Aavarana- The Veil
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16. K.M. Panikkar Malabar and The Portuguese, 1929, rpt, Voice of India, 1997.
17. K.S. Lal The Mughal Harem, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan; Muslim Slave System in Medieval India, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan; Indian Muslims: Who are they, Voice of India; Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan; The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
18. Maasir-I-Alamgiri Saqi Must’ad Khan, English tr. Jadunath Sarkar, 1947, rpt, Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1986.
19. Navaratna S Rajaram The Politics of History (Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of Scholarship), Voice of India; Nationalism and Distortions in Indian History, Bangalore: Naimisha Research Foundation; A Hindu View of the World: Essays in the Intellectual Kshatriya Tradition, Voice of India; Profiles in Deception (Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls), Voice of India; Hindutva and The Nation, Bangalore: Naimisha Research Foundation; Aryan Invasion: Historical Theory of Political Myth, Vigil (A Public Opinion Forum), Madras.
20. Navaratna S. Rajaram, David Frawley Vedic Aryans and The Origins and of Civilization (A Literary and Scientific Perspective), Foreword by Klaus K. Klostermaier.
21. R.C. Majumdar The History and Culture of the Indian People, 11 vols, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
22. Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order, Penguin.
23. Suhas Majumdar Jihad (The Islamic Doctrine of permanent war), Voice of India.
24. Swapan Dasgupta, Rama Jois, Arun Jaitley, S.P. Gupta, Koenraad Elst, Arun Shourie The Ayodhya Reference, Supreme Court Judgement and Commentaries.
25. Shrikant G. Talageri Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism, Voice of India; The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal, Foreword by S.R. Rao. Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
26. Sita Ram Goel History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (AD 304–1996) Voice of India. Hindu Temples—What Happened to Them, vol. 1, A Preliminary Survey; The Islamic Evidence, vol. 11; The Calcutta Quran Petition, Voice of India, How I Became A Hindu (Reprinted with a postscript), Voice of India; Freedom of Expression (Secular Theory versus Liberal Democracy), Voice of India; Genesis and Growth of Nehruism, vol. 1, Commitment to Communism; Catholic Ashrams: Sannyaasins or Swindlers?, Voice of India; Papacy: Its Doctrine and History; Stalinist ‘Historians’ Spread the Big Lie; Perversion of India’s Political Parlance; Hindu Society Under Siege; Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences; Pseudo-Secularism: Christian Missions and Hindu Resistance; Defence of Hindu Society; Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (AD 636–1206); Hindus and Hinduism: Manipulation of Meanings; India’s Secularism: New Name for National Subversion, tr. Yashpal Sharma.
27. Stanley Lane-Poole Aurangzib and the Decay of Mughal Empire, 1890, rpt, 1930, 1990.
28. Wheeler Thackston, ed., tr., annotated The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, New York: Oxford University Press.
29. Alexander Rogers, tr., Henry Beveridge, ed. The Tuzuk-I-Jahangiri: The Memoirs of Jahangir, 2 vols,1909–14.
30. Gul Badan Begum The History of Humayun (Humayun Nama), tr. Annette S. Beveridge with introduction, notes and illustrations, 1902.
31. William Irvine The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration.
All the books cited earlier extensively dealt with the destruction of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Lakshmi had used these books as references for the episode of the temple’s destruction in her novella.
There were many other books that she had used in her five-year-long research, whose names she started jotting down as well.
32. Anwar Shaikh Islam: the Arab Imperialism; Islam, Sex and Violence, Cardiff: The Principality Publishers, UK, 1999.
33. Arun Shourie Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, New Delhi: ASA; A Secular Agenda, New Delhi: ASA; The World of Fatwas or The Shariat in Action, New Delhi: ASA; Indian Controversies: Essays on Religion in Politics, New Delhi: ASA; The State As Charade, New Delhi: ASA; Missionaries in India, New Delhi: ASA; Harvesting Our Souls, New Delhi: ASA; Hinduism: Essence and Consequence, New Delhi: ASA; Arun Shourie and his Christian Critic, Voice of India.
34. David Frawley Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World, Voice of India.
35. Diana L. Eck Banaras: City of Light, Penguin.
36. Marmaduke Pickthall, tr. The Koran, Every Man’s Library.
37. Ibn Warraq Why I Am Not A Muslim, New York: Prometheus Books.
38. Jagmohan My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir, Allied Publishers.
39. King James Version: Holy Bible, Standard Text Edition.
40. Sir William Muir The Life of Mahommet: From the Original Sources, 3rd edition, 1894, London, 1st Indian rpt, Voice of India.
41. D.S. Margoliouth Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, 1905, London, rpt, Voice of India, 1985.
42. Martin Lings Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, George Allen & Unwin, 1983, rpt 1986, 1988. Chapter LXI of this book contains an account of how the throats of the seven hundred men of the Banu Qurayza tribe were cut off, and in what proportion their women and children were divided among the soldiers. The remaining women and children were bartered for warhorses and arms (pp 320). The government of Pakistan not only awarded a prize to Lings’ book but selected it as the best work written in English about the Prophet in the National Seerat Conference held in Islamabad in 1983. In 1990, the University of Cairo highly commended this work. Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, honoured the author with a prize. This means Lings’ work has been accepted by the Muslims themselves as definitive. I’ve used the copy published by The Islamic Text Society, Cambridge, UK, 1991;
43. Sir William Muir Book XVII, Seige of Medina, and Massacre of the Beni Kureiza;
44. D.S. Margoliouth Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, ‘Publicity’, Chapter IV, ‘Destruction of the Jews’, Chapter IX. These chapters document the root of the hatred that Muslims have towards Israel and the Jews even today; Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper Perennial, pp 166–7, 175.
45. V.S. Naipaul Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted peoples, Viking.
46. Ram Swarup The World as Revelation: Names of Gods, Foreword by David Frawley, 1980; Meditations, Yogas, Gods, Religions;Women in Islam; Whither Sikhism?; Hindu View of Christanity and Islam; Pope John Paul 11 on Eastern Religions; Yoga: A Hindu-Buddhist Rejoinder
47. Robert Sewell A Forgotton Empire (Vijaynagar), Asian Educational Services, New Delhi–Chennai.
48. H.D. Sharma The Real Tipu, tr. Dr Pradhana Gurudutt from the original entitled Tipu—Nija Swaroopa, Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu, 2003. The bibliography at the end of this book is recommended reading.
49. Sriram Sathe Aryans: Who Were They? Mysore: Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, 1971; Bharatiya Historiography, Hyderabad: Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti; Facts About Aryans, Hyderabad; European Secularism: Mother of Misconceptions.
50. Vigil: A Public Opinion
Forum Kashmir: Views by Eminent Persons, Chennai.
51. N.R. Warad Pande The Nemisis of Nehru-Worship, Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu Prakashana.
52. The Holy Quran tr. S. Abdul Gaffar into Kannada, Mangalore: Shanti Prakashan. The sura numbers vary slightly between this and the English translation of the Koran by Everyman’s Library.
The following were the reference material for supporting the sadhu’s exposition on the banks of the Ganga in Chapter 13 of her novella.
53. Kashi Ka Itihaas Varanasi: Vishwavidyalaya Prakashan.
54. Yagnavalkya Smriti pp. 1–343,Delhi: Nag Publishers,1985.
55. Raghuvamsham pp. 4–43. Vallabhadeva’s commentary on Raghuvamsham where he explains the concept of ‘Dharmavijaya’. Vallabhadeva was a scholar of Kashmir.
56. H.D. Velankar, ed. Raghuvamsham, Bombay: Nirnayasagar Press, 1948, p. 93.
57. N.S. Venakatanathacharya Kautilyarthashastram, Mysore: Oriental Research Institute. Refer to Chapter 5, Section 176, Part 13, and Chapter 19, Section 7, Part 121.
58. K.S. Na
rayanacharya Relevance of Kautilya For Today, Mysore: Kautilya Institute of National Studies.
Mr S. Gurumurthy has written a preface, which compares Greek, Christian and Islamic war ethics with that of ancient Indian war ethics. This preface has copious amounts of scholarly evidence, which supports the conversation of the sadhu in the novella’s thirteenth chapter.
59. V.S. Naipaul ‘The Chachnama is Arab or Muslim genre writing, a “pleasant story of conquest”, the conquest of Sindh. But it is a bloody story, and the parts that get into the school books are fairy tales…History as selective as this leads quickly to unreality. Before Mohammed, there is blackness, slavery, exploitation. After Mohammed, there is light: slavery and exploitation vanish. But did it? How can that be said or taught? What about all those slaves sent back from Sindh to the Caliph? What about the descendants of the African slaves who walk about Karachi? There is no adequate answer: so the faith begins to nullify or overlay the real world.’ Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, 1981.
‘Is the call for jihad against a particular people a religious right by those calling for it, or is it a human rights violation against the people on which jihad is declared and waged?’ (Dr John Garang, United Nations, Geneva, 22 March 1999) Quoted in The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, ed. Andrew Bostom, Foreword by Ibn Warraq, New York: Promethus Books.
Lakshmi scanned the list from beginning to end, put her pen down and stared at the paper. Suddenly she picked up her pen again and began to write from memory.
The Yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge, beyond reasoning, comes to man. Metaphysical and transcendental knowledge comes to that man. This state of going beyond reason, transcending ordinary human nature, may sometimes come by chance to a man who does not understand its science; he, as it were, stumbles upon it. When he stumbles upon it, he generally interprets it as coming from outside. So this explains why an inspiration, or transcendental knowledge, may be the same in different countries, but in one country it will seem to come through an angel, and in another through a Deva, and in a third through God. What does it mean? It means that the mind brought the knowledge by its own nature, and that the finding of the knowledge was interpreted according to the belief and education of the person through whom it came. The real fact is that these various men, as it were, stumbled upon this superconscious state.
The Yogi says there is a great danger in stumbling upon this state. In a good many cases there is the danger of the brain being deranged, and, as a rule, you will find that all those men, however great they were, who had stumbled upon this superconscious state without understanding it, groped in the dark, and generally had, along with their knowledge, some quaint superstition. They opened themselves to hallucinations. Mohammed claimed that the Angel Gabriel came to him in a cave one day and took him on the heavenly horse, Harak, and he visited the heavens. But with all that, Mohammed spoke some wonderful truths. If you read the Koran, you find the most wonderful truths mixed with superstitions. How will you explain it? That man was inspired, no doubt, but that inspiration was, as it were, stumbled upon. He was not a trained Yogi, and did not know the reason of what he was doing. Think of the good Mohammed did to the world, and think of the great evil that has been done through his fanaticism! Think of the millions massacred through his teachings, mothers bereft of their children, children made orphans, whole countries destroyed, millions upon millions of people killed!
So we see this danger by studying the lives of great teachers like Mohammed and others. Yet we find, at the same time, that they were all inspired. Whenever a prophet got into the superconscious state by heightening his emotional nature, he brought away from it not only some truths, but some fanaticism also, some superstition which injured the world as much as the greatness of the teaching helped. To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition. We must take up the study of the superconscious state just as any other science. On reason we must have to lay our foundation, we must follow reason as far as it leads, and when reason fails, reason itself will show us the way to the highest plane. When you hear a man say, ‘I am inspired,’ and then talk irrationally, reject it. Why? Because these three states—instinct, reason, and superconsciousness, or the unconscious, conscious, and superconscious states—belong to the same mind. There are not three minds in one man, but one state of it develops into the others. Instinct develops into reason, and reason into the transcendental consciousness; therefore, not one of the states contradicts the others. Real inspiration never contradicts reason, but fulfils it. Just as you find the great prophets saying, ‘I come not to destroy but to fulfil,’ so inspiration always comes to fulfil reason, and is in harmony with it. (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati Memorial Edition, 14th Edition, vol.I, 1972, pp 183–5).
She put the pen down and looked at the list: it didn’t amount to even one-fourth of her research. She knew it would grow over time, as and when she recalled the names of the other books and material. It was just a question of remembering them.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several people have helped in the preparatory stages of this novel. I would chiefly like to recall the assistance of a sister-novelist and her family with gratitude. For the five days that I stayed in their home, both she and her well-educated children explained the traditions, mores and manners of Muslims both in day-to-day life and on special occasions. Her husband accompanied me at all times. He took me to the mosque when it was time for namaz and introduced me to his relatives and friends, and helped me interact with them. He got me books published by the Mangalore-based Shanti Prakashana on Muslim religious traditions and rituals and explained the important ones. I shall always be grateful to him for this help. My former colleague, Dr Siddiqui, sat with me for days on end and explained the customs and manners of north Indian Muslims, especially the Muslims of Benares. Dr Ibrahim Sahib from Shimoga explained several nuances, which helped bring greater clarity to some of the mental images I had. I’m indebted to all of these people. The rest of the details in the novel are from my readings.
With respect to my specific questions and clarifications about Hampi, Dr M. Chidananda Murthy wrote back with equal specificity, along with supporting documentary evidences. I’m grateful to him for this favour. Shatavadhani Dr R. Ganesh not only dug out accurate references to specific contexts in the areas of Dharma, Indian ethics and Indian philosophical schools, but critiqued the novel’s manuscript. The respected N. Balasubramanya, Dr S. Ramaswamy, B.S. Chandrashekhar and Dr Tulasiramachandra have also provided their valuable feedback and suggestions on the novel’s manuscript. Dr Pradhana Gurudutt read the final manuscript, made corrections to it and critiqued it in thorough detail. Dr H.S. Gopal Rao unearthed some rare books and sent me photocopies. I can’t remember the names of a host of other people whose favour I have received. It is entirely my fault for not keeping notes of the names of the people who have helped me in various capacities.
A special debt of gratitude goes out to these eminent people who read the novel thoroughly before it went to print. M. Rama Jois, retired chief justice of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, former governor of Jharkhand and Bihar and author of several scholarly books on law; Haranahalli Ramaswami, senior lawyer, former law minister, Gandhian and a person with a long and distinguished record of service in public life; and Ashok Haranahalli, eminent lawyer.
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