Negationists - Criminals Who Deny the Crimes of History

Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst wrote a book in 1992 titled Negationism in india: Concealing the record of islam. Its expanded edition came out in 2014 and was republished in 2016. This book was primarily written as a review of Sita Ram Goel's book Hindu Temples: What Happened To Them in 2 volumes. Goel compiled an authenticated bibliography containing detailed accounts of the destruction of over two thousand temples, gathered directly from a thousand years of Islamic sources available in Arabic, Urdu, and English. Needless to say, this is hardly an exhaustive list. Regarding this, Shri Goel writes that starting from al-Biladhuri, who wrote in Arabic in the second half of the ninth century, to Syed Mahmudul Hasan, who wrote in English in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, references have been gathered from eighty history books spanning these eleven hundred years.

The reference list mentions the destruction of large and small Hindu temples over 1100 years across 154 locations—from Khorasan in the west to Tripura in the east, and Transoxiana in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south—by 61 rulers, 63 military commanders, and 14 Sufis. In most cases, mosques, madrasas, and khanqahs were built by demolishing temples, often using the very materials of the destroyed temples. Each time, thanks were offered to Allah, who enabled these iconoclasts to serve religion through this holy act. Among these "heroes," some names appear repeatedly, such as Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghazni, Iltutmish, Alauddin Khalji, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, Ahmad Shah I, Mahmud Begada of Gujarat, Sikandar Lodi, and Aurangzeb.

It is not without reason that the world-renowned historian Will Durant wrote in his famous book History of civilization that the Islamic campaign in India is the bloodiest story in history. Elst wrote that, "A section of intellectuals and historians denies crimes committed against humanity, and such intellectuals are called Negationists." In Western countries, there are intellectuals who somehow or another deny, downplay, or even justify the mass genocide of Jews by Hitler. It is a different matter that such negationist intellectuals receive no support from the establishment nor find a place in mainstream ideology. Anti-Negationist Laws have even been passed in France and Germany.

Prominent Holocaust deniers include Eric Thomson, Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf, Siegfried Verbeke, Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Robert Faurisson, Noam Chomsky, and others. David Irving is not a Holocaust denier per se, but according to him, the Holocaust was carried out by Himmler, and Hitler had no knowledge of it. The Western New Left also joins the negationist group when they dismiss this crime as merely an "extreme phase of capitalism" and downplay the Western taboo topic regarding the number of Jews killed.

Elst notes in his book that negationism is not prevalent anywhere else with as much vocal intensity as in Bharat. The negationist tradition of denying the destructive role of Islam (Denial of Jihad) began around 1920. Following the 1931 Kanpur riots, the Indian National Congress attempted to change Islam's image by denying its negative role. Historians of the Aligarh School played a major role in this, most notably Mohammad Habib. History was rewritten by the negationist Mohammad Habib in an attempt to downplay the destructive role of Islam.

Four arguments were presented by Mohammad Habib in this regard:

1. The court poets exaggerated the events.
2. The motive behind the invasions was economic rather than religious.
3. The third was a racial reason, meaning the invaders were Turks who were inherently uncivilized and barbaric, and had failed to absorb the true essence of Islam.
4. The fourth reason was that Shariat was more egalitarian than Hindu law, which is why people from lower castes voluntarily converted to Islam.

Elst points out that there is a strange nexus between Marxists and radical Muslims in India. JNU is the Mecca of negationists, and key negationists include Bipan Chandra, K.N. Panikkar, S. Gopal, Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia, Irfan Habib, R.S. Sharma, Gyanendra Pandey, Sushil Srivastava, Asghar Ali Engineer, and the Muslim fundamentalist Syed Shahabuddin, among others. Their techniques for denying crimes against humanity are identical to those adopted by other negationists around the world—

1. Denounce scholars who present inconvenient evidence.
2. Conceal inconvenient evidence from the reader's view.
3. If it is impossible to ignore the evidence, deny its existence.
4. If the existence of evidence cannot be denied, distort its presentation.
5. Focus on a single part of the inconvenient evidence to prove it false, thereby rejecting the entire evidence.
6. If inconvenient evidence cannot be suppressed, raise irrelevant issues outside the subject. For instance, raising the harshness of Jews to deny the Holocaust, or raising the question of untouchability regarding Hindus.
7. If confronted with facts despite this, blame the victims themselves.
8. If people still reject your absurd conclusions, accuse them instead of distorting facts and engaging in the political abuse of history.

In this situation, offense is indeed the best defense. This is pure intellectual dishonesty, and in such a scenario, truth falls victim to political expediency.

 – Shivpujan Tripathi, the author is a deep scholar and researcher of Indian history and culture

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