^*^TER 15 A CRITIQUE OF INDIAN HISTORY 221 rheral in spite of his role in the two-nation theory and assistance
o the Muslim League. These theories peddled by Bipin Chandra
Hole out the reasons why the Muslims stayed away from the
freedom movement; it was primarily a reaction to the
fu~ndamentalistic impulse of the Hindu freedom fighters.
According to him the National Movement alienated Muslim masses
and because of the Hindu overtones of the freedom movement
the Muslims stayed away and formed the Muslim League. Again
the fault lies with the Hindus. Notice the following gem from
BipHrT Chandra on the National Movement and its character;
”Unfortunately, while militant nationalism was a great step
forward in every other respect, it was to some extent a step
back in respect of the growth of national unity. The speeches
and writings of some of the militant nationalists had a strong
religious and Hindu tinge. They emphasized ancient Indian
culture to the exclusion of medieval Indian culture. They
identified Indian culture and the Indian nation with the
Hindu religion and Hindus. They tried to abandon elements
of composite culture. For example, TijaJ<^..,,gropagation..Qf
the Shivaji and Ganapati festivals, Aurobindo Chose’s semimystical
concept of India as mother and nationalism as a
religion, the terrorists’ oaths before goddess Kali, and the
initiation of the anti-Partition agitation with dips in the Ganga
could hardly appeal to the Muslims. In fact, such actions
were against the spirit of their religion, and they could not
be expected as Muslims to associate with these and other
similar activities. Nor could Muslims be expected to respond
with full enthusiasm when they saw Shivaji or Pratap being
hailed not merely for their historical roles but also as ’national’
leaders who fought against the ’foreigners’. By no definition
could Akbar or Aurangzeb be declared a foreigner, unless
being a Muslim was made the ground for declaring one a
foreigner. In reality, the struggle between Pratap and Akbar
or Shivaji and Aurangzeb had to be viewed as a political
struggle in its particular historical setting. To declare Akbar or
Aurangzeb a ’foreigner’ and Pratap or Shivaji a ’national’
hero was to project into past history the communal outlook 222 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTEI R15 of 20th century India. This was not only bad history; it Wa
also a blow to national unity.” The Prophet expects his flock to realize that Allah had given
them Quran in Arabic tongue and other believer must honour
the Arabic Quran. Later, the Prophet went to the extent of
admonishing the faithful, ”Love the Arabs for three reasons’
because I am an Arab, the Quran is Arabic, and the inhabitants;
of Paradise will speak Arabic”. If that be so did it need any
instruction from the Hindus for the Muslim community to speak
Arabic language in preference to the national tongue. VS. Naipaul
warms up to the same theme in his book Beyond Belief that
these obsessions with Arab, Quran and everything Arabic makes
Muslims revere Arab and the Arabic language and the lore,
alienating them completely from the countries of their residency,
and in the process refusing to share the collective memory of
their past, excepts one that begins after the advent of Islam. To sum up in Arun Shouri’s words: ” In regard to matter
after critical matter the Aryan-Dravidian divide, the nature of
Islamic invasion, the nature of Islamic rule, the character of the
Freedom Struggle-we find this trait-suppersso veri, suggestio
falsi. This is the real scandal of history writing in the last thirty
years. And it has been possible for these ”eminent historians” to
perpetrate it because they acquired control of institutions like
the ICHR. To undo the falsehood, the control has to be undone”. D.N. Jha in his booj^/AndenMncfa,_aii_ Introductory ..outline
makes startling revelation that Lord Indra was ”rowdy and
immoral”, Lord Krishna had a ”rather questionable personal
record”, and Lord Shiva was nothing but a development of
”phallic cult”, while the Bhakti movement represented ”the
complete dependence of the serfs or tenants on the landowners
in the context of Indian feudal society”. No evidence has been
adduced to prove these uncalled for assertions. Based on
hypothetical conjectures these statements reveal how successful
the efforts of Macaulay, the Missionaries and Marx had been. If
any such comments were made against members of the Prophet’s
own families and if even one were to reproduce what they did
and said the Marxist historians would start screaming saying that .»-•”””Tis /4 CRITIQUE OF INDIAN HISTORY223 CHAPTEK .. js an effort to denigrate the glorious figure of Islam. But the
u’ du g0^5 anc’ g°ddeses can be calumnized with impunity i.e. • repuer- ’n brief,... nothing about Hinduism was original every •rlence of greatness or sublimity was fantasy. Every achievement • contributable to the invaders, so much so that even the Maurya rt is of Persian origin. Another pet theme of these historians is
that the Shudras rose in revolt against the ruling classes, while
pone of these has ever been recorded in any history of India.
That the Brahmins invented the theory of Karma to perpetuate
the status quo and justify fatalism. However, they completely
ignored what Krishna told Arjun, when he exhorts him on the
battlefield of Kurukshietra not to accept his fate but to fight
against the evil. The distortion that the Mauryan rule was
oppressive, that the re-imposition of Jaziya by Aurangzeb
was to enable Hindus to live a normal life without any economic
pressure for conversion into Islam and this revenue was to be
collected by honest God fearing Muslims and many such gems
of wisdom, abounded. Thus, while Aurangzeb was exonerated
of his oppressive rule, Mauryan State is singled out as coercive
and overbearing. But these eminences never described the Islamic
law and the armies of Sultanas and Mughal rulers as instrument
of coercion, domination and control. Even Kautilya and Patanjali
have not been spared. Their well meant policies on spies and
laws of the State are quoted as examples of the worst construction
of State policy which promotes prostitution, soothsaying,
poisoning and cash- rewards. But the anachronistic dictates of
Quran, Hadis and Fatwas going to the ridiculous extent quoted
with documentary evidence are laughed away, as fantasies, which
are neither enjoined nor enforced. The two lone sentences in
Quran ” To you your religion, to me mine” and ”There is no
compulsion in religion” are touted adnauseum with utter disregard
to actual happenings under the Islamic rule from its very inception
till its decay, covering a period of almost one and a half millennia.
While the Quran does not ordain the scarifice of cows, the
’slamic authorities in India and the Muslim divines like Ali Mia
exhort Muslim to kill cows in India for the simple reason that
they are sacred to the Hindus. The exact words are ”precisely 224 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTF MS because cows are revered by the Hindus”. Mr. Jha in his bo
condemns the Hindus for animal sacrifices and their abolitio
by the Buddhist cult. He is silent on the uncountable numb
of animals such as cows, goats, chicken and sheep, which ar
slaughtered at every Id. According to Jha this is in order and
therefore condoned. The Marxist historians have again put history
on its head by their statement that the Gupta Age as ’the Golden
Age’, was purely a myth, and that even the so- called Golden
age did not cover the whole of India, which remained beyond
the pale of the Gupta Empire. This loose control and devolution
of power by Gupta Kings do not redound to their credit of
exercising direct control over their dominion. Thus, while Mauryas
were decried for their secularist and so- called coercive
administration, the Guptas are derided for decentralizing the
same. In other words, there is nothing commendable about the
ancient Hindu rulers and their empires. That is the central thesis
of our Leftist historians. Even astronomical achievement of
Aryabhatta.and Varahamihira are not totally their own original
contributions but were borrowed from Rome while another one
from Paul of Alexandria. Aryabhatta’s phenomenal insight about
the earth rotation on its axis and revolution round the sun
enunciated much before Copernicus and Kepler did, are
undervalued because they were ”contrary to the established
Indian notion”. The works of Kalidas are belittled as of little
literary value, because their origins lay in a distant past; Puranas
and Vedic literature were only compiled in their present form in
the times of Gupta. No literary work is known to man, which
does not have its origin and previous accounts or earlier literary
forms outside India is another pearl of wisdom from Jha’s ”so
called Hindu renaissance”. Even the term Hindu is a ”misnomer”.
”It was first used by the Arabs in the post-Gupta period and to
describe the inhabitants. Ancient Indians never thought of
themselves as Hindus.” From descriptions compiled from the
observations of Fahian, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim scholar
who visited India during the reign of Chandragupta-ll .... Indian
achievement in Mathematics regarding the original zero, we
knowledge of Pythagoras theorem, the achievement o Q^PTER 15 /4 CRITIQUE OF INDIAN HISTORY 225 ^ryabhatta and astronomy, the accuracy of their calculations
regarding forecast of solar and lunar eclipses and the facts of
panchang (a long-term forecast of calendar) are trivialized by
these great authors. The theory of Engels, of society passing through five stages
from classless primitive societies to slaved economy, to feudalism,
to capitalism, to socialism and lastly communism, is a Mantra,
which our Leftist historians still chant and ail facts of Indian
history have been sanitized to fit into this theory. The
Communists in Russian Republic had to accept that the periods
and categories enunciated by Engles do not exactly represent
the conditions in China and India, and the master country is
prepared to accept some deviations from the original theory.
But their followers in India, adopt a holier than thou attitude in
fitting the Indian history in their own straight jacket. To justify
this bias there is an overriding need to glorify the Islamic period
and black paint the pre-lslamic era and its traditions. To sum up
in the words of Arun Shourie: ”Thus, there are two points to remember. First, our friends
are not just Marxists they are also Macaulayites. Second,
they are Marxists in a special sense. They are Marxists in the
sense that they have thought of themselves as Marxists, in
the sense that they repeatedly regurgitate a handful of Marxist
phrases and assertions. But more than being Marxist
historians, they have been establishment historians. Their
theories and ’Theses’ have accorded not just with the ’classics’
of Marxism Leninism, they have accorded with the ideology,
which in terms of their theory means, the needs of
Congressite rules”. Macaulay’s missionary technique was to enslave Indian mind,
to denigrate Hinduism, their gods and goddesses, temples and
’dols and the texts held sacred by the Hindus and the language
°f these texts i.e. Sanskrit, which was the lingua franca of our
country till as late as the mid 19th century, and finally to vilify
the Brahmins, who were the custodians of the above features of
the Indian society. The other side of the exercise was to emphasize
the parts i.e. the non-Hindus, original languages, castes and the 226 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTE R15 groups most vulnerable to Missionary activities in the Empire, i e
unsuspecting tribals and the untouchables in order to reap rich
harvests for Christianity. Those who stood for the whole in the
Indian culture and traditions, like the towering figures such as
Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak, Gandhiji, Ramana Maharishi
the Paramacharya, Narayan Guru- were to be denigrated at the
altar of the trinity of the Prophet, Missionary and Marx. It will
be a Herculean task for the present generation born after
Independence, fed on the history of these leftist Marxist scholars,
to separate propaganda from truth and appreciate the pristine
glory of our ancient past culture civilisational ethos and its past
and future. A frequently touted argument by these worthies to be little
the value of our epics, is a lack of historical evidence. There are
any number of ruins scattered all over India from Kurukshetra,
Hastinapur, Dwarika down to Rameshwaram, which only the
purblind can ignore. Be that as it may, while the historicity of the
epics or Puranas can also be placed as evidence in the court of
these leftist historians the lessons therefrom and the value systems
they uphold are as universal and eternal as can be. The scientific basis of the teachings of Vedas and Upnishads
have been proved many times even by today’s scholars. Ram
stands for the ideal and ultimate in the moral code of a man;
Krishna for knowledge and philosophy, and primacy of action
with his teachings on Karmyog; Shiva is the embodiment of
asceticism, the true worship of Satvik Tatva (the purest element)
and the capacity to absorb in self-abnegation the evils of mankind.
Brahma, of course, is the creator, who also writes the destiny of
each living being, bringing in an element of fatalism in the Hindu
thought and thereby making it resistant to unfavourable
circumstances. The pantheon of Hindu gods is not obscurantism
in its intent but a simple way of showing the different faces of
God and all that is good and worth emulating. They are the
symbols and support, the crutches on which Hindu mind ascends
to celestial heights without losing sight of one Brahma, whom
Vivekanand described thus: r TER 15 A CRITIQUE OF INDIAN HISTORY 227 Ekam Sadwipra Bahudha Vadanti (The LORD almighty Braham is one; sages see it in different forms.) Thus, the area of knowledge is finite but that of ignorance
js infinite. Human mind has its limitation of perception and
cannot see beyond what is possible through the tools of science
and the power of reason. But there can be and is another truth
that lies beyond this area of perception, which Vedanta calls
neti-neti i.e., beyond comprehension or description. The history of India needs a new paradigm for study, which
is devoid of Marxist distortions and British colonial intent, the
secularist scent, and the discursive cant of the present day