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The movement for the restoration of the Ramajanmabhumi Temple at Ayodhya has brought to the fore a suppressed chapter of India’s history, namely, the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples1 by the Islamised invaders. This chapter is by no means closed. The Appendix to this book provides details of many temples destroyed by Muslims all over Bangladesh as recently as October-November 1989. Currently, temples, or whatever had remained of them, are meeting a similar fate in the Kashmir valley.
This chapter, however, though significant, was only a part of the Muslim behaviour-pattern as recorded by Muslim historians of medieval India. The other parts were: 1) mass slaughter of people not only during war but also after the armies of Islam had emerged victorious; 2) capture of large numbers of non-combatant men, women and children as booty and their sale as slaves all over the Islamic world; 3) forcible conversion to Islam of people who were in no position to resist; 4) reduction to the status of zimmis or non-citizens of all those who could not be converted and imposition of inhuman disabilities on them; 5) emasculation of the zimmis by preventing them from possessing arms; 6) impoverishment of the zimmis through heavy discriminatory taxes and misappropriation of a major part of what the peasants produced; 7) ruination of the native and national culture of the zimmis by suppressing and holding in contempt all its institutions and expressions.
Footnotes:
1 "Hindu Temples" in the present context include temples belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma - Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jain and the rest.
Authors
Shri Arun Shourie
Shri Harsh Narain
Shri Jay Dubashi
Shri Ram Swarup
Shri Sita Ram Goel
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