The Mantra of History versus the Taliban’s Roar
One of the most condemnable and shameful acts in human
history has been unfolding relentlessly in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province. The
tallest statues of the Buddha in the world are being destroyed with cannon fire
by Islamic fundamentalists. The entire world looks on in stunned silence as the
final remnants of a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old Buddhist civilization,
hewn into mountain rock, are reduced to dust by the barbarity of Taliban
devils. Rage, grief, and revulsion twist the hearts of civilized people
everywhere. Against this conspiracy to erase human history, culture, and
civilization, the voices of humanity cry out in protest. And yet, the great
powers of the world, disguised as mere spectators, continue to observe,
unwilling to intervene with moral or material strength.
America and European museums want to “buy” the statues. India too offered to preserve them. Yet the Taliban remain unmoved in their brutal resolve. Their goal: to eradicate from Afghanistan every trace of religion other than Islam. But Buddhism had flourished in Afghanistan centuries before Islam was even born. For natural historical reasons, the land was once home to Buddhists; only after Islamization were they forced to convert or flee. Islam, being the youngest of the world’s major religions, is by nature built upon the ancestors of others—idol-worshippers of Arabia, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians who were conquered or converted. In that sense, no human being of any faith is ever “pure” in religion: at some point their forebears belonged to another creed. Just as no nation remains forever under one ruler, so too no community or people is forever confined to one cultural or religious domain. With time, identities shift, nations change, civilizations blend.
This very changeability is the catalyst of human progress. Ancient cultures have never perished simply because they transformed; history has preserved them. No one today studies at Nalanda, no one lives on the ruins of Harappa, and the Taj Mahal has no private owner—but they are living documents of history. These treasures do not belong only to their current geographies; they are the collective wealth of humankind. To destroy them is to wound all of humanity. Petty, narrow-minded men fail to grasp that no power on earth can erase truth or rewrite history at will. If every copy of the Gita or the Bible were burned, would their essence vanish from human hearts? The responsibility of history lives within the human spirit. It cannot be extinguished.
Muhammad never wrote the Quran; Jesus never penned the Bible. After Christ’s crucifixion, fools thought his words would vanish forever. They did not. Jesus lives on in the souls of millions, untouchable by any Taliban sword.
But what of us—the so-called civilized people—who silently watch these atrocities? Who will judge our moral cowardice? Are America, Europe, Russia, or China any less complicit? For five hundred years they have ravaged the civilizations of the Third World. Who caused Bengal’s famine of 1943? Who destroyed the muslin industry? Who spreads Western culture across the globe to suffocate the East? Who wiped out the Red Indians of America and built a nation on their graves? These very powers now wish to buy Bamiyan’s Buddhas with dollars and lock them in museums. British writer Jeremy Seabrook once said: the museums of Europe and America are nothing but warehouses of plunder looted from colonized nations. Was not India’s Peacock Throne stolen by British “Talibans”?
Communists too are not innocent. When they seized power in Russia, their first act was to rename the ancient city of St. Petersburg to Leningrad. Today’s mania in India—Madras to Chennai, Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata—is but a refined Talibanism, an erasure of historical memory under the guise of “indigenization.” Calcutta itself was birthed by the British; to deny that in the name of nativism is to falsify its own origins.
The same brutality applies to the Babri Masjid dispute. Those who demolished it are indeed destroyers of history—but those who defend it while ignoring Babur’s destruction of the Ram temple are hypocrites. For centuries, Nehruvian and Marxist historians have whitewashed Muslim invaders while pushing Hindu dynasties into the shadows. Names like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib are no less culpable than new-age Taliban; their distortions of India’s history are equally shameful.
Every ruling class, however refined, has harbored a subconscious urge to destroy the memory of its predecessors. The British—supposedly the most “educated” nation—spent two hundred years denigrating Indian civilization. Derozio, glorified as a Renaissance hero, in truth spearheaded an intellectual assault on India’s ancient culture, producing a class of anglicized, self-hating Bengali “babus” who became willing instruments of colonial exploitation. Their contempt for native culture ensured Britain’s supremacy. The history we study today is the distorted offspring of that betrayal.
Yet history cannot be killed. The Aztec and Mayan civilizations of Latin America, the Red Indians of Mexico, the Santals of India, the tribes of Africa—though crushed, they prove that the past endures beyond the designs of rulers. Julio Cortázar once wrote that even if an entire people were annihilated, their culture would not die; the very land would remember them. Stand in Agra and you feel the Mughals. Stand in Egypt and the Nile whispers its civilization. Stand on the fields of Plassey and Siraj-ud-Daulah still breathes.
Thus, history is immortal. No Taliban of any age can annihilate it.
America and European museums want to “buy” the statues. India too offered to preserve them. Yet the Taliban remain unmoved in their brutal resolve. Their goal: to eradicate from Afghanistan every trace of religion other than Islam. But Buddhism had flourished in Afghanistan centuries before Islam was even born. For natural historical reasons, the land was once home to Buddhists; only after Islamization were they forced to convert or flee. Islam, being the youngest of the world’s major religions, is by nature built upon the ancestors of others—idol-worshippers of Arabia, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians who were conquered or converted. In that sense, no human being of any faith is ever “pure” in religion: at some point their forebears belonged to another creed. Just as no nation remains forever under one ruler, so too no community or people is forever confined to one cultural or religious domain. With time, identities shift, nations change, civilizations blend.
This very changeability is the catalyst of human progress. Ancient cultures have never perished simply because they transformed; history has preserved them. No one today studies at Nalanda, no one lives on the ruins of Harappa, and the Taj Mahal has no private owner—but they are living documents of history. These treasures do not belong only to their current geographies; they are the collective wealth of humankind. To destroy them is to wound all of humanity. Petty, narrow-minded men fail to grasp that no power on earth can erase truth or rewrite history at will. If every copy of the Gita or the Bible were burned, would their essence vanish from human hearts? The responsibility of history lives within the human spirit. It cannot be extinguished.
Muhammad never wrote the Quran; Jesus never penned the Bible. After Christ’s crucifixion, fools thought his words would vanish forever. They did not. Jesus lives on in the souls of millions, untouchable by any Taliban sword.
But what of us—the so-called civilized people—who silently watch these atrocities? Who will judge our moral cowardice? Are America, Europe, Russia, or China any less complicit? For five hundred years they have ravaged the civilizations of the Third World. Who caused Bengal’s famine of 1943? Who destroyed the muslin industry? Who spreads Western culture across the globe to suffocate the East? Who wiped out the Red Indians of America and built a nation on their graves? These very powers now wish to buy Bamiyan’s Buddhas with dollars and lock them in museums. British writer Jeremy Seabrook once said: the museums of Europe and America are nothing but warehouses of plunder looted from colonized nations. Was not India’s Peacock Throne stolen by British “Talibans”?
Communists too are not innocent. When they seized power in Russia, their first act was to rename the ancient city of St. Petersburg to Leningrad. Today’s mania in India—Madras to Chennai, Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata—is but a refined Talibanism, an erasure of historical memory under the guise of “indigenization.” Calcutta itself was birthed by the British; to deny that in the name of nativism is to falsify its own origins.
The same brutality applies to the Babri Masjid dispute. Those who demolished it are indeed destroyers of history—but those who defend it while ignoring Babur’s destruction of the Ram temple are hypocrites. For centuries, Nehruvian and Marxist historians have whitewashed Muslim invaders while pushing Hindu dynasties into the shadows. Names like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib are no less culpable than new-age Taliban; their distortions of India’s history are equally shameful.
Every ruling class, however refined, has harbored a subconscious urge to destroy the memory of its predecessors. The British—supposedly the most “educated” nation—spent two hundred years denigrating Indian civilization. Derozio, glorified as a Renaissance hero, in truth spearheaded an intellectual assault on India’s ancient culture, producing a class of anglicized, self-hating Bengali “babus” who became willing instruments of colonial exploitation. Their contempt for native culture ensured Britain’s supremacy. The history we study today is the distorted offspring of that betrayal.
Yet history cannot be killed. The Aztec and Mayan civilizations of Latin America, the Red Indians of Mexico, the Santals of India, the tribes of Africa—though crushed, they prove that the past endures beyond the designs of rulers. Julio Cortázar once wrote that even if an entire people were annihilated, their culture would not die; the very land would remember them. Stand in Agra and you feel the Mughals. Stand in Egypt and the Nile whispers its civilization. Stand on the fields of Plassey and Siraj-ud-Daulah still breathes.
Thus, history is immortal. No Taliban of any age can annihilate it.
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