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A Gesture Towards Secularism

The walls of caves, and pillars and tablets of stone, were certainly used to paint frescoes and to inscribe edicts. They can’t have it both ways.The Hindutva brigade may have a different problem with the assertion of distinguished historian Irfan Habib via the very readable and plausible Keay.Firstly, the Congress Party which has, presumably through the urgings of Mahatma Gandhi, adopted the spinning wheel as the 92poly8elastane mesh compound with printed130gsm 12p007 central symbol on its flag. The more extreme among them will no doubt turn up with some evidence that the spinning wheel was invented in, say, 2,000 BC in a settlement by the Ganges. These facts, if indeed they are such, ought to put the cat among two opposing flocks of pigeons. Such a “discovery” would deprive the supposed Hindutva brigade of the chance to say that the Congress Party has a Muslim import or invention on its flag. But maybe not.President Pranab Mukherjee and the Congress Party, manifestly dedicated to the defence of secularism, are not, I am sure, going to remove the charkha from the Congress flag or the Ashok chakra from the national one. Isami says a “woman’s place is at the spinning wheel” — the charkha.

Keay says the introduction of paper was “of incalculable value. The recent spate of unscientific and nonsensical claims of a similar sort by Hindutva “historians” will cause the world to laugh at rather than with them.So also, incidentally, was the paper and the technique of making it, on which Isami wrote his chronicle. Logical thought and scientific discovery and theory can make progress and any denial of these is just foolishness and superstition. Governance and taxation would be expedited, and literature, scholarship and the graphic arts revolutionised by the availability of a uniform writing material which could be readily filed and bound. Keay repeats an observation first made by Irfan Habib who quotes Isami, the 14th century historian, writing about the reign of Razia Sultan. They should rather apply themselves to refuting the claim that paper was not first brought to India through early Muslim conquests. India must have had ways of spinning cotton before the 14th century, but if Keay is right then the introduction of paper was surely the most important gift of the Muslim conquest and settlement.It makes one wonder on what surface the early chroniclers and travellers such as Huen Tsang recorded their observations of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms.

They may even welcome Habib’s observation and express some pride in having a Muslim invention as their brand identity. If the charkha was invented in India by Vedic people, then the Congress Party is proudly sporting a symbol of ancient Indian technology.I’ve just been reading John Keay’s masterful history of India and came across what I thought could be contentious facts. He omitted any mention of spinning wheels and paper. Was Gandhi aware of the Persian or Muslim origin or import to India of the charkha It would be heartening to think that he did know where the charkha came from and foisted the Muslim import on his party as a gesture towards secularism.There can, of course, be no “rewriting” of science.end-of. Palm leaves Cloth Parchment Or did they have paper which they brought from China The Hindutva historians should stop wasting their time fiddling with textbooks and claiming that Hindus invented flying saucers and discovered nuclear fission.The assertion that paper and the technique for fabricating it came through the Muslim conquests of the 13th or 14th century can be even more contentious. A comedy programme called Goodness Gracious Me on British TV, some years ago, had an Indian character in it who would, in every sketch and circumstance in which he appeared, assert that Indians invented any and every thing.Razia’s contemporaries and rivals in her court were resentful of the fact that she had seized the throne.

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