A first person narrative of the mass killing of Hindus of Mathura by Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1761 and preceding years. These narratives were written by Ghulam Hasan Samin and translated into English by William Irvine in the vol. 36 of Indian Antiquary in 1907. The details are gory. In Mathura, they did mass scale killing of Hindu ascetics. They killed cows as well and tied the severed head of the cows around the neck of killed ascetics in a way that dead cow's head touched the mouth of slain ascetics.

The myth created by Dilip Mandal around Fatima Sheikh is a classical example of what I term 'citation citadel' in the context of history writing. How does this work? I'll explain in this thread based on what I had written earlier on it. Leftist historians run a 'citation citadel' to give a scholarly appearance to their propaganda works. The objective of citation citadel is to establish their ideological perversion as historical truth.

Manusmriti, Hindu Society and the laws

After the burning of Manusmriti by Ambedkar, the text has become a famous scapegoat to which every sort of evil is attributed. But in reality, is the text really responsible for everything wrong? Let's begin with what these texts are. Manusmriti or other smriti-s such as Narada, Yagyavalkya etc. are essentially Dharmashastra-s. As the name itself suggests, they expound on the matters of Dharma in the strict sense. As Dharma practically touches every aspect of live, they do cover a large horizon.

Parsi intellectuals from the 19th century onwards have asserted a separate identity distinct from unwashed Indians. In their journal such as The Parsi, they used to mock Hinduism for its ritualism and backwardness while praising rational Zoroastrianism.

https://twitter.com/BhartiyaAmram/status/1864727636322218277

One of the most prominent Parsi intellectuals Dosabhai Framji Karaka in his writings used to refer to Indians as barbarians and claimed that Indians and Parsis can never be one. They regarded themselves as an 'adjacent white' community.

A. C. L. Carlleyle of Archaeological Survey of India had done a tour of the Ganga-Yamuna Antarvedi and Gorakhpur between 1874-76 and he had discovered some interesting facts regarding Jami Masjid of Sambhal in the UP. First, Hindus claimed a temple of Vishnu stood there. The inscription which is dated 1526 CE which says that a mosque was constructed on the orders of Babur is an act of forgery as per the Hindus of the city and some Muslims admitted the same.

A Muslim cleric Rahmatullah Kairanwi (from UP) was wanted for his role in 1857 mutiny. He fled to Saudi Arabia and established a madarsa in Kaaba primarily funded by Indian resident Muslims and the ones who went for Haj. Widow of a Bengali landlord gave the largest donation. Rahmatullah Kairanwi had gained his fame prior to the mutiny for debating against a Protestant Padre Pfander in Agra. While living in Kaaba, Kairanwi gained insane popularity for his writings in the Islamic world and was patronized by then Ottoman Caliph.

The great Naiyayika Jayantabhatta makes fun of this practice of plucking hair by Jaina monks in Nyayamanjari and says if plucking one's hair would help one attain moksha, every bald person will attain moksha. Another comic reference of this practice comes in Prabodhchandrodaya.

https://twitter.com/WokePandemic/status/1854782937755271506

Prabodhchandrodaya is a Sanskrit drama authored by Krishna Mishra in the 11th c. It's a satirical take on different religious and philosophical streams including Jainism. In the third act of the play, Karuna and Shanti stumble upon a Digambara ascetic.

Valmiki being an untouchable has interesting origin without any basis in the Shastra-s. The legend has its origin in Punjab as recorded by Denzil Ibbetson in 1883. In Punjab, there is a SC caste named Chuhra, quite numerous in numbers.

https://twitter.com/arjuna0104/status/1854909567030768024

Chuhra community had many guru-s and one of them was Bala Shah. As Denzil was informed, Bala Shah was identified with Bal Mik first and ultimately Balmiki. As per this legend, Bal Mik was a hunter of Karnal district.

As another disappointing Olympic games is on the verge of conclusion, the way forward is to abolish this altogether. Here are the 10 reasons why Olympic games must be scrapped for the sake of equity, gender justice and global peace. 1. The world needs cooperation which is a quintessential feminist idea but sports promote competition between individuals and nations resulting in creation of hierarchy. The winners are celebrated while the losers are admonished in the society.

This entire fiasco over a truly minor and insignificant issue related to quite straightforward rules reminds me of the accuracy of Arthur Koestler's observation on Indians' psyche. Koestler wrote: "Yet to this day a large number of Indians give that curious impression of never +

https://twitter.com/NayabSainiBJP/status/1821345808991584278

having quite grown up, of a rather moving, child-like quality, an arrested development not of the intellect but of the character, which seems somehow blurred, soft, undecided and vague, without proper contour and individuality. +

Ambedkar's credentials as a sociologist are quite weak even if we ignore the later phase of his life which was driven more by activism than a dispassionate study of the society. For instance, we can consider the paper which he wrote on the origin of caste in 1917.

https://twitter.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/1791464305637904683

In that paper, Ambedkar argued that castes were essentially classes in the beginning which later crystallized into caste. This is something which is also argued by Marxist sociologists and there is some element of truth in it considering the large number of professional castes.

Atheists who are born as Hindus but don't actively practice the religion are no different from millions of Christians who don't participate in any religious activity. They also celebrate their festivals in the same way as you do. Such an approach is vacuous for many reasons.

https://twitter.com/Schandillia/status/1781936377183285451

The cultural aspects of the religion such as festivals, temples and so on in which the atheists participate are generated by the religious factors and are inseparable from the religious aims. Without the generating engine of religion, culture isn't going to survive.

Ambedkar's view on Islam, its followers and their utility in right wing discourse

Ambedkar's view on the exclusivist tendency of Indian Muslims to create a separate community for themselves is something which is often quoted by Indian RW authors as a great counter to Liberals. In the term 'liberals' above, leftists are by default included here. My focus is not much on the content of Ambedkar's view on such topics but their utility from the narrative perspective. Ambedkar's views on Hinduism and its social system were vitriolic as we know.

The assumption that Hindutva can make India a casteless society as some of the prophets of new age Hindutva believe is unfounded in the reality. To understand the relationship between caste and politics, let's turn to Rajni Kothari. In his introduction to 'Caste in Indian Politics', Kothari describes the relationship between caste and politics in below words (p.7): "There never was a complete polarisation between the caste system and the political system, and that what is involved in the contemporary +

The supposed Iranian descent of Varahamihir is an interesting question which requires some discussion. From the works of Varahamihir, we know in his own words that he was a resident of Avanti and son of Adityadasa. He was a devotee of Surya deva as well.

https://twitter.com/LykosPagan/status/1731124007016051079

So how does Iranian descent come into the question? Utpal Bhatta in his commentary on Varahamihir's Brihatsamhita (BS) calls him a मगधद्विज. So, why does Utpal Bhatta call him a मगध-द्विज when he was from Avanti? A simpler explanation could be that his ancestors were from Magadh.

Humanities (or liberal arts) education in its current form is a civilizational destruction force. Humanities is critical and indispensable for the understanding of human activities but only after destroying its current structure and incentive. Let's look into what plagues it.

https://twitter.com/halleyji/status/1728559762789614078

Unlike STEM or other profesional courses, Humanities education is not a contributor to the jobs. It's purely an intellectual exercise whose application beyond the intellectual domain is rather limited. This doesn't mean that the ideas of humanities don't affect other domains.

The travel and residence of Chinese monk Xuanzang in India in the 7th century is well-known. In this thread, I'll be dealing with his correspondence with Indian friends after he went back to China based on the article of great P C Bagachi. There are three letters written in Sanskrit which we have for this discussion. From Indian side, his friends were प्रज्ञादेव and ज्ञानप्रभ. Both of them were Buddhist monks of considerable repute and these letters were preserved in the biography of Xuanzang written by Huili.

A timeline of the Diwali festival from first century CE to modern time. I'll be sharing excerpts from the excellent work by P K Gode in which he had summarized the references of Diwali festival covering two millennia. 1. 50-400 CE: The primary reference comes from Kamsutra of Vatsyayan.

The assumption that Dayabhaga was the dominant authority of Hindu law in Bengal
related to succession prior to British takeover of Bengal is simply untrue. Until Colebrooke translated the text to English in 1810, the reference of Dayabhaga in British works is rare.

https://twitter.com/Changeling_auf/status/1718117197955125627

The oldest reference of Dayabhaga in the British work is from 1786 when William Jones mentioned about it. Dayabhaga became the default authority on inheritance in the courts established by the British in the 19th century. Yet, lawyers and judges often disagreed.

Narada Smriti (I.46-49) lays down certain conditions in which a person couldn't be arrested. One of them was prohibiting arrest when one was about to perform yajna-s. But was this ever followed in reality? Surprisingly, R Nagaswamy found an inscription from 11th c. related to it. As per this inscription from 1010 AD of the Chola king Rajaraja I, people were exempted from arrest on three days: full moon, the day after full moon and Sankranti. While there was general prohibition, in some cases males could be arrested but not the females.

I recently come across an interesting paper on the tradition of Vayu worship in Gujarat. Vayu is obviously an integral part of Vedic Yajna-s and he also finds place in temples of different deities as guardian deity of North-west, but Gujarat has dedicated temples to Vayu. Texts such as Vishnu Dharmottara Purana, Manasollasa and others deal with the iconography of Vayu. He should be typically depicted with two or more hands; body should be black or dark-blue in colour; he carries chakra and flag; and his mouth is open.