Another great writer who led me on It this stage was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. I had read all his novels but had never been able to understand why h… - Sita Ram Goel

I was busy putting together the material when I saw the Indian Express of 5 February 1989 carrying an article by Arun Shourie-'Hideaway Communalism'. It told the story of how a book written in Arabic and Urdu by a rector of the adawatul-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 published by the rector's son, Ali Mian, the present rector and Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board. Arun Shourie's article in a major newspaper was the first of its kind after a long time. It had violated a taboo placed by the mass media and the academia on any unfavourable narration of the history of Islam since the days when Mahatma Gandhi took command of the Indian National Congress and launched his first no-cooperation movement in support of the Turkish Khilafat. The correct thing since that time had been to praise Islam and its heroes, and not to ask any inconvenient questions about its belief system or its deeds or its goals. In fact, Islam had imposed an Emergency on India and enforced it by means of terror, verbal as well as physical. Hindus were free to praise Islam but if they asked any inconvenient questions, they invited not only swear- words form all respectable quarters but also the assassin's dagger.

Greek historians who accompanied and followed Alexander tell us that before this adventurer led his short-lived raid against the republics on the Punjab and Sindh, only two other foreign invaders had had the courage to cast covetous eyes on India. Queen Semiramis of Babylonia in the 8th Century and Cyrus the Great of Iran in the 6th Century BC attacked India with vast armies but were defeated at the borders and made to flee with very few survivors. Plutarch leaves us in no doubt that Alexander himself had to beat a hasty retreat from the banks of the river Beas which, baffled by the brave resistance from a series of small republics, his armies refused to cross. And his successor in East Asia, Seleucus Nicator, was soon humbled and not only made to cede conquered Indian territory but also pay homage to the Indian emperor by a matrimonial alliance. But the wheel of time turns. The Hindus lost some of their vigour and vitality and vigilance, and neglected the art of warfare which was acquiring new dimensions in neighbouring lands. The Scythians, the Kushanas and the Hunas who stormed in after the disintegration of the Mauryan and the Gupta empires did succeed in conquering and ruling over large parts of northern and western India. This spell of foreign rule, however, was rather short-lived.

The first need of the situation was a centre round which Hindus could rally, and from which Hindu resistance to the Islamic invasion could be directed. The effectiveness of such a centre was demonstrated first in Mewar under Maharana Pratap, secondly in the South under Vijayanagara, thirdly in Maharashtra under Shivaji, and lastly in the Punjab under Banda Bahadur. But these centres crystallised too late. A nationwide centre established earlier could have contained Islamic imperialism at the borders of Bharatavarsha, or defeated and driven it out from wherever it had secured a foothold. Chandragupta, Vikramaditya, and Skandagupta had headed such a centre, and saved the motherland by hurling back the barbarians as soon as they came.