When Dr. Meenakshi Jain. Was teaching in Delhi University. As she was delved deeper into the history.
It was striking and absolute disparity, dichotomy, between what she had read and what she was teaching.
This compelled her to delve deep into the history and to try understand the reason for manipulation.
That is when she became aware of the magnitude of the deception.
Thus she would like to explain this deception and why it happened.
It's know that India was partitioned on religious lines.
Majority of the people who wanted partition in 1947.
Who voted for partition.
actually did not migrate to Pakistan. They stayed behind.
So, an overwhelming number of people who wanted partition opted to stay behind in India after independence.
At that time, there was rise of what we can loosely call, left historians or Marxist historians.
The genesis of that school of historigraphy was in Allegor Muslim University.
They were in the forefront of the Pakistan demand.
They were left in India.
It was the immediate provocation for them to turn to medieval period Indian history.
One thing that is know about medieval period.
It is the massive destruction of hindu temples.
As an abiding popular memory.
How to counter this memory was one of the objectives of the Allegor school.
And the founder of this movement was Professor Momma D habib.
He is the father of Professor Irfan Habib.
So, Professor Momma D habib was the first person to venture into this field in a very serious manner.
And he wrote a small but very influential book.
It was Mamud of Ghazni.
Mamud of Ghazni occupies a special place in the popular Indian memory.
He is associated with 16 invasions and massive destruction.
But Momma D habib's agenda was to show that religion had nothing to do with Mamud Ghazni's invasions.
So, he said that Mamud of Ghazni was motivated by the greed of a robber.
This is the words that he used.
Greed of a robber. To misrepresent him merely as a robber.
Obviously that book became very influential in the Indian academic circle.
And it acquired a cult status in AMU and other universities.
And that became the way to teach medieval intelligence.
To falsely say that, no invasion, no attack on temples. It had nothing to do with religion.
It was only economic motive.
The greed of a robber as Mamud Hamil from amu put it.
Obviously at that time, many people lack the courage to challenge this point of view. Because it was so ridiculous that it could have been demolished easily at the time the book made its advent.
How could it have been demolished?
It could have been demolished by the simple argument that how is it that the same temples were attacked again and again when there was no vestige of any wealth left in them?
And how is it that Mamud Ghazni claim the status of a Ghazi?
Ghazi meaning the holy warrior.
The first person in the Muslim world to have been accorded the designation of Sultan in recognition of his services to Islam.
So, how can you ignore all these?
Waged holy war in defense of his faith.
India was the land power excellence
of idolatry.
Every place, every square inch of this subcontinent, is smacked of
idolatry.
Which was a great crime as far as Islam was.
This argument, which was initiated by Mahamatavi, it was taken up by subsequent scholars and it extended to subsequent rulers of the subcontinent.
The rise of this left school amu, which has a very impressive body of work.
And some of the things that they did was, first of all, de-emphasized the role of religion.
And to say that economic factors were always the motivating factors in historical development.
Evolution and religion had no role to play in the entire medieval period.
This is one aspect.
Then at some point, they continued the attack and they said that, people are making much of this attack on Hindu temples.
So, they made two arguments.
One was that Hindu rulers before the Islamic advent were regularly demolishing, the temples of their rivals and desecrating images of their rivals.
This is the first point.
And second point.
If this so-called Hindu trauma at temple destruction is actual?
There was no evidence of it.
Because if Hindus are traumatized, then they would have left some literary record.
How is it that there is no record of that period?
Which talks about Hindu trauma.
So, this is a British manufactured debate.
To create division between the two communities.
They said that the Hindu rulers repeatedly, desecrated images of their rivals.
In the entire period before the Islamic advent. There is only one evidence to cite.
There is no evidence of Hindu kings ever desecrating the images of their rivals.
The first case of image appropriation, was surprisingly in the second century BC.
And it refers to a king Carvella. In Orissa. And there is an inscription.
Link to this article.
India partition history 1947.
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