{"article":{"id":25095,"heading":"Negationism in India","author":"Nilkanth","created":"2003-01-02 02:14:42","modified":"2003-01-02 02:14:42","last_modified":"Thu, 02 Jan 2003 09:14:42","article":"

New Page 1\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNEGATIONISM\r\nIN INDIA<\/span><\/u>\r\nThe negationism regarding the Nazi crimes has been the object of much public\r\ndiscussion. Turkish negationism about the Armenian genocide has received some\r\nattention. Less well-known is that India has its own brand of negationism.\r\n<\/p>

Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and\r\nto deny the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hinduism. Today, most politicians\r\nand English- writing intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn\r\nany public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms.\r\nThey will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of communal amity\r\nbetween Hindus and Muslims.\r\n<\/p>

 \r\n<\/p>

\r\n1 HINDU VS. MUSLIM\r\nMaking people believe in a history of Hindu-Muslim amity is not an easy task:\r\nthe number of victims of the persecutions of Hindus by Muslims is easily of the\r\nsame order of magnitude as that of the Nazi extermination policy, though no one\r\nhas yet made the effort of tabulating the reported massacres and proposing a\r\nreasonable estimate of how many millions exactly must have died in the course of\r\nthe Islamic campaign against Hinduism (such research is taboo). On top of these\r\nthere is a similar number of abductions and deportations to harems and\r\nslave-markets, as well as centuries of political oppression and cultural\r\ndestruction.\r\n

The American historian Will Durant summed it up like this:\"The Islamic\r\nconquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a\r\ndiscouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious\r\ngood, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any\r\nmoment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying\r\nwithin.\"\r\n<\/p>

Only off and on did this persecution have the intensity of a genocide, but it\r\nwas sustained much longer and spread out much wider geographically than the Nazi\r\nmassacre. Whereas the Germans including most members of the Nazi party, were\r\nhorrified at the Nazi crimes against humanity within a few years, the Muslims,\r\nfor whom Gott mit uns (God with us) was not a slogan but a religious certainty,\r\nmanaged to keep a good conscience for centuries. We will encounter similarities\r\nas well as differences between Nazi and Islamic crimes against humanity, but the\r\nmost striking difference is definitely the persistence with which Islamic\r\npersecutions have continued for 14 centuries. This is because it had more spine,\r\na more powerful psychological grip on its adherents than Nazism.\r\n<\/p>

The ideological foundation of the Islamic campaign was similar to the Nazi\r\nideology. The Muslium invaders (as we can read in numerous documents which they\r\nleft us, from the Quran and the Hadith onwards) distinguished between three\r\nkinds of people: first of all the Muslims, the Herrenvolk (master nation) to\r\nwhich Allah had promised the world; secondly the Jews and Christians, who could\r\nlive on under Muslim rule but only as third-class citizens, just like the Slavic\r\nUntermenschen (inferior people) in Hitler's planned new order, thirdly the\r\nspecies to be eliminated, the real Pagans who had to disappear from the face of\r\nthe earth.\r\n<\/p>

Different from Hitler's victims, the non-combatants among the unbelievers\r\noften got a chance to opt for conversion rather than death. What Mohammed\r\n(imitated by his successors) wanted, was his recognition as God's final prophet,\r\nso he preferred people to live and give him this recognition (by pronouncing the\r\nIslamic creed, i.e. converting), and only those who refused him this recognition\r\nwere to be killed. Still, conversion often came too late to save defeated Pagans\r\nfrom slavery. At this point, Mohammed deserves comparison with Stalin: unlike\r\nHitler, he killed people not for their race but for their opinions. But one can\r\nhardly say that the one totalitarianism is better than the other.\r\n<\/p>

The Blitzkrieg of the Muslim armies in the first decades after the birth of\r\ntheir religion had such enduring results precisely because the Pagan populations\r\nin West- and Central-Asia had no choice (except death) but to convert. Whatever\r\nthe converts' own resentment, their children grew up as Muslims and gradually\r\nidentified with this religion. Within a few generations the initial resistance\r\nagainst these forcible converions was forgotten, and these areas became\r\nheidenfrei (free from Pagans, cfr. judenfrei). In India it didn't go like that,\r\nbecause the Muslims needed five centuries of attempts at invasion before they\r\ncould catch hold of large parts of India, and even then they encountered endless\r\nresistance, so that they often had to settle for a compromise.\r\n<\/p>

The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure\r\nstruggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations\r\nmassacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar\r\nnumbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills\r\nof Hindus skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was\r\nfollowed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called\r\nthe Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central\r\nIndia made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on\r\nother occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital\r\nplus large areas of Karnataka depopulated. And so on.\r\n<\/p>

As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against\r\nhumanity, we may mention Prof. K.S.Lal's estimates about the population figures\r\nin medieval India (Growth of Muslim Population in India). According to his\r\ncalculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million\r\nbetween 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). More\r\nresearch is needed before we can settle for a quantitatively accurate evaluation\r\nof Muslim rule in India, but at least we know for sure that the term crime\r\nagainst humanity is not exaggerated.\r\n<\/p>

But the Indian Pagans were far too numerous and never fully surrendered. What\r\nsome call the Muslim period in Indian history, was in reality a continuous war\r\nof occupiers against resisters, in which the Muslim rulers were finally defeated\r\nin the 18th century. Against these rebellious Pagans the Muslim rulers preferred\r\nto avoid total confrontation, and to accept the compromise which the (in India\r\ndominant) Hanifite school of Islamic law made possible. Alone among the four\r\nIslamic law schools, the school of Hanifa gave Muslim rulers the right not to\r\noffer the Pagans the sole choice between death and conversion, but to allow them\r\ntoleration as zimmis (protected ones) living under 20 humiliating conditions,\r\nand to collect the jizya (toleration tax) from them. Normally the zimmi status\r\nwas only open to Jews and Christians (and even that concession was condemned by\r\njurists of the Hanbalite school like lbn Taymiya), which explains why these\r\ncommunities have survived in Muslim countries while most other religions have\r\nnot. On these conditions some of the higher Hindu castes could be found willing\r\nto collaborate, so that a more or less stable polity could be set up. Even then,\r\nthe collaboration of the Rajputs with the Moghul rulers, or of the Kayasthas\r\nwith the Nawab dynasty, one became a smooth arrangement when enlightened rulers\r\nlike Akbar (whom orthodox Muslims consider an apostate) cancelled these\r\nhumiliating conditions and the jizya tax.\r\n<\/p>

It is because of Hanifite law that many Muslim rulers in India considered\r\nthemselves exempted from the duty to continue the genocide on the Hindus\r\n(self-exemption for which they were persistently reprimanded by their mullahs).\r\nMoreover, the Turkish and Afghan invaders also fought each other, so they often\r\nhad to ally themselves with accursed unbelievers against fellow Muslims. After\r\nthe conquests, Islamic occupation gradually lost its character of a total\r\ncampaign to destroy the Pagans. Many Muslim rulers preferred to enjoy the\r\nrevenue from stable and prosperous kingdoms, and were content to extract the\r\njizya tax, and to limit their conversion effort to material incentives and\r\nsupport to the missionary campaigns of sufis and mullahs (in fact, for less\r\nzealous rulers, the jizya was an incentive to discourage conversions, as these\r\nwould mean a loss of revenue). The Moghul dynasty (from 1526 onwards) in effect\r\nlimited its ambition to enjoying the zimma system, similar to the treatment of\r\nJews and Christians in the Ottoman empire. Muslim violence would thenceforth be\r\nlimited to some slave-taking, crushing the numerous rebellions, destruction of\r\ntemples and killing or humiliation of Brahmins, and occasional acts of terror by\r\nsmall bands of raiders. A left-over from this period is the North-Indian custom\r\nof celebrating weddings at midnight: this was a safety measure against the\r\nIslamic sport of bride-catching.\r\n<\/p>

The last jihad against the Hindus before the full establishment of British\r\nrule was waged by Tipu Sultan at the end of the 18th century. In the rebellion\r\nof 1857, the near-defunct Muslim dynasties (Moghuls, Nawabs) tried to curry\r\nfavour with their Hindu subjects and neighbours, in order to launch a joint\r\neffort to re-establish their rule. For instance, the Nawab promised to give the\r\nHindus the Ram Janmabhoomi\/Babri Masjid site back, in an effort to quench their\r\nanti-Muslim animosity and redirect their attention towards the new common enemy\r\nfrom Britain. This is the only instance in modern history when Muslims offered\r\nconcessions to the Hindus; after that, all the concessions made for the sake of\r\ncommunal harmony were a one-way traffic from Hindu to Muslim.\r\n<\/p>

After the British had crushed the rebellion of 1857, the Indian Muslims fell\r\ninto a state of depression, increasing backwardness due to their refusal of\r\nBritish education, and nostalgia for the past. While the Hindu elites took to\r\nWestern notions like secular nationalism, the Muslims remained locked up in\r\ntheir communal separateness. As soon as the British drew them into the political\r\nprocess (founding of Muslim League in 1906) in order to use them as a\r\ncounter-weight against the Indian National Congress, they immediately made heavy\r\nand hurtful demands on the Hindus, such as the unlimited right to slaughter\r\ncows, and they started working for political separation. First they obtained\r\nseparate electorates where Muslim candidates would only have to please Muslim\r\nvoters, and later they would succeed in separating a Muslim state from India.\r\n<\/p>

By the twenties, they took to the unscrupled use of muscle power in a big\r\nway, creating street riots and outright pogroms. If Hindus retaliated in kind,\r\nit was a welcome help in instilling the separate communal identity into the\r\nordinary Muslim, who would have preferred to coexist with his Hindu neighbours\r\nin peace. By creating riots and provoking relatiatory violence, the Muslim\r\nLeague managed to swing the vast majority of the Muslim electorate towards\r\nsupporting its demand for the partition of India. The roughly 600,000 victims of\r\nthe violence accompanying the Partition were the price which the Muslim League\r\nwas willing to pay for its Islamic state of Pakistan. While every Hindu and\r\nMuslim who took part in the violence is responsible for his own excesses, the\r\nover-all responsibility for this mass- slaughter lies squarely with the Muslim\r\nleadership.\r\n<\/p>

After independence, the Islamic persecution of Hindus has continued in\r\ndifferent degrees of intensity, in Pakistan, Bangla Desh and Kashmir (as well as\r\nheavy discrimination in Malaysia). This is not the place for detailing these\r\nfacts, which the international media have been ignoring completely. What may cut\r\nshort all denials of this continued pestering of Hindus in Muslim states, are\r\nthe resulting migration figures: in 1948, Hindus formed 23% of the population of\r\nBangla Desh (then East Pakistan), in 1971 the figure was down to 15%, and today\r\nit stands at about 8%. No journalist or human rights body goes in to ask the\r\nminority Hindus for their opinion about the treatment they get from the Muslim\r\nauthorities and populations; but they vote with their feet.\r\n<\/p>

In the first months of 1990, the entire Hindu population (about 2 lakhs) was\r\nforcibly driven from the Kashmir Valley, which used to be advertised as a\r\nshowpiece of communal harmony. Muslim newspapers and mosque loudspeakers had\r\nwarned the Hindus to leave the valley or face bullets. After the Islamic\r\nconquest of Kabul in April 1992, 50,000 Hindus had to flee Afghanistan (with the\r\nIndian government unwilling to extend help, and Inder Kumar Gujral denying that\r\nthe expulsion of Indians had a communal motive). The pogroms in Pakistan and\r\nBangladesh after the demolition of the Babri Masjid left 50,000 Hindus homeless\r\nin Bangladesh and triggered another wave of refugees from both countries towards\r\nIndia. In Pakistan, 245 Hindu temples were demolished, in Bangladesh a similar\r\nnumber was attacked, and even in England some temples were set on fire by Muslim\r\nmobs. And then we haven't even mentioned the recurrent attacks on Hindu\r\nprocessions and on police stations.\r\n<\/p>

It will now be evident that the Hindu psyche has very little sympathy for\r\nIslam. Doing something about this was the chief motive for negationism.\r\n<\/p>

 \r\n<\/p>

\r\n2NEGATIONISM AND THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS\r\nThe political context of the frist attempts at negationism was chiefly the\r\nattempt of the independence movement, led by the Indian National Congress, to\r\neliminate all factors of disunity between Hindus and Muslims. It was the time of\r\nthe Khilafat movement (1919-23), the agitation of Indian Muslims against the\r\nBritish take-over of the Islamic sacred places from the deceased Ottoman empire.\r\nThe khilafatists demanded the restoration of the Ottoman caliph's authority over\r\nthe sacred places. Congress saw in this the occasion to enlist the Muslims in\r\nthe national freedom struggle against the same British imperialists.\r\n

This was a miscalculation: the khilafat movement intensified the Islamic\r\nsense of communal identity (therefore the rejection of Indian nationalism), and\r\nadded considerably to Muslim separatism and the Pakistan ideology. But before\r\n1923, when the Turks themselves abolished the caliphate so that the movement\r\nlost its raison d'etre (and got transmuted into pogroms against the Hindus),\r\nthere was great expectation in Congress circles. Therefore, Congress people were\r\nwilling to go to any length to iron out the differences between Hindus and\r\nMuslims, including the invention of centuries of communal amity.\r\n<\/p>

At that time, the Congress leders were not yet actively involved in the\r\nrewriting of history. They were satisfied to quietly ignore the true history of\r\nHindu-Muslim relations. After the communal riots of Kanpur in 1931, a Congress\r\nreport advised the elimination of the mutual enemy- image by changing the\r\ncontents of the history-books.\r\n<\/p>

The next generation of political leaders, especially the left-wing that was\r\nto gain control of Congress in the thirties, and complete control in the\r\nfifties, would profess negationism very explicitly. The radical humanist (i.e.\r\nbourgeois Marxist) M.N. Roy wrote that Islam had fulfilled a historic mission of\r\nequality and abolition of discrimination, and that for this, Islam had been\r\nwelcomed into India by the lower castes. If at all any violence had occurred, it\r\nwas as a matter of justified class struggle by the progressive forces against\r\nthe reactionary forces, meaning the fedual Hindu upper castes.\r\n<\/p>

This is a modern myth springing from an incorrect and much too grim picture\r\nof the caste system, a back-projection of modern ideas of class struggle, and an\r\nuncritical swallowing of contemporary Islamic apologetics, which has\r\nincorporated some voguish socialist values. There is no record anywhere of\r\nlow-caste people welcoming the Muslims as liberators. Just like in their\r\nhomeland, the Muslim generals had nothing but contempt for the common people,\r\nand all the more so because these were idolaters. They made no distinction\r\nbetween rich Pagans and poor Pagans: in the Quran, Allah had promised the same\r\nfate to all idolaters.\r\n<\/p>

By contrast, there is plenty of testimony that these common people rose in\r\nrevolt, not against their high-caste co-religionists, but against the Muslim\r\nrulers. And not only against heavy new taxes (50% of the land revenue for\r\nAlauddin Khilji, whom the negationists hail as the precursor of socialism) and\r\nland expropriations, but especially against the rape and abduction of women and\r\nchildren and the destruction of their idols, acts which have been recorded with\r\nso much glee by the Muslim chroniclers, without anywhere mentioning a separate\r\ntreatment of Hindu rich and Hindu poor, upper-caste Kafir or low-caste Kafir.\r\nEven when some of the high-caste people started collaborating, the common people\r\ngave the invaders no rest, attacking them from hiding-places in the forests. The\r\nconversion of low-caste people only began when Muslim rulers were safely in\r\npower and in a position to reward and encourage conversion by means of tax\r\ndiscrimination, legal discrimination (win the dispute with your neighbour if you\r\nconvert), handing out posts to converts, and simple coercion. Nevertheless, the\r\nmyth which M.N. Roy spread, has gained wide currency.\r\n<\/p>

The best-known propounder of negationism was certainly Jawarharlal Nehru. He\r\nwas rather illiterate concerning Indian culture and history, so his admirers may\r\ninvoke for him the benefit of doubt. At any rate, his writings contain some\r\ncrude cases of glorification of Muslim tyrants and concealment or denial of\r\ntheir crimes. Witness his assessment of Mahmud Ghaznavi, who, according to his\r\nchronicler Utbi, sang the praise of the temple complex at Mathura and then\r\nimmediately proceeded to destroy it. Nehru writes: \"Building interested\r\nMahmud, and he was much impressed by the city of Mathura near Delhi\". About\r\nthis he wrote: \"There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of\r\nthe faithful; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition\r\nbut at the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could such another be\r\nconstructed under a period of 200 years.\" And that is all: Nehru described\r\nthe destroyer of Mathura as an admirer of Mathura, apparently without noticing\r\nthe gory sarcasm in Ghaznavi's eulogy.\r\n<\/p>

Moreover, Nehru denied that Mahmud had committed his acts of destruction out\r\nof any religious motive: \"Mahmud was not a religious man. He was a\r\nMohammedan, but that was just by the way. He was in the first place a soldier,\r\nand a brilliant soldier.\" That Mahmud was definitely a religious man, and\r\nthat he had religious motives for his campaigns against the Hindus, is quite\r\nclear from Utbi's contemporary chronicle. Every night Mahmud copied from the\r\nQuran for the benefit of his soul. He risked his life several times for the sake\r\nof destroying and desecrating temples in which there was nothing to plunder,\r\njust to terrorize and humiliate the Pagans. In his campaigns, he never neglected\r\nto invoke the appropriate Quran verses. In venerating Mahmud as a pious hero of\r\nIslam, Indian Muslims are quite faithful to history: unlike Nehru, the ordinary\r\nMuslim refuses to practise negationism.\r\n<\/p>

With Nehru, negationmism became the official line of the Indian National\r\nCongress, and after Independence also of the Indian state and government.\r\n<\/p>

 \r\n<\/p>

\r\n3 THE ALIGARH SCHOOL\r\nA second factor in the genesis of negationism was the penetration of Western\r\nideas among a part of the Muslim elite, and especially the (in Europe newly\r\nemerged) positive valuation of tolerance. The Islamic elite was concentrated\r\naround two educational institutes, spearheads of the traditional and of the\r\n(superficially) westernizing trends among Indian Muslims. One was the\r\ntheological academy at Deoband, the other the British-oriented Aligarh Muslim\r\nuniversity.\r\n

The Deoband school was (and is) orthodox-Islamic, and rejected modern values\r\nlike nationalism and democracy. It simply observed that India had once been a\r\nDar-ul-Islam (house of Islam), and that therefore it had to be brought back\r\nunder Muslim control. The fact that the majority of the population consisted of\r\nnon-Muslims was not important: in the medieval Muslim empires the Muslims had\r\nnot been in a majority either, and moreover, demography and conversion could yet\r\ntransform the Muslim minority into a majority.\r\n<\/p>

Among the scions of the Deoband school we find Maulana Maudoodi, the chief\r\nideologue of modern fundamentalism. He opposed the Pakistan scheme and demanded\r\nthe Islamization of all of British India. After independence, he settled in\r\nPakistan and agitated for the full Islamization of the (still too British)\r\npolity. Shortly before his death in 1979, his demands were largely met when\r\ngeneral Zia launched his Islamization policy.\r\n<\/p>

Outsiders will be surprised to find that the same school of which Maudoodi\r\nwas a faithful spokesman, also brought forth Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was\r\nCongress president for several terms and who was to become minister of Education\r\nin free India. Understandably but unjustifiably, Azad has often been described\r\nas as moderate and nationalist Muslim: he rejected the Partition of India and\r\nthe foundation of Pakistan, not because he rejected the idea of a Muslim state,\r\nbut because he wanted all of India to become a Muslim state in time.\r\n<\/p>

When in the forties the Partition seemed unavoidable, Azad patronized\r\nproposals to preserve India's unity, stipulating that half of all members of\r\nparliament and of the government had to be Muslims (then 24% of the population),\r\nwith the other half to be divided between Hindus, Ambedkarites, Christians, and\r\nthe rest. Short, a state in which Muslims would rule and non-Muslims would be\r\nsecond-class citizens electorally and politically. The Cabinet Mission Plan,\r\nproposed by the British as the ultimate sop for the Muslim League, equally\r\npromised an effective parity between Muslims and non-Muslims at the Central\r\nGovernment level and a veto right for the Muslim minority. Without Gandhiji's\r\nand other Congress leaders' knowing, Congress president Azad assured the British\r\nnegotiators that he would get the plan accepted by the Congress. When he was\r\ncaught in the act of lying to the Mahatma about the plan and his assurance, he\r\nlost some credit even among the naive Hindus who considered him a moderate. But\r\nhe retained his position of trust in Nehru's cabinet, and continued his work for\r\nthe ultimate transformation of India into a Muslim State.\r\n<\/p>

Maulana Azad's pleas for Hindu-Muslim co-operation had an esoteric meaning,\r\nclear enough for Muslims but invisible for wilfully gullible non-Muslims like\r\nhis colleagues in the Congress leadership. Azad declared that Hindu-Muslim co-\r\noperation was in complete conformity with the Prophet's vision, for\r\n\"Mohammed had also made a treaty with the Jews of Madina\". He\r\ncertainly had, but the practical impact of this treaty was that within a few\r\nyears, two of the three Jewish clans in Medina had ben chased away, and the\r\nthird clan had been massacred to the last man (the second clan had only been\r\nsaved by the intervention of other Medinese leaders, for Mohammed had wanted to\r\nkill them too). Maulana Azad could mention Mohammed's treaty with the Jews as a\r\nmodel for Hindu-Muslim co-operation only because he was confident that few\r\nHindus were aware of the end of the story, and that better-informed Hindus\r\nhonoured a kind of taboo on criticism of Islam and its Prophet.\r\n<\/p>

This parenthesis about Maulana Azad may help clear up some illusions which\r\nHindus and Westerners fondly entertain about the possibility of Islamic moderacy.\r\nThe Deoband school was as fundamentalist in its Azad face as it was in its\r\nMaudoodi heart, and its spokesmen had no problems with the horrors of Islamic\r\nhistory, nor did they make attempts to rewrite it. That Muslims had persecuted\r\nand massacred Hindus, counted as the fulfilment of Allah's salvation plan to\r\ntransform the whole world into a Dar-ul-Islam. As Mohammed Iqbal wrote:\r\n\"All land belongs to the Muslims, because it belongs to their God.\" (Iqbal\r\nwould, however, end up in the Aligarh camp, cfr. infra) Maulana Azad shared this\r\nview of history. He condemned Moghul emperor Akbar's tolerant rule as the\r\nnear-suicide of Indian Islam, and praised fanatics like the theologian Ahmad\r\nSirhindi, who through his opposition to Akbar's tolerance had brought the Moghul\r\ndynasty back on the right track of Hind-persecution.\r\n<\/p>

Unlike the Deoband school, the Aligarh school tried to reconcile Islam with\r\nmodern culture. It understood the principles of democracy and majority rule, and\r\nrecognized that a modern democracy would be incompatible with the transformation\r\nof India into an Islamic state as long as Muslims only formed a minority. The\r\ntactical opposition against the disadvantageous system of democracy was\r\nunderpinned ideologically by Mohammed Iqbal, who criticized it as a system in\r\nwhich heads are counted but not weighed. But Iqbal understood that democracy was\r\nthe wave of the near future, and, together with more modern and sincerely\r\ndemocracy-minded people in the Muslim intelligentsia, he faced the logical\r\nconsequence that the Muslims had to give up the ambition of gaining control over\r\nall of India immediately. Instead they should create a separate state out of the\r\nMuslim-majority areas of India: Pakistan. The ideal of Pakistan was launched by\r\nIqbal in 1930, and in 1940 it became the official political goal of the Muslim\r\nLeague. Aligarh Muslim University has often been described as the cradle of\r\nPakistan.\r\n<\/p>

From their better knowledge of and appreciation for modern culture, the\r\nAligarh thinkers accepted the modern value of religious tolerance. Not to the\r\nextent that they would be willing to co-exist with the Hindus in a single\r\npost-colonial state, but at least to this extent that they wanted to do\r\nsomething about the imge of intolerance which Islam had come to carry. Around\r\n1920 Aligarh historian Mohammed Habib launched a grand project to rewrite the\r\nhistory of the Indian religious conflict. The main points of his version of\r\nhistory are the following.\r\n<\/p>

Firstly, it was not all that serious. One cannot fail to notice that the\r\nIslamic chroniclers (including some rulers who wrote their own chronicles, like\r\nTeimur and Babar) have described the slaughter of Hindus, the abduction of their\r\nwomen and children, and the destruction of their places of worship most\r\ngleefully. But, according to Habib, these were merely exaggerations by court\r\npoets out to please their patrons. One wonders what it says about Islamic rulers\r\nthat they felt flattered by the bloody details which the Muslims chroniclers of\r\nHindu persecutions have left us. At any rate, Habib has never managed to\r\nunderpin this convenient hypothesis with a single fact.\r\n<\/p>

Secondly, that percentage of atrocities on Hindus which Habib was prepared to\r\nadmit as historical, is not to be attributed to the impact of Islam, but to\r\nother factors. Sometimes Islam was used as a justification post factum, but this\r\nwas deceptive. In reality economic motives were at work. The Hindus amassed all\r\ntheir wealth in temples and therefore Muslim armies plundered these temples.\r\n<\/p>

Thirdly, according to Habib there was also a racial factor: these Muslims\r\nwere mostly Turks, savage riders from the steppes who would need several\r\ncenturies before getting civilized by the wholesome influence of Islam. Their\r\ninborn barbarity cannot be attributed to the doctrines of Islam.\r\n<\/p>

Finally, the violence of the Islamic warriors was of minor importance in the\r\nestablishment of Islam in India. What happened was not so much a conquest, but a\r\nshift in public opinion: when the urban working-class heard of Islam and\r\nrealized it now had a choice between Hindu law (smrti) and Muslim law (shariat),\r\nit chose the latter.\r\n<\/p>

Mohammed Habib's excise in history-rewriting cannot stand the test of\r\nhistorical criticism on any score. We can demonstrate this with the example of\r\nSultan Mahmud Ghaznavi (997-1030), already mentioned, who carried out a number\r\nof devastating raids in Sindh, Gujrat and Punjab. This Ghaznavi was a Turk,\r\ncertainly, but in many respects he was not a barbarian: he patronized arts and\r\nliterature (including the great Persian poet Firdausi, who would end up in\r\ntrouble because his patron suspected him of apostasy, and the Persian but\r\nArabic-writing historian Albiruni) and was a fine calligraphist himself. The\r\nundeniable barbarity of his anti-Hindu campaigns cannot be attributed to his\r\nethnic stock. His massacres and acts of destruction were merely a replay of what\r\nthe Arab Mohammed bin Qasim had wrought in Sindh in 712-15. He didn't care for\r\nmaterial gain: he left rich mosques untouched, but poor Hindu temples met the\r\nsame fate at his hands as the richer temples. He turned down a Hindu offer to\r\ngive back a famous idol in exchange for a huge ransom: \"I prefer to appear\r\non Judgement Day as an idol-breaker rather than an idol-seller.\" The one\r\nexplanation that covers all the relevant facts, is that he was driven to his\r\nbarbarous acts by his ideological allegiance to Islam.\r\n<\/p>

There is no record of his being welcomed by urban artisans as a liberator\r\nfrom the oppressive Hindu social system. On the contrary, his companion Albiruni\r\ntestifies how all the Hindus had an inveterate aversion for all Muslims.\r\n<\/p>

Another ruler, Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351-88), personally confirms that the\r\ndescruction of Pagan temples was done out of piety, not out of greed: \"The\r\nHindus had accepted the zimmi status and the concomitant jizya tax in exchange\r\nfor safety. But now they built idol temples in the city, in defiance of the\r\nProphet's law which forbids such temples. Under divine leadership I destroyed\r\nthese buildings, and killed the leaders of idolatry, and the common followers\r\nreceived physical chastisement, until this abomination had been banned\r\ncompletely.\" When Firuz heard that a Pagan festival was going on, he\r\nreacted forcefully: \"My religious feelings exhorted me to finish off this\r\nscandal, this insult to Islam. On the day of the festival I went there myself, I\r\nordered the execution of the leaders and practitioners of this abomination... I\r\ndestroyed their idol temples and built mosques in their places.\"\r\n<\/p>

The contention that Hindus stored their riches in temples is completely\r\nplucked out of thin air (though some of the richer temples contained golden\r\nstatues, which were temple property): it is one among many ad hoc hypotheses\r\nwhich make Habib's theory a methodologically indefensible construction. In fact,\r\nHabib is proclaining a grand conspiracy theory: all the hundreds of Islamic\r\nauthors who declared unanimously that what they reported was a war of Islam\r\nagainst Infidelity, would all have co-ordinated one single fake scenario to\r\ndeceive us.\r\n<\/p>

This is not to say that the entire report which the Muslim chroniclers have\r\nleft us, should be accepted at face value. For instance, writers like Ghaznavi's\r\ncontemporary Utbi give the impression that the raids on, and ultimate conquest\r\nof Hindustan were a walk-over. Closer study of all the source material shows\r\nthat the Muslim armies had a very tough time in India. From Muslim chronicles\r\none only gets a faint glimpse of the intensity with which the Hindus kept on\r\noffering resistance, and of the precariousness of the Muslim grip on Hindistan\r\nthrough the Muslim period. The Muslim chroniclers have not been caught in the\r\nact of lying very often, but some of them distort the proportions of victory and\r\ndefeat a bit. This is quite common among partisan historians everywhere, and a\r\nmodern historian knows how to take such minor distortions into account. The\r\nunanimous and entirely coherent testimony that the wars in Hindustan were\r\nreligious wars of Muslims against Kafirs is a different matter altogether:\r\ndenying this testimony is not a matter of small adjustments, but of replacing\r\nthe well-attested historical facts with their diametrical opposite.\r\n<\/p>

Habib tried to absolve the ideology (Islam) of the undeniable facts of\r\npersecution and massacre of the Pagans by blaming individuals (the Muslims). The\r\nsources however point to the opposite state of affairs: Muslim fanatics were\r\nmerely faithful executors of Quranic injunctions. Not the Muslims are guilty,\r\nbut Islam.\r\n<\/p>

 \r\n<\/p>

\r\n4 NEGATIONISM RAMPANT: THE MARXISTS\r\nThe Aligarh school has been emulated on a large scale. Soon its torch was taken\r\nover by Marxist historians, who were building a reputation for unscrupled\r\nhistory-rewriting in accordance with the party-line.\r\n

In this context, one should know that there is a strange alliance between the\r\nIndian Communist parties and the Muslim fanatics. In the forties the Communists\r\ngave intellectual muscle and political support to the Muslim League's plan to\r\npartition India and create an Islamic state. After independence, they\r\nsuccessfully combined (with the tacit support of Prime minister Nehru) to\r\nsabotage the implementation of the constitutional provision that Hindi be\r\nadopted as national language, and to force India into the Soviet-Arab front\r\nagainst Israel. Ever since, this collaboration has continued to their mutual\r\nadvantage as exemplified by their common front to defend the Babri Masjid, that\r\nsymbol of Islamic fanaticism. Under Nehru's rule these Marxists acquired control\r\nof most of the educational and research institutes and policies.\r\n<\/p>

Moreover, they had an enormous mental impact on the Congress apparatus: even\r\nthose who formally rejected the Soviet system, thought completely in Marxist\r\ncategories. They accepted, for instance, that religious conflicts can be reduced\r\nto economic and class contradictions. They also adopted Marxist terminology, so\r\nthat they always refer to conscious Hindus as the communal forces or elements\r\n(Marxism dehumanizes people to impersonal pawns, or forces, in the hands of god\r\nHistory). The Marxist historians had the field all to themselves, and they set\r\nto work to decommunalize Indian history-writing, i.e. to erase the importance of\r\nIslam as a factor of conflict.\r\n<\/p>

In Communalism and the Writing of indian History, Romila Thapar, Harbans\r\nMukhia and Bipan Chandra, professors at Jawaharlal Nehry University (JNU, the\r\nMecca of secularism and negationism) in Delhi, write that the interpretation of\r\nmedieval wars as religious conflicts is in fact a back- projection of\r\ncontemporary religious conflict artificially created for political purposes. In\r\nBipan Chandra's famous formula, communalism is not a dinosaur, it is a strictly\r\nmodern phenomenon. They explicitly deny that before the modern period there\r\nexisted such a thing as Hindu identity or Muslim identity. Conflicts could not\r\nhave been between Hindus and Muslims, only between rulers or classes who\r\nincidentally also belonged to one religious community or the other. They point\r\nto the conflicts within the communities and to alliances across community\r\nboundaries.\r\n<\/p>

It is of course a fact that some Hindus collaborated with the Muslim rulers,\r\nbut that also counted for the British colonial rulers, who are for that no less\r\nconsidered as foreign oppressors. For that matter, in the Jewish ghetto in\r\nWarsaw the Nazis employed Jewish guards, in their search for absconding Jews\r\nthey employed Jewish informers, and in their policy of deportation they even\r\nsought the co-operation of the Zionist movement: none of this can disprove Nazi-\r\nJewish enmity. It is also a fact that the Muslim rulers sometimes made war among\r\neach other, but that was equally true for Portuguese, French and British\r\ncolonizers, who fought some wars on Indian territory: they were just as much\r\npart of a single colonial movement with a common colonial ideology, and all the\r\nbrands of colonialism were equally the enemies of the indian freedom movement.\r\nEven in the history of the Crusades, that paradigm of religious war, we hear a\r\nlot of battles between one Christian-Muslim coalition and another: these do not\r\nfalsify the over-all characterization of the Crusades as a war between\r\nChristians and Muslims (triggered by the destruction of Christian churches by\r\nMuslims).\r\n<\/p>

After postulating that conflicts between Hindus and Muslims as such were\r\nnon-existent before the modern period, the negationists are faced with the need\r\nto explain how this type of conflict was born after centuries of a misunderstood\r\nnon-existence. The Marxist explanation is a conspiracy theory: the separate\r\ncommunal identity of Hindus and Muslims is an invention of the sly British\r\ncolonialists. They carried on a divide and rule policy, and therefore they\r\nincited the communal separateness. As the example par excellence, prof. R.S.\r\nSharma mentions the 19th -century 8-volume work by Elliott and Dowson, The\r\nHistory of India as Told by its own Historians. This work does indeed paint a\r\nvery grim picture of Muslim hordes who attack the Pagans with merciless cruelty.\r\nBut this picture was not a concoction by the British historians: as the title of\r\ntheir work says, they had it all from indigenous historiographers, most of them\r\nMuslims.\r\n<\/p>

Yet, the negationist belief that the British newly created the Hindu-Muslim\r\ndivide has become an article of faith with everyone in India who calls himself a\r\nsecularist. It became a central part of the negationist argument in the debate\r\nover the Ram Janmabhoomi\/Babri Masjid issue. Time and again, the negationist\r\nhistorians (including Bipan Chandra, K.N. Panikkar, S. Gopal, Romila Thapar,\r\nHarbans Mukhia, Irfan Habib, R.S. Sharma, Gyanendra Pandey, Sushil Srivastava,\r\nAsghar Ali Engineer, as well as the Islamic politician Syed Shahabuddin) have\r\nasserted that the tradition according to which the Babri mosque forcibly\r\nreplaced a Hindu temple, is nothing but a myth purposely created in the 19th\r\ncentury. To explain the popularity of the myth even among local Muslim writers\r\nin the 19th century, most of them say it was a deliberate British concoction,\r\nspread in the interest of the divide and rule- policy. They affirm this\r\nconspiracy scenario without anyhow citing, from the copious archives which the\r\nBritish administration in India has left behind, any kind of positive indication\r\nfor their convenient hypothesis - let alone the rigorous proof on which a\r\nserious historian would base his assertions, especially in such controversial\r\nquestions.\r\n<\/p>

They have kept on taking this stand even after five documents by local\r\nMuslims outside the British sphere in the 19th century, two documents by Muslim\r\nofficials from the early 18th century, and two documents by European travellers\r\nfrom the 18th and 17th century, as well as the extant revenue records, all\r\nconfirming the temple destruction scenario, were brought to the public's notice\r\nin 1990. In their pamphlets and books, the negationists simply kept on ignoring\r\nmost or all of this evidence, defiantly disregarding historical fact as well as\r\nacademic deontology.\r\n<\/p>

Concerning the Ayodhya debate, it is worth recalling that the negationists\r\nhave also resorted to another tactic so familiar to our European negationists,\r\nand to all defenders of untenable positions: personal attacks on their\r\nopponents, in order to pull the public's attention away from the available\r\nevidence. In December 1990, the leading JNU historians and several allied\r\nscholars, followed by the herd of secularist penpushers in the Indian press,\r\nhave tried to raise suspicions against the professinal honesty of Prof. B.B. Lal\r\nand Dr. S.P. Gupta, the archaeologists who have unearthed evidence for the\r\nexistence of a Hindu temple at the Babri Masjid site. Rebuttals by these two and\r\na number of other archaelogists hae received coverage in the secularist press.\r\n<\/p>

In February 1991, Irfan Habib give his infamous speech to the Aligarh Muslim\r\nUniversity historians, in which he made personal attacks on the scholars who\r\ntook part in the government-sponsored debate on Ayodhya in defence of the Hindu\r\nclaim, and on Prof. B.B. Lal. In this case, the weekly Sunday did publish a\r\nlengthy reply by the deputy superintending archaeologist of the Archaeological\r\nSurvey of India, A.K. Sinha. The contents of this reply are very relevant, but\r\nit is a bit technical (i.e. not adapted to the medium of a weekly for the\r\ngeneral public) and written in clumsy English, which gives a poor over-all\r\nimpression.\r\n<\/p>

Actually, I speculate that the Sunday-editor may well have selected it for\r\npublication precisely because of these flaws. The practice is well-known in the\r\ntreatment of letters to the editor: those defending the wrong viewpoint only get\r\npublished if they are somewhat funny or otherwise harmless. I cannot be sure\r\nabout this particular case, but it is a general fact that from their power\r\npositions, the negationists use every means at their disposal to create a\r\nnegative image for the Hindu opponents of Islamic imperialism, including the\r\nselective highlighting of the most clumsy and least convincing formulations of\r\nthe Hindu viewpoint.\r\n<\/p>

In his Babri Masjid Ram Janmabhoomi Controversy, the Islamic apologist Ali\r\nAsghar Engineer has also selected a few incomplete and less convincing\r\nstatements of the Hindu position, in order to create a semblance of willingness\r\nto hear the Hindu viewpoint while at the same time denying the Hindu side any\r\npublicity for its strongest arguments. He has kept the most decisive pieces of\r\nevidence entirely out of the readers' view, but has covered this deliberate\r\ndistortion of the picture behind a semblance of even- handedness. In Anatomy of\r\na Confrontation, the JNU historians do not even mention the powerful\r\nargumentation by Prof. A.R. Khan, while Prof. Harsh Narain and Mr. A.K.\r\nChatterjee's presentation authentic testimonies (in Indian Express, republished\r\nby Voice of India in Hindu Temples, What happened to Them and in History vs.\r\nCasuistry) are only mentioned but not detailed and discussed, let alone refuted;\r\nbut clumsy RSS pamphlets and improvised statements by BJP orators are quoted and\r\nanalyzed at length.\r\n<\/p>

The concluding paragraph of A.K.Sinha's rebuttal to Irfan Habib's speech\r\npoints out the contradiction between the earlier work of even Marxist historians\r\nabout ancient India (in which they treat the epics as sources of history, not\r\nmere fable) and their recent Babri-politicized stand: \"Today, even taking\r\nthe name of Mahabharata and Ramayana is considered as anti-national and communal\r\nby the communist leaders, Babri Masjid Action Committee historians and the\r\npseudo-secularists. What do they propose to do with all that has been published\r\nso far in [this] context by the Marxists themselves, notably D.D. Kosambi, R.S.\r\nSharma, Romila Thapar, K.M. Shrimali, D.N. Jha and others? I have been thinking\r\nabout the behavious of our Marxist friends and historians, their unprovoked\r\nslander campaign against many colleagues, hurling abuses and convicting anyone\r\nand everyone even before the charges could be framed and proved. Their latest\r\ntarget is [so] sobre and highly respected a person as prof. B.B. Lal, who has\r\nall his life (now he is nearing 70) never involved himself in petty politics or\r\nin the groupism [which is] so favourite a sport among the so- called Marxist\r\nintellectuals of this country. But then [slander] is a well-practised art among\r\nthe Marxists.\"\r\n<\/p>

Another trick which a student of Holocaust negationism will readily recognize\r\nin the pro-Babri campaign of the Indian negationists, is that truly daring form\r\nof amnipulation: selectively quoting an authority to make him say the opposite\r\nof his own considered opinion. When the JNU historians started slandering Prof.\r\nB.B. Lal as a turncoat hired by the VHP, this was a panic reaction after their\r\nearlier tactic had been exposed (though only in Indian Express, but the\r\nnegationist front will not tolerate even one hole in the cordon of information\r\ncontrol). Until then, they had been using B.B. Lal's fame to suport their own\r\nposition that the Babri Masjid had not replaced a temple.\r\n<\/p>

In their pamphlet The Political Abuse of History, the JNU historians had\r\nquoted from a brief summary, published by the Archaeological Survey of India in\r\n1980, of Prof. B.B. Lal's report on his excavations in Ayodhya and other\r\nRamayana sites. They knew this report perfectly well, for they had gleefully\r\nquoted its finding that the excavations just near the Babri Masjid had not\r\nyielded any remains pre- dating the 9th century BC. But then they had gone on to\r\nstate that there was no archeological indication for a pre- Masjid temple on\r\nthat controversial site at all, even when the same report had cursorily\r\nmentioned the remains of a building dated to the 11th century AD. Later on, they\r\nhave quoted the same summary as saying that the later period was devoid of any\r\ninterest, suggesting that nothing of any importance dating from the medieval\r\nperiod had been found.\r\n<\/p>

In fact, this remark only proves that the ASI summarizer saw no reason to\r\ngive (or saw reasons not to give) details about the uninteresting but\r\nnonetheless existing medieval findings. But in autumn 1990, some of these\r\ndetails have been made public and they turned out to be of decisive importance\r\nin the Ram Janmabhoomi debate. Prof.K.N. Panikkar (in Anatomy of a\r\nConfrontation) suggests that, if these relevant details were not recently\r\nthought up to suit the theories of the RSS, they must have been deliberately\r\nconcealed at that time (late seventies) by the ASI summarizer. The latter\r\npossibility means that negationists are active in the ASI publishing section,\r\nediting archaeological reports to suit the negationist campaign. The implied\r\nallegation is so serious that K.N. Panikkar expects the reader to assume the\r\nother alternative, viz. an RSS concoction. But he may well have hit the nail on\r\nits head with his suggestion that negationists in the ASI are doing exactly the\r\nsame thing that they are doing in all Indian institutions and media: misusing\r\ntheir positions to distort information.\r\n<\/p>

At any rate, the details of the full report were given in articles by Dr. S.P.\r\nGupta and by Prof. B.B. Lal himself (and independently by other archaeologists\r\nin talks and letters to Indian Express) in late 1990. The pillar-bases of an\r\n11th century building, aligned to the Babri Masjid walls, were presented by\r\nProf. B.B. Lal and Dr. S.P.Gupta in separate filmed interviews with the BBC.\r\nThere could be no doubt about it anymore: Prof. B.B. Lal had arrived at a\r\nconclusion opposite to the one ascribed to him by a number of Marxist historians\r\n(not only from JNU).\r\n<\/p>

That is why is early December 1990 several of the most vocal Marxist\r\nhistorians suddenly took to slander and accused Prof. B.B. Lal of having changed\r\nhis opinion in order to suit the VHP's political needs. Now that they could no\r\nlonger use Prof. Lal's reputation for their own ends, they decided to try and\r\ndestroy it. In the case of Dr. S.P. Gupta, they have not taken back their\r\nridiculous allegation that he had falsely claimed participation in the Ramayana\r\nsites excavations. But with a big name like B.B. Lal, an impeccable academic of\r\nworld fame, they had to be careful, because slander against him might somehow\r\nbackfire. That is why they have nor pressed the point, and why a number of\r\nMarxist historians and other participants in the Ayodhya debate have quitely\r\nreverted to the earlier tactic of selectively quoting from the ASI summary of\r\nProf. B.B. Lal's report, and acting as if the great archaeologist has supported\r\nand even proven their own position. As the press had given minimum coverage to\r\nB.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta's revelations, many people would not suspect the truth.\r\n<\/p>

Another trick from the negationists' book that has been very much in evidence\r\nduring the Ayodhya debate, consists in focusing all attention on the pieces of\r\nevidence given by those who upheld the historical truth,, and trying to find\r\nfault with them as valid evidence. Thus, at the press conference (19 Dec. 1992)\r\nwhere Dr. S.P. Gupta and other historians presented photographs of an\r\ninscription found during the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which proved once\r\nmore that a temple had stood on the site, and that it was specifically a\r\nbirthplace temple for \"Vishnu Hari who defeated Bali and the ten-headed\r\nking [Ravana]\", some journalists heckled the speakers with remarks that\r\n\"because of the demolition, the inscription was not in situ and therefore\r\nnot valid as evidence\", and similar feats of petty fault-finding.\r\n<\/p>

A few days later, a group of 70 archaeologists and historians, mostly names\r\nwho had not taken a prominent role in this debate so far, brought shame on\r\nthemselves by pronouncing judgement on this piece of evidence without even\r\nseeing, let alone studying it. They demanded not that the government look into\r\nthis new evidence, as would be proper for representatives of the scientific\r\nspirit, but that it trace down from which museum the planted evidence had been\r\nstolen and brought to Ayodhya. In doing history falsification, it is best to\r\nremain on the attack, and to put the bonafide historians on the defensive by\r\naccusing them first.\r\n<\/p>

After dozens of pieces of evidence for the forcible replacement of temple\r\nwith mosque scenario had been given, the Babri negationists had never come up\r\nwith a single piece of counter- evidence (i.e. positive evidence for an\r\nalternative scenario); they could not do better than keep silent over the most\r\nstriking evidence, and otherwise scream at the top of their voice that evidence\r\nA did not count, evidence B was not valid, evidence C was flawed, evidence D was\r\nfabricated. In 1992 alone, in the clearing operations near the Janmabhoomi site\r\nin June, during several visits of experts, and during the demolition on 6\r\nDecember, more than 200 pieces of archaeological evidence for the pre-existent\r\nVaishnava temple had been found, but these 70 scholars preferred to disregard\r\nall them. This time, the suggestion was that in the middle of the kar seva, the\r\ninscription had been planted there. You could just as well join the Holocaust\r\nnegationists and say that the gas chambers found in 1945 had been a Hollywood\r\nmise-en-scene. Picking at a single testimony as if the whole case depends on it\r\nhas been a favourite technique of the negationists to distract attention from\r\nthe larger picture, to make people forget that even if this one piece of\r\nevidence were flawed, this would not invalidate the general conclusions built on\r\na whole corpus of evidence.\r\n<\/p>

A final point of similarity between the Marxist involvement in the Babri\r\nMasjid case and the techniques of Holocaust negationism is the fact that there\r\nwas a Babri Masjid debate in the first place. Indeed, postulating doubt and the\r\nneed for a debate is the first step of denial. The tradition that the Babri\r\nMasjid had forcibly replaced a temple was firmly established ad supported by\r\nsources otherwise accepted as authoritative; when it was challenged, this was\r\nnot on the basis of newfound material which justified a re-examination of the\r\nhistorical position. The correct procedure would have been that the deniers of\r\nthe established view come up with some positive evidence for their innovative\r\nposition: until then, there was simply no reason for a debate. Instead, they\r\nstarted demanding that the other side give proof of what had been known all\r\nalong, and forced a debate on something that was really a matter of consensus.\r\nSubsequently, instead of entering the ring, attacking or countering their\r\nopponents' case with positive evidence of their own, the challengers set\r\nthemselves up as judges of the other side's argumentation. This is indeed\r\nreminiscent of the negationist Institute for Historical Review announcing a\r\nprize for whomever could prove that the Holocaust had taken place.\r\n<\/p>

There is yet another trick from the negationist arsenal which has been tried\r\nin India: find a witness from the victims' camp to testify to the aggressor's\r\ninnocence. Of course there are not witnesses around who lived through\r\nAurangzeb's terror, but there are many who lived through the horrors of\r\nPartition. It is nobody's case that the killings wich Jinnah considered a fair\r\nprice for his Muslim state, never took place. But the negationists have spent a\r\nlot of effort on proving the next best thing: that the guilt was spread evently\r\namong Hindus and Muslims.\r\n<\/p>

The Communist novelist Bhishma Sahni has used the novel Tamas to point the\r\nHindus as the villains in the Partition violence. The interesting thing is that\r\nBhishma Sahni's own family was among the Hindu refugees hounded out or Pakistan.\r\nHis anti-Hindu bias, coming from a man who would have more reason for an\r\nanti-Muslim animus, is a gift from heaven for the Hindu-baiters. Marxist\r\nProfessor Bipan Chandra parades a similar character in his paper: Communalism -\r\nthe Way Out (published together with two lectures by KJhushwant Singh as: Many\r\nFaces of Communalism). One of his students had survived the terror of Partition\r\nin Rawalpindi, losing 7 family members. Bud he did not have any animus against\r\nthe Muslims, for he said: \"Very early I realized that my parents had not\r\nbeen killed by the Muslims, they had been kiled by communalism.\" Coming\r\nfrom a victim of Muslim violence, this is excellent material for those who want\r\nto apportion equal blame to Hindus nd Muslims.\r\n<\/p>

Of course, Bipan Chandra's student was right. The cause of Partition and of\r\nits accompanying violence was not the Muslims, but communalism, i.e. the belief\r\nthat people with a common religion form a separate social and political entity.\r\nThis belief is not fostered by Hinduism, but it is central to Islam ever since\r\nMohammed founded his first Islamic state in Medina. It is true that some Hindu\r\ngroups (most conspicuously the Sikhs) have recently adopted some Islamic\r\nelements, including the communalist belief that a religious group forms a\r\nseparate nation entitled to a separate state. But the source of this communalist\r\npoison in India is and remains Islam. Therefore, Bipan Chandra's student has in\r\nfact said: \"My family was not killed by the Muslims, but by Islam.\"\r\n<\/p>

It is a different matter that Muslims are the most likely carriers of the\r\nIslamic disease called communalism, and that they had massively voted for the\r\ncommnalist project of creating a separate Muslim state. The culprit was Islam,\r\nand concerning the positions of the Muslims in the light of the fanatical nature\r\nof Islam, I would quote Bipan Chandra's own simile for understanding the\r\ndifference between communalism and its adherents: when a patient suffers from a\r\nterrible disease, you don't kill him, but cure him. The victims of Islamic\r\nindoctrination should not be the target of Hindu revenge, as they were in large\r\nnumbers in 1947. Don't kill the patient, kill the disease. Remove Islam from the\r\nMuslims' minds through education and India's communal problem will be as good as\r\nsolved.\r\n<\/p>

At this point we may take a second look at the Marxist position, mentioned\r\nabove, that the Hindu community is a recent invention. The observations which I\r\njust made concerning the Islamic provenance of communalism might seem to confirm\r\nthat there was no Hindu communal identity. However, the authentic sources from\r\nthe medieval period are unanimous about the sharp realization of a separate\r\ncommunal identity as Muslims and as Hindus, overwhelmingly on the Muslim side,\r\nbut also on the Hindu side. We know for instance that Shivaji, who turned the\r\ntide of the Muslim offensive in the late 17th centure, was a conscious partisan\r\nof an all-Hindu liberation war against Muslim rule (Hindu Pad Padashahi). The\r\nsame counts for Rana Pratap and many other Hindu leaders, and there cannot be\r\nany doubt that the Vijayanagar empire was conscious of its role as the last\r\nfortress of Hindu civilization.\r\n<\/p>

It is true that some Hindu kings attacked neighbouring Hindu states in the\r\nback when these were attacked by the Muslim invaders. They were at first not\r\naware that these Islamic newcomers were a common enemy, motivated by hatred\r\nagainst all non-Muslims; but their lack of insight into the character of Islam\r\nin no way disproves their awareness of a common Hindu identity. The fact that\r\nthey were acutely aware of their internal political rivalries, does not exclude\r\nthat they were aware of a more fundamental common identity, which was not at\r\nstake in these internecine feuds, but which they defended together once they\r\nrealized that it was the target of this new kind of ideologically motivated\r\naggressor, Islam. Brothers are aware that they have a lot in common, and this is\r\nnot disproven by the fact that, when left to themselves, they also quarrel with\r\neach other.\r\n<\/p>

If at all some Hindus had at first only been conscious of their own caste or\r\nsect rather than of the Hindu commonwealth, the Muslim persecutions of all\r\nHindus without distinction certainly made them aware of their common identity\r\nand interest. So, if the Marxists perforce want to deny the common culture and\r\nvalue system underlying the diversity of the Hindu commonwealth, then let them\r\napply some of their own dialectics instead. \"It is in their common struggle\r\naginst the Islamic aggressors, that the disparate sections of the native Indian\r\nsociety have forged their common identity as Hindus\": I do not agree with\r\nthis statement which posits a negative and reactive basis for a common Hindu\r\nidentity, but it must be accepted if one labours under the assumption that there\r\nnever had been a positive common identity before. It is unreasonable to expect\r\nthe Indian Pagans to be lumped together as Hindus for centuries on end, to be\r\nuniformly made the target of one neverending aggression by Islam, to be\r\nsubjected to the same humiliations and the same jizya tax, and yet not become\r\nconscious of a common interest. This common interest would then give rise to\r\nunifying cultural superstructure. That is how the sustained and uniform Islamic\r\nattack on all India Pagans would inevitably have given rise to at least a\r\nmeasure of common Hindu identity if this had not previously existed.\r\n<\/p>

In his Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya (1990), the Marxist Professor R.S.\r\nSharma argues that the medieval Hindus did not see the Muslims as a distinct\r\nreligious entity, but as an ethnic group, the Turks. His proof: the Gahadvala\r\ndynasty levied a tax called Turushkadanda, tax financing the war effort against\r\nthe Turks. But this does not prove what Sharma thinks it proves.\r\n<\/p>

The Muslims called the Pagans of India sometimes Kafirs, unbelievers, i.e. a\r\nreligious designation; but often they called them Hindus inhabitants of\r\nHindustan, i.e. an ethnic-geographical designation (from Hind, the Persian\r\nequivalent of Sindh). And they gave religious contents to this geographical\r\nterm, which it has kept till today: so it is correct that the Hindus never\r\ndefined themselves as Hindus, as this was the Persian and later the Muslim term\r\nfor the Indian Pagans adhering to Sanatana Dharma. But that was only a\r\nterminological matter, the fundamental religious unity of the Sanatana Dharmis\r\nwas just as much a fact. Similarly, the Hindus called these newcomers Turks, but\r\nthis does not exclude recognition of their religious specificity. On the\r\ncontrary, even Teimur the Terrible, who made it absolutely clear in his memoirs\r\nthat he came to India to wage a religious war against the Pagans, and who freed\r\nthe Muslim captives from a conquered city before putting the Hindu remainder to\r\nthe sword, referred to his own forces as the Turks. Conversely, the Hindus\r\ndescribe as the typical Turkish behavious pattern that which is enjoined by\r\nIslam.\r\n<\/p>

While it is true that the Hindus have been much too slow (till today) in\r\nstudying the religious foundation of the barbaric behavious which they\r\nexperienced at the hands of the Turushkas, at least they soon found out that for\r\nthese invaders religion was the professed motive of their inhuman behavious.\r\nProf. Sharma's piece of evidence, the institution of a Turushkandana, does\r\nhowever prove very clearly that the Islamic threat was extraordinary: the normal\r\narmed forces and war credits were not sufficient to deal with this threat which\r\nwas in a class by itself.\r\n<\/p>

The original source material leaves us in no doubt that conflicts often\r\nerupted on purely religious grounds, even against the political and economical\r\ninterests of the contending parties. The negationists' tactic therefore consists\r\nin keeping this original testimony out of view. A good example is Prof.\r\nGyanendra Pandey's recent book, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial\r\nNorth India. As the title clearly says, Pandey asserts that communalism (the\r\nHindu-Muslim conflict) had been constructed by the British for colonial purposes\r\nanmd out of colonial prejuidices, was later interiorized by Indians looking for\r\nnew, politically profitable forms of organization in modern colonial society.\r\nThis is like saying that anti-Judaism is a construction of modern capitalists to\r\ndivide the working class (the standard Marxist explanation for all kinds of\r\nracism), while concealing the copious medieval testimony of anti-Judaism on\r\nundeniably non-capitalist grounds. Prof. Pandey effectively denies a\r\nmillenniumful of testimonies to Islamic persecution of the Indian (Hindu) Kafirs.\r\n<\/p>

Another example is prof. K.N. Panikkar's work on the Moplah rebellion,,, a\r\npofgrom against the Hindus by the Malabar (Kerala) Muslims in the margin of the\r\nkhilafat movement in 1921 (official death toll 2,339). Panikkar takes the\r\northodox Marxist position that this was not a communal but a class conflict, not\r\nbetween Hindus and Muslims but between workers who happened to be Muslims and\r\nlandlords who happened to be Hindus. In reality the communal character of the\r\nmassacre was so evident that even Mahatma Gandhi recognized it as terrible blow\r\nfor his ideal of Hindu-Muslim unity. It is quite possible that the occasion was\r\nused to settle scores with landlords and money- lenders (that stereotype of\r\nanti-Hindu as well as of anti- Jewish sloganeering), but the mullahs exhorted\r\ntheir flock to attack all Hindus, and added in so many words that not only the\r\nlandlords but all the Hindus were their enemies. The poison of Islamic\r\nfanaticism is such that it turns any kind of conflict into an attack on the\r\nnon-Muslims.\r\n<\/p>

More Marxist wisdom we encounter in Romila Thapar's theory (in her\r\ncontribution to S. Gopal's book on the Ayodhya affair, Anatomy of a\r\nConfrontation) that the current Hindu movement wants to unite all Hindus, not\r\nbecause the Hindus feel besieged by hostile forces, not because they have a\r\nmemory of centuries of jihad, but because \"a monolithic religion is more\r\ncompatible with capitalism\" (to borrow the formulation of a reviewer). She\r\nthinks that the political Hindu movement is merely a concoction by Hindu\r\ncapitalists, or in her own words \"part of the attempt to redefine Hinduism\r\nas an ideology for modernization by the middle class\", in which\r\n\"modernization is seen as linked to the growth of capitalism\". She\r\nreads the mind behind the capitalist conspiracy to reform Hinduism thus:\r\n\"Capitalism is often believed to thrive among Semitic religions such as\r\nChristianity and Islam. The argument would then run that if capitalism is to\r\nsucceed in India, then Hinduism would also have to be moulded in a Semitic\r\nform\".\r\n<\/p>

It is always interesting to see how Communists presuppose the superiority of\r\nHinduism by denouncing Hindu militancy as the semiticization or islamization of\r\nHinduism. But the point is that the political mobilization of Hindu society\r\nunder the increasing pressure of hostile forces is explained away as merely a\r\ncamouflage of economic forces. One smiles about such simplistic subjection of\r\nunwilling facts of Marxist dogma. Especially because such analyses were still\r\nbeing made in 1991, and are still being made today: in India it has not yet\r\ndawned on the dominant intelligentsia that Marxism has failed not only as a\r\npolitical and economical system, but also as a socialogical model of\r\nexplanation. On the contrary, Indian Marxists even manage to make foreign\r\ncorrespondents for non- Marxist media swallow their analysis, e.g. after the\r\nBabri Masjid demolition, even the conservative Frankfurter Al<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"Negationism in India - Analysis","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/01\/25095.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}