Negationism

(Such negationism should be equal to “holocaust-denial”.)

Examples

  • In the Ram Mandir/ Babri masjid case, several “scholars” made shoddy claims.
  • Several scholars such as Llewelyn Morgan [KE] and Eaton (Koenraad Elst’s Eaton rebuttal) have been temple-destruction deniers.
  • Note: at 38:01 in this National Geographic documentary, they say: “These statues did not loose their heads by accident… What the Hindu priests started, muslim invaders completed.” Equating Hindu priests and Muslim invaders is vile deception. There is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that Hindu priests “beheaded statues”.

Eaton’s thesis

If you read his book Temple Destructions, there are three main, and more problematic points he posits, viz:

    1. Politics not theological iconoclasm was Muslim rulers’ motivation
    1. In this Muslims were only taking forward what more or less Hindus themselves were doing earlier.
    1. Don’t trust a Muslim chronicler when he explicitly states his/Sultan’s actions and thoughts plain and simple — he is just aggrandizing

As for the count of 80 - he doesn’t even argue about estimated number - that’s not even his point. It’s just a minimum number of well-documented verifiable cases as per him.

Negationist claims and tricks

  • Hide the context trick:
    • “In the TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that I posted last week, she notes that if you want to dispossess a people, start with “Secondly.” In other words, if you want to dispossess Native Americans, don’t start telling the story with the incursions and violence of European invaders, start with the arrows shot by Native warriors and make it look as though it was without provocation. If you want to dispossess polytheistic Hindus, start with the statue in the mosque, not the appropriation of a site of Hindu reverence. The way a story is told matters.” [krasskova16]

Hindu iconoclasm technique

  • Claim: Hindu and other pagan kings did it to their temples too!

  • Claim: “The reverse happened too.”

    • Lots of old mosques are now Gurdwaras in Punjab".

  • “Lots of old mosques are now Gurdwaras in Punjab”.

    • Above claim is unverified.

    • The mosques in question were abandoned. “After the Partition of undivided India, Muslims who were in majority in the area, left for Pakistan. Hundreds of mosques were left unattended. Now these mosques have either been destroyed by savagery of times or are under personal control of people who later occupied them.” [milligazette artcile]

    • “Hindu kings of Vijayanagar (Rama Raya) and by Aurangzeb appropriated some of the Shia ones as stables for his horses”.

Muslim patronage technique

  • Claim: Muslim kings patronized and protected hindu centers of worship… “Such actions in effect projected a hierarchy of hybridised political and religious power that descended downward from the Mughal emperor to his mansabdar, from the mansabdar to the god Jagannath and his temple, from Jagannath to the sub-imperial king who patronised the god, and from the king to his subjects.”( Eaton)
  • See Tactical tolerance pages.

Protection from deadly Mongols canard.

  • Falsehood: By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north." Ludden, D. (13 June 2002), India and South Asia: A Short History
  • And as far as the great Mongols (those not subverted by the Religion of Peace like Mughals and Timurids)- why, they were our great friends and students. If they were to have invaded India, we would have been treated the way they treated Tibet. (Manasatarangini on Hamira-deva.)

“It was about power, not religion” technique

  • Claim: “Muslim iconoclasm practiced against indigenous religions in India was almost always done as a result of state sponsorship to establish political supremacy over regions conquered or subjected, and not as a matter of religions conviction in a intolerant, monotheistic faith that received divine sanction to triumph over other, apparently lesser or antithetical, ones. The primary structures of Hindu and Muslim religious architecture, the temple and the mosque, have had a fundamental difference almost since their inception: the major Hindu temples of a kingdom housed the kuladevata, or the divinity of the race/clan, of which the acting king was but a regent. .. depredations were resorted chiefly to annul the visible symbols of Hindu political power.”

    • Why would muslim iconoclasm in India differ so much from muslim iconoclasm elsewhere (Recall the Sphynx in egypt, buddha-s of bAmiyAn, yazidi shrines in sinjAr)?
    • How did hindu conquest of other hindu kingdoms not need similar destruction of “kuladevatA-s”?
    • Numerous Muslim rulers and their chroniclers described themselve-s as ghAzi-s motivated by Islam. Why doubt them? (eg: paThAnkoT15)
    • Why were mosques built by muslim rivals not destroyed with equal frequency, since they were also “symbols of the previous dynasty’s power”?

  • audrey truschke’s claim paraphrased:

    • “Awrangzeb distanced himself from Hindu practices because he hated his brother dArA shikoh who liked them.”, in contrast with contemporary Saqi Khan’s Maasir i Alamgiri, where hatred for hindu practices is clearly mentioned as the cause [IMG].
    • “Why did Aurangzeb ban Holi? Because Holi encourages theft!” [IMG]

  • Muslim kings destroyed mosques as well.

    • This is a rare rexception rather than the rule.
    • Aurangzeb destroying Jama Masjid at Golconda
      • “Aurangzeb laid a siege to Golconda which lasted for more than eight months. More importantly, the vassal had stashed a huge cache of diamonds under the mosque. Aurangzeb ordered its demolition to retrieve the cache. It was not out of political or religious motive. Eight months of siege depletes the treasury and unless Aurangzeb retrieved the cache he wouldn’t have been able to pay his jihadi army.”

hindu heroes were ok with muslim kings technique

  • “hindu heroes were actually ok with muslim kings. it is just the modern hindutva crowd.” technique
  • audrey truschke paraphrased: “shivAjI did not successfully join Awrangzeb’s court because he did not know court manners.”
    • “His main intent of going to the fiend’s liar @ Agra was to temporarily gain access to use their vast resources to smash his 2 old foes Adil shAh and Qutb shAh” [TW]

Negationism in Europe

Just as ekarAkshasa indologists claim that the recycling of religious monuments in “South Asian” was quite innocent, we have their cousins studying Western Eurasian antiquity claim that the demolition&incorporation of Roman religions monuments into walls by the preta-s had an apotropaic function. - MT