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As per a reporter Me Faisal Kutty's commant :-
Taj Mahal or Tejo-Mahalaya?
Taj Mahal or Tejo-Mahalaya?
by Faisal Kutty
Did you know that Jesus Christ wandered the Himalayas and drew his inspiration from Hinduism? That a Hindu named Samundragupta built the Qutb Minar, originally known as Vishnu Sthambha? That the Taj Mahal was really a Hindu Temple known as Tejo-Mahalaya (Shiva's Palace)? That the Red Fort in Delhi was a Brahmin palace? Or that the largest Holocaust in history was perpetrated by Muslims against Hindus in India?
This is news to me. Probably is to most people. No, these are not extracts from a child's fable nor the impression of a lunatic few. These "historical truths" have been taught for many years at more than 22,000 Vidya Bharati schools operated by the Hindutva movement composed of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) also known as the World Hindu Council, Shiv Sena (Shiva’s army) and the Bajrang Dal (brigade of the monkey god).
Now thanks to a recent decision, these distortions and falsifications are not only being disseminated by these right wing Hindu-chauvinists organizations but by leading educational bodies in the India. Despite widespread opposition, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the body responsible for developing school curriculum in India, decided in November 2002 to rewrite Indian history texts. “It is not a question of revivalism,” says the center’s director, Physicist J. S. Rajput, in an interview published by the Washington Post late last year. “Every country should write its history from its own point of view. Our history books have been written from a Euro-centric view because we were a colony for so long. History books should instill a sense of pride in the young mind and should be rooted in our culture.”
Critics contend that the saffron brigade is using history as a tool for mythmaking and patriotism. Historical research and teaching has become a battleground for the identify and future of the nation. The situation is so grave that the Indian History Congress (IHC), the largest membership- based association of academic historians, passed a unanimous resolution setting up a committees to examine NCERT’s new history textbook at its 63rd annual conference in Amritsar. The IHC concluded its conference on December 30, 2002 on a note of caution stressing that it would remain vigilant in the face of subversive activities of the communal forces in its mission to safronise history.
Interestingly, even before the BJP embarked on its project to rewrite history, there were complaints about bias in history textbooks. In fact, as early as the Fifties and Sixties there were suggestions that textbooks in Gujarat and Maharashtra were inaccurate. A Parliamentary committee, which included Professors K. G. Saiyidin, J. P. Naik and Gopinath Aman appointed to look into these charges, found that historical events were “presented in a manner as to arouse and perpetuate prejudice against certain religious groups.” The committee concluded that “the books were overweighed with Hindu mythology…Hindu beliefs are presented in a manner as if they were universally held by all Indians.” As is the case with most commission reports, the findings were shelved by the authorities.
With the BJP’s victory in four states in 1991, the issue surfaced again as the newly elected governments started rewriting history to promote the political ideology of Hindutva. The governments even directed college libraries to stock titles with clear communal overtones such as Why Hindu Rashtra? Hum Mandir Wohin Banayenge (We Would Build the Temple There Only), Shilanyas se Shikhar ki Ore (From Laying the Foundation Stone to Attaining the Peak), etc. Now, the BJP’s landslide victory in Gujarat last month even after the massacre of more than a 1,000 Muslims in the wake of the murder of 59 Hindu pilgrims in Godhra, appears to have emboldened the saffron brigade even more.
Anyone following the developments in India would have at least heard of the attempts to rewrite history, but not many are fully aware of the magnitude and scope of the endeavor. I was rudely awakened to extent of the project when I stumbled upon an article in Canada’s largest daily, The Toronto Star, a couple of years ago. Ajit Adhopia, a regular columnist in the religion section at the time, was promoting the work of P. N. Oak, the head of the Institute for Rewriting Indian History. Adhopia was praising the "historical research" of Oak in the Saturday edition of the paper, which has a circulation of close to one million. Oak, who has written a number of books, including Some Blunders of Indian Historical Research and Islamic Havoc in Indian History, is one of the main proponents of the view that Indian history, as it is taught today, is developed out of myths planted by British historians and adopted and promoted by Indians of the Marxist, Secularist and Islamic persuasions. According to Hindutva theorists the intelligentsia, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, set out to erase from Hindu memory the history of their persecution and subjugation by Muslims. Another foreign proponent of Hindutva history, Francois Gautier, claims that “Hindu-bashing became a popular pastime.” Why would they do this? Oak, Gautier and those of their ilk have a number of absurd theories. The Marxists wanted to win favor with Arabs who were fertile ground for Marxism and Secularists wanted to nurture Hindu-Muslim unity. Muslims, obviously, had a vested interest in not exposing the fact that they had nothing to contribute to Indian history or culture or that they destroyed thousands of temples and perpetrated the largest Holocaust in history.
Disturbingly, historical revisionism has significant support among Non Resident Indians (NRI) particularly among the wealthy and educated expatriate communities in the West. According to a Times of India editorial the movement survives in part thanks to funding and involvement from NRIs. I was particularly perturbed to read glowing book reviews of these revisionist history texts by prominent NRI academics at Western universities. Consider, for instance, what Professor C.J.S. Wallia of the University of California (Berkley) wrote in his glowing review of Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, a book critiquing secular historians in India: “During the past fifty years, `this bunch of Marxist historians have been suppressing facts, inventing lies, perverting discourse, and derailing public policy’ by seizing control of institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT), large parts of Indian academia, and nearly all of the English-media newspapers and publishing houses.” Shourie, who holds a Ph.D. from Syracuse University and served as the editor of the leading Indian newsmagazine India Today is a prominent scribe of the Hindutva ideology and has written numerous books attacking secular historians and Christian missionaries, among others.
Interestingly, such views are not that new. In fact, the first major endeavor to research Indian history was financed by Nehru (yes, the same Nehru who the revisionists claim is one of the main propagators of false history and whitewasher of Muslim faults) in 1951. This project carried out by a leading Brahmin (an upper caste) historian by the name of R. C. Majumdar concluded that Muslims had distorted Indian history. It also found that Muslims had persecuted the masses of non-Muslims during their reign. A group of upper caste historians set out to make the "corrections" in 1964. This group produced a number of works that forms the basis of the recent efforts to rewrite Indian history.
In addition to working at the grass roots by changing school curriculum the BJP is also working at higher levels. In 1998, India’s Minister for Human Resources and Development, Murali Manohar Joshi, an ardent Hindutva supporter, reconstituted the once respected Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR] by appointing Hindutva leaning members. In fact, of the eighteen new members appointed at the time, four where members of the World Hindu Council's panel that worked to promote the idea of a temple at the site of the Babri Mosque and five others were closely associated with the movement. In February 2000, the ICHR stopped the publication of two volumes of Towards Freedom, a projected multi-volume history research project.
Did you know that Jesus Christ wandered the Himalayas and drew his inspiration from Hinduism? That a Hindu named Samundragupta built the Qutb Minar, originally known as Vishnu Sthambha? That the Taj Mahal was really a Hindu Temple known as Tejo-Mahalaya (Shiva's Palace)? That the Red Fort in Delhi was a Brahmin palace? Or that the largest Holocaust in history was perpetrated by Muslims against Hindus in India?
This is news to me. Probably is to most people. No, these are not extracts from a child's fable nor the impression of a lunatic few. These "historical truths" have been taught for many years at more than 22,000 Vidya Bharati schools operated by the Hindutva movement composed of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) also known as the World Hindu Council, Shiv Sena (Shiva’s army) and the Bajrang Dal (brigade of the monkey god).
Now thanks to a recent decision, these distortions and falsifications are not only being disseminated by these right wing Hindu-chauvinists organizations but by leading educational bodies in the India. Despite widespread opposition, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the body responsible for developing school curriculum in India, decided in November 2002 to rewrite Indian history texts. “It is not a question of revivalism,” says the center’s director, Physicist J. S. Rajput, in an interview published by the Washington Post late last year. “Every country should write its history from its own point of view. Our history books have been written from a Euro-centric view because we were a colony for so long. History books should instill a sense of pride in the young mind and should be rooted in our culture.”
Critics contend that the saffron brigade is using history as a tool for mythmaking and patriotism. Historical research and teaching has become a battleground for the identify and future of the nation. The situation is so grave that the Indian History Congress (IHC), the largest membership- based association of academic historians, passed a unanimous resolution setting up a committees to examine NCERT’s new history textbook at its 63rd annual conference in Amritsar. The IHC concluded its conference on December 30, 2002 on a note of caution stressing that it would remain vigilant in the face of subversive activities of the communal forces in its mission to safronise history.
Interestingly, even before the BJP embarked on its project to rewrite history, there were complaints about bias in history textbooks. In fact, as early as the Fifties and Sixties there were suggestions that textbooks in Gujarat and Maharashtra were inaccurate. A Parliamentary committee, which included Professors K. G. Saiyidin, J. P. Naik and Gopinath Aman appointed to look into these charges, found that historical events were “presented in a manner as to arouse and perpetuate prejudice against certain religious groups.” The committee concluded that “the books were overweighed with Hindu mythology…Hindu beliefs are presented in a manner as if they were universally held by all Indians.” As is the case with most commission reports, the findings were shelved by the authorities.
With the BJP’s victory in four states in 1991, the issue surfaced again as the newly elected governments started rewriting history to promote the political ideology of Hindutva. The governments even directed college libraries to stock titles with clear communal overtones such as Why Hindu Rashtra? Hum Mandir Wohin Banayenge (We Would Build the Temple There Only), Shilanyas se Shikhar ki Ore (From Laying the Foundation Stone to Attaining the Peak), etc. Now, the BJP’s landslide victory in Gujarat last month even after the massacre of more than a 1,000 Muslims in the wake of the murder of 59 Hindu pilgrims in Godhra, appears to have emboldened the saffron brigade even more.
Anyone following the developments in India would have at least heard of the attempts to rewrite history, but not many are fully aware of the magnitude and scope of the endeavor. I was rudely awakened to extent of the project when I stumbled upon an article in Canada’s largest daily, The Toronto Star, a couple of years ago. Ajit Adhopia, a regular columnist in the religion section at the time, was promoting the work of P. N. Oak, the head of the Institute for Rewriting Indian History. Adhopia was praising the "historical research" of Oak in the Saturday edition of the paper, which has a circulation of close to one million. Oak, who has written a number of books, including Some Blunders of Indian Historical Research and Islamic Havoc in Indian History, is one of the main proponents of the view that Indian history, as it is taught today, is developed out of myths planted by British historians and adopted and promoted by Indians of the Marxist, Secularist and Islamic persuasions. According to Hindutva theorists the intelligentsia, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, set out to erase from Hindu memory the history of their persecution and subjugation by Muslims. Another foreign proponent of Hindutva history, Francois Gautier, claims that “Hindu-bashing became a popular pastime.” Why would they do this? Oak, Gautier and those of their ilk have a number of absurd theories. The Marxists wanted to win favor with Arabs who were fertile ground for Marxism and Secularists wanted to nurture Hindu-Muslim unity. Muslims, obviously, had a vested interest in not exposing the fact that they had nothing to contribute to Indian history or culture or that they destroyed thousands of temples and perpetrated the largest Holocaust in history.
Disturbingly, historical revisionism has significant support among Non Resident Indians (NRI) particularly among the wealthy and educated expatriate communities in the West. According to a Times of India editorial the movement survives in part thanks to funding and involvement from NRIs. I was particularly perturbed to read glowing book reviews of these revisionist history texts by prominent NRI academics at Western universities. Consider, for instance, what Professor C.J.S. Wallia of the University of California (Berkley) wrote in his glowing review of Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, a book critiquing secular historians in India: “During the past fifty years, `this bunch of Marxist historians have been suppressing facts, inventing lies, perverting discourse, and derailing public policy’ by seizing control of institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT), large parts of Indian academia, and nearly all of the English-media newspapers and publishing houses.” Shourie, who holds a Ph.D. from Syracuse University and served as the editor of the leading Indian newsmagazine India Today is a prominent scribe of the Hindutva ideology and has written numerous books attacking secular historians and Christian missionaries, among others.
Interestingly, such views are not that new. In fact, the first major endeavor to research Indian history was financed by Nehru (yes, the same Nehru who the revisionists claim is one of the main propagators of false history and whitewasher of Muslim faults) in 1951. This project carried out by a leading Brahmin (an upper caste) historian by the name of R. C. Majumdar concluded that Muslims had distorted Indian history. It also found that Muslims had persecuted the masses of non-Muslims during their reign. A group of upper caste historians set out to make the "corrections" in 1964. This group produced a number of works that forms the basis of the recent efforts to rewrite Indian history.
In addition to working at the grass roots by changing school curriculum the BJP is also working at higher levels. In 1998, India’s Minister for Human Resources and Development, Murali Manohar Joshi, an ardent Hindutva supporter, reconstituted the once respected Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR] by appointing Hindutva leaning members. In fact, of the eighteen new members appointed at the time, four where members of the World Hindu Council's panel that worked to promote the idea of a temple at the site of the Babri Mosque and five others were closely associated with the movement. In February 2000, the ICHR stopped the publication of two volumes of Towards Freedom, a projected multi-volume history research project.