Different Viewpoints - Hindu Holocaust During the Muslim Occupation of India Part 2

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6. Although the armies of Islam which came in wave after wave succeeded in imposing alien rule over large parts of India and converting some sections of the Indian people, they continued to face a war of resistance, which became a war of liberation in due course and broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the eighteenth century;

7. Christian-Western imperialism intervened at the critical juncture when India had just started recovering from the havoc caused by Islamic barbarism, but met the same fate in a much shorter span of time;

8. While India reciprocated readily with the rational and humanist part of the modern West, it rejected its Christian and chauvinist aspects which it fought tooth and nail till it freed itself from their spell.



A typical Indian mediaeval chateau. The Govind Fort-palace at Datia. Most palaces, during the Muslim occupation of India, were heavily fortified and were built on elevation or hill tops to facilitate defense during warfare a regular occurrence during those times.




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This indigenous version of India's history had started coming to the surface in the works of Maharshi Dayananda, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and some other stalwarts of the Hindu Renaissance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But it met a vehement opposition from the powerful Pseudo-Secular/Muslim combine which had international support- ideological, political, and financial. With the coming of Independence in 1947, this combine received state patronage on a grand scale so that it came to control all institutions concerned with researching, writing, and the teaching of Indian history. The result was a wide prevalence of the mix of imperialist versions of India's history outlined above, and an almost total eclipse of India's indigenous historical traditions.
Today the entire academia and media in India are under the stranglehold of this state-sponsored version of India's history which is eulogized as the secular (actually pseudo-secular) version, and is supposed to promote national integration.

Voices of dissent are met not with solid evidence or straight logic but with a swearology coined by subversive politics. Many scholars have been hounded out. Many others have been silenced. Till the coming of the World Wide Web gave an uncensored medium where such a viewpoint could at last be put forth in front of a global audience to be accepted or rejected on the strength of its merits.

The Realistic Historian's Responsibility

Sanatana Parampara is another name for the Indian intellectual tradition. Universal Humanism as typified by the statement Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The World is ONE family) and Rationalism and Intellectual and Theological Liberty as typified by the statement Ekam Sat Viprah Bahuda Vadanti (Reality is ONE, different people call it with different names) are the heart and soul of Sanatana Parampara. There is nothing Indian or Hindu about these thoughts, they are just positive human thoughts. The only thing that associates them with India and Hinduism is that they have existed in this part of our globe which we call India and which has been the home of those who cherished these values - people whom folks from other parts of the globe have named Hindu.

But this heritage of universal relevance has been trampled under the feet of invaders who brought in intolerance, persecution, conversion at the point of the sword. Invaders who represented the anti-thesis of these universal values. Thus not just Indians and Hindus but all of us (i.e. the human species) will suffer a defeat if we fail to face and correct the numerous distortions which this spiritual vision, culture, social philosophy and history have suffered in the process of appeasing Islam. In this context, it is the responsibility of the Realistic Historian to speak fearlessly and frankly of the reality of history and of the nature of all religions and all religious dogma.

Pseudo-secularism might have reinforced our leaders' proneness to pacify Islam on its own terms, but this basic weakness is a gift of the Freedom Movement against British rule.

There is no evidence that Hindus, by the large, ever voluntarily accepted the exclusiveness of Islam as a religion or the medieval Muslim rule as a native dispensation, before the compulsions of the Freedom Movement made this necessary. But without any positive result.


British Created the Hindu-Muslim Divide is a Myth

It was during the course of that Movement that Indian leaders floated the myth that Islam was a religion, that the Islamic invaders were native rulers, and that Indian culture was of a composite character. The leaders had hoped to gain Muslim cooperation against the British. The cooperation never came. But the distortions have continued to stay. There is little hope for truth to prevail, if the myth is not given up and the challenge against white-washing past Islamic misdeeds is not faced in real earnest.

The general architecture of India during the Middle Ages reflects the siege situation that Hindu India had developed under the antagonistic Muslim aggressors. Those were the times when the Muslims ruled Delhi and
every city ruled by a non-Muslim ruler was susceptible to attack without notice.
Most of the cities were then built not on the open plains as was the case earlier,
but in hilly areas and were heavily fortified. (Seen here is the Amber Fort near Jaipur, Rajasthan.)



Another mischievous myth floated during the Freedom Movement was that the British had created the gulf between Hindus and Muslims. The myth has not been given up, although the British have gone away and the gulf has refused to be bridged.

Indian Muslims Overwhelmingly are forced Hindu Converts to Islam

It is high time for us to start facing some hard facts The facts are that an overwhelming majority of Muslim Indians are the same as their Hindu brethren in terms of race, language, culture and a lot more, and that the only point at which they differ from Hindus is their credo of Islam. Had Islam been like one of the spiritual traditions that originated in India, it would not have created the gulf, which has existed and continues to exist between Hindus and Muslims. There is surely something in the character of Islam, which alienates its adherents from their own people. That is the point, which should draw our attention. That is also the point on which Islam has proved to be the most difficult. It simply refuses to be discussed and come to terms with reason or reality.

Islamic Aversion to Discuss Islam

Christianity has been discussed threadbare in all countries where it has dominated the scene for centuries. So has been Hinduism in its own homeland. Then why not Islam? Why should Islam be allowed to impose a ban on free discussion by issuing fatwas of death threats against those who dare to expose the true nature of Islam's medieval barbarism. It is high time that the bluff of Islam is called, so that while one is free to praise it; one can also ask any questions about its origins, its methods, its prophet, its god, its scripture, its theology, its history? Islam enjoys the freedom to propagate its dogmas and invite non-Muslims into its fold. Then why should non-Muslims be deprived of the freedom to examine those dogmas and find out their worth? Why should the pseudo-secularists who never hesitate to tear Hinduism apart, cry wolf whenever Islam is examined?

It is now high time for the triumph of dispassionate inquiry over religious bigotry. This alone will restore the freedom of discussion and dissent for which ancient India's philosophical tradition has been famous.

Let us reiterate that in this context, it is the responsibility of the Realistic Historian to speak fearlessly and frankly of the reality of history and of the nature of all religions and all religious dogma, even at the pain of death. If we fail in doing this, we are being dishonest with ourselves.


Now let us move on to see what Hindu Culture and Ethos comprises.

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