International Conference On Indian History

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PART FOUR

In Pakistan, the historical record is very clear. Ghaznavi, Ghori, Babar, et al entered Hindustan on divinely inspired missions to “bring the light of Islam to the infidels”. As Muslims it was their duty to crush the idols worshiped by the pagans, and as soldiers it was their right to take their due share of the booty, as per the instructions of the Qu’ran. According to Pakistani textbook writers and historians, Islamic invasions of India had nothing to do with greed. Most Pakistani historians defend such plunderous and destructive activity as corollary events necessitated by the dictum to spread the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Indian Marxists would rather focus on the economic and political implications of the Islamic invasions, reinterpreting the zeal of the invaders as greed instead of religious fervor.

Sita Ram Goel capitalizes on this irony:
“The [Indian] Muslim apologists who have been in a hurry to borrow the Marxist explanation do not know what they are doing. The explanation converts Islam into a convenient cover for brigandage and the greatest Muslim heroes into mere bandits.”

Finally, in response to the historians’ comment that even “the historicity of the personality [of Krishna] is in question”, Goel trivialized their argument, saying that the “Srî KrishNa for whom the Hindus really care is a far greater figure than the Srî KrishNa of history”. The historicity of Hindus gods and goddesses is far less important than their symbolic and Puranic or mythological aspects. Goel explains:
“What [Hindus] really worship is the Srî KrishNa of mythology. There are many temples and places of pilgrimage all over India associated with this mythological Srî KrishNa. [….] [A] majority of the renowned places of Hindu worship and pilgrimage have only mythology in support of their sanctity. Are the professors telling the Hindus that the desecration or destruction of these places should cause no heart-burn to them because the characters associated with these places are drawn from mythology, and that an iconoclast is badly needed in every case for blowing up the myth?”

Goel also takes up the issue of Hindus destroying Jain and Buddhist temples, and numerous other contemporary controversial historical debates. Goel, with his frontal attacks, and the massive amount of information that he is able to gather, is much despised by the JNU associated intellectuals.

As mentioned, in the years leading up to the destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, many scholars jointly published pamphlets and released press statements claiming that in the past, Hindu rajas often destroyed the temples of their adversaries. The argument proposed that Muslims were not the only ones who destroyed temples, consequently, they could argue by a stretch, that there is nothing anti-Hindu about the Babri Masjid. They felt that this titillating bit of supposition, that Hindu rajas desecrated Hindu and Buddhist shrines, somehow justified temple desecrations by Babar and those who preceded and followed him through the Khyber.

This point is argued much in the same way as the insistence that alternative research into the Aryan invasion/migration theory is driven by the idea that, if the Aryans, the ancient ancestors of the Hindus, were foreign invaders from Central Asia, then the Turks and Afghans who came a few thousand years later, fit into the same category, foreign invaders from Central Asia, then all Indians are also descendants of India’s medieval, as well as ancient ancestors. This argues, that if “all Indians, Hindus and Muslims, are descendants of invaders, then ‘those Hindu Nationalists’ couldn’t claim to be the true culturally autochthonous inhabitants of the Subcontinent and it would then be impossible to paint the Muslim minority as the foreign other.”

That most Hindu nationalists adamantly think the vast majority of Indian Muslims are indigenous Indians, whose Hindu or Buddhist ancestors converted to Islam, is rarely considered within the anti-Sangh critiques.

Considering how vehemently Prof. Mukhia, Prof. Thapar, and their colleagues in the Delhi Historians Group have insisted that Hindu iconoclasm was commonplace in the medieval and pre-medieval period, there are really very few hard statistics about this claim and scant existing evidence to support their theory of wide spread Hindu temple and Buddhist vihara destruction by Hindu rajas. After hearing this claim propagated for over a decade, as an accepted "fact" to which those who are anti-Hindutva constantly refer, it would be fair to assume that these historical occurrences of Hindus destroying temples and viharas were well documented. Though there has been scant hard data to support the claim, it had been repeated off-handedly again and again by certain Indian social scientists and by Western academicians, and finds space quite regularly, in the English language media in India.

In Delhi in the Spring of 2000, when I interviewed Prof. Harbans Mukhia, whose op-ed piece about Hindus demolishing temples appeared just a few days after my arrival in India, I asked him what documentation he could provide regarding the destruction of temples by Hindus. He informed me that Prof. Romila Thapar had collected some information that confirmed the theory that Hindus, during earlier eras, had been very active in the destruction of temples. He had some references, he mentioned, “somewhere in his files”. I thought they must be pretty dusty by now since he had used the temple desecration tack for years, and though he is a well published scholar of medieval Indian history, he had never written any papers about this very interesting phenomenon by which he swears. A few days later I met with Professor Romila Thapar and told her Professor Mukhia had said that she could provide information to substantiate the hypothesis that Hindu rulers in the past had regularly destroyed temples in neighboring kingdoms. She said that she had not written anything but that Richard Eaton, an American scholar had recently written about this phenomenon in “the introduction of his latest book”.

In the December 9 and 16, 2000 editions of Frontline published by the The Hindu newspaper--where there has been a steady stream of essays about historiography, almost weekly for years. Prof. Eaton wrote a long article in two parts that discussed in detail the destruction and desecration of various temples during the medieval period. In his article, Eaton attempted to prove this assertion commonly made by Dr. Mukhia and his colleagues. However, Eaton failed to understand the difference in scale and magnitude, separated by over several centuries, that Hindus raided the temples of other kings, usually to snatch the murti, not to raze them. Compare this with the much more widespread, widely practiced, and architecturally devastating attacks on Hindu temples by Muslim armies that systematically destroyed hundreds, if not thousands, of Hindu temples in North India within a few centuries. Politically incorrect, or not, I am pained to point out that there is not only a difference of scale, but it is like comparing apples and oranges.

When I spoke with Professors Thapar and Mukhia I told them that I had heard about Harsha in Kashmir, recounted by the poet Kalhana in the “Rajtarangini”. The Hindu king Harsha destroyed some temples and viharas44, but most of Harsha's contemporaries considered his actions as exceptions to the usual practice. I pointed out to the good professors, that all of the literature indicates that Harsha was definitely only looting the temples for gold and riches, not desecrating them for ideological reasons. Though the result is the same--the temples were attacked--the intent and the scale of the destruction were very, very different.

While meeting with both Professor Mukhia and Professor Thapar I mentioned one or two instances I had heard of in Rajasthan and Gujarat. I also spoke of an isolated raid over the Vindhya Mountains, where competing Maharajas raided temples in another kingdom and stole a murti (consecrated statue) considered to be endowed with powerful attributes. Then, bringing it back to his own kingdom, the king erected a new and more fabulous temple for the murti. This type of vandalism is a very different case--the murti was removed as a trophy, not as an unholy thing to be desecrated.

In the accounts that I had heard, the Hindu kings who looted the temple of an adversary did not throw the captured statue in the roadway or bury it into the staircase of a religious structure in his kingdom to be trod upon, but, interestingly, built an even grander temple and had it installed with great fanfare. Though the actions may have similarities, the motivations and importantly, the ultimate impact on Indian architecture and Hindu educational and religious institutions was very different.

I argued that these types of attacks on temples were not representative of usual Hindu practice, but in fact were very much the exception to the rule. Even after reading the Eaton article, I was not impressed by the meager evidence. The article offered very few verifiable examples to substantiate this often-repeated claim that Hindus were just a guilty as Muslims for breaking statues and destroying temples.

I suggested to Professors Mukhia and Thapar and a few other historians, in the Delhi G-group, that “they should stop using that tact about the Hindus destroying temples, because hardly anyone in India really believes them and such assertions bring their competence into question”. The evidence that Hindus were equally culpable for the destruction of temples and viharas, similar to the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples and educational institutions by the various Sultans, is simply untenable. Though the left-leaning (some would say “Hindu-baiting”) historians in India cite the case of King Harsh in Kashmir, it is a rare historical exception, certainly not proof of a legacy of Hindu-driven carnage against Buddhists or Jains during the ancient or medieval period. From the data available, the historians who make these claims have failed to uncover any overwhelming evidence to substantiate their theory of wide spread Hindu aggression against non-Hindus in the ancient or medieval periods. Strangely enough, many scholars in the West have also accepted this theory without deconstructing its flaws or substantiating the details.

Very few people in India actually believe the theory that throughout history Hindu rulers destroyed a considerable number of temples. The historians who make these claims are discredited in the eyes of many people in India because their arguments remain speculative and are seen as politically motivated. Those who have argued this point since the historical/archeological battles that raged around the Ram Janma Bhumi/Babri Masjid controversy have provided quite limited documented historical instances where Hindus are believed to have razed temples and/or Buddhist viharas. Though this claim was the rallying cry of the scholars who opposed the Ram Janma Bhumi movement, no one among the proponents of this theory has yet published anything to corroborate these claims, They have propagated this theory as a factual intellectual weapon for well over a decade.

My questions about this issue remain: Why, when Professor Mukhia and Professor Thapar and their colleagues have asserted this as fact, in numerous pamphlets and op-ed pieces, have none of them ever published any scholarly articles to actually prove it, even though among themselves, they all believe it? Yet, why haven’t they bothered to document the facts to which they have constantly referred during the past decades? My questions, concerning lack of evidence for this theory were dismissed by its proponents. However, other scholars, the infamous non-leftists, with whom I spoke in India, called this the “manufacturing of historical myths to suit the ‘pseudo-secular’ leftist paradigm”.

Is this the manufacturing of historical beliefs or an undistorted dispassionate retelling of well-established events? Many supposedly neutral scholars in the West feel comfortable when Marxist historians use facts in a specific manner in order to write Indian history, but completely discredit other traditions that are trying to do the same thing, from their own perspectives. Though facts are facts, as so many historians have told me, historiography is interpretation.

Meenakshi Jain continued her condemnation of Marxist historiography, as she critiqued Harbans Mukhi’s speculative theory regarding the possible Brahminical vandals who destroyed the 11th century Jain temple near Fatehpur Sikri. The tone of her criticism of leftist scholars mirrors Mukhia’s mud slinging at the Saffron archaeologists. While presenting a mini lesson on historiography to the readers, as did Mukhia in his op-ed piece, Dr. Jain wrote:
“Unfortunately for leftist academics, the time for such crude theories is fast running out. A re-examination of religious texts, historical records, and literary treatises has forced a growing body of non-Marxist scholars to reach entirely different conclusions about Indian’s religious culture. For instance, they now believe that undue stress has been laid on the so-called orthodox-heterodox religious divide. In historical practice the division between Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism was never so fundamental as to foreclose the possibility of mutual exchange. […]Explaining the presence of Hindu gods and so-called Hindu ‘elements’ in Jain temples, the scholars highlight a shared religious culture wherein divine figures and even ritual forms were reincorporated, reformulated, and re-situated. […] The doctrinal, ritualistic, and institutional similarities between Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism were too marked to be over-looked. [….] Brahmins constituted the largest groups of monks and supporters of early Buddhism and were strongly represented in most religious movements in India. Several key Jain philosophers were Brahmins. […] The claim of Brahminical intolerance is mischievous and dishonest. The Brahmins were known for their tendency to absorb, assimilate and upgrade deities, not for exhibiting animus towards them. [….] While leftists have accused Brahmins of intolerance, they have downplayed, if not purged, evidence of Muslim bigotry.”

When I questioned several of the well-known scholars comprising this entrenched but suddenly ideologically vulnerable group of elite historians, without a doubt, they let it be known that they did not think other Indian historians could possible be trusted to re-evaluate Indian history, except, as Romila Thapar suggested, “westerners” whom, she thought were more objective than non-Marxist Indian historians. In all probability, most scholars or journalists who come to interview these “JNU type” intellectuals do not ask such provocative questions and it did seem that my some of my questions were not very welcome.

I was told several times that Richard Eaton had recently published something about Hindus destroying temples. They admitted that even after over a dozen years of propounding this theory, they had not bothered to support it with research. I simply found it amazing that scholars who had made a certain claim, using a very specific tact for all those many years, had never sought to back up their well used theory with any hard data.

As mentioned, the articles published by Professor Eaton in the popular news magazine, Frontline, though they did document temple destructions, could not show that it was wide spread and in particular, he could not, in his article, claim that the Hindus had destroyed murtis, rather they captured them, to increase their own spiritual and temporal power. Not only is the scale drastically different, but the intention was seemingly the exact opposite.
Eaton writes:
“In 642 A.D., according to local tradition, the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I looted the image of Ganesha from the Chalukyan capital of Vatapi. Fifty years later armies of those same Chalukyas invaded north India and brought back to the Deccan what appear to be images of Ganga and Yamuna, looted from defeated powers there.”

The article goes on to discuss several of these types of Hindu on Hindu events, each separated by fifty years or a century or two. Even taking into consideration the instances of a Hindu Raja attacking a temple in a rival kingdom, there is a big leap between the claim that Hindu rajas are as culpable for destroying temples are were their Muslim counterparts during later centuries. This is simply not true. But most importantly, Eaton never makes the distinction between the destruction of a murti or mandir45 based on revulsion towards the institution represented, in contrast to capturing the murti for purposes of worship thereby enhancing the prestige of the king. The destruction of Hindu temples by Islamic invaders and rulers during the pre-modern period far exceeded any quasi-similar destructions by Hindu kings in earlier periods. Drawing such parallels, as Professors Mukhia, Thapar, and Eaton have done, is making tremendous assumptions in order to justify a certain rather politically motivated point of view.

Arun Shourie, in his critique of historiography, took up this topic:
“[T]oday the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction. In one typical instance, Romila Thapar has cited three inscriptions. The indefatigable Sita Ram Goel looked them up. Two of these turned out to have absolutely no connection with Buddhist viharas or their destruction, and the one that did deal with an object being destroyed had been held by authorities to have been a concoction; in any event, it told a story which was as different from what the historian had insinuated as day from night. [….] Goel repeatedly asked the historian to point out any additional evidence or to elucidate how [she] had suppressed the import that the inscription in its entirety conveyed. He waited in vain. […] Marxists cite only two other instances of Hindus having destroyed Buddhist temples. These too it turns out yield to completely contrary explanations. Again Marxists have been asked repeatedly to explain the construction they have been circulating--to no avail.”

Harbans Mukhia, R.S. Sharma and especially Romila Thapar and K.N. Panikkar, as well as a whole list of scholars who appeared as witnesses for the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, such as K.M. Shrimali, Sumit Sarkar, and others, are railed by Shourie in his book, which is now a classic among non-leftist/Hindu-centric scholars. When I interviewed Romila Thapar she said that Eminent Historians was a “pail-full of abuse being thrown at us”. She added that she gets “irritated each time creeps like S.P. [Swaraj Prakash] Gupta get up and start abusing me. Or Arun Shourie, yes I find it beneath my dignity to respond”. Yet Prof. Thapar and her colleagues, do respond, by constantly writing op-ed pieces, issuing press releases, intended to cast dispersions at the Saffronites—often alluding a certain physics professor and former journalist. They hold news conferences and make very provocative public statements, against those whose research is at odds with theirs, This is ironically, not beneath their dignity.

The tight coterie of “leftist”, now called “progressive” social scientists, mostly historians, who are predominantly situated in New Delhi, are very vocal and prolific social critics. Besides being on the warpath against archaeologists, such as B. B. Lal and S. P. Gupta, they particularly loathe Arun Shourie, and paint M.M. Joshi as a monster. Without a doubt, over the years these historians have done some very interesting work and are serious scholars, but they have an agenda. As progressives they view the progress of the nation as their duty, which is a noble cause, but often they discount the means in their quest for an end that reflects their ideology. However noble they describe the goals of that quest to be--national integration, secularism--they feel strongly that their paradigm is the only one that has the sophistication and intellectual rigor to dictate how these national objectives are to be achieved. However there are many others who have critiqued the particulars of their program.

In the historical narrations created to promote this mandate there often seem to be few limitations to their criticism of the religion of the majority of their fellow countrymen. More than one eminent leftist scholar whom I interviewed became rather irritated when I suggested that Hinduism was a tolerant non-dogmatic and deeply reflective religion. After an interview, Uma Chakrovarti, a professor of Women’s Studies at Delhi University, cried out, in response to my comment “Hinduism is the most intolerant religion!” I found it incredibly ironic that among a group of highly placed Indian intellectuals “Hindu” often seems like it is used only as a pejorative term.

Arun Shourie expressed what many of the “non-leftist” informants whom I sought out said to me, when he wrote:
“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! [I]t suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant.”

The media’s attention to the meaning of the Jain site near Fatehpur Sikri and leftist scholars’ questioning of the motivations of the Indian Archaeological Survey continued through the next few months. This highly publicized and politicized dialogue offers a good glimpse at the stances and rebuttals that characterize the history wars in India.

Mukhia’s impetuous article that had initiated the colorful rebuttals in the media about this site had, in large script under his byline a sentence that is also the final ominous exclamation in his op-ed piece, “The digging under Fatehpur Sikri’s Anup Talao, has just about begun and it is already being claimed that it too hides a temple underneath!” This was in reference to an entirely different excavation that was “just about to begin” inside the walls of Fatehpur Sikri. Mukhia’s comment is a sensationalist statement intended to provoke and is not reflective of the intentions of the planned dig. The excavation under the water tank, Anup Talao (peerless pond) located within the palace compound, was conducted based on “contemporary accounts of the construction of Fatehpur Sikri, a variety of textual references were available to a chamber that Akbar sought to build en closed in water. Access to the chamber could be obtained without the Emperor soaking himself.”

While D.V. Sharma found “a huge jar, 12 feet high and 8 feet wide” in a hidden room below the pond, the media connected the two digs, and made some assumptions that Akbar may have destroyed the Jain temple. Mukhia’s claim that the ASI was looking for another desecrated temple under Anup Talao was unfounded and intended to cast politicized dispersions on the ASI, also criticized by Irfan Habib, who:
“thinks that the excavation of Anup Talao is a grossly misdirected enterprise. The contemporary chronicler Badayuni has mentioned… that Akbar had tried in vain to build a chamber which would be protected from the fury of the summer sun by a layer of water. This attempt was abandoned because water kept seeping through to the chamber. The chamber was subsequently sealed and Anup Talao used in the following years alternately to store water and to display a hoard of copper coins. Since these facts are known from the textual record, there was no need to excavate right in the heart of a World Heritage Site, argues Habib. Indeed, he claims that the ASI's procedure is contrary to all known principles of preservation of historical monuments.”