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DR. N. M. KANSARA
SAMBODHI
incident in a supposedly impartial acdemic work, he has taken sides with the so-called secularists, and the Islamic fanatics. The author conveniently forgets that the Hindus only wished to reinstate these temples which had a sacred basis and were desacreated in the past by the Islamic fanatics. If Hindus had been fanatics themselves or militant like the modern Islamic terrorists operating in Kashmir from their Pakistani bases, they would have long back demolished so many tombs and mosks in India. This testifies to the innately tolerant nature of the Hindus and their Hindu Dharma, so much so that even today more Hindus visit the Khwaja Mohiuddin Chisti tomb in Ajmer than do Muslims in respect of the Sufi saint.
(3) On p. 5, under the caption 'Political Hinduism and Hindu jagarani, the author says: 'When India became a Muslim country", he conveniently ignores the fact that India never became wholly Islmic as a geographical and historical reality. The terin "Islamic country” denotes a wholly Muslim country, a veritable Darul-Islam, and it cannot apply to India which is an exclusively Hindu country, in spite of it being subjugated in parts politically by the Asian hords of looters like Changizkhan, Taimur Lang and others, an subsequently by the Britishers. And, the Britishers too never call it a British country, but rather refer to it as one of their political colonies. Such flaws detract the value of a book supposed to be an 'Encyclopaedia concise or otherwise.
(4) On the same page, the futhor say: "Hindu jagran, a great awakening of Hindu consciousness, was claimed by non-political, 'cultural organizations such as the Rāstriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS; founded in 1926) and the Viśva Hindū Parisd (VHP; founded in 1964).” There is a factual mistake committed by the author of the CEH here, testifying to his puerile and so-called 'research'. Firstly, the RSS was founded on the Daserā day in 1925, and not in 1926, and it did not start the Hindu revival, it was started rather to unite the Hindus so far as they were divided on the caste, community, language, religion, region and all such grounds, thus underinining their essential unity as the Hindu Rästra. This task was taken up more widely and more effectively by the promulgators and sponsers of the TV serials Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata, when RSS was inspite of its highly disciplined cadre and organization was being obstructed repeatedly by the rulers that be since 1925 upto about 1995 or so, and inspite of its roots in the RSS, the BJP was not taking roots firmly and very extensively in the Hindu
