Mohammad Habib of AMU was one of India’s most influential historians. Though he claimed to be a Marxist, he was a rabid Islamic fanatic who whitewashed Islamic history to absolve Islam of all blame.
He claimed that Mahmud Ghazni destroyed Hindu temples for the ‘lust of plunder’ and not because of Islamic ideology. That Hindu temples were centers of wealth and thus targets of Islamic kings.
Jawahar Lal Nehru went one step further. He mentioned how Mahmud comes to Mathura and admires the panorama. And then omits to mention how he destroyed Mathura and all its Hindu temples after that.
This excuse of blaming ‘lust of plunder’ rather than Islamic ideology for the destruction of Hindu temples became the standard practice to excuse all Islamic iconoclasm in India. Every case of the destruction of Hindu temple was excused in this way.
The fact that there was absolutely no evidence that the Hindu temples were destroyed for loot, or they were the centers of wealth didn’t bother the Marxist and Islamist historians.
The fact that no Muslim king touched a mosque no matter how wealthy it was didn’t bother the Marxists. Anyone who called Islamic ideology as the inspiration for Islamic vandalism was branded instantly as a ‘Hindu communalist’. This is how Marxists and Islamists distorted the history of India.
(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @PankajSaxena84 on May 18, 2023, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)
