekistan's
best kept secret - BBC news.com).
Refer
to Al-Qaeda
letter says Taj next target
- ibnlive.com.
Watch General
(R) Hameed Gul (ISI): History Will Repeat Itself
Buddhism,
Jainism and Sikhism originated as offshoots of Hinduism. Their founders were
neither crucified nor exiled. The ancient history of India attests to
the symbiotic existence of multiple religions in that subcontinent. Religious
tolerance has been the norm in India for thousands of years.
(source: Proselytization
In India: An Indian Christian's Perspective - By C Alex Alexander -
sulekha.com).
Many foreign groups of
people persecuted for their religion came to seek refuge in India.
The Parsis have thrived. The
heterodox Syrian Christians have lived in peace until the
Portuguese arrived to enlist them in their effort to christianize
India. The Jews have expressed their
gratitude when they left for Israel because India was the only
country where their memories were not of persecution but of
friendly co-existence.
(source: Negationism
in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam - By Koenraad Elst Voice
of India p.
72).
The
infidels in the new territories were mainly Buddhists and Hindus. The
Buddhists with their pacifist philosophy offered no resistance and were the
first to go. The destruction of the
monasteries, the killing of the monks and the rape of nuns is well-known even
though there is still no book documenting this episode in all its horror. In
particular the destruction of the Buddhist universities of Nalanda,
Vikramshila, Odantapura, and Jagddala as the universities destroyed by Mohammed
Bakhtiar Khilji around 1200 A.D. These
were particularly heinous crimes. The burning of the Library of Nalanda ranks
with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as the two most notorious acts
of vandalism in the course of Islamic expansion.
The ruins of temple to Hanuman.
(image
source: History of
India - By A V Williams Jackson).
***
Ghosh's book gives
many examples how these Islamic principles were carried out in succeeding
centuries in India against the Hindus. Hinduism had a military tradition, cf.
Krishna's exhortation to Arjuna to fight given in the Bhagavat Gita. But Hindu
warfare lacked the fanaticism of the Muslim and theirs was not to convert
subject populations. Indeed Hinduism as an ethnic religion meant that people
could not come within its confines except by birth. The Hindus were able to
offer some resistance but not to the extent of preventing the establishment of
Muslim rule over large parts of India.
The fate of
Rajasthan
was typical. Ghosh writes: "The
Rajputs houses of worship were destroyed, their women raped and carried away,
their children taken away as bonded labour, and all non-combatants murdered. The
Rajputs soon came to know the ways of the Moslems. If it appeared that the
battle could not be won, then they themselves killed their women and children,
Masada style, and then went to fight the Moslems until death. In many cases the
Rajput women took their own lives by taking poison and then jumping into a deep
fiery pit (so that their bodies could not be desecrated)".
"The most cruel treatment was reserved to the
religious leaders of the Hindus who refused to convert. In 1645 the Sikh
guru Tegh Bahadur was tortured for his resistance
to the forcible conversion of the Hindus in Kashmir. His followers were killed
before him and when this did not make him yield he was finally beheaded.
"
(source:
A. Ghosh. The Koran and the Kaffir: Islam and the
Infidel Houston,
Texas: A.Ghosh, 1983; Robert E. Burns. The Wrath of Allah. Houston, Texas: A.
Ghosh, 1994; Mohammad Qutb. Islam the Misunderstood Religion. Kuwait: Ministry
of Islamic Affairs, n.d.; John L. Esposito. Islam: the Straight Path. N.Y:
Oxford University Press, 1991; Rudolph Peters. Jihad in Classical and Modern
Islam. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996).
The tradition of "but
shikani" (idol or statue-breaking)
practiced by Arab marauders in their quest to rule the Indian subcontinent, was
done on the plea that idol or religious object worshipping was un-Islamic.
One thousand years later, this
intolerance has resurfaced, justifying the destruction of all statues of the
Buddha (Bamiyan Buddhas) in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Remnants
of temple found in a Mosque washed out in floods
 In
a 'Mosque' situated at the foot of Nathsagar in Jaikwadi, a wall of the Mosque
collapsed with the onslaught of massive floods and some remnants of an ancient
temple along with 'Nandi'
head have been found. To
suppress this evidence of treasure of Hindu culture, Muslims overnight tried to
build the structure. As the waters of the massive Godavari floods receded, the remnants of
the razed Mosque came to light. The steps constructed of stones were also seen
going towards the river. In the morning some of the young fishermen had gone to
this area. At that time they found carved pillars of the temple and idol of
Nandi in shattered state in the ruins of the Mosque
(source: Remnants
of temple found in a Mosque washed out in floods - hindujagrurti.org).
Watch History
of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.
For a documentary on Hindu temples, refer to The
Lost Temples of India.
Parsis - their plight
The Parsis who had fled Persia (Iran) to seek a
new land of religious freedom, settled in India. Under the Hindu rule the Parsis
lived a quiet, secure and settled life. In 1297 CE Muslim armies invaded
Gujarat. Parsis feared there would be a return to the persecution they had
suffered in Persia, so they fought alongside the Hindus, but to no avail.
Mohammed of Ghazni
Sardar
Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (1896-1963)
Indian scholar, journalist, historian from Kerala, administrator, diplomat,
Minister in Patiala Bikaner and Ambassador to China, Egypt and France. Author of
several books, including Asia
and Western Dominance,
India Through
the ages and India
and the Indian Ocean. He writes:
"Much destruction he inflicted on the
prosperous towns of the Gangetic valley, on Thanesar, Kanauj, the imperial city,
on Muthra, the city sacred to Krishna and for over a thousand years the center
of an unparalled artistic culture. The description of the temples of Mathura
left by Utbi, the contemporary historian, is
worth quoting:
"In that place there was a place of worship
of the Indian people: and when he came to that place he saw a city of wonderful
fabric and conception, so that one might say this is a building of
paradise...They had brought immense stones and had laid a level foundation upon
high stairs. Around it and at its sides they had placed one thousand castles
built of stone....And in the midst of the city they had built a temple higher
than all to delineate the beauty and decoration of which the pens of all writers
and the pencils of all painters would be powerless.....In his memoirs which the
Sultan (Mahmud) wrote of this journey he thus declares that if anyone should
undertake to build a fabric like that he would expend thereon a hundred thousand
packet of a thousand dinars and would not complete it in two hundred years with
the assistance of the most ingenious masters...."
The cities of India were laid waste. The glories
of Indian architecture which called forth such reluctant admiration from the
Sultan himself were razed to the ground, and an incalculable amount of wealth
carried away.
(source: India Through
The Ages - By K. M. Panikkar - Discovery Publishing House. Delhi 1985.
p. 142-144). For more on Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar refer to chapter on Quotes.
Andre
Wink ( ?) describes that this aspiration
to conquer India had existed since the time of the Prophet, as is
evidenced by the sacred texts:
The
plunder was also achieved by an ingenious system of leaving the prosperous
population alone, so that they would continue to bring donations to the temples,
and then the Muslims would loot these temples. In order to save their temple
from destruction, many Hindu warriors refused to fight:
“An even greater part of the revenue of these
rulers was derived from the gifts donated by pilgrims who came from all over
Sind and Hind to the great idol (sanam) of the sun-temple at Multan…
When Muhammad al-Qasim conquered Multan, he quickly discovered that it was this
temple which was one of the main reasons for the great wealth of the town. He
'made captives of the custodians of the budd, numbering 6000' and
confiscated its wealth, but not the idol itself – which was made of wood,
covered with red leather and two red rubies for its eyes and wearing a crown of
gold inlaid with gems --, 'thinking it best to leave the idol where it was, but
hanging a piece of cow's flesh on its neck by way of mockery'. AI-Qasim built
his mosque in the same place, in the most crowded bazaar in the center of the
town. The possession of the sun-temple -- rather than the mosque -- is what in
later times the geographers see as the reason why the local governors or rulers
could hold out against the neighboring Hindu powers. Whenever an 'infidel king'
marched against Multan and the Muslims found it difficult to offer adequate
resistance, they threatened to break the idol or mutilate it, and this,
allegedly, made the enemy withdraw. In the late tenth century however the
Isma'ilis who occupied Multan broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests.
A new mosque was then erected on its site…”
(source:
The
Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval
India and the Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries
- By Andre Wink. Oxford University Press, New Delhi
1999.
p.187-193).
Refer to Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By
Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.
Refer to chapter on Survarnabhumi
and Sacred
Angkor
Aurangzeb
Road
Indians
abroad have the leisure to see the history of
India
without fear of being labelled "communalists."
 The
Danish Embassy in
India
is located on
Aurangzeb
Road
in
New Delhi
. So there is still a road in
India
that is named after the most ruthless and cruel of the many
ruthless and cruel Muslim rulers, oppressor and mass-murderer of
Hindus. Why is there a road by that name? Change it, for god's
sake.
Would
that modern, bustling young Hindus, all those computer whizzes we keep reading
about, would not ape the Western world's young in their indifference to their
own history, and especially in this damn fear among Hindus abroad of being
accused of narrow-minded communalism.
Muslims
invaded India. They destroyed tens of thousands of Hindu and Buddhist artworks. They killed,
over time, 60-70 million Hindus. They had a deplorable effect on Indian
civilization, interrupting its natural and healthy evolution with mass murder
and rapine on a colossal scale. They forced the conversion to Islam of many
millions of Hindus. These are the ancestors of today's Muslims in
Pakistan
,
Bangladesh
, and
India
itself. Those descendants should recognized this; so should the lucky Hindus
whose ancestors managed to escape forced conversion -- possibly because as
Hindus they continued to be the jizyah-paying stratum that the Muslims wished to
preserve. After all, if everyone forcibly became a Muslim, who would pay for
things?
The conquest continues. In Kashmir, in
Pakistan
, and in
Bangladesh
today, there are attacks all the time, on Hindus (and Sikhs, and
Christians, and even on the occasional Buddhist in Bangladesh). They are almost never reported outside of
India
itself. And there, in fact, a ruling
elite downplays them, determined to show how very forward-looking
it is, how far from the supposed crime of "communalism."
In Indian terms, "communalism" is coming to mean an
awareness of the history and threat and permanent menace of Islam.
This is maddening.
Indians
abroad have the leisure to see the history of
India
without fear of being labelled "communalists." It
is they who should tutor others in what Islam has meant for
India
. Would that those who are the Muslim descendants of Hindus who
were forcibly converted (either on pain of death, or because of
the intolerable conditions to which they were subject by Muslim
masters) would bethink themselves, and would realize how it is
that they "became Muslims."
So as
part of that effort, a question: why memorialize a killer like Aurangzeb? Why
not make a little statement, by removing his name?
(source:
Aurangzeb
Road - By Hugh Fitzgerald - jihadwatch.org).
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