That history can be distorted and erased needs no proof as it happens before our very eyes in the subcontinent especially in Pakistan and India.

The diverse past haunts us. The two largest communities, Hindu and Muslim, want a sanitised version of their chequered past. Each community is driven by a desperate desire to highlight the wrongs it suffered and cover up the wrongs it did. For such a project to succeed, one needs to distort and erase the history as the intention is not to right the wrongs or forgive the past wrongs. The purpose on the contrary is to hold the past as justification for glorifying oneself and demonising one’s rivals. The process of distortion and erasure involves tangible and intangible aspects. Excavation sites, monuments, buildings point to the former and collective unconscious, historical memory, languages and culture to the latter. The temper of the times unambiguously shows that both the communities brazenly tinker with the tangible and intangible past. But let’s first pan to India.

Historians believe that the Indian society had strength; magnanimity which enabled it to accept and include in its fabric all the disparate elements that shaped it. Post-Harappa society didn’t believe in human equality because of its caste system born of hostile interaction between Indus valley people and newly arrived Aryans. But it found a way to square with diversity through the way of co-existence. It defined castes and assigned them specific professions. Each caste or community thus created was allowed to have its exclusive existence within its specified sphere while interacting with others which was an inescapable necessity.

Social diversity that underpinned the Indian society has been as great as the geographical diversity found all across the subcontinent. It has socially and culturally been enriched by diverse races, peoples, faiths, languages and cultures.

Strangely, with the advent of modern epoch, we witness the emergence of a revivalist movement spearheaded by a section of Hindu intelligentsia which has now morphed into full-blown ideological war against the plurality of historical influences that defined Indian society. Its traditional strength is touted as its weakness and its inclusiveness as destructive for the Hindu majority. Now the emphasis on purity implies efforts to purge the Indian society of extraneous influences.

Purity and indigenousness are supposed to envisage a new Hindu dawn shorn of all foreign elements epitomising the upper caste glory.

Talking of the findings of those ‘who study plate tectonics’, Wendy Doniger says something quite relevant in her book The Hindus. “...Not just the land but people came to India from Africa, much later; the winds that bring monsoon rains to India each year also brought the first humans to peninsular India by sea from East Africa in around 50,000 BCE. And so from the very start India was a place made up of land and people from somewhere else. So much for “immemorial.” Even the ancient “Aryans” probably came, ultimately, from Africa. India itself is an import, or if you prefer, Africa outsourced India”, she writes.

Currently the Hindutva (Hindu hood) espoused by upper castes is in full swing ready to grind anything that appears non-Hindu forgetting that purity is a product that has never been found in the subcontinent. The word ‘Hindu’ itself implies acceptance of impurity. It’s derived from the name of the river Sindhu. Persians, Greeks and Arabs called the people living this side of the river Sindhu Hindu. S changed into H. In ancient times ‘Hindus’ didn’t know that they were Hindus. So much for the purity. They even borrowed gods, goddesses and several religious practices from Harappa civilisation. Black or blue colour of the painted deities is an incontrovertible proof. Dark skin couldn’t be a symbol of Arya who prided themselves on their fair complexion. As to the Arya, against all the solid evidence found Rig-Veda (composed in Punjab) and other scriptures, whole new “Out of India theory” has been manufactured to assert that Aryans were indigenous to the subcontinent and Indo-European languages branched out from India.

Another pseudo theory holds that most of the contemporary languages in this region are based on or derived from Sanskrit which is considered to be emblematic of Brahminical literary culture. Sanskrit as the very name indicates, means perfected and manufactured.

Sanskrit makes sense when juxtaposed with Prakrit, the natural speech. Which could be older, a perfected language or natural language? Do we need another Panini from Taxila to tell us which one has a longer history? But Hindutva spin masters still propagate that Sanskrit, a manufactured language, is mother of almost all peoples’ languages which have their roots in Prakrits. The assertion rests on vocabulary borrowed from Sanskrit. If borrowings are the measure of origins of a language, then one can comfortably claim that Punjabi and Sindhi languages are offshoots of Arabic.

The major problem Hindutva intelligentsia face is the invasions of India by Muslim Arabs and Turks which mark the start of a new era. Notwithstanding the death and destruction invasions cause, this painful process unleashes new social forces and welds different strands of diverse cultures which result in a historical development pregnant with new possibilities.

Hindutva forces in India currently at the crest of their political power are dealing with the material and immaterial manifestations of a culture born of Hindu-Muslim interaction with unprecedented ferocity. They demolished the 16th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya which was built, Hindus believe, at the site of Ram Janambhoomi, the birth place of the Lord Rama. It’s a historical fact that invaders built their own monuments on the sacred sites of vanquished people as a sign of their power. Invaders after destroying cities built new cities on the ruins of the old ones. Lahore, Multan and Delhi are a few examples. Now should we raise the cities to the ground we live in? Such sites are in thousands. Drive against shared culture is expressed in the efforts to spin a new nationalist narrative on historical events and personages involving Hindus and Muslims.

Muslim names of cities and town are being changed. Prithviraj Chauhan is being projected as mightier than Muhammad Ghori. Emperor Aurangzeb is depicted as so full of hatred that he had no Hindu general in his army. Notwithstanding his narrow-mindedness and bigotry, Aurangzeb employed the largest number of Hindu commanders in his army and had Hindu blood in his veins. If the Indian society succeeds in cleansing its flesh of all non-Brahminical influences, it would end up as a bone dry land hit by drought. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2022