Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud; by Arun Shourie.

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Eminent Historians:

Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

by Arun Shourie

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Before a decade or so, when one still read books bought from stores (or wherever, such as the book exhibitions in Delhi or sidewalks in Mumbai where one acquired the much prized treasures bought for pennies that was all one could afford), and cherished over decades and migrations around the globe, one of the final discoveries was this author, and we still have about half a dozen of his books in the almirah stuffed so very tight with books. But the lack of space drove one to kindle, and this accidental rediscovering of Arun Shourie with his fearless exposes of various frauds, on pedestal over decades after independence, is just as shocking, albeit refreshing - despite the decade of such exposure, via media and reading the materials now available, being not new per se.

Here he deals with the frauds perpetrated and scams run by - as the title tells one - so called eminent, leftist historians in India, a subset of the bunch who fraudulently label themselves secular.

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Amongst other things, Shourie goes on to argue against the baseless theory of Aryan invasion, a lie made up by racist European and British to justify their own colonial rule and subjugation of local people in India and elsewhere, the lie continued by the so-called historian and so-called intellectuals he's refuting.

But here's the mistake - pointing at their lack of evidence and logic isn't good enough. One must look within, at the huge quantities of treasure of knowledge of India that has been branded - of course! - myth by all invaders, but has kept India aware of prehustorical events of earth's and India's geological history, on humongous scale - such as Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean, Ganga subsequently being brought down from heaven, and evolution (mirrored pretty exactly in Dashaavataara).

Wouldn't one think that a people who kept alive memory of all this would recall a homeland elsewhere, if there were one? At least the migration, crossing a river at the border that is the characteristic feature of the land - for all those who approached it from elsewhere? For outsiders named the land India, after Indus, which is named Sindhu, deformed to Indus by outsiders.

How important is Sindhu to India? Perhaps slightly more than Kaaverie and Brahmaputra, but that might be because the very name Sindhu tells a geological reason for the name - Sindhu literally means ocean, and only this river us thus named, although it's nowhere near as large as Ganga, much less the tremendous Brahmaputra. That's because india watched the ocean disappear and a river flow in the place instead, when India collided with Asia and Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean was witnessed by Aarya population, from within India.

But in order of importance, Sindhu is sixth at best, only one before the last, so it's out of question that there was migration from elsewhere of Aarya people.

And in any case, the word never ever was about physical characteristics of colour, much less of race. It literally means enlightened, and that's about culture. The topmost Aarya that comes yo mind, Raama, is described very lovingly for physical beauty, but never as fair. It's not a discrimination - a very worshipped Shiva is "Karpouragaura", literally white as camphor. Shiva is never described for physical beauty, but Raama is; and attractive, enchanting, is neither of them, it's Krishna, again dark, blue lit, but again, not described physically.

Aryan migration theory was made up by the Europeans due to the undue importance they place on pale skin of theirs which is merely result of millennia of ancestry in dark of Nordic latitudes, since humans don't hibernate in winter, and must sleep every day the same amount, roughly. Nature balances it by bringing out babues pale, but in California the descendants of europeans are already losing the uncooked meat hue of skin that's normal to north and central Europe, and acquiring a more human golden hue.

Shourie, and anyone sensible, would do better to ditch European theories about India, and not merely point out the lack of logic therein, but begin with the humongous treasure of knowledge of antiquity that belongs to India.

Amongst many other such so-called historians, Shourie is giving excerpts from work of D. N. Jha.

" ... Common people, slaves and labourers seem to have coveted his wealth and wished him harm; often he is depicted as keeping a bodyguard to defend himself.’15 ‘The cultural lag of the aboriginals, living mainly as hunters and fowlers,’ we are told, ‘in contrast to the varna-divided society…. perhaps led in the post-Vedic period to the growth, of untouchability.’ ... "

There's never been any mention of either unyouchability or slavery in any of the indigenous Indian literature either in Sanskrit or anything that's pre-islamic invasions and colonisation. Slavery was brought in and enforced by Islamic invaders who did, indeed, practice it hugely. Untouchability evolved due to unhygienic practices imposed by Islamic rulers, just as Sati became tradition due to Islamic terror, against women being kidnapped and put through horrors by them. Until Islamic invasions, Sati was a legend from era before battle between Gods and demons; and untouchability was about hygienic rules, within every home, not a caste or lifelong condition.

Shourie quotes Jha going on and on about India Gods and Godesses being borrowed or copied from region including central Asia, West Asia and Greece, since apparently Greek ambassador to Maurya court wrote so.

Perhaps we should tell Jha that we met a couple in academia, husband a professor, very decent and friendly, of which the wife thought Indian Gods and Godesses were copied from fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Shourie gives excerpts from Jha about Ashoka.

Amongst other effects of subjugation to colonial rules for over a millennium, mindset of slavery is evidenced in following everything by the erstwhile rulers uncritically. One such manifestation is in how much importance is given to Ashok after the British discovered his inscriptions, all due to his having hand some role in spreading a creed of a new God, Buddha.

But China had accepted Buddha without any role of Ashok therein, and Southeast Asia was influenced by Indian culture hugely anyway, as was of course Tibet and much of neighbourhood.

British lionised Ashok for their own convenience of conscience, normalizing the combination of missionaries and warring expeditions - just as they invented the lie of Aryan migration because non Europeans had to be small and dark, and couldn't possibly be so endowed with kniwledge, literature, and all in a language far more scientific than anything they'd ever known.

"The guilds come into being, the variety of professions multiplies. To his discomfiture, our author has to acknowledge that the condition of even the artisans improved. But our author is quick to recover his gloom and censure! ‘Artisans and craftsmen were largely drawn in this period from the shudras,’ says our author, ‘who gained in wealth and status on account of the progress of crafts and commerce…. The economic distinctions between the vaishyas and the shudras thus tended to be blurred….’ That, unfortunately, is an unavoidable fact, and so our author moves swiftly to discount it! ‘But most of the artisans known from inscriptions were confined to the Mathura region and the western Deccan,’ he says. ‘It is therefore difficult to postulate any change in the living conditions of the main body of the shudras.’ Could it not be that the condition of the shudras in general did improve but that the relevant inscriptions have yet been discovered only from Mathura and the western Deccan? Indeed, that they have been recovered from areas which, given the primitive modes of transport and communication must be considered to have been far apart, would suggest that the improvement was pervasive.

"And notice also how scrupulous and demanding our author is regarding evidence on this point, and how on other matters – those which will enable him to push his prejudice – he is satisfied with ‘may have’, ‘perhaps’, ‘probably mostly’. And so a few sentences later our author has recovered his composure fully, and we get his firm conclusion: ‘Most shudras seethed in discontent. It is not unlikely that under such foreign rulers as the Shakas and Kushanas, who were not committed to the varna ideology, they turned against the brahmanas. This may explain why Manu provided a number of safeguards against the hostile activities of the shudras!’31"

Wasn't Manu supposed to be caught in the flood covering earth, in which case he was not contemporary with Ashok or Shakya, Kushana at al, but prehistoric, before Ganga was brought down?

There's another train of thought that credits Manusmriti not to Manu and prehistoric times, but to post Islamic topimes and influence of Islamic invasions and rule arriving in India, this is believable, chiefly because of the freedom for women evident in Sanskrit literature, not only in Ancient epics but also in literature immediately prior, while Manusmriti says differently and contradictory. Moreover, Manu being older, if Manusmriti were older and indeed written by him and not by someone else in his name, why wasn't it even mentioned, instead of being copiously quoted by, sages and learned people of the ancient epics, who were all later?

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Shourie quotes Jha.

" ... To save themselves the brahmins, ‘therefore appropriated a number of popular cults with significant following’, says the author. ‘In the process brahmanical religion underwent some important changes and most of the Vedic gods passed into oblivion,’ and their places were taken by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva."

Thus is complete nonsense. Shiva was worshipped by Raama, in an era when evolution was at a critical stage - hence the Vaanara kingdom, and Jaambuwanta, whose daughter Satyabhama remains favourite amongst wives of Krishna in Tamil speakers.

Brahmaa as a male God might have been brought in as an effect of Islamic invasions and concept of predominantly male Gods, since Brahma denotes pure Divine principle, without characteristics; but Shiva predates Buddha by aeons, as does Vishnu, and knowledge of Dashaavataara.

Most of all, Vedic Gods haven't "gone", they are still very much part of life and soul of India and always have been. Weddings were shifted to night for safety in North India due to fear of Islamic attacks, but ceremony still involves invocations of Gods beginning with Agni; and as every child knows confidently, praying to Hanuman The Son of Pawana (Wind) is the most effective last minute possibility for getting through an examination! That is, if one hasn't worshipped Saraswatie, the Goddess of learning, sincerely.

Shiva is ancient, and worshipped not just himself, but whole family, each individually. As for Vishnu, when wasn't his consort worshipped? She is worshipped in every home in North India and in Maharashtra during Deepawali, and in Bengal publicly but a fortnight prior to that.

No, India isn't giving up on Gods, Goddesses, and on India.

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Here's more garbage from Jha -

"Having struck a ‘class alliance’ with the rulers, having struck their ‘mephistophelian bargains’, the brahmins gird up to counter the twin challenges – of the campaign against sacrifices by Buddhists and by the growing tradition of asceticism. ‘The brahmanas by way of compromise invented a formula,’ says our author, ‘by which the life of an Aryan individual was divided into four stages (ashrams)….’37"

Mahaabharata and Raamaayana are ancient, and they definitely mention four stages; but even more, Buddha wasn't the first ascetic in India, much less the only one! Asceticism was key to life of every sage, of course, who are numerous in both epics; but the most ancient such mention would be of Shiva, or rather, of Rudra, indeed a Vedic God, and the husband of the legendary Sati. Here again, Jha takes ills and evils that belong to church, and impose it on India, accusing Hindus.

" ... ‘The adoption of various deities, beliefs and superstitions by Vaishnavism,’ says our author, ‘indicates that it assimilated different popular cults and substituted faith for logic. It therefore acted as an effective instrument for reconciling the masses to their lot and maintaining the social division based on varna.’38"

There was no "Vaishnavism" and no adoption, these are tricks by British seeking to divide India. A person had usually a whole head if hair, one need not wonder which one us his or hers own; looking above at night one need not pick one object and close ones mind to every other. One doesn't pick a favourite part if body and let others go, nor does one equalise them by standing on head as permanent position. And most of what he says about Varna is garbage, as is everything he says about "making up" Karma.

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More crap from these so-called historians, as Shourie talks of them.

"Bhakti is just a reflection of the subservience of the hapless tenant to the landlord under feudalism. The very word ‘Islam’ means ‘surrender’, they teach us in the same breath; such an exalted sentiment, they exclaim – total submission to the will of Allah."

This explains the fraud. Bhakti is an emotion of heart, towards an object of worship. It has nothing to do with a better, bargain, or gain in earthly, material terms. By distorting it to mean feudal loyalty, leftists have used it as an abusive word last few years, inexplicably. They were abusing not just Hindus, but India, just as the word "hysterical" abuses all womanhood.

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Clearly this atrocious somersault and double standard treatment by the so-called, self-labelled historians and intellectuals operating in India to undermine everything of India and justifying everything by marauding invaders done against India, isn't accidental, and not merely a result of their commitment to leftist thought - simce that thought applies very differently to fundamentalusm of islam or behaviour of missionaries.

Surely it's a manifestation of not just being of slave mindset to serve colonial regimes of yore of over a millennium and half, but far more - serving an underlying need of justification of all such invaders and their destruction of older, much more sophisticated civilisations, including genocides by conquistadores of local populations? Because the latter includes not only India, but the immense continent West of Europe across Atlantic which lost its own name when it was named after a minor sailor, and the former includes migrants to that continent who committed genocides of natives who were falsely labelled "Indian " despite everyone being quite well aware that they had no connection with India?

Psychologically the association then was, what invaders did to natives branded Indian was of no importance, including genocides and destruction of all art, architecture and precious objects; denying the destruction of the prior civilisation by invaders was topped by denial of existence thereof, as evidenced in today's paki politicians denying on t.v. any existence of civilisation in India prior to Islamic invasions; and supporting these denials or going further profits those who so help.

The so-called leftists in reality are merely supporters of every invading, marauding conquistadores gang who destroyed everything on arrival and having massacred, destroyed and taken over, simply denied it all; and they are helping the colonial regimes and conquistadores of yore by doing the twisted somersault arguments absolving Islamic destruction of Hindu and other temples, and genocides of Hindu and other people by the invaders, by making fraudulent arguments inventing destruction by Hindus of temples of others, and supporting the baseless fraudulent theory of Aryan invasion theory lie by British, invented solely to justify British regime.

By that logic, and extending the forgetfulness regarding far higher genocides such as Mao's estimated 100 millions, why not celebrate Hitler's conquest of Europe and excuse his genocides in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as political putting down of rebels, which included burning alive whole villages? He was only copying Attila the Hun and Chingis Khan.

Why not admit that KKK burning alive whole churches filled with African Americans was only different in detail from Islamic invaders and colonial regimes conducting genocides of Hindus and other nonmuslims, and destroying Hindus' and others' temples.

Or are these so-called historians loyal to Europe and Mongols, Chinese and Islam, way above their loyalty to leftist ideology?

Shourie continues quoting Vinay Lal where the latter calls Shivaji low caste in need of a ceremony to raise himself to a ruler. Shourie refutes Vinay Lal and quite rightly too. But the refutation is only on one point or two, and he misses two essential points.

One, there has never been any question about Shivaji having been himself not only Kshatriya but in fact Rajput, amongst those whose ancestors migrated presumably due to atrocities by Islamic invaders and massacres in the North.

Two, the ceremony referred to is about anointing a ruler king, and thus is necessary even for any prince who was understood to inherit kingdom of his father's, not only in infia but through Europe as well - there is called crowning, and for example Edward VIII never was allowed to have it due to his insistence about marrying a woman th ought unsuitable by parliament.

But the ceremony anoint one as a king. It's not understood to be necessary to change caste, and if that were the point change if profession to warrior and protector had already achieved it for this man named emporer by his people.

If a ceremony is all it took to change caste, everybody could have anointed himself king just by having the ceremony conducted. It's not that simple. But as Shourie points out quite rightly, if Hinduism allows change of caste to upwards and Vinay Lal is not lying about Shivaji's caste having been low, then his being accepted as Kshatriya by Hindus has to be seen in the positive light and all propaganda against Hindu caste system is a complete lie.

What Vinay Lal and his like will never understand is that India is not the culture where caste is untransmutable boxes, that characteristic belongs to outside India where caste is based on race, ancestral property and religion, apart from gender. The very word caste is anglo-saxon of German origin and it literally means box in German. To understand caste in its context, recall why Archduke Ferdinand wasn't called Prince despite being the only heir to throne of Austria-Hungary, and why cousin Willy humiliated the Battenberg family, his cousins.

Both were about morganatic marriages of an elder relative, each, and that tells you royalty was a caste through Europe, unlike India where kings married women of low caste or unknown parents as the well known examples in each great epics show, or low caste men could raise themselves above to a status of universal acclaim and veneration by their subsequent lives and actions and achievements as did great men from the contemporary author of Raamaayana to the famous poet Kalidas.

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Contents

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Introduction

The Historians

1. A characteristic concoction

2. Eminent entrepreneurs!

3. How to do it!

4. A fitting tribute

5. When cornered, cry ‘Petty’, ‘Personal’, ‘Uncivilized’

6. ‘…after selling himself in the flesh market’

Their Line

7. A circular 8. Devices to further the circular

9. ‘Let us look forward to the positive aspects’

10. Insinuate falsehood, explain away the truth

11. Were all these authors also communalists?

12. The policy of ‘broad toleration’!

13. The litmus test

14. Erasure to parity to absolution

15. ‘Maybe perhaps, probably mostly… Therefore’

16. Gavah chust, muddayi sust!

Context and Consequences

17. The tug of intellectual fashions

18. The appeal of ‘The Theory’, and the antidote to it

19. Programmed to self-destruct

20. The pattern of consequences

21. The changing balance

22. The insidious, the false

23. A few reasons, a few lessons

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Review

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Introduction

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"In June–July 1998, progressives kicked up quite a racket. The government has packed the Indian Council of Historical Research with pro–Ram Mandir historians, they shouted. It has surreptitiously altered the aims and objectives of the Council, they shouted.

"As is their wont, they had sparked the commotion by giving wind to a concoction.

"As is their wont too, they were charging others with planning to do in some undefined future what they had themselves been actually doing for decades – that is, write history to a purpose."

"Small scandals turned up too. So accustomed have we become to crores being raked off that the amounts mentioned in this narrative will seem less than the pilfering of pickpockets. That is so in part because our standards have become so lax. And in part because the real crime of these eminences does not lie in the loss they have inflicted in terms of money. It lies in the condition to which they have reduced institutions. It lies in their dereliction – because of which projects that were important for our country have languished. It lies even more in the use to which they have put those institutions.

"They have used them to have a comfortable time, of course. They have used them to puff up each other’s reputations, of course. But the worst of it is that they have used their control of these institutions to pervert public discourse, and thereby derail public policy.

"They have made India out to have been an empty land, filled by successive invaders. They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such than as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period. They have denounced ancient India’s social system as the epitomy of oppression, and made totalitarian ideologies out to be egalitarian and just.

"They have belittled our ancient culture and exaggerated syncretistic elements which survived and made them out to have been an entire ‘culture’, the ‘composite culture’ as they call it. Which culture isn’t? And all the while they have taken care to hide the central facts about these common elements in the life of our people: that they had survived in spite of the most strenuous efforts spread over a thousand years of Islamic rulers and the ulema to erase them, that they had survived in spite of the sustained efforts during the last one hundred and fifty years of the missionaries and British rulers to make us forget and shed these elements, that the elements had survived their efforts to instead inflame each section to see its ‘identity’ and essence in factors which, if internalized, would set it apart. Most of all, these intellectuals and the like have completely diverted public view from the activities in our own day of organizations like the Tabhligi jamaat and the Church which are exerting every nerve, and deploying uncounted resources to get their adherents to discard every practice and belief which they share with their Hindu neighbours.

"These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism – they have made out to be the epitomes of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!

"This has been their real crime. It has also been a bit of a feat. For they have been just a few: during the Ayodhya controversy, for instance, every other week a press statement would appear in favour of the stand of the Babri Masjid Action Committee – one week over the names of ‘eminent historians’, the next over the signatures of ‘distinguished social scientists’, and the week after that in the name of ‘leading intellectuals’! But they would always be the same lot. Always the same small lot: six in one statement, eight in the next; their high was forty-two once. But what commotion they have been able to create, and what mischief.

"They have been able to do so because of what they were advancing – for instance, the Marxist ‘thesis’ they were parroting in their textbooks – was in accord with the temper of the times. Because their kinds were in critical positions in professions like journalism and universities. And because the rulers reckoned that to garner votes it would be politic to dress up in progressive plumes; patronizing persons who had taken out a copyright, so to say, on the progressive hue was accordingly useful.

"Most of all, they were able to work their mischief because of the control they came to acquire over institutions.

"Times have changed: the committed progressive of yesterday is the unthinking conservative today.

"The needs of the rulers have changed: who can fool the masses today by nationalizing banks and parading certificates from progressives?

"The theory in which progressives preened about had been shown decades ago to be without basis. At that time no one listened. But today no one invokes it! For it has floundered on the one test the progressives had said alone mattered: the test of practice. Whatever the theoretical imperfections, whatever the empirical evidence, the one thing that counts is that it has worked in practice – in the Soviet Union, in eastern Europe, in China: that was their argument. And as only those facts about these countries were facts which they certified, the argument could scarcely be countered. Today that very argument works to the opposite effect: whatever the logical coherence you claim for it, whatever scraps of empirical evidence you adduce in its favour, the one thing that counts is that it has failed in practice!"

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December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021.

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The Historians

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1. A characteristic concoction

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One recalls the headlines Shourie mentions, and the general cacophony by various media against Hindus.

" ... I rang up the secretary of that ministry. Has the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR been changed? I asked. No, he said. It has not been changed, he said.

"And then about the resolution announcing the new members. The allegation, you will recall, was that the aim which in the Memorandum of Association is, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and RATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history…’, had been altered in the resolution to read, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and NATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history….’"

'I requested the secretary of the ministry: could he please request someone to look up resolutions of the earlier years, and see whether they contained anything different? Could he help me trace when this ‘alteration’ got made?

"The secretary was able to trace resolutions going back up to 1978 – that is, twenty years. Each of them carried the very same words!

"The research of the secretary and his colleagues established that – to reproduce the word the secretary used – the whole mystery had arisen from a ‘typographical error’: some typist banging away on his typewriter some twenty-odd years ago typed ‘rational’ as ‘national’. As each typist, when asked to type out the subsequent resolution, copied the preceding one, that word continued to be typed as ‘national’ year after year. The leftists inferred no conspiracy. But, lo and behold, now that a BJP government was in power, inferring conspiracies – to use their favourite phrase – was a historical necessity. It was objective history! It was progressive methodology! I half-expected them to put on their Sherlock Holmes caps again, and establish that the governments of Mrs Indira Gandhi, of Rajiv Gandhi, of V.P. Singh, of Narasimha Rao had all been in league with the RSS, and therefore parties to this grave conspiracy!

"I then rang up Vinod Mehta, the editor of Outlook and president of the Editors Guild of India. ‘But the reporter says she has the text and everything,’ he said. I narrated what I had found. He promised to check and get back to me. When we talked again he said he had sent me the text of the resolution. But that was the current one. My point had been that the ‘change’ on which Outlook had built its story had existed in all resolutions for at least twenty years. He said he would get back to me. He never did. Nor did senior journalists of two other publications that had built their stories on the fabrication, and who, after I requested them to ascertain the basis of their accounts, had promised to get back to me."

"Such forgeries, such allegations are the standard technology of this school. Fabricating conspiracy theories is their well-practised weapon. And they have a network: stories containing the same ‘facts’ about the ICHR had figured prominently in paper after paper. ... "

"The associated charge, repeated in Outlook and all the other publications, was that historians who had now been nominated to the ICHR were ones who supported the proposition that there had been a Ram temple at Ayodhya before it was replaced by the Babri mosque. Assume that the charge was entirely correct. What about the members who had not been renominated? They were the intellectual guides and propagandists of the Babri Masjid Action Committee. They represented it at the meetings Mr Chandrashekhar’s government had convened for settling the matter by evidence. That was an outstanding initiative of Mr Chandrashekhar: for such contentious issues ought to be dissolved in the acid of evidence. These leftist ‘historians’ had attended the initial meetings. They had put together for and on behalf of the Committee ‘documents’. It had been a miscellaneous pile. And it had become immediately evident that this pile was no counter to the mass of archaeological, historical and literary evidence which the VHP had furnished, that in fact the ‘documents’ these guides of the Babri Committee had piled up further substantiated the VHP’s case. These ‘historians’, having undertaken to attend the meeting to consider the evidence presented by the two sides, just did not show up!

"It was this withdrawal which aborted the initiative that the government had undertaken of bringing the two sides together, of introducing evidence and discourse into the issue. Nothing but nothing paved the way for the demolition as did this running away by these ‘historians’. It was the last nail: no one could be persuaded thereafter that evidence or reason would be allowed anywhere near the issue.

"Not only were these ‘historians’ the advisers of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, its advocates in the negotiations, they simultaneously issued all sorts of statements supporting the Babri Masjid Action Committee’s case – which was the ‘case’ they had themselves prepared! A well-practised technique, if I may say so: they are from a school in which members have made each other famous by applauding each other’s books and ‘theses’!"

"Their deceitful role in Ayodhya – which in the end harmed their clients more than anyone else – was just symptomatic. For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be today about that objective of the ICHR – to promote objective and rational research into events of our past! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal government in 1989 which Outlook itself had quoted – ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned?’ But incorporating their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist viharas, about the non-existent ‘Aryan invasion’, that is mandatory – to question them is to be communal, chauvinist! The capture of institutions like the ICHR has been bad enough, but in the end it has been a device. The major crime of these ‘historians’ has been this partisanship: suppresso veri, suggesto falsi."

"But we are getting ahead of the story: what was their answer when their fabrication – ‘rational changed to national’ – was nailed? As, unlike Shourie, who, a resident of Delhi, is a BJP MP from UP, I am not a member of parliament, wrote their spokesman, Panikkar, ‘I have no means to ascertain from the ministry’ whether what Shourie has written is true!

"A much favoured device: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other man is privileged! And that, as you are from the toiling masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact. QED!"

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December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021.

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2. Eminent entrepreneurs!

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Arun Shourie documents the scams run by the leftist clique siphoning off public funds in name of historical research, writing and documentation, via various projects proposals, infights and more.

In this chapter he gives extensive accounts.

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December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021.

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3. How to do it!

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Theme from chapter two continues.

Here it's about modus operandi.

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December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021.

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4. A fitting tribute

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This particular one is shocking despite one being slightly used to the idea of just how many scams and how fraudulent the whole racket- because it involves personal theft of work of one scholar, by a deputy director of ICHR, who simply style the work, published it in his own name, got a doctorate, and destroyed the original manuscript submitted by the person who had done the work. The theft was exposed due to over sixty pages of the original manuscript being in a file at ICHR, which tallied, every word, with the plagiarised book published in name of the thief, which had support of some so called eminent historians.

Arun Shourie mentions them by name.

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December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021.

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5. When cornered, cry ‘Petty’, ‘Personal’, ‘Uncivilized’

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One doesn't recall watching this episode, but it's typical of the leftist frauds who label themselves secular and make claims that they cannot prove, and when challenged, resort to abusive behaviour and loud voices. This particular argument was about cow slaughter.

It's surprising that nobody else seems to have connected the dots, from cattle protection, to environmental disaster in reversing the policy, in an agricultural economy in a tropical land, with one seventh of the global population mostly living in poverty.

At the very least, environment is one issue one may reasonably expect every leftist to care about - and mechanisation on a humongous scale is something one shoukd expect a political party swearing by Gandhi to look askance at. But the so self labelled seculars don't explain what poor rural population of a tropical land is expected to replace cattle with, for agriculture and transport, apart from nutrition for their children. Or have they not read the Amitav Ghosh work that British bypassed for Booker, for pointing out how their forcing opium on Indian farmers ruined them, the latter? Multiply that disastrous chain effect by exponential factor and you have East Bengal drown fast because india lost cattle to beefeaters and had to go with gasguzzling machinery.

But it doesn't get anywhere near that, in the episode described. Shrimali claimed Vedic literature supported slaughter of cattle for food; they asked him to find one quote, he couldn't - despite audience providing him with actual books. Then he wrote to every newspaper claiming hed been attacked personally!

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December 31, 2021 - December 31, 2021.

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6. ‘…after selling himself in the flesh market’ Their Line

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"‘This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then,’ wrote one of these historians, K.N. Panikkar in The Asian Age1 in response to an article in which I had nailed the ‘rational’ vs ‘national’ forgery they had circulated. He said that The Times of India too had put out a front-page story about the Towards Freedom Project the previous year. And the historians had clarified the facts through a public statement…’

CWe have seen more of the facts since. But what he said – ‘This is an old charge…’ – is something to bear in mind – there is never a right time to ask a question about them. If events are still fresh, their response always is: ‘But where are the facts?’ If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: ‘But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose.’ When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: ‘But this is an old charge. That he is raking it up now shows how the forces of reaction are panic-stricken at the growing consolidation of forces of secularism and democracy.’

"And there is never a right person to question them either. If the critic happens to have been one of them at some time in the past, and speaks from inside knowledge, they denounce him: ‘His writing itself shows that he has crossed the barricade.’ If he has not, they shout: ‘A habitual Left-baiter, notorious for having been at the World Bank, a self-confessed apologist for the forces of reaction….’"

What follows is extremely abusive from Pannikar, abusive not only of Shourie, but of all Hindus and all women. No excerpts from that here.

"I documented the treacherous role the communists had played during the 1942 movement. Pritish Nandy, then editor of The Illustrated Weekly, carried the text in a series. The text contained documents from Indian and British archives – of secret liaisons of the communist functionaries with British rulers, of the reports they furnished detailing the service they were rendering to the British, the requests they were making and the concessions they were being given….

"E.M.S. Namboodiripad rushed to Bombay. Shourie is speaking for the forces of reaction, he thundered at a specially convened press conference. These forces have panicked at the growing unity of secular and democratic forces … They are unnerved that they will get a sound drubbing at the elections which are round the corner…

"No elections were round any corner. Mr Tarkunde had given his invitation five months earlier. The communists’ role in the Quit India movement had not been the topic I had thought of in the first instance. I had thought that I would speak on ‘Ideology as Blinkers’, and that I would illustrate my argument with four examples. By the time of the lecture only one example was ready – that relating to the communists during the 1942 movement. And that is how I got to speak on the topic when I did. But ‘conspiracy’, ‘unnerved’, ‘elections round the corner’… it was!"

" ... I had published extensive extracts from a 120-page report which the Communist Party had submitted to the British narrating the assistance its members were rendering by sabotaging the Quit India movement. ‘The so-called 120-page document,’ the publication scoffed, ‘unfortunately I thought it a waste of time to count whether it was actually 120-pages as Shourie seems to have done.’"

"‘Naturally enough questions are being asked by people all over India: why has Shourie started this foul campaign now?….’ That is always a useful question to ask: when you can’t answer a person on facts, ask: ‘But why now?’ India carries out its first nuclear explosion on 18 May 1974 at Pokhran. And what does the redoubtable representative of the communists ask in the Lok Sabha?

""We have been told that we have [had] the capability for a long time, we could have set off this blast much earlier, if we wanted to. Well, if we could have set it off much earlier, we could have set it off much later also. My question is about the timing of it. There must be some reason behind the timing of this, this particular timing of 18th May. I am not clear about it.5""

"Twin lessons in that. To roll back their untruth, we must immunize ourselves against their verbal terrorism. And among the easy prophylactics is to cut out and store their vituperation – in less than no time it mutates into the ridiculous. The press conferences and pamphlets were hurled at me in 1984. In 1986 in his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, E.M.S. Namboodiripad acknowledged that communists had collaborated with the British during the ‘Quit India’ movement.6 In 1984, as we have just seen, the communists were proclaiming, ‘Nonetheless, the Earth goes forward, and all roads lead to Communism.’ In 1989 the Berlin Wall was pulled down…."

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2021.

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Their Line

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7. A circular

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"Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K.M. Shrimali, one of this group of eminences, and me to discuss on ZEE Television’s Aap ki Adalat, Aap ka Faisala the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported – that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned.’

"Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective history, rational history? Shrimali’s response was the well-practised script: firstly, he did not know that such an instruction had ever been issued; if it had been issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued…"

Shourie furnishes extensive evidence, of the circular and examples of "corrections" in textbooks, with deletions of every mention of Muslim atrocities cut out.

"In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!

"Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.

"Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.

"But there isn’t just whitewash of Islam. For, after Islam, came another great emancipatory ideology – Marxism-Leninism."

"The teachers in Bengal furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V:

"‘…. in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country.’

"‘…. after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established.’

"‘…. Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality….’

"Thus, not just whitewash, hogwash too."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2021.

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8. Devices to further the circular

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"As we have seen, the explicit part of the circular issued by the West Bengal government in 1989 in effect was that there must be no negative reference to Islamic rule in India. Although these were the very things which contemporary Islamic writers had celebrated, there must be no reference to the destruction of the temples by Muslim rulers, to the forcible conversion of Hindus, to the numerous other disabilities which were placed on the Hindu population. Along with the circular, the passages which had to be removed were listed and substitute passages were specified. The passages which were ordered to be deleted contained, if anything, a gross understatement of the facts. On the other hand, passages which were sought to be inserted contained total falsehoods: that by paying jizyah Hindus could lead ‘normal lives’ under an Islamic ruler like Alauddin Khalji!

"A closer study of the textbooks which are today being used under the authority of the West Bengal government shows a much more comprehensive, a much deeper design than that of merely erasing the cruelties of Islamic rule.

"Of course, there is no reference to those cruelties. But in addition, the growth of the Aligarh movement and its objectives, the role of Sir Syed Ahmad in founding this movement, the role of the Muslim League, its close [‘association with the British, its espousal of the Two Nation doctrine – all these are almost entirely erased in the half a dozen books which teachers in Calcutta have been so kind as to send.

"It was only in one book, Sabhyatar Itihash by Dr Atul Chandra Ray, Prantik, 1998, for Class VIII, that there was a reference to the Muslim League, the Lahore Resolution, the Two Nation theory, and Jinnah’s ‘Direct Action’. Even in this book the only reference to Sir Syed Ahmad was one that projected him as a great, progressive religious reformer: ‘All his life he struggled against blind faith and tradition, conventional rituals, practices and ignorance.’ That he founded the Aligarh movement, that he was the original proponent of the Two Nation theory, that he exhorted Muslims to stay away from the Congress, that he wrote essays followed by books followed by essays to establish in the eyes of the British how loyal Muslims had been through the 1857 uprising, how loyal they were and would always be to the British because of their nature and their religion, that he gave very special ‘interpretations’ to passages from the Quran to establish that it was the religious duty of Muslims to support and stand by the British rulers – to the point that if the British asked them to eat pork, they were by their religion duty-bound to do so in good cheer:1 not a word on any of this.

"Similarly, while Ram Mohan Roy is mentioned, while Keshab Chandra Sen – in whom Max Muller had seen such hope for Christianizing India! – is mentioned, while Debendranath Tagore is mentioned in this ‘History of Civilisation’, Bankimchandra is not mentioned! After all, for the constituency which our progressives have been wooing, Bankimchandra, being the author of ‘Bande Mataram’, of Ananda Math, is anathema. Many would think it natural that as such ‘Histories of World Civilisation’ are written in and for Bengal, Bengali personages – including K.C. Sen! – should figure more prominently than reformers and leaders from outside Bengal. But even they would be surprised by what the teachers point out in regard to the most widely used textbook: that while Swami Vivekananda gets one line, Karl Marx gets forty two!

"In regard to our religion, the trick is threefold. The textbooks denigrate religion, attributing to it the evils which it serves the progressives’ purpose to highlight. Second, in each of these instances the examples they give are linked by them to Hinduism. Third, among religions, Islam is always presented as the one, progressive, emancipatory religion. Of course, the final emancipation comes in the form of the Soviet Revolution of 1917!"

And it's indoctrination with false propaganda that begins at class three, aimed at children of seven or eight!

" ... Not just the usual Marxist claptrap, the Marxist rendition of the Macaulay-missionary design: make them ashamed of the things they revere – their gods, their scriptures, their language, Sanskrit; and make them hate the one group which has been charged with the task of continuing their religion and culture."

Did all this begin with China attacking India, or merely get aggravated after independence with left joining jihadists to divide the country? Both, coming to strengthen via Indira Gandhi? Certainly especially more so via her current heirs to power and property of the family!

"By predictable contrast, Itihash (Prachin), West Bengal Shiksha Parishad, 1994, on page 94 gives an illustration of the ruins of Nalanda. It says how important these seats of learning were. But it is studiously silent on who it was that destroyed them! After all, alluding to that would violate the circular!"

"While these books are published in 1995,1998, etc., there is not a word in them about the purges under Stalin, about the fact that under him millions of Soviet citizens were killed, nor of the fact that millions more were killed under Maoist rule in China, there is not a word of the slave labour camps of these regimes. And, of course, there is not a word about what has happened to the Soviet Union, to eastern Europe since then, nor about the great leap which China has executed away from the bankrupt communist economic system."

"Hence the design is not just what was set out in that circular – to erase the evil that Islamic rulers heaped upon India and Indians. It 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!"

In Kerala,

"In 1996 the Marxists came to power again. They once again revised the texts and curricula for Standards I to IV. The textbooks and curricula which had been introduced just three years earlier and which were in the process of being extended over the state were dumped. The textbooks were prepared by teachers who were actively associated with the Sasthra Sahitya Parishad, a Marxist-sponsored organization. ‘Public educationists and teachers’ organizations strongly criticised the new textbooks,’ teachers write. ‘The main criticism was that the textbooks were silent in regard to national leaders, social reformers, ancient poets and Indian culture. Stories and poems relating to Ramayana and Mahabharatha were left out in the name of secularism.’"

" ... A poem by the leading poet of Kerala, Mahakavi Ikkitham Achuthan Namboodiripad, was prescribed for study, they write. In it, anxious and pining for her son, the mother asks whether anyone has seen her son, ‘Ambadi kannante niramane’ – my son, the colour of Krishna, which is dark. This line has been deleted, and substituted’ by ‘Njaval pazhathinte chelane’ – Njval pazham is a fruit, which, the teachers point out, is red in colour. ‘This change was done without the prior permission of the renowned poet,’ they write. ‘It was done to ensure that the name of Lord Krishna does not occur in the poem.’ Furthermore, they point out, the 1986 National Education Policy had identified a set of core components. In preparing the new curriculum the ones related to the history of the Indian freedom movement, the content essential to nurture a national identity, the items dealing with India’s common cultural heritage, as well as those relating to the removal of social barriers, were all erased from the curriculum. In the lesson on Gandhiji in the textbook for Class IV, he is not represented as the leader of the struggle for freedom, but merely as one who loved the poor. For this an incident from his days in South Africa is recalled. And, the teachers say, he is deliberately referred to as ayal, which means ‘he’. The word is a disrespectful one, they write. It is not used for an honourable person, an elder."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2021.

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9. ‘Let us look forward to the positive aspects’

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"The position of these ‘academics’ in Bengal has, of course, been helped by the fact that the CPI(M) has been in power there for so long. But their sway has not been confined to the teaching and ‘research’ institutions of that state. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the same ‘line’ being poured down the throats of students at the national level. And so strong is the tug of intellectual fashion, so lethal can the controlling mafia be to the career of an academic that often, even though the academic may not quite subscribe to their propositions and ‘theses’, he will end up reciting those propositions. Else his manuscript will not be accepted as a textbook by the NCERT, for instance, it will not be reviewed….

"S.N. Jha’s Society, State and Government is an NCERT textbook for Class XI students.1 This author too is from that citadel of the ‘committed writing’ which we are considering, the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Working in that institution, among those controllers, whatever his views, the text he produces for acculturating the young fits the pattern.

"The book does deign to mention that the Soviet Union has collapsed, that East Germany has merged with West Germany. But even in 1996 it regurgitates rationalizations for the Soviet system, and when it cannot avoid mentioning the collapse of the Soviet Union and of other ‘socialist’ states, it dutifully puts the word ‘collapse’ within inverted commas!"

"As the book is being put out in the 1990s, and that too in Delhi, one cannot entirely ignore the fate which has overtaken the Great Experiment. But in spite of everything that is known about the states which were founded in its name, our academic deems it fit not to rush to any hasty conclusion about the collapse. He remarks:

"Why did this disintegration take place? Which forces were responsible for it? These are complex questions that will be analysed by commentators. It is enough to note here that the socialist state and form of government has [sic] suffered a serious set back.17"

Reminds one of a conversation with a colleague who said that the East Germany premier didn't seem happy about unification of Germany. "Of course", I said - "he's going to lose his job!" But on the other hand, Dragon is only propped up by U.S..

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2021.

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10. Insinuate falsehood, explain away the truth

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It would be not possible to quote as much as is worth, unfortunately. But Arun Shourie now exposes the lies, filthy lies written by another historian. He quotes R. S. Sharma in "Ancient India" saying that Brahmins hated Ashok because he was tolerant and forbade sacrifices, so they lost income!

" ... If they really had become that addicted to sacrifices, what proportion of the people would have obeyed a prohibition; how, given the primitive modes of communication and transport, given the extremely thin veneer of the state’s presence 2,300 years ago, how Ashoka would have had his prohibition enforced – no word on that either. But ‘obviously’, ‘naturally’, ‘really’, it is!

"Evidence apart, notice the denunciation-by-juxtaposition. Hinduism equals ‘Brahmanism’. Brahmins are fixated on their incomes. Incomes come from sacrifices. Hence, the ‘antipathy’ to Ashoka is inherent in Brahmanism-equals-Hinduism. And what about the destruction by Islamic invaders and zealots of every Buddhist structure in sight – in India, of course, but also in Central Asia and Afghanistan? R.S. Sharma has all of two sentences on that:

""For their riches the monasteries came to be coveted by the Turkish invaders. They became special targets of the invaders’ greed. The Turks killed a large number of Buddhist monks in Nalanda, although some of the monks managed to escape to Nepal and Tibet.3""

"And invariably there is another kind of ‘balancing’ also. These two sentences about the Turks covering three lines in the textbook are preceded by an entire paragraph, six times the length, about the persecution of Buddhists by Hindu rulers! And in that paragraph the motivation of the Hindu rulers is entirely religious!"

Arun Shourie further gives excerpts where Sharma explains Islamic massacre of Buddhist monks and destruction of Buddha statues as obligatory by religion, and also because Buddhism had been corrupted, and he blames Hinduism but doesn't call it that, calling it Brahmanism instead, and he draws the obvious parallel.

" ... The standard mode of argument on every controversy today: for 150 years, missionaries denounced Hinduism on the charge that it demarcates people by caste, they exalted Christianity for exorcising caste from among its followers; and now, when they fear that their flock is deserting them because they have in fact continued all those distinctions – separate pews for the lower castes, few OBCs in the hierarchy, etc., – and they must demand reservations for ‘Dalit Christians’, a category they were saying did not exist by definition, guess who is to blame: it is all the result of the enveloping Hinduism, they allege!

"The same ‘line’ is peddled by Sharma’s comradely historian, Satish Chandra, in his companion NCERT textbook, for Class XI students, titled Medieval India.6 Here also we learn that ‘not only were the tenets of Buddhism and Jainism challenged at the intellectual level, there was on occasions outbreak of violence and forcible occupation of Buddhist and Jain temples.’ Satish Chandra also talks of the ‘internal developments in Buddhism’ – the reversion to speculation about metaphysical questions, to the recitation of mantras, the relapse into mysticism, to secret rites, etc. The sum total of it all? ‘Thus,’ says Satish Chandra, ‘Buddhism did not so much decline, as it assumed forms which made it indistinguishable from Hinduism!’7

"In a word, both corruption and evil on the one hand and exploitation on the other are germane to, they are inherent in, Hinduism: Hinduism is Brahmanism; Brahmanism is that ‘ism’ which serves the interests of the Brahmins; these interests can only be served by the exploitation and oppression of people of lower castes. Hence, Hinduism is necessarily an arrangement for the exploitation and oppression of the mass of people. QED!

"By contrast, the aggression, the butchery, the devastations committed by Islamic rulers are sanitized through a three-layered filter. First, the devastation is attributed to individuals and not the religion. Among individuals, it is made out that just a few individuals – a few isolated exceptions – indulged in it. Third, that they committed aggression, destroyed temples, pulverized idols, not because of some religious belief but because, being rulers, they had to put down their opponents who happened to be Hindus; and because they were motivated by mundane considerations like greed for the riches of temples, the need to establish political sway over the conquered territory, etc."

"Each of these assertions is a blatant falsehood. But these historians, having, through their control of institutions, set the standards of intellectual correctness, the one who questions the falsehoods, even though he does so by citing the writings of the best known Islamic historians of those very times, he is the one who is in the wrong."

"And in regard to the killing of that Brahmin which our eminent historian Satish Chandra attributes to the Brahmin having abused the Prophet of Islam – the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi of Shamsu’d-Din bin Siraju’d-Din, the courtier of Firuz Shah himself, describes the execution as follows:

""A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects…. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultan’s strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!""

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January 15, 2022 - January 16, 2021.

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11. Were all these authors also communalists?

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Author sums the chapter -

"In regard to matter after critical matter – the Aryan-Dravidian divide, the nature of Islamic invasions, the nature of Islamic rule, the character of the freedom struggle – we find this trait – suppresso veri, suggesto falsi. This is the real scandal of history writing in the last thirty years. And it has been possible for these ‘eminent historians’ to perpetrate it because they acquired control of institutions like the ICHR. To undo the falsehood, the control has to be undone."

He's given excerpts from fraudulent writings of current, as he wrote, historians, as well as renowned authorities of yore whom they quote only as it suits them, distorting not only thereby the import of those authorities but also of facts and truth, to suit this strange leftist-islamic merger agenda that has emerged post WWII in West and seeped into India, but exists only in these spheres, while neither leftist nations nor Islamic ones have any sense of anything but hostility between the two spheres - this merger in India and in West being suitable for purposes of targeting India, Hinduism, Israel and Judaism, equally.

Shourie gives specific quotes regarding supposed demise of Buddhism, by various authors current when he published this work, and authorities of yore. But there's a major glitch that neither they nor he see.

It is thus - even though West, specifically British, held Buddhism as separate, neither Hindus nor India do so. If such separation process were acceptable to India and Hinduism, it woukdnt be merely four religions indigenous to India, it would be more than a few thousand, one for each great religious figure and preacher, one for each God or Goddess, one for each different religious practice - the way it's in abrahmic faiths.

Buddhism did not die, because it never was either independent or separate in India. It merely was reabsorbed, because it always was and still is, part of the great treasure that's India.

It's true that China and East Asia, Central and Southeast Asia accepted Buddha as their God, but then Hinduism wasn't strange to Southeast Asia through history - what was later called Indochina was three different kingdoms with Sanskrit names, and Angkor Wat is today the most humongous Hindu temple.

That China accepted Buddhism due to a Chinese emperor having a vision of Buddha as a new, immense golden God, but China still retained and redoubled her then existing hostility to India, is limitation characteristic of China's character, giving more importance to hatred, war and destruction of other, than progress and knowledge for themselves.

But none of that makes Buddha a non-indian either in person, history or in thought, or realisation of Godhead in himself. He's held as another Avataara in India, and that's Truth. Buddhism, like a stream going around an island in the main river, has returned in India to merge with mainstream.

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January 16, 2022 - January 16, 2021.

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12. The policy of ‘broad toleration’!

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"‘Despite the pressure of a section of the orthodox theologians,’ the eminent historian Satish Chandra assures the Class XI student, ‘this policy of broad toleration was maintained during the Sultanate.’ Really?

"What policy do we find narrated in the accounts of Islamic historians of the time, in the accounts, that is, of the very authorities on whose books our distinguished historians would have to construct their ‘theses’? What events do they celebrate? What do those Islamic authorities say were the motives which impelled the rulers of the time?

"Fortunately, the intrepid Sita Ram Goel has set out four hundred pages of extracts and evidence from the leading Islamic historians of those days in his decisive work, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, The Islamic Evidence, Volume II ... "

Shourie gives extensive excerpts from works of various islamic historical writers who wrote contemporary history of the destruction of temples, breaking of statues of Gods, humiliating them by being trodden, raising mosques in place of the temples, and killings of worshippers, conducted by or at orders of various sultan such as Lodi, Khilji, Tughlaq et al, some written by Tughlaq himself. Descrip9of destruction of temples and more throughout India from Somnath to Puri to Vijayanagar, and especially through Mathura, are copious, apart from Delhi. Killings of Hindus by these sultan amounted to several thousand at a time and included not only able men with weapons, as per rules in india, but women, children, babies, everyone (- which, as characteristcs of massacres of Hindus by Muslims, continued right up to Noakhali during partition of India). All of this, as shown in excerpts that Shourie quotes, was deliberately done in name of islam, and celebrated thereafter.

From the excerpts it's clear that the word ghazi or ghazy is a title denoting one who massacred people thus on huge scales, and it's specifically mentioned in the excerpts that the sultan were proud to assume such a title.

"And so on – among the highest piles of rubble in the world of the sacred temples of another religion, among the highest piles of corpses of those venerated by another religion. Yet, in the reckoning of our eminent historians a policy of ‘Broad Toleration’! A policy of toleration guided by purely secular motivations!

"Having presented voluminous evidence about the destruction of temples, Sita Ram Goel remarks:

"Starting with Al-Biladhuri who wrote in Arabic in the second half of the ninth century, and coming down to Syed Mahmudul Hasan who wrote in English in the fourth decade of the twentieth, we have cited from eighty histories spanning a period of more than twelve hundred years.. Our citations mention sixty-one kings, sixty-three military commanders and fourteen Sufis who destroyed Hindu temples in one hundred and fifty-four localities, big and small, spread from Khurasan in the West to Tripura in the East, and from Transoxiana in the North to Tamil Nadu in the South, over a period of eleven hundred years. In most cases the destruction of temples was followed by erection of mosques, madrasas and khanqahs, etc., on the temple sites and, frequently, with temple materials. Allah was thanked every time for enabling the iconoclast concerned to render service to the religion of Muhammad by means of this pious performance.2

"And the destructions were not because of a lust for plunder or a determination to impose political hegemony alone. Their impulse was religious – that is, to carry out the command of Allah and to follow the Sunna of the Prophet. Goel correctly observes:

"The destruction of Hindu temples at the hands of Islamised invaders continued for more than eleven hundred years, from the middle of the seventh century to the end of the eighteenth. It took place all over the cradle of Hindu culture, from Sinkiang in the North to Tamil Nadu in the South, and from Seistan in the West to Assam in the East.

"All along, the iconoclasts remained convinced that they were putting into practice the highest tenets of their religion. They also saw to it that a record was kept of what they prized as a pious performance. The language of the record speaks for itself. It leaves no doubt that they took immense pride in doing what they did.

"It is inconceivable that a constant and consistent behaviour pattern, witnessed for a long time and over a vast area, can be explained except in terms of a settled system of belief which leaves no scope for second thoughts. Looking at the very large number of temples, big and small, destroyed or desecrated or converted into Muslim monuments, economic or political explanations can be only a futile, if not fraudulent, exercise. The explanations are not even plausible.3

"In an entire chapter – Chapter 16 of his book – Goel recalls instances after instances set out with great pride by the biographers of the Prophet, describing the destruction of temples by the Prophet himself. What the Prophet did is by definition the Sunna – along with the Quran, it is one of the two principal sources in accordance with which every believer must order his conduct. Sita Ram Goel’s conclusion is unassailable. He writes:

"Thus the practice of the Prophet or his Sunnah vis-a-vis idols and idol-temples was added to prescriptions of the Quran in this respect, and the Islamic theology of iconoclasm stood completed. Ever since, iconoclasm has been a prominent as well a permanent part of the theology of Islam.

"Allah had denounced the idols and their worship as abominable. His Prophet got the idols broken or burnt, and their temples destroyed.

"The Prophet added a few nuances on his own. He got the sites and materials of pagan temples used in the construction of mosques that replaced them. In many cases, idols were placed on the footsteps of the mosques so that the faithful could trample upon them while entering and coming out of Allah’s abodes. These acts, too, became pious precedents and were followed by Islamic invaders wherever they came across idols.4

"In a word, what was done was no fortuitous ‘error’. Allah had decreed that the houses of worship of other religions be destroyed. The Prophet had carried out the command at every occasion on which it had been necessary and prudent to do so. And what the Prophet did is the Sunna, which, alongwith the Quran, is the model on which believers are to order their conduct. That is what these rulers, invaders, and ‘saints’ did. That is what they and their historians said they were doing.

"And that is precisely what our eminent historians conceal."

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January 16, 2022 - January 16, 2021.

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13. The litmus test

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Shourie begins by quoting lies of a prominent historian Satish Chandra who claimed that there were no persecutions of Sikhs or Hindus by Muslim rulers and therefore no requirement for Sikhs to protect Hindus, although he allows that some persecution and killings did take place, including destruction of temples, attributing it all to incidental or personal details. Shourie quotes Guru Granth Sat in in refutation. Having quoted, he translates -

""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…."

And remarks -

"What do they say of Guru Nanak’s account of the young brides whose youth, jewels, honour have been snatched away by the invaders on the orders of Babar? ... "

Shourie translates -

"Hindus have been forbidden to pray at the time of the Muslim’s namaz, Hindu society has been left without a bath, without a tilak. Even those who have never uttered ‘Ram’, even they can get no respite, not even by shouting ‘Khuda, Khuda’…. The few who have survived Babar’s jails wail…. The desolation which has come over the land …. The entire races which have been exterminated, which have been humiliated….2

"The account not of some merely eminent historian, but of Guru Nanak. Not some account written by looking at records of centuries ago, but testimony of the moment, of what Guru Nanak had been witness to himself…."

Shourie goes into attempts by Satish Chandra to excuse and gloss over destruction of temples by Aurangzeb.

"Moreover, Aurangzeb did so, Satish Chandra tells us, because ‘he began to look upon temples as centres of spreading subversive ideas, that is ideas which were not acceptable to the orthodox elements. Hence the destruction of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple at Banaras and the temple, at Mathura.’ ‘The destruction of these temples had a political motivation as well….,’ Satish Chandra emphasizes, and continues, ‘it was in this context that many temples built in Orissa during the last 10 to 12 years were also destroyed.’ And then, ‘but it is wrong to think that there were any orders for the general destruction of temples.’ Lest anyone come up with citations from contemporary historians, another sentence to explain away what was actually done: ‘however, the situation was different during periods of hostilities.’8"

"The first thing that strikes one, of course, is the double standard. We shall soon see how, with next to no evidence, our eminent historians pressed the most far-reaching assertions about ancient India – about its having been a period riddled with tensions, inequity and oppression. And how, in cases such as Aurangzeb and the sultanate, these very historians shut their eyes to what stares them in the face. In a word, their histories are set to a formula: pre-Islamic India must be presented as a land of discord, a land in the grip of a social and political system marked by injustice, extreme inequities and oppression – evidence or no evidence; and the Islamic period must be presented – evidence or no evidence – as a period in which ‘the composite culture’ flowered, a period in which the policy of ‘broad toleration’ was the norm, and such departures from it as took place were just the aberrations of individuals, aberrations which themselves can be tracked down to wholly secular causes."

"The third thing that strikes one in these accounts and explanations is how closely they parrot the volumes of a person like Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi; as is well known, Qureshi taught history at the Delhi University and then migrated to Pakistan. ... He was eventually decorated with the high honour, Sitara-i-Pakistan."

Shourie gives excerpts from both to show how closely they follow his writing.

" ... Thus the ‘explanations’ for Aurangzeb’s policies are identical, all that is missing is the adoration that Qureshi holds for Aurangzeb.

"The fourth point is the brazenness with which our historians suppress the evidence and, having done so, slip in falsehoods. ... "

Shourie proceeds to enumerate the falsehood, and then question them.

"How does this assertion compare with what the Akhbarat of Aurangzeb itself state, as well as other accounts recorded at the time? Here are some of the entries:

"25 May 1679: ‘Khan-i-Jahan Bahadur returned from Jodhpur after demolishing its temples, and bringing with himself several cart-loads of idols. The Emperor ordered that the idols, which were mostly of gold, silver, brass, copper or stone and adorned with jewels, should be cast in the quadrangle of the Court and under the steps of the Jama Mosque for being trodden upon.’

"January-February 1680: ‘The grand temple in front of the Maharana’s mansion (at Udaipur) – one of the wonderful buildings of the age, which had cost the infidels much money – was destroyed and its images broken.’ ‘On 24 January the Emperor went to view the lake Udaisagar and ordered all the three temples on its banks to be pulled down.’ ‘On 29 January Hasan Ali Khan reported that 172 other temples in the environs of Udaipur had been demolished.’‘On 22 February the Emperor went to look at Chitor, and by his order the 63 temples of the place were destroyed.’

"10 August 1680: ‘Abu Turab returned to Court and reported that he had pulled down 66 temples in Amber’. 2 August 1680: ‘Temple of Someshwar in western Mewar ordered to be destroyed.’

"September 1687: ‘On the capture of Golkonda, the Emperor appointed Abdur Rahim Khan as Censor of the city of Haidarabad with orders to put down infidel practices and (heretical) innovations and destroy the temples and build mosques on their sites.’

"Circa 1690: Instances of Aurangzeb’s temple destruction at Ellora, Trimbaakeshwar, Narsinghpur (foiled by snakes, scorpions and other poisonous insects), Pandharpur, Jejuri (foiled by the deity) and Yavat (Bhuleshwar) are given by K.N. Sane in Varshik Iribritta for Shaka 1838, pp. 133–135.

"1693: ‘The Emperor ordered the destruction of the Hateshwar temple at Vadnagar, the special guardian of the Nagar Brahmans.’

"3rd April 1694: ‘The Emperor learnt from a secret news-writer of Delhi that in Jaisinghpura Bairagis used to worship idols, and that the Censor on hearing of it had gone there, arrested Sri Krishna Bairagi and taken him with 15 idols away to his house; then the Rajputs had assembled, flocked to the Censor’s house, wounded three footmen of the Censor and tried to seize the Censor himself; so that the latter set the Bairagi free and sent the copper idols to the local subahdar.’

"Middle of 1698: ‘Hamid-ud-din Khan Bahadur who had been deputed to destroy the temple of Bijapur and build a mosque (there), returned to Court after carrying the order out and was praised by the Emperor.’

"‘The demolition of a temple is possible at any time, as it cannot walk away from its place.’ – Aurangzeb to Zullfiqar Khan and Mughal Khan.

"‘The houses of this country (Maharashtra) are exceedingly strong and built solely of stone and iron. The hatchet-men of the Government in the course of my marching do not get sufficient strength and power (i.e., time) to destroy and raze the temples of the infidels that meet the eye on the way. You should appoint an orthodox inspector (darogha) who may afterwards destroy them at leisure and dig up their foundations.’ – Aurangzeb to Ruhullah Khan in Kalimat-i-Aurangzib.

"1 January 1705: ‘The Emperor, summoning Muhammad Khalil and Khidmat Rai, the darogha of hatchet-men…., ordered them to demolish the temple of Pandharpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there and slaughter cows in the temple…. It was done.’"

" ... there are two pillars of progressive history writing in India: first, to fabricate evidence which will establish Hindus to be intolerant; second, to respect and show an empathetic understanding of Islamic communalism.

"And the litmus test of whether you are committed to secular history writing is whether you are prepared to stand up for Aurangzeb!"

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January 16, 2022 - January 16, 2021.

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14. Erasure to parity to absolution

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"Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with the Quran, with the Hadis, with the history of Islamic rule, knows that the separation between believers and non-believers is of the very essence in Islam.1 The main concern of our eminent historians is to completely absolve Islam of such notions and of campaigns and deeds which flow from them. When they cannot but acknowledge the deeds of Muslim leaders and rulers, they attribute them to the foibles or errors of individuals. Next, as we have just seen, they give elaborate explanations to account for those individuals having taken those steps. Again and again they emphasize that the spurs for many of those actions were the deeds and attitudes of the victims themselves. And whenever they mention the intolerance or bigotry of the Muslims they make sure to generalize the matter and always slip in allusions to the Hindus also."

"Indeed, the very nature of the nationalist movement, Bipan Chandra emphasizes repeatedly, alienated the Muslims and it was because of that character of the nationalist struggle that the overwhelming majority of Muslims stayed away from the national movement and in the end backed the Muslim League. Therefore, once again it is the Hindus who are to be blamed!"

"Notice that there is not a word about Muslim historians and what they had written about India. Those history books were the triumphalist literature of the community as were the writings of influential figures such as Shah Waliullah and Sheikh Ahmad Sarhindi. There is not a word about the volumes upon volumes of those who really governed and moulded Muslim thought in late nineteenth and early twentieth century – for instance, of persons like Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan."

" ... Bipan Chandra sets his guns not just at some unnamed Hindu communalist historians, but at the character of the entire national movement and of its greatest leaders. This is how he assesses them:

"Unfortunately, while militant nationalism was a great step forward in every other respect, it was to some extent a step back in respect of the growth of national unity. The speeches and writings of some of the militant nationalists had a strong religious and Hindu tinge. They emphasised ancient Indian culture to the exclusion of medieval Indian culture. They identified Indian culture and the Indian nation with the Hindu religion and Hindus. They tried to abandon elements of composite culture. For example, Tilak’s propagation of the Shivaji and Ganapati festivals, Aurobindo Ghose’s semi-mystical concept of India as mother and nationalism as a religion, the terrorists’ oaths before goddess Kali, and the initiation of the Anti-Partition agitation with dips in the Ganga could hardly appeal to the Muslims. In fact, such actions were against the spirit of their religion, and they could not be expected as Muslims to associate with these and other similar activities. Nor could Muslims be expected to respond with full enthusiasm when they saw Shivaji or Pratap being hailed not merely for their historical roles but also as ‘national’ leaders who fought against the ‘foreigners’. By no definition could Akbar or Aurangzeb be declared a foreigner, unless being a Muslim was made the ground for declaring one a foreigner. In reality, the struggle between Pratap and Akbar or Shivaji and Aurangzeb had to be viewed as a political struggle in its particular historical setting. To declare Akbar or Aurangzeb a ‘foreigner’ and Pratap or Shivaji a ‘national’ hero was to project into past history the communal outlook of 20th century India. This was not only bad history; it was also a blow to national unity.10"

Bison Chandra is either lying deliberately and knowingly, or assuming laws of U.S. constitution regarding citizenship of U.S. to be the only reality applicable to deciding who was foreign in India a millennium ago!

In what way were mughals "not foreigners"? Not only they were of Mongol ancestry, but had not entered India like Tibetans or Parsees, as quiet migrants in needs of refuge. They were warring would be rulers looking for a place to rule, beginning with Babar, who hated India all his life, despite having come to india as the last refuge due to being kicked out of everywhere else, by his own cousins who were as convinced of being specially chosen by God to rule the world as he was himself. He left a will asking to be butied the place he loved, was buried in Afghanistan until that was possible, and finally taken to central Asia to be buried. Certainly they were foreigners, but chief point has always been their hatred of everything Indian and their love of, reverence towards, things elsewhere. British had thus characteristic, and remained foreigners even after generations born in India or buried in India. And so remain the large section of muslims and others who consider India and her treasures merely as property to be destroyed at will and rebuilt over in for of generations of objects elsewhere.

Shourie quotes more excerpts from lies by the so-called historian.

"Moreover, the reformers put a one-sided emphasis on the religious and philosophical aspects of the cultural heritage. These aspects were, moreover, not a common heritage of all people. On the other hand, art and architecture, literature, music, science and technology, etc., in which all sections of people had played an equal role, were not sufficiently emphasised. ... "

"Equal"???!!!! Might as well say Aurangzeb had a role for Sikhs equal to mother's of Sikh gurus! Rest of the excerpt carries on with more lies, such as the non reformed Hindus and muslims living in harmony with each other across the religion divide in a composite culture.

" ... That ‘many in the Muslim middle classes went to the extent of turning to the history of West Asia for their traditions and moments of pride’ was the result of our leaders and reformers giving a Hindu colour to the nationalist movement?

"Did the believer need to be instigated by these Hindu reformers before he turned five times a day to the Kaba in the West Asia? Did he need instigation from Hindu reformers or nationalist leaders before he came to regard Mecca and Madina as the places that were holy? Did he need the instigation of these reformers and nationalist leaders for holding Arabic to be the language which deserves the highest veneration – is it not Allah Himself who reminds him repeatedly in the Quran that it is in Arabic that He has sent down the Revelation?"

What next, Bipan Chandra is going to blame Gandhi for Pakistan declaring itself an Arabic speaking nation for decades?

"In honouring not just the Arabs, and among Arabs the Quraish, is the believer instigated by these Hindu reformers and nationalist leaders? Is it not enough for him that the Prophet himself declared that believers are to be subservient to the Quraish and that the caliphate is the right of the Quraish?15 Does he need Hindu reformers and religious leaders to push him to regard the Quraish as pre-eminent when, Allah having said that he has sent the Quran in Arabic, the Prophet makes that declaration specific, and declares that the Quran has been sent in the Arabic of the Quraish – that is, in their dialect which is distinct from the Arabic spoken by other tribes?16

"All this will be evident to anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with Islam. Nor are these esoteric doctrines, these are notions which are fed to the believer with, so to say, his mother’s milk from the moment of his conversion. Every observer is struck with this insistence of Islam in wrenching believers away from his land, from his language, from his dress, from his older beliefs and turning him towards the Arabs, towards Arabia, towards Arabic, towards Arabian lore and legend. V.S. Naipaul has recently given a poignant account in Beyond Belief of the deep scars this basic insistence has left on the psyche of the converted. Site after sacred site, conversation after conversation etches the truth: Recounting his travels among believers Naipaul gives a heart-rending account of the consequences of this insistence. Reflecting on what the believers tell him, Naipaul remarks: ‘Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s world view alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his…’"

"Would the believer have had to wait upon some Tilak or Aurobindo or Gandhi to decide that this was just the movement of Hindus for Hindus and therefore he should shun it? Does the Prophet not instruct him in hadis after hadis after hadis that he must in every particular and at all times use one criterion to decide what he should do – that is, he must see what the non-believers are doing, and do the opposite?25"

"From such descriptions of the net effect of the Ahrars and of institutions like the Dar-ul-ulum of Deoband, one must infer either deceit or total ignorance of their literature and their politics. The whole attitude of the Ahrars, of the Deoband school, even of a person like Mufti Kifayatullah was that, by asking for a separate Pakistan, the Muslim League was confining Islam to one corner of the subcontinent, when in fact the whole of the subcontinent was open for establishing the sway of Islam. The Ahrars did not fault Jinnah from some nationalist viewpoint, they did not fault him for being too Islamic. On the contrary – their famous couplet for Jinnah was:

"Ik kafira ke waste Islam ko chhora

yeh Quaid-i-Azam hai keh hai kafir-i-azam

"But recalling any of that will strain the effort of our eminent historian in establishing a parity between Hindus and Muslims in regard to communalism, and therefore, he just ignores the facts!"

In short, don't confuse their opposition to partition as opposition to commonality, it was intending more as harking back to the millennium of killing, enslaving, looting, kidnapping and raping India - not different in any way from what Germany did to lands East and Southeast of her borders, not just during WWII but medieval era too, when rather than go crusading to holy land they argued it was just as good to convert closer to home, went and wiped out population of Prussia and acquired the land, to settle Germans and repopulate.

"This glossing over can be seen at every turn. The book has a paragraph on Iqbal. But for the fact that Iqbal was ‘one of the greatest poets of modern India’, he would seem to have been, on the reckoning of our historian, a cross between Swami Vivekananda and M.N. Roy! ... If only our eminent historian had deigned to read, if not Iqbal’s own political writings and those on Islam, even his Shikwa, at least the volumes upon volumes which have been produced about him in Pakistan, if only he had deigned to ask himself why is it that Pakistani historians, political scientists and politicians ascribe such an important place to Iqbal in the creation of Pakistan, if only he had read any of these and asked whether they are doing so without basis!"

Isn't he, along with Jinnah, considered father of their nation by Pakistan? He was livid when Tagore was awarded Nobel prize. When ruler of (Persia?) invited Tagore, Iqbal - according to Tarek Fateh - wrote to him asking to withdraw the invitation to Tagore and invite him, Iqbal, instead, on racist basis.

"Similarly, Bipan Chandra instructs students that ‘we must distinguish between religion as a belief or system, which people follow as a part of their personal belief, and the ideology of a religion-based socio-political identity, that is, communalism.’28 But what about all the authorities of Islam from the Prophet onwards who declare that Islam embraces all of life, that Islam is not merely a matter of adhering to some personal beliefs? What about their affirmations over 1,400 years that Islam is an ideology in the most comprehensive sense of the word? That believers are to regulate their political life, that they are to organize their state, that they are to enact their laws in accordance with it as much as they are to regulate other, more personal aspects of their life and that of the Islamic community in accordance with it? By that very distinction which Bipan Chandra furnishes for the students – ‘we must distinguish between religion as a belief or system, which people follow as a part of their personal belief, and the ideology of a religion-based socio-political identity’ – is Islam not by its own definition, ‘communalism’?"

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January 16, 2022 - January 16, 2021.

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15. ‘Maybe perhaps, probably mostly… Therefore’

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"As one would expect from an eminent historian, the Brahmins and the warriors, he teaches us, had formed a ‘class alliance’, and, therefore, ‘as elsewhere in India from now on the priests began to play the second fiddle to the ruler and strike mephistophelian bargains’.6 What the evidence is of the ‘class alliance’, of the priests ‘playing second fiddle’, of the ‘mephistophelian bargains’ – not a word. We, the eminent historians, hold these truths to be self-evident…!"

The source is obvious, if one stops to reflect. Such bargains, manipulations and more for power, were routine in Europe, especially ever since church joined Rome and threw Jews overboard, and this amongst other evils of church have been accused against Brahmins ever since Macaulay policy of destruction of the spirit of India via fraudulent propaganda was adopted as official policy; the so-called historians are amongst the so-called intellectuals that retain the slave mindset, sold to West or left or both, but abusive of India via fraudulent propaganda and false accusations.

Shourie is giving excerpts from work of D. N. Jha.

"Excavations show that the Harappan civilization covered areas from Musa Khel in the North-West to Kolhapur in southern Maharashtra to locations far to the East. How a few ‘groups’ of invading Aryans overran this extensive civilization without leaving any archaeological or literary trace is not explained, but the standard ‘Aryans-from-Mesopotamia’ theory – with an emphasis on their subjugating native Dravidians – is repeated at length."

Shourie goes on to argue against the baseless theory of Aryan invasion, a lie made up by racist European and British to justify their own colonial rule and subjugation of local people in India and elsewhere, the lie continued by the so-called historian and so-called intellectuals he's refuting.

But in order of importance, Sindhu is sixth at best, only one before the last, so it's out of question that there was migration from elsewhere of Aarya people.

"‘Weaving,’ we are told, ‘was practiced on a wide scale but perhaps remained confined mainly to women…’ ... "

There's the evidence of copying everything from Europe and changing the label to read India instead of Europe! Weaving being confined mainly to women was indeed true, but not of India, it was of Europe. Hence the word spinster applied to unmarried women beyond normal age of marriage, an epithet realistic in Europe but ridiculous in India.

" ... ‘Kautilya fixes the wages of artisans, who were probably mostly shudras. They seem to have been the worst paid members of the society…."

Do they not realise that India was an economic power and that's is why Islamic invaders were attracted, to come loot, because fame of Indian artisans' work is what made her attractive to invaders by being famous for quality work? That thereby it's obvious that artisans couldn't have been treated below par, and must have had respect, even if this historian never read anything of literature produced in India before the invasions? Why, even now with modern science, nobody has a clue just how the pillar outside Kutubminar in Delhi has withstood weather without adverse effects.

Shourie gives excerpts from Jha about Ashoka.

But China had accepted Buddha without any role of Ashok therein, and Southeast Asia was influenced by Indian culture hugely anyway, as was of course Tibet and much of neighbourhood.

Wasn't Manu supposed to be caught in the flood covering earth, in which case he was not contemporary with Ashok or Shakya, Kushana at al, but prehistoric, before Ganga was brought down?

Shourie quotes Jha.

No, India isn't giving up on Gods, Godesses, and on India.

Shourie quotes more garbage from Jha. Garbage it is, mixing Mahaabharata with Chandragupta and worse. He puts traders among lower classes and revolting, evidence of total lack of thought by Jha. For he doesn't stop to reflect - traders, in India as everywhere else, are the ones with wealth. Moreover the two higher castes aren't allowed to charge for services rendered, and kings often had to borrow from traders.

Here's more garbage from Jha -

Here again, Jha takes ills and evils that belong to church, and impose it on India, accusing Hindus.

More crap from these so-called historians, as Shourie talks of them.

"The taxes imposed by the Maurya kings were oppressive exactions for maintaining an ever-expanding coercive apparatus of the state, Jha insinuates.39 But the jazyah exacted by the sultans was, as we have seen, a little something by paying which Hindus were able to lead normal lives! When Aurangzeb revived it, it was not, we have seen, meant to put any economic pressure on Hindus to convert to Islam, it was not imposed to help the empire deal with financial difficulties either. Its incidence was meant to be light, and care was taken to ensure that it would be collected by honest, Allah-fearing Muslims! And there were many exemptions, don’t forget – ‘women, children, the disabled, the indigent, those whose income was less than the means of subsistence’ were exempted, as were those who were being useful to the empire by being in its service!"

Shourie goes on to point out several more contradictions in writings of Jha where Jha consistently puts down India and fails to criticise, or even finds excuses for, similar or identical situations, rules, eta., in Islamic or leftist regimes.

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January 16, 2022 - January 17, 2021.

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16. Gavah chust, muddayi sust!

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Shourie gives excerpts from commandments to leftists.

"So, uprooting the moorings of the people, discrediting and destroying every element in the past from which the people may derive pride and identity – these are as essential to the purpose of these progressives today as they were to the purposes of the missionaries and Macaulay in the nineteenth century. So, what they do is done towards a high purpose, and is therefore beyond such bourgeois criteria as objectivity and veracity. As what the rest do is to perpetuate the exploitation of the labouring masses, what if we plant a concoction or two to further the Great Cause!"

" ... Stalin set these assertions and periods in stone by making them a part of the text the faithful memorized, A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union! Indeed, the books of our friends on ancient India can be seen as just a padding up with Indian examples a paragraph and a half from this textbook! Just as textbooks for students of Classes III to VI of the West Bengal government can be seen to be the exact facsimiles of the paragraphs! ... "

" ... our historians have done no more: take that single lecture of Lenin, take just that paragraph and a half from Stalin’s Short History, and you have the sum total of the analytical content of our eminent historians’ output on ancient India. ... "

" ... it became difficult to fit Asiatic societies into categories which had, after all, originated from information about the evolution of societies and states in Europe, and that too only from information which was available in mid-nineteenth century. Piles of additional information even about Europe has become known since then, and heaps more about China, India, and other societies. Sub-classifications and sub-periods accordingly were developed.

"But here in India a simplistic recitation of the earlier phrases and categories remained enough. It is not just fidelity to the masters, therefore, which characterizes the history writing by these eminences. It is a simple-mindedness!

"But there is an additional factor. Whitewashing the Islamic period is not the only feature which characterizes the work of these historians. There is in addition a positive hatred for the pre-Islamic period and the traditions of the country. ... "

Arun Shourie discusses the differences of accounts of Indian history as published in Soviet publications, versus those in India by Indian "eminent historians ". He gives excerpts from Soviet publications acknowledging superior quality of art and literature of India, high standards of architecture in Ancient India, and achievements of India in spheres of mathematics, astronomy, geography and more. Also, he points, Soviets are more candid and honest regarding Islamic rulers' oppression of India.

"Thus, there are two points to remember. First, our friends are not just Marxists, they are also Macaulayites. ... "

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January 18, 2022 - January 18, 2021.

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Context and Consequences

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17. The tug of intellectual fashions

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"History is but one subject. The Indian Council of Historical Research is but one institution. These intellectuals have over the years captured an array of institutions and professions. Through this dominion they have controlled public discourse in general. They have set the intellectual fashion, they have determined what is politically correct and what is not. The effects are all around us. Occurrences that bedevil us every other day provide ready examples. To begin with, the instances seem unconnected. But only, ‘to begin with’."

Arun Shourie proceeds to describe various hypocrisies and frauds, from politicians who claimed Gandhi did not have dalits at heart, to press silence on Mayawati spending hundred stores on park and huge statues, to her ordering gun licenses being granted to her people, to editors hesitating or refusing to give positive reviews to deserving works for fear of being branded communal by the leftist gang of so-called historians and so-called intellectuals.

"The very selection of reviewers tells the same story. If there is a book by a leftist, editors will be loath to give it to a person of a different point of view: ‘They will say, I have deliberately given it to a rightist,’ the editors are liable to explain. On the other hand, if it is a book by a person they have decided is a rightist, they will be loath to give it to a reviewer who also has been branded a rightist: ‘They will denounce me for deliberately giving the book to a person who is bound to praise it,’ they will bleat. Therefore, in such cases they deliberately give the book to a person who ‘is bound to condemn it’!"

Shourie describes how and why the gang occupied positions in various institutions since independence to exclusion of all others, chiefly due to Jawaharlal Nehru who was abused by them, and Indira Gandhi who used them for political support. He describes the infiltration in publishing and pressures to use leftist reviewers for any publications, and the usage of filling various positions in institutions to capture power in public discourses.

"And books are but the smallest of their activities: ‘Letters to the Editor’ are orchestrated in the same way. As are ‘analyses’: one of them asserts, ‘The book is nothing but the last war cry of the twice-born.’ Writing in another paper, the other says, ‘As the leading commentator …. in his trenchant analysis of Shourie’s latest diatribe has shown, the book is nothing but the last war cry of the twice-born….’ Assertion becomes a thing established!"

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January 18, 2022 - January 18, 2021.

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18. The appeal of ‘The Theory’, and the antidote to it

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"Progressives have always seen the value of the theory as stupefacient. Of course, they denounced other priestly classes for keeping the rites and texts of their religions secret, but, as far as their own texts were concerned, they made sure that these remained mysterious. ... "

" ... Whether it is a proposition about some event or it is some policy measure, people do not go by the detailed reasons for it, nor by the details of evidence in its favour. They go by the general temper of the times: one group gets branded ‘reactionary’, the other progressive and secular; a proposal gets stamped ‘anti-people’ – this branding determines how the people will react to it. And what label will get pasted on to a group or a proposal, the progressives have known, depends not on the merits of the case, but on the skills and effort which are deployed for the purpose. Whether it is an essay of Lenin or an article of one of our present-day hacks, more space and passion are spent for pasting a label on the adversary than in setting out rational arguments and evidence. In fact, pasting the label, putting a colour on the one who is to be refuted is recognized as the principal task. In his Encounters With Lenin,1 Valentinov recounts Lenin telling him, ‘Plekhanov once said to me about a critic of Marxism (I’ve forgotten his name) “First let us stick the convict’s badge on him, and then after that we will examine his case.” And I think that we must “stick the convict’s badge” on anyone and everyone who tries to undermine Marxism, even if do not go on to examine his case. That’s how every sound revolutionary should react.’ Branding is the special skill these intellectuals have honed.

"And what Eric Hoffer called ‘religiofication’ – the skill to transform mundane pursuits, mere tactical manoeuvres into Holy Causes. In the case of the progressives this was achieved, as Professor Hayek explained, by appropriating the catchwords of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: ‘scientific’, ‘rational’, ‘justice’, ‘equality’. ... The slightest tightening of labour laws in a capitalist country was ipso facto admission of the worsening crises of capitalism, it was proof of the heartless suppression of the toiling masses; but in the Soviet Union and China it was but natural that workers and peasants should forego the right to strike, the right to bargain about the terms and conditions of work, to form their own organizations – because the state itself belonged to them…"

"This ‘religiofication’ was a skill they honed. And, in turn, making the theory itself a religion served many purposes: the votary was liberated from qualms, from ‘bourgeois qualms’ about ordering mass executions, about conspiring to pull down others, about pasting that convict’s badge on them, circulating canards about them, planting forgeries. Everything was in the cause of the Revolution. What a relief this was: the progressive intellectual could indulge the bully in him without inhibition, without limit. ... "

"There scarcely is any body of writing which pours as much abuse and ridicule on intellectuals as the essays of Lenin and Mao. In the course of the revolutions and movements too, waves upon waves of intellectuals were crushed to death and exile. But that only seemed to have made the theory, and of course the revolutions occurring in their Meccas, even more beguiling for our progressives here. This quality of satiating the masochistic urges of our intellectuals was as important a ground for the popularity of the theory as its giving the bully in them free rein."

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January 18, 2022 - January 18, 2021.

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19. Programmed to self-destruct

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Shourie begins with the familiar failure of predictions regarding revolution and how it was to occur - in developed, industrial societies, such as England - instead of how it did, namely, in poor in developed nations Russia and China.

In latter case, it was built on familiar tradition of what's named 'war lords' in china but were in fact bandit gangs that rose periodically and ruked territories around unyil another rose and captured by defeating old ones, while the emperor existed above it all; mao built on it by building a super gang and capturing central power and wiping out everything else, ftom intellectuals in china to a nation that was in fact larger, Tibet.

Russia on the other hand was toppled by cousin Willy who must have hated cousin Nicholas for winning Alix who had refused Willy, so much so he smuggled in Lenin on a German diplomatic train deep into Russia in midst of WWI, after having gone to war against Russia in the first place - which ended in butchering of the cousin he'd wanted to marry, along with her five children all under twenty, and of course, husband. Willy lost war, had to flee, lived out his life in ignominy, but hey, look at the spectacular revenge he exacted against a first cousin who married someone else, although the latter did have not only a bigger kingdom but better looks!

"But once a theory becomes the gospel, once it becomes the basis of a religion, that things are going in the direction opposite to what the theory had forecast leads to a repudiation not of the theory, but of the facts. This is exactly what happened."

"But are the other sets for whom these eminences are always speaking up, those who strain to read new meanings into the verses of the Quran and the Hadis on jihad – ‘These refer to only the internal struggle between good and evil’ – not doing the same thing today? Instead of re-examining the theory – in their case the revelation – are they not trying to contrive new ‘meanings’ – meanings that have somehow eluded their predecessors for 1,400 years?"

Shourie describes how Einstein and his work were treated in Soviet union, as the extreme example of how this veneration of one book, one theory creed affects all thinking of those that go with it - scientists couldn't work with it until it could be satisfactorily shown to not contradict pronouncements of Lenin, Engels et al!

Effects of such system are comical enough when reading about it distanced by space and time, but quite disastrous when anywhere closer.

" ... Anyone who refuses to accept it must be put out – for he is blocking the march of history, he is impeding the will of Allah. So, the party, the faithful are perfectly justified in using all means. ... "

Shourie points at Jha connecting "Bhakti" with feudalism, in repeated assertions wighout evidence. This is, course, incredibly inane, stupid, malevolent of those who do so, alt6it explains why "bhakt" has been used as a derogatory and abusive word by opposition since 2014.

"The assertion gains instant acclaim as it is a repetition of what some theoretical ancestor has said! In this case, D.D. Kosambi himself! But when we read Kosambi we see that he himself had just strung together a string of assertions, and thus built a Theory about the Gita! ... "

Shourie quotes Kosambi extensively, and it's unbelievable - the thesis, unproven and with no evidence, is that Bhagawadgeeta was written in Gupta period!

Why would a brilliance that was capable of writing something this great and original be a completely unknown name, is the obvious question. It isn't the artist whose arms were cut off by emperor Shahjehan, after finishing Taj Mahal, that we are talking about; it's an author writing an original work in Sanskrit, to fit in the great epic Mahaabharata, as a dialogue between the hero and God, Arjuna and Krishna, each with characters definitely and extensively set forth in the epic. It's simply out of question that Bhagawadgeeta - or any piece thereof, for thst matter - is an addition so late, millennia post original.

And reading the excerpts Shourie gives from Kosambi about Bhagawadgeeta makes one wonder why one woukd take a man who writes such garbage seriously! Not that anyone did, in his state - he was sort of noted, and left alone, by the society that prizes learned, wise personae. Reading the excerpt here, it's obvious why nobody much mentioned him, much less anything more.

Shourie points out how Kosambi and Jha both are forcing fitting the work into Marxist theory, and its refutation is plain - since Bhagawadgeeta speaks equally of three other paths of attaining Divine, apart from Devotion - there's path of Knowledge, and path of Action too, for example. They certainly do not fit in this theory about fitting spiritual works such as Bhagawadgeeta into Marxist theory of feudalism.

"Consider the great revival of bhakti during the period of Islamic rule in India – the revival that occurred because of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, of Surdas, of Kabir, of Nanak, of Tulsidas. Did this occur also because the arrangements were feudal and the Islamic rulers wanted to buttress these arrangements by coming to some further ‘mephistophelian bargains’ with these seers? Or was it the other way round – that, seeing the onslaught of Islam and the pace at which the population was succumbing to force and thereby getting converted to Islam, these seers, by emphasizing devotion to a personal god, stemmed the tide of Islam in India?

"And what about the reformers and leaders who stood India on its feet in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century? What were, say, Aurobindo, Tilak, Gandhi doing when they attached such pivotal importance to the Gita? Were they also buttressing feudalism?"

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January 18, 2022 - January 19, 2021.

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20. The pattern of consequences

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In this chapter Arun Shourie unveils the theoretical structure that's behind much of the horrendous disturbances planned and executed by opposition since 2014 attempting to provoke a reaction from the government that would help them go crying for help everywhere against India - unsuccessfully, so far, as far as the objective goes.

He proceeds to discuss the modus operandi of an obstructionist political modus operandi that was constructed over decades post independence and is now manifesting through opposition since 2014 in its worst possible way via nothing positive in motives behind it - a series of steps consisting of inventing grievances of a group to begin with, and proceeding to protest at any cost, including breakdown of civil structures and systems, burnings of vehicles, and not caring about cost in human lives - worse, blaming system or everyone else fraudulently for cause and cost both.

He shows the Macaulay-missionary British policy at the root of this policy of continuous attack against Hinduism, Sanskrit, temples, Hindu Gods and Godesses, and Brahmins, and why it was taken up by leftists and seculars, encouraging partition - the agenda having always been destruction of India! Shourie discusses path to reconstruction opposing these seekers of destruction.

" ... We, in India, have been singularly fortunate in this regard: here alone the traditions have roots going back thousands of years, absolutely no other country has had so many luminescent figures as we have had in the last one hundred and fifty years. Their lives embody the values on which that sense of the whole can be rebuilt. But these are the traditions, these are the very persons – Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak, Gandhiji, Ramana Maharshi, the Paramacharya, Narayan Guru – whom, as we have seen, our Macaulay-Missionary-Marx lot has had us repudiate.

"The beginning of reconstruction, therefore, the sine qua non for it is to overturn the intellectual fashions set by these intellectuals, and defeat their verbal terrorism."

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January 19, 2022 - January 19, 2021.

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21. The changing balance

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"But there has been great progress over the years. They used to hurl Marx. And then Lenin. And then Stalin – yes, Stalin: two-and-a-half sentences from an essay of his written in 1912 had been ‘the theoretical basis’ for the communists to embrace the demand for Pakistan. And then it was Mao. And then Lin Piao. And then Ho Chi Minh. And then Pol Pot. There was even a lot who would deem a point established once they had quoted Enver Hoxha of Albania. The names have changed over the years, but the habit has remained: just that the only brahmastra they can now think of is ‘postmodernism’!"

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January 19, 2022 - January 19, 2021.

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22. The insidious, the false

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Arun Shourie gives extensive, mindboggling description of Nalanda university, quoting from , I-Tsing, Hieun Tsang and other Chinese visitors, as well as from historian Vincent Smith.

Descriptions of the layout, architecture and more are stultifying, and impress more in context of the library, the subjects taught, and the administration methods.

Shourie proceeds to quote from a contemporary writer, Minhaj-ud-din, to give story of Islamic invaders looting and destroying Nalanda, having murdered hundreds of monks; he proceeds to tell of Dharmaswamin, the monk visiting from Tibet, who arrived forty years thereafter, and wrote of how people lived in fear of Islamic invaders who looted and killed. He quotes from Dr. A. S. Altekar's work.

"When Dharmaswmin reached Vaisali on his way to Bodh Gaya, the town was all deserted on account of the apprehended arrival of a Muslim force. People used to desert their houses by day and come back to them at night. Vikramsila had been completely destroyed before 1206 A.D. and its foundation stones had been hurled into the Ganga. The Bodh Gaya establishment had been deserted by all except four monks. The ancient image had been walled up by a brick wall and a new one had been put in the ante-chamber. The old image had, however, been already despoiled of its emerald eyes earlier. The king of Bodh Gaya had fled to the forest. Dharmaswamin himself had to flee away for seventeen days…10"

Shourie proceeds to describe the terror those remaining, less than a hundred from ten thousand before the Islamic invaders' looting and killing spree, lived in, eventually surviving the next wave of killers by hiding. He proceeds next to describing how Marxists in India lied about it all. He quotes Jha, blaming it all on "Hindu fanatics", to begin with.

"‘Hindu fanatics’? The expression struck me as odd. A Tibetan text of the eighteenth century using so current an expression as ‘Hindu fanatics’? Especially so because, on Jha’s own reckoning, as we shall soon see, Hinduism is an invention of the British in the late nineteenth century?

"So, what is this ‘Tibetan text’? What does it say? Had Jha looked it up?

"Pag Sam Jon Zang was written by Sumpa Khan-Po Yece Pal Jor. The author lived in 1704-1788: that is, five hundred years after the destruction of Nalanda. That is the first thing that strikes one: our historian disregards the contemporaneous account, Tabakat-i-Nasiri, and opts for a text written five hundred years after the event."

Shourie quotes relevant original passage from translation by Sarat Chandra Das, and questions -

"Surely, no self-respecting Marxist could have made his account rest on not just one miracle – acquiring sidhis and raining fire on to the structures – but two, for we also have the streams of water running down from the scriptures."

Shourie proceeds to describe how Jha quoted another Marxist, Yadava, but left out his statement about it being "difficult to say anything as to how far this account may be correct". Also, Jha left out the description "doubtful" by Yadava whike quoting him, and Yadava had used the words "Hindu fanatics" to replace the original Tibetan "beggars".

"In a word,

"There is a Tibetan text written five hundred years after the destruction of Nalanda

"Sarat Chandra Das annotates it, and includes in his Index a summary in English of a passage in the text – the summary naturally leaves out telling components of the original passage

"Yadava looks only at the summary in the Index – ‘non-Buddhist beggars’ becomes ‘Hindu fanatics’

"Yadava notes that the account is based on a ‘doubtful tradition’

"Jha omits the word ‘doubtful’ And we have a presidential address to the Indian History Congress!

Shourie points out that after Jha spoke, nobody looked up the references.

"Indeed, in concluding his section, Yadava had stated,

"A great blow to Buddhism was, no doubt, rendered by the Turkish invasions, leading to the destruction and desertion of the celebrated Buddhist monasteries of Magadha and Bengal. Many Buddhist scholars fled to Tibet and Nepal.16"

Jha, of course, does not mention that.

Shourie brings up the question of how the so-called self-labelled progressive historians deal with Islamic destruction of non-Islamic structures, chiefly temples and their contents, whik e extensive accounts thereof were written immediately and proudly by contemporary Islamic historians as the destruction were on. He gives an example from Jadunath Sarkar's translation of such an account during Aurangzeb's reign.

"2 September 1669: It was reported that, according to the Emperor’s command, his officers had demolished the temple of Viswanath at Kashi.

"27 January 1670: During this month of Ramzan abounding in miracles, the Emperor as the promoter of justice and overthrower of mischief, as a knower of truth and destroyer of oppression, as the zephyr of the garden of victory and the reviver of the faith of the Prophet, issued orders for the demolition of the temple situated in Mathura, famous as the Dehra of Kesho Rai. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers, the destruction of this strong foundation of infidelity was accomplished, and on its site a lofty mosque was built at the expenditure of a large sum. This temple of folly was built by that gross idiot Birsingh Deo Bundela. Before his accession to the throne, the Emperor Jahangir was displeased with Shaikh Abul Fazl. This infidel [Birsingh] became a royal favourite by slaying him [Abul Fazl], and after Jahangir’s accession was rewarded for this service with the permission to build the temple, which he did at an expense of thirty-three lakhs of rupees.

"Praised be the august God of the faith of Islam, that in the auspicious reign of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence [Aurangzeb], such a wonderful and seemingly impossible work was successfully accomplished. On seeing this instance of the strength of the Emperor’s faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the proud Rajas were stifled, and in amazement they stood like facing the wall. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra, and buried under the steps of the mosque of the Begam Sahib, in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad."

The account quoted continues with destruction of several temples in "Oudh", that's Ayodhya, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Chittor and Amber, some places as many as over sixty temples, destruction and humiliation of objects of worship, massacres of Hindus, and decree that tax be collected from nonmuslims who were required to pay in humility.

"Reports of this kind can be multiplied by the score. And there are the buildings, starting with the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – the mosque celebrating the Might of Islam – and the Qutab Minar, celebrating victory over the infidels. The inscriptions on the buildings proclaim that they have been built by destroying temples (twenty-seven in the case of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque says the inscription at this mosque). Even to this day, the materials testify to the fact that they were of Hindu temples.

"How do our progressives get around these inscriptions and the materials in the buildings? How do they talk away the contemporary accounts?21"

Shourie describes the disgusting explanations and excuses by them, beginning with claiming that some sites were considered sacred and hence taken over - isn't that idol worship, forbidden in islam? - consisting of need to build quickly and hence use available material, apart from need to control rebelling population by such destruction, usage of escape clauses such "in most cases".

"And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!"

Shourie goes on to describe their crowning lie, calling contemporary Muslim historians' accounts of destruction a lie and bragging about destruction that did not take place!

Shourie compares, for an example, the treatment given to inscription by Islamic rulers, one at Kutubminar stating destruction of 27 temples, versus treatment accorded, for example, Manusmriti, where the former is declared mere verbal claim without support and the latter built upon to declare Hindus were oppressive; Shourie questions why former isn't taken literally, and why is it not inferred that Manusmriti amounted to wishful thinking.

"Second, this historian is telling us that precisely because the inscription records that materials obtained from twenty-seven temples were used to construct the mosque, they were not so obtained. Just a little later, he proclaims precisely the opposite. The fact that the inscription over the Babri Masjid did not mention that it had been constructed by bringing down a temple, proves that it was not built by destroying a temple! Unbelievable? Here is what he says in this regard on the Babri masjid: ‘If the Muslim is enjoined, as Hindus are asked to believe, to celebrate the defeat of the infidel and the destruction of idolatry…’

"Pause: the ‘if ’ and the ‘as Hindus are asked to believe’ insinuate that there really is no such mandate in Islam. Are historians completely exempt from reading the Quran, the hadis, and the canonical books on Islamic law? Are they completely exempt from reading centuries of Islamic history? Perhaps it is not that they are exempted from reading these, but that they are confident that no one else has read these – that is why they can continue to peddle their theories.

"But to continue:

"If the Muslim is enjoined, as Hindus are asked to believe, to celebrate the defeat of the infidel and the destruction of idolatry, why did not Mir Baqi, whom [sic.] the inscription states as having built the mosque, mention the destruction of the temple, a deed for which he would have acquired merit?29

"Hence, temples were not destroyed because a contemporary history – Maasir-i-Alamgir, say – records that they were destroyed. And the Ram temple was not destroyed because the inscription on the mosque does not say that it was destroyed! QED!!"

Shourie quotes from a pamphlet titled "Black Sunday", where Vijay Lal and co. state that even if a temple was in existence and destroyed to build a mosque 500 years ago, that cannot be taken as indicative of animosity since it was only routine part of conquest in that era, and therefore does not justify destruction of a mosque so constructed on ruins of a temple destroyed by an invader. Shourie compares the contrast between this and the inferences drawn from claims that Hindus had destroyed Jain temples.

"The double standards are visible from a mile. What do these historians infer after alleging that, in the wake of a victory, Hindus destroyed Jain temples in Karnataka? That the destruction proves that intolerance is germane to Hinduism. And here? That the destruction of temples by Muslim invaders was just part of ‘the politics of conquest’!"

Shourie discusses writings of Satish Chandra regarding Aurangzeb's destruction of Hindu temples, latter having argued that it can only be said that he was an inadequate politician, not that he was a zealot.

"So, what about those temples that Mustad Khan recorded as having been destroyed by the order of the emperor, Aurangzeb? The argument that they were destroyed in pursuance of a general order by Aurangzeb has not been accepted, Satish Chandra says, ‘because no copy of any such order has been found’ – has any copy of a general order by Hitler decreeing the extermination of Jews in gas chambers been found? – ‘and has been referred to by no contemporary observer except Sagi [sic.] Mustad Khan who wrote half a dozen years after Aurangzeb’s death’.33

"That no one other than the person who was charged with drawing up the chronicle of the reign of Aurangzeb referred to the order is proof that the order was not issued! And that bit about the chronicle having been written six years after the death of Aurangzeb – I won’t quarrel about three years having become six. Recall instead the case with which we started: the destruction of Nalanda. How many years after the destruction of Nalanda had that Tibetan text on which D.N. Jha relied been written: five hundred years! That is a worthy foundation on which to build a theory. One written three or six years after Aurangzeb’s death is not."

Shourie points out how, when Aurangzeb granted land for nonmuslim religious structures, Satish Chandra and Vinay Lal et al conclude that it was tolerance, not political decision, while his destruction of temples is treated with exactly opposite inferences by the same people.

This seeming justification of destruction of temples as reprisals by an invader against rebellion - isn't that an extension of policemen and judges all justifying domestic violence against women, including murders, by husbands and their relatives, on grounds of dissatisfaction of the violence perpetrators with the victim?

Similar excusing of deaths of babies and children due to drunken driving caused accidents, too, was almost automatic by judges who were predominantly male, with a sentiment of "there but for the grace of God go I ", until a new organisation by the women, Mothers Against Drunken Drivers, brought in a change.

Or are these so-called historians loyal to Europe and Mongols, Chinese and Islam, way above their loyalty to leftist ideology?

Shourie writes about lecture by Irfan Habib, delivered in late 1988 and obsolete in a year. He discusses the declaration by these so-called historians and so-called intellectuals that India was never an entity or country and Hinduism never a religion. Neither, according them, exist at all. Shourie refutes their assertion that there was nothing common between parts of either India or Hinduism, and points out that these so-called historians and so-called intellectuals simply ignore anything that dies not fit their fraudulent thesis.

Shourie quotes Irfan Habib stating that awareness of India as an entity began only around between for to two centuries B.C., and questions about whether countries that only sprang up less than five to less than one century ago are thereby not nations.

Shourie quotes verses by Guru Nanak describing atrocities perpetrated in infia by Babar in particular and Islamic invaders in general, an account by the contemporary great man of the events contradicting the minimization and denial by today's historians who brand themselves secular in India but in reality are infia hating, Hindu hating slaves of everyone so inclined. Shourie quotes Irfan Habib and asks if Habib never heard of Guru Nanak, never read the accounts by him. He quotes Habib defining nationhood by definitions of Stalin and John Stuart Mill, but Habib seems to hold on to the identity of an invader heritage that denies civilisation of the colonised land prior to invasions.

One must say, ones reminded of the brilliant Sushama Swaraj, who had responded to an MP in parliament questioning what is India, after expressing her shock at such a question.

And Irfan Habib is wrong, simply because he's closed his mind to the ancient culture of what he calls his country but wishes was empty land instead, as do all conquistadores and their heirs. Else he'd have known the reply Sushama Swaraj gave that stupid MP in parliament and marvelled at her being able to articulate it so well.

Yes, awareness of India as the land is in every illiterate person in India and has been, always. It's a question of asking relevant questions. Yes, awareness of India as the land is in every illiterate person in India and has been, always. It's a question of asking relevant questions. And Shourie too knows, as one can see - when responding to the insistence by these India haters about awareness of India being only in upper strata and India bring riddled by caste with no unity, he brings out events that are evidence of falsehood of both these statements - pilgrimages, and the people who perform them, and the crowds at the great events annual or otherwise regular where crowds attend from everywhere throughout India.

Shourie quotes at length the mindboggling attack by Jha, in a speech at ICHR, against Hinduism and India, claiming neither existed until nineteenth century, and claiming thst the mention thereof long prior has been given exaggerated importance!

Shourie points out that Jha denies existence of Hinduism as a religion, except when he seeks to abuse it with false accusations, and then blames it as a religion. He points out the contradiction of Jha, despite being a Marxist, quoting about Shiva being born as Shankaraachaarya to combat Buddha, and next Jha quoting Wendy Doeniger O'Flaherty to say that Shaivites were persecuted by Vaishnavites in Karnataka.

Shourie shows the contradictions in Jha's diatribe when, on one hand, he claims Hinduism, is exclusionary; and on the other accuses Hinduism of convertìng others.

Shourie quotes the legend of Ekantada Ramayya of which an inscription is basis of Jha claiming Veershaiva conversion of Jains, and questions a Marxist believing the legend, which involves a man - Ekantada Ramayya - cutting off his head, placing it at feet of Shiva and having it intact back on within seven days, for a wager that if it happened the Jains woukd convert - and the legend not only having it happen, but more!

Shourie pinpoints the contradiction in Jha's address where he says Hinduism did not exist until nineteenth century, but Lingayats' (who were - according to him - never Hindus) persecution of Jains was evidence of Hindu persecution of other religions!

That's triple negative adding to positive in Jha's book!

Jha even invokes legend of Sati! Truly for a nan who denues existence of India and Hinduism, and claims fealty to Marxism and dialectic materialism, he's into every story told for aeons in Ancient India, if only to discredit India and prove Hinduism and India never existed!

Jha and co with their arguments remind one of nothing so much as some of the German colleagues who'd argue that India not eating beef in particular or mostly being vegetarian in general was pointless, and did not achieve anything other than bad health, because buttermilk too has bacteria, and plants have life too so vegetarians are taking lives.

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January 19, 2022 - January 21, 2021.

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23. A few reasons, a few lessons

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Shourie outlines history of the left in India post independence, in particular those amongst historians.

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January 21, 2022 - January 21, 2021.

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December 30, 2021 - January 21, 2021.

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December 30, 2021 -

January 11, 2021 - January 21, 2021. .

Purchased December 30, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 400 pages

Published June 1st 2014

by Harpercollins

(first published November 1st 1998)

Original Title

Eminent Historians:

Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

ASIN:- B015HGRZ3Q

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4490990506

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Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Friday, January 21, 2022

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud; by Arun Shourie.

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