Shivaji -- Portrait of the King as Barbarian

DM #170 If chowk posts quickly descend into muslim vs hindu views, it is because people lapse into generalities and one dimensional black and white viewpoints. Unfortunately, this is precisely (and uncharacteristically for you) what you have done in your post. Also uncharacteristic of you is personal attacks about ``muslim converts forgetting their ancestral roots`` which is standard bs from Indian posters of a lesser caliber than you (although I would be quite pleased to discuss that personal aspect with you as well if you wish).

I have in my posts below noted some obvious facts about the very significant muslim contributions in many different dimensions to India (including providing the inspiration that gave rise to the basic tenets of Sikhism itself). I dont see any Indian acknowledging it - although too many are happy to denigrate Islam as an unmitigated evil.

Seeing history as from a factual viewpoint, rather than an ideological one, demeans neither hindus nor muslims nor anyone else. On the contrary it is uplifting to both. What demeans hindus or Indians is this stupid chauvinism that ignores obvious historical facts.

dost-mittar #173
dost-mittar, it is the binary approach of either-or implicit in your statement which bothers me. Can`t the complexities of both Shivaji and Aurangzeb be appreciated? This article was about Shivaji which is why I posted #9.

I happen to think of Aurangzeb as an Indian and as a tragic figure who was less bigotted than his latter-day admirers make him out to be in their rush to make him a role model for their own world view, much like the Shiv Sena and Shivaji. My views in #9 do not preclude me from thinking that about Aurangzeb and I don`t see why it should.

You are the one bringing an either-or/ Hindu or Muslim into it, very like Salim_Chauhan and Mantolives` continuous lies that because I will not condemn Shivaji, so I think of Aurangzeb as a foreigner(when I don`t and have said so repeatedly). I am sorry but it is extremely dishonest of you or your friends to keep assigning viewpoints to me that I don`t hold.

Is there any thing new in this world? #170 and 171 are back with Hindu victim hood mantra and as always can only look at the history from their communal glasses.

It is true that Indians (Hindu or Buddhist or Jain) of ancient and not so long ago India did not wear stitched clothes. Sari is a good example of that and so is Dhoti. Whether Indians spun or weaved is not the issue.

Aurangzeb was a reality in India and so was a regional leader like ShivaJi.
Aurangzeb like many other political leaders, needed to make alliances to survive in the brutal war for accession. He was fighting against his “secular” brothers and he needed to gain support from the orthodox Turk and afghan Sardars and also the Muslim population.
He became a namazi muslim.

Histroy would have been different if his brothers were devout Muslims. In that case, Auranzeb would have gone for support from Hindu Sardars and the other local elements. That is the reality of Politics and that is the secular view. But communal minds that we have on display here can only look at things in black and white, hindu and muslim, like we see on display here in # 170 and #171.

Some one mentioned Raja Dahir here. He gets Sindhi admiration because he fought against the foreign invaders but the truth is that he was done in by the sindhi Buddhist in Sindh who did not support him against the Arabs. But Sindhis don’t look up to Dahir as some revered figure. Dahiri is a word used in Sindhi for idiots and sometime immoral person. Raja Dahir married his half sister and was not an intelligent person.

sadna#171:

My perspective tends to be that of Hindus and Sikhs as well, which is perhaps why I really liked your post#9. There is no harm in admitting that we all have identities and we look at current and historical events from those perspective.

Salim:

This was a generalization which allows for exceptions. Yes, you do have a rather unique perspective which cannot be easily labelled. I might add that there are many other Hindus (many of whom rewrote Indian history textbooks) and Muslims like Manto (who has praised Ranjeet Singh and Porus even on this thread) and SameerJB (wherever he is!) who cannot be put into a neat category.

#170, DM Sahib,
It`s not all that black and white. Even when I try to be objective in reading Indian history, I cannot help but cheer for Indians against Bin Qasim and Ghaznavi. I certainly find myself admiring Prithviraj Chauhan against the invader, Ghauri. In other words, I always tend to look at Indian history from an Indian perspective. So, in 1857, I find myself on the side of Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope, JhaNsi ki Rani, Bahadur Shah, and of course Mangal PanDey. It`s not a matter of Hindu or Muslim, or good guy vs bad guy. It`s from the perspective of Indian freedom. Remember that most Indians are with Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan against the Hindu Maharaja of Mysore and his pro-British dynasty.

#170
Rebutting an argument that there was no cloth in India before the Turks arrived can scarcely be called `Hindus singing praises`. Rebutting an article on how Shivaji was dishonest and irreligious because he was `Shudra` can scarcely be called `Hindus singing praises`. Yes there will always be people who term rebutting explicitly way-out arguments such as the above as `singing praises` and `two nation theory`.

That is precisely why articles with reasonable arguments about such things are not published nor are reasonable arguments made by Hindus recognised by people like you nor is anything published about figures like Akbar (because then there would be no opportunity to accuse Hindus.)

It never fails!
Whenever the discussion turns on Indian history, there will never be an agreement between Hindus and Muslims. The two have totally different perspectives on history, which is not surprising. Hindu kings were defeated by Muslim invaders. The Hindu perspective is one of the defeated, with those who fought outsiders and their decendants being their heroes. The Muslim perspective is one of the conquerors, even of those whose ancestors were the defeated ones. They take pride in the achievement of the victors and all the good things they brought and show explicit or concealed contempt for the achievement of the earlier natives. Hindus, on the other hand, sing praises of the achievements of the people who lived in the landmass we call India, before the Muslims invaded. Whether two nations or not, the two will always have opposite perspectives; even the Marxian textbooks` attempt to foist the Muslim perspective on a secular India did not succeed . Those who converted to Islam did not merely change their faith, they also adopted the conquerors` names and their historical perspectives. This is not going to change, whether or not one calls it a two nation theory.

When you migrate to a part of India where your mother tongue or dialect is not spoken your caste becomes immaterial. You will be treated as foreigner and unless you are loud mouth Brahmin of your place of origin most likely you are a trader or artisan practicing your inherited trade. You are Luhar, Suthar, Mochi etc. But this is also not universally true. If you are an uprooted Mochi you most likely are looking for work in your new home which could be anything.

This idea that caste system was strictly enforced is a myth. It was enforced strictly only if you did not know how to migrate. Different regions of India have no real insurmountable barriers as far as travel and migration is concerned. And in new city you survive by adaptation. Adaptation usually means new trade.

amanasandhu: It is true that cloth was spun in India long before Islam. But stitched clothes seems (at least from what I read) to have been a muslim introduction. As was the charkhha - the impact of the charkhha on spinning I am not sure and hope to learn more about (any references from anyone welcomed).

I dont think there is anything in my posts to suggest that India was civilized only by the coming of Islam, as you seem to think. What I am saying is that the many positive aspects of the muslim ``invasion`` of the subcontinent do not seem to register with indian posters on chowk who see it as an unmitigated evil at worst (with Aurangzeb being the devil incarnate in their view) or something barely tolerable at best.

In that spirit, here is one more example, and this is not out of muslim conceipt or to annoy our most honored Indians chowkies but just to illustrate the above point:

Where, if not from the undeniably positive influence of the muslim ``invaders`` in sindh, did Sikhism borrow the key concepts of monotheism and of egalitarianism? Granted that monotheism may not seem to be a big deal in practice, but surely egalitarianism is something of significant value that muslims have contributed to India (most visibly in the form of the rise of Sikhism). Resonable replies welcome. :-)

Egypt-India trade in BC
Under Centuries of Sand, a Trading Hub
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
July 9 2002
NY Times

``The biggest ships sailed the monsoons to and from India to satisfy the bounding appetites in the Mediterranean world for spices, precious stones and other exotic goods.

So robust was the India trade 2,000 years ago that Emperor Tiberius, concerned over Rome`s increasingly adverse balance of payments, complained that ``the ladies and their baubles are transferring our money to foreigners.``

Perhaps the greatest of these ports in the India trade was Berenike, about 600 miles south of Suez, near Egypt`s border with Sudan.``



``Their spades uncovered building ruins, teak and metal from ships, sail cloth, sapphires and beads, wine and stores of peppercorns. Some of the goods show that Berenike was trading, at least indirectly, with places as far away as Thailand and Java. Inscriptions and other written materials in 11 different languages, Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin, Coptic and Sanskrit, attest to the cosmopolitan mix of people who lived in or passed through the town.``

``Their excavations revealed that Berenike experienced three periods of prosperity. The first was in the early Ptolemaic times, the third and second centuries B.C. Then after a century of decline, the port under the Romans enjoyed its second and greatest boom, in the late first century B.C. and through the first century A.D.

An enormous Roman rubbish dump, covering some of the Ptolemaic ruins, yielded a variety of ancient Indian goods, ranging from Indian coconuts and batik cloth to glass beads and gems. A pot held 16 pounds of peppercorns, one of the most common commodities. ``If you find it in the trash, then the amount transported through the town must have been mind-boggling,`` Dr. Wendrich said.``

Ranjit,

In addition to my post on Ranjit Singh- allow me to say that I consider Raja Poru as great a hero as Maharaja Ranjit Singh... though I do not demonise Alexandar either... Please read the book ``Indus Saga; the making of Pakistan`` by Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, a renowned lawyer and an equally renowned researcher- whose views I agree with 99.99%...

You should have thrown a better question than that... what about Raja Jaipal against Mahmud of Ghazni and Raja Dahir against Mohammed bin Qasim... again- these Jaipal and Dahir were proud antecedents of Indus and hence Pakistan and therefore I respect them, as much as I acknowledge that Bin Qasim changed the landscape of this region.

Amansandhu writes:

``no, wonder akbar ,a known glutton died young``

Maharaja Akbar-e-Azam ruled Hindustan for 49 years from 1556-1605 .. He was 14 years old when he took over.

That makes his age around 63- How young was he? But then who could blame you when you have shown your ignorance about a man as important as Ambedka- Akbar was merely a monarch from the 16th century.

Geeeez man- I am sick of people confidently putting up facts they don`t know the first thing about ..

Amansandhu and Sadna have taken to post libelous bakwas about me on unplugged because they were cornered and made to cry when their lies and bluffs were exposed...

Just so that they don`t miss it: a Fair challenge...

Instead of abusing me and lying about me - mind fighting on facts?

My questions

1- Is Arun Shourie a historian?

2-Is Arun Shourie not a Hindu Nationalist?

3- Is Arun Shourie right in saying that B R Ambedkar was not popular with the Dalits because he lost the limited franchise 1937 elections?

4- Did Dalits not convert massively to Buddhism after Ambedkar asked them to in 1955?

5- Did Ambedkar not die in the 1950s (instead of 1970s as alleged by Amansandhu)?

I don`t know how Gandhi figures into this discussion but I frankly don`t think the man had any redeeming qualities- it is my point of view- why must I be abused, lied about simply because you can`t argue on facts?

Instead of making every discussion into a personal attack on me ... why not answer the questions asked in good faith?

-YLH

Tahmed Indians were spinning yarn eons ago so what is the context of the charkha. as regards to food only pakistanis think food starts and end with mughlai, the most kind of unhealthy food to have. no, wonder akbar ,a known glutton died young. the concieted pak view that civilisation came to india only with islam is what annoys most indians.

Ranjit,

I consider Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his great empire just another example of how the Indus State existed as an independent and viable entity... it was temporary resurgence. The creation of Pakistan and then separation of Bangladesh preserved the Indus state in its original form yet again. Today (Islamic) Republic of Pakistan is a primordial state which has been crystallised by the information age.

As for the great Maharaja Ranjit Singh, my admiration for him is not confined to the fact that he was a great Indus antecedent... but that he was also a remarkable ruler, a fairly just ruler and a ruler under whose wise rule, the Indus (or most of it anyway) became a great independent and sovereign state.


Sadna...

If what I have put up are lies (and I have quoted directly out of Nehru`s works) they still are a 100 times more truthful than the lies you have put up in the last 6 years... Did Nehru not call Sivaji Hindu nationalist? Did he not then praise him for being a true patriot and embodying the ``Indian Nation``... what conclusion should one draw? That Siva ji was lovey dovey towards Muslims?? Sadna seriously you need to get your positions straight on this... you have tied yourself up in so many knots that you now embody the lies you have so shamelessly woven on chowk for the last 6 years.

Mohar11,

I do acknowledge the need that you feel to abuse me since you could never argue and you feel compelled to waste everybody`s time.


Jang,

The person in question is Nehru not Gandhi. Do you not know the difference... But good that you called Arjunm`s bluff and showed him that it is actually a civics book...

further to #160: and to the list of things like adminstration, economics and so on that i mention in #160, also add spinning, stitching and food as well. as i also read in the book by Keay that I mention, tailoring used to be a ``muslim`` occupation in india until recent times and this was a direct result of the introduction of stitching in india by muslims, btw. i think it is only excess of ego that causes people from having such difficulty recognizing the obvious fact that we all learn from one another.