It is strange to know, in India, that people say that claiming one’s heritage is sinful and you would find people branding you as extremist or a fundamentalist. Nowhere in the world find a part of the population, especially those who were not invaders but invaded leading this cry.You will not find this in Greece, Rome or the Middle East. There this cry is not heard because even the memories of earlier civilizations have been wiped out. Nor would you hear this in Africa for here also the people have been brainwashed into believing that they had no culture or history, as is often made out for Arabia before the advent of promoted Religions/ sects. When you take the instance of China you would not find references to pre-Buddist information ,or even a reference to religion under the communist dispensation. So history is what Victors tell you what it is.It is alright if the rulers continue to rule over you. But if your history and culture is denied even after you have become free of Invaders?

This is what is happening in India now,when people are trying to recover their historic monuments,places of Worship. The seculars, a special breed of self styled keepers of Nation’s Conscience and Freedom of Faiths, would jump up and cry foul cawing that architectural history and cultural pluralism is being wiped out. Wish they adopt the same attitude if their property was encroached upon and a new structure comes up when the family was not in a position to put up a fight; and when the younger generation comes of age and tries to reclaim their past.

This is what is happening in India now. To reclaim Ram Janmabhoomi , attempting to list out the temples destroyed by Mughals and recover them is considered as a sin.If the court intervenes, law enacted at the time of India getting Freedom,(in fact it was not independence at all,but only a release from being a Dominion of Britain) ,which forbids anyone including courts to review the place the places of Worship,thanks to nearly seven decades of proxy British ruling India under the garb of Indians, is quoted!That if the invader had destroyed your places of worship and you were powerless for about 100 years to rebuild or reclaim it, then your ancestry is not proven! I am talking about the Find of Shiva Linga in Gnanavapi mosque in Varanasi.This how the media in India report.

I am providing the firmans, commands,orders of Aurangazeb to destroy temples and his special instructions regarding Varanasi,Kalka,Mathura Temples.Read on ..

Arun Shourie confronted this claim with the information given in the official court chronicle, Maasiri Alamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions of temples. Its entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: “News came to court that in accordance with the Emperor’s command his officers had demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras.”

Moreover, till today, the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.

In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to challenge facts headon. It is better to minimise or to justify them. Thus, Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious Penguin History of India, writes: “Aurangzeb’s supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.”

But a perusal of the same Moghul chronicle thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion: Aurangzeb had thousands of temples destroyed…

JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out: “the destruction of the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It appears that a nexus between the Sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple existed and it was primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered action against the temple.” The eminent historian quotes no source for this strange allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk with Mlecchas, let alone to concoct intrigues with them.

Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated variation, now regularly reproduced in the media: “Did Muslim rulers destroy temples? Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of a local princess by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb ordered the total destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby site. And this is the only temple he is believed to have destroyed.”

This story is now repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim press and in the secularist press but also in academic platforms by “eminent historians”. It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi Chakravartty, who also reveals the source of this story. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dharmadispatch.in/amp/story/history/exploding-the-secularist-myth-of-aurangzebs-demolition-of-the-kashi-vishwanath-temple

Given that the picture and the associated caption portrayed Aurangzeb as a tyrant, the Congress party came to the defence of the Mughal ruler. The official handle of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Sevadal insinuated that the ancient Hindu temple was not destroyed by the Mughal emperor, by claiming how the photograph taken in 1890 can prove that Aurangzeb had destroyed the temple when the Mughal emperor had died almost two centuries ago.

“Aurangzeb died on 3 March 1707. How a photograph clicked in 1890 can show that wall which is allegedly broken by a person who died in 1707?” the tweet by Maharashtra Congress Sevadal read.

Allegations by Congress Sevadal junked

Twitter user ‘IndiaHistorypics’ refuted the claim by responding that the same destroyed wall is also seen in a lithograph made In 1834 by British scholar James Prinsep, which had mentioned that the temple was destroyed by Aurangzeb.

“Further you may take up the matter with ASI and British Library as the source belongs to them,” the popular handle told Congress Sevadal. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.opindia.com/2022/05/congress-sevadal-whitewashes-destruction-of-kashi-vishwanath-temple/amp/