Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians

Reading Arun Shourie's ‘Eminent Historians: their technology, their line, their fraud'. He describes how a group of historians with Leftist leanings work like friends-with-benefits; helping each other and occupying all influential positions in India. Then they produce nothing new but keep siphoning govt grants and funds. He shows how the communist govt in Bengal issued a circular revising school text books in 1989 in order to delete any mentions about Muslims destroying Hindu temples or forcefully converting in history, etc and Brahmins are made to show in bad light. The idea, Arun Shourie writes, is to "make them ashamed of the things they revere - their Gods, their scriptures, their language, Sanskrit..." He also shows how Communist Party had sided with the British during our freedom struggle. So far really enlightened. Reading Arun Shourie for the first time and he has mesmerized me! Recommended for serious read!

This book is about a communist leaning group of historians who have formed a nexus to be become "Eminent Historians". Revelations are like: One such historian Tasneem Ahmad simply stole the work of another historian Dr. P. Saran who had died some time back and published it in his own name. He was proven guilty in probe. And many false theories published in the name of history and so much editing of text books.

I know many of us are suspicious of history; many friends don't know if they should believe or not believe in certain things from history. While reading Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians, a lot of doubt has got cleared. Currently govt is asking a group of Historians to write or edit text book of history taught in schools. These historians with Leftist ideology and govt seeking minority votes hide a lot of historical facts. But history is not subjective. Arun Shourie writes that most Kings had a designated person in their court whose job was to keep writing their deeds and exploits, preserved for future generations. Many times Kings wrote about their work themselves. And these accounts are available for our reference even today! In this book, he quotes from many such historians who saw it from their own eyes and wrote accounts on the same day events happened. They tell about these Kings attacking Hindu kings all over India and destroying temples and idols. They killed priests and made mosques in place of those temples; they disgraced idols and gave away idols to be used by butchers to weigh meat or cemented idols in the stairs of mosques so that people and Namazis could insult them daily. Hindus were forbidden from wearing Tilak and religious marks; they were not allowed to take holy dips in rivers on auspicious days; if a Hindu was found worshiping, he was given a choice to either convert to Islam or get killed. On many instances Brahmins were found having made small temples and worshiping idols; in one such case from Delhi the Brahmin was burnt alive publicly with his small wooden temple because he declined to convert to Islam. For our govt and politicians these historical facts documented by historians and kings of those times who saw from their eyes are inconvenient and hence they try to hide these facts. But history is not subjective and we should understand their conspiracy.

Do you know that Communist Party of India had sided with the British during 1942 Quit India movement and used to send Weekly Reports to the British to show how they were working hard to foil the Congress led movement? (much correspondence and reports are available which establish this). Do you know that Muslim orgs and intellectuals like AMU founder Syed Ahmad Khan had tried hard to convince Muslims not to take part in freedom movement because they thought it was not worth it and instead focus on education? (enough documents from those times prove it). Do you know that Muslim hardliners condemned Jinnah for getting a separate nation Pakistan for Muslims, because they thought instead of getting a portion of the land, whole country was available for Islamic rule? All these proven facts from Arun Shourie's book Eminent Historians.

Mughals are not the only ones who destroyed India and Hindu temples. The book talks about Sikandar Lodi; Ahmud Shah, Mujahid Shah; Sultan NasirudDin, Jalaluddin Khalji, and of course Firuz Shah Tughlaq... Each a greater demon than others in his destruction...

Arun Shourie also quotes SR Goel as a good Historian. The communist historians tried to paint Golden age of India (basically the history before Muslim invaders came) as a chaotic period with class conflict. Often they would write things like, "There must have been class conflict though evidences of these are wanting." How hilarious! They condemned Maurya empire for centralization of administration, and also condemned Guptas for decentralization of administration. How hypocritical? When a foreign traveler came during Gupta rule and wrote in his accounts that "people were generally happy", our communist historian will conclude "it is likely that he met only the rich among the population." When art on the temple walls depicted people relaxing and in doing things all happy and prosperous, our communist historians will conclude, "temple art depicted only the rich of the population." This is why we need to have objective understanding of history by various sources. Do not trust one man's writing but match it with many other primary sources. There would be ruins and excavations which will confirm about kingdom's structure and there would be multiple people of those times (kings, designated historian in their court, foreign visitor, foreign traveler, etc) writing about things and we have to match and understand if there was peace at that time or there was anarchy. For example, communist historians wrote that all Islamic invaders broke temples only for money (financial motive), but those invaders have written themselves that they were doing what their religion wanted. Sikh scriptures like Guru Granth Sahib also tells about atrocities done by Muslim kings, but our eminent historians will keep repeating good things and keep hiding bad things about Muslim rule...

Though this book is not about Islam, Arun Shourie throws light on many of its aspects in order to expose what the communist historians have been hiding from all of us. He says that whole of Mecca pilgrimage is basically coming from Pagan practices from pre-Islamic times. So they are hypocritical in saying that they don't have symbols and rituals, etc. In the last pages, Shourie quoted some intellectuals who said that Hindus, our saints and India were not known to the Arabs and that is why these are not mentioned in their book. Shourie asked: how come being known to Arabs mattered when the book is basically word of Allah who is supposed to know all? So how come he did not know that India/Hindus/our Saints existed? He said that to defeat them we have to counter them on facts every time and they will retreat. And after a while all their arguments will be known (because they are not allowed free thinking and hence cease to grow), and hence will bear no fruits.

One more puzzle got solved for me from this book. As we notice communists are generally anti-religion but they seem to love islam. But Arun shourie says that communists have been doing switch on and switch off to islam as per their needs of the time. He says,

"Soviet and Chinese writings on Buddhism and Islam illustrate the matter. It was not just that the subtle insights of the Buddha were reduced to ashes, one thing was said about them one day and its opposite the next - according to the relevant entries in any handy reference book - for instance, the Encyclopedia of Marxism, Communism and Western Socialism - nails the pattern. In 1917-27 the Soviet rulers needed to pacify Buddhists. Therefore, they extolled Buddhism as an ideology of the oppressed masses, they extolled it for what they said was its atheism, for its emphasis on equality… After 1929 when crushing was in order, they portrayed Buddhism as having been an instrument created by feudal lords to keep the working masses in thrall. Once the stamping-out began, Stalin declared that it was “absurd” to “equate” Buddhism and Dialectical Materialism. ..

The writings on Islam, we learn from the same authorities, went through the same cycle. By the thirties and forties Soviet writers were portraying the Prophet and Quran in dark, minatory colours – ridiculing accounts of miracles attributed to the Prophet, questioning not just the spiritual worth, not just the literary worth but even the coherence of the Quran…”

So it seems that they have sided with them for their own benefit and it is just a phase. If communists captured power, which is nowhere going to happen as such, they would again have gone back to their hatred towards Islamists, but as of now they need them so as to undermine Hindus and hence are looking like one team...

I think single book will give lots of perspective and I have learned new ways of thinking and analyzing situations thanks to reading Arun Shourie. I realize that there is so much to learn and now I am planning to buy some of his other books also.