RAJARAM EPISODE

[nanda chandran]

>I'm always sorry to find anyone too burned out to believe in
>"integrity and truth."

Yep, it is indeed very sad. But how can I help having such an attitude
when professional historians whom one would expect to discuss issues
objectively with courtesy, get down to gutter level polemic, personal
slanging and vindictive abuse? Even common courtesy demands one to
refrain from kicking somebody who's down.

And to top it you've to go out of your way to publish your "discovery"
in some leftist magazine!

>Comparative historians by definition deal
>with more than one civilization. Are you telling me that Indology
>is out of bounds? By the way, I've certainly conducted enough
>historical research, held enough post-docs, research grants,
>university teaching positions, and produced enough scholarly
>works (including a recent 595-page book on premodern thought) not
>to have "researcher" put in question marks.

This more than anything else is what makes your attitude so
disappointing.

>Can I point out that Rajaram glorifies its destruction as the beginning of
>the resurgence of modern India?

Outside academic circles many Hindus indeed view it that way. That there's
no resentment by the Hindus of the iconoclastic fanaticism of Islam is
leftist propoganda. I'm a software engineer and in my field I've met quite a
few Hindus from Punjab, UP, MP etc who seeth with anger at the leftist
attempts to distort history. Traditionally it has always been known that
Islamic kings demolished temples in Ayhodhya and Mathura, the Kashi
Vishwanath in Varanasi etc. Even this leftist distortion has happened only
in the last few decades. I've an article of the Mahabodhi society written
sometime in the 1940s, where the author, a Sinhalese Buddhist, has little
doubt about the truth behind the Kashi Vishawnath temple.

The days of the Mughal empire are over. India is now a democratic country.
Let the truth about Islamic iconoclasm be known. Let the Hindus get back
what is rightfully theirs. Even here the Hindus do not even want all the
temples back, the thousands which were demolished to make way for the
mosques - only the really important ones - only 3 or 4 - the temples at
Mathura and Ayodhya, the Kashi Vishwanath etc - which are so integral a part
of the Hindu psyche - like the Vatican is to the Catholics. Surely this is a
reasonable demand! For this why should there be any violence at all?

That even this reasonable demand is not met only reflects the perverted
nature of Indian polity and the intelligensia who back it.

Here I've to clarify that I'm neither a member of the RSS nor affiliated to
any "Hindutva" organization - in the South of India where I come from, this
movement was virtually unknown until recently. It is only the hypocrisy and
the distortion of facts by the leftists who refuse to acknowledge the
sufferings of the Hindus under Islam, which makes me support the
HindutvavAdis.
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