Hinduism & History & Happenings: Hinduism History

Hinduism remains a vibrant, cultural and religious force in the world today. To understand Hinduism, it is necessary that we examine its history and marvel at its sheer stamina to survive in spite of repeated attacks across India's borders, time and again, by Greeks, Shaks, Huns, Arabs, Pathans, Mongols, Portuguese, British etc. India gave shelter, acceptance, and freedom to all. But, in holy frenzy, millions of Hindus were slaughtered or proselytized. Their cities were pillaged and burnt, temples were destroyed and accumulated treasures of centuries carried off. Even under grievous persecutions from the ruling foreigners, the basics of its civilization remained undefiled and, as soon as the crises were over Hindus returned to the same old ways of searching for the perfection of the unknown.

For no other country in the world from east to west, faces the agony that the Hindus in India have to face. They are the injured party; but even today they are crucified by the 'so called' secularists—most of them themselves Hindus—at every stage. No country in the world has been so ravaged and raped by outside forces as India has been down the centuries: Not Japan, not China, not Russia, none of the European countries, neither the Arab nations and certainly not the United States of America. Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagar Empire did not send his forces to Portugal to tear down churches, use force to convert Christians to Hinduism and indulge in religious terrorism. Prithviraj Chauhan did not invade Afghanistan nor Central Asia and raise temples.

No Chola, Chera or Pandya (Indian) rulers sent a fleet to Saudi Arabia to tear down the Ka’aba and build a temple to Meenakshi on its ruins or even next to it to demonstrate Hindu might. India and Hinduism have been ravaged beyond belief. Hindu missionaries did not accompany a conquering horde to Britain and under their benign rule set to convert Scottish peasants to Hinduism—or even Buddhism.

No blood has been shed for religion in India except by its invaders. Intolerance came with Islam and Christianity; the Moslems proposed to buy Paradise with the blood of “infidels” and the Portuguese, when they captured Goa, introduced the Inquisition into India.

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Introduction

India before the advent of Islamic imperialism was a country with plenty of wars fought by Hindu princes. But in all their wars the Hindus had observed some time honored conventions sanctioned by the Shastras. The Brahmins and Bhikshus were never touched. The chastity of women was never violated. The cows were never killed. There was no ravage of the soil The temples were never touched. The non-combatants were never killed or captured. A human habitation was never attacked unless it was a fort. The civilian population was never plundered. The martial class (kshatriyas) who clashed, mostly in open fields, had a code of honor.

As early as as the 4th century B.C. Megasthenes (c. 350 BC-290 BC) Greek Scholar and historian, noticed a peculiar trait of Indian warfare.

"Whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides, they never ravage an enemy's land with fire, nor cut down its trees."

(source: A Brief History of India - By Alain Danielou p. 106). The modern "scorched earth" policy was then unknown." For more on Alain Danielou refer to chapter on Quotes.

A L Basham ( ? ) one of the leading authority of ancient Indian culture and well-known historian has observed:

"No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity."

(source: The Wonder That Was India - By A L Basham p. 8 - 9). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Harold Horace Wilson (1786-1860) Eminent Orientalist, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University author of Wilson's Works and The Visnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition and co-author of History of British India says:

"The Hindu laws of war are very chivalrous and humane, and prohibit the slaying of the unarmed, of women, of the old, and of the conquered."

At the very time when a battle was going on, be says, the neighboring cultivators might be seen quietly pursuing their work, - " perhaps ploughing, gathering for crops, pruning the trees, or reaping the harvest." Chinese pilgrim to Nalanda University, Hiuen Tsiang affirms that although the there were enough of rivalries and wars in the 7th century A.D. the country at large was little injured by them.

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was one of the most profound philosophers of this century, author and educationalist. Radhakrishnan was also a professor of Eastern Religions at Oxford and later became the second President of free India. He has observed:

“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one Jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien cults. They invoke Divine Sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam.

He went on to remark:

“Wars of Religion which are the outcome of fanaticism that prompts and justifies the extermination of aliens of different creeds are practically unknown in Hindu India.”

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 40). For more on Dr. S. Radhakrishnan refer to chapter on Quotes. Watch The Crescent and the Cross

Faxian (4th century) a Chinese pilgrim to India, marveled a the peace, prosperity, and high culture of the Hindus. Having grown up in war-torn China, he was deeply impressed by a land whose leaders were more concerned with promoting commerce and religion than with slaughtering substantial portion of the population.

(source: Hinduism - By Linda Johnson p. 38).

Colonel James Tod (1782-1835) Late British political agent to the Western Rajpoot State, author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India ISBN 8120803809 Vol. II wrote:

"To spare a prostrate foe is the creed of the Hindu cavalier, and he carried all such maxims to excess."

Islamic imperialism knew no code of honor. The only rule of war they observed without fail was to fall down the helpless civil population after a decisive victory had been won on the battlefield. They sacked and burnt down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins and Buddhist Bhikshus invited their special attention in a mass murder of non-combatants. Their temples and shrines were their special targets in an orgy of pillage and destruction. Those that they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves. The scene was described by Kanhadde Prabandha (1456 A.D) in the following words: "The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people's wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks."

(source: Story of Islamic Imperialism in India - By Sita Ram Goel ASIN 8185990239 p. 41-42). For more Colonel James Tod refer to chapter on Quotes.

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and a world spokesperson for Vedanta. India's first spiritual and cultural ambassador to the West, came to represent the religions of India at the World Parliament of Religions, held at Chicago wrote that:

"the Mohammedans used the greatest violence" and he asserted: "You know that the Hindu religion never persecutes. It is the land where all sects may live in peace and amity. The Mohammedans brought murder and slaughter in their train, but until their arrival peace prevailed."

(source: Complete Works - Swami Vivekananda volume 5 p. 190 and volume 8 p. 217).

John P Jones ( ? ) has observed in his book:

"It is a curious fact that the hideous and bloody monster of religious intolerance was hardly known in India until, first the followers of Mohammed and secondly, the disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus, began to invade the land."

(source: India - Its Life and Thought - By John P Jones p. 166).

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud. Author of his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, in 1819, he narrates the sordid tale as follows:

"...This of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bears witness to the monotheistic fury...carried on from Mahmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurangzeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese...have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto defe of the inquisition at Goa...We hear nothing of this kind in the case of the Hindoo...."

(source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - By T. Bailey Saunders - ISBN 0936128690 p. 42 - 43). For more on Arthur Schopenhauer refer to chapter on Quotes. Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

Watch The Crescent and the Cross and refer to chapter on Survarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Swami Aksharananda ( ) an Indian of Caribbean origin and holds a Ph.D. degree in Hindu Studies from the University of Madison, Wisconsin (USA) has observed:

"The concept that “All religions are one” as propagated by Gandhi incessantly is the most destructive concept that is affecting us all. It is not only silly but dangerous fallacy to propagate the idea that all religions are one. Hindus, who are under severe attacks every day by the same forces of Allah and Christ. Hinduism and other religions can’t be equated and called same because “religions” of the world have been born in the environment of hostility.

(source: All religions are not same - By Swami Aksharanand - theuniversalwisdom.org).

Karl Marx (1818-1883), the grandfather ideologue of Communists worldwide. In his article titled “Declaration of War— On the History of the Eastern Question” published in the New York Tribune of April 15, 1854, he observed that:

"The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels. The Infidel is ‘harby’, i.e. the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever. In that sense the corsair-ships of the Berber States were the holy fleet of Islam….”

(source: The Marxists' Islamic phobia - By Priyadarsi Dutta ).

The entire northwestern India and later the rest of India was gradually butchered and plundered with ruthless savagery surpassing perhaps even the genocide in the Americas.

Afghanistan was a full part of the Hindu cradle up till the year 1000, and in political unity with India until Nadir Shah separated it in the 18th century. The mountain range in Eastern Afghanistan where the native Hindus were slaughtered, is still called the Hindu Kush (Persian: "Hindu Slaughter"). It is significant that one of the very few place-names on earth that reminds us not of the victory of the winners but rather of the slaughter of the losers, concerns a genocide of Hindus by the Muslims.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst - Voice of India SKU: INBK2650 p.278).

Sita Ram Goel (1921- 2003) scholar, writer, publisher, the founder of Voice of India, an ‘intellectual’ Kshatriya’ par excellence, and a Hindu revivalist. Author of several books, including The Story of Islamic Imperialism, Defence of Hindu Society and History of Hindu-Christian Encounters.

He has written: "The cradle of Hindu culture on the eve of its Islamic invasion included what are at present the Sinkiang province of China, the Transoxiana region of Russia, the Seistan province of Iran and the sovereign states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The Islamic invasion commenced around 650 A.D., when a Muslim army secured a foothold in Seistan, and continued till the end of the eighteenth century, when the last Islamic crusader, Tipu Sultan, was overthrown by the British. Hordes of Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Afghans who had been successively inspired by the Theology of Islam poured in, in wave after wave, carrying fire and sword to every nook and corner of this vast area. In the process, Sinkiang, Transoxiana region, Seistan and Afghanistan became transformed into daru’l-IslÃm where all vestiges of the earlier culture were wiped out. The same spell has engulfed the areas which were parts of India till 1947 and have since become Pakistan and Bangladesh."

"Hindus were great temple builders because their pantheon was prolific in Gods and Goddesses and their society rich in schools and sects, each with its own way of worship. But by the time we come to the end of the invasion, we find that almost all these Hindu places of worship had either disappeared or were left in different stages of ruination."

(source: Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them - Volume 1 A Preliminary Survey - Sita Ram Goel - chapter Ten - voi.org).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Robert Sewell (1845-1925) the British civil servant who discovered the ruins of Vijayanagar, wrote of its tragic end, 'Never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought suddenly, on so splendid a city'. In A Forgotten Empire says writes about the missing, defaced or vandalized temples and about the destruction of the mighty Vijayanagar kingdom. An empire where "it used to rain gold and gems in the days of the mighty rulers here," He has written:

"for five months the Mohammeddans with fire and sword, with crowbars and axes carried on day after day their work of destruction. Never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought so suddenly, and reduced to ruins amid scenes of savage massacre and horrors beggaring description".

Ferishta, the late 16th Century Persian traveler describes the 1565 rout thus — "the river which ran near the field was dyed red with their blood. It is computed that 1,00,000 infidels were slain during the pursuit."

(source: Wanderings in Hampi - hindu.com). For more on refer to the Ruins of Hampi.

Dr. Anwar Shaikh (1928-2006) who later converted to Hinduism and took the name Aniruddha Gyan Shikha. He was a Pakistani-born author who lived in Cardiff for many years. He is best known for his many books on Islam.

He has written:

“India is yet another major victim of Islam."

The day Muhammad bin Qasim, entered Sindh as a conqueror, must rank as the most ominous, odious and outrageous moment in the history of India, whose proud, pious and powerful traditions have been the torch-bearer of world civilisation. The Indians, used to enjoying the warmth of ahimsa, were stunned by the violence that the Arab raiders displayed in robbing the rich and seducing the indigenous damsels. Yet the irony was that they did all this in the name of the Most Compassionate and Just Allah, who counts these felonies as acts of fairness when they are committed to torture the unbelievers.”

"India was a prosperous, peaceful and proud country, which has not only been reduced to extreme poverty and ignorance by the Muslim predators and the Islamic rule, but has also been fragmented into geographical and political units."

"Most Muslims think of Bharat not as their Motherland but Dar-ul-Harb = battlefield, where people murder, plunder and deceive out of hatred and greed. It is totally false to say that Islam is the ambassador of international brotherhood."

(source: Islam: The Arab Imperialism - By Dr. Anwar Shaikh and Anwar Shaikh’s Interview with Chandigarh Times - By Dr. Ranjit Kanwar).

Refer to online book, The Arab Imperialism - By Anwar Shaikh

Koenraad Elst (1959 -) born into a Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. He has pointed out:

"Hindus too experienced this treatment at the hands of Islamic conquerors, e.g. when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the lower Indus basin in 712 CE. Thus, in Multan, according to the Chach-Nama, "six thousand warriors were put to death, and all their relations and dependents were taken as slaves". This is why Rajput women committed mass suicide to save their honour in the face of the imminent entry of victorious Muslim armies, e.g. 8,000 women immolated themselves during Akbar's capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (where this most enlightened ruler also killed 30,000 non-combatants).

"Hindu Society has been suffering a sustained attack from Islam since the 7th century, from Christianity since the 15th century, and this century also from Marxism. The avowed objective of each of these three world-conquering movements, with their massive resources, is the replacement of Hinduism by their own ideology, or in effect: the destruction of Hinduism. This concern is not at all paranoid (as the spokespersons of these aggressors would say), even if the conversion squads are remarkably unsuccessful in India. Consider the situation in Africa: in 1900, 50 % of all Africans practiced Pagan religion; today Christian and Islamic missionaries have reduced this number to less than 10 %. That is the kind of threat Hinduism is up against. "

(source: Negationism in India: Concealing the Records of Isalm - By Koenraad Elst p 78 - 79 and Was There an Islamic "Genocide" of Hindus? - By Koenraad Elst). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Refer to Ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh - muktomona.com.

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman.

M V Kamath ( ? ) the Indian columnists has written eloquently:

"For no other country in the world from east to west, faces the agony that the Hindus in India have to face. They are the injured party; but they are crucified by the secularists—most of them themselves Hindus—at every stage. No country in the world has been so ravaged and raped by outside forces as India has been down the centuries: Not Japan, not China, not Russia, none of the European countries, neither the Arab nations and certainly not the United States of America. Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagar Empire did not send his forces to Portugal to tear down churches, use force to convert Christians to Hinduism and indulge in religious terrorism. Prithviraj Chauhan did not invade Afghanistan nor Central Asia and raise temples. '

"No Chola, Chera or Pandya ruler sent a fleet to Saudi Arabia to tear down the Ka’aba and build a temple to Meenakshi on its ruins or even next to it to demonstrate Hindu might. India and Hinduism have been ravaged beyond belief. Hindu missionaries did not accompany a conquering horde to Britain and under their benign rule set to convert Scottish peasants to Hinduism—or even Buddhism."

(source: Help us bear the burden of secularism - By M. V. Kamnath - organiser.org). Watch The Crescent and the Cross

"Let us face it: for almost a millennium, India has been ruled in different parts of the country, but in one continuous stream, by Islamic conquerors and their successors, which has caused a deep psychological scab in the Hindu psyche that starts bleeding at the slightest provocation.

Our liberal secularists have always failed to understand that. Primarily they refuse to face up to the past, which only worsens matters. To seem to be secular, the Hindu liberal needs to stand by Muslim kings and Nawabs, like Romilla Thapar being apologetic about the destruction of Somnath Temple by Ghazni Mohammad. It is a mind-set that is hard to understand."
(source: Why this row over Tipu? Let Hindus & Muslims come to terms with past - By M V Kamath - samachar.com).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Andre Wink ( ? ) Professor of History at University of Madison, Wisconsin, describes that this aspiration to conquer India had existed since the time of the Prophet, as is evidenced by the sacred texts:

“… in the hadith collections the prophet Muhammad himself is credited with the aspiration of conquering India. Participants in the holy war against al-Hind [the Hindus] are promised to be saved from hell-fire… Thus also an eschatological work which is called the Kitab al-Fitan ('Book of Trials') credits Muhammad with saying that God will forgive the sins of the members of the Muslim army which will attack al-Hind, and give them victory.”
(source: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries - By Andre Wink. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1999. p.192-193).

For more on Islamic Terrorism refer to chapter on Glimpses XV and Glimpses XVIII. Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal" - By Tathagata Roy and Al-Qaeda letter says Taj next target - ibnlive.com. Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

Dr Charles Sabillon ( ?) author of several books, has observed in his article Christianity and Islam: Which is the Worst?

"The origins of both religions are based on the claims of two men, Jesus and Mohammed, and both men proved equally incapable of demonstrating their divine mandate. From that perspective, the two creeds are equally based on false propositions and can be classified as nothing more than lies.

Mohammed ordered his followers to do it by the sword, and that is what they did once he died. They launched into one of the most enthusiastic conquering ventures the world has ever seen and forged an empire that extended from Central Asia to the southwest of Europe.

For most of the sixty-three years of his life, Mohammed was a merchant, then a religious leader, and finally a general. He was an active military leader for ten years. While Jesus told his disciples to spread his teachings by persuasion, Mohammed ordered his followers to do it by the sword, and that is what they did once he died. They launched into one of the most enthusiastic conquering ventures the world has ever seen and forged an empire that extended from Central Asia to the southwest of Europe. Nations were ruthlessly converted to Christianity by the sword just like Islam converted Arabia, Central Asia, and Africa by the sword.

(source: Christianity and Islam: Which is the Worst? - By Charles Sabillon - americanchronicle.com).

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Two Chapters in India's history are most noted for its atrocities against Hinduism:

Islamic Onslaught
European Imperialism

Islamic Onslaught

Slaughter of the Hindus
Islamic Hoards and Their Terror
Indian Code of Chivalry: The Rajput and Maratha Warriors
Torture of the Buddhists
Aurangzeb's Tryanny against the Sikhs and Hindus
Negationism by Marxists Historians
Effect of Muslim Atrocities on Hindu Society
Islamic Scholarship on India
The Religious consequences of Defeat
Conclusion
Articles

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Slaughter of the Hindus

An event of immense and lasting impact in Indian history was the advent of the Muslims in the north-west. Lured by tales of the fertile plains of the Punjab and the fabulous wealth of Hindu temples, Mahmud of Ghazni first attacked India in 1000 AD. Other raiders from Central Asia followed him. Hindus never forgot the repeated destruction of the Somnath Temple, the massacre of Buddhists at Nalanda, or the pogroms of the Mughals. Hindus gallantly resisted, knowing full well that defeat would mean a choice of economic discrimination via the jaziya tax on non- Muslims, forced conversion, or death. It is no wonder that the residents of Chittor, and countless other people over the length and breadth of Bharat, from present-day Afghanistan to present-day Bangladesh, thought it better to die gloriously rather than face cold-blooded slaughter.

Will Durant (1885-1981) the well-known American historian would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and love for all living things.

He says in the book The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage page 459:

"...the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Almost all the Muslims of South Asia are descendants of weaker elements of the population who had succumbed to forcible Islamic conversion." )

"The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history". The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride of the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period. "

"The growth of Buddhism and monasticism in the first year of our common era sapped the manhood of India, and conspired with political division to leave India open to easy conquest. When the Arabs came, pledged to spread a simple and stoic monotheism, they looked with scorn upon the lazy, venal, miracle-mongering Buddhist monks, they smashed the monasteries, killed thousands of monks, and made monasticism unpopular with the cautious. The survivors were re-absorbed into the Hinduism that had begotten them; and eased the return of the prodigal by proclaiming Buddha a god."

"At Elephanta the Portuguese certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity; and almost everywhere in the north the Moslems brought to the ground those triumphs of Indian architecture, of the fifth and sixth centuries, which tradition ranks as far superior to the later works that arouse our wonder and admiration today. The Moslems decapitated statues, and tore them limb from limb; they appropriated for their mosques, and in great measure imitated, the graceful pillars of the Jain temples; time and fanaticism joined in the destruction, for the Hindus abandoned and neglected temples that had been profaned by the touch of alien hands.” "Even in its ruins the Temple of Shiva at Elephanta, with its massive fluted columns, its “mushroom” capitals, its unsurpassed reliefs, and its powerful statuary, suggests to us an age of national vigor and artistic skill of which hardly the memory lives today."

"No blood has been shed for religion in India except by its invaders. Intolerance came with Islam and Christianity; the Moslems proposed to buy Paradise with the blood of “infidels” and the Portuguese, when they captured Goa, introduced the Inquisition into India.”

(source: Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant MJF Books. 1935. p. 459 and 505 and 524 – 600). For more on Will Durant refer to chapter on Quotes. Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com. Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com.

Alberuni ( ? ) Muslim scholar from Central Asia. He wrote a very comprehensive book "Indica" in1030 AD. He diligently went into the specifics of the invasion:

"...they (the Hindus) frighten their children with us, our dress and our ways and customs" and decree us as "devil's breed". "They regard everything we do as opposite of all that is good and proper". (Sachau: 20)
Some of the reasons of Hindus' repugnance of Muslims are complete banishment of Buddhists from countries from Khurasan, Persis, Irak, Mosul and Syria, first by the Zoroastrians and then by Islam."

And then Muhammad ibn Elkasim entered India proper, conquered the cities of Bahmanwa and Mulsthan and went as far as Kanauj –

"All these events planted a deeply rooted hatred in their (Hindu) hearts." (Sachau: 21)

And, regarding the effect of Mahmud's raids, he says:

"Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed those wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people."
"their (the Hindus') scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims." (Sachau: 22).

(source: Alberuni's India. - By C Edward Sachau trans. New Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1993).

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) was among India's most fervent nationalists, fighting for Indian independence from British rule.

Following the assassination of Swami Shraddhanand at the hands of a Muslim fanatic in December, 1926, he had said:

"Mussalmans have an ordeal to pass through. There can be no doubt that they are too free with the knife and the pistol. The sword is an emblem of Islam. But Islam was born in an environment where the sword was, and still remains, the supreme law. The message of Jesus has proved ineffective because the environment was unready to receive it. So with the message of the Prophet. The sword is yet too much in evidence among the Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means - peace." This was 80 years ago.

Long years before Mahatma Gandhi spoke his mind on Islam, Swami Vivekananda told a gathering in London in November, 1896:

"In the Quran there is the doctrine that a man who does not believe these teachings should be killed. It is a mercy to kill him! Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of such beliefs!"

(source: The Pope is not alone - By A Surya Prakash - dailypioneer.com). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi. Refer to Cruel genocide by Muslims in India - slideshow.

Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

Watch General (R) Hameed Gul (ISI): History Will Repeat Itself

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com. Watch Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman. Watch General (R) Hameed Gul (ISI): History Will Repeat Itself

Irfan Husain ( ? ) a freelance columnist from Pakistan has observed:

”While historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistan.

The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed. Indeed, the presence of Muslim historians on their various campaigns has ensured that the memory of their deeds will live long after they were buried.

Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster. Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful.

These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillage. When these warriors settled in India, they ruled as absolute despots over a cowed Hindu populace. For generations, their descendants took their martial superiority over their subjects for granted. "... And a substantial number of Pakistani Muslims are secretly convinced that they are inherently superior to the Hindus. One irony, of course, is that contrary to their wishful thinking, the vast majority of Muslims in the subcontinent have more Hindu blood in their veins than there is Arab, Afghan, Turkish or Persian blood. Many of the invaders took Hindu wives and concubines."

(source: Demons from the past - By Ifran Husain - dailytimes.com.pk). Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com. Refer to chapter on Glimpses XV

Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - by Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org. Refer to Cruel genocide by Muslims in India - slideshow.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Colonel James Tod (1782-1835) Late British political agent to the Western Rajpoot State, author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India.

He wrote in 1829:

"After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after almost every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarians, bigotted, and exasperated foes, it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained..." "

(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod p. viii). For more on Colonel Tod refer to chapter on Quotes.

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) the English novelist and essayist, born into a family that included some of the most distinguished members of the English ruling class, author of Perennial Philosophy (ISBN 0060901918) also notices:

"Islam's black record of holy wars and persecution - a record comparable to that of later Christianity."

He mention in his book, Ends and Means, "It is an extremely significant fact that, before the coming of the Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the first half of the seventh century and has left a circumstantial account of his 14 years in the country, makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhist lived side by side without any show of violence. Neither Hinduism or Buddhism is disgraced by anything corresponding to the Inquisition; neither was ever guilty of such iniquities as the Albigensian crusade or such criminal lunacies as the religious wars of the 16th and 17the centuries."

(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p.150-151). For more Aldous Huxley on refer to chapter on Quotes. Watch Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West

"The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people."

"Most European and American authors of books about religion and metaphysics write as though nobody had ever thought about these subjects except Jews, the Greeks Christians of Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe.------Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is the threat to world peace".

(source: The Perennial philosophy - By Aldous Huxley p. 194 - 204). Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, wrote the following in 1920 regarding the impact of centuries of jihad and dhimmitude on the indigenous Hindus of the Indian subcontinent:

”Islamic theology, therefore tells the true believer that his highest duty is to make 'exertion (jihad) in the path of God', by waging war against infidel lands (dar-ul-harb) till they become part of the realm of Islam (dar-ul-Islam) and their populations are converted into true believers. After conquest the entire infidel population becomes theoretically reduced to the status of slaves of the conquering army. The men taken with arms are to be slain or sold into slavery and their wives and children reduced to servitude. As for the non-combatants among the vanquished, if they are not massacred outright, - as the canon lawyer Shaf'i declares to be the Qur'anic injunction,- it is only to give them a respite till they are so wisely guided as to accept the true faith.”

(source: How the Muslims forcibly converted the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to Islam). Refer to Cruel genocide by Muslims in India - slideshow.

Ayatollah Khomeini (1902 - 1989) was a Shi`i Muslim cleric, philosopher and marja (religious authority), and the political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran and he had said on August 24, 1979:

“Islam grew with blood. The great Prophet of Islam carried in one hand the Quran and in the other the sword.”

The learned Qazi Mughis-ud-din of Bayana says on conversion:

“Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects.”

As the learned Qazi Mughis-ud-din declared, in accordance with the teachings of the books on Canon Law:

"The Hindus are designated in the Law as ‘payers of tribute’ (kharaj-guzar); and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should, without question and with all humility and respect, tender gold. If the officer throws dirt into their mouths, they must without reluctance open their mouths wide to receive it. By these acts of degradation are shown the extreme obedience of the zimmi [dhimmi], the glorification of the true faith of Islam, and the abasement of false faiths. God himself orders them to be humiliated , (as He says, ‘till they pay jaziya) with the hand and are humbled…The Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive…No other religious authority except the great Imam (Hanifa) whose faith we follow, has sanctioned the imposition of jaziya on Hindus.

According to all other theologians, the rule for Hindus is ‘Either death or Islam".

(source: Conversions were never a civilised affair - By M.S.N. Menon and The Legacy of Jihad - By Jamie Glazon - frontpagemagaz.com).

Francois Gautier (1950 - ) Paris-born, he has lived in India for 30 years, is a political analyst for Le Figaro, one of France's largest circulation newspaper. In his book - Rewriting Indian History he observes:

"Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese."

Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul (1932 - ) Nobel laureate, He is the author of several books including Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, and India: A Wounded Civilization. He has said: "India was wrecked and looted, not once but repeatedly by invaders with strong religious ideas, with a hatred of the religion of the people they were conquering. People read these accounts but they do not imaginatively understand the effects of conquest by an iconoclastic religion."

"India became the great land for Muslim adventurers and the peasantry bore this on their back, they were enslaved quite literally. It just went on like this from the 11th century onwards."

(source: Economic Times - http://www.economictimes.com/today/30poli04.htm).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com. Refer to Cruel genocide by Muslims in India - slideshow.

Vidiadhar Naipaul summed up the situation well. He said, "In art and history books, people write of the Muslims "arriving" in India as though they came on a tourist bus and went away again. The Muslim view of their conquest is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the casting away of locals as slaves."

(source: No comparison between Buddhas and Babri - Chao Mumbai.com). For more on Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul refer to chapter on Quotes. For more refer to Hindu Holocaust Museum

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman. Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

Naipaul laments:

"I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel that the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions ... The Old World is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed."

(source: S. Naipaul, Anwar Shaikh and Rafiq Zakaria - By V.P. Bhatia - indiafirstfoundation.org).

Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal" - By Tathagata Roy Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

For more on Islamic Terrorism refer to chapter on Glimpses XV and Glimpses XVIII

“India has been a wounded civilization because of Islamic violence: Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorized civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed.”

(source: OutlookIndia.com, 15 November 1999 and http://www.indpride.com/vsnaipaul.html).

Akbar, The Great?
Sixty years of feel-good negationism?

Our Indian History books lyrically hail dead men like Akbar as Akbar the Great. But history is proof that on February 24, 1568, Akbar (the great) called for a pogrom and brutal massacre of 30,000 defenseless Hindus of Chittorgarh, Rajasthan who had refused to convert to Islam.

In fact according to the biography by Vincent Smith, Akbar enjoyed 'a harem consisting of 5000 women, mostly Hindus'.

(source: Putting Jodha Akbar on trial - IBOSNetwork.com January 25, 2008).

Surely, Aurangzeb, we are told, was not the best emperor. The finest emperor was clean-shaven Akbar the Great (1556-1605). However, it is a little inconvenient fact that the title Akbar himself wore was 'ghazi' (killer of Hindu infidels). At the second battle of Panipat (1556) he had presumably beheaded (or was it Bairam Khan on his behalf?) Hemu, or Hemchandra Vikramaditya Bhargava, the great Brahmin military general from Rajasthan.

Akbar won greater claims to ghazi-hood after the capture of Chittor in February 1568, when he ordered a general massacre of Hindus in which an estimated 30,000 perished. A pyramid of severed heads was raised. And Chittor did not prove for 'secular' Akbar any Kalinga for Asoka. But this February, we are celebrating the 'immortal' love of Jodhaa-Akbar as a Valentine's Day-era makeover!

While in pre-independent India we had Rana Pratap as our hero, in independent India his tormentor, Akbar, is our reel-model. Sixty years of feel-good negationism! The Rajput Karni Sena's agitation is thus momentous. It's the shock therapy Hindus need to come out of 'secular' self-hypnosis. Now, can Rajput resurgence of 2008 replicate a 1708?

(source: Jodhpur then, Jodhaa now - By Priyadarsi Dutta daily pioneer.com Edit 2/20/08).

Arun Shourie has written in his book how India's Eminent historians have portrayed Islam:

"Islam is always presented as the one, progressive, emancipatory religion."

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie Harper Collins India ISBN 8172233558 p. 71).

Refer to Ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh - muktomona.com.

Hindus of Western Deccan.

Jihad's evil fury - From Jammu to Jaipur, from Delhi to Bangalore, from Gujarat to Varanasi, today's serial Islamic terrorist bombing has the same cultural pattern of centuries ago.

Tragically today India 'self-proclaimed and noisy' secularists are quite oblivious to this destructive pattern.

***

Alain Danielou (1907-1994) son of French aristocracy, author of numerous books on philosophy, religion, history and arts of India, in his book, Histoire de l' Inde writes:

"From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races." Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, "was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked." Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined."

(source: Histoire de l' Inde - By Alain Danielou p. 222 or A Brief History of India). For more on Alain Danielou refer to chapter on Quotes. For more on destruction of Hindu temples, refer to Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them : (A Preliminary Survey) - By Arun Shourie and For more refer to Hindu Holocaust Museum

Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

Islamic imperialism came with a different code--the Sunnah of the Prophet. It required its warriors to fall upon the helpless civil population after a decisive victory had been won on the battlefield. It required them to sack and burn down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins, and the Bhikshus invited their special attention in mass murders of non-combatants. The temples and monasteries were their special targets in an orgy of pillage and arson. Those whom they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves. The magnitude of the booty looted even from the bodies of the dead, was a measure of the success of a military mission. And they did all this as mujahids (holy warriors) and ghazls (kafir-killers) in the service of Allah and his Last Prophet.

Hindus found it very hard to understand the psychology of this new invader. For the first time in their history, Hindus were witnessing a scene, which was described by Kanhadade Prabandha (1456 AD) in the following words

"The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people's wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks."

That was written in remembrance of Alauddin Khalji's invasion of Gujarat in the year l298 AD. But the gruesome game had started three centuries earlier when Mahmud Ghaznavi had vowed to invade India every year in order to destroy idolatry, kill the kafirs, capture prisoners of war, and plunder vast wealth for which India was well-known.

(source: The Magnitude of Islamic Invasion). Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - by Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

Reused doubled Hindu temple pillars, Quwwat al-Islam (Might of Islam) Mosque, Delhi A.D. 1192-6.

(source: Indian Art - By Vidya Dehejia p. 249).

According to British Historian John Keay in the book, History of India, 27 previous Hindu and Jain temples were destroyed and their materials reused to construct the Kutub Minar.

Watch the carved Hindu columns of Kutb Minar video and Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Watch Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West and a documentary on Hindu temples, refer to The Lost Temples of India.

Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

***

Hindu Kush Mountains - " Slaughter of the Hindus "

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) poet, author, philosopher, Nobel prize laureate. Tagore was deeply critical of the British Raj in India. Tagore's aim was criticize an unjust practice (colonialism) and an international system (the League of Nations) which was thoroughly unsympathetic to the plight of colonized people in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

He wrote:

“We want to draw a veil over our past to appease the Muslims.” We have done it for a long time. It is time to lift the veil."

(source: Patriotism is not enough - By M.S.N. Menon).

***

Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists have also suffered a terrible holocaust, probably without parallel in human history. Take the Hindu Kush for instance, probably one of the biggest genocides of Hindus. There is practically no serious research ever done about it and no mention in history books. Yet the name Hindu Kush appears many times in the writings of Muslim chroniclers in 1333 AD.

Ibn Battutah, the medieval Berber traveller, said the name meant 'Hindu Killer,' a meaning still given by Afghan mountain dwellers.

Unlike the Jewish holocaust, the exact toll of the Hindu genocide suggested by the name Hindu Kush is not available. 'However,' writes Hindu Kush specialist Srinandan Vyas, 'the number is easily likely to be in millions.'

(Note: To the Hindus, this mountain range was known as Paariyaatra Parvat. But when the last Hindu king of Kabul was killed Muslims ruled this land and then called these mountains the Hindu Kush -- "Slaughter of the Hindus" ).

It is significant that one of the very few place-names on earth that reminds us not of the victory of the winners but rather of the slaughter of the losers, concerns a genocide of Hindus by the Muslims.

A few known historical figures can be used to justify this estimate. The Encyclopaedia Britannica recalls that in December 1398 AD, Taimurlane ordered the execution of at least 50,000 captives before the battle for Delhi; likewise, the number of captives butchered by Taimurlane's army was about 100,000.

The Britannica again mentions that Mughal emperor Akbar ordered the massacre of about 30,000 captured Rajput Hindus on February 24, 1568 AD, after the battle for Chitod, a number confirmed by Abul Fazl, Akbar's court historian. Afghan historian Khondamir notes that during one of the many repeated invasions on the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, which used to be part of the Hindu Shahiya kingdoms '1,500,000 residents perished.' 'Thus, 'it is evident that the mountain range was named as Hindu Kush as a reminder to the future Hindu generations of the slaughter and slavery of Hindus during the Moslem conquests.'

(source: Where's India's holocaust museum? - By Francois Gautier - rediff.com).

***

Adhai-din-ka-jhonpra

Ultimate example of destruction of Hindu Temple

No matter what people believe about the secular nature of Muslim rulers in India , the Adai-din ka Jhonpra is the ultimate example of the destruction of a Hindu temple to construct a mosque.

This edifice of 1192 came up even one year before construction of Qutub Minar began in Delhi.It is called Adhai din ka Jhonpra, following an interesting anecdote. After the second battle of Tarain (1192) in which Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori defeated and killed Prithviraj Chauhan, the victor passed through Ajmer .

Mohammad Ghori was so awed by the temples of the city, that he wanted them destroyed and replaced instantly.

Ultimate example of destruction of a Hindu Temple and Sanskrit college by Muslim Invaders - Hindu pillars still evident in the mosque.

Mohammad Ghori was so awed by the temples of the city of Ajmer, that he wanted them destroyed and replaced instantly. He asked Qutub-ud-din Aibak, his slave general, to have the needful done in 60 hours’ time (adhai din) so that he could offer prayers in the new mosque on his way back. The mosque is believed to have been built in two and a half days, thus named Adhai-din (two and a half days). The edifice was originally a Sanskrit college, but Muhammad Ghori converted it into a mosque in 1198 and built a seven-arched wall inscribed with verses from the Koran.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

***

He asked Qutub-ud-din Aibak, his slave general, to have the needful done in 60 hours’ time (adhai din) so that he could offer prayers in the new mosque on his way back. The mosque is believed to have been built in two and a half days, thus named Adhai-din (two and a half days). The edifice was originally a Sanskrit college, but Muhammad Ghori converted it into a mosque in 1198 and built a seven-arched wall inscribed with verses from the Koran.

Colonel James Todd (1782-1835) describes the Adhai-din ka Jhonpra as a temple in his book Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Volume I. This Englishman is credited with being the first to map Rajasthan and write about it in immense detail. He writes that "the entire façade of this noble entrance … is covered with Arabic inscriptions … but a small frieze over the apex of the arch contains an inscription in Sanskrit." The Arabic script he attributes to Ghori who used local masons and artisans to break down this centre of learning where one was taught in Sanskrit and built a mosque in its place. Perhaps that is the reason why the mosque was completed in two and a half days, for the original infrastructure must already have existed. The interior of the Jhonpra is designed along the lines of a Hindu temple rather than a mosque where the main hall is supported by a number of massive columns. Three pillars are placed over each other to gain more height while the roof is supported on square bays. The columns are of an uncommon design, heavily decorated and quite similar to Hindu and Jain rock temples, each of one being dissimilar to each other. Their bases are large and bulbous, tapering as they gain height, with nichés to house images of gods and goddesses. Even the ceiling is an extensively carved adventure, below which is a pulpit especially constructed to deliver sermons from the Koran. It was almost completely built by Hindu masons, and supervised by Afghan overseers. There’s a tiny Sanskrit inscription on top of the main gate that reminds you of the actual origin of this historic monument. The interior of the mosque is more like a Hindu temple, with a main hall supported by numerous columns. Three pillars are placed over each other while the roof is supported on square bays. The columns are of an uncommon design, heavily decorated and quite similar to Hindu and Jain rock temples. Their bases are large and bulbous, tapering as they gain height. Although the original pillars and the roof of the pre-Muslim structure were allowed to remain, many of the original carvings were defaced by the conquerors. Most of these artefacts are now in the local Rajasthan museum, including the panels containing fine inscriptions from two popular Sanskrit dramas, Harakeli Natak and Lalilta Vigraharaja Natak.

The credit for the restoration of Adhai din ka Jhonpra goes to archaeologists Alexander Cunningham and D. R. Bhandarkar in the first half of the 20th century. In their report they say: "The whole of the exterior of the mosque is covered up with a network of tracery so finely and delicately wrought that it can only be compared to a fine lace."

Cunningham described the exterior of the Jhonpra even more eloquently: "For gorgeous prodigality of ornament, beautiful richness of tracery, delicate sharpness of finish, laborious accuracy of workmanship, endless variety of detail, all of which are due to the Hindu masons, this building may justly vie with the noblest buildings which the world has yet produced."

***

Negationism and the Muslim Conquests - by Francois Gautier

Allah's Apostle said "I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy). - Bukhari 4:52:220

(source: Fighting for the Cause of Allah (Jihad) - usc.edu). For information on Jihad refer to chapter on Glimpses XVIII

***

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

- George Santayana (1863 - 1952) American philosopher. The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905. Refer to the Holocaust.

***

Francois Gautier (1950 - ) Paris-born, he has lived in India for 30 years, is a political analyst for Le Figaro, one of France's largest circulation newspaper. He defends Indian nationalism. He caused a storm of controversy in India by advocating reunification with Pakistan. Author of several books, including A Western journalist on India : The Ferengi's Columns and Rewriting Indian History

"Muslims invaders did record with glee their genocide on Hindus, because they felt all along that they were doing their duty; that killing, plundering, enslaving and razing temples was the work of God, Mohammed. Indeed, whether it was Mahmud of Ghazni (997-1030), who was no barbarian, although a Turk, and patronised art and literature, would recite a verse of the Koran every night after having razed temples and killed his quota of unbelievers; or Firuz Shah Tughlak (1351-1388) who personally confirms that the destruction of Pagan temples was done out of piety and writes: "on the day of a Hindu festival, I went there myself, ordered the executions of all the leaders AND PRACTITIONERS of his abomination; I destroyed their idols temples and built mosques in their places".

(source: Negationism and the Muslim Conquests - by Francois Gautier). Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com. Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst. Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Refer to Ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh - muktomona.com.

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman.

In India, a whole literature has developed which denies, minimizes or whitewashes this history.

Islam’s Other Victims: India

Serge Trifkovic ( ? ) author of The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World has observed in his article:

"India prior to the Moslem invasions was one of the world’s great civilizations. Tenth century Hindustan matched its contemporaries in the East and the West in the realms of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. Indian mathematicians discovered the number zero (not to mention other things, like algebra, that were later transmitted to a Moslem world which mistaken has received credit for them.) Medieval India, before the Moslem invasion, was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Its sculptures were vigorous and sensual, its architecture ornate and spellbinding. And these were indigenous achievements and not, as in the case of many of the more celebrated high-points of Moslem culture, relics of pre-Moslem civilizations that Moslems had overrun.

Moslem invaders began entering India in the early 8th century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of what is now Iraq. (Sound familiar?) Starting in 712 the raiders, commanded by Muhammad Qasim, demolished temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces, killed vast numbers of men — it took three whole days to slaughter the inhabitants of the city of Debal — and carried off their women and children to slavery, some of it sexual."

" The mountainous northwestern approaches to India are to this day called the Hindu Kush, "the Slaughter of the Hindu," a reminder of the days when Hindu slaves from Indian subcontinent died in harsh Afghan mountains while being transported to Moslem courts of Central Asia."

(source: Islam’s Other Victims: India - By SergeTrifkovic). Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com. For more refer to chapter on Hindu Art.

For more on Islamic Terrorism refer to chapter on Glimpses XV and Glimpses XVIII. Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal" - By Tathagata Roy. Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - by Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org. Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg and Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman.

Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Refer to Cruel genocide by Muslims in India - slideshow. Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

For more on destruction of Hindu temples, refer to the book - Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them : (A Preliminary Survey) - By Arun Shourie and For more refer to Hindu Holocaust Museum

Amir Timur or Tamerlane (1336 - 1405) Turkmen Mongol conqueror wrote:

"My principal object in coming to Hindustan… has been to accomplish two things. The first was to war with the infidels, the enemies of the Mohammadan religion; and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was… that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels: plunder in war is as lawful as their mothers’ milk to Musalmans who war for their faith.”

While studying the legacy of Muslim rule in India, it has to be constantly borne in mind that the objectives of all Muslim invaders and rulers were the same as those mentioned above. Timur or Tamerlane himself defines them candidly and bluntly while others do so through their chroniclers.

(source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India - By K S Lal).

For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India.

To start with he stormed the fort of Kator on the border of Kashmir. He ordered his soldiers "to kill all the men, to make prisoners of women and children, and to plunder and lay waste all their property".

Next, he "directed towers to be built on the mountain of the skulls of those obstinate unbelievers". Soon after, he laid siege to Bhatnir defended by Rajputs. They surrendered after some fight, and were pardoned. But Islam did not bind Timur to keep his word given to the "unbelievers". His Tuzk-i-Timuri records: "In a short space of time all the people in the fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground."

By now Timur had captured 100,000 Hindus. As he prepared for battle against the Tughlaq army after crossing the Yamuna, his Amirs advised him "that on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolators and enemies of Islam at liberty". Therefore, "no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword". Tuzk-i-Timuri continues: "I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death."

(source: Kashmir Islamic Atrocities in India). Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman. Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com.

Ghazw (plural ghazawāt) is an Arabic word meaning an armed incursion for the purposes of conquest, plunder, or the capture of slaves and is cognate with the terms ghāziya and maghāzī. For the ghāzīs in the marches, it was a religious duty to ravage the countries of the infidels who resisted Islam, and to force them into subjection.

(source: Cambridge History of Islam p. 283).

American Historian Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson (1862-1937) wrote:

"At Muhamud's blockade the defenders "fell to the earth like sparrows before the hawk." Immense stores of treasure and jewels, money and silver ingots, were laden upon camels, and a pavilion of silver and a canopy of Byzantine linen reared upon pillars of silver and gold were among the prizes of the Holy War. The booty was displayed in the court of the palace at Ghazni, "jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shinning like sparks or iced wine, emeralds as it were sprigs of young myrtle, diamonds as big as pomegrantes." The Eastern chronicles tell of seventy million silver dirhams, and hundreds of thousands of pounds weight of silver cups and vessels; and, with every allowance for exaggeration, the spoils must been colossal. All the world flocked to Ghazni to gaze upon the incredible wealth of India. Such rewards were incentives enough to carry on the pious work. Year after year Mahmud swept over the plains of Hindustan, capturing cities and castles, throwing down temples and idols, and earning his titles of "Victor" and "Idol-breaker," Ghazi and But-shikan.

Zeal for Islam was the dominant role of the tenth-century Turks, as of most new converts. The great missionary creed of Mohammed, which to the Arabs and Persians had become a familiar matter of routine, was a source of fiery inspiration to the untutored men of the steppes. To spread the faith by conquest doubled their natural zest for battle and endowed them with the devoted valor of martyrs.

Mahamud was a staunch Moslem, and he vowed that every year he would wage a Holy War against the infidels of Hindustan. The sack of Somnath had made Mahmud of Ghazni a champion of the faith in the eyes of every Moslem for nearly nine centuries, and the feat, signal enough in itself, has been embellished with fantastic legends."

Mahmud died in 1030 A. D. and his tomb and two lofty minarets, stand to show Ghazni's life. On one of the minarets one may still read the resonant titles of the Idol-breaker, and on the marble tombstone an inscription entreats "God's mercy for the great Amir Mahmud." Soon India was to witness something very like a repetition of his swift irresistible raids. For more than a century there was peace, at least little war. Probably the Hindu troops and Hindu officials had to some extent Indianized them, and the last descendants of Mahmud made their home at Lahore without difficulty... Mu'izz-ad-din, commonly known as Mohammad Ghori, led a series of campaigns in India which recalled the days of the Idol breaker nearly two centuries before.

For thirty years Mahmud had ravaged Hindustan from Indus to the Ganges; and for thirty years Mohammed Ghori harried the same country in the same way...full of religious zeal, and eager to send the "groveling crow-faced Hindus to the fire of hell."

(source: History of India - By A V Williams Jackson volume 3 p. 17 - 28 and 52 - 54).

Thus, 'it is evident that the mountain range was named as Hindu Kush as a reminder to the future Hindu generations of the slaughter and slavery of Hindus during the Moslem conquests.'

(source: Where's India's holocaust museum? - By Francois Gautier - rediff.com).

Refer to Ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh - muktomona.com.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) first prime minister of free India, was more than a deeply moral human being. He wrote in his Discovery of India:

"In Kashmir a long-continued process of conversion to Islam had resulted in 95 per cent of the population becoming Moslems, though they retained many of their old Hindu customs. In the middle nineteenth century the Hindu ruler of the state found that very large numbers of these people were anxious to return en bloc to Hinduism.

The Moslems who came to India from outside brought no new technique or political or economic structure. In spite of a religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook. In technique and in the methods of production and industrial organization, they were inferior to what prevailed in India. Thus their influence on the economic life of India and the social structure was very little."

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995. p 267). Refer to Islam: The Arab Imperialism - By Anwar Shaikh

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg.

Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman. Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com.

A section of the Indian intelligentsia is still trying to erase from the Hindus' memory the history of their persecution by the swordsmen of Islam.

The Islamic reports on the massacres of Hindus, destruction of Hindu temples, the abduction of Hindu women and forced conversions, invariably express great glee and pride. They leave no doubt that the destruction of Paganism by every means, was considered the God-ordained duty of the Moslem community. Yet, today many Indian historians, journalists and politicians, deny that there ever was a Hindu-Moslem conflict. They shamelessly rewrite history and conjure up centuries of Hindu-Moslem amity; now a growing section of the public in India and the West only knows their negationist version of history. It is not a pleasant task to rudely shake people out of their delusions, especially if these have been wilfully created; but this essay does just that.

(source: Negationism in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam - By Koenraad Elst). Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com.

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

In fact according to the biography by Vincent Smith, Akbar enjoyed 'a harem consisting of 5000 women, mostly Hindus'.

A section of the Indian intelligentsia is still trying to erase from the Hindus' memory the history of their persecution by the swordsmen of Islam.

Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

***

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) the great British historian. His massive research was published in 12 volumes between 1934 and 1961 as A Study of History. He was a major interpreter of human civilization in the 20th century and he has said:

"Aurangzeb's purpose in building those three mosques (Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura) was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to build their Orthodox cathedral in the city centre at Warsaw. Those mosques were intended to signify that an Islamic government was reigning supreme, even over Hinduism's holiest of holy places. I must say that Aurangzeb had a veritable genius for picking out provocative sites. Aurangzeb and Philip II of Spain are a pair. They are incarnations of the gloomily fanatical vein in the Christian-Muslim-Jewish family of religions. Aurangzeb -- poor wretched misguided bad man -- spent a lifetime of hard labour in raising massive monuments to his own discredit. Perhaps the Poles were really kinder in destroying the Russians' self-discrediting monument in Warsaw than you have been in sparing Aurangzeb's mosques."

(source: One World and India - Arnold Toynbee Indian Council for Cultural Relations New Delhi. 1960 p 59 - 60). For more on Arthur Toynbee refer to chapter on Quotes.

Prince Muhammad Dara Shikoh (1627-1658 AD) the favorite Sufi son of Moghul emperor, Shah Jehan. Known the world over for his unorthodox and liberal views. He was a mystic and a free thinker. Dara Shikoh's most important legacy is the translation of fifty Upanishads, known under the title of Sirr-i-Akbar ("The Great Secret").

He was executed on the orders of his brother - Aurangazeb. For more on Dara Shikoh refer to chapter on Quotes.

If Christians are facing their past. Even in religion class in Catholic schools in Belgium, we gave attention to the gruesome part in Church history. In Latin America, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival has sparked some serious reconsideration both within and outside the Church, about the role of Christianity in the wholesale destruction of all the cultures without exception in the entire New World. But in India, we find the unbelievable situation, that not only Muslim historians and public figures refuse to face the truth about Muslim history : neutral secular historians are also covering up and denying the crimes which Islam has systematically committed, and even many Hindus are denying the crimes committed against their own society.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Treatment of Hindu Women
Sati - the only way out?

Padmini was the queen of Rana Ratan Singh of Mewar in Rajasthan. She was famous for her exquisite beauty. However, she also has an exalted place in the Rajput chivalry. No woman in the history can match what Padmini did to uphold the honor of Indian womanhood. It is said that one reason for Ala'uddin Khilji's invasion was his infatuation for Padmini. The history records the chivalrous role of Padmini and a number of other women of Mewar at the time when the famous citadel of Chitter was besieged by Ala'uddin.

The historical records show, "The funeral pyre was lighted within the great subterranean retreat, in chambers impervious to the light of the day, and defenders of Chitter beheld in procession the queens, their own wives and daughters, to the number of several thousands. The queen Padmini closed the throng. Then they were conveyed to the cavern, and the opening was closed upon them, leaving them to the final security from dishonor in the devouring fire."

Thus Padmini and other women of Chitter preferred heroic death to disgrace and rape. Rajput women are famed for their beauty and their bravery.

The mention of Rajput women brings to mind images of the valorous and pure Queen Padmini, who fought to maintain her dignity as a woman.

Rape, genocide and gross human rights violations against ethno-cultural groups induce victims to adopt defensive mechanisms.

Hindu women in India adopted the Sati traditions to protect themselves from Muslim invaders, who perpetrated the largest holocaust in history against Hindus.

Place of Valor - Chittorgrah, Rajasthan.

Immolation of the Brave and beautiful Queen Padmini and the entire ladies of the palace who preferred to meet their end through self immolation in a ceremony called 'johar' rather than be part of a Allauddin Khilji's harem and thus avoiding the gross human violations that would have occurred against them. Today she is one of the epitomes of Indian woman-hood and a saga of sacrifice and valor.

Islamic conqueror Allauddin Khilji slaughtered 30,000 Hindus. Even today minstrels sing of this tragic event in the life of Chittorgarh.

In fact according to the biography by Vincent Smith, Akbar enjoyed 'a harem consisting of 5000 women, mostly Hindus'.

Hindu women in India adopted the Sati traditions to protect themselves from Muslim invaders, who perpetrated the largest holocaust in history against Hindus.

Sixty years of feel-good negationism - Our Indian History books lyrically hail dead men like Akbar as Akbar the Great. But history is proof that on February 24, 1568, Akbar (the great) called for a pogrom and brutal massacre of 30,000 defenseless Hindus of Chittorgarh, Rajasthan who had refused to convert to Islam.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

(Image source: Editor's collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

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According to Dr.Younis Shaikh (Pakistani author of the study ‘Islam and Women’), eighty million were slaughtered and millions of women were raped. Sexual violence occurred on a gory and unimaginable scale: it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males. A large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders.

Hindu woman doing Tulsi and Shiv puja in ancient India.

For more on Tulsi puja refer to chapter on Nature Worship.

Sexual violence occurred on a gory and unimaginable scale: it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males.

The tradition of sati, where Hindu women voluntarily cast themselves onto burning cremation grounds after their husbands’ death, gained widespread acceptance during the Islamic invasions.

***

As a result, Hindu women often veiled themselves in public to avoid the eyes of rapacious Islamic conquerors. This was especially prevalent in regions with high Muslim populations, such as Hyderabad under the Nizams. The tradition of sati, where Hindu women voluntarily cast themselves onto burning cremation grounds after their husbands’ death, gained widespread acceptance during the Islamic invasions. The most famous instance took place when Muslim invaders overran Chattisgarh in 1568: rather than submit to the rape and slavery that would follow, eight thousand heroic Hindu women committed sati en masse.

(source: Veiled Threats to Democracy - By Ron Banerjee - canadafreepress.com).

The famous iron pillar in Delhi belonging to the fourth-fifth century A.D. is a metallurgical wonder. This huge wrought iron pillar, 24 feet in height 16.4 inches in diameter at the bottom, and 6 1/2 tons in weight has stood exposed to tropical sun and rain for fifteen hundred years, but does not show the least sign of rusting or corrosion. Evidence shows that the pillar was once a Garuda Stambha from a Vishnu temple. This pillar was plundered by Islamic hoards from a temple dedicated to Vishnu and added as a trophy in the Quwwat al-Islam mosque in Delhi. Made of pure iron, which even today can be produced only in small quantities by electrolysis. Such a pillar would be most difficult to make even today. Thus, the pillar defies explanation.

"One does not need to be communally-minded to infer that desecration of Hindu holy sites was held to be meritorious activity in the entire Muslim world, which is why the writers in question felt the need to glorify such acts, whether they actually took place or not."

(source: Sanitizing Temple Destruction by Islam - By Meenakshi Jain).

Muhammadan Architecture in India

The Arabs were, indeed, themselves aware of the immense superiority of Indian cultural and artistic achievements over their own. Al Beruni, the famous philosopher and contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni, familiar with the splendor of Bagdad at its best, was amazed at the excellence of Indian architectural monuments. “Our people”, he says “when they see them wonder at them, and are unable to describe them, much less construct anything like them.”

Even the iconoclastic fanatic, Mahmud of Ghazni himself, could not restrain his wonder at the triumphs of Indian art he discovered at Mathura.

Farishta records a letter of the raider to his lieutenant at Ghazni, in which he says:

“There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could such another be constructed under period of two centuries.”

The first Mussalman conquerors, in India just as much as in Persia and the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire, adapted to their own use the structure of the conquered. The continuation of the tradition thus involved led easily to the perpetuation of all the builder’s conventions, - himself a fresh convert, if not a persisting alien in faith, - in the architecture that came into vogue after the Muslims had been established in the countries of their conquest. Iconographic ornamentation, or sculptured splendors of the converted Hindu temples, were thus excluded from the mosques, architecturally designed on the same principles as the temple it had replaced. But in the spirit and the essence, in conception and design, the building remained the same, even if it came to be called by another name.

There is, indeed nothing surprising in this consummation. The Muslims who came with the conquerors were soldiers, not artists. When, therefore, they had to plan work of art, like a Jami Masjid or Cathedral Mosque, they had of necessity to employ the local artists; and the latter unavoidably took at their model the achievements they were themselves most familiar with. Besides, in the countries across the north-western frontiers of India, from which the first Muslim invaders came, Buddhist or Hindu influence had penetrated long ages before, thanks to the missionary zeal of the Buddhist. Now these people, accustomed for centuries to those conventions of building which had satisfied their urge for a thousand years, could not discard their cultural skin merely because they adopted a new creed. Hence we find the conquerors themselves imperceptibly adopting the Indian rules and conventions of building, in their most solemn and stately structures of public worship or royal habitation. Even those features of the Muhammadan monuments of architecture of India, which have been considered to be peculiarly Saracenic, seem to be, when closely studied, Indian – Hindu – in origin, conception, and execution. The ornamentation by arabesques was no doubt a Muslim contribution in public buildings, as also the intricate geometric patterns, or the ogee curves. But the pointed or trefoiled arch, and the ribbed or spherical dome, - commonly considered to be distinctive features in Muslim architecture, - were in reality of Indian – Hindu origin.

The pointed arch, was originally the temple niche of the Buddhist and Hindus. The sculptured figures of religious significance were removed by the Mulsim iconoclastic; and the niche, bare and simple, came to serve as the Mihrb in the converted or the new mosque.

Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell (1861-1934) was a principal to the Madras College of Art in the 1890s and left as principal of the Calcutta College of Art some 20 years later. He wrote several books, including his book, Indian Architecture - Its Psychology, Structure and History from the First Mohammedan Invasion to the Present Day

“The trefoil arch was a compound aureole, or nimbus, make up of a combination of the lotus and papal or banyan tree…..The papal leaf stood for the glory round the head of the Buddha, while the lotus leaf remained as before to indicate the shape of the aura which surrounded the body. The intersection of the two formed the trefoil arch. A very common variety of this was made by the charka, or Wheel of the Law, which was also the emblem of the sun-gods, - Vishnu, Surya and Mitra – taking place of the papal leaf, making the crown of the arch round instead of pointed.”

"The dome that other supposed peculiarity of the Muhammadan architecture, was also known and used in Indian building long before Islam was brought to India, and with a wealth of ornamentation abhorrent to the followers of the Prophet of Arabia. The Stupa was the origin of all such rounded construction; and this, and the different forms of the temple, Shikhara, exemplify to the highest the excellence achieved by Indian builders in this department.

"The oldest Mosque in India, Qutbuddin's Mosque, was originally a Jain temple, which the first Turkish conquerors of Delhi converted to their own use. While, thus, the sides and the entrances were Musalman, the pillars were ancient Jain, as also the roof, domes and other inner ornamentation, where they did not offend the zeal of the true believer."

(source: The Splendour That Was India - By K T Shah D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., Bombay 1930 p. 160 - 162). For more on Ernest Binfield Havell, refer to chapter on Quotes.

The Muslims loved rigid simplicity and were idol-breakers. The Muslims borrowed many features of the Hindu art. According to Sir John Marshall two of the most vital elements borrowed from Hindus were the qualities of strength and grace. In no other country except India are strength and grace so superbly united and harmonized.

(source: Indian Culture Through the Ages - Mohan Lal Vidyarthi p 295).

Colonnade of Hindu Pillars near Q'utb Minar, Delhi.

According to British Historian John Keay in the book, History of India, 27 previous Hindu and Jain temples were destroyed and their materials reused to construct the Kutub Minar.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

(image source: The Splendour That Was India - By K T Shah).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

***

Slavery under Islamic Rule

The poet Amir Khusrau testified that "the Turks, whenever they please, can seize, buy or sell any Hindu."

(source: History of India - By Elliot & Dawson, vol 3 p. 561. Quoted from Amir Khusrau's Nuh Sipehr).

Shahabuddin al-Umri wrote about the days of Sultan Mohammed bin Tughlaq (1325-51):

"The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making wars upon the infidel....Every day thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners."

(source: Muslim Slave System in Medieval India - By K. S. Lal p. 128).

Amir Khusrau (1253 - 1325) Indo-Persian poet. A prolific classical poet associated with royal courts of more than seven rulers of Delhi Sultanate. He described:

"in poetical metaphors the destruction of Hindu temples for the sake of transformation into mosques."

(source: India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding - By Wilhelm Halbfass p. 31).

In South Asia, where claims of "egalitarianism" are trump cards in the competition with "caste-ridden" Hinduism, the claim that Islam was the emancipator of the slaves in very popular.

Hindu women of India

(source: History of India - By A V Williams Jackson).

Refer to Will Islam convert itself? – By Francois Gautier - indowave.com.

Refer to Kashmiri Pundits : Are they facing a Dodo future? and Kashmiri pandits alienated again - ibnlive.com.

***

As Marxist historian, Ifran Habib notes: "Slaves were, in effect, deprived of caste and converted to Islam, could be put to almost any task or learn any trade." "The number of slaves in the Sultans' establishments were very high (50,000 under Alaudddin Khilji, and 180,000 under Firuz Tughlaq), Barani judges the level of prices by referring to slave prices, and the presence of slaves were almost all-pervasive."

Foreign travelers in different centuries, including the great globe-trotter, Ibn Batuta, author of Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, testify that Indian slaves were very cheap because they were very numerous in supply." William Finch, who lived at the Moghul court in c. 1610, testifies that hunting expeditions in the forest brought human as well as animal prey.

B. R. Ambedkar, wrote: "The Hindus have their social evils. But there is one relieving feature about them - namely that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. The Muslims, on the other hand, do not realize that they are evils and consequently do not agitate for their removal."

(source: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind - By Koenraad Elst p. 414-424). For more refer to chapter on Caste System.

As Nobel laureate V S Naipaul said recently in an interview: 'India has been a wounded civilization because of Islamic violence: Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorized civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed.'

(source: You want a plebiscite? Okay, let's do a real one, then! - Rajeev Srinivasan). Refer to Some observations on Medieval India - History textbook for Class VII by Romila Thapar). For more information please refer to Hindu Holocaust Museum).

Ferdinand Braudel (1902-1985) French historian, author of A History of Civilizations, wrote:

"The conquest, successful after countless setbacks, ended in wholesale military occupation. The Muslims, who were few in number and based solely in the larger towns, could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm - burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasions there were forced conversions. If ever there was an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves."

Usually, the plains were left to be run by native princes or village communities. These intermediate authorities were responsible for paying heavy taxes which were sometimes the counterpart of a certain autonomy, as in the case of the rajahs of Rajputana.

India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence, including the splendor of the palaces and feasts in Delhi, which the sultans had made their capital, and which was a source of wonder to Muslim travelers such as the famous Ibn Batuta.'

(source: A History of Civilizations - by Ferdinand Braudel - translated by Richard Mayne p. 232).

Louis-Frederic, French Indologist, author of L'lnde de l'Islam, frequently mentions forced conversions, massacres and temple demolitions. On pages 42-49 he writes:

“Mohammed Ghori had the Hindu temples of Ajmer demolished and ordered the construction of mosques and Quran schools on their runins…He plundered Kanauj and Kashi and destroyed their temples.” While his generals “destroyed in passing the remaining Buddhist communities of Bihar and destroyed the universities of Nalanda.”

Bakhtiar Khilji “established a Muslim capital in Lakhanauti (Gaur) on the Ganga and destroyed, in 1197, its basalt temples. In Odantpuri, in 1202, he massacred two thousand Buddhist monks. “

Meanwhile, back in Delhi: “This Quwwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) was built in a hurry using the debris, chiefly sculpted pillars, of twenty-seven dismantled Hindu temples.” Thirty years later, “Iltutmish did not forget that he was a Muslim conqueror. He showed himself to be very pious, never forgetting to do his five devotional daily….He likewise showed himself totally intolerant vis-à-vis the Hindus who refused to convert, destroying their temples and annihilating Brahmin communities.”

However, in India a literature has developed which denies, minimizes or white-washes this history.

(source: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind - By Koenraad Elst p. 328).

Alain Danielou (1907-1994), son of French aristocracy, author of numerous books on philosophy, religion, history and arts of India, including Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation : The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India.

He points out that the sack of the magnificent city of Vijayanagar, which was like an island of civilization, chivalry, and beauty, in the midst of a shattered and bleeding India, by Husain Nizam Shah, was an horror:

"During nearly FIVE months," reminisces Danielou, "the Muslims set themselves to the task of destroying everything, the temples, the palaces, the magnificent residences. The scenes of terror and massacre were unparalleled and mightier than the imagination can ever fathom. The victors grabbed so much richness in gold, silver, jewels, precious furniture, camels, tents, girls, boys, slaves, weapons, armours, that there were not a single plain soldier who did not depart a rich man. And nothing remained after their departure of the most beautiful and prosperous city of that time, but smoking ruins."

Nadir Shah, of Iran attacked Delhi in 1739 and for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He took the fabulous Peacock throne to Iran.

(source: History of India - By A V Williams Jackson).

Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

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The Priceless Peacock Throne

What is the costliest single treasure made in the last 1,000 years? Wrought out of 1150 kg of gold and 230 kg of precious stones, conservatively in 1999 the throne would be valued at $804 million or nearly Rs 4.5 billion. In fact when made, it cost twice as much as the Tajmahal. On the top of each pillar there were to be two peacocks, thick-set with gems and between each two peacocks a tree set with rubies and diamonds, emeralds and pearls. The ascent was to consist of three steps set with jewels of fine water". Of the 11 jewelled recesses formed around it for cushions, the middle one was intended for the seat it for Emperor. Among the historical diamonds decorating it were the famous Kohinoor (186 carats). It was one of the most splendiferous thrones ever made. it was encrusted with 26,733 precious stones! Ascended by silver steps, it was sheeted with gold encrusted with emeralds and rubies. Its back was a peacock's tail of sapphires, pearls and turquoises. The throne was completed after seven years of unceasing labour by the best craftsmen of the empire and was valued at 10 million rupees or Rs 500 crore today.

(source: As priceless as the Peacock Throne - By K. R. N. Swamy - tribuneindia.com). For more on the Kohinoor diamond refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII.

"Nadir Shah, of Iran attacked Delhi in 1739 and for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He went back to Iran taking with him precious furniture, works of art, horses, the Kohinoor diamond, the famous Peacock throne and 150 million rupees in gold."

(source: Histoire de l' Inde - By Alain Danielou p. 251- 290 or A Brief History of India).

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India has been a land of freedom of thought and tolerance from the very dawn of her history. Conformism of any kind, religious or political, is alien to her genius and culture. As a result different schools of philosophy, forms of government and ways of worship have co-existed in it all through the history. Theistic and atheists, spiritualists, and materialists, Shaivas and Vaishanavas, Buddhists, and Jains have flourished here side by side with full freedom to preach their viewpoints and convert others to their line of thinking and way of worship. Even Charwak, the Indian precursor of Karl Marx, has been accepted as a Rishi in the Indian tradition.

This situation was changed by the advent of Islam in this country. Apart from the fact that it came to India on the wings of foreign invaders one of whose main motivation was spread of Islam in this country, its very character was anti-thesis of Indian thinking and attitude in regard to religion. Unlike the numerous forms of worship and systems of thought that co-existed in India at the time, it stood for a monolithic uniformity and conformism. It had no tolerance for any other form of worship. It not only aimed at converting all the Indian to Islam, on the point of the sword if necessary, but also expected such converts to reject their pre-Islamic past and ancestors. The Muslim invaders looked upon the people of this country as kafirs or heretics. They behaved towards the Hindus in a barbaric manner. They destroyed temples and libraries and indulged in most heinous type of vandalism. Their cruelty and harshness towards Indian kafirs knew no bounds. When Mahmud of Ghazni saw the temple of Mathura he was so much wonder struck by their splendor, magnificence and art that he exclaimed that they must have been built not by men but by angels who must have taken centuries to complete them. But his Islamic zeal impelled him to raze them to the ground.

Indians who had been accustomed to wars in which the women, the old, children, the peasants were left untouched and who had never seen temples and other places of worship being desecrated or destroyed like this felt aghast at the conduct of the new invaders. This further explains the notorious declaration of Maulana Mohammed Ali, the President of All-India Congress Committee in 1923 that for him a goonda and an adulterer Muslim was thousand times superior to Mahatma Gandhi.

(source: Indianisation? - By Balraj Madhok).

Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul Nobel laureate, has said on the Ayodhya issue that: "Indian intellectuals have a responsibility to the state and should start a debate on the Muslim psyche" and that : "The idea (of the temple) should be welcomed."

In 1739, Nadir Shah carried away from India money, plate, and jewels valued at from thirty to sixty millions sterling.

(source: Economic Conditions of India - By P. P. Pillai p. 12).

V S Naipaul said in 1967: "Indians are proud of their ancient, surviving civilization. They are, in fact, victims of Islam."

For more on destruction of Hindu temples, refer to Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them : (A Preliminary Survey) - By Arun Shourie.

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Islamic Hoards and Their Terror - By B. R. Ambedkar

The first Muslim invasion of India came from the north-west by the Arabs who were led by Mahommad Bin Qasim. It took place in 711 A.D. and resulted in the conquest of Sind. This first Muslim invasion did not result in a permanent occupation of the country because the Caliphate of Baghdad, by whose order and command the invasion had taken place, was obliged by the middle of 9th century A.D. to withdraw its direct control from this distant province of Sind. Soon after this withdrawal, there began a series of terrible invasions by Muhammad of Ghazni (the idol breaker) in 1001 A.D. Muhammad died in 1030 A.D., but within the short span of 30 years, he invaded India 17 times. He was followed by Mahommed Ghori, who began his career as an invader in 1173. He was killed in 1206. For thirty years Muhammad of Ghazni ravaged India and for thirty years Mahommad Ghori harried the same country in the same way.

Then followed the incursions of the Moghul hordes of Chenghiz Khan. They first came in 1221. They then stayed on the border of India but did not enter it. Twenty years later, they marched on Lahore and sacked it. Of their inroads, the most terrible was under Timur in 1398. Then comes on the scene a new invader in the person of Babar who invaded India in 1526. The invasion of India did not stop with that of Babar. There occurred two more invasions. In 1738 Nadir Shah’s invading host swept over the Punjab like a flooded river “furious as the ocean”. He was followed by Ahmad Shah Abdali who invaded India in 1761, smashed the forces of the Marathas at Panipat and crushed for ever the attempt of the Hindus to gain the ground which they had lost to their Muslim invaders.

These Muslim invasions were not undertaken merely out of lust for loot or conquest, but also to strike a blow at the idolatry and polytheism of Hindus and establishing Islam in India.

Muhammad of Ghazni also looked upon his numerous invasions of India as the waging of a holy war. Al’Utbi, the historian of Muhammad, describing his raids writes:

“He demolished idol temples and established Islam. He captured ……cities, destroyed the idolaters, and gratifying Muslims. He then returned home and promulgated accounts of the victories obtained for Islam……..and vowed that every year he would undertake a holy war against Hind.”

(source: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches. Reprint of Pakistan or The Partition of India. Education Department. Government of Maharashtra 1990 Vol. 8. p. 53-66).for more ....

The temple of Somnath, which is not very far from Dwaraka, is dedicated to Lord Siva as Nagnath or Nageshwar Mahadev, and enshrines one of the twelve ‘Jyotirlingas’ which according to the Puranas manifested themselves as columns of light in different parts of the country. The magnificent temple that stands there now is a replica of the original temple. The 13th century Arab source refers to the glories of the temple thus: "Somnath - a celebrated city of India situated on the shore of the sea is washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnat. This idol was in the middle of the temple, without anything to support it from below or to suspend it from above. It was held in the highest honour among the Hindus, and whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement..."

Sultan Alau’d-Din Khalji (1296-1316), in Tarikh-I-Firuz Shahi, op. cit:

Somnath (Gujarat): “At the beginning of the third year of the reign, Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan, with their amirs and generals, and a large army marched against Gujarat…All Gujarat became prey to the invaders, and the idol, which after the victory of Sultan Mahmud and his destruction of )the idol) of Manat, the Brahmans had set up under the name of Somanat, for the worship of the Hindus, was carried to Delhi where it was laid for the people to tread upon….” (Report to the same effect in Tabqat-I-Tawarikh; the latter also mentions that at the site of the temple a mosque was constructed.)

(source: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie Harper Collins India ISBN 8172233558 p. 107-136).

"In 1193, when the Muslim conquerors reached Bihar and massacred the 'idolatrous unbelievers', the Buddhists were still in the majority on the lower Ganges. According to an 11th century inscription, the great temple of Bodh Gaya had been restored by the Burmese - an indication that the native population had lost all interest.

(source: India - By Martin Hurlimann p. 224). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi, who rampaged across most of northern India converting Hindus to Islam and smashing Hindu statues. He is said to have taken Hindu statues and put them at the entrance to a mosque in Ghazni so the Muslim faithful could use them as stepping stones.

(source: Associated Press).

Dr Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963) first President of India, during the renovation of the historic Somnath temple in 1950 which was vandalised by a 11th century Muslim invader, Mohammad Ghazni.

'By rising from its ashes again, this temple of Somnath will proclaim to the world that no man and no power in the world can destroy that for which people have boundless faith and love in their hearts... Today, our attempt is not to rectify history. Our only aim is to proclaim anew our attachment to the faith, convictions and to the values on which our religion has rested since immemorial ages.'

(source: Symbol of an awakened civilization - Ram Madhav - rediff.com). For more on Somnath refer Somnath and Ayodhya: What Is the Difference - By David Frawley).

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

When Marxist Historian, Romila Thapar tries to make gullible readers believe that Mahmud Ghaznavi only desecrated temples for their wealth she must know (assuming, as all her quoters do, that she is competent historian) that Mahmud is revered by the Muslims as a devout Muslim, that he calligraphed Quran text "for the benefit of his soul", and that he actually refused a huge ransom which Hindus were ready to pay if he agreed to give back an idol, instead of breaking it. Mahmud preferred breaking idols to selling them, even if that meant foregoing wealth. So her theory of Mahmud's economical rather than religious motives is at best an unscientific imposition of Marxist dogma upon the facts of Indian history, otherwise a deliberate lie.

The myth of Brahmin oppression, the myth of Buddhism as a social reform movement, the myth of the Buddhist-Brahmin power struggle, the myth of the economical motives for the Muslim conquests and destruction, the myth of the non-existence of an indigenous and nation-wide Hindu culture, the myth of the social reforms brought by Islam, the myth of Hindu-Muslim amity, the myth of Nehru and of India as a a nation in the making, the myth of the Composite Culture, the myth that communalism is a British creation, all these myths are bound to give way once a substantial number of Hindu intellectuals apply their minds to them in a serious and scientific way, and then use the available channels to speak out.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to video Statistics on Islamic Terrorism - By B Raman.

Refer to Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Also refer to Blasts in Varanasi

"Why are there absolutely no Buddhist temples left in Afghanistan, in Turkestan? Nor Hindu or Zorastrian or Manichaen temples, for that matter? Secularist scholars do not seem to know that the Buddhist monasteries and universities were destroyed and exterminated to the last, in India just as well as in Central Asia, by none other than the Muslim armies. So, the answer is that, while, Buddhism had been partly reabsorbed into Hinduism, and had partly continued as a separate tradition under Hindu dynasties, the Muslim conquerors finished it off totally."

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India SKU: INBK2650 p. 103).

The Quwwat ul-Islam or 'Might of Islam' Mosque, erected on the site of Delhi's largest Hindu temple, and it contains on three sides, by rows of stone columns pillaged from some 27 local Hindu and Jain shrines. To the southeast was erected the great Qutb (pole or axis) Minar. It was haughtily erected as a tower of victory, and its inscriptions proclaim its purpose - to cast a long shadow of God over the conquered city of the Hindus. Qutub-ud-din employed the local Hindu craftsmen of Delhi, and their beautifully detailed stonework is everywhere in evidence. The pointed arches of the mosque's western screen were constructed using only traditional Hindu corbelling techniques; and around these arches and on the decorative band encircling the minar the craftsmen carved inscriptions, in elegant Naskhi script, interspersed with floral designs of Indian origin.

(source: Indian Art - By Roy C. Craven p. 195-196). Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - by Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

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Indian Code of Chivalry:The Rajput and Maratha Warriors

Hindus, like the Jews, have been subject to Muslim persecution for centuries. Following the example set by the Prophet, Muslim invaders destroyed Hindu places of worship and sold Hindu women and children in the slave markets of Damascus and Baghdad. For centuries, Rajputs, Marathas, Jats and Sikhs fought Muslim invaders.

Rajput Kingdoms contended with the rising and expansionist empires of Central Asia, be they Arabs, Moghuls,Mongols Afghans, or other Turks. They earned their reputation by fighting these battles with a code of chivalrous conduct rooted in their strong adherence to tradition and (Hindu Dharma). The Rajput Kingdoms held out against the Arab Caliphates and other Central Asian Empires for several centuries. The heroism and sacrifice displayed by the Rajputs is legendary in the chronicles of Indian history.

A point to note here is that lot of Muslims, Western and some Hindu historians think that Islam/Muslims did not do conversion of Hindus by sword. The argument they give is that there are so many Hindus still today in India. This is completely wrong because most Muslim rulers in India tried to convert as many as they could but it was the strength of Rajput sword and later Maratha, Sikh swords that kept Hinduism alive in India. If there were no Rajputs, Marathas , Sikhs in India, then India would be just like Iraq, Iran, Turkey, or Pakistan in terms of religion of the population.

The perseverance of Hinduism in India by the Rajput sword against the entire might of Islamic rulers is the most glorious achievement by a race in the annals of world history and every one should know this fact, more so Indians and most definitely each and every Rajput. Presence of Rajput generals in Mughal army was a blessing in disguise for the Hindu population as the mughal army when headed by a rajput general could not engage in wanton destruction of Hindu temples as well as mass conversion of Hindus to Islam.

Colonel James Todd in his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan wrote:

"What nation on earth could have maintained the semblance of civilization, the spirit or the customs of their forefathers, during so many centuries of overwhelming depression, but one of such singular character as the Rajpoot? . . . Rajasthan exhibits the sole example in the history of mankind, of a people withstanding every outrage barbarity could inflict, or human nature sustain, from a foe whose religion commands annihilation; and bent to the earth, yet rising buoyant from the pressure, and making calamity a whetstone to courage. . . . Not an iota of their religion or customs have they lost. . . ".

Contrast this to how Muslims converted entire Iranian kingdom, where a very ancient religion of Zoroaster flourished, on the edge of the sword in a very short amount of time.

(source: The Great Rajputs - hindurajputblogspot.com). Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India.

Heroism of Prithiviraj Chauhan

Prithviraj Chauhan III was the last of the great Chauhan rulers of Ajmer who left a deep imprint in the sands of time and redefined the concept of valour in its noblest form. The legendary Prithviraj lived here and became a force to reckon with. His exploits are related with great wonder and sometimes disbelief. Few rulers of that time could match the charisma and heroism of this dynamic ruler.

Prithviraj was the son of Someshwara who died in 1179 A.D. The second Turkish attack was led by Mu'izzu'd-Din Muhammad (also known as Muhammad Ghuri), who conquered Sindh and Lahore in 1182. Soon after, he commenced his attack on the Rajput kingdoms. Prithviraj Chauhan successfully led the Rajputs against Ghuri at the first battle of Tarain in 1191 AD. However, at the second battle in 1192 AD, Prithviraj who became the last Hindu ruler was defeated and the kingdom of Delhi fell to Muhammad Ghuri.

Prithviraj Chauhan, king of Delhi, magnanimously let Ghuri off. Legend has it - and it is widely believed in India - that when Ghori eventually succeeded in defeating Prithviraj Chauhan at the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192, he blinded him and took him in chains to Afghanistan along with his friend, the poet Chandravardai.

Adhai – din- ka- Jhonpra - Its construction took two and a half days (Adhai-Din) to complete. It was originally a Sanskrit college, built within a temple. In 1193 A.D., Mohammad Ghauri conquered Ajmer and converted the building into a mosque by adding a seven arched wall in front of the pillared hall in just two-and-a-half days (adhai-din) and hence the name.

To this day, Prithviraj Chauhan is remembered by the Rajputs as a model of chivalry and courage, and is the hero of many folk ballads.

The Legendary Prithviraj Chauhan III was the last of the great Chauhan rulers of Ajmer, Rajasthan.

To this day, Prithviraj Chauhan is remembered by the Rajputs as a model of chivalry and courage, and is the hero of many folk ballads.

The Rajput warriors earned their reputation by fighting these battles with a code of chivalrous conduct rooted in their strong adherence to tradition and (Hindu dharma).

For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India and Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

***

Shivaji - The Great Maratha Warrior

For about three hundred and fifty years before Shivaji, Maharashtra was not a free state. A large portion of it was under the rule of the Nizamshah of Ahmednagar and the Adilshah of Bijapur. These two had divided Maharashtra among themselves. Their officers rules Maharashtra on their behalf. Adilshah and Nizamshah, were very narrow in their outlook and oppressed the people over whom they ruled. They were also sworn enemies of each other. They constantly fought each other and as a result the people of Maharashtra suffered untold hardships. There was hunger everywhere and the people were starving. People were not free to celebrate festivals and worship their Gods openly. Life was not safe at all and injustice prevailed everywhere.

Shivaji - The Great Maratha Warrior

***

On this background, 18 year old Shivaji and his faithfuls took the oath at Rohedeshwar Temple to establish a nation of the natives which Shivaji maintained was the will of the providence. In his next 35 years he lived an epic which thrilled the imagination of his friends and foes alike.

It is true that Shivaji contributed a lot towards the rise and growth of Maratha power in India, but it is equally true that at the time he appeared on the scene, the ground had already been prepared for him.

Shivaji Maharaj was coronated at fort Raigad about 350 years ago. The throne was made up of gold and studded with diamonds.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote about Shivaji’s great ideals:

“Into one virtuous rule,
This divided, broken, distracted India
I shall bind.”

In his essay on Shivaji and the Maharastrains written in Bengali from the Visva Bharati quarterly, he wrote:

In the history of Maharastrians we find Shivaji in the dominating role. But Shivaji could never have achieved greatness, had not the whole of the Maharastrian nation made him great. The religious movement in Maharashtra was uniting the people through a process of churning. Shivaji’s genius was derived from that churning."

Sir Jadunath Sarkar was right in observing that, “Shivaji’s ideals were such that we might accept them even today without any change.”

“He was a person of middling height, with an erect bearing and excellent proportions, very active and whenever he used to speak, it appeared as if he was smiling. He had quick and piercing eyes and was fairer than any of his own people.” - English Records on Shivaji – vol. 1 p. 73. January 1664.

“With a success as happy as Ceasar’s in Spain; he came, saw, and overcame and is reported to have taken so vast a treasure in gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies and wrought corall that have strengthened his arms with very able sinews to prosecute his further designs. “He being no less dexterous, thereat (conquests) than Alexander the Great was for, by the agility of his winged men (himself terming them birds) he took in less than eight months what he had delivered to Jaysing.” - English Records on Shivaji – vol. II p. 150. dated January 1677- 78.

“But it is too well known that Shivaji is as second Sertorious, and comes not short of Hannibal for Stratagems.”
- English Records on Shivaji. Vol II p. 153. dated February 14 1677 – 78.

“Into one virtuous rule,
This divided, broken, distracted India
I shall bind.”

***

Sir Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji p. 115 remarked:

“The Historian of Shivaji at the end of a careful study of all the records about him in eight different languages, is bound to admit that Shivaji was not only the maker of the Maratha nation, but also the greatest constructive genius of medieval India . States fall, empires break up, dynasties become extinct, but the memory of a true “hero as King” like Shivaji remains an imperishable historical legacy for the entire human race. – The pillar of people’s hope. The center of a world’s desire, to animate the heart, to kindle the imagination, and to inspire the brain of succeeding ages to the highest endeavors.”

According to Dr. Ishwari Prasad, "But Shivaji's rise to power cannot be treated as an isolated phenomenon in Maratha history. It was as much the result of his personal daring and heroism as of the peculiar geographical situation of the Deccan country and unifying religious influences that were animating the people with new hopes and aspirations in the 15th and 16th centuries."

The Maratha the most formidable enemy; for he will not fail in boldness and enterprise when they are indispensible, and will always support them or supply their place, by stratagem, activity and perseverance.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

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Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said: "Shivaji did not belong to Maharashtra alone; he belonged to the whole Indian nation."

"Shivaji was not an ambitious ruler anxious to establish a kingdom for himself but a patriot inspired by a vision and political ideas derived from the teachings of the ancient philosophers. He studied the merits and faults of the systems of administration in kingdoms existing at the time and determined his own policies and administration in the light of that knowledge. A devout Hindu, he was tolerant of other religions and established a number of endowments for maintainig sacred places belonging to them. As a general he was undoubtedly one of the greatest in Indian history; he saw the need for and raised a navy to guard his coastline and to fight against the British and the Dutch. Pratapgad Fort build in 1656 stands today as a monument to his military genius. Shivaji is a symbol of many virtues, more especially of love of country."

A.B. de Braganca Pereira Arquivo Portugues Oriental, Vol III wrote: "Wonderous mystic, adventurous and intrepid, fortunate, roving prince, with lovely and magnetic eyes, pleasing countenance, winsome and polite, magnanimous to fallen foe like Alexander, keen and a sharp intellect, quick in decision, ambitious conqueror like Julius Caesar, given to action, resolute and strict disciplinarian, expert strategist, far-sighted and constructive statesman, brilliant organizer, who sagaciously countered his political rivals and antagonists like the Mughals, Turks of Bijapur, the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch, and the French. Undaunted by the mighty Moghuls, then the greatest power in Asia. He fought with Bijapuri to carve out a great empire."

D. Kincaid - The Grand Rebel "In spite of the character of a crusade which Ramdas's blessings gave to Shivaji's long struggle, it is remarkable how little religious animosity or intolerance Shivaji displayed. His kindness to Catholic priests is an agreeable contrast to the proscriptions of the Hindu priesthood in the Indian and Maratha territories of the Portuguese. Even his enemies remarked on his extreme respect for Mussulman priests, for mosques and for the koran. The Muslim historian Khafi Khan, who cannot mention Shivaji in his cronicle without adding epithets of vulgar abuse, nevertheless acknowledges that Shivaji never entered a conquered town without taking measures to safeguard the mosques from damage. Whenever a koran came to his possession, he treated it with the same respect as if it had been one of the sacred works of his own faith. Whenever his men captured Mussulman ladies, they were brought to Shivaji, who looked after them as if they were his wards till he could return them to their relations."

Shivaji: The founder of the Maratha power.

(source: India Armour - By Lord Egerton, Lord of Tatton).

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Cosme da Guarda - Life of the Celebrated Sevaji: "Such was the good treatment Shivaji accorded to people and such was the honesty with which he observed the capitulations that none looked upon him without a feeling of love and confidence. By his people he was exceedingly loved. Both in matters of reward and punishment he was so impartial that while he lived he made no exception for any person; no merit was left unrewarded, no offence went unpunished; and this he did with so much care and attention that he specially charged his governors to inform him in writing of the conduct of his soldiers, mentioning in particular those who had distinguished themselves, and he would at once order their promotion, either in rank or in pay, according to their merit. He was naturally loved by all men of valor and good conduct."

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi observed:

"I think Shivaji ranks among the greatest men of the world. Since we were a slave country, our great men have been somewhat played down in world history. Had the same person been born in a European country, he would have been praised to the skies and known everywhere. It would have been said that he had illumined the world."

Sir E. Sullivan says in Warriors and Statesmen of India

"Shivaji possessed every quality requisite for success in the disturbed age in which he lived. Cautious and wily in council, he was fierce and daring in action; he possessed an endurance that made him remarkable even amongst his hardy subjects, and an energy and decision that would in any age have raised him to distinctions. By his own people he was painted on a white horse going at full gallop, tossing grains of rice into his mouth, to signify that his speed did not allow him to stop to eat. He was the Hindu prince who forced the heavy Mughal cavalry to fly before the charge of the native horse of India. His strength and activity in action were glory and admiration of his race."

Shivaji on the March.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

***

Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) poet, author, philosopher, Nobel prize laureate. Tagore was deeply critical of the British Raj in India. He wrote a poem:

In what far-off country, upon what obscure day
know not now,Seated in the gloom of some Mahratta mountain-wood
O King Shivaji,
Lighting thy brow, like a lightning flash,
This thought descended,
"Into one virtuous rule, this divided broken distracted India,
I shall bind."

As Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) eminent historian, has well expressed:

"Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies. "

(source: Shivaji and His Times - By Sir Jadunath Sarkar p. 406).

Goddess Bhavani at Pratapgad Fort.

***

D. F. Karaka author of Shivaji: Portrait of an Early Indian has written the following passage:

" ...by birth a Hindu, by caste a Maratha but by his own inclination Shivaji was an early Indian who fought to preserve the native heritage of the people of the land from the foreign invaders, at that time Moghul and Muslim, but to Shivaji's way of thinking, it could have been anyone else"

(source: Shivaji: Portrait of an Early Indian - By Dosabhai Framji Karaka p. 167).

Leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Annie Besant, Aurobindo Ghosh and poet Tagore have paid eloquent tributes to Shivaji as a great national leader and the builder of the country.

(source: Shivshahi.on the Web).

Shivaji and Aurangzeb - An All India Struggle

Shivaji had broadend the struggle against the Mughals into an all India one. He had brought the Deccan States together against the Mughals. He had enouraged the Bundelas in their struggle. Ever tolerant of other faiths, Shivaji was hurt beyond measure by Aurangzeb's intolerant policies, such as the imposition of Jizia and senseless destruction of places of worship. In a spirited letter to Aurangazeb, Shivaji reminded the latter that intolerance would lead to the ultimate destruction of the Mughal Empire and that toleration alone should be the basis of any rule in a country like India. This letter is one of the great documents of Indian history.

Aurangzeb and Shivaji - The two represented two different forces in history, one intolerant and narrow minded, the other liberal, humanitarian and tolerant. The one aggressive and expansionist, the other spirited and defensive. In this struggle, Shivaji and the spirit of Shivaji, which stood out for freedom, justice, tolerance and humanity were the ultimate victors.

Shivaji's Maritime Power

Having realized fairly early in his meteoric career the importance of navy to his realm, Shivaji set about achieving his aim in a methodical, deliberate manner, as was his wont. Shivaji’s navy made a small beginning with his conquest of what is today the district of Thane. Around 1659 a handful of his vessels plied in inland waterways and creeks around Bhiwandi, Panvel and Kalyan and created quite a stir among the Portuguese. With his ever growing power along the west coast hinterland, he quickly enlarged the size of his navy. Besides the defence of his territories, he pressed it into profitable ventures along the Malabar Coast .

Shivaji on horseback - It is a tribute to his foresight and military genius that side by side with the development of his fleet, he carried out a systematic campaign of capturing the forts along the coast and built fortifications at strategic points.

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It is a tribute to his foresight and military genius that side by side with the development of his fleet, he carried out a systematic campaign of capturing the forts along the coast and built fortifications at strategic points. He spared no efforts in collecting the very best among shipwrights and gunsmiths. Sindhudurg, the Fort of the Ocean, built on an island of Malvan , on whose many bastions fluttered the Zari Patka, bore testimony to his immense concern for safeguarding his maritime interests.

Shivaji’s Fleet

His fleet consisted of the big Gurabs, the slow moving gun boats, Galbats, sleek and swift assault vessels, Shibars and Machwas, the trading vessels. At the peak of its strength, Shivaji’s fleet had 700 vessels of various sizes, though most of these belonged to the Mercantile Marine and were cargo carrying in nature. At the time of his coronation in 1674, he had 57 major war ships and a total strength of 5,000 able bodied men.

Mahartha Grab and Gallivat ships attacking an English ship.

(source: History of Indian Shipping - By Radha Kumud Mukerjee).

For more refer to chapters on Suvarnabhumi, Pacific and Sacred Angkor

***

Five years later in 1679, the strength of big ships rose to 66. In 1665, barely five years after the raising of his fleet from scratch, he mounted an expedition to Karwar and Ankola with 85 assorted ships. This was essentially a ‘Show the flag’ affair but also to build up the efficiency of his fleet. Again in 1670, his fleet, much stronger now, set sail for another such ‘Show the flag’ expedition towards Surat . Such forays along the west coast created panic and concern among the alien powers, notably the English and Portuguese. They presumably thought – “What if he repeats his exploits at sea with similar tenacity and purpose as he has carried out his lightning campaigns on land!

(source: Shivaji: The Great Nation Builder - By S K Sagane published by Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai, India).

The Great Maratha Power

J. Grant Duff says in History of the Marathas

"Bred a soldier as well as a statesman, Bajeerao united the enterprise, vogour, and hardihood of a Maratha chief with the polished manners, the sagacity, and address which frequently distinguish the Brahmins of the Concan. Fully acquainted with the financial schemes of his father, he selected that part of the plan calculated to direct the predatory hordes of Maharashtra in a common effort. In this respect, the genious of Bajeerao enlarged the schemes which his father devised; and unlike most Brahmins of him, it may be truly said- he had both- the head to plan and the hand to execute."

Sir R. Temple says in Oriental Experiences

"Bajirao was hardly to be surpassed as a rider and was ever forward in action, eager to expose himself under fire if the affair was arduous. He was inured to fatigue and prided himself on enduring the same hardships as his soldiers and sharing their scanty fare. He was moved by an ardour for success in national undertakings by a patriotic confidence in the Hindu cause as against its old enemies, the Muhammadans and its new rivals, the Europeans then rising above the political horizon. He lived to see the Maratha spread over the Indian continent from the Arabian sea to the Bay of Bengal. He died as he lived in camp under canvas among his men and he is remembered among the Marathas as the fighting Peshwa, as the incarnation of Hindu energy."

Jadunath Sarkar says in his forward to Peshwa Bajirao I and Maratha Expansion

"Bajirao was a heaven born cavalry leader. In the long and distinguished galaxy of Peshwas, Bajirao Ballal was unequalled for the daring and originality of his genius and the volume and value of his achievements. He was truely a carlylean Hero as king or rather as a Man of action.' If Sir Robert Walpole created the unchallengeable position of the Prime Minister in the unwritten constitution of England, Bajirao created the same institution in the Maratha Raj at exactly the same time."

Surendra Nath Sen says in The Military System of the Marathas

"The lover of Mastani knew well how to appeal to the religious sentiments of his co-religionists, although he could scarcely be considered an orthodox Brahman... Shivaji had given the Marathas a common cry, and none appreciated the potency of that cry clearly than Peshwa Bajirao. Shivaji's military reforms he would not or could not revive, but he stood forth, as Shivaji had done, as champion of Hinduism. People of Central and Northern India saw in him a new deliverer."

According to J. N. Sarkar, nature developed in the Marathas "Self-reliance, courage, perseverance, a stern simplicity, a rough straight-forwardness, a sense of social equality and consequently pride in the dignity of man as man. " There were no social distinctions among the people and Maratha women added to the strength and patriotism of men.

According to Elphinstone

"They (the Marathas) are all active, laborious, hardy and persevering. If they have none of the pride and dignity of the Rajputs, they have none of their indolence or want of worldly wisdom. A Rajput warrior as long as he does not dishonour his race, seems almost indifferent to the result of any contest he is engaged in. A Maratha thinks of nothing but the result, and cares little for the means, if he can attain his object. For this purpose, he will strain his wits, renounce his pleasures and hazard his person; but has not a conception of sacrificing his life, or even his interest for a point of honour. This difference of sentiment affects the outward appearance of the two nations; there is something noble in the carriage of the ordinary Rajput, and something vulgar in that of the most distinguished Maratha. The Rajput is the most worthy antagonist - the Maratha the most formidable enemy; for he will not fail in boldness and enterprise when they are indispensible, and will always support them or supply their place, by stratagem, activity and perseverance. All this applies chiefly to the soldiery to whom more bad qualities might fairly be ascribed. The mere husbandmen are sober, frugal and industrious, and though they have a dash of national cunning, are neither turbulent nor insincere."

Warren Hastings had noted, "..The Marathas possess alone of all the people of Hindostan and the Deccan a principle of national attachment, which is strongly impressed on all the individuals of the nation.."

The great Maratha power - Bajirao Peshwa and Rani Lakshmi Bai.

***

Sir Hugh Rose the commander of the British force, wrote later, "The Ranee was remarkable for her bravery, cleverness and perseverance; her generosity to her Subordinates was unbounded. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her the most dangerous of all the rebel leaders." A popular Indian ballad said:

How valiantly like a man fought she,
The Rani of Jhansi
On every parapet a gun she set
Raining fire of hell,
How well like a man fought the Rani of Jhansi
How valiantly and well!

"Bundeli har boli mein suni yehi kahani thi...
Khoob laDi mardaani woh toh Jhansi Wali Rani thi...."

(source: Hindunet.org). For more on Rani Lakshmi Bai refer to chapter on Women in Hinduism and European Imperialism). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Glimpses VIII.

***

What the Invaders really did - By Rizwan Salim
Rizwan Salim reviewer, New York Tribune, Capitol Hill reporter, Engineering Times, assistant editor, American Sentinel, published in Hindustan Times has wisely observed:

" Savages at a very low level of civilization and no culture worth the name, from Arabia and west Asia, began entering India from the early century onwards. Islamic invaders demolished countless Hindu temples, shattered uncountable sculpture and idols, plundered innumerable palaces and forts of Hindu kings, killed vast numbers of Hindu men and carried off Hindu women. This story, the educated-and a lot of even the illiterate Indians-know very well. History books tell it in remarkable detail. But many Indians do not seem to recognize that the alien Muslim marauders destroyed the historical evolution of the earth's most mentally advanced civilization, the most richly imaginative culture, and the most vigorously creative society. "

Mewar Hindu warriors

Islamic invaders demolished countless Hindu temples, shattered uncountable sculpture and idols, plundered innumerable palaces and forts of Hindu kings, killed vast numbers of Hindu men and carried off Hindu women.

(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod).

For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India and Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

***

"It is clear that India at the time when Muslim invaders turned towards it (8 to 11th century) was the earth's richest region for its wealth in precious and semi-precious stones, gold and silver, religion and culture, and its fine arts and letters. Tenth century Hindustan was also too far advanced than its contemporaries in the East and the West for its achievements in the realms of speculative philosophy and scientific theorizing, mathematics and knowledge of nature's workings. Hindus of the early medieval period were unquestionably superior in more things than the Chinese, the Persians (including the Sassanians), the Romans and the Byzantines of the immediate proceeding centuries. The followers of Siva and Vishnu on this subcontinent had created for themselves a society more mentally evolved-joyous and prosperous too-than had been realized by the Jews, Christians, and Muslim monotheists of the time. Medieval India, until the Islamic invaders destroyed it, was history's most richly imaginative culture and one of the five most advanced civilizations of all times.

Look at the Hindu art that Muslim iconoclasts severely damaged or destroyed. Ancient Hindu sculpture is vigorous and sensual in the highest degree-more fascinating than human figural art created anywhere else on earth. (Only statues created by classical Greek artists are in the same class as Hindu temple sculpture). Ancient Hindu temple architecture is the most awe-inspiring, ornate and spell-binding architectural style found anywhere in the world. (The Gothic art of cathedrals in France is the only other religious architecture that is comparable with the intricate architecture of Hindu temples). No artist of any historical civilization have ever revealed the same genius as ancient Hindustan's artists and artisans.

Their minds filled with venom against the idol-worshippers of Hindustan, the Muslims destroyed a large number of ancient Hindu temples. This is a historical fact, mentioned by Muslim chroniclers and others of the time. A number of temples were merely damaged and remained standing. But a large number - not hundreds but many thousands - of the ancient temples were broken into shreds of cracked stone. In the ancient cities of Varanasi and Mathura, Ujjain and Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi and Dwarka, not one temple survives whole and intact from the ancient times.

It is easy to conclude that virtually every Hindu temple built in the ancient times is a perfect work of art. The evidence of the ferocity with which the Muslim invaders must have struck at the sculptures of gods and goddesses, demons and apsaras, kings and queens, dancers and musicians is frightful. At so many ancient temples of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, for example, shattered portions of stone images still lie scattered in the temple courtyards. Considering the fury used on the idols and sculptures, the stone-breaking axe must have been applied to thousands upon thousands of images of hypnotic beauty.

Giving proof of the resentment that men belonging to an inferior civilization feel upon encountering a superior civilization of individuals with a more refined culture, Islamic invaders from Arabia and western Asia broke and burned everything beautiful they came across in Hindustan. So morally degenerate were the Muslim Sultans that, rather than attract Hindu "infidels" to Islam through force of personal example and exhortation, they just built a number of mosques at the sites of torn down temples-and foolishly pretended they had triumphed over the minds and culture of the Hindus. "

Hindu columns from devastated temples, incorporated in the halls of the Kwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) mosque at Delhi, began in 1193

(image source: India: A Concise History - By Francis Watson p. 96).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Watch Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West

Refer to Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath? - By Koenraad Elst.

For a documentary on Hindu temples, refer to The Lost Temples of India.

Refer to Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims - By Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

***

" I have seen stones and columns of Hindu temples incorporated into the architecture of several mosques, including the Jama Masjid and Ahmed Shah Masjid in Ahmedabad; the mosque in the Uparkot fort of Junagadh (Gujarat) and in Vidisha (near Bhopal); the Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra right next to the famous dargah in Ajmer-and the currently controversial Bhojshala "mosque" in Dhar (near Indore).

Hindu culture was at its imaginative best and vigorously creative when the severely-allergic-to-images Muslims entered Hindustan. Islamic invaders did not just destroy countless temples and constructions but also suppressed cultural and religious practices; damaged the pristine vigor of Hindu religion, prevented the intensification of Hindu culture, debilitating it permanently, stopped the development of Hindu arts ended the creative impulse in all realms of thought and action, damaged the people's cultural pride, disrupted the transmission of values and wisdom, cultural practices and tradition from one generation to the next; destroyed the proper historical evolution of Hindu kingdoms and society, affected severely the acquisition of knowledge, research and reflection and violated the moral basis of Hindu society. The Hindus suffered immense psychic damage. The Muslims also plundered the wealth of the Hindu kingdoms, impoverished the Hindu populace, and destroyed the prosperity of Hindustan."

" Gaze in wonder at the Kailas Mandir in the Ellora caves and remember that it is carved out of a solid stone hill, an effort that (inscriptions say) took nearly 200 years. This is art as devotion. The temple built by the Rashtrakuta kings (who also built the colossal sculpture in the Elenhanta caves off Mumbai harbour) gives proof of the ancient Hindus' religious fervor.

The descendants of those who built the magnificent temples of Bhojpur and Thanjavur, Konark and Kailas, invented mathematics and brain surgery, created mindbody disciplines (yoga) of astonishing power, and built mighty empires would almost certainly have attained technological superiority over Europe.

It is not just for "political reasons" that Hindus want to build grand temples at the sites of the (wrecked) Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, and the Mathura idgah. The efforts of religion-intoxicated and politically active Hindus to rebuild the Ram Mandir, the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir, and the Krishna Mandir are just three episodes m a one-thousand year long Hindu struggle to reclaim their culture and religion from alien invaders.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 was just one episode in the millennial struggle of the Hindus to repossess their religion-centered culture and nation. Meanwhile, hundreds of ancient Hindu temples forsaken all over Hindustan await the reawakening of Hindu cultural pride to be repaired or rebuilt and restored to their original, ancient glory. "

(source: What the invaders really did - By Rizwan Salim - hindustantimes.com - December 28, 1997). For more on Rizwan Salim, refer to chapter on Quotes and Hindu Art.

Also refer to India: Putting the Fallouts of the Islamic Invasion and British Occupation in Perspective - by Alamgir Hussain - islam-watch.org.

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Meera Mandir, Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. The temple is associated with the visionary poetess Meera bai - a fervent devotee of Krishna .

Meera bai (1503 - 15546) was the wife of Prince Bhojraj. She sang her devotional songs to Lord Krishna. Her deeply poignant songs are still sung in Hindi around the world today.

(Image source: Editor's collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

***

V S Naipaul has remarked:

“How do you ignore history? But the nationalist movement, Independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don’t tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta Island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated.”

Disown your past and you are half a people!

"The converted Muslims of India are denying their past. They do not want to acknowledge a history beyond the time they assumed their new identity. This is almost as bad as Indians not knowing their history," said Sir V S Naipaul at the India Habitat Centre on Friday evening.

He told Indians, "There is this great denial of the past, this shame to acknowledge of 500-600 years of great defeat. You must understand that other countries have had them too."

(source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\story8&d=FRONT_PAGE).

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com. For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India.

***

India - Still The object of Islamic conquest

India , as the object of Islamic conquest, endured, over the centuries of Muslim rule and misrule, tens of millions of Hindu victims. India is a country that, at its Independence, was forced to give up large chunks of its territory on both sides to form West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in order to accommodate Muslim demands. In Pakistan , at Partition, 15% of the population was Hindu; it is now 1.5%. In Bangladesh , at Partition, 34% of the population was non-Muslim (Hindu and Buddhist); it is now 7%. Meanwhile, in India , the Muslim percentage of the population steadily rises.

In the Pakistan-held parts of Jammu and Kashmir , 400,000 Hindu Pandits have, by Muslim pressure, been driven out. In Indian-held Kashmir , terrorist attacks by Muslims, supported by Pakistani groups unchecked by, and at times supported by, the Pakistani army, have attempted to murder and terrorize the Hindus and drive them out.
But every counter-attack by Hindus pushed to the limits of their endurance is given front-page coverage. We all know about the Hindu attacks on the mosque deliberately erected on the Hindu temple at Ayodha. We all know about the Hindu attacks on Muslims in Gujarat -- why, the State Department banned Narendra Modi, who ran the Gujarat government, from entering the United States .

But the provocations that prompted those attacks, the burning to death of Hindu pilgrims, is quickly glossed over in a sentence. And all the other Muslim attacks, steadily, all over India -- those repeated bombs in Mumbai, killing bankers and tea-wallahs alike, set off by the Muslims who run the Bombay underworld (the head gangster sought, and found safe haven, in Pakistan), and even the attack by Muslims on the Parliament building in New Delhi --somehow none of them ever quite make any impression on the non-Indian world. That world remains so deeply uninterested in what is endured by Indians, and unsympathetic (but why?) to Hindus.
(source: Required: a different attitude by the Indian government, and by all the Infidel governments - By Hugh Fitzgerald Jihad Watch).

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Torture of the Buddhists
Islam Killed Buddhism

"Why are there absolutely no Buddhist temples in Afghanistan, in Turkestan? Nor Hindu or Zorastrain or Manichaen temples, for that matter?"

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst p. 103).

***

According to B. R. Ambedkar:

"The Musalman invaders sacked the Buddhist Universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few. They raised to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. A very large number were killed outright by the Muslim commanders. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves. Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD, Mr. Vincent Smith says, "....Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.' "Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of the Buddha in India...."

But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction.

(source: To undo the Scandal, Undo the Control - By Arun Shourie - indiaconnect.com).

Refer to Muslim Militants blow up Buddha statue in Swat (Pakistan)

"There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans." Islam came out as the enemy of the 'But'. The word 'But' as everybody knows, is the Arabic word and means an idol. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but whatever it went. Before Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar, and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia..."

The Ruins of Nalanda University

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org.

***

"The Mussalman invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves.

(source: B. R. Ambedkar, "The decline and fall of Buddhism," Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III, Government of Maharashtra. 1987, p. 229-38). For more refer to chapter on Education in Ancient India.

Gertrude Emerson Sen ( - 1982) historian and journalist and Asia specialist, wrote on the plight of the universities:

"Night was to descend on all the great centers of traditional Indian learning, however, when the untutored Muslims of Central Asia poured into India with fire and sword at the beginning of the 11th century."

(source The Pageant of India's History - By Gertrude Emerson Sen p. 275 - 276). For more on Gertrude Emerson Sen refer to chapter on Quotes.

Refer to Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.

For more refer to Rajputs and Invasion of India.

***

The Dalai Lama (1935 - ) has said: “When I say that Buddhism is part of Hinduism, certain people criticize me. But if I were to say that Hinduism and Buddhism are totally different, it would not be in conformity with truth.”

(source: Who is a Hindu? – By Koenraad Elst p. 233).

***

Was Buddhism driven out of India?

No. It is a canard. A lie propagated by vested interests.

What are the facts? Buddhism was a reaction to the growing permissiveness and distortions of Aryan society.

It was, therefore, puritanical. But by banning drinking, dancing, singing and theatre, Buddhism sowed the seeds of opposition.

Brahmanism never opposed Buddhism.

The first disciples of the enlightened one were all Brahmins, like Maha Muggalanna, Sariputta, Maha Kashyapa, Asita, Kaundinya. In Fact, the kings gave equal protection to both Hinduism and Buddhism. For example, the Gupta Empire, although Hindu, gave full protection to Buddhism. So did Harsha’s empire. Lalitaditya, the greatest king of Kashmir, although not a Buddhist, built the largest Vihara for the Buddhists.

According to Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids (1857 - 1942) among the 246 poet-authors mentioned in the Thera Gatha, 113 were Brahmins, 70 Kshatriyas.

Thus, it is clear that Buddhism had no real opposition in India. In Fact, the kings gave equal protection to both Hinduism and Buddhism. For example, the Gupta Empire, although Hindu, gave full protection to Buddhism. So did Harsha’s empire. Lalitaditya, the greatest king of Kashmir, although not a Buddhist, built the largest Vihara for the Buddhists.

For more refer to chapter on Gllimpses XIX

Refer to Muslim Militants blow up Buddha statue in Swat (Pakistan)

Will Durant (1885-1981) American historian, would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and love for all living

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