Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them
| Author |
Sita Ram Goel Arun Shourie Harsh Narain Jay Dubashi Ram Swarup |
|---|---|
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Hinduism |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
|
Publication date
|
1991 |
| ISBN | (Volume 1) (Volume 2) |
| OCLC | 41002522 |
| LC Class | DS422.C64 H562 1998 |
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them is a two-volume book by Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi and Ram Swarup. The first volume was published in the Spring of 1990.
The first volume includes a list of 2,000 mosques that were built on Hindu temples, based primarily on the books of Muslim historians of the period or inscriptions found on mosques. The second volume excerpts from medieval histories and chronicles and from inscriptions concerning the destruction of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist temples. The authors claim that the material presented in the book as "the tip of an iceberg".
The book contains chapters about the Ayodhya debate. The appendix of the first volume contains a list of temple-destructions and atrocities that the authors claim took place in Bangladesh in 1989. The book also criticizes Marxist historians, and one of the appendices of the second volume includes a questionnaire for "Marxist professors", one of which the authors sent to well-known Indian historian Romila Thapar.
In August 1990, while releasing the book "Hindu Temples – What Happened To Them", Bharatiya Janta Party leader L. K. Advani chided Goel for using "strong language". There were proposals in November 1990 in Uttar Pradesh to ban the book.
Cynthia Talbot in 1995 claimed that Goel's list of destroyed temples is "greatly inflated", but also called for a systematic and unbiased study of the subject, without which it is very difficult to gauge the extent of damage wrought on Indian temples. Cynthia Talbot noted that in the decades after 1565, temple desecration were on the rise in Andhra Pradesh, which is in accord with the dates of temple destructed provided by Goel's list (in Goel's chapter "Let the Mute Witness speak"). Reflecting on Goel's list, Talbot states: "Five date from the fourteenth century (phase one), six come from phase two, and nineteen date from 1565 to 1650 CE (phase three). The remaining thirty or so cases stem from the century after 1650, with a notable bunching of incidents in the late 1600s, when the Mughal empire was absorbing the former Qutb Shahi kingdom of Golconda."
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