Non Fiction Authors From India

"The Hindutva version of the theory became a mechanism for excluding some sections of Indian society, specifically Indian Muslims and Christians, by insisting that they are alien."

"His commitment to the Babri Masjid could be gauged from the fact that under his Chairmanship, ICHR was accused of functioning as a wing of the BMAC. Suraj Bhan admitted in Court that during Professor Habib's tenure, ICHR sanctioned him a grant for "exploration" at Ayodhya."

"Now, Irfan Habib’s seemingly strongest piece of evidence (not for the temple’s non-existence, of course, but at least for the untrustworthiness of some pro-temple spokesmen) turned out to be false... During the demolition on 6 December 1992, many Hindu artefacts had turned up, albeit in less than desirable circumstances from an archaeological viewpoint... Among the first findings during the demolition was the Vishnu Hari inscription, dating from the mid-11th century Rajput temple, which the Babri Masjid masons had placed between the outer and inner wall. Several Babri historians dismissed the inscription as fake, as of much later date, or as actually brought by the Kar Sevaks during the demolition itself. Prof. Irfan Habib, in a combine with Dr. Jahnawi Roy and Dr. Pushpa Prasad, dismissed this inscription as stolen from the Lucknow Museum and to be nothing other than the Treta ka Thakur inscription. The curator kept this inscription under lock, but after some trying, Kishore Kunal, author of another Ayodhya book (Ayodhya Revisited, 2016), could finally gain access to it and publish a photograph. What had been suspected all along, turns out to be true: Prof. Habib, who must have known both inscriptions, has told a blatant lie. Both inscriptions exist and are different. Here they have been neatly juxtaposed on p.104-5. Yet, none of the three scholars has “responded to the publication of the photograph of the Treta ka Thakur inscription, which falsifies the arguments they have been persistently advocating for over two decades.”"

"Irfan Habib.. has been a prominent member of the Stalinist gang which, starting from the days of Pandit Nehru's dominance has come to control all institutions... The gang catapulted him into the chairmanship of the ICHR, an office which members of the gang have occupied by turn for years on end. A second term in the same office was secured for him by Abdullah Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid at Delhi and the great friend of the erstwhile Prime Minister, V.P. Singh. It is while occupying this august office that Irfan Habib has launched personal attacks on historians and archaeologists who have been honest to their profession and come out openly against the antics of the Stalinist gang in the context of the Ayodhya controversy."

"It is true that my conclusions and views on certain issues are based on my knowledge existing prior to the submission of ASI’s report in court. I and Prof. Habib had given this statement that remains of old mosque or Eidgah had been found beneath the disputed site and not of any temple. If this propaganda that remains of temple were found at the disputed site, had not taken place, there would have been no occasion for me and Prof. Irfan Habib to give the above statement."

"Such an insinuation is in conformity with [Irfan] Habib's pattern of thinking and writing. He is a patently biased historian."

"Political ideologies focusing in particular on what they call ‘cultural nationalism’—and this is common to many societies apart from the Indian—blatantly exploit history."

"Fifteen years ago there was a disagreement between the Chairman Irfan Habib and M.G.S. Narayanan, who was associated with ICHR at that time and is now the chair. In an interview in December 2001, Professor Narayanan explained, Earlier than RJB/BM when I was member secretary at ICHR, and Irfan Habib was the chairman, we had our differences. I found that he was doing many things stealthily, unacademic unethical things, acting for this Babri Masjid committee supporting the Imam… Though he claims himself to be a Marxist he used to take instructions from the Imam. I was in the office. I said that he should not do this in his office… he stopped it there…. But he had other means. He was using the ICHR for organizing the All Indian Babri Masjid Committee."

"He always went to the extent of stifling the voices of those who disagreed with him.... The Babri issue would have been settled long ago if the Muslim intelligentsia had not fallen prey to the brain washing by the Leftist historians. A set of historians including Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra and S Gopal argued that there was no mention of the dismantling of the temple before 19th century and Ayodhya is Bhudhist-Jain centre. They were supported by historians Irfan Habib, RS Sharma, DN Jha, Suraj Ben and Akthar Ali."

"If it can be argued that the Harappan culture is in fact Vedic or that the Rigveda is earlier even than the Harappan, then the Vedas continue to be foundational to the subcontinental civilisation of South Asia and also attract the encomium of representing an advanced civilization, superior even to the pastoral-agrarian culture actually described in Vedic texts."

"“…the population during the Mughal period did not remain stable though the compound rate of growth, 0.14% per annum, was hardly spectacular and was much lower than the rate attained during the nineteenth century”"

"In one of his theses Marx said: 'Philosophers have so far interpreted the world. The point is to change it.' Marxism sees an innate unity between perception of the past and present practice. This unity implies continuous interaction: as time passes and history (human experience) lengthens, we draw greater lessons from it for the present; and as our present experience tells us more about the possibilities and limitations of social action, we turn to the past and obtain new comprehensions of it."

"It is inherent in the unity of past and present that Marxist historiography must continuously turn to fresh aspects to explore and re-explore and fresh questions to answer... This examination must cover everything from general principles to specific facts, because both are all the time being brought into question by others. We have to answer them not by denunciation – always a bad counsellor – but careful scrutiny and investigation."

"While medieval Islamic literature referred to Hindus as 'infidels' and denounced polytheism and image worship, there was no criticism of the caste system, the theory of pollution and oppression of untouchables that were rampant in medieval India. ... The attitude of the Muslims towards the caste system was by no means one of disapprobation..."

"Intolerance of the views of others and anti-intellectualism are on the rise. In this confrontation, universities and the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets. Education can easily be converted into indoctrination."

"Without undue modesty, we can say we know more about India’s past than Marx did."

"The pressure of new circumstances led initially to large-scale slave-trading and the emergence of slave labour during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The numbers of slaves in the Sultans' establishments were very high (50,000 under Alauddin Khilji, and 180,000 under Firuz Tughluq). Barani judges the level of prices by referring to slave prices, and the presence of slaves was almost all-pervasive."

"To begin with, the new conquerors and rulers…were of a different faith (Islam) from that of their predecessors… their principal achievements lay in a great systematization of agrarian exploitation and an immense concentration of the resources so obtained."

"Secularism is the curtailment of religious control over social institutions, not the absence of religion from society. It is when our primary identity is of equal citizens of the nation, not as belonging to a particular religion or caste. But the Indian definition of secularism is limited to the coexistence of many religions which is incomplete because some religions can still be marginalised as they are."

"Strangely, Indians travelling outside the subcontinent do not seem to have left itineraries of where they went or descriptions of what they saw. Distant places enter the narratives of storytelling only very occasionally."

"Some forms of Indian asceticism, although not all, have a socio-political dimension and these cannot be marginalized as merely the wish to negate life."

"Some have argued that as language is the medium of knowledge, that which comes in the form of language constitutes a text; since language is interpreted by the individual, the reading by the individual gives meaning to the text; therefore each time a text is read by a different individual it acquires a fresh meaning. Taken to its logical conclusion, this denies any generally accepted meaning of a text and is implicitly a denial of attempts at historical representation or claims to relative objectivity, since the meaning would change with each reading. However, the prevalent views are more subtle."

"Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as “McCarthyist” anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that “eminent historians” like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought."

"Intellectually, these Nehruvian historians and pressmen stand thoroughly discredited. But they have power positions in the media and in the education and research establishments, so they still manage to black out criticism and alternative opinions. A recent example of their power is the nomination of a successor to Leftist Muslim historian Irfan Habib as head of the Indian Council of Historical Research. The expected choice was Prof. G.C. Pande, former vice-chancellor of two universities. But the secularist intelligentsia launched a campaign against him : "RSS connections loom large". It is said that Irfan Habib contacted the Shahi Imam, who in turn had a chat with his friend V.P. Singh, prime minister. At any rate, G.C. Pande's name was scrapped from the list of candidates. This is also one more example of the unscrupled connivance between secularists and Muslim communalists."

"So great was the compulsion and enthusiasm of the historians to somehow discredit the archaeological evidence unearthed at Ayodhya that one of them, Prof. Irfan Habib, who is known amongst his fellow historians as a great scholar of medieval India, ended up making a great professional howler. He announced that he had dated the artifacts found in the Ayodhya excavations, by the carbon dating technique, and found that these artifacts were of rather recent origin. And it so happened that an officer of the Archaeological Survey reviewed the procedures of Prof. Irfan Habib and found that if Prof. Habib’s dating procedures were to be followed then one would come to the conclusion that the reign of Emperor Akbar is yet to begin: It shall begin in 2009 A.D.!"

"You have every right to protest. But you cannot shout me down... When you shut the door for debate and discussion, you are promoting culture of violence... Shri Irfan Habib tried on stage to disrupt inaugural address questioning Hon'ble Governor's right to quote Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, shouting that he should quote (Nathuram) Godse. He pushed Hon'ble Governor's ADC and security officer, who prevented his unseemly gesture... Shri Irfan Habib raised some points on CAA. But, when Hon'ble Governor addressed these points, Sh.Habib rose from seat to physically stop him... Hon'ble Governor said that he had responded to points raised by previous speakers,as a person duty bound to defend &protect the Constitution. But trying to disrupt speech from stage&audience due to intolerance towards different opinion is undemocratic."

""The evidence for such enslavement is there for all to see. So economically important was it that the success of military campaigns was often judged by the number of captives (burdas) obtained for enslavement. Qutbuddin Aibak's campaign in Gujarat in 1195 netted him 20,000 slaves, seven years later a campaign against Kalinjar yielded 50,000. In 1253 Balban obtained countless 'horses and slaves' from an expedition in Kalinjar. In the instructions that Alauddin Khalji is said to have issued to Malik Kafur before his campaigns in the Deccan it is assumed that 'horses and slaves' would form a large part of the booty. As the Sultanate began to be consolidated, the suppression of mawas or rebellious villages within its limits yielded a continuously rich harvest of slaves. Balban's successful expedition in the Doab made slaves cheap in the capital. How people of the village could be made slaves for nonpayment of revenue is described in the 14th century sources; and women so enslaved are mentioned in different contexts in two others"."

"The publication of Dr. Tasneem Ahmad’s translation is a notable contribution to the National celebration of the 450th Anniversary of Akbar’s birth. I feel confident that it would reinforce the interest in Akbar’s age widespread among those who have a care for the long process of the creation of a composite culture and a unity that together constitute what is India.... ‘What it [the Tarikh-i-Akbari] now needed was a full-scale English translation.’... ‘This has been provided by Dr. Tasneem Ahmad in a very competent manner, aiming at faithful accuracy and at a critical assessment of the information here received by comparing it with that offered by other sources.’"

"Irfan Habib, to whom the name Sarasvati is a kind of anathema... has his faith in an obscure nineteenth century opinion that the name Sarasvati was originally given to the Helmand river in Afghanistan and that was later transferred to the one near Kurukshetra in Haryana. This opinion which was ignored by people like C.F. Oldham and Aurel Stein seems to have found favour among some modern Sanskritists and government historians like Habib. The problem with the historical linguists and those who have faith in historical linguists/ comparative philology is that they apparently inhabit a world in which there is no need for independently testing a theory. One would , however, have thought that Habib as a historian would critically examine the source on which the idea that the Helmand was the original Sarasvati was based. In any case, the Sarasvati-phobia of this group of scholars is inexplicable. If they are upset by the density of distribution of Harappan sites in the region drained by the Sarasvati and get alarmed by the prospect of the Indus civilization being associated with ancient Brahmavarta, basically the land between the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati, that is their problem."

"The fundamental sanity in Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan."

"Another curious agenda is that of what is described as 'a critical mass' of Indians and a few others in America and Canada who refer to themselves as the Indo-American school (as against what they call the Indo-European school of scholars who work within the earlier Indian and European scholarship). The Indo-American school, according to one of its prominent spokesmen, consists of predominantly American-trained professional scientists researching on ancient India (presumably as a hobby), and using the resources of modern science and technology. Obviously well-endowed, they run their own journal from their main office in Canada. They too are committed to proving that the Vedic and the Harappan cultures are the same and that their antiquity goes back to the fifth millennium bc and therefore the Aryans are indigenous to India and took the Aryan mission westwards from India. Much of their writing contributes to the invention of yet more methodologies about a complex subject. What is striking about their publications is their evident unfamiliarity with the methods of analysing archaeological, linguistic and historical data. Consequently their writings read rather like nineteenth century tracts but peppered with references to using the computer so as to suggest scientific objectivity since they claim that it is value-free. Those that question their theories are dismissed as Marxists! That Indian scientists in America should take upon themselves the task of proving the Harappan to be Vedic, to having influenced other civilisations such as the Egyptian, and to proving that the Aryans proceeded on a civilising mission issuing out of India and going westwards, can only suggest that the 'Indo-American school' is in the midst of an identity crisis in its new environment. It is anxious to demarcate itself from other immigrants and to proclaim that the Indian identity is superior to the others who have also fallen into the 'great melting-pot'."

"All history is contemporary history; you can't get away from the politics around you."

"But it seems likely... that Sarasvati/Harakhvati was the name for the Helmand. Otherwise it is difficult to understand how Sarasvati could be put between Sindhu and Sarayu as the major intervening river in RV X, 64.9."

"The parallel can be seen for example in the recent resurgence of the worship of Rama, where the control of this religious articulation is politically motivated. The characteristics of the Semitic religions are introduced into this tradition. The teacher or prophet is replaced by the avatâra of Vishnu, Rama; the sacred book is the Râmâyana; the geographical identity or the beginnings of the cult and the historicity of Rama are being sought in the insistence that the precise birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya was marked by a temple, which was destroyed by Babur and replaced by the Babri Masjid; an ecclesiastical infrastructure is implied by inducting into the movement the support of Mahants and the Shankaracharyas or what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad calls a Dharma Sansad; the support of large numbers of people, far surpassing the figures of earlier followers of Rama-bhakti, was organized through the worship of bricks destined for the building of a temple on the location of the mosque. There has been an only too apparent exploitation of belief. The current Babri Masjid dispute is therefore symbolic of an articulation of a new form of Hinduism, militant, aggressive and crusading, which I have elsewhere referred to as Syndicated Hinduism."

"Communal interpretation is based on the notion that for the last thousand years Indian history has been dominated by a society which consists of a monolithic Muslim community and a monolithic Hindu community. And that these two communities have always been in a state of conflict. Therefore every historical event that takes place is to be explained by this conflict. This I think is absolutely primitive history. This is worse than colonial history. Because historical interpretation has now moved on to a position where we analyse an event in a multi-causal way."

"Understand: there is a universal consciousness that fills the entire cosmos and there is an individual consciousness that fills us. Man’s whole purpose is to establish a connection between these two. When this connection happens, man is said to be enlightened or in eternal bliss or in nithyananda. Nithyananda means eternal bliss."

"Everything is a projection of our mind! We can decide how we want to be. It is all in the mind. With the help of our mind, we have stopped the flow of bliss from within. That is the truth."

"Intuition is the energy of your being. When this pure energy starts flowing out from the unconscious level, it also heals you physically, mentally and emotionally. Apart from healing, it reduces stress and helps you to make decisions spontaneously."

"Even if you are thousand people in this hall, I am talking to you. When I say you, I mean Y O U. There is a thread running with each of you; so don’t ever apply what I am saying to others; you will simply miss the whole thing yourself."

"Our very worries become our comfort zone. We hide in them."

"Fear means being afraid of the future. When you are not ready to accept the future moments, it becomes fear."

"When you don’t love yourself, you become cynical(bitter) and negative towards life."

"A responsible leader is a person who is able to respond spontaneously to situations."

"Stop Seeking, you are already bliss!"

"If you are here, it means Existence wants you to be here in this form. You are not an accident, you are an incident. You are a conscious miracle of Existence. Don’t think this is positive thinking. This is the straightforward and simple Truth. If you trust this Truth, you will start experiencing life in its pinnacle(peak)."

"Whether it is energy, time, talent or pleasure, only when you are overflowing can you really share it."

"Whenever you express love you become a channel for healing energy."

"In the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita , Arjuna Vishaada Yoga, which is the Yoga of Arjuna’s grief, Arjuna talks throughout and Krishna remains silent. It is only when Arjuna finally surrenders saying, ‘I know nothing!’ that he is at last ready to receive Krishna’s message. Although Krishna and Arjuna were friends, though there might have been hundreds of other more relaxed situations, the Bhagavad Gita was not delivered to Arjuna anytime earlier. Why? Because until then, Arjuna was not ripe enough to receive the Gita! It is only when he utters the words, ‘I don’t know’ that he becomes qualified to know. The basic condition for spiritual progress is to know very clearly that you don’t know. This is the first step towards really knowing."

"The Ramayan also happens to be part of the Mahabharata, dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE, where it is called the Ramopakhyan. When the Pandavas bemoaned their thirteen years of forest exile, Rishi Markandeya retorted by telling them how Ram suffered for fourteen years and while the Pandavas deserved their punishment for gambling away their kingdom, Ram did not deserve his fate – he was simply obesing his father."

"The twentieth century saw Ram on celluloid with films like Bharat Milap (1942), Ram Rajya (1943 film) andSati Sulochana (1961). Ramanand Sagar's television serial Ramayan, with Arun Govil starring as Ram, made history in the late 1980s."