History is an eternal whore likely to sleep with people who have power and persuasiveness to seduce her with their art of guile and tweaking. Interestingly, while in bed with the powerful, she continues to suggestively nod at new aspirants who passionately desire to bed her with a promise of new gifts. Being anybody’s game history can be anything; it can be itself and at the same time opposite of itself depending on whose company it’s in. The big lie, historical and academic, is that history can be objective. Well, it can be objective in a narrow sense of the word; its objectivity is proportionate to human capacity to be objective that in any way is quite limited if historical evidence itself is anything to go by. History is an account of society, and society is essentially conflict-driven. Conflict, irrespective of its nature, has its partisans who are motivated by their specific worldviews conditioned by their interests. Competing views negate each other. Each view is seemingly validated by negating its negation. Thus history becomes a process of negation of negation with the purported objective of affirming something which never gets enduring affirmation.

The question of the so-called objective history assumes frighteningly complex dimensions in an ancient society such as South Asia where we have to deal with stunning diversity; a host of races, unbridgeable caste and class distinctions, ethnic plurality, diametrically opposed faiths, distinct lingo-cultural group identities, regional disparities and unequal economic development.

Let’s now, for example, very briefly look at a few turning points in the long history of India and Pakistan. Almost all notable historians agree that nomadic Aryans came to northern India in waves over a long period of time and slowly but steadily overwhelmed the urbanised Dravidians, the people of Indus valley civilization. This view of history is being increasingly challenged by Hindu extremists who try to turn the accepted historical account on its head by their noisy assertion that Aryans have been the original inhabitants of the subcontinent. Some segments of Aryans migrated to Central Asia and Europe from India. The reason obviously is ideological. If the extremists accept that Aryans came from foreign lands, their hatred of later days Aryans (Iranians and Central Asians) and Arabs professing different faith that invaded India and settled here loses its rationale. The new settlers’ riposte to Hindu extremists is: at some point of time you too were aliens on this land. In order to rebut this historically grounded assertion, the Hindu revivalists manufacture ideologically motivated flimsy myth of ‘indigenous Aryans’ which is at odds with the concrete historical evidence that has come to surface as a result of archaeological excavations at different sites of Indus Valley Civilization in Pakistan and India.

Arab (Muslim) invasion of Sindh (India) had a lasting impact across the spectrum. Muhammad Bin Qasim is hailed by the Muslim fundamentalists of the subcontinent as a saviour who invaded Sindh with the express purpose of spreading his faith which, history tells us, is a smoke screen. His invasion, in fact, reflected the expansionist urge of the Arab empire. Spread of Islam in Sindh and Punjab was the by-product of the invasion. Well before the actual event, the invasion of India was planned many a time but was dropped due to the paucity of funds required for such an expedition. The planners this time gave the Caliph a solemn pledge that the expenses incurred would be paid back along with a hefty booty. And they indeed honoured their pledge, Chach Nama informs us.

Article continues after ad

Invasions of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni against Punjab which changed the course of history are poignantly described by all and sundry. Muslims (not all) celebrate him as a pious warrior who demolished idol worshiping Hindu kingdoms that demonised him as a marauder with insatiable lust for wealth who desecrated temples which was thought to be sacrilegious attacks on Hindu faith. The Muslims and Hindus both conveniently ignore facts about Mahmud that don’t support their jaundiced view of the man. He wasn’t that pious as made out by narrow-mined devout Muslims. He invaded Multan and decimated Ismailia Muslim rulers. So the stirrings of faith couldn’t be the motivating force of the invasions. And devout Hindus forget that the destruction of temple of Somnath was prompted more by the lure of wealth hidden in the famed temple than religious zeal. And how do we explain the fact that he had in his armies Hindu soldiers and officers of all ranks. Mahmud could for the imperatives of the kingdom, which he himself personified, vandalise any place of worship regardless of its religious affiliation. He, like any other powerful ruler of his times, firmly believed in the territorial expansionism that could result in an enhancement of revenue generation for the royal treasury. The invasions by Muslim rulers from the North against the Muslim rulers/Sultans in India in the later days prove the point.