New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) The BJP on Monday attacked the Congress on 1,000 years of Somnath temple’s first destruction by Mahmud of Ghazni, saying this day is important to “remember and understand” how Jawaharlal Nehru and Leftist historians distorted history by portraying the Muslim invader as a “mere plunderer” and that he was not a “religious fanatic”.
BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said that priests of the temple and the king of that time had pleaded Mahmud of Ghazni to spare the ‘Shivling’ in lieu of lakhs of gold coins but he rejected the offer and broke it, saying he wanted to be known as a “murtibhanjak (iconoclast)” instead of a “despicable person” who engaged in trade with “idol worshippers”.
“A historian, who had accompanied Mahmud Ghazni, has mentioned this episode in his writings. This demolishes all the theories that the Leftist historians and others gave, distorting the history,” the BJP Rajya Sabha MP told a press conference at the party headquarters here.
They projected Mahmud Ghazani as the person who was not a religious fanatic and that he came to India with the sole objective of “making money”, he charged.
“In our history, it is taught that whatever Mahmud Ghazni did at Somnath temple was only for earning wealth and that he had nothing to do with his religious feelings,” he charged.
Trivedi alleged that the book, ‘The Discovery of India’, authored by the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is the source of all the distortions made in the history relating to Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasion and attack on the Somnath temple.
“Nehru stated in his book that Mahmud Ghazni was far more a warrior than a man of faith. Like many other conquerors, he used to exploit the name of religion for his conquest. India was to him just a place from where he could earn treasures and materials,” he said, reading from the first prime minister’s book.
“Nehru also wrote that Mahmud Ghazni was such a lover of art that after seeing the beauty and architecture of the buildings from Mathura to Delhi, he said overwhelmingly that they must have been built by ‘jinns’, not human beings,” the BJP leader said.
That is why it is important to remember the day today to understand how a very “disgusting joke” had been played with India’s “respect and identity”, Trivedi added.
The BJP leader said that the Somnath temple was reconstructed due to the efforts taken by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel despite Nehru’s “vehement opposition” to the move.
At the Somnath temple’s inaugural ceremony, India’s first president Rajendra Prasad had said that its reconstruction will be complete on the day when India will progress on the path of development and prosperity, he recalled.
“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, we are moving towards its completion with India becoming the fourth largest economy in the world, fourth biggest stock exchange, third biggest automobile manufacturer, second biggest mobile handset manufacturer and the number one country in the world in digital transactions,” he said.
Underlining that India is the fastest-growing economy in the world for the last two years, Trivedi hit out at the Congress and other opposition parties for attacking the Modi government over US President Donald Trump’s remarks after Operation Sindoor.
“Trump had also said that the conflict between India and Pakistan is 1,000 years old and that Kashmir is linked to that. It’s indeed a 1,000-year-old fight. Pakistan’s missiles are named after Ghazni, Babar and Ghori. But did they ask why?” he said.
“For those intellectual sons of Macaulay and Marx whose minds are completely filled with ‘M-factor’, the meaning of which I am confident you can figure out with your intelligence… So, the answer to that too is an ‘M-factor’, which means Modi,” Trivedi added in a tongue-in-cheek remark. PTI PK PK KSS KSS
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