The Girvan-Vanmanjari of Dhuniraj 119 written in 1702-04 during the reign of Aurangzeb, brings out this problem clearly. The book is written in the f… - K. S. Lal

The growing awareness that Muslim religion and Muslim rule were impositions and that Indians belonged to a different religious and political tradition, has not escaped Hindu consciousness of medieval history. It does not accept the Ilbaris, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, the Bahmanis, the Sharqis, the Lodis and the Mughals as indigenous dynasties on par with the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Sangamas, the Marathas, the Sikhs, and the Jats. Its heroes are Prithviraj Chauhan, Vikram Pandya of Madura, Harihar and Bukka and Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagar, Maharanas Kumbha, Sanga and Pratap, Maharajas Shivaji and Ranjit Singh and not Muhammad Ghauri, Alauddin Khalji, Sikandar Lodi or even Shahjahan.

Ziyauddin Barani is an eye-witness historian, but his figures and data are not always precise. When sometimes he means to convey‘a very large number’, he gives the figure of 100,000.... Let us take another fourteenth century historian, Shams Siraj Afif. If Barani has a weakness for 100,000, Afif is very fond of 180,000, so that the slaves of Firoz Tughlaq numbered 180,000, the revenue from his 1200 gardens was 180,000 tankahs, and in his war with Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah (A.D. 1353), he killed 180,000 men in Bengal. The immensity and coincidence of the numbers create misgivings. ... The chronicler has left no stone unturned to convince us of his veracity. Still the figure seems to be unduly. large for Firoz Tughlaq ; it could have fitted in with the narrative of massacres of Chingiz or Timur. And then there is the authority of the Sirac-i-Firoz Shahi , which says that only 60,000 were killed.

Should it be a matter of criticism if I deplore "government-sponsored attempts to rewrite Indian history in the interest of minorityism by suppressing unpalatable truths about the character of Muslim rule"? I have quoted from government circulars addressed to authors of school and college textbooks. Here some instructions/suggestions are reproduced. These appear on p. 70 of the Legacy. "Muslim rule should not attract any criticism... Destruction of temples by Muslim invaders and rulers should not be mentioned... Ignore and delete mention of forcible conversions to Islam" etc., etc. Curiously enough the instructions themselves admit of destruction of temples and forcible conversions. Why are there no instructions about writing the history of the ancient (Hindu) period or the British period? Does it mean that the record of Muslim rule in India alone is unmentionable? Or, does it mean that only the destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned (for the appeasement of one minority), while destruction by Portuguese invaders and rulers should be freely mentioned? Evils of Hindu society may be discussed but the evils of Muslim society should not. Warren Hastings, Wellesley and Dalhousie may be impeached relentlessly but no Muslim governor or ruler. These are double angles of approach, double standards of judgement recommended for writing Indian history. But this is actually being done by historians engaged by the establishment for writing school and college textbooks.