Brannon Parker is a white American from the USA living in Hawaii islands. He has great interest in the Indian history. He has also lived and studied in India. After reading all sorts of strange things about Indian history in the American schools, Parker began his independent research. Ultimately he reached the conclusion that most of the wrong information about India’s past has reached America via Indian authors themselves, especially through the books penned by Romila Thapar. Which is why Parker felt annoyed when, in April 2003, the US Congress Library appointed Thapar to its prestigious Kluge Center for research on the awareness of history in ancient India. After all, he is himself an American and not an Indian. He resented such waste of public money. He did not think it fit to remain silent. He wrote a letter to the US Congress.
By the US standards, it was an ordinary matter. But not for our beleaguered Marxists who are obsessed with a destructive passion: if we are finished we'll ensure that even you won't survive as well. So they invented a Hindu conspiracy behind Parker’s protest in the distant USA. With the help of their foreign cohorts, they started denigrating Parker as an agent of Hindu nationalists on a website called South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.sacw.net/).
Parker was astonished. To those who had started the propaganda against him, Parker said
What Parker told his accusers is applicable to most Marxists including Ms Thapar. Dr Karan Singh, then a senior Minister in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cabinet once accused that
In fact, any Indian who knows the true history of his/her own country, who knows the basics of Hinduism and the Indian tradition should have been as disturbed as Dr Singh. However, due to the indifferent attitude of the Hindu urban classes, they generally did not react to the writings of Romila Thapar. Many of our good scholars were even unconcerned about what she wrote. Those who did see what she wrote could obviously understand the innately political reasons behind such writings.
Till very recently, the entire Western world, European scholars and even Christian missionaries, recognised that in matters of religion, Hindus are the most tolerant people in the world. In the 19th century Christian missionaries abused Hindu gods, for example ‘the terrible Kali’, ‘the obscene phallus’, ‘the foolish Ganesh’ or ‘the lecherous Krishna’ but Hindu pundits just laughed it away. No anger or violence by Hindus was ever heard over such abuses. Islamic aalims and ulemas of the mediaeval period also knew about this characteristic Hindu tolerance.
India is the only country in the entire world where persecuted people from outside distant lands in search of shelter were always treated with kindness and honour. Till recently, Hindu tolerance was well recognised by the entire world.
However, the first blows of disaster struck when the overtly political aim of strengthening secularism was propagandised by our Marxist historians since the 1960s. The vilest form of this propaganda was to paint the Hindu past in dark colours. Their sustained propaganda, their importance owing to the high positions in academic institutions which they wrested by virtue of their political affiliations, and its mindless repetition by secular politicians – all this have brought things to such a pass.
The psyche of our upper and educated class of Hindus is such that it accepts as true anything reflected back from the Western world. But, if we try to reach the root source by picking any thread as Parker did, we invariably find that the false impression of ‘Hindu intolerance’ and ‘Hindu Fascism’ has spread in the Western world only through the dirty propaganda done by Marxist historians. For example, another Marxist historian Irfan Habib states that
This has been repeated by him and other Marxist historians at various forums. Because they hold high chairs and are politically influential, such propaganda is routinely publicised by the media and has become accepted ‘facts’ in the Western world. But these worthies have never undertaken a serious study of either Nazism or the Hindu nationalism of the RSS. For example, the Marxist Party, still decorates its offices or congregations with the photographs of Stalin. No Hindu nationalist organisation has been observed using the picture of any Nazi leader. They never swear by any such figure. Nor their literature reveals any such material. Thus, Irfan Habib’s propaganda is entirely baseless.
Let us consider the issue propagated by Romila Thapar and other Marxist historians that ‘Hindu kings too used to destroy temples.’ Not only common readers but intelligent academicians also cannot estimate the importance and long-term effect of this single line propaganda. It is that proposition on the strength of which all Marxist historians and their followers have been trying to balance the Islamic conquest and cruelties in India. Our Marxists publicise that intolerance and atrocities are as much a part of Hinduism as they are of Islam and by way of proof, Marxists have been repeating the lie that Hindu kings also destroyed temples. This proposition first appeared in 1969, in the booklet Communalism and the writing of Indian History produced jointly by Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra. In the ‘anti-communal’ movement (actually just an anti-Hindu movement) led by Marxist historians, this propaganda has been used as the ace argument.
But readers will be shocked to find how Marxist historians have deliberately, popularised a falsehood only on the strength of their own official positions for so many years. This is one of the biggest academic frauds a full verification of which would expose the Marxist historians as what they actually are: cheap political activists. Whatever little scholarly abilities they have had was always subservient to political goals. A serious examination of the above proposition, repeatedly propagated for almost four decades, proves it beyond doubt. In our general search we have found at least five facts, which render the proposition ‘Hindu Kings also destroyed temples’ totally baseless and fraudulent. They are as follows:
No Marxist historian has ever carried out any study on the subject
Marxist historians did not accept Sita Ram Goel’s academic challenge disproving their propositions
Their example of King Harsha of Kashmir destroying temples is deceptive
The Marxist propaganda that Hindu kings also destroyed temples has no support from other historians
Marxist historians have repeatedly failed to defend their claims under rigorous examination
In the subsequent parts, we shall examine each of the aforementioned points in a fairly detailed fashion.
To be continued
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