"Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while announcing the new museum in Agra raised a pertinent question about the legacy of Moghuls and took a stand that the symbols of colonialism would not have any place in Uttar Pradesh. As expected, the secular intellectuals were taken aback. They have problems with naming the museum with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, as invoking the idea of ‘Hindavi Swarajya’ itself has been a communal idea for them. As usual with their skewed sense of history based on colonial myths, they started giving citations about the heroics of the Mughal era from their own sources, claiming them to be the heritage of Bharat. This episode has allowed us to look at our history with an open mind and historical documents."
# OPINION : Tuesday, September 29, 2020. 8:00. PM. - 2254.
What’s in a name? Asked William Shakespeare. Name and form are ,however interrelated; if I say Banana, you can’t think of coconut. Name is especially important in the case of an individual. An individual's name reflects his culture, tradition, and values.
Recently, Mughal Museum in Agra has been named after Great Maratha King Maharaja Chhatrapati Shivaji and as the expected huge debate has started and certainly lost journalists trying to find their voice in the din. Why the name is important if that’s the question then given the free run of the secular historians right from the dawn of India’s independence, made us almost forget our own history, our ancestry, our tradition, and our culture. We have been served cooked up and selective history to build a narrative that would in turn yield political mileage albeit secularism remained on the lips. The country was partitioned on the basis of religion. The new entity which came into existence as a result of the partition started its journey as secular states soon choose to be the Islamic Republic. Do we have a problem with that? Absolutely not! But then Hindus also should have the right to celebrate their own culture and tradition by celebrating their Heroes by naming public places after them. Thereby, though the history won’t be erased, what it will do at least is to bring those Heroes, who reflect the culture and tradition of the land, out of the obscure darkness, that they had been pushed to by those celebrated self-seeking historians and introduce them with the up-coming generation.
"The Mughal Museum being constructed in the Uttar Pradesh district of Agra will now be named after Maratha Icon Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath questioned “How can Mughal be our heroes ?” he tweeted , "The museum under construction in Agra will be known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The symbols of slavery mentality have no place in your new Uttar Pradesh. Our hero is Shivaji Maharaj. Jai Hind Jai Bharat."
Mughals are history now and we have to understand how historians have not only mislead us but also have created myths according to their personal whims, political affiliations resulting in their personal benefits.
A number of historians have dedicated their whole life in creating a propaganda which portrays that it was the Mughal invasion which brought culture to us, as later the Britishers said it loud that we have unified India for the first time. Though India was not under the control of any single dynasty or political the rule in its thousands of years of its history but culturally, socially and spiritually was always one.
As the verse from Vishnu Purana says : “The country north of the sea and south of the Himalayas is Bharata and her child are Bharati.”
"While asking for the proof of the birth of lord Rama and Krishna is part of secular history and showing facts about plunder, brutal repression, and temple destruction becomes communal history. It has been asked many times now that why don’t the Hindus accept the Mughals or the Muslim rulers as their own? This is an invalid question, the question should be why Indian Muslims don’t accept our common ancestry do they connect or have anything to do with the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upnishads, Shrimad Bhagwat Gita, the Sangam literature, the two national epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Is lord Buddha and Mahavira part of their past or not? Does the 16 Mahajanpadas have anything to do with their ancestry? Is Ajatasatru, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka, Samudragupta, Krishnadevaraya part of their cultural heritage or not?"
His grandson Akbar who had been presented as liberal (his liberalism was however confined to his court only) can be put in the terms of “andho me kana raja” as he also slaughters around 30,000 innocent civilians after the fall of Chittor. These numbers exclude the people who were involved in the battle and Jauhar.
His son Jahangir who had a little of war history, after his victory over Kangra ( present-day in Himachal Pradesh ) writes in his memoirs, the ‘Tuzuk-i- Jahangiri’ , that he celebrated the event by demolishing the temple of the Hindu goddess Durga, and constructing a mosque at the site. He was a hypocrite too, as according to the Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci Jahangir’s love for both wine and pork which are prohibited in Islam grows more intensely during the holy month of Ramazan. So Muslims should also ponder how much they would like to identify themselves with the Mughal pride. It was under the same emperor that Guru Arjan the 5th Sikh guru was arrested and was asked to convert to Islam and when refused, he was tortured and executed in 1606 CE.
Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan in his court chronicle Shah Jahan Nama describes his armies as the force of Islam. But it was his son Aurangzeb a religious bigot, who according to Vincent Arthur Smith in his book ‘The Oxford History of India’, in 1669 ordered, all his governors of provinces to "destroy with a willing hand the schools and temples of the infidels, and that they were strictly enjoined to put an entire stop to the teaching and practice of idolatrous forms of worship."According to the historian Abraham Eraly during Aurangzeb’s era all temples around Ujjain were destroyed’’, and later, “300 temples were destroyed in and around Chitor, Udaipur and Jaipur’’ among other Hindu temples destroyed elsewhere in campaigns through 1705. Exclusively he demolished 66 temples in Amber, Rajasthan. Abu Turb who was sent to the place returned to the court and reported the destruction. Two of the most important temples of Hindu civilisation Mathura(the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple) and Vishwanath Temple at Varanasi was not only destroyed but mosques were established after the demolition. The temple of Mathura was demolished in 1670 and a grand mosque was erected and the name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad,’ observes chronicler of Aurangzeb’s reign Saqi Mustaid Khan. The destruction of temples and educational institutions, the killings of learned monks, and the scattering of students led to a widespread decline in Hindu education. When ninth Sikh guru Guru Tegh Bahadur fought against these evils of forced religious conversions and imposition he was beheaded in front of a huge mass by Aurangzeb on 24 November 1675, Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk marks the place of his execution.
So the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath’s question ‘’How can Mughals be our hero?” Is absolutely correct. If Germany cannot have places named after Hitler and Spain removing places and streets named after fascist leaders how can we have Cities, places, roads, and buildings named after Mughals who killed our spiritual leaders, demolished Mathura, Kanshi temples among other thousands, and have religiously converted, killed and plundered many? Identifying with and considering Mughals as heroes would justify all their brutality and oppression. Thinkers of the Nation should decide.
(The writer is a State Youth Head at Vivekananda Kendra, Uttar Prant. He obtained his Masters in History from the University Of Delhi and is pursuing COP in Vedic Culture from Jawaharlal Nehru University.)
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##2. The Mughals: Neither Heroes, Nor Heritage : 27-Sep-2020 : Prafulla Ketkar : Organiser : Media Report.
###These invasions of India by Muslims were as much invasions of India as they were wars among the Muslims themselves. This fact has remained hidden because the invaders are all lumped together as Muslims without distinction. But as a matter of fact, they were Tartars, Afghans and Mongols. Muhammad of Ghazni was a Tartar, Mahommed of Ghori was an Afghan, Taimur was a Mongol, Babar was a Tartar, while Nadirshah and Ahmadshah Abdalli were Afghans. In invading India, the Afghan was out to destroy the Tartar and the Mongol was out to destroy the Tartar as well as the Afghan. They were not a loving family cemented by the feeling of Islamic brotherhood. They were deadly rivals of one another and their wars were often wars of mutual extermination. What is, however, important to bear in mind is that with all their internecine conflicts they were all united by one common objective and that was to destroy the Hindu faith” — Dr Babasaheb B R Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar – Writings and Speeches Vol. 8, pg 57, Dr Ambedkar Foundation, New Delhi, 2014NSCN-IM) on August 3, 2015
"Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while announcing the new museum in Agra raised a pertinent question about the legacy of Moghuls and took a stand that the symbols of colonialism would not have any place in Uttar Pradesh. As expected, the secular intellectuals were taken aback. They have problems with naming the museum with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, as invoking the idea of ‘Hindavi Swarajya’ itself has been a communal idea for them. As usual with their skewed sense of history based on colonial myths, they started giving citations about the heroics of the Mughal era from their own sources, claiming them to be the heritage of Bharat. This episode has allowed us to look at our history with an open mind and historical documents."
First of all, to name a historical museum with Shivaji Maharaj need not have his connection with Agra. His miraculous escape from the custody of Aurangazeb in Agra and heroic journey of around thousand miles to reach his capital Rajgarh is inspirational enough to understand his influence, but for pseudo-historians that was a minor connection. The same righteous King of Swarajya inspired common masses to continue the fight even after 200 years of his death makes Shivaji Maharaj a national figure. The people who see our history from the colonial prism will find it difficult to understand.
For the secularists, the assertion that Mughals are not our heroes is the real problem. The heritage they see in the Moghul era is the sole source of their communal secularism. While doing so connecting all Bharatiya Muslims with the Mughal identity is the biggest injustice they do with Muslims. Knowing very well that Mongols, Turks, Afghans were fighting among themselves, and as Dr Ambedkar explained, “They were all united by one common objective, and that was to destroy the Hindu faith”. Who were the first victims of this forged unity? – The present-day Muslims of Bharat. It was their ancestors who faced the sword of forced conversion. In turn, this process sowed the seeds of pan-Islamism among Muslims and damaged the real assimilative culture of Bharat.
The Moghuls never believed in the existence of multiple faiths which was a cornerstone of Bharat. The non-Bharatiya ideas like conversion through force and temple destruction have been the only legacy they have left for us. A series of historical documents reveal these facts which secularist chose to neglect. Massacres during the Khilafat or the Partition were the part of the Mughal legacy, which we certainly cannot celebrate.
Even the Arabastan, where Islam originated, is making necessary reformation internally. The peace deal of various Islamic countries with Israel is the sign that with the external world also they want to move on. Unfortunately, the secular intellectuals of Bharat, for the sake of their agenda, continue to make heroes out of Baburs and Aurangzebs and do not allow Muslims to embrace Dar Shikohs and APJ Abdul Kalams with open arms. It is for the Muslim society and leadership to decide whether to be part of the ever-evolving, diverse and assimilative idea of Bharat or to live in the illusion of so-called Caliphate by connecting themselves with Mughals. For the common Bharatiyas, irrespective of religion, bigoted, intolerant, murderous Mughals are certainly not heroes or part of our heritage.
End.
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JAI HIND
JAI BHARATHAM
VANDHE MATHARAM
BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.
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