Author: Vinod Kumar
Publication:
Date: Dec 7, 2004
Maulana Qureshi's, who is also Secretary
of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, is reported to have said that
the demolition of the structure at Ayodhya "is the blackest incident in
the history of the country" and that "it will not be forgotten till justice
is done and the rule of law is established". In response, A Surya Prakash
in his article "Wounds on the Hindu Psyche" (Daily Pioneer, December 6,
2004) has given incidents that are far more horrendous than the demolition
of Babri structure.
Surya Prakash gives the examples
of how the temples at Somnath, Mathura and Varanasi -- among countless
others -- were demolished and what reverence they held for the Hindus.
Has Maulana Qureshi or any other Muslim ever contemplated how the Hindus
might have felt -- or continue to feel -- when the icons of their religion
were ruthlessly razed to the ground?
Let me cite just one more example
of "the blackest incidents in the history of the country". The temple at
Mathura demolished by Aurangzeb was not the first time it was demolished.
A more "spectacular" demolition was recorded by Utbi -- secretary to Mahmud
Ghaznavi.
Utbi in his Tarikh-e Yamini describes
the siege of Mathura in these words: "The Sultan next directed his attacks
against the sacred city of Mathura. The city was surrounded by a massive
stone wall, in which were two lofty gates opening on to the river. There
were magnificent temples all over the city and the largest of them all
stood in the center of it. The Sultan was very much struck by its grandeur.
In his estimate it cost not less than 100,000,000 red dinars, and even
the most skillful of masons must have taken 200 years to complete it. Among
the large number of idols in the temples, five were made of pure gold,
the eyes of one of them were laid with two rubies worth 100,000 dinars,
and another had a sapphire of a very heavy weight. All these five idols
yielded gold weighing 98,300 mishkals. The idols made of silver numbered
200... He seized all the gold and silver idols and ordered his soldiers
to burn all the temples to the ground. The idols in them were deliberately
broken into pieces. The city was pillaged for 20 days, and a large number
of buildings were reduced to ashes."
But Nehru calls Mahmud an admirer
of art and architecture because before he plundered and burnt the temple
at Mathura down he admired its beauty, and not only that he goes on to
call Mahmud "was far more a warrior than a man of faith and like many others
conquerors used and exploited the name of religion for his conquests."
Surya Prakash wrote how Mahmud turned
down offer of large sums of wealth to spare the Somnath temple -- let me
not repeat it here. Ferishta gives another similar example of Mahmud's
religious convictions. Before his demolition of the temple at Thanesar
-- another principal place of worship of the Hindus -- King Anundpal offered
him "that the amount of the revenues of that country shall be annually
paid to Mahmood and a sum shall also be paid to reimburse him for the expense
of the expedition, besides which on his own he will present him with fifty
elephants and jewels to a considerable amount." As in the case of the offer
at Somnath, Mahmud turned the offer down saying, as Ferishta writes: "The
religion of the faithful inculcates the following tenet: 'That in proportion
as the tenets of the Prophet are diffused, and his followers exert themselves
in subversion of idolatry, so shall be their reward in heaven;' that, therefore,
it behoved him, with the assistance of God, to root out the worship of
idols from the face of all India. How then should he spare Thanesar?"
Evidently Mahmud not interested
just in wealth, he had a more important duty to perform.
In contrast, the Hindus offered
to relocate the Babri masjid to another location at their expense. They
were not interested in demolition of the structure just in the site it
stood upon.
But I have yet to hear any Muslim
calling any of the destruction of thousands of Hindu temples by Muslim
invaders and rulers from Kasim to Aurangzeb "the blackest incident in the
history of the country".
Many contend that the Muslims destroyed
the Hindu temples for the wealth that the Hindus had accumulated in them.
This does not stand even the basic
test of logic. While we can understand human greed but we fail to understand
why one interested only in plunder would go to disfigure the stone idols
and break them in pieces -- how does this enrich the one interested in
wealth alone?
We can, for the sake of argument,
accept than in fury of war one destroyed the stone idols but again why
would one just interested in plunder of wealth ship the broken pieces of
idols all the way to Ghazna to be kept in front of the main mosque so that
the faithful can tread upon them as they enter. This
only one who is interested in destroying
the idolatry would do.
The true nature of Muslim rule in
India was captured by Will Durant in his History of Civilization. Describing
the rule of Aurangzeb, he wrote: "Aurangzeb cared for nothing for art,
destroyed its 'heathen' monuments with coarse bigotry, and fought, through
a reign of half a century, to eradicate from India almost all religions
but his own. He issued orders to the principal governors, and to his other
subordinates, to raze to the ground all the temples of either Hindus or
Christians, to smash every idol, and to close every Hindu school. In one
year (1679 - 80) sixty-six temples were broken to pieces in Amber alone,
sixty-three at Chitor, one hundred and twenty-three at Udaipur; and over
the site of a Benares temple especially sacred to the Hindus he built,
in deliberate insult, a Mohammedan mosque. He forbade all public worship
of the Hindu faith, and laid upon every unconverted Hindu a heavy capitation
tax. As a result of his fanaticism, thousands of temples which had represented
the art of India through a millennium were laid in ruins. We can never
know, from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty she once possessed."
Aurangzeb, like Mahmud, is an important
figure in Indian History. He was, again like Mahmud, one of the most devout
Muslims to rule India. He is reported to have memorized the entire Koran
and regarded by the Muslims as Alamgir and "Living pir".
The Muslim invasions and rule of
India is full of so many "blackest incidents in the history of the country"
that is difficult to recount. But what our Muslim brothers can see is only
the Babri structure.
Another anniversary of "the blackest
day in the history of the land" has come and gone.
Given the sad history of India and
the events leading to the demolition of the Babri structure, is it not
about time to give up the rhetoric and come to the terms with reality.
Muslims should read the history of Muslim invasions and rule as written
by the contemporary Muslim historians and ask if what the Muslims did to
the Hindus was done to them by the Hindus, how would they have felt?
End of matter