Buddhists and others, wasRe: RAJARAM EPISODE

[Samar Abbas]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, P. Anand wrote:
> .. you suggest that Muslims' interaction with Buddhists in India
> would have been better than with "bad" Hindus ..

 Such theories that Muslims destroyed Buddhism are simply illogical,
because :

1. First they shout, `Buddhism is a form of Hinduism' and then the
next moment `Evil bearded Muslims destroyed Buddhism'. If Buddhism did not
exist (ie. it was Hinduism anyway), how could Muslims have destroyed it ?
Apoint well-made at http://www.dalitstan.org/books/decline/decline01.html

2. How come Buddhism existed only in Eastern India ? What happened to the
well-attested Buddhism which existed in north India (Asokan inscriptions
in Afghanistan, Buddhist statues and stupas in Punjab) ? Or did the evil
Muslims convert the Buddhists to Hinduism there by mistake ? Or perhaps
they converted the Bengali Buddhists to Islam, and the Northern Buddhists
to Hinduism ?

3. Buddhism was also predominant in South India - Ambedkar says they
formed the majority all across India. Why did the Muslims convert the
Buddhists there to Hinduism instead of Islam ?

4. If the Muslims could destroy Buddhism in distant Bengal (thousands
of km away from Delhi), howcome they could not destroy Hinduism in
Haryana just south of Delhi or in nearby UP ?

> 2) Romila Thapar, "A History of India", page 263-264. "The coming of
> Islam was the final blow ... the attacks on the monasteries resulted
> in an exodus of Buddhists from eastern India to south-east Asia. Islam
> found its largest following in previously Buddhist areas of India, the
> north-west and the east."

 So the esteemed Thapar is now saying that the Buddhists of eastern India
migrated to Thailand and Malaysia, ie. that the Vietnamese are Bengalis by
descent. Anything to prove that Buddhism was destroyed by `marauding
Muslims'. Surely, another wonder of Pseudo-Secularism. Reminds one of the
Urdu-from-Prakrit theory, which the likes of Thapar et al so loudly parrot
over and over again.

BTW what is Romila Thapar's caste ? She is an upper-caste Punjabi, but is
she a Brahmin ? She is definitely not a Buddhist. The Buddhists themselves
do not accept these claims of `Muslim destruction', - just see the
book `Decline and Fall of Buddhism'. Should we go by what the Buddhists
themselves think about how their religion was destroyed, or what their
ideological opponents claim ?

nanda chandran wrote:
> I think the best way to discourage such posts is to ignore them.

  The target of my posts to this list are not Hindutvadins - arguing with
them is always futile on account of certain inherent mental blocks. It is
the Westerners and Dravidianists on this list. If I wanted to convince
Sanghis, or merely offend them, I would be posting to various lists on
hindunet.org. Hindutvadins are advised to ignore my posts - as I said,
they are not for them. If they dare respond, they risk being made a
laughing-stock in public. Responses from Dravidianists, Westerners and
non-hotmail Hindutvadins only shall be replied to in a scholarly manner,
not those from hotmail Sanghis.

> BTW, what's Samar's interest in www.dalistan.org - indeed he seems to be
> the site's lone and vocal supporter!

  If I gave any Muslim site (of which there are many), you would of course
jump up and shout `evil bearded Muslim site for terrorists'. So I chose
to cite from a `fellow Aryan Hindu' Dalit website. Also, those Islamist
sites are too extreme - so I don't give them out of kindness. We don't
want anybody crying now, do we ?  I shall give Real Muslim sites only if
somebody asks for them. Till then, the relatively moderate Dravidian sites
will do.

  Just because a handful of Hindutvadins flood indology hiding behind
numerous aliases from free email accounts at hotmail ( like
vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM aka nanda chandran and of course Vishal Agarwal) does
not strengthen their case at all. These Hindutvadins are paid by various
Hindutva organisations like BJP, etc. to make posts to this list, and,
because they are regularly expelled, they have to hide behind these
anonymous aliases, making virulent attacks.

Samar