S.A.T.A
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History has many diverse and intersecting narratives and in its nationalist construct it is essentially the chronicle of a indigenous society and its struggle,vision and achievements as a collective,a historical-political basis for its current nationhood.India's historical consciousness,today has become subservient to a cause that furthers the rendering of historical narrative, which serves a certian political expediency,secularizing Indian historical narrative is a product of this confused vision.
As much as one would like to conceive a mutually independent historical narrative,for Hindus and Muslims of India,where the respective narratives did not negatively influence the respective constituents evolution as a socio-political entity,or atleast complemented each other,such a historical rendering is a artificial construct.At every bend in their common History in India, the Hindu and Muslim historiography,esp that of the latter,is a chronicle of an existential strife between an indigenous socio-cultural entity and a violent,destroying intruding element.
While the Hindu has no problem fitting his narrative into nationalist perspective,infact he gives shape to such perspective,the Muslim is left confused.Those aspects of early Muslim political history,the conquest by Qasim the Arab,Ghazni and Ghuri,the Mughals,which should have commonly swelled Muslim hearts with pride,which they would have had they been living in different environment,have only ended up putting them on the defensive.Because These are the precisely the aspect which clash with the Hindu narrative,particularly when it is generally held to generate negative emotion among the Hindu.
The result is we have evolved a secular narrative,an euphemism for a new historical narrative, where Hindu have to adjust his narrative wherever it places the Muslim on a defensive.Where such adjustments become untenable,there new semantics are invented to explain common understanding.When the secular narrative paints Qasim,Ghazni or Ghuri,as mere booty collectors,common rapists and arsonists,with no particular religious motive for what they did,even when their own camp chroniclers,Muslim historian and other observers,have produced indisputable evidence,where it was the spirit of Ghazi(to be understood as one wages war against the unbeliever)against the idolatrous Hindus,which was the strongest motivation that drove the Muhammadan warriors forward in their brutal conquests(Muslim Chronicles amply testify how Muslim warriors would first destroy the Hindus places of worship,behead or enslave Hindus,before they indulge in looting and plunder.They are noted to have spared the life and property of those who convert to the faith of the conquerors,Ghuri and Ghazni took personal pleasure in razing to ground Hindu places of worship and defiling Hindu deities,breaking them off and sending them to various Mosques to be used as common stepping stones)it must be understood in the backdrop of this need for circumventing a uncomfortable narrative.
Producing a confused and contrived historical narrative,is synonymous with having no history,a country without history has no particular future.
As much as one would like to conceive a mutually independent historical narrative,for Hindus and Muslims of India,where the respective narratives did not negatively influence the respective constituents evolution as a socio-political entity,or atleast complemented each other,such a historical rendering is a artificial construct.At every bend in their common History in India, the Hindu and Muslim historiography,esp that of the latter,is a chronicle of an existential strife between an indigenous socio-cultural entity and a violent,destroying intruding element.
While the Hindu has no problem fitting his narrative into nationalist perspective,infact he gives shape to such perspective,the Muslim is left confused.Those aspects of early Muslim political history,the conquest by Qasim the Arab,Ghazni and Ghuri,the Mughals,which should have commonly swelled Muslim hearts with pride,which they would have had they been living in different environment,have only ended up putting them on the defensive.Because These are the precisely the aspect which clash with the Hindu narrative,particularly when it is generally held to generate negative emotion among the Hindu.
The result is we have evolved a secular narrative,an euphemism for a new historical narrative, where Hindu have to adjust his narrative wherever it places the Muslim on a defensive.Where such adjustments become untenable,there new semantics are invented to explain common understanding.When the secular narrative paints Qasim,Ghazni or Ghuri,as mere booty collectors,common rapists and arsonists,with no particular religious motive for what they did,even when their own camp chroniclers,Muslim historian and other observers,have produced indisputable evidence,where it was the spirit of Ghazi(to be understood as one wages war against the unbeliever)against the idolatrous Hindus,which was the strongest motivation that drove the Muhammadan warriors forward in their brutal conquests(Muslim Chronicles amply testify how Muslim warriors would first destroy the Hindus places of worship,behead or enslave Hindus,before they indulge in looting and plunder.They are noted to have spared the life and property of those who convert to the faith of the conquerors,Ghuri and Ghazni took personal pleasure in razing to ground Hindu places of worship and defiling Hindu deities,breaking them off and sending them to various Mosques to be used as common stepping stones)it must be understood in the backdrop of this need for circumventing a uncomfortable narrative.
Producing a confused and contrived historical narrative,is synonymous with having no history,a country without history has no particular future.