Dr. Durrani Profile picture
Aug 29, 2021 14 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Visibly frustrated on failure of his foreign policy in AFG, Modi alluded to Mahmood Ghaznavi & to the Taliban in his speech.

Did you know that the British exploited religious feelings of Hindus of India, particularly on Somnath temple, against the Afghans 180 yrs ago?

Thread
British, Ranjit Singh & Shah Shuja all had their own interests in invading AFG in the 1st Anglo-Afghan war (1839-42).

A rarely known story of that war is that the doors of a revered tomb in AFG were removed & brought to India under the orders of the then Gov. Gen. Ellenborough. Image
That tomb was of Mahmood of Ghazna, and it's doors were believed be of the revered temple of Somnath in India, and that there were brought 800 yrs ago to Ghazni Afghanistan, and later were installed at the tomb of Mahmood Ghaznavi. Image
Gen. William Nott took over Ghazni on #OTD in 1842, and ruined it further in retribution for what had happened to Gen. Elphinstone's army. Ellenborough issued orders to Gen. William Nott to remove the wooden doors from the tomb and carry it to India. Image
Ellenborough believed that Muslims were irreconcilable foes but Hindus were friends of the British against these foes. He wanted to win further favor with Hindus by restoring to them the doors of their revered temple avenging the 800 yrs of insult.

Excerpt from his proclamation. Image
Gen. Nott's army then joined Gen. Pollock's army in Kabul in Sep 1842 and committed gross brutalities in the name of retribution. They killed many Afghans, plundered everything they could hold of and then sacked much of Kabul city including the historic covered Bazaar of Kabul. Image
Acc. to the British record, the fire that they started to burn down Kabul beginning with the blowing up of two mosques, continued to burn for weeks, & when they withdrew their army in Oct 1842, the fire was still raging & they could see it from the mountain pass as they withdrew.
They carried the "Trophy of Affghanistan" i.e., the wooden doors back to India, and a huge party including Governor general and few Raja, Maharajas received the doors at the bridge on the river Sutlej in Punjab. ImageImage
In a sheer embarrassment for them all, the doors turned out to be not those of the Somnath temple but were of a recent date made in Ghazni or something but weren't the doors of the 11th century. These doors since then are in the Agra fort and were never carried any further.
A comic sketch showing Ellenborough as a dancing girl in a Hindu temple holding a Def with inscription

"THE INSULT OF 8 HUNDRED YEARS IS AVENGED".

By Meadows, Joseph Kenny, 1843.

Source: wellcomecollection.org/works/e2zxysk3… Image
The whole thing abt the doors turned out to be a lie neither there exist any record that indicates that the temple doors were taken to AFG but this lie did play a huge part in the desecration of the tomb of Mahmood, in blowing up of mosques & in other brutalities in Kabul.
It is interesting in itself that the topic of Somnath temple was brought up in the 1st Anglo-Afghan war in 1842 for local politics of India, & it has been again highlighted by Modi at the conclusion of the Afghan war by US & its allies obviously for similar political objectives.
Photo Sources:
1. Ghazni Fortress
collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc…
2. Trophy of Affganistan
collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc…
3. The Sacking of the Great Bazar of Caubul.
collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?q=s…
4. Tomb of Mahmood Ghaznavi commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomb…
5. Tomb doors at Agra kevinstandagephotography.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/agr…
The great bazaar on fire, Kabul, 1842
Ink wash over pencil sketch signed by George Alfred Croly (1822-1845).

Source: collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc… Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Dr. Durrani

Dr. Durrani Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @NafeesRehmanDr

Apr 21
Imran Khan seems to not know that Qazi Faiz Isa brazenly lies about his father and grandfather, and exaggerate their role to project them as some sort of great, principled people. They were not!

There's well-documented evidence which prove Qazi Isa was corrupt, and offered his services to the military dictator.

For now, I am sharing one such evidence, penned by no one else but Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself. Qazi Isa collected donations for Anjuman-i-Islamia Baluchistan to establish a school but then he would not hand over the donations to the Anjuman. It was only when Jinnah himself intervened in the matter, and asked Qazi Isa to hand over the amount. He reluctantly did that but claimed expenses and lesser amount in donations than what the Anjuman demanded.Image
Image
In this scripted and choreographed to-the-minute interview, Qazi Faez Isa claims that his father and Jinnah not only had the relation of a leader-follower, Pir-o-Murshid, but that there was more to their relationship, and they were very close because, acc. to Faez Isa, Jinnah wrote his father TWO letters in which he addressed his father as "My dear Isa".

I have seen many who try to win favor with the state by claiming to have some very unique and special relationship with the father of the nation. This seems such a case. See the next tweet who else Jinnah used to address as "My dear".
There are more people whom Jinnah addressed as "My dear" but the following instances should be enough to say that the use of "My dear" was not something unique to Qazi Muhammad Isa. I am also not saying that this isn't something one should not be proud of but if you watch this interview, and read other writings of Faez Isa, you will definitely notice a pattern wherein he throws in many such anecdotes involving Jinnah and his father to project his image beyond of what Qazi Muhammad Isa was in reality.Image
Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Oct 26, 2022
Exactly 68 yrs ago in 1954, Governor General Ghulam Muhamad, with the help of Army, dissolved the 1st Constituent Assembly of Pak & reconstituted the cabinet forcing three* new ministers in including Gen. Ayub & Gen. Iskandar Mirza as Defense & Interior Ministers respectively.🧵
Pakistan, at that time, was politically very volatile and unstable. East-Pakistan was already put under martial law removing the elected Chief Minister Fazal Haq few months ago where governor Major General Iskandar Mirza ruled with an iron fist.
There was a dirty power struggle going on between the Governor General and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. I think a few bits on this lesser known struggle won't be out of place in this thread.

The parliament wanted to restrain the powers of the Office of Governor General.
Read 16 tweets
Oct 24, 2022
Did you know?

One of the first high-profile *murder* of a Pakistani on foreign soil was of Shahnawaz Bhutto, brother of Benazir Bhutto, who was found dead in his apartment in Paris in 1985.

Bhutto's family suspected Gen. Zia-Ul-Haq and Shah Nawaz's Afghan wife for his death.🧵 Image
When Zia's martial law regime executed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the then PM of Pakistan, in a sham trial, his both sons went to Kabul and launched a guerilla war under their militant org Al-Zulfikar. Shah Nawaz was leading the training of Al-Zulfikar militants in Afghanistan.
Pakistan was hosting, training and arming Mujahideen and actively supported them against Kabul and AFG was doing the same with the separatists & ethnic militants and activists who ran terrorist and sabotage ops in Pak with the help of KGB and KHAD.
Read 7 tweets
May 22, 2022
Abt 25 yrs ago, the Taliban morality police was the major reason that we left Kabul to the disappointment of our students in the computer learning institute that we had set up ourselves during the volatile early months of the Taliban rule.

Here’s how it started & ended for us.🧵
Keep in mind that it was the time when the civil war had entered its final phase & in favor of the Taliban and Kabul had fell them. Economic & security situations was still very bad. But we (an Afghan, a Pakistani & I) had decided to open a *computer learning institute in Kabul.
We had a couple of small basic institutes in Khyber, our Afghan friends wanted us to replicate the same in Kabul. So we bought a total of 4 computers (386 & 486 ) from Peshawar two with monochrome monitors, several 3½” & 5¼” disks incl. a set of 20+ disks with Windows 95 on it.
Read 43 tweets
May 22, 2022
Historic photographs of the 'wrestling' match where Zbysco remained in a motionless kneeling position for 2 hours and three quarters & didn't wrestle Gama disappointing the large crowds who had come to see a wrestling match. Their jeers & boos failed to make him wrestle Gama.
Gama had challenged the famous wrestlers including Zybsco when he toured London in 1910. Newspapers ran stories of the 'silence' of Zybsco and accepting his challenge but he did there was much excitement and interest in the giants facing each other in the ring.
However the match turned out to be a disappointment for the people and for the crowds. Zbysco, right from the first minute, remained in the kneeling position for the whole run of the match before the match was stopped due to darkness and rematch was fixed on the next Saturday.
Read 10 tweets
Apr 23, 2022
False-flag ops of a different kind!

'...another 'GEO' official disclosed to an officer of a European diplomatic mission that they [GEO TV] had taken themselves off the air in order to blame the political party, and garner support for the station.'

The confession in para 11👇 Image
When the Group Editor of Geo was queried by the US embassy staff he said that they know that many of their reporters have political agendas, are paid by ISI, military intelligence, Jamaat-e-Islami, or other interests but that they prefer not to fire or reprimand these reporters. Image
'"GEO" sees its behavior [reporting rumors, innuendo, and unsubstantiated allegations] as win-win with sensationalism and hate speech generating ratings and any attempt by authorities to rein it in allowing them to exploit their circumstance by claiming censorship.' Image
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(