The “chieftain” is a reference to Chhatrapati Shivaji MahaRaj. My simple dictionary tells me that a “chieftain” is usually a leader of a group, clan or tribe. Anyone who has studied the history of that age will readily agree that Chhatrapati Shivaji MahaRaj was more – a lot more – than merely a leader of a clan or a tribe. Having dismissed Chhatrapati Shivaji as a “Maratha Chieftain”, the text devotes an entire chapter (Ch 4) to the Mughal empire. No mention of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s exploits – or any description of the Maratha Empire.  No mention of  war that lasted 27 years – and was probably the longest war ever fought in the history of India. No mention of the fact that at its height, the Maratha empire covered much of South Asia, encompassing a territory of over 2.8 m km² (compared to 3.2m km² under the Mughal Empire at its peak).

And while we are at it, no mention of the forgotten empire that lasted almost as long as the Mughals - the Vijayanagar Empire in south India. No mention of the state that defeated seventeen successive attempts by the Delhi Sultans and Mughals to bring it under their rule..No mention of the Battle of Saraighat and the heroic story of Lachit Barphukan.  No mention of the Battle of Bahraich..

You see – such stories interrupt the smooth narrative of “harmony and peace” and could disrupt the “secular fabric of the nation“. Why create unnecessary trouble? Why bother with demons from the past?

No wonder entire generations of Indians grow up having little sense of history – or self-worth and self-esteem. The way the text book is written you would be forgiven for thinking that ”India” did not exist before the Mughals came – and it only became “India” after the British. The rest of “Indian History” would merely appear as stories about the Vijayanagar kings, about the Rajputs, about the Marathas, about the Sikhs – but nothing about the “Indians”. And a child would be forgiven for wondering who were these “Indians”? No wonder that most Indians are clueless about why this land is called by a foreign name – instead of being called “Bharat”.

But beware..as George Santayana wrote:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it

Related Posts: Distorting history…and getting paid for it, Lies and half-truths in the name of national integrationand  Remembering the MahaRana..

Also read:  Dear Salil, I read lots and lots… and Dear Vir, Leave these kids alone…

The tales of Rajput valour and their determined resistance against the Mughals find no mention in this History text for students of Class VII (Age 12-14). There is no mention of the three Jauhars of Chittor (or of the more than 30,000 that were massacred following the fall of Chittor). The story of the one who refused to bow down appears to have been erased from the “official” version of history. The exploits of MahaRana Pratap will remain alien to these students…

What they will learn about instead are the kind and gentle-hearted Mughals and their buildings and architecture – written in a style that induces awe and suggests admiration. As an example, read this bit about the Qutub Minar:

Notice that the surface of the minar is curved and angular. Placing an inscription on sucha surface required great precision. Only the mostskilled craftsperson could perform this task.Remember that very few buildings were made of stoneor brick 800 years ago. What would have been theimpact of a building like the Qutb Minar on observersin the thirteenth century? (Pg60, Chapter 5)

What the text book delicately avoids mentioning is the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque that was built from parts taken by destroying  27 Hindu and Jain temples that stood in the complex (pl see image below).

But the negationism does not end there. Under a section titled, “Why were Temples Destroyed?“, the text-book has several paragraphs devoted to why temples were attacked by kings and rulers (emphasis added):

Because kings built temples to demonstrate their devotion to God and their power and wealth, it is not surprising that when they attacked one another’s kingdoms, they often targeted these buildings.

In the early ninth century when the Pandyan king Shrimara Shrivallabha invaded Sri Lanka..the Buddhist monk andchronicler Dhammakitti noted: “he removed all thevaluables … The statue of the Buddha made entirelyof gold in the Jewel Palace … and the golden images in the various monasteries – all these he seized.”

The blow to the pride of the Sinhalese ruler had to be avengedand the next Sinhalese ruler, Sena II, ordered his general to invade Madurai, the capital of the Pandyas.The Buddhist chronicler noted that the expedition made a special effort to find and restore the gold statue of the Buddha.

Similarly in the early eleventh century, when the Chola king Rajendra I built a Shiva temple in his capital he filled it with prized statues seized from defeated rulers.

And then slyly,

Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was a contemporary of Rajendra I. During his campaigns in the subcontinent he also attacked the temples of defeated kings and looted their wealth and idols. Sultan Mahmud was not a very important ruler at that time. But by destroying temples – especially the one at Somnath – he tried to win credit as a great hero of Islam. In the political culture of the Middle Ages most rulers displayed their political might and military success by attacking and looting the places of worship of defeated rulers.

As expected no evidence is cited, nor is any record mentioned of a single temple razed & destroyed by Hindu kings of that age (or of any previous age). But there appears to be almost complete amnesia about the thousands of temples that were systematically razed to ground and/or converted into mosques by invading armies and the then Islamic rulers of India (as an aside, a good reference for this is “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them?“).

Is it because of the demons from the past? Or is there something else?

In Part II: Of great Mughals and a Maratha chieftain

As Jay mentioned in his email, this is

A really thought-provoking analysis of Islamic terrorism by  a Canadian of Indian origin, who also happens to have been born as a Muslim.. A self-proclaimed and critical Marxist.

His honesty and sincerity about the religion of his birth are something that Indian Marxists should try and emulate. What we have here are the jholawallahs bending over backwards to be sympathetic to a force that is nothing but Islamo-fascism.

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Related Posts: “The Distinction between People and Ideologies” – Excerpts,

Radical Islam, Byzantine and the Huns – Reading Edward Luttwack,

Cameron, muscular liberalism and a sense of deja vu…

“Learning to Live With Radical Islam” – Excerpts and

How do you distinguish between an Islamist and a Muslim?

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends
when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turn ed reporting these updates into a game.

…But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his
whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

Read more here.

Next read Purushottam by Firoz Bakht Ahmed:

On behalf of all Muslims catering to the voice of reason and sanity in India and globally, I declare that the ASI affidavit (now withdrawn) was vitriolic, scathing, unfortunate and absolutely blasphemic — not only for the Hindus but for all those who cherish our pluralistic cultural heritage. By the way how can a government decide the veracity of a
figure like Ram?

Therefore, it goes without saying that Ram and the Ramayan are central to both India’s social history and to our civilizational identity no matter to what religion we belong to. Denying Ram his place would mean falsifying with impunity, India’s civilizational character.

Hai  Ram  ke  wajood  pe  Hindostan  ko  naaz, Ahl-e-nazar samajhtey hain usko Imam-e-Hind.

Iqbal, the poet of the East has written a wonderful and moving poem on the authenticity of the existence of Ram.

Read the full article here.

Next read, History and faith are beyond law by Kanchan Gupta:

James Tod joined the Bengal Army as a cadet in 1799, presumably looking for a life of adventure in the heat and dust of India. He swiftly rose through the ranks and, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, provided valuable service to the East India Company. His uncanny ability to gather information helped the early colonisers smash the Maratha Confederacy.

Later, his assistance was sought during the Rajputana campaign. Colonel Tod, as he was known, was a natural scholar with an eye for detail and a curious mind. He was fascinated by the history of Rajputana and its antiquities as much as by its palace intrigues and the shifting loyalties of its rulers and their factotums. That fascination led to his penning two books that are still considered mandatory reading for anybody interested in the history of the Rajputs…

Thousands of people, Indians and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims, visit Ajmer every day to offer a chaadar at Dargah Sharif of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, a shrine where all are welcome and every prayer is answered, or so the pious choose to believe. Many stay on to visit the other antiquities of Ajmer, among them a magnificent mosque complex which bears little or no resemblance to its name: Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.

People gawk at the columns and the façade intricately carved with inscriptions from the Quran in Arabic. They pose for photographs or capture the mosque’s ‘beauty’ on video cameras and carry back memories of Islam’s munificence towards its followers. Don’t forget to visit Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, they will later tell friends and relatives visiting Ajmer.

…let us return to Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra in Ajmer. Few who have seen and admired this mosque complex would be aware of Colonel Tod’s description of it in the first volume of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: “The entire façade of this noble entrance . is covered with Arabic inscriptions . but in a small frieze over the apex of the arch is contained an inscription in Sanskrit.” And that oddity tells the real story of Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.

Read the real story here.

And finally, Manmohanomics by Vivek Dehejia:

The truth is, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have never really believed in liberal economic policy. Period. That is why no major reform has ever occurred under their watch. The original reforms in 1991 were launched, don’t forget, when the Gandhis were absent, and the next phase of reforms took place under non-Congress-led governments, most notably the BJP-led NDA.

The reasons for this could be manifold. Do they really believe in the socialism that their founder, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, espoused and then foisted on us after Independence? Possibly. Perhaps more likely, they see populism and patronage as political winners. That was certainly how the wily Mrs. Indira Gandhi operated, and her daughter-in-law seems to have taken a leaf from the same playbook.

Read it in full here. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe and stay healthy… Past weekend readings are here.

The majority of our people are Muslims. How can we not talk of Islam?

I can’t help wondering – what happened to the famed “Kashmiriyat”?

Source: Interview of Syed Ali Shah Geelani by Kaveree Bamzai, India Today, November 8, 2010

Additional Reading: Rajiv Sikri on what happened to the much-touted Kashmiriyat? and Is this man the biggest roadblock to peace in Kashmir valley?