HINDU NAZI HAVOC ON INDIAN MIND
To what extent our upper caste/Hindu historians have distorted Indian history to instigate anti- Muslim feelings among the young school and college students Is demonstrated by the Modern Rationalist, a monthly journal from Madras, devoted to rationalist causes. In its issue of June 1975, It quotes the text from the books of five noted historians. While the subject dealt with relates to one single incident – Mohammed Ghazni’s attack on Somnath temple – the version differs from historian to historian indicating their biased approach. Each history book Vincent Smith (Oxford History of India), Majumdar, Rayachaudhuri and Kalinkar Datta (An Advanced History of India), Romila Thapar (A History of India), R.C. Majumdar (The History and culture of Indian people, vol.5, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan) – gives different interpretations of the sack of Somanath Temple and the motives behind the attack in which 5,000 Hindus were said to have been killed. While Vincent Smith and Romila Thapar say that Ghazni invaded India to plunder the hidden wealth in temples, Mazumdar and Sathianathaier play the Hindu nazi tune that Ghazni’s invasion was part of his idol- breaking campaign at destroying Hindus. The relevant passages from these books are reproduced.
The most celebrated and interesting of Mahamud’s expeditions was the sixteenth, undertaken with the object – of sacking the temple of Somnath of Prabhasa Pattana on the coast of . Saurashtra or Kathiawar, which was known to be stored with incalculable riches … He seems to have quitted Ghazni with a force of 30,000 horsemen besides volunteers … A fiercely contested fight gave the invaders possession of the fortified temple and of an enormous mass of treasure. The number of slain exceeded 50,000 …. The object of worship was a huge stone lingam enshrined in the sanctum of a temple constructed mainly of timber. The principal hall had 56 columns of wood covered with lead … He arrived at Ghazni loaded with plunder … While Muslim historians regard him as one of the glories of Islam, a less partial judgement finds in his proceedings little deserving of admiration. His ruling passion seems to have been avarice … So far as India was concerned, Mahmud was simply a bandit operating on a large scale, who was too strong for the Hindu Rajas, and was in consequence also able to inflict much irrepairable damage”. – The Oxford History of India.
MAJUMADAR/RAYACHAUDHURI AND KALIKINKAR DATTA
“Mahmud’s expeditions were mostly regular raids undertaken mainly with the object of destroying Hindu temples, desecrating Hindu idols and plundering the wealth of the country. Altogether seventeen expeditions were set to his credit by Muslim chroniciers who describe with glee the wanton destruction and massacre on a large scale by Mahmud and the fabulous wealth carried by him to Gazni after each expedition. It is said that from Nagarkot alone he plundered 700,000 golden dinars, 700 mans of gold and silver plates, 200 mans of pure gold in ingots, 2,000 mans of unwrought silver, and twenty mans of various jewels, including pearls, corals, diamonds and rubies”.
ROMILA THAPAR
Temples were depositories of vast quantities of wealth in cash, golden images and jewellery-the donations of the pious-and these made them natural targets for a non-Hindu searching for wealth in northern India. Mahumud’s greedf for gold was insatiable. From 1010 to 1026, the invasions of Mahmud were directed to temple towns-Mathura, Thanesar, Kanauja and finally Somnath. The concentration of wealth at Somnath was renowned, and consequently it was inevitable that Mohmud would attack it.
“Added to the desire for wealth was the religious motivation, iconoclasm being a meritorious activity among the more orthodox followers of islamic faith. The destruction of Somanth was frengniied, and its effects were to remain for many centuries in the Hindu mind and to colour its assessment of the character of Mahmud, and on occasion of Muslim rulers in general. A thirteenth century account from a Arab source refers to this event:
Idol floating: Somnath-a celebrated city of India situated on the shore of the sea and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnath. This idol was in the middle of the temple without anything to support it from below,or to suspend it from above. It was held in the highest honour among the Hindus and whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement, whether he was a Mussalman or an infidel. The Hindus used to go on pilgrimage to it whenever there was an eclipse of the moon and would then assemble there to the number of more than a hundred thousand.
Devadasis : “They believed that the souls of men used to meet there after separation from the body and that the idol-used to incorporate them at its pleasure in other bodies in accordance with their doctrine of transmigration.
“The ebb and flow of the tide was considered to be the worship paid to the idol by the sea. Everything of the most precious was brought there as offerings, and the temple was endowed by more than ten thousand villages.
“There is a river(the Ganges) which is held sacred, between which and Somnath the distance is two hundred parasangas. They used to bring the water of this river to Somnath every day and wash the temple with it.
‘A thousand Brahmans were employed in to worshiping the idol and attending to the visitors and five hundred damsels sung and danced at the door-all these were maintained upon the endowments of the temple.
50,000 “Hindus” killed: “The edifice was built upon fifty six pillars of teak covered with lead. The shrine of the idol was dark but was lighted by jewelled chandeliers of a great value. Near it was a chain of gold weighing two hundred mans. When portion(watch) of the night closed, this chain used to be shaken like bells to rouse a fresh lot of Brahmans to perform worship.
“When the Sultan went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnath in the hope that the Hindus would become Muhammadans … The Indians made desperate resistance They would go weeping and crying for help into the temple and then issue forth to battle and fight till al were killed. The number of slain exceeded 50,000.
“The king looked upon the idol with wonder and gave orders for the seizing of the spoil and the appropriation of the treasures. There were many idols of gold and silver and vessels set with jewels, all of which had been sent there by the greatest personages in India. The value of the things found in the temple and of the idols exceeded twenty thousand dinars.
Secret exposed: “When the king asked his companions what they had to say about the marvel of the idol and of its staying in the air without proper support, several maintained that it was upheld by some hidden support. The king directed a person to go and feel all around and above and below it with a spear which he did, ‘but met with no obstacles
One of the attendants then stated his opinion that the canopy was made of load-stone and the idle of iron, and that the ingenious builder had skillfully contrived that the magnet should not exercise a greater force on any one side-hence the idol was suspended in the middle.
SATHIANATHAIER
“Some coincided, others differed. Permission was obtained from the Sultan to remove some stones from the top of the canopy to settle the point. When two stones were removed from the summit, the idol swerved on one side, when more were taken away it inclined still further until at last it rested on the ground”. – (A History of India)
“Three years later he (Mahmud of Ghazni) achieved his greatest triumph in India – the expedition to Somnath (Patan on the coast of Kathiawar above Diu). He is said to have been provoked into undertaking it by the boast of the Brahmans of Somnath that their god Siva was the greatest of the gods and that it was his hostility to the other gods that had been responsible for their overthrow by the idolbreaker.
“Mahmud made careful preparation for his march through the Indian desert and reached Sakmbhari (Sambhar)and thence Anhilvad in 1025. Bhimadeva | Solanki fled from his capital and Mahmud, after defeating his army, arrived at Somnath and captured the fort in spite of its vigorous defence. Subsequently, he saw the great temple with the revenue of 10,000 villages, 1,000 priests, 300 barbers and 350 dancing girls, with a big linga 9 feet high above the floor and 15 feet on the whole, daily bathed in. the Ganges water carried over a distance of 750 miles and garlanded with Kashmir flowers,
“He was offered a huge sum of money, if he would spare the idol and against the advice of some of his own followers he broke it on the plea that he was a breaker not seller of idols and sent the fragments to Ghazni, Mecca and Madina …
“To defend his destruction of Hindu temples by pointing out that it was effected in the course of warfare in order to get at the treasures accumulated and hidden in them is one-sided and the humiliation to which the idols were subjected even after they had been broken to pieces.
“If his objectives was not conversion, it is difficult to see what purpose his desecration of temples ant idols would have served other than the glorification of islam in a way most objectionable to the Hindus, and we cannot therefore, exonerate him completely from the charge of fanaticism, though we cannot concede that the destruction of monuments to some extent in the course of protractted warfare is inevitable in order to break the resistance of the enemy by seizing his wealth and removing his points of vintage”. – (History of India)
R.C.MAJUMDAR
“Mahmud reached Somnath in the middle of January, 1025 and found there a strongly defended fortress on the sea shore. The Hindus, who assembled on the rampart of the fort, were passing their time in merrymaking, fondly believing that Somanath had drawn the Muslims there only to annihilate them for the sins they had committed in demolishing idois elsewhere. Their morale was high even though their leader had fled away in cowardice with his family to a neighboring island. The following day the Sultan began assault .. a large number of people lost their lives. But before the Muslims could consolidate their position they were attacked violently by a fresh batch of Hindus who came out of the temple of Somanath after a prayer for strength and courage … Next day … they all crowded in front of the gate of the temple of Somanath. The Muslims pursued them there and then followed a terrible carnage.
“Bands of Hindus in succession entered the temple to pray with all their hearts for victory and then coming out of it rushed against their enemies, only to be killed. In this way, more then 50,000 Hindu scarified their lives to defend the honour of their deity. The new survivors, who attempted to escape by sea were pursued by the Muslims and put to the sword.
“The Sultan made a truimphal entry into the temple, broke down the Sivalinga into pieces and took posession of the vast wealth it contained said to have been worth 2,000,000 dirhams. The temple was then razed to the ground. The fragments of the Sivalinga were carried to Ghazni, where they were made to serve as steps at the gate of the Jamia Mosque – an act of profanity imitated by later Muslim rulers”.
The History and Culture of the Indian People Vol.5-(Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan).
HYSTERIA OVER HISTORY
As soon as the Janata Party came to power in 1977 middle, the RSS – Jan Sangh elements, who had a dominant say in the then Government launched their first attack on some important historians with “leftist” leaning. The controversy generated on this account rocked the good part of the latter half of the year 1977 throwing much light on the nazi bid to re-write Indian history. The nazi attack on these historians – Romila Thapar, Biopin Chandra and Harbans Mukhia was so sharp that even the Jamaate-Islami could not tolerate it inspite of its then new – found friendship with nazis.
Secret note: The attempt, obviously, was to portray the medieval period of Indian history as a period of relentless struggle between the Hindus and Muslims or between the religious community and others. A “secret note” was prepared by some pro nazi historians and it was forwarded by a Jan Sangh MP to Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s office. They somehow prevailed upon the Prime Minister’s office and got the note sent to the Education Ministry seeking withdrawal of the some of the history textbooks which in their view gave a “brighter side of the Muslim rule of India”. One of the books to which exception was taken is that of Dr.Romila Thapar, a noted historian who is described in the note as a “communist and a communalist”.
Its objections is to a passage in the book pertaining to Mahmud Ghazni’s invasion of India. The note says: “This book largely gives only the brighter side of the Muslim rule in India”.
The example quoted is as follows: “For examples, Mahmud Ghazni’s destroying of Hindu temples has been justified on the ground that he wanted to plunder them. His proud claim as a breaker of idols has been almost ignored.”
“The reality is different. The original quotation from the book which has been distroted, reads thus: “He (Mohmud Ghazni) had heard that there was much gold and jewellery kept in the big temples in India. So he destroyed the temples of Somnath in western India. Destroying temples had another advantage. He could claim, as he did, that he had obtained religious merit by destroying images”.
“Another example mentioned in the note refers to another book on medieval India which had said that Akbar and Aurangazeb were not foreigners. For that they have been charged with saying that they were national heroes and others like Rana Pratap were not national heroes.” (National Herald-July 31 ,- 1977).
Taj Mahal is Temple: Why do the Hindu nazis are so particular of rewriting Indian history? It is because they know that history is an ideological weapon. Several instances of nazi distortions of history can be cited- the most well known being that the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort were not built by Shahjehan but by Rajput princes. It is because nazis do not want any account of current developments to be left behind by contemporary historians; its existence might make re-writing or distortions of present-day history difficult by future nazi historians.
