By Mr. V Sundaram, Retired IAS Officer

I Interviewed Dr Subramanian Swamy, President of Janata Party, and one of the most fearless and authentic voices speaking on behalf of the beleaguered Hindus of India today. When I asked him about ludicrous joke of the supine and serpentine Liberhan Commission Report, Dr Swamy told me in categorical terms: “It is time for Muslims of India to act with grace. Then I put this question to Dr Subramanian Swamy: ‘Who will render justice to the Hindus of India who continue to remain as third-class citizens even 62 years after our independence, whose Temples were destroyed literally in thousands in the most savage manner in all parts of India for over a thousand years from 712 AD till 1800 AD?’ He gave me this reply: “To the best of my knowledge more than 30, 000 Temples were destroyed by the Muslim marauders who invaded India in the Millennium you are referring to. Irrefutable contemporary Islamic documentary evidence exists to prove this fact. Many of them were exquisite Temples noted for their artistic and sculptural value of timeless significance — Temples like the Somnath Temple, Gobind Dev Temple at Vrindavan-Mathura, the Bija Mandal Temple at Vidisha etc. I would demand a NATIONAL MILLENNIUM COMMISSION OF INQUIRY to go into this issue of large scale destruction and defilement of Hindu Temples to ascertain the facts in the larger public interest of the majority Hindus of India.”

When Dr Subramanian Swamy referred to irrefutable contemporary Islamic evidence, then I thought of the great landmark book written in 2 volumes by Sri Sitaram Goel, under the title, ‘HINDU TEMPLES – WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM’. Volume I gives the preliminary survey of destruction in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Delhi, Diu, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kashmir, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The cover page of Volume I has been presented below.

What is most interesting about Volume I is that it not only gives a detailed list relating to the large scale destruction of Hindu Temples during the Muslim rule in India, it also gives a long list of recent destruction of Temples in Bangladesh. Using the Babari Masjid-Rama Janmabhoomi controversy as a pretext, Muslim mobs with the full official support of the Government of Bangladesh went on a rampage all over Bangladesh in October 1989. Starting from October 29, 1989, the mob fury reached its climax on November 9 and 10, 1989 after the Shilanyas ceremony at Ayodhya. Many Temples were demolished or burnt down or damaged in various ways. Images of deities were broken and thrown out. Temple priests were beaten up. They attacked and burnt down Hindu houses and business establishments in many places, murdered many Hindus and inflicted injuries on many others. Sitaram Goel has cited details  relating to large scale destruction of Temples in Bangladesh within a period of 2 months in October-November 1989.

Volume II of Sitaram Goel’s book presents authentic documentary evidence from purely Islamic sources. We can see from this presentation that the destruction of Hindu Temples at the hands of the Islamized invaders continued for more than 1100 years, from the middle of the 7th century to the end of the 18th century. It took place all over the vast cradle of Hindu culture, from Sinkiang in the North to Tamil Nadu in the South, and from Sistan in the West to Assam in the East. The cover page of Volume II has been presented above at the top of this story.

To quote the words of Sitaram Goel: ‘All along, the iconoclasts remained convinced that they were putting into practice the highest tenets of their religion. They also saw to it that a record was kept of what they prized as a pious performance. The language of the record speaks for itself. It leaves no doubt that it took considerable pride in doing what they did. … Looking at the very large number of Temples big and small, destroyed or desecrated or plundered or converted into Muslim monuments, economic or political explanations can only be a futile, if not, fraudulent exercise. The explanations are not even plausible. In fact, it is not at all difficult to locate the system of belief which inspired this kind of behaviour pattern. We have only to turn to the scriptures of Islam – The Koran and the Sunnah of the Prophet – and we run straight into what we are looking for. The principles and the pious precedents which were practiced and followed by the subsequent swordsmen of Islam are, all of them, there. The scriptures of Islam do not merely record what happened in the past, they also prescribe that what is recorded should be imitated by the faithful in the future, till the end of time. That is why the swordsmen of Islam who functioned in much later times than that of the Koran and the Sunnah, did what they did. It is the very nature of Islamic scriptures that they make permanent what can otherwise be dated and dismissed as temporary aberrations’

What the Justice Liberhan Commission has deliberately failed to note — what the Justice Sachar Committee has deliberately plotted not to see — is this patent fact. The very same Islamic scriptures referred to above are still being taught in thousands of Maktabs and Madrassas spread over the length and breadth of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. At the same time, the swordsmen who destroyed innumerable Temples and monasteries (Hindu, Jain and Buddhist) all over the vast cradle of Hindu culture retain their halos as the heroes of Islam. This fact alone can easily explain why Hindu Temples become the first targets of attack even today when ever Muslim mobs are incited against the Hindus by the mullahs and politicians in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir.

Unfortunately for the Hindus of India, the National Movement for the Restoration of Hindu Temples has got bogged down around the Rama Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya. The fundamental and very much more important question, namely, why Hindu Temples met the deathly fate they did at the hands of the Islamic invaders, has not been even whispered, much less discussed. Pseudo-secular Hindu leaders seem to have deliberately and mischievously endorsed the Muslim propagandists in proclaiming that Islam does not permit the construction of a Mosque at other peoples’ places of worship. Here the brilliant words of Sitaram Goel are absolutely apt and relevant: ‘One wonders whether this kowtowing to Islam is prompted by ignorance, or cowardice, or calculation, or a combination of them all. The Islam of which Hindus are talking exists neither in the Koran nor in the Sunnath of the Prophet Mohammad. It is hoped that this Volume II will help in clearing the confusion’.

Let me now go on to deal with what inspired Sitaram Goel to produce his two outstanding volumes on Islamic destruction of Hindu Temples for a thousand years from the 8th century AD till the end of the 18th century. The Times of India, New Delhi in August and September 1986 had published two photographs on the front page relating to Islamic destruction of Hindu images. The first photo was of stones from the Kutub Minar at Delhi depicting defaced carvings of Hindu deities. The editorial comment in the Times of India had said that the stones were found with their faces turned inwards during repairs of a wall of the Kutub Minar. The second photo was that of Aurangazeb’s Idgah on the Katra Mound at Mathura standing on the site with the rubble of a pre-existing Kesavadeva Temple. The editorial comment was that a Committee had been formed at Mathura for the liberation of Krishnajanmabhoomi. The second photograph was displayed by Arun Shourie who had joined the Times of India, a few months earlier to take over as Chief Editor from Girilal Jain.

The Stalinist Communist anti-Hindu “historians” led by Romila Thapar and S. Gopal (son of Dr Radhakrishnan, former President of India) jumped into the fray and wrote a strong letter of protest to the Times of India. They proclaimed that the Kesavadeva Temple which had been destroyed by Aurangazeb for rich booty as well as for being a centre of “Hindu rebellions” was built at first during the reign of Jehangir and occupied the site of a Buddhist Monastery destroyed by Hindus. They had questioned the historicity of Sri Rama and Sri Krishna and contended that, according to a Persian text, the Babri Masjid did not occupy the site of a pre-existing Rama Temple. At the same time, they had accused Hindus of having destroyed Buddhist and Jain monuments and pre-Hindu animist shrines.

An article titled ‘Hideaway Communalism’ by Arun Shourie in the Indian Express of 5 February, 1989 told the story of how a book written in Arabic and Urdu by a Rector of the Nadawatul-Ulama at Lucknow mentioned several historical mosques which had replaced pre-existing Hindu Temples and how the references to this replacement had been omitted in the English translation of the same book.