The communal interpretation of medieval Indian history

by Guest Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:02 pm

[Excerpted from Prof B. N.
Pande's speech in the Indian Upper House of Parliament, the Rajya
Sabha, made on 29 July 1977. At the time of the publication of this
article in Impact International (1987), Dr Pande was Governor of the
Indian state of Orrisa. Dr. Pande died in New Delhi on June 1, 1998.]

I have the honour to move the following resolution for the consideration of this House:

'This House is of the opinion that the main factor retarding
cultural and emotional integration of the Indian people is the communal
interpretation of the medieval Indian history and its distortion by the
British historians, while India was under British rule, portraying the
Hindus and the Muslims as being divided into two warring camps with
little in common between them, and that this distortion paved the way
for the emergence of the two-nation theory, and therefore recommends
that the government should take immediate steps for the re-orientation
of the study of Medieval Indian History ...'

The task is not easy, because unfortunately the histories of
India which have been taught in our schools and colleges for generations
past were originally compiled by European writers. And Indians have not
yet succeeded in shaking off the biases inclucated by their European
teachers. These so called histories have presented Muslims as destroyers
of Hindu culture and traditions; despoilers of Hindu temples and
palaces; and brutal idol-breakers who have offered to their Hindu
victims the terrible alternative of conversion or the sword.

It is hardly surprising that educated men in India drugged with
such poisonous stuff from the most impressionable period of their lives
grow up to suspect and distrust each other. The Hindu has been brought
up to believe that the Muslim period of Indian history which extends
over eight hundred years and more is a nightmare....
A glimpse into official British records will show how this policy of Divide-et-Impera was taking shape. The Secretary of State Wood
in a letter to Lord Elgin [Governor General Canada (1847-54) and India
(1862-63)] said: 'We have maintained our power in India by playing off
one part against the other and we must continue to do so. Do all you
can, therefore to prevent all having a common feeling.’

George Francis Hamilton, Secretary of State of India wrote to
Curzon, ‘I think the real danger to our rule in India not now, but say
50 years hence is the gradual adoption and extension of Western ideas of
agitation organisation and if we could break educated Indians into two
sections holding widely different views, we should, by such a division,
strengthen our position against the subtle and continuous attack which
the spread of education must make upon our system of government. We
should so plan educational text-books that the differences between
community and community are further strengthened (Hamilton to Curzon, 26th March 1886).

Cross informed the Governor-General, Dufferin, that 'This
division of religious feeling is greatly to our advantage and I look for
some good as a result of your Committee of Inquiry on Indian Education
and on teaching material' (Cross to Dufferin, 14 January, 1887).

Thus under a definite policy the Indian history text-books were
so falsified and distorted as to give an impression that the medieval
period of Indian history was full of atrocities committed by Muslim
rulers on their Hindu subject and the Hindus had to suffer terrible
indignities under Islamic rule. There were no common factors in social,
political or economic life.

While I was doing some research on Tippu Sultan in 1928 at
Allahabad, some office bearers of a college Students Union approached me
with a request to inaugurate their History Association. They had
directly come from the college with their text-books. I opened the
chapter on Tippu Sultan. One of the sentences that struck me deeply was:
'Three thousand Brahmins committed suicide as Tippu wanted to
convert them forcibly into the fold of Islam'. The author of the
text-book was, Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Har Prashad Shastri, Head of the
Department of Sanskrit, Calcutta University. I immediately wrote to Dr.
Shastri for the source of his information. After many reminders came the
reply that he had taken that from the Mysore Gazetteer....

... Prof Srikantia informed me that the episode of the suicide of
3,000 Brahmins is nowhere in the Mysore Gazetteer and he, as student of
history of Mysore, was quite certain that no such incident had taken
place. He further informed me that the Prime Minister of Tippu Sultan
was a Brahmin named Punaiya and his commander-in-chief was also a
Brahmin, named Krishna Rao. He supplied me with the list of 156 temples
to which Tippu Sultan used to pay annual grants. He sent me 30 photostat
copies of Tippu Sultan's letters addressed to the Jagadguru
Shankaracharya of Srinageri Math with whom Tippu Sultan had very cordial
relations....

Dr Shastri's book was approved as a course book of history for
high schools in Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, U.P., M.P. and Rajasthan. I
approached Sri Ashutosh Mukherjee, the then Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta
University, and sent him all the correspondence that I had exchanged
with Dr Shastri, with Mysore University Vice-Chancellor, Sri Brijendra
Nath Seal, and Prof. Srikantia, with the request to take proper action
against the offending passages in the text-book. Prompt came the reply
from Sri Ashutosh Mukherjee, that the history book by Dr Shastri has
been put out of course.

However, I was amazed to find the same suicide story was still
existing in the history text-books which had been prescribed in 1972 for
Junior High Schools in U.P.

http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/pande.htm

by Guest Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:15 pm

Dr Pande goes on to talk about Aurangzeb. I would just like to clarify that while it is true that Aurangzeb gave funding for maintenance and even construction of various hindu temples, it is also true that he destroyed certain hindu temples. We can argue about the reasons for why he did so, but the fact that he did do so is indisputable.

There is also no denying the fact that Aurangzeb was communal as is evident by the fact that he foolishly reimposed the jaziya (special tax to be paid by non-muslims). Defenders of Aurangzeb point out all the caveats: jaziya was not imposed on old men, children, and women. Only on young men. They say that he needed to raise money for the campaign in the deccan. But surely if more funds had to be generated for the Deccan campaign the extra financial burden should have not have to be borne by non-hindu young men, but by all young men (even if we agree that it was all right to exclude women, children, and old people).

Jaziya was abolished by Akbar, reimposed several years into his reign by Aurangzeb, and again reabolished (this time for good) shortly after Aurangzeb's death.

Dr Pande's note is instructive in that it reveals the complicated nature of Aurangzeb's character: giving funding to hindu temples on one hand (which most Indians are not aware of) and destroying other hindu temples on the other hand (which we all know of).

The communal interpretation of medieval Indian history

The communal interpretation of medieval Indian history

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