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Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
The nature of medieval Hindu-Muslim relations is an issue of great relevance in contemporary India. Prior to the 200 years of colonial subjection to the British that ended in 1947, large portions of the Indian subcontinent were under Muslim political control. An upsurge of Hindu nationalism over the past decade has led to demands that the state rectify past wrongs on behalf of India's majority religion.' In the nationalist view, Hindu beliefs were continually suppressed and its institutions repeatedly violated during the many centuries of Muslim rule from 1200 C.E. onward. The focal point of nationalist sentiment is the most visible symbol of Hinduism, its temples. As many as 60,000 Hindu temples are said to have been torn down by Muslim rulers, and mosques built on 3,000 of those temples' foundations. The most famous of these alleged former temple sites is at Ayodhya in North India, long considered the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. The movement to liberate this sacred spot, supposedly defiled in the sixteenth century when the Babri Masjid mosque was erected on the ruins of a Rama temple, was one of the hottest political issues of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tensions reached a peak in December 1992, when Hindu militants succeeded in demolishing the mosque.
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References
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1993 Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Mexico City and the 1994 national meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Boston. I am deeply indebted to Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, my fellow panelists on both occasions, whose ideas have so heavily influenced my own. Their editorial assistance is also gratefully acknowledged, as is the help of Susan M. Deeds.
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63 The Kaluvacheru grant of the Reddi queen Anitalli, partially published in Somasekhara Sarma, Forgotten Chapter, 111–2. This Sanskrit inscription identifies the Lord of Elephants as the king of Utkala (a sub-region of Orissa), the Lord of Horses as the ruler of the territories in the west, and the Lord of Men as Kakatiya Prataparudra, the Andhra king. In this instance, the Lord of Horses in the west must refer to the Bahmani Sultanate, which controlled the territories to the immediate west of northern Andhra during the early fifteenth century.
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76 Author's translation from Telugu, II. 157–162 of El 6.22.
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86 Based on translation of Ibid., 24. P. V. Parabrahma.
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88 However, other types of sources do engage in an anti-Muslim polemic. Notable among these are the Rayavacakamu (Wagoner, Tidings of the King) and the village, family, and temple histories (kaifiyat) collected by Colin Mackenzie around 1800, many of which mention anarchy and destruction in the decades after the battle of 1565 (Sastri, Nilakanta and Venkataramanayya, , Further Sources, 2:245–50).Google Scholar
89 In contrast to the 862 records originating in the eight decades between 1490 and 1570 C.E., the eighty-year span from 1570 to 1650 C.E. yields only 318 inscriptions—a mere third of the earlier total.
90 At present, lists of sites where Hindu temples were destroyed and mosques or tombs (dargah) built in their place are being circulated by nationalist scholars. The data upon which these lists are based are not always provided, making the evidence suspect. Muslim chronicles and Perso-Arabic inscriptions are sometimes utilized, but neither of these types of sources is totally reliable. Sita Ram God is one scholar compiling such lists, see his “Let the Mute Witnesses Speak,” in Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, A Preliminary Survey, Shourie, Arun et al., ed. (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1990), 88–181;Google Scholar and Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, Pt. 2 The Islamic Evidence (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1991). Thanks are due to Richard M. Eaton for acquainting me with these works.Google Scholar
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94 SII 16.296.
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