S. L. Bhyrappa Quotes

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.

Girish Karnad has taken the title of his play, “ The dreams of Tipu Sultan” from a collection of leaflets written by Tipu in his own handwriting in Farsi. Major Beatson, a Britisher who edited the English edition of this collection gave it the name “The dreams of Tipu Sultan.” I have read this work. Tipu used to be anxious about the fact that he had to have absolute privacy when he was writing this, and later, while reading it. This collection was found in the royal latrine in the Srirangapattanam palace. Tipu’s most loyal servant, Habibulla identified and confirmed that these were indeed written by his master. Today, both the original and the translation are at the India Office in London. When one reads it, the true extent of Tipu’s religious fanaticism becomes clearer. He always refers to Hindus as Kaffirs and the British as Christians. A long-bearded Maulvi frequently appears in his dreams; Tipu goes to Mecca on a pilgrimage; Prophet Mohammad tells a long-bearded Arab, “Tell Tipu that I shall not enter Heaven without Tipu;” Tipu is then on a mission to convert all non-Muslims to Islam and Islamizes all non-Islamic nations. Tipu never talks about modernizing India and is furious that the Christians (British) are the biggest obstacles in his path; he desires to drive them out.

What is the purpose of teaching history? History is seeking the truth about our past events and learning about ancient human lives by studying the inscriptions, records, literary works, relics, artefacts and so on. Historical truths help us understand and learn the noble qualities that our ancestors adopted during their times.. I strongly reiterate: teaching history that is not based on truth is dangerous. ... The method adopted by the communists, who were unable to come out of the clutches of Marxism, the very basis of their identity, was to systematically appoint people in the universities who were loyal to their theories. They were expected to present their theories through newspapers, television and other media, get appreciative critiques for the books written by their ‘favourite’ authors, devise plans to dispel the writers from the opposite group.

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.”

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.

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.”

Two NCERT textbooks serve as good examples to expose the design of this Marxist group to assault the minds of growing and impressionable children. Both were written by Marxist historians and prescribed as Class XI textbooks. The first is Ancient India by R.S. Sharma, and the other is Medieval India by Satish Chandra. According to them, Ashoka’s policy of religious toleration included extending respect even to Brahmins. Because Ashoka had prohibited the slaughter of animals and birds, the livelihood of Brahmins, which depended on the dakshina they received for conducting Homas and Havans, was threatened. After Ashoka, Brahmins ruled over several parts of the splintered Mauryan Empire. This immature reasoning extends even to the temples that were destroyed by Muslim invaders. The reasoning given is that temples were destroyed because the Muslim invaders wanted to loot the enormous wealth they contained! In other cases, it says that temple destructions occurred because of the Sharia law. However, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the Decline and Fall of Buddhism (Writings and Speeches, Volume III, Government of Maharashtra, 1987 PP229-38) narrates how Muslim raiders razed to the ground the great Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramashila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri, etc, and committed the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks. Those who managed to escape this mass murder fled to Nepal and Tibet. Dr. Ambedkar then remarks, “The axe fell upon the roots of Buddhism. By killing the priestly class of the Buddhists, Islam killed Buddhism itself. This is the most brutal calamity visited upon Buddhism in India.” When it suits their Hindu-baiting purposes, these Marxists selectively quote Dr. Ambedkar. However, they actively suppress the same Ambedkar—who fought against the Hindu Varna system and became a Buddhist towards the end of his life—who says that Muslims were responsible for the brutal destruction of Buddhism in India.

Tipu, who embarked on a long campaign of the Malabar and Coorg and left a brutal trail of forcible conversion of Hindus in its wake, refrained from trying a similar stunt in the Mysore region. He needed the support of Hindus after his financial humiliation in the Third Mysore War of 1791, which was when he had to submit his two sons to the British apart from surrendering a large portion of his empire. Therefore, in a move to placate Hindus, he gave a large donation to the Sringeri Shankaracharya Mutt. Our secularprogressives project this incident as an instance of Tipu’s nonsectarianism and religious tolerance.

Towards the end of his life, Gandhiji’s ideas and influence had waned within the Congress party. Nehru was never a follower of Gandhiji’s ideas. Although Nehru had great admiration for the British system of democracy, his heart really lay with Russia’s Communism. After he became Prime Minister, he slowly sidelined most leaders within the Congress. Patel’s death became a boon to Nehru. As President, Rajendra Prasad was reduced to the status of a respectable token. Although leaders like Rajagopalachari and Kriplani quit the Congress party and formed their own outfits, their influence was insignificant. Nehru, who was influenced by a hardcore Marxist like Krishna Menon wasn’t naïve. Although he earned some goodwill in the international community as the leader of the Non-aligned Movement, he had to face opposition from America because the NAM was essentially sympathetic to Communist Russia. The result was India’s loss. However, India’s loss wasn’t Nehru’s loss. Nehru’s worshipful love for the Communist ideology had reached such proportions that his Government and the Indian media routinely chanted the HindiChini bhai bhai (India-China brothers) slogan until India was kicked out of its own territory by China. By then Marxists had occupied the intellectual space in India. For his political survival, Nehru practiced the policy of pitting Hindus against themselves and simultaneously, of appeasing Muslims. This was the tactic the British had instituted for maintaining their colonial hold over India, which Nehru continued. The word “casteism” became a term of abuse reserved only to be used against Hindus. Further, he also spread the perception that secularism was something that only Hindus needed to practice towards Muslims and Christians because being minorities, they were incapable of casteism.

When Tipu looted the Mysore Palace in 1796, he ordered to burn all the valuable and rare books and manuscripts, palm leaves that contained priceless handwritten notes to cook horse gram for his horses, and other files kept in the palace library. There are plenty of references in, for instance, the Malabar Manual by William Logan about the cruel military operations and Islamic atrocities of Tipu Sultan in Malabar—forcible mass circumcision and conversion, large-scale killings, looting and destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples, and other barbarities like gang-raping helpless women. There are hundreds of such incidents mentioned in various documents. It is impossible to reinforce nationalism based on the false picturization of History.

Tipu also changed the original names of entire cities and towns: Brahmapuri became Sultanpet, Kallikote became Farookabad, Chitradurga became Farook yab Hissar, Coorg became Zafarabad, Devanahalli became Yusufabad, Dindigal became Khaleelabad, Gutti became Faiz Hissar, Krishnagiri became Phalk-il-azam, Mysore became Nazarabad (today’s Nazarbad is the name of a locality in Mysore city), Penukonda became Fakrabad, Sankridurga became Muzaffarabad, Sira became Rustumabad, and Sakleshpur became Manjarabad. Does all this reflect Tipu’s nationalism, his religious tolerance, and his love for the Kannada language?

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 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 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 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).