Myths of Pakistani History-Dawn

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Well, some people argue that warfare between subcontinental armies was significantly different from the attacks from outsiders.

Due to the caste system, the act of war was restricted to only a section of the population, namely the warrior class. The peasants, traders and priests were excluded from the bloodshed.
There were strict warfare codes that were followed. Women, Children, farms and villages were spared, war was fought only from dawn to dusk, etc. etc.

Kautilya's "Arthashastra" is a good reference for the codes of war.

However with the coming of the central asians and middle eastern raiders, Indians were not used to such a united and brutal assault.
Islam's egalitarian principles meant that the entire population would be considered as the enemy.
Moreover the nomadic nature of the attacking tribes also meant that they were perhaps a lot more battle hardened than the forces on the Indian side.

Codes of war don't really make the "unity" or "outsider" argument. Those "codes" were just the "Geneva conventions" of the time. You may be correct that the Central Asian/Afghan invaders tended to come from Nomadic backgrounds (compared to the pastoral life in the subcontinent) but lifestyle or geography does not a "single nation make".

That "nomadic life" could explain the attitudes of some of the invaders, similar to the behavior of the Mongol Armies.

Ultimately, the foreign invasions are what united India in spirit. So, what might have never been, was created due to a common enemy.

What spirit? How do you know the Punjabis and Sindhis were "united in spirit" for a "Mauryan empire" any more than they were under the "Abdali empire"? Resorting to such an impossibly verifiable claim is why I made the argument earlier that Indians today may feel that "their land was violated" because they are projecting the sentiments of nationalism and identity created after 1947 backwards in time to encompass the lands and peoples that composed the "region known as the Indian sub continent".


Its the modern desire to cement even further the notion of an "Indian nation" and a "Single Indian Civilization" evolving over time that has led to most of these claims, based primarily on the "shared faith" (evolution from Vedism) argument, even if implicitly.

 

[Flintlock]

What spirit? How do you know the Punjabis and Sindhis were "united in spirit" for a "Mauryan empire" any more than they were under the "Abdali empire"? Resorting to such an impossibly verifiable claim is why I made the argument earlier that Indians today may feel that "their land was violated" because they are projecting the sentiments of nationalism and identity created after 1947 backwards in time to encompass the lands and peoples that composed the "region known as the Indian sub continent".


Its the modern desire to cement even further the notion of an "Indian nation" and a "Single Indian Civilization" evolving over time that has led to most of these claims, based primarily on the "shared faith" (evolution from Vedism) argument, even if implicitly.

Agno, the very reason India exists today is because the Punjabis and Sindhis want to be together. If they didn't, the union would not exist.

I won't deny the British played a huge part in the political unification, but it would have been impossible to hold it together if Indian's didn't share some common sentiments.

Those sentiments were the common struggle against the british, and at a deeper level, the (perhaps perceived) struggle against central asian/middle easter invaders.

 

[Flintlock]

Codes of war don't really make the "unity" or "outsider" argument.

I think you misunderstood my argument. What I'm trying to say, is that foreign invasions disrupted the traditional indian society in ways that was rare during subcontinental wars. Not that Indian society was perfect or anything, just that the established norms, knowledge systems, were torn apart.

Those "codes" were just the "Geneva conventions" of the time. You may be correct that the Central Asian/Afghan invaders tended to come from Nomadic backgrounds (compared to the pastoral life in the subcontinent) but lifestyle or geography does not a "single nation make".

I"m not making a case for the unity of the subcontinent at that time, but the reasons that would be used to forge this unity much later.

The caste system during the centuries after the decline of buddhism was a very rigid one. One could not in most cases, do any duty outside one's caste. The business of war was reserved to warriors and noone else. You must remember that the rigidity of society even extended to warfare.

Kautilya's Arthashastra, for example, isn't a book on the theory of warfare, but a book on the current practices at the time.

It is a very pragmatic book, and deals with warfare, seige, espionage, winning over the population with religious shenanigans etc etc. It clearly describes the rules for engagement at the time, and It won't be outrageous to assume that they were followed, like the rest of the rules of society.

 

[Vinod2070]

AM, I don't think Punjabis, Sindhis and other people of the subcontinent consider each other to be outsiders in the same way Persians or Afghans would look at them and vice versa.

We may have quite a lot of differences in culture and lifestyle but still you can see a lot of commonality. And because of that, I doubt they would be as brutal towards each other typically as a true foreigner could be.

We saw the same thing in Iraq. Some Americans were as brutal as they were because they did not consider the Iraqis as the same people as them. They could never be as brutal with Europeans or others who looked like them or whom they could identify with.

I feel it's a bit of a stretch to equate the internecine warfare between kingdoms within the subcontinent to attack by the Mongols or Arabs or other central Asian hordes. They were obviously different in their so many ways not least in the brutality that the latter brought along.

I will try to find some links to the brutality but obviously I assume you are aware of the destruction of temples and mass destruction and murders by Mamud Gazhani. Same holds for Aurangzeb. Timur Lame's and Nadir Shah's gencoides and bloodthirst are also well known.

 

[Samudra]

I will try to find some links to the brutality but obviously I assume you are aware of the destruction of temples and mass destruction and murders by Mamud Gazhani. Same holds for Aurangzeb. Timur Lame's and Nadir Shah's gencoides and bloodthirst are also well known.

There won't be any need for links. However, as to the assertion that the brutality on the new invaders was somehow related to their nomadic lifestyles - I think its appears valid on the surface however while the Mongol's invaded for either money or territory the Islamic invaders of ancient India were concerned about faith as much as money/territory. Had it been money or territory Muslim invaders could've been forgotten easily.

It has happened in the case of the British, who don't name missiles after Dyer or Clive. The British themselves consider colonialism an evil today. They acknowledge and move on - so do we.

Money or territory keeps changing hands and conquering these were part of the Indian dharma. Faith was rarely touched upon - there were many large scale conversions, royal debates and persecutions but none comes anywhere close to the wholesale slaughter of idol worshipers. Why, the 1858 rebellion happened because of a perceived assault on the faiths of the Hindu/Muslim sippahis.

At the end of the day the Hindu narrative tells the story of centuries of persecution and I don't see why they would willingly forgive and forget while the new adversaries openly proclaim raising their flags in Delhi again!

 

[asaad-ul-islam]

didn't timur lane slaughter muslims as well, in dehli. i think of him as a monster, he saw himself as another chengiz khan.

 

[Samudra]

didn't timur lane slaughter muslims as well, in dehli. i think of him as a monster, he saw himself as another chengiz khan.

He marched against the Delhi Sultanate as a Ghazi - the reason he stated was that the Delhi Sultans were too lenient towards infidels. Help yourselves with the Wikipedia. And notice the contempt he had for infidels and the glee with which he describes the slaughter of infidels in the book Tuzuk-i-Timuri.

In his descriptions of the Loni massacre he wrote, "..Next day I gave orders that the Musalman prisoners should be separated and saved."

Of course he sacked many a Muslim cities, too.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Vinod:

I don't want to hijack the thread any further into a debate over the atrocities by Muslim invaders, but, despite Samudra's views, I would appreciate those links if you get a chance to find them - never to late to stop learning and all that, you know..

AM, I don't think Punjabis, Sindhis and other people of the subcontinent consider each other to be outsiders in the same way Persians or Afghans would look at them and vice versa.

We may have quite a lot of differences in culture and lifestyle but still you can see a lot of commonality. And because of that, I doubt they would be as brutal towards each other typically as a true foreigner could be.

Sure there are commonalities in culture and lifestyle between peoples in Pakistan and India, but we also have those commonalities with peoples in Afghanistan and Iran. But on that note, what about the cultural and lifestyle similarities in South East Asia? Does China somehow get a right to claim that those similarities are proof of a "spirit for a United One China" encompassing the entire region?

I would argue the same for Europe as well - where there are tremendous amounts of similarities, more than the subcontinent I would say - racial, religious, lifestyle - but there is no question about each nation being "distinct and separate".

I suppose one similarity to your argument of "outsiders" invading the "locals" could be the aspect of the Crusades fought against Muslim invaders, Mongols etc. ("outsiders" so to speak). The problem is that unlike the Europeans, the modern Indian argument goes far, far beyond that to argue for a "single nationhood and civilization" - which is an argument that I find deeply flawed, given the multiplicity of political, cultural and perhaps even civilizational entities that existed throughout history in the Subcontinent.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

There won't be any need for links. However, as to the assertion that the brutality on the new invaders was somehow related to their nomadic lifestyles - I think its appears valid on the surface however while the Mongol's invaded for either money or territory the Islamic invaders of ancient India were concerned about faith as much as money/territory. Had it been money or territory Muslim invaders could've been forgotten easily.

It has happened in the case of the British, who don't name missiles after Dyer or Clive. The British themselves consider colonialism an evil today. They acknowledge and move on - so do we.

Money or territory keeps changing hands and conquering these were part of the Indian dharma. Faith was rarely touched upon - there were many large scale conversions, royal debates and persecutions but none comes anywhere close to the wholesale slaughter of idol worshipers. Why, the 1858 rebellion happened because of a perceived assault on the faiths of the Hindu/Muslim sippahis.

I don't think faith can be discounted from the rationale behind destroying temples, though I am hard pressed to see why you see a difference (positive in favor of the Hordes it almost seems) between the CA hordes destroying and killing everything in sight for the purposes of instilling fear and psychologically (sometimes physically) destroying the peoples and lands they conquered.

However, the reason behind pointing out the "Nomadic background" of the invaders was to perhaps show why the military campaigns were different from those within South Asia, and perhaps even those carried out by Muslim rulers in West Asia/Eastern Europe.

I think at the end of the day the fact has to be recognized that these campaigns were carried out by dictators and autocrats, and no matter what their faith, the manner in which they ruled is itself a negation of what Islam teaches. After all, it would be horrible if the Hazara's and Heratis bore grudges for ages against the Pashtun and Tajiks because of what the Taliban and Masood did.

At the end of the day the Hindu narrative tells the story of centuries of persecution and I don't see why they would willingly forgive and forget while the new adversaries openly proclaim raising their flags in Delhi again!

No need to resort to demagoguery to make a point - you know very well that there are just as many extremists in India who would like nothing better than to see Pakistan disintegrate and merge with India. It is wrong to try and link the current sentiment (if at all it is even a predominant one anymore) of "raising the flag in Delhi" to the historical Muslim invasion, and not take into account the hostility between the two nations since independence.

 

[Vinod2070]

As far as I am concerned, the partition is over and done with and the two nations must remain as they are.

If they can come out of the pathological enmity, I will prefer that.

When I talk about these topics, it is not to extrapolate that to mean that we should again become one. But does it mean that I agree with the basis of partition, perhaps no.

We have accepted the partition and agreed to move on. There should be no doubt on that score. So I feel that any discussion should not be colored by the perception of how it impacts the two nation theory. It doesn't matter now. It doesn't need to be proved right or wrong now at every turn. the two nations are a reality.

We have an attachment to the whole land where the Indian civilization once flourished and it was not forced on anyone. It was one of the most advanced in the world at it's time and was violently rooted out from many areas by invaders. We feel the pain and wound of that loss and if you say that we are not even entitled to that sense of loss, I can never agree to that. Should we now think of taking revenge for that ancient loss? I don't think so. But we have to make sure no one dares to do that to us again.

No one can take our love and respect for the land away as love for the motherland is part of our culture.

No Indian will ever say that they will willingly destroy their whole country for a grain of sand of some distant place as I have seen some Pakistanis claim. For many of them it may be just a piece of land as good or bad as any other, not for us. It is the motherland as well as "Punya Bhumi" for us.

Anyway, I think this link may be a good point to start:

Persecution of Hindus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Vinod:

Thank you for the link, and I agree with most of what you said.

I am not at all suggesting that you should not celebrate the achievements of peoples in the subcontinent throughout history, but civilizations have come and gone throughout world history, many ending quite violently, and I have issues with projecting that "pain and wound from loss" into a "clash of civilizations" or "1000 year war between Islam and Hinduism" as Stealth once mentioned some Hindutva apologists were framing it as.

While the discussion here has been conducted in an extremely civil manner, often it is not, and the demise of the civilizations that existed prior to the Muslim ones are blamed on Islam and Muslims rather than within the context of the specific rulers and dynasties whose actions may not have been Islamic at all. Think of it this way, when future generations study the impact of the Taliban, it would be incorrect to attribute it to Islam or Muslims, when it is clear that it was a particularly obscurantist and distorted version of Islam that provided the fuel for their actions.

 

[Vinod2070]

AM, I have thought about why actions of Muslims are associated so much with Islam while it doesn't happen for other religions as much. e.g. Hitler's actions are not linked to Christianity nor are Stalin's purges nor Mao's actions leading to 30 million deaths etc.

Is it to be blamed on non-Muslims only that they single out Islam and Muslims or do Muslims link their bad actions to Islam themselves?

What I feel is that many Muslims rulers misused the name of their religion to cover their dirty deeds and personal greed (may be more than other religions) and as you said it may not be in accordance with the spirit of the religion but it was never opposed by any sections of the Muslims (as far as I know). And for some reason Muslims make heroes out of some very cruel people in their history.

Good and bad people are there in every society and religion. But a society is identified by how it deals with it's problem children. My perception definitely is impacted when someone says that they feel Aurangzeb was the best Mughal ruler as opposed to Akbar. Or that they agree with all that Gazhani did. On the other hand if most Muslims were to say that people like them were aberrations and did not represent the spirit of Islam, my perception would be different.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Vinod:

To clarify - I don't support the "glorification of Muslim rule". While I can understand Muslims looking at them favorably because they consider them harbingers of the Islamic faith in the subcontinent, they should be analyzed for their misdeeds just as equally. While I argued that the discussion from your side focuses too much on the Islam aspect, rather than the specific rulers or dynasties, it is also correct that Muslims in general have chosen to view those events through a similar closed prism of only "faith", and in doing so have neglected a very substantial aspect of history as it relates to the actions of these figures during their invasions and subsequent rule.

It is also true that within Islamic society in general there may not be a sense of how wrong the destruction of temples and idols was, because it is viewed entirely through the prism of an "infallible faith", rather than what that "infallible faith" commands in terms of respect for those who aren't a part of it.

History should be balanced - subcontinental Muslims are not going to renounce the actions of the invaders as they pertain to bringing Islam, and attempting to change the culture to better fit Islamic mores- however they should criticize any atrocities and persecution that took place because, as you mentioned, to not do so indicates an implicit acceptance of those actions.

 

[Samudra]

I am hard pressed to see why you see a difference (positive in favor of the Hordes it almost seems) between the CA hordes destroying and killing everything in sight for the purposes of instilling fear and psychologically (sometimes physically) destroying the peoples and lands they conquered.

I believe it is the systematic religion based post-conquest persecution of Hindu's and their continued suffering which was absent in the case of other invaders who readily assimilated and went on to enrich the native culture. Contrast that to the new invaders who won't let Hindu's enter one of their greatest works of architecture apparently built in tribute to love. Thats a simple analogy but seeing that they refuse to be inclusive of all faith,the society itself and instead seek partition I believe there is a strong case for a distinction to be made.

I think at the end of the day the fact has to be recognized that these campaigns were carried out by dictators and autocrats, and no matter what their faith, the manner in which they ruled is itself a negation of what Islam teaches

I'm digressing here but I don't see any point of applying Islamic moral standards to the rulers for the reason that I see a parallel between the pulling down of the holiest shrines of Hindu Gods and the acts of Mohammed when he violated the temples of idol worshiping pagans in the Mecca building. I fail to see the moral standing of the religion itself. Besides, I refuse to buy this argument because to this day Muslims are most willing to sit idle and watch the spectacle of non-Muslim symbols destroyed and non-Muslims persecuted, *legally* nonetheless in some of the reasonably educated and developed countries. I have no option but to conclude morals are only talked about when it is not possible to continue the persecution. Only Lip service is found abound.

After all, it would be horrible if the Hazara's and Heratis bore grudges for ages against the Pashtun and Tajiks because of what the Taliban and Masood did.

So long as the Pashtun and Tajik communities continue to uphold and glorify the ugly and uncivilised acts of Taliban and Masood why would any self-respecting Hazara and a Herati respect the Pashtun and Tajik?

However, if on the other hand the Pashtuns and Tajiks were to happily acknowledge the horrors of Taliban and Masood, and the part their communities played in the slaughters, in totality minus any platitude and excuse making, all should be well.

It is wrong to try and link the current sentiment (if at all it is even a predominant one anymore) of "raising the flag in Delhi" to the historical Muslim invasion, and not take into account the hostility between the two nations since independence

So long as the state of Pakistan, the government, a representative of its people and their will, continues to choose a terminology that would imply their identification with those Muslim invaders who willingly persecuted natives and their faiths, I fail to see the reason as to why the link cannot be made. Besides, I'm bewildered that you don't want such a link to be made when its your government that continues with the cheap terminology complete with their dummies decorating traffic islands.

Even If such a terminology and a sentiment is persistent due to the hostility post-independence it conveys that the other side is more than willing to align itself on the side of the aliens against the natives in Hindustan on the slightest excuse whilst the natives are far more willing to accommodate and assimilate aliens by making a Muslim President, the same guy who made all the important missiles.

I'm also wondering about the relevance of Islamic morals or preachings in the naming of missiles. Apparently it appears to my eyes that a whole nation full of moderates, is perfectly willing to be a silent audience, even support the institutions, that act against what the religion, supposedly, preaches.

I'm afraid it would take a lot more than lip service.

 

[Shabaz Sharif]

Hindus named their fist missile after Prithvi who won the first battle against muslims while lost second and with it the war. Now when Pakistan response with naming of missile after who won against hindus, they start their usual BS that prithvi mean eart.