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Prof. Vijay Prashad in his article Hindu Holocaust (News India Times, Sept. 25, 2009) about Francois Gautier's fund raiser on August 16, 2009 in New Jersey for a Hindu Holocaust Museum in Pune, India has made many assertions and statements which have no evidence in contemporary or even subsequent recorded history. To keep the response reasonable length let me address a few of the issues covered by him and let the readers make their own judgment.
Prof. Vijay Prashad in his article Hindu holocaust (News India Times, Sept. 25, 2009) about Francois Gautier's fund raiser on August 16, 2009 in New Jersey for a Hindu Holocaust Museum in Pune, India has made many assertions and statements which have no evidence in contemporary or even subsequent recorded history. To keep the response reasonable length let me address a few of the issues covered by him and let the readers make their own judgement.
Prof. Prashad wrote, and I quote the entire paragraph:
"Between Hindus and Muslims there has not been an endless rivalry for social power. When Islam enters the subcontinent, it does not come in the saddlebags of the Ghaznis or the Ghouris, but amongst the rumble of goods brought by traders. Early conversions are not by the sword but by the merchants . There was killing, but that was as much for reasons of warfare and plunder as for reasons of God and tradition. An interested reader might want to look at the distinguished historian Romila Thapar's superb book "Somnatha: The Many Voices of a History" (Penguin, 2005). There, Professor Thapar shows us that Mahmud Ghazni's destruction of the Shiva temple in 1026 was driven not so much by a fanatical religious belief but because his father, Subuktigin, needed money to sustain his faltering kingdom in Central Asia. Now it is certainly true, as historian Mohammed Habib put it, that there was "wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army."
Last update : 27-09-2009 13:32
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NS Rajaram
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