Etymologically Hindi word for History is Itihaas- which is derived from -I- so- ti-it-haas- was. The way history has been written in communist-controlled academia post-independence has been everything that is not history. It has been a writing of opinions and perspective, not the way things were. We have lived with such manipulation of history in order to build a narrative in which Hindus, the original inhabitants of India, were deserving to be enslaved, and Muslim invaders were kind of liberators of India. This Ponzi scheme has gone on for so long that the academicians and scholars are no longer concerned with the mockery their absurd explanation of medieval savagery which was brought into India by middle-eastern militias, attracts. In his book Eminent Historians, Arun Shourie critically examines this partisan subjectivity which has impact the scholarship in Indian History when he wrote, they (these leftist historians) are from a school in which members have made each other famous by applauding each other's books and thesis.
With diligence, with effort, and will little support from the Government and a lot of support from the people this stranglehold over historical narrative has been cracked if not broken. However, what prompted this article is the fact that two Mughal-worshiping articles recently make way into mainstream media recently. What is absolutely galling is that the national media like Indian Express and The Print, run by old journalistic hands lacked any structure or even information which stood the scrutiny of logic. In the first one, there is an article by Adrija Roychowdhury in Indian Express, dated 26th August, 2023, titled How the Bhakti Movement Flourished under the Mughals. Leading non-left historians have written that Bhakti movement was not some carefully crafted strategy if the Islamic invaders that Mughals too were to conserve the Hindu culture of India. Rather writers like Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (Sanskriti ke char Adhyay) and Acharya Ramchandra Shukla (Hindi Sahitya ka Itihasa) have written about the kind of oppression Hindus faced with forced conversions and the widespread destruction of Hindu temples, which shrunk the Hindu spaces of practicing the faith into private houses, away from the community religious engagements. In those dark days of demonic oppression Bhakti movement took shape, which was a cry of defeated people pinning their hopes on the unseen and unknown to end their days of oppression.
As if the premise itself was not lousy enough, Adrija, a student from JNU, makes it ridiculous by wild imagery. A Persianate cosmopolitan culture had made its way to South Asia with the Ghaznavid invasions of the 11th century she writes. She quietly covers up not only the brutal aspect of Islamic invasion into India, thus in one phrase cosmopolitan culture- she covers up the complete wiping away of Persian history and culture by the Islamic Arab marauders. The refugee Parsis who have since made Hindu India their homes are living evidence of the cruelty and genocide they had faced. Ms Roychowdhury couldn't care less. She quotes Patton Burchett and Diana L Eck to somehow project that the Mughals somehow brought in a spirit of secular co-existance ignoring the chequered history of now-much-acclaimed Sufism which went around as an important part of grand of game of Islamic conversion. Diana Eck is a member of Methodist Church of Harvard. The writer is a living example of an Indian scholar trying to understand India through western eyes.
What starts out as lame piece of historical writing, turns into downright funny when in this article published in a prestigious Indian Daily, she claims that Akbar made a land grant to the priest in Vrindavan in 1526. She and the editor of this wonderful daily of national repute remains oblivious to the fact that Akbar was born on 15th of October, 1542 AD. Strangely this same reference is found in an IAS Preparation website (IASscore) which is meant to train future public administrators of India, published 21st of August 2023. Immediate reason for this sudden spurt and interest is PM Narendra Modi honouring Hindu Saint from the Bhakti Age, Sant Ravidas, so it became urgent to immediately ensure that Bhakti movements credit should be taken away from a Hindu thinker and passed on to the Mughals.
| Excerpt from Indian Express Article In an another unrelated note, she quotes another JNU Historian Harbans Mukhia to claim that Bhakti Movement was brought in not to protect an under-attack polytheist Hindu faith but to convert Hinduism into a Monotheistic faith like Islam. Coincidentally, Harbans Mukhia also claimed that until 1822 there was no discourse on Ram Mandir, and there never was a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. So driven by the ideology are these leftist historians that facts mean little to them. Mr. Mukhia and his ilk have been thoroughly exposed in Allahabad High Court. Historical evidences like the Guru Nanak's writings and Gazetteers written in 17th century have all been ignored by men like Mr. Mukhia. In a speech he made to a gathering of Muslims, he lied about all the evidences which Mughals themselves had written about their temple destruction activities starting right from Babar and Akbar, claiming that there was no evidence of destruction of temples by the Mughals. It cannot go more blatant than that. Then after India had successful mission to Moon, came an article by Professor Dilip Mandal, which spoke of the centuries lost when the Mughals did precious little to promote science and general public development work. What Mr. Mandal proposed in his article has been corroborated by many contemporaries of Mughals who wrote in detail about who public wealth was squandered off in building private wealth of the Emperors while the masses suffered huge devastations in incessant famines across the country. Another JNU scholar, Mayurpankhi Choudhury quickly rushed in to counter the claim in another article in The Print, Why the Mughals did not fail India in Science. In a close to 1800 words rebuttal, Mayurpankhi spent 1200 words to quote European historians, and writes about Black Lives Matter and Jamaica and Europe, without even mentioning the word 'Mughal'. He then writes about the advances in science in Arab world, quoting Al Biruni, who came to India four centuries before the Mughals came, somehow mixing Islam with Mughals. Then he writes about Arabian scientific discoveries in vague terms, ending with one does not have the space to cover the strides that were made in shipbuilding industry etc. Yes, you obviously do not have the space because you are low on facts and high on emotion, having wasted 1500 out of an 1800 words article on nothing remotely connected to the topic. Then he tried to make up for lack of data by extrapolating the Arabian progress in science before Islam and in the initial phases of Islam to the Mughals. I fail to understand the kind of scholars our education system is churning out. This article is a living proof of poor scholarship which ails the study of Indian history. The article is an example of how one can write an article heavy on rhetorics and so light on facts and objectivity that it should never have been published. |
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