Akhand Bharat

The Ideology for the New Millennium










I s l a m i c o n s l a u g h t




Hinduism remains a vibrant, cultural and religious force in the world today. To understand Hinduism, it is necessary that we examine its history and marvel at its sheer stamina to survive in spite of repeated attacks across India's borders, time and again, by Greeks, Shaks, Huns, Arabs, Pathans, Mongols, Portuguese, British etc. India gave shelter, acceptance, and freedom to all. But, in holy frenzy, millions of Hindus were slaughtered or proselytized. Their cities were pillaged and burnt, temples were destroyed and accumulated treasures of centuries carried off. Even under grievous persecutions from the ruling foreigners, the basics of its civilization remained undefiled and, as soon as the crises were over Hindus returned to the same old ways of searching for the perfection or the unknown.

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India before the advent of Islamic imperialism was a country with plenty of wars fought by Hindu princes. But in all their wars the Hindus had observed some time honored conventions sanctioned by the Shastras. The Brahmins and Bhikshus were never touched. The chastity of women was never violated. The cows were never killed. The temples were never touched. The non-combatants were never killed or captured. A human habitation was never attacked unless it was a fort. The civilian population was never plundered. The martial class (kshatriyas) who clashed, mostly in open fields, had a code of honor.

As early as as the 4th century B.C. Megasthenes noticed a peculiar trait of Indian warfare.

"Whereas among other nations it is usual in the contests of war to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen, the tillers of the soil, even if battle is raging in the neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side, in waging the conflict, make carnage of each other but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides they never ravage an enemy's land with fire nor cut down its trees." The modern "scorched earth" policy was then unknown.

Professor H. H. Wilson says: "The Hindu laws of war are very chivalrous and humane, and prohibit the slaying of the unarmed, of women, of the old, and of the conquered."

At the very time when a battle was going on, be says, the neighboring cultivators might be seen quietly pursuing their work, - " perhaps ploughing, gathering for crops, pruning the trees, or reaping the harvest." Chinese pilgrim to Nalanda University, Hiuen Tsiang affirms that although the there were enough of rivalries and wars in the 7th century A.D. the country at large was little injured by them.

Colonel James Tod, Late political agent to the Western Rajpoot State, author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India wrote: "To spare a prostrate foe is the creed of the Hindu cavalier, and he carried all such maxims to excess."

Islamic imperialism knew no code of honor. The only rule of war they observed without fail was to fall down the helpless civil population after a decisive victory had been won on the battlefield. They sacked and burnt down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins and Buddhist Bhikshus invited their special attention in a mass murder of non-combatants. Their temples and shrines were their special targets in an orgy of pillage and destruction. Those that they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves. The scene was described by Kanhadde Prabandha (1456 A.D) in the following words: "The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people's wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks."

(source: Story of Islamic Imperialism in India - By Sita Ram Goel p. 41-42).

The entire northwestern India and later the rest of India was gradually butchered and plundered with ruthless savagery surpassing perhaps even the genocide in the Americas. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher and writer, narrates the sordid tale as follows:

"...This of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bears witness to the monotheistic fury...carried on from Mahmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurangzeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese...have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto defe of the inquisition at Goa...We hear nothing of this kind in the case of the Hindoo...."

(source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - By T. Bailey Saunders p. 42-43).

wpe1.jpg (4085 bytes) Two Chapters in India's history are most noted for its atrocities against Hinduism:

Islamic Onslaught
European Imperialism

Islamic Onslaught

Islamic Hoards and Their Terror
Torture of the Buddhists
Aurangzeb's Tryanny against the Sikhs and Hindus
Negationism by Marxists Historians
Effect of Muslim Atrocities on Hindu Society
The Religious consequences of Defeat
Conclusion
Articles

An event of immense and lasting impact in Indian history was the advent of the Muslims in the north-west. Lured by tales of the fertile plains of the Punjab and the fabulous wealth of Hindu temples, Mahmud of Ghazni first attacked India in 1000 AD. Other raiders from Central Asia followed him. Hindus never forgot the repeated destruction of the Somnath Temple, the massacre of Buddhists at Nalanda, or the pogroms of the Mughals. Hindus gallantly resisted, knowing full well that defeat would mean a choice of economic discrimination via the jaziya tax on non- Muslims, forced conversion, or death. It is no wonder that the residents of Chittor, and countless other people over the length and breadth of Bharat, from present-day Afghanistan to present-day Bangladesh, thought it better to die gloriously rather than face cold-blooded slaughter.

Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul Nobel laureate, has said: "India was wrecked and looted, not once but repeatedly by invaders with strong religious ideas, with a hatred of the religion of the people they were conquering. People read these accounts but they do not imaginatively understand the effects of conquest by an iconoclastic religion."

"India became the great land for Muslim adventurers and the peasantry bore this on their back, they were enslaved quite literally. It just went on like this from the 11th century onwards."

(source: Economic Times - http://www.economictimes.com/today/30poli04.htm).

Colonel James Tod, Late political agent to the Western Rajpoot State, wrote in 1829:

"After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after almost every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarians, bigotted, and exasperated foes, it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained..." "

(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - James Tod p. viii).

Vidiadhar Naipaul summed up the situation well. He said, "In art and history books, people write of the Muslims "arriving" in India as though they came on a tourist bus and went away again. The Muslim view of their conquest is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the casting away of locals as slaves."

(source: No comparison between Buddhas and Babri - Chao Mumbai.com).

Francois Gautier in his book - Rewriting Indian History

"Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger 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."

Alain Danielou, son of French aristocracy, author of numerous books on philosophy, religion, history and arts of India, in his book, Histoire de l' Inde writes:

"From 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 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races." Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, "was 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." 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."

(source: Histoire de l' Inde - By Alain Danielou p. 222).

Reused doubled Hindu temple pillars, Quwwat al-Islam Mosque, Delhi A.D. 1192-6
(source: Indian Art - By Vidya Dehejia p. 249).



Will Durant, the well-known American historian says in the book "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage" page 459

"...the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Almost all the Muslims of South Asia are descendants of weaker elements of the population who had succumbed to forcible Islamic conversion." )

"The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history". The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride of the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period. "

(source: The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant page 459).

A section of the Indian intelligentsia is still trying to erase from the Hindus' memory the history of their persecution by the swordsmen of Islam. The Islamic reports on the massacres of Hindus, destruction of Hindu temples, the abduction of Hindu women and forced conversions, invariably express great glee and pride. They leave no doubt that the destruction of Paganism by every means, was considered the God-ordained duty of the Moslem community. Yet, today many Indian historians, journalists and politicians, deny that there ever was a Hindu-Moslem conflict. They shamelessly rewrite history and conjure up centuries of Hindu-Moslem amity; now a growing section of the public in India and the West only knows their negationist version of history. It is not a pleasant task to rudely shake people out of their delusions, especially if these have been wilfully created; but this essay does just that.

(source: Negationism in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam - By Koenraad Elst ).

If Christians are facing their past. Even in religion class in Catholic schools in Belgium, we gave attention to the gruesome part in Church history. In Latin America, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival has sparked some serious reconsideration both within and outside the Church, about the role of Christianity in the wholesale destruction of all the cultures without exception in the entire New World. But in India, we find the unbelievable situation, that not only Muslim historians and public figures refuse to face the truth about Muslim history : neutral secular historians are also covering up and denying the crimes which Islam has systematically committed, and even many Hindus are denying the crimes committed against their own society.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).>

The famous iron pillar in Delhi belonging to the fourth-fifth century A.D. is a metallurgical wonder. This huge wrought iron pillar, 24 feet in height 16.4 inches in diameter at the bottom, and 6 1/2 tons in weight has stood exposed to tropical sun and rain for fifteen hundred years, but does not show the least sign of rusting or corrosion. Evidence shows that the pillar was once a Garuda Stambha from a Vishnu temple. This pillar was plundered by Islamic hoards from a temple dedicated to Vishnu and added as a trophy in the Quwwat al-Islam mosque in Delhi. Made of pure iron, which even today can be produced only in small quantities by electrolysis. Such a pillar would be most difficult to make even today. Thus, the pillar defies explanation.

"One does not need to be communally-minded to infer that desecration of Hindu holy sites was held to be meritorious activity in the entire Muslim world, which is why the writers in question felt the need to glorify such acts, whether they actually took place or not."

(source: Sanitizing Temple Destruction by Islam - By Meenakshi Jain).

Danielou points out that the sack of the magnificent city of Vijayanagar, which was like an island of civilization, chivalry, and beauty, in the midst of a shattered and bleeding India, by Husain Nizam Shah, was an horror: "During nearly FIVE months," reminisces Danielou, " the Muslims set themselves to the task of destroying everything, the temples, the palaces, the magnificent residences. The scenes of terror and massacre were unparalleled and mightier than the imagination can ever fathom. The victors grabbed so much richness in gold, silver, jewels, precious furniture, camels, tents, girls, boys, slaves, weapons, armours, that there were not a single plain soldier who did not depart a rich man. And nothing remained after their departure of the most beautiful and prosperous city of that time, but smoking ruins."

"Nadir Shah, of Iran attacked Delhi in 1739 and for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He went back to Iran taking with him precious furniture, works of art, horses, the Kohinoor diamond, the famous Peacock throne and 150 million rupees in gold."

(source: Histoire de l' Inde - By Alain Danielou p. 251- 290).

***

Slavery under Islamic Rule

The poet Amir Khusrau testified that "the Turks, whenever they please, can seize, buy or sell any Hindu."

(source: History of India - By Elliot & Dawson, vol 3 p. 561. Quoted from Amir Khusrau's Nuh Sipehr).

Shahabuddin al-Umri wrote about the days of Sultan Mohammed bin Tughlaq (1325-51): "The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making wars upon the infidel....Every day thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners."

(source: Muslim Slave System in Medieval India - By K. S. Lal p. 128).

In South Asia, where claims of "egalitarianism" are trump cards in the competition with "caste-ridden" Hinduism, the claim that Islam was the emancipator of the slaves in very popular.

As Marxist historian, Ifran Habib notes: "Slaves were, in effect, deprived of caste and converted to Islam, could be put to almost any task or learn any trade." "The number of slaves in the Sultans' establishments were very high (50,000 under Alaudddin Khilji, and 180,000 under Firuz Tughlaq), Barani judges the level of prices by referring to slave prices, and the presence of slaves were almost all-pervasive."

Foreign travelers in different centuries, including the great globe-trotter, Ibn Batuta, author of Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, testify that Indian slaves were very cheap because they were very numerous in supply." William Finch, who lived at the Moghul court in c. 1610, testifies that hunting expeditions in the forest brought human as well as animal prey.

B. R. Ambedkar, wrote: "The Hindus have their social evils. But there is one relieving feature about them - namely that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. The Muslims, on the other hand, do not realize that they are evils and consequently do not agitate for their removal."

(source: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind - By Koenraad Elst p. 414-424).

***

As Nobel laureate V S Naipaul said recently in an interview: 'India has been a wounded civilization because of Islamic violence: Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorized civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed.'

(source: You want a plebiscite? Okay, let's do a real one, then! - Rajeev Srinivasan). Refer to Some observations on “Medieval India,” - History textbook for Class VII by Romila Thapar). For more information please refer to Hindu Holocaust Museum).

Louis-Frederic, French Indologist, author of L'lnde de l'Islam, frequently mentions forced conversions, massacres and temple demolitions. On pages 42-49 he writes:

“Mohammed Ghori had the Hindu temples of Ajmer demolished and ordered the construction of mosques and Quran schools on their runins…He plundered Kanauj and Kashi and destroyed their temples.” While his generals “destroyed in passing the remaining Buddhist communities of Bihar and destroyed the universities of Nalanda.”

Bakhtiar Khilji “established a Muslim capital in Lakhanauti (Gaur) on the Ganga and destroyed, in 1197, its basalt temples. In Odantpuri, in 1202, he massacred two thousand Buddhist monks. “

Meanwhile, back in Delhi: “This Quwwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) was built in a hurry using the debris, chiefly sculpted pillars, of twenty-seven dismantled Hindu temples.” Thirty years later, “Iltutmish did not forget that he was a Muslim conqueror. He showed himself to be very pious, never forgetting to do his five devotional daily….He likewise showed himself totally intolerant vis-à-vis the Hindus who refused to convert, destroying their temples and annihilating Brahmin communities.”

However, in India a literature has developed which denies, minimizes or white-washes this history.

(source: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind: Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst p. 328).

India has been a land of freedom of thought and tolerance from the very dawn of her history. Conformism of any kind, religious or political, is alien to her genius and culture. As a result different schools of philosophy, forms of government and ways of worship have co-existed in it all through the history. Theistic and atheists, spiritualists, and materialists, Shaivas and Vaishanavas, Buddhists, and Jains have flourished here side by side with full freedom to preach their viewpoints and convert others to their line of thinking and way of worship. Even Charwak, the Indian precursor of Karl Marx, has been accepted as a Rishi in the Indian tradition.

This situation was changed by the advent of Islam in this country. Apart from the fact that it came to India on the wings of foreign invaders one of whose main motivation was spread of Islam in this country, its very character was anti-thesis of Indian thinking and attitude in regard to religion. Unlike the numerous forms of worship and systems of thought that co-existed in India at the time, it stood for a monolithic uniformity and conformism. It had no tolerance for any other form of worship. It not only aimed at converting all the Indian to Islam, on the point of the sword if necessary, but also expected such converts to reject their pre-Islamic past and ancestors. The Muslim invaders looked upon the people of this country as kafirs or heretics. They behave towards the Hindus in a barbaric manner. They destroyed temples and libraries and indulged in most heinous type of vandalism. Their cruelty and harshness towards Indian kafirs knew no bounds. When Mahmud of Ghazni saw the temple of Mathura he was so much wonder struck by their splendor, magnificence and art that he exclaimed that they must have been built not by men but by angels who must have taken centuries to complete them. But his Islamic zeal impelled him to raze them to the ground.

Indians who had been accustomed to wars in which the women, the old, children, the peasants were left untouched and who had never seen temples and other places of worship being desecrated or destroyed like this felt aghast at the conduct of the new invaders. This further explains the notorious declaration of Maulana Mohammed Ali, the President of All-India Congress Committee in 1923 that for him a goonda and an adulterer Muslim was thousand times superior to Mahatma Gandhi.

(source: Indianisation? - By Balraj Madhok).

Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul Nobel laureate, has said on the Ayodhya issue that: "Indian intellectuals have a responsibility to the state and should start a debate on the Muslim psyche" and that : "The idea (of the temple) should be welcomed."

In 1739, Nadir Shah carried away from India money, plate, and jewels valued at from thirty to sixty millions sterling.

(source: Economic Conditions of India - By P. P. Pillai p. 12).

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Islamic Hoards and Their Terror - By B. R. Ambedkar

The first Muslim invasion of India came from the north-west by the Arabs who were led by Mahommad Bin Qasim. It took place in 711 A.D. and resulted in the conquest of Sind. This first Muslim invasion did not result in a permanent occupation of the country because the Caliphate of Baghdad, by whose order and command the invasion had taken place, was obliged by the middle of 9th century A.D. to withdraw its direct control from this distant province of Sind. Soon after this withdrawal, there began a series of terrible invasions by Muhammad of Ghazni in 1001 A.D. Muhammad died in 1030 A.D., but within the short span of 30 years, he invaded India 17 times. He was followed by Mahommed Ghori, who began his career as an invader in 1173. He was killed in 1206. For thirty years Muhammad of Ghazni ravaged India and for thirty years Mahommad Ghori harried the same country in the same way.

Then followed the incursions of the Moghul hordes of Chenghiz Khan. They first came in 1221. They then stayed on the border of India but did not enter it. Twenty years later, they marched on Lahore and sacked it. Of their inroads, the most terrible was under Timur in 1398. Then comes on the scene a new invader in the person of Babar who invaded India in 1526. The invasion of India did not stop with that of Babar. There occurred two more invasions. In 1738 Nadir Shah’s invading host swept over the Punjab like a flooded river “furious as the ocean”. He was followed by Ahmad Shah Abdali who invaded India in 1761, smashed the forces of the Marathas at Panipat and crushed for ever the attempt of the Hindus to gain the ground which they had lost to their Muslim invaders.

These Muslim invasions were not undertaken merely out of lust for loot or conquest, but also to strike a blow at the idolatry and polytheism of Hindus and establishing Islam in India.

Muhammad of Ghazni also looked upon his numerous invasions of India as the waging of a holy war. Al’Utbi, the historian of Muhammad, describing his raids writes:

“He demolished idol temples and established Islam. He captured ……cities, destroyed the idolaters, and gratifying Muslims. He then returned home and promulgated accounts of the victories obtained for Islam……..and vowed that every year he would undertake a holy war against Hind.”

(source: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches. Reprint of Pakistan or The Partition of India. Education Department. Government of Maharashtra 1990 Vol. 8. p. 53-66).for more ....

Sultan Alau’d-Din Khalji (1296-1316), in Tarikh-I-Firuz Shahi, op. cit:

Somnath (Gujarat): “At the beginning of the third year of the reign, Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan, with their amirs and generals, and a large army marched against Gujarat…All Gujarat became prey to the invaders, and the idol, which after the victory of Sultan Mahmud and his destruction of )the idol) of Manat, the Brahmans had set up under the name of Somanat, for the worship of the Hindus, was carried to Delhi where it was laid for the people to tread upon….” (Report to the same effect in Tabqat-I-Tawarikh; the latter also mentions that at the site of the temple a mosque was constructed.)

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie p. 107-136).

Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi, who rampaged across most of northern India converting Hindus to Islam and smashing Hindu statues. He is said to have taken Hindu statues and put them at the entrance to a mosque in Ghazni so the Muslim faithful could use them as stepping stones.

(source: Associated Press).

When Marxist Historian, Romila Thapar tries to make gullible readers believe that Mahmud Ghaznavi only desecrated temples for their wealth she must know (assuming, as all her quoters do, that she is competent historian) that Mahmud is revered by the Muslims as a devout Muslim, that he calligraphed Quran text "for the benefit of his soul", and that he actually refused a huge ransom which Hindus were ready to pay if he agreed to give back an idol, instead of breaking it. Mahmud preferred breaking idols to selling them, even if that meant foregoing wealth. So her theory of Mahmud's economical rather than religious motives is at best an unscientific imposition of Marxist dogma upon the facts of Indian history, otherwise a deliberate lie.

The myth of Brahmin oppression, the myth of Buddhism as a social reform movement, the myth of the Buddhist-Brahmin power struggle, the myth of the economical motives for the Muslim conquests and destruction, the myth of the non-existence of an indigenous and nation-wide Hindu culture, the myth of the social reforms brought by Islam, the myth of Hindu-Muslim amity, the myth of Nehru and of India as a a nation in the making, the myth of the Composite Culture, the myth that communalism is a British creation, all these myths are bound to give way once a substantial number of Hindu intellectuals apply their minds to them in a serious and scientific way, and then use the available channels to speak out.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).

"Why are there absolutely no Buddhist temples left in Afghanistan, in Turkestan? Nor Hindu or Zorastrian or Manichaen temples, for that matter? Secularist scholars do not seem to know that the Buddhist monasteries and universities were destroyed and exterminated to the last, in India just as well as in Central Asia, by none other than the Muslim armies. So, the answer is that, while, Buddhism had been partly reabsorbed into Hinduism, and had partly continued as a separate tradition under Hindu dynasties, the Muslim conquerors finished it off totally."

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst p. 103).

Hindu columns from devastated temples, incorporated in the halls of the Kwat-ul-Islam mosque at Delhi, began in 1193
(source: India: A Concise History - By Francis Watson p. 96).

The Quwwat ul-Islam or 'Might of Islam' Mosque, erected on the site of Delhi's largest Hindu temple, and it contains on three sides, by rows of stone columns pillaged from some 27 local Hindu and Jain shrines. To the southeast was erected the great Qutb (pole or axis) Minar. It was haughtily erected as a tower of victory, and its inscriptions proclaim its purpose - to cast a long shadow of God over the conquered city of the Hindus. Qutub-ud-din employed the local Hindu craftsmen of Delhi, and their beautifully detailed stonework is everywhere in evidence. The pointed arches of the mosque's western screen were constructed using only traditional Hindu corbelling techniques; and around these arches and on the decorative band encircling the minar the craftsmen carved inscriptions, in elegant Naskhi script, interspersed with floral designs of Indian origin.

(source: Indian Art - By Roy C. Craven p. 195-196).

***

Disown your past and you are half a people!

"The converted Muslims of India are denying their past. They do not want to acknowledge a history beyond the time they assumed their new identity. This is almost as bad as Indians not knowing their history," said Sir V S Naipaul at the India Habitat Centre on Friday evening.

He told Indians, "There is this great denial of the past, this shame to acknowledge of 500-600 years of great defeat. You must understand that other countries have had them too."

(source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\story8&d=FRONT_PAGE).

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Torture of the Buddhists

According to B. R. Ambedkar:

"There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans." Islam came out as the enemy of the 'But'. The word 'But' as everybody knows, is the Arabic word and means an idol. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but whatever it went. Before Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar, and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia..."

"The Mussalman invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves.

(source: B. R. Ambedkar, "The decline and fall of Buddhism," Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III, Government of Maharashtra. 1987, p. 229-38).

British Historian Mr. Vincent Smith says:" Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans", that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them." It was discovered, we are told, that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar." But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists to Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historian (like Romila Thapar and others) who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to prove even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction.

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie p. 98-99).

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

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.

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

K. M. Panikkar 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).

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Aurangzeb's Tryanny against the Sikhs and Hindus

Since coming to power by imprisoning his father and killing his two brothers, Aurengzeb had been consolidating his power base. After ten years he now began to apply his power throughout the country. Aurengzeb was an orthodox Muslim who dreamed of purging India of all ‘infidels’ and converting it into a land of Islam. Aurengzeb had no tolerance for other religions and proceeded on a brutal campaign of repression. Famous Hindu temples throughout the country were demolished and mosques built in their place. Hindu idols were placed in the steps of mosques to be trodden on by the feet of Muslim pilgrims. Aurangzeb issued a number of harsh decrees. In 1665 he forbade Hindus to display illuminations at Diwali festivals. In 1668 he forbade Hindu Jatras, in 1671 he issued an order that only Muslims could be landlords of crown lands, and called upon provincial Viceroys to dismiss all Hindu clerks. In 1669 he issued a general order calling upon all governors of all provinces to destroy with a willing hand the schools and temples of the infidels; and they were told to put a stop to the teachings and practicing of idolatrous forms of worship. In 1674 lands held by Hindus in Gujarat, in religious grants were all confiscated.

In this climate of intolerance the viceroy of Kashmir Iftikhar Khan took to the task of forcibly converting the Hindu population to Islam by the sword. The Hindu Brahmin Pandits of Kashmir were among the most highly learned and orthodox of the Hindu leadership. Aurangzeb felt if they could be converted, the rest of the country would easily follow. He did not want to see the talik (holy mark on the forehead) or janaeu (sacred thread) on any of his subjects. Given this ultimatum, a large delegation of 500 Kashmiri Pandits decided to journey to Anandpur Sahib to seek the help of Guru Tegh Bahadur.

This delegation was led by Pandit Kirpa Ram Datt (who would later on become the Sanskrit teacher of Guru Gobind Singh and eventually become a Khalsa and died fighting in the battle of Chamkaur). The Pandits met the Guru and explained their dire predicament to the Guru and requested the Guru to intercede on their behalf. As the Guru was pondering over the issue his nine year old son Gobind Rai walked into the room, noticing the serious and gloomy mood in the room the young Gobind asked his father what was happening. Guru Tegh Bahadur replied, “Unless a holy man lays down his head for the sake of the poor Brahmins, there is no hope for their escape from imperial tyranny.” Young Gobind replied, “Revered father, who would be better equipped for this than yourself?” Guru Tegh Bahadur hugged his son and wept for joy. “I was only worried about the future, for you are far too young”. “Leave me to God”, Gobind replied, “and accept the challenge of the Mughals.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur was subjected to many cruelties, he was kept in an iron cage and starved for many days. The Guru was made to watch as Bhai Mati Das the devoted Sikh was tied between two pillars and his body split in two by being sawn alive. Bhai Dyala was boiled alive in a cauldron of boiling water and Bhat Sati Das was wrapped in cotton wool and set on fire. The Guru bore these cruelties without flinching or showing any anger or distress. Finally on November 11, 1675 Guru Tegh Bahadur was publicly beheaded with the sword of the executioner as he prayed. The Gurus body was left in the dust as no one dared to pick up the body for fear of the emperors reprisal.

(source: http://www.sikhs.org/guru9.htm)

(For more information on Islamic Imperialism and Hindu Genocide please visit this site In The Islamic Age - http://hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/moghal_link.html )
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu/1995_Apr_2/msg00027.html)

Jawaharlal Nehru - that High Priest of Indian secularism wrote: "Babur was one of the most cultured and delightful person one could meet. There was no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as his ancestors used to."

This extravagant praise of Babur by our secualarists is vitiated by the observations of the great Guru Nanak, a contemporary and an eyewitness to Babur's invasion; in his Babur Vani, Nanak denounced him in no uncertain terms, giving a vivid account of Babur's vandalism in Aimanabad.

(source: Babur in His Own Words - voi.org - please refer to The Baburnama Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor - translated by Wheeler M. Thacktson).

The plight of Hindus has been enshrined in the Granth Sahib:

"Having lifted Islam to the head, You have engulfed Hindustan in dread...Such cruelties have they inflicted, and yet Your mercy remains unmoved...Should the strong attack the strong, the heart does not burn. But when the strong crush the helpless, surely the One who was to protect them has to be called to account...O' Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed and yet You do not pay heed...." (Mahla 1.36).

Marxists historian Satish Chandra author of Medieval India: from Sultanate to the Mughals continues the pattern of negationism in Indian history and writes:

"Thus, there was no atmosphere of confrontation between the Sikhs and Mughal rulers during this period, Nor was there any systematic persecution of the Hindus, and hence, no occasion for the Sikhs or any group or sect to stand forth as the champion of the Hindus against religious persecution. The occasional conflict between the Gurus and Mughal rulers was personal and political rather than religious."

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie p. 119-120).

"Aurangzeb's religious fanaticism plunged India again in chaos, famine and misery. He was foremost a Sunni Muslim, puritan, unbending: he had the koranic law applied in its strictest sense, cleansed from the court all musicians and poets, banned all Hindu religious festivals and imposed the very heavy "jizya" tax on unbelievers. He thus made once more the Mughal monarchy highly unpopular and everywhere revolts sprang-up such as the one of the Satnamis of Alwar. Aurangzeb has them massacred until the last one, leaving an entire region empty of human being." He also battled against the Mahrathas, who spearheaded the a Hindu renaissance in India, he had Sambhaji, Shivaji's son and his Minister tortured scientifically for three weeks and after that they were cut in small pieces till they died on March 11, 1689.

(source: Histoire de l' Inde - By Alain Danielou p. 278).

***

Taj Mahal - Indian Icon?

Long marginalized, Hindu nationalism is becoming mainstream in India. Indeed, more than 50 years after independence from Britain, many Indians invoke memories of past invasions so that future generations will not be too pacifistic.

"You can turn the other cheek for only so long," a female friend commented during my visit. "Sometimes you have to show the world that you are proud."

Educated women seem to be on the forefront of the Hindu nationalistic movement today. Many now join peasants in their annual trek to the Kumbh Mela and other spiritual gatherings.

Unless future American foreign policy takes Hindu nationalism into account, violence in the subcontinent may well escalate, and might lead to a military, even a nuclear, conflict.

Standing in the visa line at the Indian Consulate in San Francisco recently, I noticed the large picture of the Taj Mahal covering an entire wall. "Isn't it ironic," I said to a friend, "that the one icon most people identify with India happens to be a Muslim tomb?"

"I wish they would use a picture of the Minakshi Temple instead," she replied. The temple is Hindu.

(source: U.S. Policy Should Acknowledge Hindu Nationalism - By Sarita Sarvate).

***

Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell (1861-1934) principal to the Madras College of Art in the 1890s and left as principal of the Calcutta College of Art some 20 years later. His major ideas about Indian art theory are to be found in his two works, Indian Sculpture and Painting (1908) and, more important, The Ideals of Indian Art (1911).

He has written about the civilizing influence of Hindu art on the invaders:

"It is very important to remember also that from motives of self-interest, and not from any respect for art, these ferocious invaders, who massacred wholesale men, women, and children of the general population, usually spared the artisans and craftsmen, and thus preserved for their own uses the art-traditions of the countries they ravaged and desolated. Skilled craftsmen were always the prizes of war, and when an uncivilized race like the Mongols triumphed over a highly cultivated one the craftsmen of the defeated became the teachers of the victors; this transplantation into a new soil brought new vigor into art, and was the beginning of great developments. When Timur the ancestor of the Indian Moghul dynasty, withdrew his hordes from northern India in 1398, after ravaging it with fire and sword, he took back with him as captives all the masons who had built that famous mosque of Ferozabad, in order that they might build one like it at Samarkhand. This Indian art fulfilled once more its civilizing mission, and when two and half centuries later Timur’s descendant…”

The important part which craftsmen, more especially oriental craftsmen, have always played in the world’s history as missionaries of civilization, culture, and religion, is not generally recognized by bookmen. Even at the present day the Indian craftsmen deeply versed in his Silpa-sastras, learned in folk-lore and in national epic literature, though excluded from Indian universities – or rather, on that account – is often more highly cultured intellectually and spiritually than the average Indian graduate.

It is curious that archaeologists, who are so concerned in trying to prove that nearly all Indian art was derived from the West, should seem to be only dimly aware of the immeasurably greater debt which European art and science owe to India, for they very rarely dwell upon it. From the time of the break-up of the Roman Empire, and even some centuries before, down to the days of the Renaissance, there was flowing into Europe, a continuous undercurrent of Indian science, philosophy, and art, brought by the art workers of the East."

(source: The Art Heritage of India - By Ernest Binfield Havell p. 77-78).

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Negationism by Marxists Historians

"The nation which delves deep into its past sees far into its future."

In spite of these atrocities, Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar, is the foremost Marxist scholar of ancient Indian history) of Penguin History of India, writes:

"Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of the mosque on a temple site in Benares." She has called the muslim invaders as mere "visitors".

B. R. Ambedkar who became a Buddhist wrote: "Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of the Buddha in India. " Today it is impossible to find this quotation of the Indian history textbooks.

(source: The decline and fall of Buddhism - Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Volume III Government of Maharashtra. 1987. p. 229-38).

Yet, these Marxist historians hawk their party line. There is no such thing as Hinduism. it is Brahminism; Brahminism equals intolerance and persecution - Buddhists, Jains, and of course the Shudras; Islam equals peace, equality, brotherhood, the ascent towards monotheism; the Left means equality, freedom and everything nice; Revolution means the rule of Workers and Peasants.........

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie p. 87).

Soviet historians, K. Antonova, G. Bongard-levin, and G. Kotovsky write:

"This cold calculating politician was a fanatical Moslem and his victory over Dara Shukoh signified the advent of a policy, which stripped Hindus of their rights..." Between 1665 and 1669, he gave orders for Hindu temples to be destroyed and for mosques to be erected from their debris. Hindus were not allowed to wear any marks of honor, to ride elephants etc.." "The heaviest burden of all was the poll-tax on non-Moslems, or jizya, introduced in 1679..."

(source: A History of India - By K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin, and G. Kotovsky Moscow, Volume I and II 1973 p. 255).

In spite of Islamic Onslaught and British Imperialism, our children should read what the West Bengal's leftist government is teaching kids. Refer to an extract from the, textbook for Class V.

“Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honor and equality..."

(source: Does Indian history need to be rewritten? Times of India 12/02/01 http://www.hvk.org/articles/1206/69.html).

Claude Alvares has written: "The English establishment themselves as a separate ruling caste; like other Indian castes, they did not inter-marry or eat with the lower (native) caste. Their children were shipped off to public schools in England, while they themselves kept to their clubs and bungalows in special suburbs known as cantonments and civil lines."

(source: Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day - By Claude Alvares p. 191).

Swami Vivekananda remains a great Hindu thinker and seer. He has written: "Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality? Why, anybody who is not a Mohammedan will not be admitted into the brotherhood; he will more likely have his own throat cut. Christians talk of universal brotherhood; but anyone who is not a Christian must go to that place where he will be eternally barbecued."

(source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume II, page 380).

Koenraad Elst writes: "There is nothing intrinsically equalitarian in monotheistic religions like Islam and Christianity. The case of sharp inequality fostered by Islam, ...the champion of slavery and forcing of Kafirs or Infidels into slavery was a common practice...while lower castes are continuously being fed anti-Brahmin "history." "In Christianity, stratified feudal society was sanctified by Christian theology. The Christian concern for social action is a recent invention, made necessary by the finding that in Europe the working class was attracted by atheist socialism..."

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst p.109-110).

In Christianity, The Believing Christians are superior to Pagans or Heathens. This super caste system of Christianity does not leave pagan humans even after they die, because 'Pagans' are condemned to everlasting hell.

Arun Shourie writes: "The design is... to attribute evil to the religion of our country, Hinduism; it is to present Islam as the great progressive force which arose; it is to lament the fact that humanity did not heed the teachings of progressive men like Muhammad -- till the "remarkable and comprehensive" Russian Revolution of 1917!"

Where was Romila Thapar's moral indignation when this skewed history was being imposed on the impressionable children of West Bengal?

(source: Indians will no longer be impressed by Marxist histrionics - By Rajeev Srinivasan rediff.com).

As for this equality the facts are that Islam practiced slavery on an unprecedented scale, and that its treatment of Kafirs was anything but brotherly (unless you think Aurangzeb's treatment of his broad-minded brother Dara Shikoh is normative). Tolerance in Hinduism can be found in books like the Rig-Veda and the Bhagavad Gita :"Let good thoughts come to us from all sides", or "The truth is one but the wise call it by many names", or Krishna saying that "Whoever invokes a deity by whatever name, it is Me he invokes".

"For 50 years this bunch (leftist historians) has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be about that objective of the ICHR! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal Government in 1989 which Outlook magazine itself quoted -

"Muslims rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."?

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie p. 9).

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) the English novelist and essayist, born into a family that included some of the most distinguished members of the English ruling class, author of Perennial Philosophy, also notices: "Islam's black record of holy wars and persecution - a record comparable to that of later Christianity."

He mention in his book, Ends and Means, "It is an extremely significant fact that, before the coming of the Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the first half of the seventh century and has left a circumstantial account of his 14 years in the country, makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhist lived side by side without any show of violence. Neither Hinduism or Buddhism is disgraced by anything corresponding to the Inquisition; neither was ever guilty of such iniquities as the Albigensian crusade or such criminal lunacies as the religious wars of the 16th and 17the centuries."

(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p.150-151).

Noble laureate V. S. Naipaul has said "The millennium began with the Muslim invasions and the grinding down of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of the north. This is such a big and bad event that people still have to find polite, destiny-defying ways of speaking about it. In art books and history books, people write of the Muslims "arriving" in India, as though the Muslims came on a tourist bus and went away again. The Muslim view of their conquest of India is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of the faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the carting away of the local people as slaves, so cheap and numerous that they were being sold for a few rupees. The architectural evidence- the absence of Hindu monuments in the north is convincing enough. This conquest was unlike any other that had gone before. There are no Hindu records of this period. Defeated people never write their history. The victors write the history. The victors were Muslims. For people on the other side it is a period of darkness."

(source: V.S. Naipual interview - Outlook India Novemeber 15 1999).

Trinidad-born VS Naipaul says Hindu militancy is a 'creative force'. "Dangerous or not, it's a necessary corrective to history and will continue to remain so."

In Arun Shourie's book, Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - Shourie gives an account of what these Indian objective Historians have been up to.

The so-called objective rational Historians, as against the "national" Historians, either tow the western liberal line or the western Marxist line and write their Histories so as to present the Hindus as the extremists who are engaged in myth making. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for undoing the harm done by the Marxist historians to the Indian psyche: "they have used these institutions to sow in the minds of our people [the Hindus] the seeds of self-hatred.

(For more please refer to IndiaStar Review and Indians will no longer be impressed by Marxist histrionics - R. Srinivasan - rediff.com).

(Note: In an interview in Le Monde, same Marxist historian, Romila Thapar cheerfully predicted that India won't be able to stay together.
(source: Interview in Le Monde, spring 1993, reproduced in India, Brussels, June 1993).

However, according to the official court chronicle, Aurangzeb "ordered all provincial governors to destroy all schools and temples of the Pagans and to make a complete end to all Pagan teachings and practices." The chronicle sums up the destructions like this: "Hasan Ali Khan came and said that 172 temples in the area had been destroyed...His majesty went to Chittor, and 63 temples were destroyed...Abu Tarab, appointed to destroy the idol-temples of Amber, reported that 66 temples had been razed to the ground."

In the official court chronicle, Maasiri Alamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions of temples. Its entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: "News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras". Moreover, till today, the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site. Aurangzeb didn't stop at razing temples: their users too were leveled. There were not just the classical massacres of thousands of resisters, Brahmins, Sikhs. What gives a more pointed proof of Aurangzeb's fanaticsm, is the execution of specific individuals for specific reasons of intolerance. To name the best-known ones: Aurangzeb's brother Dara Shikoh was executed because of 'apostasy' (i.e. taking an interest in Hindu philosophy), and the Sikh guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because of objecting to Aurangzeb's policy of forcible conversions. Percival Spear's statement is a most serious case of negationism. Now, the great whitewash over the Muslim role in Indian history, carried out by leftist historians, has been exposed.

(source: Negationism in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam - By Koenraad Elst p. 49-50).
Why did Aurangzeb demolish the Kashi Vishvanath ? by Koenraad Elst, Leuven (Belgium), 21 November 1998 http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/articles/aurangzeb.html ).

Marxist writers have glorified Arab imperialism. M. N. Roy, author of The Historical Role of Islam, 1981, calls the "Arab Empire", a magnificent monuments to the memory of Muhammed.

(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p. 42).

" While the Ottomans moved into South-East Europe, the Moghul invasion of India destroyed much of Hindu and Buddhist civilization there. The recent destruction by Moslems in Afghanistan of colossal Buddhist statues is a reminder of what happened to temples and shrines, on an enormous scale, when Islam took over. The writer V. S. Naipaul has recently pointed out that the destructiveness of the Moslem Conquest is at the root of India's appalling poverty today. Indeed, looked at historically, the record shows that Moslem rule has tended both to promote and to perpetuate poverty."

(source: Relentlessly and Thoroughly - By Paul Johnson National Review Online).

The History of India as Told by its own Historians - By Elliot and Dawson, paints a very grim picture of Muslim hordes who attack the Pagans with merciless cruelty.

Gautam Sen, who teaches in the London School of Economics & Political Science, and is a member, Indo-UK Roundtable has written about history written by India's Stalinist historians:

"The Islamic conquest of India, by contrast, is regarded as no worse than a temporary cricket pitch invasion, followed by the resumption of normal play. The Stalinist insistence, that past Islamic invasions of India were inconsequential, is novel in the extreme, since such a belief about the meaning of military conquest, is embraced by historians nowhere else. Yet this remarkable fantasy is now an axiom that has taken hold among a majority of American and British academic specialists working on India as well. They are also engaged in a grossly inaccurate chorus of denunciation of Hinduism and its political manifestations as a calamity only barely exceeded by Nazism."

(source: Righting and rewriting Indian history - By Gautam Sen).

Columnist Sandhya Jain observes:

"The discerning reader would be savvy enough to realize that the objective of Leftist scholarship is to prove, despite all available evidence, that the Islamic invasion was really India's age of enlightenment. Hence the denigration of the Vedic Age and the stubborn insistence that the Aryans were not indigenous people. This is why Bipan Chandra protests if medieval Muslim rulers are described as "foreign" Objecting to the "artificial glorification of all and sundry who fought against Sultanate and Mughal rulers", he derides glorification of ancient India as "undue national pride (which) has its own negative aspects".

(source: A history of impotent rage - By Sandhya Jain The Daily Pioneer).

"The killing of men and enslaving of women and children was standard practice in Islamic conquests. Thus when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the lower Indus basin in AD 721, he entered Multan and, according to the Chach-Nama, "6,000 warriors were put to death, and all their relations and dependents were taken as slaves." This is why Rajput women took to immolating themselves en masse to save their honor in the face of the imminent entry of victorious Muslim armies, eg. 8,000 women immolated themselves during Akbar's capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (whereas this most enlightened among Muslim rulers also killed 30,000 non-combatants).

Even peacetime was not all that peaceful, for as Fernand Braudel wrote in his book, A History of Civilization,

"Islamic rule in India as a "colonial experiment" was "extremely violent", and "the Muslims could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm - burnings, summary executions, crucifxions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves."

Alauddin Khilji is hailed by secularist historians as India's first socialist, and with reason. "Alauddin is notorious for having pauperized the Hindus to the utmost limit", in a deliberate policy of pushing the Hindus so deep into material hardship that they would be too busy with sheer survival to even think of rebellion." While the earlier Muslim writers had described Indian prosperity, after the establishment of the Sultanate the population got impoverished, and remained so under the Moghuls: "The poverty of Indians was noticed in the later periods by foreigners."

(source: The Saffron Swastika - By Koenraad Elst p. 824-826).

Secularism and India

The renewed secular jihad declared by the media in the wake of the Gujarat backlash accuses Hindutva of communalising the atmosphere in the country. Liberal intellectuals can afford to do so only because they are safe in a country whose frontiers are defended by a Hindu army. In an imaginary case scenario they could not have preached this secularism under the reigns of Allauddin Khilji, Giyasuddin Tughlak, Babur or Aurengzeb. They cannot do so even in Srinagar, let alone Islamabad or Dhaka for even though secularism is dear to them, life is dearer than secularism.

Was there something ironic when 57 innocent pilgrims were scorched to death inside the Sabarmati express, when the name Sabarmati had become synonymous with peace, non-violence and tolerance? On the other hand the carnage was actually a product of the political Gandhianism of minority appeasement that emanated from Sabarmati in the 1920s and 30s.

Marxist attitude to History

In an interview, V. S. Naipaul: I don't see it quite in that way. The things you mentioned are quite superficial. What is happening in India is a new, historical awakening. Gandhi used religion in a way as to marshal people for the independence cause. People who entered the independence movement did it because they felt they would earn individual merit.

Today, it seems to me that Indians are becoming alive to their history. Romila Thapar's book on Indian history is a Marxist attitude to history which in substance says: there is a higher truth behind the invasions, feudalism and all that. The correct truth is the way the invaders looked at their actions. They were conquering, they were subjugating. And they were in a country where people never understood this.

Only now are the people beginning to understand that there has been a great vandalising of India. Because of the nature of the conquest and the nature of Hindu society such understanding had eluded Indians before.

What is happening in India is a mighty creative process. Indian intellectuals, who want to be secure in their liberal beliefs, may not understand what is going on, especially if these intellectuals happen to be in the United States. But every other Indian knows precisely what is happening: deep down he knows that a larger response is emerging even if at times this response appears in his eyes to be threatening.

But the sense of history that the Hindus are now developing is a new thing. Some Indians speak about a synthetic culture: this is what a defeated people always speak about. The synthesis may be culturally true. But to stress it could also be a form of response to intense persecution. In Ayodhya the construction of a mosque on a spot regarded as sacred by the conquered population was meant as an insult. It was meant as an insult to an ancient idea, the idea of Ram which was two or three thousand years old.

(source: An area of awakening - An interview with Sir V. S. Naipaul - By Dileep Padgaonkar, The Times of India, July 18, 1993).

As Naipaul observes, post-conversion, there is a tendency to obliterate the past.

(source: Secularism and India Inc - Priyadarsi Dutta DailyPioneer.com).

Swami Vivekananda talking about Muslims, the monk says they "brought murder and slaughter in their train and until then peace prevailed in India".

Here is what Sri Aurobindo had to say on Islam in a letter to a disciple on September 12, 1923: "The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own.... I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric."

(source: The Hindu Soul in search of Its Body - Balbir Punj).

Sir Sidney Low (1857-1932) writes about Benares:

"Benares is the metropolis of Hinduism...and like a queen, Benares sits by the Ganges, albeit a queen with purple robes somewhat patched and tattered and a throne of ivory and clay.

The stream of the sacred river sweeps past in a wide crescent of pale yellow water, and Kashi, 'the Splendid,' as the Hindus call the city...."

"The Mohammedans tramped heavily on Kashi, and most of its older shrines disappeared. If you want to see the true memorials of Hindu art, in its stronger days, you must go elsewhere, to Madura or Tanjore or Congevaram or to the temples of Ellora, enriched with sculptured figures almost Hellenic in their austere simplicity. Benares, like Rome, has passed under the hoof of the spoiler."

But Aurangzeb, the iconoclast, broke the idols of the sacred city in vain."

(source: A Vision of India - By Sir Sidney Low 1911 p. 263-266).

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Ayodhya and End of Negationism

Here is just one example from the 19th century, written by Mirza Jan, the author of a historical work known as Hadiquah-I-Shuhada that appeared in 1856:

“…wherever they found magnificent temples of the Hindus….the Muslim rulers in India built mosques, monasteries, and inns, appointed mu’assins, teachers and store-stewards, spread Islam vigorously, and vanquished the Kafirs. Likewise they cleared up Faizabad and Avadh (Ayodhya), too from the filth of reprobation (infidelity), because it was a great center of worship and capital of Rama’s father. Where they stood a great temple of (Ramajanmasthan), there they built a big mosque…what a lofty mosque was built there by king Babar!”

Some of the old sources used by Mirza Jan have yet to be unearthed, but one which he quotes from a Persian work known as Sahifah-I-Chihal Nasa’ib Bahadurshahi written in 1707 by a grand-daughter of the Moghur emperor Aurangazeb is particularly interesting. The Moghul princess declares:

“…keeping the triumph of Islam in view, devout Muslim rulers should keep all idolators in subjection to Islam, brook no laxity in realization of Jizyah (religious tax on Hindus), grant no exceptions of Hindu Rajahs from dancing attendance on Id days and waiting on foot outside mosques till end of prayer…and keep in constant use for Friday and congregational prayer the mosque built up after demolishing the temples of the idolatrous Hindus situated at Mathura, Banaras and Avadh…”

The Encyclopedia Britannica volume 1, 1985. 15th edition, has to say about Ayodhya:

“There are few monuments of any antiquity. Rama’s birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babur in 1528 on the site of an earlier temple.

This leaves no doubt that all regarding either the fact of the temple destruction, or the motives behind their destruction – especially of the holiest of them, situated at Mathura, Benares and Ayodhya. In the face of such overwhelming evidence, it is an exercise in futility to try to deny it. Negationism is simply not an option.

It is important to remember the point made by Sir V. S. Naipaul, author of India: A Wounded Civilization, that the Ayodhya demolition must be viewed as a symbol of awakening historical awareness on the part of the Hindus. To the Hindus, the site is hallowed by the birth of their hero, Rama, regarded by them as the embodiment of truth, generosity, bravery, chivalry and an incarnation of God Vishnu. It is a sacred spot. Hindus will not forget history. And writers, intellectuals, and journalists who are ignoring this are failing in their responsibility. They are taking the easy way out by hiding behind slogans like ‘Secularism’ and platitudes like “We must not reopen the wounds of history.” This is not scholarship, but cowardice.

Every living nation has national symbols and Ayodhya is one of India’s. Just like an American would not let stand a mosque built by someone after demolishing Mount Vernon (George Washington’s home) or the Statue of Liberty, which Americans see as a national monument, same way for Hindus, it is a sacred spot.

(source: A Hindu View of the World - By N. S. Rajaram and Profiles in Deception - By N. S. Rajaram).

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Ayodhya and Integration of Hindu Society

Please refer to Koenraad Elst excellent book - Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).

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Effect of Muslim Atrocities on Hindu Society

The Islamic onslaught destroyed centers of learning in North India. A historical fact worth noting that the last great school of Indian mathematics flourished in far away Kerala in the 14-15th century, where Madhava and his students worked on problems of Calculus and Infinite Series more than two centuries before Newton and Gregory. India before the coming of Islam had many great centers of learning. Taxila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, Sarnath and many more used to attract students from all over the world. Following the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, for the next six hundred years, not a center of learning worth the name was established.

Effect of Muslim Atrocities on Indian Society can be summed up in the words of Abu-Raihan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Alberuni, Muslim scholar from Central Asia. He wrote a very comprehensive book "Indica" in1030 AD. "Alberuni felt a strong inclination towards Indian philosophy. He learnt Sanskrit and Hindu literature and sciences. He seems to have thought that the philosophers both in ancient India and Greece, held in reality the very same ideas, the same as seem to have been his own i.e. of pure monotheism. He seems to have to have reveled in the pure theories of Bhagavad-Gita. He accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni on his campaigns in India wrote: "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there, wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions. ... Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion of all the Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places, which our hand cannot yet reach."

(Refer to Edward Sachau -- translator Alebruni's 'Indica and article 'Earth's rotation, its globular shape and gravity' - By Vinod Kumar, June 1999 http://www.americanfriends.org/kashmir/earth-shape_K62.html

The Moghuls neglected practical and secular learning, especially the sciences. Throughout their long rule, no institutions was established comparable to modern university, although early India had world-famous centers of learning such as Taxila, Nalanda and Kanchi. Neither the nobles nor the mullas were stirred into learning. Nor did Akbar show any curiosity in European science and philosophy, although both Hindus and Muslims had made notable scientific contributions in the past. Akbar was presented with printed books and a printing press, yet even the Indian classics were first printed by Europeans. It is therefore, not surprising that during the period of European struggle for power, India was in a state of unparalleled decline.

(source: India and World Civilization - By D.P. Singhal p. 198).

Naipaul flays Islam
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/051001/detFOR05.asp

Novelist V S Naipaul has caused an outcry by comparing the "calamitous effect" of Islam on the world with colonialism.

Speaking after a reading of his new book, Half a Life, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Sir Vidia said Islam had enslaved and attempted to wipe out other cultures. "It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'."

(source: Guardian News Service) .

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Taj Mahal – A Rajput Palace/Hindu Temple ?

The story has been challenged by Professor P.N. Oak, author of Taj Mahal: The True Story, who believes that the whole world has been duped. He claims that the Taj Mahal is not Queen Mumtaz Mahal's tomb, but an ancient Hindu temple palace of Lord Shiva (then known as Tejo Mahalaya), worshipped by the Rajputs of Agra city. In the course of his research, Oak discovered that the Shiva temple palace had been usurped by Shah Jahan from then Maharaja of Jaipur, Jai Singh. Shah Jahan then remodelled the palace into his wife's memorial. In his own court chronicle, Badshahnama, Shah Jahan admits that an exceptionally beautiful grand mansion in Agra was taken from Jai Singh for Mumtaz's burial. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur is said to retain in his secret collection two orders from Shah Jahan for the surrender of the Taj building.

The use of captured temples and mansions as a burial place for dead courtiers and royalty was a common practice among Muslim rulers. For example, Hamayun, Akbar, Etmud-ud-Daula and Safdarjung are all buried in such mansions.

(source: The Taj Mahal - BBC).

Many believe that the Taj Mahal was a 12th century temple-palace seized from Raja Jaisingh of Jaipur and converted to accommodate Mumtaz's tomb. Mullah Abdul Hamid Lahori, Shah Jehan's own official chronicler, has written, that Mumtaz's body was laid to rest in a "lofty sky-high palace with a majestic dome" procured from Raja Jaisingh.

The journals of Tamerlane (1336-1405) and Babur (1483-1530) show that this palace pre-dates Shah Jehan and also points to the notable absence of any claim by Shah Jehan himself for its construction.

A passage from Shahjahan’s court chronicle, the Badshahnama, which despairingly admits that the Taj Mahal is a commandeered Hindu palace. Mansingh’s mansion (manzil) was then in the possession of his grandson Jaisingh – says the Badshahnama.

French merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who visited India during Shah Jahan’s reign, has said in his book, Travels in India, the cost of the scaffolding exceeded that of the entire work done regarding the mausoleum. This proves that all Shah Jahan had to do was engrave Koranic texts on the walls of a Hindu palace; that is why the cost of the scaffolding was much more than the value of the entire work done.

The Encyclopedia Brittanica states, that the Taj Mahal building complex comprises stables and guest and guard rooms.

Mr. Nurul Hassan Siddiqui’s book, The City of Taj, admits that the Badshahnama states that a Hindu palace was commandeered to bury Mumtaz in.

Historian Vincent Smith, also states that Babur died in the Taj Mahal 100 years before the death of the lady for whom the Taj is believed to have been built as a mausoleum. On page 321, Smith
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