Comment
Falsifying History
Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam
Muslims and Christians are not the only enemies that the Sangh and its offshoots like BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal want to destroy. The Constitution of India and the History of India are two equally valid targets for destruction by the Sangh and its front organisations.
There is a long record of efforts, often bordering on the absurd, to change history and rewrite Constitution. It would be better, for the reason of space, to discuss only their comical efforts to change history. The Sangh historiography can be tagged as the “Oak-Madhok school of historiography”.
According to this school, the holy Kaaba at Makkah was a shiva temple and the Hajr-e-Aswad a Shivalingam. Mr. Oak says the Taj Mahal was a “Hindu palace” and Jerusalem was “Yadavsthanam”, the abode of Yadavs. He says the “Y” in Yadav is read as “J”. That is enough reason for him to come to this conclusion. And, of course, Delhi’s Jama Masjid was Jamuna (Yamuna) Devi’s temple, Fantastic.
Of late, Shri Nrendrabhai Modi of 2002 fame (or, infamy) has made valuable contribution to this great body of work. Last Sunday in Kheda he declared grandly that the Bengali founder of Jana Sangh, Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, was a Gujarati.
Shri Modi said that Mookherjee died in Europe in 1930, while the fact is that he died in 1953 in India. In his Patna rally earlier, he declared that Taxila is in Bihar, while the fact remains that it is in Pakistan.
Shri Modi also believes that Alexander the Great had visited Bihar, but the historical fact is that he never ventured into these parts. We have not heard the last from him. More of such gems will follow in days ahead.
As I said earlier, such innovative historiography is not new to the Sangh. During its rule in Uttar Pradesh, it got the school textbooks of history rewritten. The new history book said that the Khilafat movement was against (khilaf) the caliph (Khalifah) of Turkey, while the historical fact is that it was not against the caliph, but in his support.
The same textbook said the name of Pakistan’s founder was Mohammad Ali Jauhar, while the fact remains that the founder of Pakistan was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, not Mohammad Ali Jauhar. Jauhar had nothing to do with Pakistan whatsoever, even though he, too, was a front-rank leader of independence struggle.
We have not heard the last of Shri Modi and the likes of him on history.
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