The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

Infobox Book
name = The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India
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author = Sita Ram Goel
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country = India
language = English
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genre =
publisher = Voice of India
release_date = 1982, 1994
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isbn = ISBN 81-85990-23-9
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"The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India" is a book that was published by radical publisher [ Contested Past: Anti-Brahmanical and Hindu nationalist reconstructions of Indian prehistory, Bergunder, Michael, Historiographia Linguistica, Volume 31, Number 1, 2004, pp. 59-104(46)] and historian Sita Ram Goel under his Voice of India imprint in 1982. The second revised edition was published in 1994.

Goel describes the history of the Islamic invasions of India, and its role in contemporary Indian politics. The book also gives background to what he calls dhimmitude in India. [Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide By Bat Yeor, Miriam Kochan, David Littman]

The book has not been specifically reviewed by any mainstream scholars of Indian history, and was self-published.

Themes

Islamic invasions

Goel also comments that the Hindus had elaborate codes of warfare which were too strictly observed by the Hindus. The Muslims, by not respecting them, could gain significant victories. [The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) By Robert Spencer, p.114, Onward Muslim Soldiers. The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion]

The book claims that South Asia was as not "as easily conquered" by "the Muslims" as North Africa or Spain. "Reviewed as a whole, the period between the last decade of the 12th century and the first quarter of the 18th - the period which is supposed to be the period of Muslim empire in India - is nothing more than a period of long-drawn-out war between Hindu freedom fighters and the Muslim invaders." In two chapters, he describes atrocities that he attributes to some Muslim invaders and rulers like Mahmud of Ghazni or Aurangzeb. Goel is also of the opinion that the Islamic invasion was possible because of a spiritual failure of the Hindus.

Alleged History rewriting

Goel claims in the book that there was a "systematic distortion" of India's history which the Marxist historians of Aligarh and the JNU had undertaken. [Goel: How I became a Hindu, ch.9] In particular, he claims that the history of medieval India and the Islamic invasions is being rewritten. He described it as an "experiment with Untruth" and an exercise in suppressio veri suggestio falsi. According to him, the Ministry of Education has extended this experiment to school-level text-books of history. Goel called it "an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing" and argued that the NCERT guidelines are "recommendations for telling lies to our children, or for not telling to them the truth at all."

Hindu-Muslim conflict

Despite his criticism of Islam, Goel writes that he is not opposed "to an understanding and reconciliation between the two communities. All I want to say is that no significant synthesis or assimilation took place in the past, and history should not be distorted and falsified to serve the political purposes of a Hindu-baiting herd."Goel, Sita Ram, The Story of Islamic Imperialism] He argues that the Muslims should evaluate the Islamic history and doctrines in terms of rationalism and humanism "without resort to the casuistry marshalled by the mullahs and sufis, or the apologetics propped up by the Aligarh and Stalinist schools of historians", just as the European Christians did centuries earlier with Christianity.

He believed that the "average Muslim is as good or bad a human being as an average Hindu", and warned::Some people are prone to confuse Islam with its victims, that is, the Muslims, and condemn the latter at the same time as they come to know the crudities of the former. This is a very serious confusion, which should be avoided by all those who believe in building up a broad-based human brotherhood as opposed to narrow, sectarian, self-centred, and chauvinistic nationalism or communalism.

References

* By Bat Ye'or, Miriam Kochan, David Littman
*Robert Spencer. Onward Muslim Soldiers 2003. , Regnery Publishing 2006. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), Regnery Publishing, 2005.

External links

* [http://voiceofdharma.com/books/siii/ Online book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India]
* [http://www.indiastar.com/wallia13.htm Review]