Thread by @MumukshuSavitri

1/n
For decades, Leftist & Islamophile historians have claimed that just as Muslim invaders destroyed temples & institutions, so did Hindu kings persecute Buddhists & Jain places of worship. This claim has been propounded by them to justify the iconoclasm of Islam

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By suggesting religion had nothing to do with destruction by Islamic invaders & implying intolerance finds support in Hindu practice, they achieve the dual goal of dividing Hindus, Buddhists & Jains as well as glossing over the inherent religious roots of Islamic iconoclasm.

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Sita Ram Goel has elaborated how Marxist professors explain away Islamic iconoclasm in terms of what they describe as Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship. They have never been able to cite more than half-a-dozen cases of doubtful veracity.

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A very late & unreliable Buddhist book (Divyavadana - 2nd c, CE) from Sri Lanka accuses Brahmin king Pushyamitra Sunga, (2nd c. BCE) of offering prizes for heads of Buddhist monks. This single reference has sufficed for presenting Pushyamitra as a Brahmanical fanatic.

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In fact the famous Buddhist stupas and monasteries at Bharhut and Sanchi were built during the reign of Pushyamitra. Later, the Hindu Gupta kings & queens built, endowed & patronized many Buddhist monasteries at Bodh Gaya, Nalanda and Sarnath & many others.

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Pandyan king of Madura, Arikesari Maravarman (7th c. CE) is reported to have persecuted Jains. But the source also says that before converting to Shaivism, he was a devout Jain & persecuted Saivites. This part of the story is never mentioned by the Islamophile historians.

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According to the Rajatarirgini of Kalhana, King Harsha of Kashmir plundered Hindu and Buddhist temples in his lust for the gold and silver which went into the making of idols. This is played up by Hinduphobic historians with great fanfare.

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But they never mention Kalhan’s comment that by plundering as he did, Harsha acted like a Turushka (Muslim) and was prompted by the Turushkas in his court. This placing of Hindu kings on par with Muslim invaders in the context of iconoclasm is dangerous.

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Firstly, it lacks all sense of proportion when it tries to explain away the destruction of 100s of 1000s of Brahmanical, Buddhist & Jain temples by Islamic invaders by comparing it to less than a dozen Buddhist and Jain shrines by Hindu kings.

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Secondly, there is absolutely no evidence that Hindus ever had a theology of iconoclasm as part of Hinduism. Isolated acts by a few fanatics whom no Hindu historian or pandit has ever admired, cannot explain away a full-fledged theology which inspired Islamic iconoclasm.

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Hinduphobic historians purposely never mention the huge list of destroyed Buddhist and Jain establishments in Transoxiana, Sinkiang, Seistan and India which on the eve of the Islamic invasion included present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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Every historian and archaeologist of that period knows that the vast Buddhist and Jain establishments at Bukhara, Samarkand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Takshasila, Mirpur-Khas, Nagar-Parkar, Sringar, Sialkot, Agroha,

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Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramsila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantpuri, Bharhut, Paharpur, Jagaddala, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amaravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Bharuch Valabhi, Palitana, Girnar, Patan, Jalor,

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Chandrawati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Bairat, Gwalior and Mandu were destroyed by the swordsmen of Islam. Smaller establishments met the same fate, adding up to 100s. It is high time such distortion of Hindu history be countered by factual evidence.

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The above information was taken from Chapter 3 of “Hindu Temples, What happened to them?” Volumes 1 & 2 by Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi, Ram Swarup & Sita Ram Goel.