April 10, 2005 - Bharatvani: One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar and Iran RPCV Prof. Richard M. Eaton.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: India: Peace Corps India: The Peace Corps in India: April 10, 2005 - Bharatvani: One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar and Iran RPCV Prof. Richard M. Eaton.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-242-91.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.242.91) on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 1:08 pm: Edit Post

One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar and Iran RPCV Prof. Richard M. Eaton.

One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar and Iran RPCV Prof. Richard M. Eaton.

One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar and Iran RPCV Prof. Richard M. Eaton.

Massive Evidence of Temple Destruction:

One Western author who has become very popular among India’s history-writers is the American scholar Prof. Richard M. Eaton. Unlike his colleagues, he has done some original research pertinent to the issue of Islamic iconoclasm, though not of the Ayodhya case specifically. A selective reading of his work, focusing on his explanations but keeping most of his facts out of view, is made to serve the negationist position regarding temple destruction in the name of Islam.

Yet, the numerically most important body of data presented by him concurs neatly with the classic (now dubbed “Hindutva”) account. In his oft-quoted paper “Temple desecration and Indo-Muslim states”, he gives a list of “eighty” cases of Islamic temple destruction. “Only eighty”, is how the secularist history-rewriters render it, but Eaton makes no claim that his list is exhaustive. Moreover, eighty isn’t always eighty.

Thus, in his list, we find mentioned as one instance: “1094: Benares, Ghurid army”.[1] Did the Ghurid army work one instance of temple destruction? Eaton provides his source and there we read that in Benares, the Ghurid royal army “destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations”.[2] This way, practically every one of the instances cited by Eaton must be read as actually ten, or a hundred, or as in this case, even a thousand temples destroyed. Even Eaton’s non-exhaustive list, presented as part of “the kind of responsible and constructive discussion that this controversial topic so badly needs”[3], yields the same thousands of temple destructions ascribed to the Islamic rulers in most relevant pre-1989 histories of Islam and in pro-Hindu publications.

That part of course is not highlighted in secularist papers exploiting Eaton’s work. Far more popular, however, is the spin which Eaton puts in this data: Islam cannot be blamed for the acts of Muslim idol-breakers, the blame lies elsewhere....

Apparently in good faith, but nonetheless in exactly the same manner as the worst Indian history falsifiers, Eaton discusses the record of Islam in India while keeping the entire history of Islam outside of India out of view. This history would show unambiguously that what happened in India was merely a continuation of Prophet Mohammad’s own conduct in Arabia and his successors’ conduct during the conquest of West and Central Asia.

That the Arabian precedent is ignored is all the more remarkable when you consider that the stated immediate objective for Eaton’s paper was Sita Ram Goel’s endeavor to “document a pattern of wholesale temple destruction by Muslims in the pre-British period”[4]. Goel’s elaborately argued thesis, telling left unmentioned here by Eaton, is precisely that Islamic iconoclasm in India follows a pattern set in the preceding centuries in West Asia and accepted as normative in Islamic doctrine. Eaton’s glaring omission of this all-important precedent makes his alternative explanation of Islamic iconoclasm in India suspect beforehand.




Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.

Story Source: Bharatvani

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - India; COS - Iran

PCOL10853
48

.


Add a Message


This is a public posting area. Enter your username and password if you have an account. Otherwise, enter your full name as your username and leave the password blank. Your e-mail address is optional.
Username:  
Password:
E-mail: