Negationism in India – The book starts with the explanation of the term ‘negationism’ in general. Negationism is a denial of historical facts, not the reinterpretation of the known facts. The original usage of the term lies in the denial of the Nazi genocide of the Jews and Gypsies in World War 2. Once the reader gets to know the meaning of negationism, the focus shifts to the Indian version of it which is more wide-spread than the former.
Continued efforts are made to make the people of India to forget the persecution of Hindus by Muslims over six centuries. An excerpt from the book says “Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and to deny the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hinduism. Today, most politicians and English- writing intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn any public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms. They will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of communal amity between Hindus and Muslims.”
Then the author explains how negationism became official policy under congress rule. Great efforts happened to re-write Indian history in a large scale. Then explanation shifts to the distortion of history by Marxist historians and how the academia fell into the hands of Marxists and how they used it to rewrite history according to their ideologies. Many Marxist historians are analysed like: Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, Irfan Habib, Gyanendra Pandey etc. Negationism can’t happen without consistent support of the academia and the media. But now, negationists control most part of them. Therefore people seldom get to know the real facts.
In the later part of the book, the ideology of Islam & the character of Mohammed (the founder of Islam) are analyzed. It becomes clear from the argument that Mohammed had political ambitions than spiritual ones. The author demolishes the statement “Islam is good but some Muslims may be bad” but instead proves the opposite and shows how with following Quran and hadith strictly, no Muslim can be at peace with Non-Muslims ever.
This is a milestone book written by the Belgian author Koenraad Elst. Enormous amount of studies of various histories, religion, philosophies, politics, social structure have gone into the making of this book. The author has stayed steadfast to truth and not hesitated in touching a subject which is a ‘taboo’. I’d say this is a very essential book to understand how propaganda is created, how it is sustained for a long period of time by both outside forces and the inside ones and how it destabilizes the country. This is a scholarly work, a highly recommended read.
Continued efforts are made to make the people of India to forget the persecution of Hindus by Muslims over six centuries. An excerpt from the book says “Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and to deny the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hinduism. Today, most politicians and English- writing intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn any public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms. They will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of communal amity between Hindus and Muslims.”
Then the author explains how negationism became official policy under congress rule. Great efforts happened to re-write Indian history in a large scale. Then explanation shifts to the distortion of history by Marxist historians and how the academia fell into the hands of Marxists and how they used it to rewrite history according to their ideologies. Many Marxist historians are analysed like: Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, Irfan Habib, Gyanendra Pandey etc. Negationism can’t happen without consistent support of the academia and the media. But now, negationists control most part of them. Therefore people seldom get to know the real facts.
In the later part of the book, the ideology of Islam & the character of Mohammed (the founder of Islam) are analyzed. It becomes clear from the argument that Mohammed had political ambitions than spiritual ones. The author demolishes the statement “Islam is good but some Muslims may be bad” but instead proves the opposite and shows how with following Quran and hadith strictly, no Muslim can be at peace with Non-Muslims ever.
This is a milestone book written by the Belgian author Koenraad Elst. Enormous amount of studies of various histories, religion, philosophies, politics, social structure have gone into the making of this book. The author has stayed steadfast to truth and not hesitated in touching a subject which is a ‘taboo’. I’d say this is a very essential book to understand how propaganda is created, how it is sustained for a long period of time by both outside forces and the inside ones and how it destabilizes the country. This is a scholarly work, a highly recommended read.
