Somanatha, Myth of the bloodthirsty Muslim Conquerors

Somanatha, an ancient South-Asian city whose temple was allegedly raided by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026, became a rallying point for the British and later, Hindu Nationalists. The British ignored Hindu sources from the time period which made no mention of Ghazni’s raid. Rather, they relied solely on Muslim chronicles trying to legitimate their ruler’s power and legitimacy. In fact, they deliberately mistranslated these chronicles which wrote about various raids simply as war against a neighbouring kingdom–whether Muslim, Hindu, or Jain–and turned these commonplace raids into jihads, or holy wars against infidels. In reality, South Asia around this medieval time period was very diverse, fractured amongst many kingdoms. There was no Hindu/Muslim animosity. Rather Hindus and Muslims lived and worked together quite peacefully. The temple at Somanath around the time of Ghazni’s raid even had a dedication inscription by a local Muslim merchant in both Arabic and Sanskrit. To find the cause of the raid one must look at politics instead of religion.

These kingdoms were in constant flux. Basically, every kingdom raided every kingdom regardless of the local rulers’ religious affiliation. In fact local sources mention raids on Somanatha by other rulers but nothing of the raid by Ghazni. The temple was never really destroyed in any of these raids, rather over time it lost its popularity as a pilgramage destination and was abandoned. So why did the British propagate the idea of a Hindu temple destroyed by Muslim Jihadists? Well, it fit into their rewriting of South Asian history in which foreign Muslims were evil, violent conquerors of a Hindu land which needed the benevolent British to save them from the yoke of the Muslim ruler. It both supported the British claim to authority in South Asia as well as splintering the population into religious factions who could be played off against one another. Not to mention that such views fit into British prejudice against Muslims and helped to bring a disparate group of different somewhat pagan religious beliefs under one label, Hinduism. Over the course of 100 years of British colonialism South Asians had no choice but to fall under the label Hindu and Muslim, creating animosity as each group fought for rights under the British and ensuring a religious quality to rising nationalism. Ultimate results of these policies are the partition of India/Pakistan and the rise of militant Hindu Nationalism. Thanks Britain!

Source: Thapar, Romila. “Somanatha: The Many Voices of History.” London; New York, Verso 2005.