S. L. Bhyrappa Quotes

The blurb of Tughlaq explicitly states that although the plot of the play is historical, its intent is not to portray history. However, wherever this play has been staged, both the audience and the performers have invariably felt that the Tughlaq of Karnad’s play was the real, historical Tughlaq. ‘A Brahmin was wronged by my officers. You all have seen that I am committed to erasing this injustice and that I’m devoted to walk in the path of justice. This is an unforgettable moment in the history of our kingdom, a kingdom which is splintered due to religious strife. I want equality in my kingdom. I want progress. I want justice that is based on logic. It is not merely enough to have peace; I want the spark of life.’ ‘The most important fact is that Daulatabad is a city where the majority is Hindus. I want to shift my capital to Daulatabad in order to foster greater harmony between Hindus and Muslims.’ Thus goes the Sultan’s words. Further, the statement that ‘the Sultan lapses into ecstasy whenever he witnesses the sight of a Brahmin who is with a Muslim friend’ is intended to evoke a feeling in the audience that Tughlaq was far more tolerant and religiously fair minded than Akbar whom he preceded by about 230 years. But then as per Ibn Battuta, this is the same Sultan who renamed Devagiri to Daulatabad. This is the same Sultan who imprisoned and forcibly converted to Islam, the 11 sons of the southern king of Kampili who rebelled against him (Ibn Battuta, The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, Eng translation by Dr. Mahdi Hussain, 1953, pg 95. Ishwari Prasad’s Qaaunah Turks in India, Vol 1, Allahabad 1936, Pg 65-66. Mahdi Hussain, Tughlaq Dynasty, Calcutta 1963, pg 207-208, quoted in “Muslim Slave System in Medieval India” by K.S. Lal, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1994). This same Tughlaq didn’t refrain from demolishing Hindu temples and building mosques on the same spot. A mosque named Bodhan Deval exists in the Nizamabad district in Andhra Pradesh. As the name itself suggests, this is a mosque built after demolishing a preexisting temple on the site. Two inscriptions—that are still available—state that this mosque was built during the reign of Muhammad Bin Tughlaq. G.Yazdani, author of Epigraphia IndoMoslemica 1919-20, states on page 16 that “as the name itself suggests, the Deval mosque was a Jain temple, which was converted to a mosque when Muhammad Bin Tughlaq became victorious in his raid of the Deccan.” The original temple’s architecture was star-shaped. However, the Muslims (Tughlaq) replaced the sanctum sanctorum with a pulpit. This apart, the temple was not significantly modified. The original pillars remain intact till date. The carvings of the Tirthankaras on the pillars too, remain intact till date (Sitaram Goel, Hindu Temples What happened to them? Vol II, page 67).

Western historians who began to write India’s history by following the European historical method have paved us a good path. But their scholarship was fuelled by an ulterior motive. They had already developed the following narrative: Indian culture is the Vedic culture. The creators of this culture were Aryans, who came into India from abroad. They destroyed the native culture and established themselves here. Thus, everybody who came thereafter were alien invaders. At one stage the Muslims came. Now, the British have come. Therefore, if somebody argued that the British weren’t native to India, they had a readymade response: neither are you. This was institutionalized in universities, and the media. English-educated young men and women carried this perception, too. This narrative also informed that the Rg Veda, held sacred by the Aryans was composed by them when they were outside India. This narrative severed the spiritual bond that connected Indians with India. The result was that over hundred years, Englisheducated Indians suffered a sense of alienation. This narrative also germinated and escalated the discord among some Indians who saw themselves as the native Dravidians whom the invading Aryans subjugated. Those who understand human nature well know that it is easy to beget enmity and that when it is proved that the enmity is based on false reasons, it is still difficult to let go of ill-feeling.

Truth for the Communists is the position the Party takes. This holds true for values like art and ethics. We don’t need to explain this to people who have read books published by Communist Russia on these topics and sold at dirt cheap prices.

I was a small boy when the country achieved freedom and held its initial general elections. However, I’ve witnessed Congress leaders discussing the relative strengths and reach of castes in a particular constituency, and caste-based leaders who needed to be nominated for elections.

Mohammad Karim Chagla was born, raised, and educated in Bombay. He became famous as a lawyer and earned goodwill and respect as a man of integrity. He went on to become the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and retired from the position. He recounts in his autobiography, Roses in December that he was desirous of contesting the Lok Sabha elections. He wrote to Nehru requesting him to give a ticket from a constituency in Bombay. The Congress High Command acceded to his request. In its reply, it said that he would be given a ticket to contest from the Aurangabad constituency. In turn, he replied with, “I was born, raised, and I have served the public in Bombay. People know me well here. Why have you given me a ticket in faraway Aurangabad where I know nobody and about which I know nothing?” Nehru’s High Command retorted, “Aurangabad has a large Muslim population. Because you are a Muslim, you contest from there.”

According to Abu Nassir Aissi, Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughlaq planted the flag of Islam in corners that had never been conquered before, and had the verses of the Quran recited in places that had never heard them recited before. He put an end to the fireworshipping verses and replaced them with the verses of the Azaan (S.A.A Rizvi, India in Tughlaq’s Time, Aligarh, 1956, Vol I, pg 325). What basis does the playwright have to depict this Sultan as tolerant, other than that of the Marxist propaganda?

The Muslims in the Malabar speak, read and write Malayalam even today. The same applies to Muslims in Tamil Nadu. However, Muslims in Karnataka speak only Urdu and have remained distant from mainstream Kannada. This is the direct result of Tipu’s imposition of Farsi and Urdu as the only permitted mediums of instruction.

I have always been interested in sociology, psychology, history and allied subjects in the humanities. I have done some reading in these. Philosophy is the subject of my profession. Aesthetics was the topic of my doctoral research. However, my proclivity made me turn to writing literature, writing novels specifically. As long as I can remember, my mind has dwelled on the nature of the relationship between truth and beauty, and literature and truth. What is the nature and extent of the freedom that a writer has in recreating an actual historical character, information about whose life and times is based on literary, archeological and other evidences? This question has bothered me at every step. The preface to The Real Tipu written by S.D. Sharma has further intensified my thoughts: “Tipu Sultan has recently leapt from the pages of history to the television screen. This has naturally aroused curiosity about him and his times. It has also caused great controversy. This is because several—especially, people from Kerala—hold the view that the real Tipu was not the same person that is being depicted in the Doordarshan serial. The serial, based on Bhagawan S. Gidwani novel, The Sword of Tipu Sultan is a book filled with falsehoods. It is a narrative that wrongly portrays factual historical events. Doordarshan’s serial has given us a gift that is far from the truth. This controversy made me study Tipu Sultan in detail. When I learnt the truth about him, I was aghast.”

The Aryan Invasion Theory was disproved eventually by several researches, which showed plenty of evidence against the occurrence of such an invasion. However, nobody had written a comprehensive work on Indian history from the Indian perspective. In this backdrop, the freedom fighter, Gandhian, distinguished lawyer, member of the Constituent Assembly, eminent scholar, and founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kanhaiyalal Munshi conceived of a project to write a comprehensive history of India. He invited the towering History scholar and researcher, R.C. Majumdar to become the editor. The two entered into an agreement. It was Munshi’s responsibility to provide equipment and money that Majumdar asked for. Additionally, Munshi would have no say in the selection of scholars (who would be invited to write on specific areas of history) and other editorial tasks. Munshi honoured this agreement. Thus came to be written the History and Culture of the Indian People in 11 volumes written by scholars who were specialists in various themes and sub-themes of history. No other work in comparable scope or depth or fidelity to truth has been attempted either singly or jointly in the last fifty years. I had read all the volumes. If one reads a specific section or period as it is classified in these volumes, it provides the complete and up-to-date research done on it including references to primary sources. All that remains is adding contemporary research—if any—and republishing a new edition. My personal collection contains all these 11 volumes.

The purpose of my essay is not to support Shankaramurthy. Neither is it to condemn historical Muslim personalities. All Muslims in India are our brothers. Our nationalism must grow stronger on the edifice of precisely this brotherhood. However, we cannot strengthen nationalism on the foundation of a false history. Almost a century has passed since we have fearlessly written about and discussed the drawbacks of Hindu society, and initiated reforms accordingly. A society becomes stronger by such candid and honest criticism and analysis. Writing the truth about the history of Muslim rule in India doesn’t mean we are insulting Muslims. All of us need to learn lessons from history. If we are afraid to write the facts of history because it might offend people, if we bury the truth thus and build a false narrative of history, we cannot construct a strong building on such a false foundation.

The National Book Trust put out a proposal to translate these 11 volumes into all Indian languages. The proposal was forwarded to the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) because it pertained to history. The ICHR formed a Committee to examine the proposal. The Committee was headed by S.Gopal and included Tapan Roy Choudhury, Satish Chandra and Romila Thapar. By then, the ICHR was completely under the control of Marxists. Expectedly, they recommended that the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan volumes were unsuitable for translation into Indian languages and that the proposal should not be carried forward. And it didn’t stop at just that. It suggested an alternative works that had potential for such a translation. These alternative works were authored by the selfsame Committee members and their other Marxist comrades. Five books authored by the Chairman of ICHR, R. S.Sharma, three books by S. Gopal (son of the renowned scholar and philosopher, S.Radhakrishnan), three by Romila Thapar, two by Bipan Chandra, two by Irfan Habib, two by his father Mohammad Habib, one by Satish Chandra, works of the Communist Party of India’s leading light, E.M.S Namboodiripad, and one book by Rajni Palme Dutt, who was guiding and controlling the Indian Communists in the 1940s. Not a single book by Lokamanya Tilak, Jadunath Sarkar or R.C. Majumdar! (In this connection, it is worth reading Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, ASA 1998. Arun Shourie is hated by different groups for different reasons. A defining characteristic of Arun Shourie’s writing is the fact that it delves into the deepest roots of the issue it discusses. Eminent Historians provides the complete list of the remuneration that each person took for the aforementioned translation project.)

The tactics of Marxists to capture power in all spheres and at all levels is no different from that of caste politics, which has proved to be a curse upon India. They appoint people sympathetic to their ideology in universities, infiltrate print and television media with their fellow travelers, write glowing reviews of books written by authors loyal to their ideology, sideline authors who hold opposing or alternate views, organize ideologically-motivated seminars and camps to attract young minds to their side, exert influence on the Government to give out awards to people who follow their ideology…they have done this in a systematic manner. Critiquing a literary work by using ideology as the yardstick is the method of literary criticism that Marxists introduced in India. By doing this, they feel they have destroyed traditional measures and conceptions of literary criticism such as Rasa (Feeling or Emotion), Dhwani (Suggestion), and Auchitya (Appropriateness).

Indira Gandhi, whose sole aim was to retain and remain in power, required the help of the Communists against her opponents that included the fast-growing Jana Sangh, and the ex-Congress combine of Morarji Desai, Nijalingappa, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Kamaraj and others. On their part, the Communists realized that they didn’t have enough strength to capture power on their own. They reasoned that putting their ideology in positions of power was a good alternative. Indira Gandhi thus helped the Communists infiltrate key institutions like the ICHR, NCERT, universities and the media. Additionally, Communist Russia exerted external pressure to make this happen. Nehru and his daughter had by then stooped to a position of weakness, which prevented them from taking a strong stance against Russia even in key domestic matters. Once the Communists were firmly entrenched in the nation’s key intellectual nerve centres, they began to shape the direction of these institutions following the model already laid down by Communist dictatorships like Russia and China. Now, Sonia Gandhi’s UPA Government is anyway dependent on the life support given by the Communists (Note: this article was written in 2008, during the first innings of the UPA Government. Communist parties supported the Government from outside.).

When the Leftists began to occupy the Government’s Education department, the History department, and the departments of history, sociology and literature, the media adopted a studied ignorance. When Murli Manohar Joshi, the NDA’s HRD Minister began to introduce changes that emphasized Indianness in our education, these Leftists raised a shrill cry. His changes included things like teaching the contribution of ancient India to science, and beginning classes with the Saraswati Vandana. The media projected this as a major calamity. Congress party workers and social-equality champions took out rallies and raised slogans predicting doomsday for India. Now, when the UPA Government’s Arjun Singh has embarked on a project of severely re-Marxifying education, none of these worthies have raised a word of protest. The media, especially the English media, has been highly supportive of this. The Congress party, whose only aim is to remain in power, has completely lost even the semblance of intellectualism. It remains in blissful slumber content and secure in the knowledge that it can borrow intellectualism from the Left if and when required. However, it has followed the policy of economic liberalization because of its realization that its past experiment with socialism brought India to the brink of bankruptcy. However, the Communists who have accepted this have been unable to break away from Marxism from which they derive their very identity.

During the Indian freedom struggle, wandering bards, minstrels, and those who sang lavanis used to sing rustic songs that glorified Tipu at street corners, in marketplaces, and fairs. These semi-literate and illiterate people had no knowledge of history. They were patronized by Muslims, especially Muslim merchants and businessmen who gave them bakshish. In the same vein, some playwrights wrote plays glorifying Tipu as a great patriot based on the sole fact that he had fought against the British. Thus informed, the audience and general public began to believe that this was the true picture of the historical Tipu Sultan. Post-independence, our Marxists, vote bank politicians, and religiously-driven Muslim writers, artists, playwrights, and filmmakers portrayed Tipu as a patriot and a national hero. Real history died. The British were depicted as heartless villains for taking two sons of Tipu as hostages. Girish Karnad, who adheres to this tradition of painting Tipu as a national hero takes up this hostage episode in his play and makes Tipu mouth this highly revelatory dialogue of sociology: “A new language has come to our land. A new culture. Angreji! A culture that takes children aged seven—eight as war hostages.”