Historian Dr. T. R. de Souza on the Goa Inquisition

Historian deSouza on the Goa Inquisition

Posted May 29, 2005

Dr. T. R. de Souza

"At least from 1540 onwards, and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to erect new Christian Churches and chapels. 

Various viceregal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in Churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion."

"A particularly grave abuse was practiced in Goa in the form of 'mass baptism' and what went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was alter initiated by the Franciscans also. The Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible, a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the Hindu quarter in pairs, accompanied by their Negro slaves, whom they would urge to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his lips with a piece of beef, making him an 'untouchable' among his people. Conversion to Christianity was then his only option."

The Goan inquisition is regarded by all contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812. The inquisition was set as a tribunal, headed by a judge, sent to Goa from Portugal and was assisted by two judicial henchmen. The judge was answerable to no one except to Lisbon and handed down punishments as he saw fit. 

The Inquisition Laws filled 230 pages and the palace where the Inquisition was conducted was known as the Big House and the Inquisition proceedings were always conducted behind closed shutters and closed doors. The screams of agony of the culprits (men, women, and children) could be heard in the streets, in the stillness of the night, as they were brutally interrogated, flogged, and slowly dismembered in front of their relatives. Eyelids were sliced off and extremities were amputated carefully, a person could remain conscious even though the only thing that remained was his torso and a head.

Diago de Boarda, a priest and his advisor Vicar General, Miguel Vazz had made a 41 point plan for torturing Hindus. Under this plan Viceroy Antano de Noronha issued in 1566, an order applicable to the entire area under Portuguese rule :

"I hereby order that in any area owned by my master, the king, nobody should construct a Hindu temple and such temples already constructed should not be repaired without my permission. If this order is transgressed, such temples shall be, destroyed and the goods in them shall be used to meet expenses of holy deeds, as punishment of such transgression."

In 1567 the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished.

A religious fatva was issued on the basis of the findings of Goa Inquiry Commission. It stated,"...Hereby we declare the decision that the conventions mentioned in the preamble of the fatva as stated below are permanently declared as useless, and therefore prohibited".

Prohibitions Regarding Marriages

* The instruments for Hindu songs shall not be played.

* While giving dowry the relatives of the bride and groom must not be invited.

* At the time of marriage, betel leaf packages (pan) must not be distributed either publicly or in private to the persons present.

* Flowers, or fried puris, betel nuts and leaves must not be sent to the heads of the houses of the bride or groom.

* Gotraj ceremony of family God must not be performed.

* On the day prior to a wedding, rice must not be husked, spices must not be pounded, grains must not be ground and other recipes for marriage feast must not be cooked.

* Pandals and festoons must not be used.

* Pithi should not be applied.

* The bride must not be accorded ceremonial welcome. The bride and groom must not be made to sit under pandal to convey blessings and best wishes to them.

Prohibitions Regarding Fasts, Post-death Rituals

* The poor must not be fed or ceremonial meals must not be served for the peace of the souls of the dead.

* There should be no fasting on ekadashi day.

* Fasting can be done according to the Christian principles.

* No rituals should be performed on the twelfth day after death, on moonless and full moon dates.

No fasting should be done during lunar eclipse. 

Conventions

* Hindu men should not wear dhoti either in public or in their houses. Women should not wear cholis .

* They should not plant Tulsi in their houses, compounds, gardens or any other place.

Following the law of 1567, orphans were kidnapped for converting them to Christianity.

On September 22, 1570 an order was issued that :

* The Hindus embracing Christianity will be exempted from land taxes for a period of 15 years.

* Nobody shall bear Hindu names or surnames.

In 1583 Hindu temples at Esolna and Kankolim were destroyed through army action.

"The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers." wrote Sasetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588. 

An order was issued in June 1684 eliminating Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak Portuguese language. The law provided for dealing toughly with anyone using the local language. Following that law all the symbols of non-Christian sects were destroyed and the books written in local languages were burnt. 

The Archbishop living on the banks of the Ethora had said during one of his lecture series, "The post of Inquiry Commission in Goa is regarded as holy." The women who opposed the assistants of the commission were put behind the bars and were used by them to satisfy their animal instincts. Then they were burnt alive as opponents of the established tenets of the Catholic church.

The victims of such inhuman laws of the Inquiry Commission included a French traveller named Delone. He was an eye witness to the atrocities, cruelty and reign of terror unleashed by priests. He published a book in 1687 describing the lot of helpless victims. While he was in jail he had heard the cries of tortured people beaten with instruments having sharp teeth. All these details are noted in Delone's book. 

So harsh and notorious was the inquisition in Goa, that word of its brutality and horrors reached Lisbon but nothing was done to stop this notoriety and escalating barbarity and it continued for two hundred more years. No body knows the exact number of Goans subjected to these diabolical tortures, but perhaps it runs into hundreds of thousands, may be even more. The abominations of inquisitions continued until a brief respite was given in 1774 but four years later, the inquisition was introduced again and it continued un-interruptedly until 1812. 

At that point in time, in the year of 1812, the British put pressure on the Portuguese to put an end to the terror of Inquisition and the presence of British troops in Goa enforced the British desire. Also the Portuguese power at this time was declining and they could not fight the British. The palace of the Grand Inquisitor, the Big House, was demolished and no trace of it remains today, which might remind someone of inquisitions and the horrors inside this Big House that their great saint Francis Xavier had commenced.

Dr. Trasta Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, "Inspite of all the mutilations and concealment of history, it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a result of this violence the character of our people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching but through the methods of violence and pressure. If any evidence is needed for this fact, we can obtain it through law books, orders and reports of the local rulers of that time and also from the most dependable documents of the Christian sect.”

Gandhi- Deep within by Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari

source: http://www.indianresurgence.com/hindutva18.htm

by Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari

In 1891, Gandhi returned from England as a barrister and in the next year he sailed to South Africa to fight a case for an Indian business firm Dada Abdulla & Co., against an immigrant Indian Muslim Tyabji Haji Khan Muhammad. During his brief stay in India, he wrote a few essays and sent them to Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale and according to Sri Gokhale, those were hopelessly rubbish. It should be mentioned here that Gandhi somehow managed to pass the Matriculation Examination in 1887 in the third division, scoring 247 out of 625.

                In that time the black population of South Africa, including the immigrant Indians, were denied some vital civic rights by the discriminatory and racist government led by the British colonialists. In some occasions, Gandhi himself fell victim of the said racist discriminations. Here in South Africa, he applied his version of nonviolence as a political strategy and started a movement to earn some special privileges for the Indian community and later on this peaceful civil disobedience was named Satyagraha. Due to this movement the government of South Africa ultimately passed the Indian Relief Act-1914, granting some privileges to the Indians. The followers of Gandhian nonviolence usually highlight this fact as a great victory of Gandhi and his creed.

                But it ia really amazing that, though apartheid had been abolished from the rest of the world quite a long ago, it continued in South Africa till May 1994, where had fought it nearly hundred years ago. Furthermore, it is early astonishing that up to the last hour the white rulers of South Africa used to advise the its non-white population and their leaders to adopt Gandhian type nonviolent movement. However, one thing Gandhi could conclusively prove through his struggle and other activities in South Africa that his loyalty to the British Crown was firm and unwavering, and he and his creed would never pose a threat to the British empire. And hence the British imperialists had little difficulty to gauge his profound respect for the British race, extraordinarily high esteem for the British culture and extreme loyalty towards the throne of England.

                While commenting on this aspect, historian Dr. A. C. Roy writes, “Gandhi had enough respect for the British cultural heritage. He strongly believed that the intercourse between India and Britain would be beneficial for the Indians”.

(1) He further writes, “In the early part of his life, he (Gandhi) was not anti-British. … It is true that, he was against the strong nationalist movement that swept India in the wake of partition of Bengal in 1905. It is also true that nationalist views of leaders like Sri Aurobinda Ghosh, Lala Lajpat Rai etc. could hardly influence Gandhi”.

(2)  And in fact, Gandhi supported the British decision of partitioning of Bengal.

(3)  During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi, to express his loyalty to the British Crown, used to sing the British National Anthem at public functions. Later on, he could discover violence in the lines of the  British Anthem:

  

                           “Scatter her enemies, and make them fall;

                            Confound their politics; frustrate their knavish tricks”

“Despite this, his loyalty to the British Empire was unsullied”, says Sri D. Keer, the most renowned biographer of Gandhi.(4) In fact, while in South Africa Gandhi never missed a single opportunity  to project himself as a loyal subject of the British empire. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and Gandhi, to express his loyalty to the British Crown, sent condolence message to England, placed a wreath at Queen’s statue in Durban and distributed souvenirs containing Queen’s pictures among the school children.(5)  On the occasion of coronation of the British King George-V, Gandhi expressed his loyalty to the throne of England and said, “The Indian residents of this country (i.e. South Africa) sent congratulatory cablegrams on the occasion, thus declaring their loyalty.(6)

                In 1899, a war between the Dutch settlers, called Boers, and the British in South Africa broke out. Gandhi then organized, of his own accord, an ambulance corps of immigrant Indians, 1100 strong, for the Red Cross and they served the British soldiers whi were wounded in the war. The British government of South Africa, in recognition of his sincere service to the British Empire, awarded a medal and a certificate of excellence to Gandhi. Even in his declining years of his life, Gandhi used to proudly recall how his loyalty had served the British during the Boer War, and in some occasions risked his life as he strongly believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world.(7) 

                Again during the Zulu Rebellion in 1906, against the British government in South Africa, Gandhi sided with the British and served the British army as a stretcher-bearer. The Zulus, or the natives of Africa, were victims of barbaric torture and inhuman exploitation by the British occupiers. They, as a result, were seething discontent and ultimately rose in revolt. Gandhi, being a similar victim, should have been sympathetic to the Zulus and sided with them. But it is a shame that he served the colonialist British government of South Africa and to justify his action he, in his autobiography, wrote, “But I then believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world. A genuine sense of loyalty prevented me from even wishing ill to the Empire”.(8)  This time as well, the British Government of South Africa recognized his service by presenting him a gold medal and the title of Kaiser-i-Hind. 

                         It should be mentioned here that Gandhi used to maintain the view that India would be benefited by its British connection and it would be a calamity to break the connection between the British people and the people of India.(9)  And there is no doubt that due to this unwavering loyalty to the British Crown, he was chosen by the British to bring him back to India to lead the freedom movement, or to sabotage the freedom movement.(10)  


Apart from his unwavering loyalty to the British Empire, Gandhi was chosen by the British as the new leader of freedom struggle due his newly invented doctrine of nonviolence. It was not difficult for the British to understand that his harmless and nonviolent Satyagraha would pose no threat to the British Empire. It has been ponted out earlier that British in India, at that time, were terribly afraid of violent freedom struggle launched by the patriots of Bengal, Maharastra and Punjab. But Gandhi, through his speeches and writings, could have managed to expose that he was against any sort of violence in Indian freedom movement.

                When Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw bombs on Englishmen at Muzaffarpur in Bihar on April 30, 1908, Gandhi immediately condemned the incident and said, “They had no reason to rejoice at the introduction of Russian methods.

They could neither achieve real Swaraj by following the path of evil, i.e. by killing British, nor by establishing factories”.(11)    

It should be mentioned here that, to explain Satyagraha, he used to say, “A Satyagrahi should expect to get killed by an aggressor and not to kill him”.(12)  


One should recall here that instruction of Hindu scriptures is to kill an aggressor without giving a second thought.(13)    

                    

                On that occasion, Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote 3 articles in the Kesari, supporting the action of Khudiram, and was sentenced by the British for 6 years in prison. On the contrary, Gandhi condemned Tilak and in his Indian Opinion, wrote,

“He (Tilak) aimed at inciting Indians against British rule. The rulers are justified, from their point of view, in taking action against him. … We submit that Mr. Tilak’s view should be rejected”.(14)  There is no doubt that Tilak was the first among the Indian leaders who boldly stood up to terminate British rule in India, while “Gandhi devoted years of his life to reform British imperialism”.(14)  


It should be mentioned here that Gandhi used to write that his strategy of passive resistance (Satyagraha) was always infinitely superior to physical power (perhaps due to the simple reason that it was harmless for the British rulers.)

                Madan Lal Dhingra was a student at an engineering college in London. He was a revolutionary, a follower of Veer Savarkar and killed Dr. Curzon Wyllies, a tyrant, on July 1, 1909. He also shot and killed Dr. Cawas Lalcaca while he tried to save Wyllie. Gandhi deplored Dhingra for this violence and condemned Savarkar for supporting Dhingra. Moreover, Gandhi Asked people like  Dhingra to abandon violence and adopt nonviolent Satyagraha as the means to fight British power and earn freedom. 


There is no doubt that all such actions and utterances of Gandhi encouraged British to bring Gandhi to India and put him at the helm of the freedom movement, so that nonviolent Satyagraha could be the only mode of Indian Freedom struggle. So they were in search of a dependable stooge who could be taken into confidence to tell their plan and used as a messenger to communicate the plan to Gandhi.

                At that historic hour, people of this country saw Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale to sail to London and visit South Africa on his return journey. He landed at Cape Town on October 22, 1912, and pressed Gandhi to return to India. While in London, Gokhale pleaded to the Prime Minister Mr. Gladstone to repeal the so called Black Act of South Africa, an unjust tax of £3 per Indian, for which Gandhi was then fighting. Mr. Gladstone agreed just to glorify Gandhi. After reaching South Africa, Gokhale, whom Gandhi revered as his political guru, communicated this piece of news to Gandhi and said that he (Gandhi) would have to return to India within a year (according to the plan of their British master).

                So after one year and nine months he had met Gokhale, Gandhi, after staying 21 years in South Africa, came to India, via London. He left Cape Town by S.S. Kinfauns Castle on July 18, 1914, accompanied by his wife Smt. Kasturva and his German friend Mr. Kalenbuch, and reached London on August 6. He again sailed from London on December 19, 1914, for India and landed Bombay on January  9, 1915. Thus he stayed nearly 5 months in England on his way back to India.

                While in London, he wrote in Satyagraha, “I sailed for England to meet Gokhale on my way back to India, with mixed feelings of pleasure and regret – pleasure because I was returning home after many years and eagerly looked forward to serving the country under Gokhale’s guidance, regret because it was a great wrench for me to leave South Africa, where I have passed 21 years of my life sharing to the full in sweets and bitters of human experience, and where I have realized my vocation in life”.(15)  Two days after Gandhi reached London, World War – I broke out. At that time Gokhale was also proceeding towards London, bu got stranded in Paris. 

On August 13, Gandhi issued a circular affirming his resolve to tender his unconditional service to the British Empire and sent it around to collect signatures. As a follow up of the said circular, Gandhi offered to raise an Indian Volunteer Corps for ambulance work. He also set up an Indian Volunteer Committee with himself in the chair and Sri V.V. Giri and Jivraj Mehta and others as members. But Sri Giri ultimately resigned from the committee as he thought it to be sinful to help to British at the hour of its crisis. 

While Gandhi, on the contrary, went a step further and attended classes to learn nursing and hence to nurse the wounded British soldiers. Gandhi, in many  other ways, tried to project his terrible loyalty to the British, during his brief stay in London and to comment on it his biographer Sri D. Keer Writes, “Gandhi could not bear the idea that the British master’s difficulty was India’s opportunity. A loyal subject should unselfishly cooperate with the master in the hour of need. Non-violently violent towards the Indian revolutionaries, he was violently loyal to the British Master”.(16)  Gandhi met Gokhale in London on September 18, 1914. 

                There arise a few questions from the above narrations. 

Firstly, why Sri Gokhale visited South Africa, met Gandhi there and requested him to return to India, in October 1912? 

Secondly, How could Gokhale predict that Gandhi was going to be the supreme leader of India’s freedom movement? 

And thirdly, why Gandhi went to London on his way back to India? 

It is well known that the Indian National Congress was founded by the British in 1885, with some eminent and pro-British loyal Indians like Feroze Shah Mehta, Surendra Nath Banerji, Dadabhai Naoraji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and others as its leaders. 

These people were generally known as moderates. Later on, another group, consisting of leaders  Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bepin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and others, known as radicals or extremists, came to prominence. Up to 1906, the moderates were the majority in the Congress by a good margin, but the radicals could command more support from the common people and the younger generation. 

And this development made the moderate leaders scary of losing their grip over the Congress. When the trend matured, British took Gokhale into confidence and disclosed to him their plan to bring Gandhi to India, make him the supreme leader of Indian freedom movement and establish his nonviolent Satyagraha as the sole doctrine of Indian freedom struggle. 

Naturally, Gokhale at once saw a ray of hope in the conspiracy and accepted the same to retain their hegemony in the Congress. Gokhale was confident that Gandhi would respond positively to this proposal as he regarded Gokhale as his political guru.

                So Gokhale went to England in 1912, to receive the final instructions from his British master and then arrived South Africa in October to communicate the same to Gandhi and asked him to return to India within a year. And that was the reason that enabled gokhale to predict, well in advance, that Gandhi was going to be the supreme leader of Indian freedom struggle.

                 Gandhi also, according to the instructions of his British master, went to England first to receive the final instructions or the letter of appointment from his employer, undoubtedly through the British stooge and his political guru Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who also sailed to England to meet Gandhi on the plea of recovering health. Thus proceeded the plan to sabotage India’s freedom movement according to the design of the British aggressors.

Shah and Khomeyni - Before and after

Iran during the Shah

Tipu Sultan: Villain or Hero? by the Bombay Malayalee Samajam ; The Histoire d l'Inde, French historian Alain Danielou

TIPU SULATAN: VILLIAN OR HERO??!! How hundreds of Hindu Namboodri Brahmins were converted to Islam under extreme duress: The Indian Hitler??!!

In 1989, the Indian National Television, Doordarshan, ran a serial on Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore from 1782 to 1799 A.D. With the lofty objective of national integration and communal harmony, the national TV presented Tipu Sultan as a hero of Hindu-Muslim amity and a staunch freedom fighter against the British. 

Based on a novel by Bhagwan Gidwani, the docudrama "The Sword of Tipu Sultan" provoked widespread outrage. Tipu Sultan: Villain or Hero? originally published by the Bombay Malayalee Samajam, is an anthology of essays that excoriates Doordarshan's depiction of Tipu Sultan and criticizes the peculiar "secularism" practised by the contemporary Indian State.

In the words of Ravi Varma, one of the contributors to the anthology: "It was Tipu Sultan and his fanatic Muslim army who converted thousands of Hindus to Islam all along the invasion route and occupied areas in North Kerala, Coorg, Mangalore, and other parts of Karnataka. 

Besides over 8,000 Hindu temples were desecrated and/or destroyed by his Muslim army. Even today, one can see large concentrations of Muslims and ruins of hundreds of destroyed temples in North Kerala as standing evidence of the Islamic brutalities committed by Tipu Sultan ... 

He was, all through, waging a cruel Islamic war against the Hindu population of Kerala, with a large Muslim army and ably assisted by the French with powerful field guns and European troops. ...

In spite of all this, historical documents and records are being suppressed, distorted, and falsified in order to project this fanatic Tipu Sultan of Mysore as a national hero like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Rana Pratap Singh, and Pazhassi Raja of Kerala. It is an insult to our national pride and also to the Hindus of Kerala by our 'secular' government and the motivated Muslim and Marxist historians of Jawaharlal Nehru, Aligarh, and Islamia universities.

So what do the original sources tell us about Tipu? The anthology includes excerpts from Tipu's letters as researched by the distinguished Kerala historian K. M. Panicker, which he reviewed in the Bhasha Poshini magazine, August 1923:

1. Letter dated March 22, 1788, to Abdul Kadir: "Over 12,000 Hindus were honoured with Islam. There were many Namboodri Brahmins among them. This achievement should be widely publicised among the Hindus. Then the local Hindus should be brought before you and converted to Islam. No Namboodri Brahmin should be spared. 

2. Letter dated December 14, 1788, to his army chief in Calicut: " I am sending two of my followers with Mir Hussain Ali. With their assistance, you should capture and kill all Hindus. Those below 20 may be kept in prison and 5000 from the rest should be killed from the tree-tops. These are my orders."

3. Letter dated January 18, 1790, to Syed Abdul Dulai: " ...almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. I consider this as Jehad."

The anthology also quotes from A Voyage to the East Indies by Fra Barthoelomeo, a renowned Portuguese traveller and historian, who was present in Tipu's war zone in early 1790:

"First a corps of 30,000 barbarians who butchered everybody on the way ... followed by the field gun unit under the French commander, M. Lally. Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged with their children tied to necks of mothers. 

That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christian and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated, and destroyed. ... 

Those Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately. These atrocities were told to me by the victims of Tipu Sultan who escaped from the clutches of his army and reached Varapphuza, which is the centre of Carmichael Christian Mission. I myself helped many victims to cross the Varapphuza river by boats. 

Moreover, evidence of Tipu's atrocities abounds in many contemporary church records in Mangalore, Calicut, and Varapphuza. In the preface, Sita Ram Goel observes that the contemporary Indian State, under the sway of a distorted concept of secularism, promotes pseudo-history. 

"Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modern West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity .... But secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come with foreign invaders and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries." 

This pseudo-secularism, foisted by Nehru, is "a magic formula for transmuting base metal into 24-carat gold.... How else do we explain Islam becoming a religion of tolerance? One has only to go the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam. 

How do we explain Tipu Sultan and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism?"

Goel's comment on Nehruvian pseudo-secularism brings to mind Vallabhbhai Patel's famous remark, just before the partition, that in India there's only one nationalist Muslim: Jawaharlal Nehru. 

And, three decades before the partition of India, Sri Aurobindo raised the question about the fundamental intolerance of Islam: "How is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate you?' How are you going to have unity with these people?" Sri Aurobindo cited the Koranic injunction (chapter IX, verse 5): "Slay the Idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent [i.e. convert to Islam] and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave them free. Lo! Allah is forgiving, merciful."

Does the Doordarshan serial's characterization of Tipu in "The Sword of Tipu Sultan" as a patron of Hindu temples have any historical basis at all? Yes, says C. Nandagopal Menon, the convenor of the Bombay Malayalee Samajam: "Tipu had immense faith in astrology. It was at the appeal of his Hindu astrologer and his own mother that Tipu spared two temples out of 12 within Sriangapatnam Fort. Moreover, by the end of 1790, Tipu was facing enemies from all sides. He was also defeated at the Travancore Defence Lines. 

It was only then, in order to appease the Hindus of Mysore, that he gave some land-grants to Hindu temples."

The Doordarshan serial seized on this historical event and fabricated most of the other events in its so-called "docudrama." 

As to Tipu's struggle against the British, it was to maintain his usurped kingdom, not as a nationalist fight for freedom. This is clear from the historical documents in which he invited the French to join him to defeat the British and then divide South India between himself and the French.

Dr. P.C.C. Raja, a direct descendent of the Zamorin of Calicut, writes in the anthology: "Tipu Sultan was one of the worst fanatics, and more inhuman than even the Nazis." The Bombay Malayalee Samajam and numerous viewers, especially in Kerala, were as outraged by the pseudo-history of this TV serial as the Jews would be at a depiction of Hitler as a multicultural hero!

Historical evidence has clearly established that Tipu Sultan was, to put it mildly, no multicultural hero. Indian State TV's promotion of the serial's pseudo-history, in the name of secularism no less, was a flagrant exercise of pseudo-secularism. It is precisely to repudiate this sort of wishful, self-deluding pseudo-history that Koenraad Elst, the Belgian scholar, recently published Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam (published by theVoice of India) . To be sure, other Western historians have written of this record before. 

In The Histoire d l'Inde, French historian Alain Danielou wrote: "From the time Muslims started arriving in 632 A.D., the history of India becomes a long monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is as usual in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilisations." 

In the words of the well-known American historian,Will Durant, "the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident lesson is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate balance can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplication from within."

The historical record of Islamic ideology practised in India is heavily tainted.(To cite two sources: The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India by Sita Ram Goel, published by the Voice of India; The Koran and the Kafir: All That An Infidel Needs to Know About the Koran)

The promotion of pseudo-history will be ultimately counterproductive. Fabricating history for the sake of a current cause, no matter how lofty its ideals, tempts the fates. To forget history will always be fateful; to forgive some of its frightful facts can be redemptive. Forgive -- but never forget -- history. A salient example of making sure that history is not forgotten is the contemporary German State's making it illegal to publish a reconstructed World War II history that attempts to negate or conceal the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles.

As a secular humanist, however, one should make a distinction between an ideology and its adhering victims, especially those born into it. And, nonetheless, one should regard a typical liberal Indian Muslim to be as good a human being as any other Indian. Genuine secularism in India will finally emerge from the Hindus forgiveness of Islamic history in India, not from the pseudo-secularists' self-deluding denials and glossy cover-ups tacked onto the documented facts of that history.

For anyone interested in the contemporary 'secularist' Indian Stateand the politics of history, this is a must-read book.

Thanks!!

In the 1400 years in the name of Islam every religion has been suppressed and the people of all other religions have been put to enormous physical and mental tortures and difficulties.

One example is that fearing forced conversions, raping, and circumcision by the islamic thugs of Tipu Sultan, thousands of hindu families left karnataka and escaped to tamilnadu. Those families are still living in Tamilnadu and will explain their difficulties suffered by their great grand parents in the hands of muslim thugs. Even though Tipu destroyed all other temples and humiliated the hindus, he was considered to be very tolerant, as he did not destroy the Vishnu temple in Srirangapatnam. He did not destroy this because he used to consult the temple priests on astrology to know his future. Cruel and dirty fellows. This is the kind of peace and tolerance in Islam.

tags: Bhagwan Gidwani, Bombay Malayalee Samajam, converted to Islam, Coorg, Hindu Namboodri Brahmins, Hindu-Muslim amity, Mangalore, North Kerala, The Sword of Tipu Sultan, Tipu Sultan

Making a secular hero out of Tipu Sultan

by CJ: Nithin Sridhar

The International Conference on the Life and Achievements of Tipu Sultan concluded on 18th January. The agenda of the conference seemed to be the secularisation of Tipu's image. But history abounds with instances of his communal atrocities.
CJ: Nithin Sridhar Fri, Jan 22, 2010 12:26:22 IST

http://www.merinews.com/article/making-a-secular-hero-out-of-tipu-sultan/15795059.shtml

THE THREE day International Conference on the Life and Achievements of Tipu Sultan concluded in Mysore on Monday, January 18. It was organized by Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Mysore.

Dr.B.Sheikh Ali, former Vice Chancellor of Mangalore and Goa Universities, speaking at the valedictory function said “Tipu Sultan practiced religious tolerance and was a revolutionary of his time.” Several people had the wrong notion that Tipu was not tolerant to other religions.

K.B.Ganapathy, Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Star of Mysore’, a local newspaper, while delivering his presidential address stated “There are misconceptions about Tipu Sultan among the masses that are under the impression that Sultan had initiated forcible religious conversion.”

He added “If Tipu had initiated forcible conversions; he could have had the entire Kodagu populace converted to Islam during his rule over the region.” Earlier, on January 16th, while inaugurating the conference B R Jayaramaraje Urs, Secretary, Department of Kannada and Culture had also described Tipu as a secular-minded ruler.

However, these remarks are far from the truth. The new generation of scholars points to the correspondence between Sringeri Shankaracharya Paramahamsa Parivrajakacharya and Tipu Sultan during 1791-92 and 1798, and argues that Tipu was an upholder of secularism and respected Hindu religious heads and places of worship.

However if one goes through the letters and edicts issued by Tipu Sultan to his principal military commanders, the governors of forts and provinces, their argument falls apart. The letter of January 19, 1790, sent to Budruz Zuman Khan by Tipu himself says: "Don't you know I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam? I am determined to march against that cursed 'Raman Nair' very soon (reference is to Rama Varma Raja of Travancore). Since I am overjoyed at the prospect of converting him and his subjects to Islam, I have happily abandoned the idea of going back to Srirangapatanam now."

Previously, a letter dated March 22, 1788, to Abdul Kadir reads: "Over 12,000 Hindus were 'honoured' with Islam. There were many Namboodiris (Brahmins) among them. This achievement should be widely publicised among the Hindus. There the local Hindus should be brought before you and then converted to Islam. No Namboodiri (Brahmin) should be spared.” A letter dated January 18, 1790, to Syed Abdul Dulai says: "With the grace of Prophet Muhammed and Allah, almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. Only a few are still not converted on the borders of Cochin State. I am determined to convert them also very soon. I consider this as Jehad to achieve that object."

The above clearly, shows the ‘secularism’ of Tipu Sultan. Further, these historians try to portray Tipu as a nationalist as he fought against the British. But the renowned historian, Dr. I.M. Muthanna, says in his ‘Tipu Sultan X-Rayed’ that Tipu was a traitor as he invited the French to invade India. The letter, dated April 21, 1797, written by Tipu and classified as No. 4 in the Persian File of Records reads: "Since I manifested my friendship in writing to you, my messengers have arrived with the following intelligence which will not be displeasing to you..I inform these events in order to prove to you that it is now the moment for you to invade India. With little trouble we shall drive the British out of India. Rely on my friendship.”

This shows the expansionist agenda of Tipu Sultan. According to the official report of Col. Fullarton of the British forces stationed in Mangalore (During the siege 1783), Tipu's soldiers daily displayed the cut off heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight from the fort for Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see. It is asserted that the Zamorin rather than witness such atrocities and to avoid further killing of innocent Brahmins, chose to abandon the Palghat Fort." Further he states, "It was not only against the Brahmins who were thus put in a state of terror of forcible circumcision and conversion; but against all sections of Hindus.

In August, 1788, a Raja of the Kshatriya family of Parappanad and also Trichera Thiruppad, a chieftain of Nilamboor, and many other Hindu nobles who had been carried away earlier to Coimbatore by Tipu Sultan, were forcibly circumcised and forced to eat beef.” The world-famous Portuguese traveler, Fr. Barthoelomeo, writes in his book ‘Voyage to East Indies’: “Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut; first mothers were hanged with their children tied to the necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated and destroyed. Christian and Hindu women were forced to marry Mohammedans and similarly their men (after converting Hindu men into Islam) were forced to marry Mohammedan women. Those Christians, who refused to be honoured with Islam, were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately.”

The propaganda that Tipu Sultan was tolerant and fair-minded towards the Hindus in Mysore is also without any foundation, as explained in ‘History of Mysore’ written by Lewis Rice. According to Lewis Rice, during the rule of Tipu Sultan, only two Hindu temples inside the Sreerangapatanam Fort had daily pujas conducted while the assets of all other temples were confiscated.

Historian Gopal Rao says - "Muslims were exempted from all taxes. Even those who were converted to Islamic faith were also allowed the same concessions," The ‘Mysore Gazetteer’ says that the ravaging army of Tipu Sultan destroyed more than 8000 temples in South India.

Despite this overwhelming evidence to the contrary the myth of Tipu Sultan’s tolerance is being propagated in academic circles. It is high time to voice objection against the whitewashing of history by vested interests. We, the people of India should gather the courage to call a spade a spade.

Afghanistan

The invasion of Persia was completed five years after the death of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, and all of the Persian territories came under Arab control, though pockets of tribal resistance continued for centuries in the Afghan territories. During the 7th century, Arab armies made their way into the region of Afghanistan from Khorasan with the new religion of Islam. At this point in time the area that is currently Afghanistan had a multi-religious population consisting of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jews, and others.

Part of the region was ruled by Turkic Buddhist/Hindu dynasty called the Kabul Shahis since the 5th century AD. The Arabs were unable to succeed in converting the population of that area because of constant revolts from the mountain tribes. In 870, Ya'qub-i Laith Saffari, a local Persian ruler from the Saffarid dynasty of Zaranj, conquered most of the cities of present-day Afghanistan in the name of Islam.

Arab armies carrying the banner of Islam came out of the west to defeat the Sasanians in 642 AD and then they marched with confidence to the east. On the western periphery of the Afghan area the princes of Herat and Seistan gave way to rule by Arab governors but in the east, in the mountains, cities submitted only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old beliefs once the armies passed. The harshness and avariciousness of Arab rule produced such unrest, however, that once the waning power of the Caliphate became apparent, native rulers once again established themselves independent. Among these the Saffarids of Seistan shone briefly in the Afghan area. The fanatic founder of this dynasty, the coppersmith’s apprentice Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, came forth from his capital at Zaranj in 870 AD and marched through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamyan, Balkh and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam.

India's handling of Pakistan--- by Manish Maheshwari

India's handling of Pakistan reeks of the debilitating impact of Gandhism, the myths of which have been fed to generations of Indians and seeps into almost everything we do. 

When the fuzzy thinking of Nehruised Indian diplomacy mixes with a famous Gandhian myth ("de di hamein azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal, sabarmati ke sant tu ne kar diya kamaal"), what results is a dangerous concoction which goes like this: "if Gandhi could defeat the world's most powerful empire using his philosophy, why can't we manage our free nation according to the same philosophy?".

Now, when this concoction seeps into the behaviour of the sovereign nation of india, we end up with hugely suboptimal results. Let's use this framework to analyse the causes underlying india's non-response to Pakistani terrorism. All we have been doing after every Paki terror act is whining to the whole world that "india has been a victim of terrorism for the last 30 years" in the hope that the US will declare pakistan a terrorist state. 

Have you ever wondered why we are never able to summon the national will required to give the Pakis as good as we get? Thats Because we're subconsciously following Gandhism, viz., submit to the oppression of the aggressor, without making the slightest attempt to defend yourself, in the hope that (a) the oppressor's conscience will be ultimately pricked and he'll go awaly and/or (b) the world will be outraged and will stop the oppressor. The bad news which nobody seems to have broken to Gandhi and millions of his blind followers is that the Jihadi oppressor has no conscience and that the world's sense of moral outrage is buried deep under it's sense of self-interest.

So, thanks to Gandhi's irrationality, while 1000s of Indians die each year at the hands of Paki terrorists, the remaining 1.1 billion Indians, instead of taking some concrete action, merely chant Gandhi-dhun, patiently waiting like turkeys before Christmas, for the world to feel outraged.