India Unvarnished

What a waste of time and effort it has been! As one interested in serious history, I had set out for a brief unemotional journey down the lanes. But what i got was a half-cooked, biased and a bunch of lies; propagated with an unsubstantiated belief in the self. Murad is actually trying to make political statement(s), separating brahmins from others, suggesting them to be the biggest curse on India. Everything that is positive and undeniably good had it`s roots in Persia.Everything demeaning and unhuman was strictly local in origin. If rig veda has any salient feature then it is derived from Zend Avesta. What kind of history is this Mr. Murad?

You seem to rejoice im many of the findings (many based on your own discovery) and you call it an unemotional look at history. Actually you have interpreted history here, just as you wanted it to be.

Like...

# Early Indians always ate beef..but these brahmins...

# ``Are (Shiv, Krishna, Ram, Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, Ganga) or the concepts of rein­carnation, Dharma, Karma, Ahimsa alien to the Vedas?``

How did you think this question bothered students of history all along?

Dharma,karma, himsa,ahimsa are all sanskrit wordds, hence Hindu in origin but Buddhism and Jainism advocated strong adherence to them.

# Ramayana, Mahabharata were great battles fought in Persia and documented and ``mythologised``

in India. Rama must have made a long voyage to Lanka{gawd!!!}. Do you need to discuss Rama`s character to tell us about Ancient Indian history?

# A baniya festival, a kshatriya festival or a shudra festival...what do you want to say..?

Do you need to discuss Babri Masjid when talking of Moghul history? Muslim invaders destroyed temples because they wanted to loot the wealth..? How simplistic. A few years from now you will say Taliban destroyed Buddha statues because they thought they would find huge amount of wealth in Buddha`s large belly. (sic...Murad your argument stinks..). Do not try to justify history Murad just as we (hindus) cannot justify babri masjid demolition. Indian Muslims are not responsible for the deeds of their ``ancestors`` and the conditions prevalent then.

If discussing Indian history meant discussing hinduism(buddhism, jainism..) and it`s evils then you should also have discussed Islam and thrown more light on it`s evils and life and character of Mohammed (now it might sound ridiculous to you).

You are not biased when you say that there is nothing wrong with Islam but only that the followers knew little islam....

# Just like Islam, Buddhism and Jainism are great simple religions unlike hinduism. Thanks for the concession Mr. Murad. To think that Buddhism,Jainism and Hinduism constitute the same people.

# ``Though some historians have given a strong communal colour to the torture and execution of Guru Arjan Dev, few know that his chief tormentor was no Muslim but a Hindu banker whose daughter Arjan had refused to marry to his son. Paradoxically his main defender was Mian Mir a Muslim divine``

{ another of your logic...that hindus were the cause for everything, basically sikhs and moghuls were bosom pals but for those brahmins... }

# Until the advent of the Turks and then more such tribes...India was in dark ages....and the sole reason for the cultural advancement of moghul india were the persians!!!!!!

You make me laugh Murad.

# Muslims are intolerant today because european powers rode to great heights and they(muslims) started living on past glory...{ Murad you are a genious SIR! }



There are many more issues you have touched which have no bearing on history, which you could have done well to avoid. Many valid and useful information that you have brought out here are lost in a non-sense lens that you used to decipher history. Don`t add feelings to history and neither be judgemental. History is a sensitive subject.

It`s only at the end that I found that you are mainly into advertising. And you did just that Mr. Murad. One solitary suggestion: ``please, stick to advertising, and leave history alone.

At the end of it all, one word kept coming to my mouth: ``NAMURAD``.



no regards, { let good thoughts come to you from all directions }

Pullu (hindu)

On the Misportrayal of India:

Toward a New Look at Indian History

by David B. Gray, PhD

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITmisportrayalframeset.htm

Copyright 2001, The Educational Council on Indic Traditions

Presented at the Asian Studies Development Program National Conference on March 21, 2001

at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL

Introduction

The study of India in the West has long been overshadowed by the concerns of Eurocentric historians, who, to the extent that they studied India at all, did so in a manner that privileged Europe as the motivating force of world history. India has, ever since the classical Greeks make contact with the Persians to the East, been an object of curiosity for Europeans, although until recently their knowledge of India was largely second-hand and imprecise. As Europeans gained greater access to India, it was under the context of the British conquest and colonialization, and this significantly affected the resulting portrayal. India has been represented as lacking historical agency, and serving a role in history that is subservient to the agenda of Europeans. Despite the many recent critiques of colonial orientalist historiography, elements of this tradition linger on in contemporary studies of India, and, in particular, in textbooks geared for secondary school and undergraduate students.

The purpose of this essay is twofold; it will attempt to undertake the following aims:

1. Elucidate the paradigms of Indian historiography that have prevailed in academic writings, especially the notion that India lacks a historical tradition per se, and that India was a passive field activated primarily by the incursion of invading groups.

2. Counteract this notion and restore the historical agency of Indians by stressing the numerous ways in which India served as a powerful civilizing and economic force in the world, not because of invasions but in spite of them. Evidence concerning centrality of India in the pre-modern and early modern world economies should be presented in secondary and undergraduate level texts.

In this paper the former task will largely be addressed. Given the time constraint, it will only be possible here to suggest an alternative approach to the study of Indian history.

Much ink has been spilled concerning the issue of orientalism; in the context of India, Ronald Inden and many others have shown the degree to which the orientalist enterprise was deeply intertwined with colonial institutions. Histories of India produced by this school tended to represent Indian history in a fashion that legitimated colonial rule. This paper will explore one aspect of this historiography, an aspect which is unfortunately alive and well in many current accounts.

One might hope that by now a new model of Indian historiography would have developed, one that stresses the agency of Indians and rejects contrived culturally chauvinist constructions. Fortunately, new models are emerging, but unfortunately they have not yet fully supplanted the older models, which still linger on albeit in weakened forms. One model is what might be called the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. In its strong form, it is simply a version of the Hegelian portrayal, the assumption being that India as a passive, unchanging entity has only undergone historical change when motivated by outside forces, namely active aggressors. While the explicit version of this model has fallen out of fashion, it remains in an attenuated forms in narrative accounts of Indian history that are structured around invasions, making them implicitly appear to be the central events in Indian history.

Now, India was of course invaded over the course of its long history, usually from the interior of Asia. This is not peculiar to India, but is a pattern seen throughout Eurasia, in which sedentary agricultural societies situated along the coasts or in river valleys were periodically invaded by nomadic, pastoral peoples from the interior. This pattern is also seen in East and West Asia as well as in Europe; it is unlikely that India suffered invasions with any greater frequency than these regions. In fact, it seems likely that East and West Asia were invaded more frequently simply because they are far more geographically open to attack. China`s northern border, for example, is simply the open steppes of central Asia, whence invaders descended with alarming frequency. Lacking a natural barrier such as the Himalayan and Hindukush mountains that admirably shield India`s northern border, the Chinese expended incredible time and energy constructing a series of walls and guard posts. Naturally, no barrier is impermeable; walls can be breached and mountain ranges have passes. Since India is no exception in this regard, there is thus no good reason to particularly dwell on invasions as a motivating force in Indian history.

Hegel played an important role in this model of Indian historiography. In so doing, he ignored and indeed discredited the extensive influence India had on other Eurasian civilizations. He wrote in his Philosophy of History that

On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion; that is, it presents no political action. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves. And as in this silent way, Northern India has been a center of emigration, productive of merely physical diffusion, India as a Land of Desire forms an essential element in General history … From the most ancient times downwards, all nations have directed their wishes and longings to gain access to the treasures of this land of marvels, the most costly which the earth presents; treasures of nature - pearls, diamonds, perfumes, rose-essences, elephants, lions, etc. - as also treasures of wisdom. The ways by which these treasures have passed to the West, has at all times been a matter of World-historical importance, bound up with the fate of nations. Those wishes have been realized; this Land of Desire has been attained; there is scarcely any great nation of the East, nor of the Modern European West, that has not gained for itself a smaller or larger portion of it. 1

India so characterized makes the Western colonial aggression and resultant theft of resources appear as an essential an inevitable stage of history; this indeed is the ulterior motive, conscious or unconscious, in constructing an essentalized version of Indian history. The conclusion of this passage, which portrays the colonization of India as something practically every ``great nation`` has done, is also clearly an attempt at the legitimization of the colonial enterprise.

It is now widely recognized that such theories of history are basically ethnocentric justifications of European colonialism. While they are rooted in the very real hegemony achieved by the Europeans of most of the world during the nineteenth century, they err in assuming this achievement was due to an intrinsic superiority of the Europeans. This myth of the superiority of the West is in fact based upon a systematic erasure of the interdependency of humanity, and the negation of the many and real contributions of other regions of the world that made the European rise to power possible.

The colonial perspective lingers on today in what might be termed the ``invasion theory`` of Indian history. This narrative assumes (usually implicitly) Hegel`s idea that India is an intrinsically static, passive civilization, incapable on its own of having a history. Indian history then is taken as the result of a long series of invasions, beginning with the mythical ``Aryans`` and culminating in the invasion by the British. While there was at times warfare between India and her neighbors, sometimes culminating in invasion, India here is no exception to the general trends of ancient and medieval history. To assume that invasions are THE motivating force in Indian history is to fall into the self-justifying theory of Indian history developed by the British to legitimate their exploitive colonization of India.

This pattern is often repeated in contemporary histories of India. These typically begin with a cursory description of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, before moving on to describe the destruction of this civilization by the ``Aryans``, a nomadic people, supposedly originating in the steppes of Central Asia, whose invasion destroyed its older precursor, but who introduced to India their own culture which was to give rise to glories of the Vedas and classical Indian Vedic civilization. This is the first of the invasions that mark the ``invasion theory`` narrative. It is based on one bona fide fact: that there is in fact a strong linguistic connection between European and Indian languages. This theory slips from the factual and into the mythical, however, in making several assumptions. The first is the equation of language and race. The second is that language transfer was necessarily effect through the medium of invasion, rather than by diffusion, peaceful migration or some other means.

There are several inconsistencies with this theory. One is that there is actually no evidence that invaders destroyed the Indus-Saraswati civilization; this theory is in fact based upon the interpretation of several ambiguous Rig Veda hymns. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein have pointed out, archeological evidence points to a gradual abandonment of Indus Valley sites due to climate change, and particularly due to massive tectonic activity around 1900 BCE which changed the course of the Saraswati river and rendered the numerous cities located on its former banks uninhabitable. These changes occurred several centuries before the Aryans supposedly even arrived in India, which is usually dated around 1500 BCE. These changes led to the gradual migration of peoples East, into the Gangetic Valley, a event which is attested both in the archeological record and in the Vedic texts themselves. As Shaffer and Lichtenstein put it,

The modern archeological record for South Asia indicates a cultural history of continuity rather than the earlier eighteenth through twentieth century scholarly interpretations of discontinuity and South Asian dependence upon Western influences. The cultural and political conditions of Europe`s nineteenth and twentieth centuries were strong influences in sustaining this interpretation. It is possible now to discern cultural continuities linking specific social entities in South Asia into one cultural tradition. This is not to propose social isolation nor deny outside influence. Outside influences did affect South Asian cultural development in later historic periods, but an identifiable cultural tradition has continued, an Indo-Gangetic Tradition linking diverse social entities which span a time period from the development of food production in the seventh millennium BC to the present. (Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1999:255-56)

It is not my point here to argue that there was or was not an Aryan invasion. Given the ambiguity of evidence, it is a topic on which I must remain agnostic, although I should add that the burden of proof lies with those who insist on its veracity. Here I would only like to point out the peculiar fact that on such a tenuous hypothesis rests an entire edifice of Indian historiography. The assumption of Aryan conquest of Northern India was elaborated into timelines of Indian history as well as theories of social geography and demography that are extended well into the historical era, as if this one event of the distant past is the key to understanding all of Indian history. As Inden points out,

Presupposing their Aryocentric geography and oriental demography, scholars have represented these states on their maps and read the political history they fabricated from them. That history consisted of the narrative of a society that was made to be inherently dependent on the intervention of a Western political economy for its unity and prosperity. (1990:187)

The next invasion in the invasion theory timeline is that conducted by Alexander the Great. Our sources for this invasion are Greeks, who may have had a natural tendency to exaggerate the significance of this event, which in fact made no impression whatsoever on the Indian historical record. Even in the Greek sources, Alexander`s sojourn in India is admittedly brief; having made it to the Indus River he quickly returned West again. The consequence of this event was the establishment of the Seleucid Greek kingdom in Persia and the Middle East, as well as the establishment of a smaller, independent Greek kingdom in Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan. Their expansion into India proper was prevented by the rise of the Mauryan dynasty in the late fourth-century BCE, which succeeded in uniting most of India under centralized rule.

There is no doubt that the Greeks had an influence in North India and were in turn influenced by the stay there. But this influence has been exaggerated, extending beyond the realm of the probable and into the realm of the wildly improbable. Greek influence was particularly attributed to the rise of Buddhist art and the development of Mahayana Buddhism, casting India`s most significant cultural export as a product of European influence. These theories have been largely discredited, however, and exposed as what they truly are. As Stanley Abe put it,

The late nineteenth-century interest in claiming an originary role for the Greek tradition in early Buddhist art must, at least in part, be understood in the context of this larger European project to construct a cultural lineage back to purely Aryan Greece. The erasure of the non-Aryan within the West was played out in the assertion of Greek (Aryan) influence onto Gandhara. In this sense, the discovery of Greek influence in Gandhara has as much to do with the need of the West to secure its own internal dislocations and self-representation as it does with Buddhist art. (1995:84)

Following the Greeks, the invasion theory timeline moves on to the Mauryan dynasty, and then to the invasions of the Kushans and Sythians. The Gupta dynasty is then covered, only to move on to the devastation caused by the invasion of the Huns. Following the Huns, India is usually portrayed as undergoing a political decline characterized by fragmentation and decentralization, as well as a cultural decline, resulting in the rise of ``unorthodox`` religious traditions such as the Tantric schools of Buddhism and Hinduism. India was then purified by the violence of the Islamic invasions, resulting in the re-establishment of centralized rule under the Moghuls.

This narrative framework is found in many histories of India, including some quite modern ones. The classic version of this history is Vincent Smith`s The Oxford History of India (1919), which has been duly deconstructed by Inden, who makes quite clear the ideology underpinning the ``invasion`` narrative. Inden wrote that

To have represented the kingdoms of India as relatively autonomous agents, as complex, inter-related polities that could unite through pacts as well as `force` within a single imperial formation and create new centres not determined by a fixed military topography, would have undermined this whole orientalist project. So Smith dispatched cruel Huns to prepare the way for the still worse advent of Islam, which would in turn, clear the way for the miraculous arrival by sea of the better Aryan, the Western or European. He could clip the Dravidian jungle and prevent the Russians setting fire to the whole green expanse. The history of medieval decline did not stop, however, by preparing for the modern. If Smith`s history of ancient India was, in effect, a history of its present, his narrative of medieval India was really a parable of the future, of what would happen in India if the British withdrew. (1990:188)

At issue here are not necessarily the ``facts`` of history, but rather the ideology that underlies certain configurations of ``facts``, and the relative degrees of emphasis placed upon them. Even if all were true that would not render the ``invasion theory`` histories unproblematic. Histories are, after all, narratives, and as such are selective in the narrative elements in which they choose to convey. Histories are ideological in precisely this way; ideology is present in the choices historians make. This is not necessarily a conscious process. As Edmund Leach noted,

``Bad`` history is seldom constructed out of fantasy; it is simply that we tend to accept as good history whatever is congenial to our contemporary way of thinking. The good history of one generation becomes the bad history of the next.

In presenting an essentalized view of India as a passive land of invasions, historians of the colonial era concocted histories congenial to their contemporary way of thinking. For us now, presumably, these are bad history, but one might wonder if the persistence of this narrative might indicate that we are not as far from the colonialist mentality as we would like to believe.

How might a new history be constructed? At this point I cannot answer this question definitively, but only offer a tentative solution. This would be to depict cultural influence not as a one-way street, but as a result of complex interdependencies between cultural regions. A more accurate portrayal of India would treat the influence of India on the rest of Eurasia at least as extensively as the influence of other cultures on India. So doing would require a conceptual framework that transcends the academic regional pigeon-holes such as West Asia, South Asia, East Asia and so forth and focus instead on the dynamics of inter-regional connectivity. Such would probably best be undertaken not by a single scholar, but by a group of scholars representing numerous methodological and regional specializations.

Here we should conclude with the hope that new histories do not fall into the same trap of essentalizing India. While we can and should seek a history that places greater emphasis on India`s historical agency, we should not do so with the assumption that there is any essential ``India`` out there which needs to be rediscovered. India is and probably always has been a complex of different cultural and ethnic groups who cannot be reduced to any particular essence. But in writing a history, such diversity must be respected, while at the same time paying more attention to the ways in which Indians throughout history have played an active role both in constructing their own history as well as in acting as influential players in the world.

Notes

1. Hegel 1956, pp. 141-42, op cit. Inden 1990 p. 70.

Works Cited

Abe, Stanley K. 1995. ``Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West``. In Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism. Donald S. Lopez, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 63-106.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1956. Philosophy of History. J. Sibree, trans. New York: Dover.

Inden, Ronald B. 1990. Imagining India. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Leach, Edmund. 1990. ``Aryan Invasions over Four Millenia``. In Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, ed. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 227-245.

Shaffer, Jim G. and Diana A. Lichtenstein. ``Migration, Philology and South Asian Archeology``. In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Johannes Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 239-60.

Smith, Vincent A. 1919. The Oxford History of India. fourth edition, Percival Spear, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

I think that Murad Ali Baig should go back to some History School if he has to even think about writing history again. I think age is getting over him. He probably should retire. Or else go to a mental asylum!

There are many faults in what he has said in this article. Its a pity that such a seasoned man like him (Really???) should make comments on things he doesnt even know. Some of the useless and wrong interpretations in his article are:

Q1. Nobody ever said India was the oldest civilization!!

Q2.Everybody knows that Homo Sapiens originated from Africa. Who said they originated in India???

Q3.What has skin colour to do with this debate?? Did anyone say that India ever had fair skinned people and that led to social problems?

Q6.GREAT THINKING,IF THEY WERE DRAVIDIANS, THEN WHY IS THERE NO SIMILARITY IN THE LIFESTYLE OF DRAVIDIANS TODAY AND THAT OF THE INDUS VALLEY PEOPLE.

Q9. What has the origin of the word ``Magic`` to do with religions??? If MAB thinks that religions had their foundations in magic, then I cant stop laughing at his great finding!!!

Qs10 and 12. Here our great writer is trying to mislead leaders with like sounding names. True, Rig Veda may have borrowed from Zend Avesta. MAB says Devas were Daevas of Zend Avesta, who were Devils. Cant they be ``Daityas`` who are the demons of Rig Veda. MAB is just trying to foment trouble by unnecessary and ridiculous interpretations

Q13. THERE ARE 4 VEDAS !!!! BOTTOM LINE .TRUE THE THE OTHER THREE WERE COMPILED LATER, BUT THEY WERE VEDAS!! BECAUSE THEY ARE REGARDED AS VEDAS. THERE IS NO REASON WHY A PERSON WHO DOESN`T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HINDU MYTHOLOGY SHOULD DECIDE THAT THEY ARE NOT VEDAS!!

Q14. NOBODY EVER SAID THAT SANSKRIT WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGES !!! IF MAB EVER BELIEVED THAT, THEN HE IS A FOOL.

Q15. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT ARYANS DID NOT ORIGINATE IN INDIA. WHY THE DEBATE THEN??

Q19.Their priests were the Arthvan (from Arth, meaning a person of essence).This was probably the origin of the Vedic word Brahmin. Their warriors were Ratheshwar (from Rath, meaning charioteer) and this was the origin of Kshatriya.HOW CAN ``ARTHVAN`` PROBABLY BE THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD ``BRAHMIN``?? AND ``RATHESHWAR`` BE THE ORIGIN OF ``KSHATRIYA``??? DO THEY SOUND ALIKE TO MAB????? OR IS THERE ANY OTHER EXPLANATION??

SO MANY MISLEADING COMMENTS IN THE FIRST 20 SELF MADE QUESTIONS THAT MAB HAS TRIED TO ANSWER!!! FRANKLY, I DIDNT THINK THIS ARTICLE WAS WORTH EVEN A SINGLE MORE MINUTE OF MY PRECIOUS TIME. I THINK CHOWK SHOULD REMOVE THIS ARTICLE FROM THEIR SITE TO SAVE PEOPLE THEIR TIME AND BAR MAB FROM WRITING ANY MORE ARTICLES ON THE SITE.

Mr. Baig

I am not a Hindutva-vadi, or a ``praise-seeking`` Indian. I tried hard to read your essay without any pre-judgements or passions, but boy, do you make it heard.

Unfortunately, you see, I am a brahmin. It is very hard to remain silent when you bash me, my ancestors and effectively try to rewrite our history. My people have persevered over thousands of years, living ascetic lives and on the alms of other castes, to carry forward the knowledge of the vedas from generation to generation. There have been those among us (like in ALL castes) seeking fame, power, and money and have done unnameable harm to others. But hey, ``let he who is without sin cast the first stone`` and all that, right? Brahmins account for 3% of the country`s population and are being systematically eradicated from Kashmir downwards. Please do not indulge in the fantasy that you can heap the country`s ills and bad moments in history upon us and get away with it.

Anyway, your article is anything but objective, and anything but unvarnished. You are doing exactly the same thing to history that the VHP and Bajrang Dal are - trying to tilt it to suit your tastes. I`d like to see how Muslims react if you called Mohammed a ``seducer of women`` - like you have called Hanuman. It is a testament to Hindus` tolerance by and large that slanderous writing like yours is let go without challenge.

Hello Murad

You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .

(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.

(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .

And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .

Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .

Understand

Hello Murad

You are one of the worst writer I have ever seen .

(1) There is a place called kurushetra where Mahabharata was fought and the soil is still red.

(2) There is a place called Janakpur in nepal wheer ram married sita .

And there are many information that are wrong .Idol worship became famous because it gives you a way to pray .

Islam not spread by love but it spread by sword .

Understand

in Question 59 you write:

``Two hundred years later, the celebrated Al-Bukhari, a devout Muslim scholar, travelled the Muslim world to write most of the Hadith or the sayings and examples from the prophet`s life, that now forms a part of the Koran.``

This is completely false!

Hadith do not form a part of the Koran!

The Holy Koran is ONLY as much as was revealed to the Prophet PBUH over a period of 23 years!

Murad,

56. Did Muslim perpetrate forcible conversions?

You don`t give any accounts here, just some baashan. Why not try to list the events from the history ? You do not want to list them, Why? Do you want me to list them for you ?

46. Did Hindu rulers encourage violent religious persecutions?

Now, Here you go hunting for some kind of half-truths, to be pushed as ``history``. Really, in more than 2 millenia of history you couldn`t find more half-truths to be subverted as ``truth``, Right?

http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/KoenraadElst/articles/aurangzeb.html

During the Ayodhya controversy, there were occasional statements in the Hindutva camp confirming (VHP) or denying (BJP) that apart from Ram Janmabhoomi, two other sacred sites should also be ``liberated`` from Islamic ``occupation``: Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath in Varanasi. Though the Hindu business community in central Varanasi has made it clear that it refuses to suffer the inevitable losses which would accompany an agitation in their densely populated neighbourhood, the liberation of Kashi Vishvanath is still on the VHP`s agenda. Therefore, some authors have tried to ``do an Ayodhya`` on Kashi, viz. try to make people believe that there never was a Hindu temple at the disputed site.

Syed Shahabuddin asserts that Muslims cannot possibly have destroyed any Hindu temple, because ``pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat``; claims to the contrary are all ``chauvinist propaganda``. Arun Shourie has confronted this claim with the information given in the official court chronicle, MaasiriAlamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions of temples. Its entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: ``News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor`s command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras``. Moreover, till today, the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.

In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to challenge facts headon. It is better to minimize or to justify them. Thus, Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious Penguin History of India, writes: ``Aurangzeb`s supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.`` But a perusal of the same Moghul chronicle thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion: Aurangzeb had thousands of temples destroyed. And other chronicles, diaries and other documents concerning Muslim rulers in India prove that the practice was not a personal idiosyncrasy of Aurangzeb`s either.

Therefore, a more promising way of defusing the conflict potential which the mosque at the Kashi Vishvanath site carries, is to justify the replacement of the temple with a mosque. Maybe the owners and users of the temple had brought it on themselves? Maybe Islam can be disentangled from this act of destruction in favour of a purely secular motive?

JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out: ``the destruction of the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It appears that a nexus between the sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple existed and it was primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered action against the temple.`` The eminent historian quotes no source for this strange allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk with Mlecchas, let alone to concoct intrigues with them.

Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated variation, now regularly reproduced in the media: ``Did Muslim rulers destroy temples? Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of a local princess by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb ordered the total destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby site. And this is the only temple he is believed to have destroyed.`` This story is now repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim press and in the secularist press but also in academic platforms by ``eminent historians``. It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi Chakravartty, who also reveals the source of this story.

She introduces the quotation as follows: ``Much has been said about Aurangzeb`s demolition order of Vishwanath temple at Banaras. But documentary evidence gives a new dimension to the whole episode:`` What follows is the theory launched by B.N. Pande, working chairman of the Gandhi Darshan Samiti and former Governor of Orissa:

``The story regarding demolition of Vishvanath temple is that while Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal, the Hindu Rajas in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a day, their Ranis may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay their homage to Lord Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were posted on the five mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on the Palkis. They took their dip in the Ganges and went to the Vishwanath temple to pay their homage. After offering Puja all the Ranis returned except one, the Maharani of Kutch.

``A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but the Rani was to be found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was very much enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the Rani. Ultimately, they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in the wall was a moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a flight of stairs that led to the basement. To their horror, they found the missing Rani dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments. The basement was just beneath Lord Jagannath`s seat. The Rajas expressed their vociferous protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded exemplary action. Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have been despoiled, Lord Vishvanath may be moved to some other place, the temple be razed to the ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.``

The story is very bizarre, to say the least. First of all, it has Aurangzeb go to Bengal. Yet, in the extant histories of his life and works, no such journey to Bengal, or even any journey as far east as Varanasi, is recorded. Some of his generals were sent on expeditions to Bengal, but not Aurangzeb himself. There are fairly complete chronicles of his doings, day by day; could B.N. Pande or any of his quoters give the date or even the year of this remarkable episode?

Neither was Aurangzeb known to surround himself with Hindu courtiers. And did these Rajas take their wives along on military expeditions? Or was it some holiday picnic? How could the Mahant kidnap a Rani who was there in the company of other Ranis, as well as the appropriate courtiers and bodyguards? Why did he take such risk? Why did the ``Rajas`` wait for Aurangzeb to take ``exemplary action``: did they fear his anger if they punished the priests or destroyed the temple themselves? And since when is demolition the approved method of purifying a defiled temple, an eventuality for which the Shâstras have laid down due ritual procedures?

One question which we can readily answer is, where did B.N. Pande get this story from? He himself writes: ``Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in his famous book The Feathers and the Stones has narrated this fact based on documentary evidence.`` So, we have to go one more step back in time to find this intriguing ``documentary evidence``. Let us turn to this book, now hard to find, to see what the documentary evidence is on which this whole wave of pro Aurangzeb rumours is based, but which no one has cared to reproduce or even just specify. This is what Gandhian Congress leader Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote in his prison diary:

``There is a popular belief that Aurangazeb was a bigot in religion. This, however, is combated by a certain school. His bigotry is illustrated by one or two instances. The building of a mosque over the site of the original Kasi Visveswara Temple is one such. A like mosque in Mathura is another. The revival of Jazia is a third but of a different order. A story is told in extenuation of the first event.

``In the height of his glory, Aurangazeb like any foreign king in a country, had in his entourage a number of Hindu nobles. They all set out one day to see the sacred temple of Benares. Amongst them was a Ranee of Cutch. When the party returned after visiting the Temple, the Ranee of Cutch was missing. They searched for her in and out, East, North, West and South but no trace of her was noticeable. At last, a more diligent search revealed a Tah Khana or an underground storey of the temple which to all appearances had only two storeys. When the passage to it was found barred, they broke open the doors and found inside the pale shadow of the Ranee bereft of her jewellery.

``It turned out that the Mahants were in the habit of pick ing out wealthy and bejewelled pilgrims and in guiding them to see the temple, decoying them to the underground cellar and robbing them of their jewellery. What exactly would have happened to their life one did not know. Anyhow in this case, there was no time for mischief as the search was diligent and prompt. On discovering the wickedness of the priests, Aurangazeb declared that such a scene of robbery could not be the House of God and ordered it to be forthwith demolished. And the ruins were left there.

``But the Ranee who was thus saved insisted on a Musjid being built on the ruined and to please her, one was subsequently built. That is how a Musjid has come to exist by the side of the Kasi Visweswar temple which is no temple in the real sense of the term but a humble cottage in which the marble Siva Linga is housed. Nothing is known about the Mathura Temple.

``This story of the Benares Musjid was given in a rare manuscript in Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla who had read it in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and give the Ms. to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling his promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we are told, against Aurangazeb persists.``

So now, we finally know where the story comes from: an unnamed mullah friend of an unnamed acquaintance of Sitaram ayya`s knew of a manuscript, the details of which he took with him in his grave. This is the ``document`` on which secularist journalists and historians base their ``evidence`` of Aurangzeb`s fair and secularist disposition, overruling the evidence of archaeology and the cold print of the MaasiriAlamgiri, to ``explode the myth`` of Islamic iconoclasm spread by the ``chauvinist`` Hindutva propagandists. Now you just try to imagine what the secularists and their mouthpieces in Western academe would say if Hindus offered evidence of this quality.

Hi,

Your research seems to have lacked a clear insight and at the same time is biased.

To me it seems more like Brahmin bashing.

Whatever good india could achieve was only due to the Buddhists (before Islamic invasion) and in the later phase attributed to thePersians, Moghuls,..

``Though it may have initially been a revolt against the oppressive Brahmin practices especially their lavish sacrifices, it propagated the concepts of Karma, Dharma, Ahimsa reincarnation that later became a core part of

Hindu philosophy especially through the later Upanishads.``

Now what the hell is this?

Isn`t that Guatama wanted to find the reason for human suffering, why a human has to go through sickness, suffering of old life and finally the death.

Didn`t he want to find the reason for this suffering. Finally he did find it, which was desire.

So how do you say that ``it may have initially been a revolt against the oppressive Brahmin practices``

Also, he started penancing, starving and went through hardships as these were the methods to achieve Siddhi and various other powers but failed

(rather was not onvinced) and left it halfway.

And then you go on to say that ``it propagated the concepts of Karma, Dharma, Ahimsa and reincarnation that later became a core part of

Hindu philosophy especially through the later Upanishads.``

Dharma and Ahimsa were there since the time of Jainism which was practised way before Buddism took form.

``Buddhism, as well as Jainism, encouraged industry and commerce which the Brahmins considered `arth`, or earthly, and thus impure and undesirable. It was the trade and commerce of the Buddhist era that actually contributed to so much of the greatness of India.``

Well if you go through the defination of each and every caste/class

Brahmin is supposed to learn and teach thats his dsuty he is not supposed to collect wealth but live by the donations (bikshas) given to him by the warrior class

The kshtriya class is bound by the duty to protect the country i.e.defeed and wage war

Only the vaishnav is supposed to engage in bussiness

``Alexander`s enemies were not Indian or Hindu. There were no national boundaries at the time and Buddhism was the strongest religion of the time in

India.``

Religion at that time didn`t define national boundaries as it does today. And ofcourse there was never a war like situation b/t the vedic and the budhist thoughts. These crusades and jehads are the product of the ``revealed religions`` like Islam and Christianity. So it does not really matter whether Vedic or Buddhist thoughts hold sway on the people because the culturally the people were the same.

And ofcourse it was a Brahmin Kautilya who was running from pillar to post to form a united stand against the Alexander.

``Did Hindu rulers encourage violent religious persecutions?

These question is like how many Muslim rulers encourage tolerant religion practices?

Ofcourse its just a handful of them.

``It was this spectacular wealth and not the wealth of the land that attracted robbers like Mahmud of Ghazni``

If I am not wrong this guy invaded the northen parts of the Indian subcontinent 11 years in a row. So you mean to say that every time after being looted and gutted down, the poor hindus used to rebuild and enrich their temples so that the robber won`t go empty handed the next year.

``They even took control of the tomb of a Muslim saint, the Sai Baba at Shirdi in Maharashtra.``

Now this is highly ridiculous, how do you know that Saibaba was a Muslim saint. I have read extensively about the saint. Even his close acquantiances could not determine this secret and he never answered this question. He used to say ``Allah malik`` to the hindus and ``Ram Ram`` to the muslims just to create harmaony between them. Though he used to dress like a muslim fakir, his ears were pierced. He used to stay in a abandoned masjid which he used to call Dwarkamai. Even now people don`t know his faith at the time of his birth.

`` Did betrayal cause the success of Arab incursions?``

Its been said that after the conquest the Arabs killed the entire brahmin caste of sindh .THere are two theories 1. the brahmins were the only one who offered resistance ,2. the branmins colluded with the Arabs to win against the local king and hence the arabs didn`t trus them.

Whichever is true, today there is no Brahmin caste among the Sindhis.

``Why did the Rajputs fail to ward off the Islamic threat?``

Now you should look into various aspects here.

A Rajput is a very different type of a warrior. Even a British officer had pointed out that for a Rajput honour is more important than winning a war.For him the code of conduct like fighting till death, not fleeing the battleground and not attacking a fleeing enemy are more important than a war won by deceptive means.

Have you forgotten how Alauddin Khilji deceptively captured the Rana.

Also Islam had brought a very different kind of warfare to the subcintinent. The victor now not only killed the garrison but didn`t even spared the civilian populace.

Regarding the ``johars``, it was to prevent getting dishonoured by the victors. And this happened only if defeat was imminent. The johars of Chittor was done in face of certain defeat in the hands of powerful enemies.

``Many years later, Babur was to remark:

``The Indians know how to die better than how to fight.``

Do you now that he was the first person to get cannons in the Indian subcontinent. I would say he used technology to his advantage.

And as per your long detailed essay about the warfare, such things can be written about the fall of the Mughal empire at the hands of the British, the fall of the Marathas and Sikhs at the hands of the British, the fall of the Maginot line , the fall of the Pakistani defence forces in Bangladesh

Surely defeat is an orphan.

But one thing I would like to add is the failure of teh Rajputs was because of disunity. Prithviraj routed Ghauri at Tarrain with the help pf Jaisigh(if I am right) but the internice b/t them say that he was defeated in the next war.

But the same thing happened to the Marathas, the Siks

Hence I would say that the real failure was no unity against the external force.

``Many Jat tribes settled in north India who were suspicious of Brahmin priests, rites and sacrifices found the practical simplicity of Sikhism and its freedom from caste appealing and became its main followers.``

Give me a break. Why are you dragging this poor brahmin into this. It was a custom to donate a families first son to the cause of the Khalsa. Also majority of the jats are still Hindu by faith. Also Guru Gobind himself raised the Khalsa to protect the native Dharma form the uncultured foreign forces.

``No conversions can survive in any land without conversions of the hearts. Unconvinced converts will quickly revert to their inner faiths as soon as they are unsupervised. ``

Not if generations pass practising the forced religion.

Also, conversions were for monetary benefits, personal reasons like tansen converted simplify to marry a muslim. Also, converting to islam helped some to escape death.

And please don`t say that conversion was not forcible. look at the history Sambhaji, netaji palkar, even Guru Gobind Singhjis sons are all testimony to this.

``They were originally casteless animists and not Hindu. ``

For me any one native to this land is a Hindu. Because for me it is not a religion but a culture in itself.

``Although Islam was avowedly a religion of peace it changed over the 1400 years of its history. In the early years it was the most liberal religion offering equality to all men and giving women better rights than had ever been known before. ``

That will even put the prophet to same.

The prophet himself lead his followers to loot the wealth of passing caravans. Infact he has given rules how to share a loot. This Allahs banda has to kill his maliks creations to fill the pockets of his followers.

And don`t forget that Islam spread through the Sword.

`` On his own authority he rejected 99% of the 600,000 contributions he had received.

On what basis did he select that 1% ?

``Did Colonial Britain exploit India`s wealth?``

So the Bengal famine was whose legacy?

Bengal was the richest province when the British came and became the poorest during their departure.

Hi,

Your research seems to have lacked a clear insight and at the same time is biased.

To me it seems more like Brahmin bashing.

Whatever good india could achieve was only due to the Buddhists (before Islamic invasion) and in the later phase attributed to thePersians, Moghuls,..

``Though it may have initially been a revolt against the oppressive Brahmin practices especially their lavish sacrifices, it propagated the concepts of Karma, Dharma, Ahimsa reincarnation that later became a core part of

Hindu philosophy especially through the later Upanishads.``

Now what the hell is this?

Isn`t that Guatama wanted to find the reason for human suffering, why a human has to go through sickness, suffering of old life and finally the death.

Didn`t he want to find the reason for this suffering. Finally he did find it, which was desire.

So how do you say that ``it may have initially been a revolt against the oppressive Brahmin practices``

Also, he started penancing, starving and went through hardships as these were the methods to achieve Siddhi and various other powers but failed

(rather was not onvinced) and left it halfway.

And then you go on to say that ``it propagated the concepts of Karma, Dharma, Ahimsa and reincarnation that later became a core part of

Hindu philosophy especially through the later Upanishads.``

Dharma and Ahimsa were there since the time of Jainism which was practised way before Buddism took form.

``Buddhism, as well as Jainism, encouraged industry and commerce which the Brahmins considered `arth`, or earthly, and thus impure and undesirable. It was the trade and commerce of the Buddhist era that actually contributed to so much of the greatness of India.``

Well if you go through the defination of each and every caste/class

Brahmin is supposed to learn and teach thats his dsuty he is not supposed to collect wealth but live by the donations (bikshas) given to him by the warrior class

The kshtriya class is bound by the duty to protect the country i.e.defeed and wage war

Only the vaishnav is supposed to engage in bussiness

``Alexander`s enemies were not Indian or Hindu. There were no national boundaries at the time and Buddhism was the strongest religion of the time in

India.``

Religion at that time didn`t define national boundaries as it does today. And ofcourse there was never a war like situation b/t the vedic and the budhist thoughts. These crusades and jehads are the product of the ``revealed religions`` like Islam and Christianity. So it does not really matter whether Vedic or Buddhist thoughts hold sway on the people because the culturally the people were the same.

And ofcourse it was a Brahmin Kautilya who was running from pillar to post to form a united stand against the Alexander.

``Did Hindu rulers encourage violent religious persecutions?

These question is like how many Muslim rulers encourage tolerant religion practices?

Ofcourse its just a handful of them.

``It was this spectacular wealth and not the wealth of the land that attracted robbers like Mahmud of Ghazni``

If I am not wrong this guy invaded the northen parts of the Indian subcontinent 11 years in a row. So you mean to say that every time after being looted and gutted down, the poor hindus used to rebuild and enrich their temples so that the robber won`t go empty handed the next year.

``They even took control of the tomb of a Muslim saint, the Sai Baba at Shirdi in Maharashtra.``

Now this is highly ridiculous, how do you know that Saibaba was a Muslim saint. I have read extensively about the saint. Even his close acquantiances could not determine this secret and he never answered this question. He used to say ``Allah malik`` to the hindus and ``Ram Ram`` to the muslims just to create harmaony between them. Though he used to dress like a muslim fakir, his ears were pierced. He used to stay in a abandoned masjid which he used to call Dwarkamai. Even now people don`t know his faith at the time of his birth.

`` Did betrayal cause the success of Arab incursions?``

Its been said that after the conquest the Arabs killed the entire brahmin caste of sindh .THere are two theories 1. the brahmins were the only one who offered resistance ,2. the branmins colluded with the Arabs to win against the local king and hence the arabs didn`t trus them.

Whichever is true, today there is no Brahmin caste among the Sindhis.

``Why did the Rajputs fail to ward off the Islamic threat?``

Now you should look into various aspects here.

A Rajput is a very different type of a warrior. Even a British officer had pointed out that for a Rajput honour is more important than winning a war.For him the code of conduct like fighting till death, not fleeing the battleground and not attacking a fleeing enemy are more important than a war won by deceptive means.

Have you forgotten how Alauddin Khilji deceptively captured the Rana.

Also Islam had brought a very different kind of warfare to the subcintinent. The victor now not only killed the garrison but didn`t even spared the civilian populace.

Regarding the ``johars``, it was to prevent getting dishonoured by the victors. And this happened only if defeat was imminent. The johars of Chittor was done in face of certain defeat in the hands of powerful enemies.

``Many years later, Babur was to remark:

``The Indians know how to die better than how to fight.``

Do you now that he was the first person to get cannons in the Indian subcontinent. I would say he used technology to his advantage.

And as per your long detailed essay about the warfare, such things can be written about the fall of the Mughal empire at the hands of the British, the fall of the Marathas and Sikhs at the hands of the British, the fall of the Maginot line , the fall of the Pakistani defence forces in Bangladesh

Surely defeat is an orphan.

But one thing I would like to add is the failure of teh Rajputs was because of disunity. Prithviraj routed Ghauri at Tarrain with the help pf Jaisigh(if I am right) but the internice b/t them say that he was defeated in the next war.

But the same thing happened to the Marathas, the Siks

Hence I would say that the real failure was no unity against the external force.

``Many Jat tribes settled in north India who were suspicious of Brahmin priests, rites and sacrifices found the practical simplicity of Sikhism and its freedom from caste appealing and became its main followers.``

Give me a break. Why are you dragging this poor brahmin into this. It was a custom to donate a families first son to the cause of the Khalsa. Also majority of the jats are still Hindu by faith. Also Guru Gobind himself raised the Khalsa to protect the native Dharma form the uncultured foreign forces.

``No conversions can survive in any land without conversions of the hearts. Unconvinced converts will quickly revert to their inner faiths as soon as they are unsupervised. ``

Not if generations pass practising the forced religion.

Also, conversions were for monetary benefits, personal reasons like tansen converted simplify to marry a muslim. Also, converting to islam helped some to escape death.

And please don`t say that conversion was not forcible. look at the history Sambhaji, netaji palkar, even Guru Gobind Singhjis sons are all testimony to this.

``They were originally casteless animists and not Hindu. ``

For me any one native to this land is a Hindu. Because for me it is not a religion but a culture in itself.

``Although Islam was avowedly a religion of peace it changed over the 1400 years of its history. In the early years it was the most liberal religion offering equality to all men and giving women better rights than had ever been known before. ``

That will even put the prophet to same.

The prophet himself lead his followers to loot the wealth of passing caravans. Infact he has given rules how to share a loot. This Allahs banda has to kill his maliks creations to fill the pockets of his followers.

And don`t forget that Islam spread through the Sword.

`` On his own authority he rejected 99% of the 600,000 contributions he had received.

On what basis did he select that 1% ?

``Did Colonial Britain exploit India`s wealth?``

So the Bengal famine was whose legacy?

Bengal was the richest province when the British came and became the poorest during their departure.

MORAL OF THE STORY

Hindus are fools/weak/corrupt

Muslims are smart/brave/honest

So ,when do u plan to get pakistani citizenship Mr. Baig.A braveheart like u must not live in a country full of infidels.

Congratulations to Mr MA Baig for his very readable essay,``India Unvarnished``. It deserves to be widely distributed as a pamphlet or a book.

I hope we shall hear more from him in the future.

My congratulations to Mr Murad Ali Baig for the

clarity and readableness of his excellent essay

``India Unvarnished``. He should consider publishing

it as a pamphlet, or if he has time, expanding it

into a book.

It is the first time I have read that the Arabs

were repulsed several times in their invasion of

Sind. Some of the other factual information and

his commentary on events was most interesting.

Thanks to ``Chowk`` and Sulekha.com for making this

essay available on the Internet.

AN ICON OF WORLD & INDIA BISMILLAH KHAN IS BEGGING WHAT KASHMIR CAN EXPECT MORE

If bharat Ratna recepient some sort of Award ,obviously not much worth in his own country but his Shenai c.d. sells for premium dollars both here & Japan

Now if one of a kind player of a shehnai not many players out side indo pak continent ,is begging (see pic in thelink ) what chance does average joe Mohommed Syed Khan has in India.May be Azharuddin ,but he found the short lived euphoria when Hindu giveth what Hindu taketh in Bharat secularism

http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=1174154641

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002

THE TIMES OF INDIA CITIES: HYDERABAD POWERED BY

INDIATIMES

Bismillah Khan humiliated

HINA KAUSAR ALAM

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002 1:48:20 AM ]

YDERABAD: Shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan was in tears as he described to The Times of India, the hardships he was put through over the last two days by the state government and the Andhra Pradesh Lalita Kala Vedika (APLKV), a private cultural organisation.

He was made to run from pillar to post for a place to stay and to claim his performance fee. ``Hamara man Hyderabad se chal gaya (I am heart-broken with Hyderabad),`` Khan Saheb said.

The 86-year-old Bharat Ratna was to perform at Necklace Road as part of the Festival of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday. But the show was cancelled due to bad weather. He was also scheduled to play at Ravindra Bharati on Wednesday in a programme arranged by APLKV, which too did not happen. He will now perform at Necklace Road on Thursday evening.

APLKV founder R V Ramanamurthy took the initiative to invite the ustad to perform at the Festival of AP. Ramanamurthy said, ``I approached Tourism Director G Kishen Rao in December with a proposal to honour the ustad and asked him if Bismillah Khan`s performance could be included in the Festival of AP.`` He says Kishan Rao approved, but only if the maestro agreed to a Rs 3 lakh fee instead of his regular fee of Rs 5 lakh. Bismillah Khan agreed.

According to Ramanamurthy, Kishan Rao agreed to contribute Rs 2 lakh towards the fee with the APLKV pooling in Rs 1 lakh. This deal agreed, APLKV was told to make the arrangements, Ramanamurthy says.

Ramanamurthy went ahead and arranged for Khan`s travel to Hyderabad on Jan. 7, one day ahead of the Necklace Road performance. But in the meantime, the deal between APLKV and the tourism director to split the bill fell through. Ramanamurthy claims Kishan Rao backed out of his commitment to contribute Rs 2 lakh. The latter offered to give just Rs 1 lakh.

So, just a day before the performance, Ramanamurthy says he had a maestro on his hands with his accommodation not yet arranged for and no money to pay for the performance. When Bismillah Khan reached Hyderabad, he was taken to the state guest house Manjira, but had to wait in the taxi for nearly two hours.

``I pleaded with the authorities to let him stay but they refused as he was not a state guest,`` Ramanamurthy claimed. Kishan Rao denied Ramanamurthy`s allegations. ``I did not make any promises,`` he said. ``I was actually trying to rescue the deal and see to it that the maestro does not face any more trouble,`` Kishan Rao said.

After two days, Bismillah Khan was on Wednesday given the status of state guest and the state government agreed to meet all his expenses. Despite his harrowing experience, Bismillah Khan said he was finally going to perform at Necklace Road on Thursday.

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 09 2002



http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html

Cover story

THE TIMES, UK



A state of war



BY TREVOR FISHLOCK



The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?



Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.

Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.

In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.

It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.

Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.

The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.

Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.

The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.

At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.

Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.

India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.

India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.

Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.

Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.

Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.

Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.

The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.

Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.

In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.

Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.

It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.

It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.

In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.

People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.

Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.