Menu Close

Why no commission of enquiry for temples’ destruction?

Margashirsha Krushna Ashtami, Kaliyug Varsha 5111

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.

In the most inspiring and instructive manner, Sitaram Goel writes in his preface to Volume I of ‘Hindu TEMPLES: What happened To Them’: ‘As a student of history in school and college, I had been taught the history of Medieval India in the conventional way, presenting Islam as a great religion and the Islamic invaders and rulers as indigenous Indian princes.

Later on, Mahatma Gandhi’s mindless slogan of sarva-dharma-sama-bhava had prevented me from studying the history and theology of Islam from primary source. But Ram Swaroop’s magnum opus, ‘The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods’ and his subsequent study, ‘Understanding Islam through Hadis: Faith or Fanaticism’ had made me aware of Islam’s real character. I could see that there was more to the history of medieval India than the reigns of Muslim dynasties, their rise and fall, the wars they waged, the harems they collected and the monuments they built etc. It was by now several years since I had been reading the primary sources in English and Urdu — the Quran, the orthodox Hadis collections, the Hidaayah, the numerous histories written by medieval Muslim chroniclers, and Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) about the genesis of many Muslim monuments which dotted the land. I had become fully aware of the Holocaust caused by Islam in India for centuries on end through its victims and slaves — the Arabs, the Turks, the Afghans, the Iranians and the native Hindu converts. I was in a position to compile the record of Islamic iconoclasm and place it in the context of Islamic theology.’

Keeping this larger obje-ctive in view, Sitaram Goel requested Ram Swaroop to recommend the name of a historian for undertaking the above task, as he himself was too preoccupied with other equally pressing tasks. Ram Swaroop suggested the name of Dr Ganesh Lal Varma who had been writing good pieces in the weekly ‘ORGANISER’.  Dr Varma accepted the assignment proposed by Sitaram Goel. A few weeks later, Dr Varma wrote an article in the ‘Organiser’ mentioning the names of a few Muslim monuments which stood at the original site of Hindu Temples or had been built with temple materials. He had cited a report of the ASI and wrote a long report on the list of such temples giving details as to who had built those temples and when. Ram Swaroop ‘was quite annoyed because he felt that Dr Varma’s articles failed to convey what he and Sitaram Goel wanted to convey, namely, that Hindu Temples had been destroyed by such and such Muslim ruler inspired by the theology of Islam.

Dr Varma went on collecting more and more material and writing articles in the ’Organiser’. In all he wrote 18 articles in the ’Organiser’ in 1987 in which he had covered 350 Muslim Monuments which were constructed in the original Temple sites after demolishing the Hindu Temples, many of which had wantonly used the Hindu Temple materials for the construction of those Islamic monuments. But he had not mentioned the theology of Islam. Nor did he take care to place them in a chronological context. Therefore Dr Varma’s list made practically no impact on public opinion. I am shocked to see from Sitaram Goel’s preface that even the General Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) at that time was not even aware that such an authentic list had appeared in the mouthpiece of the Sangh Parivaar. Failure to widely publicise Dr Varma’s list was a grave strategic failure on the part of the VHP/ BJP combine which on it’s own had produced till that time no literature at all on the subject of Islamic iconoclasm and large-scale Hindu Temple destruction and which was trying to coax the Muslims out of their cherished Babri Masjid by merely flattering Islam.

What seems to have finally inspired Sitaram Goel to produce his 2 magisterial Volumes on Islamic destruction of Hindu Temples was a brilliant article of Arun Shourie titled ‘Hideaway Communalism’ in the Indian Express of New Delhi on 5 February, 1989. In this article Arun Shourie presented his story by referring to the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai. He was renowned Muslim scholar and Rector of one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning in India, namely the Nadwatul-Ulamah of Lucknow. This was founded in 1894 and is second only to the Darul-Ulum at Deoband.

Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai in his original Arabic book had listed some of the Mosques, including the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya, which were built on the sites and foundations of original Hindu temples using their stones and structures. The Arabic version of this book was published in 1972 in Hyderabad, the Urdu version in 1973 in Lucknow and the English version was published in 1977. Great care was taken by the underground Islamic currents and forces, ever working for the destruction of Hindu India, to completely censor out from the English version of the book, the tell-tale passages relating to the large-scale destruction of Hindu Temples that were detailed in the original Arabic version. The scoop that Arun Shourie had achieved was indeed historic.

Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai’s son Maulana Abul-Hassan Ali Nadwi or Ali Mian, who became Rector of the Nadwatul-Ulamah of Lucknow in 1961 wrote a foreword to the Arabic version of his father’s book in 1972. To quote the words of Arun Shourie: “It is an eloquent, almost lyrical foreword. … It did not suck away the wealth of the country, he writes, and vomit it elsewhere as Western powers did. On the contrary, it brought sophistication, culture, beneficent administration, peace, tranquillity to the country. And so on.”

Arun Shourie then asks a highly delightful question: “Such being the trans-national Islamic eminence of the author writing the foreword, such being the greatness of the original work by his father Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai, why is it not the cynosure of the Muslim fundamentalists’ eyes?” The answer seems to lie in the Chapter “Hindustan Ki Masjidein’ or ‘The Mosques of Hindustan’. In barely 17 pages, a few facts about some of the principal mosques are described in a few lines each. Why do Muslim / Marxist historians of Aligarh Muslim and Jawaharlal Nehru Marxist Universities choose to be silent and furtive about this chapter? Why? Descriptions of 7 very important mosques provide the answer.

In order to understand the total nature and extent of the letter and spirit of Muslim destruction of Hindu Temples, all that we need do is to quote a few sentences about 7 mosques written by Maulana Abdul Hai in his book in the original Arabic version and which were deliberately censored out in English Edition.

1. ‘Quawwat al-Islam Mosque’

 “According to my findings the first Mosque of Delhi is Qubbat al-Islam or Quwuat al-Islam which, it is said Qutbud-Din Aibak constructed in Hijra 587 after demolishing the Temple built by Prithvi Raj and leaving some parts of the Temple (outside the Mosque proper) and when he returned from Gazni in Hijra 592, he started building, under orders from Shihaibud-Din Ghori, a huge Mosque of inimitable red stones and certain parts of the Temple were included in the mosque.

2. The Mosque at Jaunpur

“This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi with chiselled stones. Originally it was Hindu Temple. After he demolished the Temple, he constructed the Mosque. It is known as the ATALA MASJID. The Sultan used to offer his Friday prayers and Id prayers in it.

3. The Mosque at Qanauj

“This Mosque stands on an elevated ground inside the fort of Quanauj. It is well known that it was built on the foundations of a Hindu Temple that stood there. It is a beautiful Mosque. They say it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi in Hijra 809.

4. Jami (Masjid) at Etawah

“The Mosque stands on the bank of the Jamuna at Etawah. There was a Hindu Temple at this place, on the site of which the Mosque was constructed.

5. Babri Masjid at Ayodhya

“This Mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya, which Hindus call the birth place of Ramchanderji. It is said that Sita had a Temple here in which she lived and cooked food for her husband. On that very site Babar constructed this Mosque in Hijra 963.

6. Mosques of Alamgir (Aurangazeb) at Benaras

 “It is said that the Mosque of Benares was built by Amalgir on the site of the Bisheshwar Temple. That Temple was very tall and held as holy among the Hindus. On this very site and with those very stones Alamgir constructed a lofty Mosque and its ancient stones were rearranged after being embedded in the walls of the Mosque. It is one of the renowned Mosques of Hindustan. The second Mosque at Benaras is the one which was built by Alamgir on the bank of the Ganga with chiselled stones. This is also a renowned Mosques of Hindustan. It has 28 towers, each of which is 238 feet tall.

7. Mosque at Mathura

“Alamgir built a Mosque at Mathura. It is said that this Mosque was built on the site of the Gobind Dev Temple which was very strong and beautiful as well as exquisite.”

December 6, 2009 was observed by the Muslims of India as the Babri Masjid Day. If the Hindus of India in majority today have to follow the ‘noble’ example of their “compassionate Muslim brethren”, then in the light of the details of Islamic destruction of Hindu temple published above, the Hindus of India have a fundamental right to observe all the 365 days from 1st January 2010 onwards, as such and such Temple Destruction Day every day of the year, for the next 10 years just to complete one round of commemoration of savage Islamic destruction of Hindu Temples during the Millennium from 712 AD till 1800 AD.

In these columns on 7 December and 8 December 2009, I have referred to the unprovoked, uncontrolled, unabashed and Islamic state sponsored destruction of Hindu Temples in India for a thousand years from the beginning of the 8th century AD to the end of the 18th century AD. For the one and only Babri Masjid, the Hindus of India can furnish a list of at least 30,000 centres in India where Mosques had been built on original temple sites by completely demolishing the temples and using the damaged rubble of those temples with Islamic fervour for the construction of mosques on those very sites in order to uphold the glory and grandeur of Islam from time to time, strictly in accordance with the tenets of the Koran and Sharia.

15TH AUGUST 1947 SAW THE DAWN OF FREEDOM ONLY FOR THE MUSLIMS OF PAKISTAN. Very unfortunately for the Hindus of India 15th of August 1947 was really a day of mourning. Many Hindu families in Western Punjab and East Bengal lost their near and dear ones. More than half a million Hindu men, women and children were slaughtered mercilessly by the rampaging Muslim mobs in Pakistan with the full official approval of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, responsible for the partition of India on religious lines. Thousands and thousands of Hindus in Pakistan were grievously injured, their property looted and their women subjected to gang rapes and abduction in accordance with the known tenets of Islam relating to the treatment of the Kaffirs by the Momins (practicing Muslims).

Jinnah created Pakistan for the sake of Islam. “Mahatma” Gandhi allowed Jinnah to partition India in order to appease the Muslims of India. Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress Government have promoted the cause of Islamization for the further partition of India by stages after independence till date.

The beleaguered Hindus of India today would like to put 2 simple and straight questions to Dr Manmohan Singh:

1. Are you aware of the documentation done by Sita ram Goel in regard to the large scale savage destruction of Hindu Temples in India for a thousand years by the Muslim invaders, marauders and rulers?

2. If the demolition of the Babri Masjid (where there was no worship for 60 years from 1949 till date!) demands a Liberhan Commission of Inquiry, paid out of public funds in perpetuity for a millennium or 17 years which ever is earlier, then will not by the same token and the same logic, the large-scale Islamic destruction of Hindu Temples by the Muslim invaders / marauders / rulers for a millennium equally call for at least 4 REGIONAL COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY — North, East, West and South (NEWS) — to assuage the shattered religious feelings and emotions of the oppressed and suppressed Hindus of India today?

In the history of Islam, iconoclasm and razing other people’s temples are not just aberrations — stray acts of zealous but misguided rulers — but are central to the faith. They derive their justification and validity from the Kuranic Revelation and the Prophets Sunnah or practice. Shrines and idols of the “unbelievers” (non-Muslims or Kaffirs) began to be destroyed during the Prophets own life time and indeed at his behest. Sirat-un-Nabi, the first pious biography of the Prophet, tells us how during the earliest days of Islam, young men at Medina influenced by Islamic teachings repeatedly crept into a house every night and carried it’s idol and threw: “it on it’s face into a cesspit”. However, desecration and destruction began in right earnest when Mecca was conquered. The fact is that the Revelation of the Prophet of Islam does not stand alone. It is rooted in the older Judaic Revelation from which Christianity derives. The two Revelations differ in some particulars but they have important similarities.

Muslim historians, in India and abroad, have written hundreds of accounts in which the progress of Islamic Armies across the cradle of Hindu culture is narrated, stage by stage and period by period. A very pronounced feature of these Muslim histories is a description — in smaller or greater detail but always with considerable pride and delight —— of how the Hindus were slaughtered en masse or converted by force, how hundreds of thousands of Hindu men and women and children were captured as booty and sold into slavery, how Hindu Temples and monasteries were razed to the ground or burnt down, and how images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses were destroyed or desecrated.

In Volume I of his work, ‘HINDU TEMPLES: What Happened to Them’, Sita Ram Goel has written a brilliant chapter (Chapter 7) titled ‘Let the Mute Witnesses Speak’, completely documenting the unparalleled Islamic destruction of Hindu Temples in a very detailed manner which the anti-Hindu secular brigade of Arjun Singhs, Mulayam Singh Yadavs, Prakash Karats and the like can never succeed in obliterating once for all from the collective Hindu consciousness of the HINDU NATION.

I am presenting below in summary form the details relating to the destruction of temples from Islamic literary sources furnished by Dr Sita Ram Goel in Chapter 7 of Volume I.

I. TARIKHU’L-HIND By Abu Rihan Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Biruni al-Khwarizmi.
This author spent 40 years in India during the reign of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (AD 997 – 1030). His history treats of the literature and learning of the Hindus at the commencement of the 11th century.

The Muslim Rulers He Wrote ab0ut:

A. Jalam ibn Shaiban (9th century AD) Multan (Punjab)

“A famous idol of theirs was that of Multan, dedicated to the sun, and therefore called Aditya. It was of wood and covered with red Cordovan leather; in its two eyes were two red rubies. It is said to have been made in the last Kritayuga …..When Muhammad Ibn Alkasim Ibn Almunaibh conquered Multan, he inquired how the town had become so very flourishing and so many treasures had there been accumulated, and then he found out that this idol was the cause, for there came pilgrims from all sides to visit it. Therefore he thought it best to have the idol where it was, but he hung a piece of cow’s flesh on its neck by way of mockery. On the same place a mosque was built. When the Karmatians occupied Multan, Jalam Ibn Shaiban, the usurper, broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests…”

B. Sultan Mahmud of Gazni (AD 997-1030)

1. Thanesar (Haryana):

“The city of Taneshar’ is highly venerated by Hindus. The idol of that place is called Cakrasvamin, i.e. the owner of the cakra, a weapon which we have already described. It is of bronze, and is nearly the size of a man. It is now lying in the hippodrome in Ghazna, together with the Lord of Somnath, which is a representation of the penis of the Mahadeva, called Linga.”

2. Somnath (Gujrat)  

“The linga he razed was the stone of Somnath …. The image was destroyed by the Prince Mahmud, may God be merciful to him! —AH 416. He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghaznin, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze that had been brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somnath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghaznin, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.”

II KITABU’L-YAMIN

By Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al Jabbaru’l-Utbi.

This author’s work comprises the whole of the reign of Subuktigin and that of Sultan Mahmud down to the year AD 1020.

The Muslim Rulers He Wrote ab0ut:

A. Amir Sbuktigin Of Ghazni Lamghan (Afghanistan)

“The Amir marched out towards Lamghan, which is a city celebrated for its great strength and abounding wealth. He conquered it and set fire to the places in its vicinity which were inhabited by infidels, and demolishing idol temples, he established Islam in them.”
B. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (AD 997-1030)

1.Narain (Rajasthan)

“The Sultan  …reduced chiefs, who, up to that time obeyed no master, overturned their idols, put to the sword the vagabonds of that country …”

2. Nardin (Punjab)

”The Sultan marched with a large army in the year AH 404 (AD 1013) … A stone was found there in the temple of the great Budda on which an inscription was written purporting that the temple had been founded 50,000 years ago.”

The barbarous anti-Hindu attempts by Marxist historians like Habib, Romila Thapar and others to deliberately clothe the destruction of Hindu Temples in terms of economic motives, have to explain as to how and why when the besieged Hindus tried to ransom their idols by expressing willingness to pay their weight in gold, the Muslim invaders rejected such gainful offers with contempt. According to Muslim historical sources, the Muslim invaders wanted to ‘earn merit in the eyes of Allah’ rather than ‘mere mammon’.

Source: News Today

Also See

Hindu Genocide in Kashmir and Bangladesh

Online photo exhibition of Hindu genocide and temples destruction in Kashmir by local Muslims.
Read more

Save temples from Anti-Hindus

Temples are the centres of Hindu Dharma. Anti Hindu forces like Muslims, Congress, Christians has constantly targetted them. HJS is fighting against these forces.
Read more

Related News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *