Have been tweeting about absolute lack of scholarship on the right, the left fares no better. More pointer in support of our contention that nothing much to choose between the two. A short thread on my interactions with peelaraja and Pen int chair Salil Tripathi
Tipu Sultan’s atrocities are now too well documented to rebut, partly due to our research on the topic, led by @maidros78 . The way out to salvage Islamism - give a list of atrocities from the past to show all ancient rulers are bad, not only Muslim ones.
This is the lazy and intellectually dishonest road that the Peelaraja handle takes, without investing the time and effort to document his claims like we have done through months of research on Tipu.
Examples given by Peelaraja- 1) caste discrimination among Hindus 2) Goa inquisition by Xaviers 3) Ashoka’s Kalinga war 4) Maratha atrocities on Bengal. The obvious distinction - other than 2) none of the rest involves forced conversion which Tipu did.
Tipu Sultan and Xavier’s atrocities are instances of religious imperialism which the rest aren’t. Once I point that out, the Peelaraja handle gets abusive & ask rhetorical questions on Ashoka-don’t u think rapid spread of Buddhism post Kalinga war involve forced conversion?
What is shocking that the Peelaraja handle belongs to an academic of a top institute in India. I would think that academics ought to know that what he or I think is irrelevant, what counts is historical documentation, preferably primary source.
So, if one wants to show that like Tipu, Ashoka forced the populace he conquered to embrace Buddhism, he or she needs to substantiate with historical proof, preferably from primary source. But, why take such a laborious route when one can abuse his way out ?
1 of the abusive tweets by Peelaraja on me gets RT from @pen_int chair Salil Tripathi. Again, when 1 lacks the scholarship to rigorously establish his contentions, the rancor must find a way out. It’s however shocking that literary org names can be abused 4 such lowly interests
Now, let’s come to the recurring defense of Islamist atrocities - Hindus discriminated on the basis of caste. But where is the evidence that caste discrimination led to mass murders, mass abduction of women, of the scale of Tipu, ever ? Let alone mass conversion.
But then even attempting to establish such equivalence would require months or may even be years of research. The current left, namely Peelaraja or Salil Tripathi types, simply lack that ability. So the age old exit strategy - abuse and run.
God save the IIMs given such abysmal mediocrity of their faculty. I doubt if God can at all save @pen_int given such a chair, and who knows how many of his predecessors were like him.
And, if u feel so strongly about the Maratha atrocities on Bengal, the right thing would be to write a comprehensive documented article on the topic establishing each claim from historical sources.But that’s beyond the brains of Peelaraja and Salil Tripathi, even when aggregated
Tweeting abuses and RT ing them comes much easier for such intellectually challenged
