Ashdoc's book review---Eminent historians : their technology , their line , their fraud

Long ago when the reviewer of India today magazine reviewed this book he said that the real gems of the book lie in the accusations of corruption that Arun Shourie has made on the so called ' eminent historians ' ---tales of how they pilfered funds from the revenues made available to them from the government . The reviewer then proceeded to dismiss the rest of the book as just another islamophobic tirade produced by the encouragement of Arun's mentor Sita Ram Goel , a well known islamophobe .

How wrong he could be !!

It is the so called ' islamophobic tirade ' that helped up the book notch up considerable sales .
The stories of corruption did not---however true they may be.....for the corruption consisted of small amounts like 12,000 rupees etc---too tiny for the public to take notice in this era of multi thousand crore corruption scandals .

.....For the ' islamophobic tirade ' is no tirade at all ; its a well researched account of how history is written to suit the dictates of politicians eager to satisfy their fave vote bank---the muslims , who else.....

Shourie was in direct contact with many school teachers who wrote textbooks of history for schools , and he shows how any sentence or paragraph written about the fanatical fury of islamic invaders while destroying temples or killing people is directly deleted by orders of political masters .

It becomes clear that Shourie's main targets are the historians of the marxist/communist variety and history writing in communist ruled West Bengal is a favourite theme in the book . He shows how Russian communist writers heap glory upon hinduism and ancient India's achievements as they are not under pressure from any vote bank to attack hinduism . But the communist historians of India humiliate hinduism by a thousand ways to satisfy the vote bank of their political masters .

In order to attack Babur who is the favorite target of the hindu nationalist lobby because his general destroyed the Ram temple of Ayodhya and built the Babri masjid in it's place , Shourie very cleverly makes use of the words of an impeccable source---Guru Nanak no less....
He shows how Guru Nanak vividly described the horrors and pain that the people of Punjab and India had gone through during Babar's invasion . Now the Guru is a source that no secular historian can argue against....

Aurangzeb is not spared either . But above all Shourie brings out to what extent the marxist historians go to appease their vote banks . He points out how in one school textbook the historian Irfan Habib has called Aurangzeb a ' zinda pir ' ( living saint ).....

Of course , Shourie carries it too far in certain instances . To counter a liberal muslim who says that prophet Muhammad would have doubtlessly included hindus as ' people of the book ' just like he has included Christians and Jews and would have asked muslims to not attack them if he had known about their existence , Shourie says '' But the divine all knowing Allah must have doubtlessly known about the existence of hindus for nothing escapes his eye . So why did he not ask Muhammad to tolerate hindus in his revelations to Muhammad ?? '' . What logic !!

Verdict---Explosive stuff .