The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c12.s9.1

c12.s9.1

Whichever political party has been in power at the Centre during the last forty-three years, whosoever has been the Prime Minister - Nehru or Gandhis, Morarji Desai or V.P. Singh - the Nehruvian Congress culture has spared no effort to woo the Muslim minority. In this attempt it was even decided to manipulate and distort our countrys history. The justification for rewriting Indian history, particularly medieval Indian history, from the nationalist point of view lay in the plea that British historians have deliberately distorted Indian history with a view to highlighting Hindu-Muslim differences. We have already discussed this allegation earlier in Chapter 2. The British rulers and their historians only took advantage of the prevailing situation. For example, Monstuart Elphinstone, a Governor of Bombay, suggested in his Minute dated 14 May 1859: *Divide et Impera* was the old Roman motto, and it should be our. Given the circumstances, it would have been foolish of any imperialist power not to follow such a policy. But for achieving this aim there was no need for them to distort Indian history. British historians had just to reiterate what the Muslim chroniclers themselves had written about the glorious achievements of their kings and conquerors. Their stories needed no proof: they stood confirmed by the hundreds of vandalised medieval monuments. The mistake lay with the misjudgement of our Congress-culture Government and the so-called secularist and Stalinist historians. They chose to treat history as a handmaid of politics to please the Muslim minority. They instructed their text-book writers to eschew mention of unpalatable historical facts like destruction of temples and forced conversions by Muslims in history, language and social science. But perpetration of lies has proved counter-productive. It has encouraged Muslims to ask for proof as to when Babur or Aurangzeb broke this or that temple, knowing full well that such shrines were actually vandalised and razed.