BENGALURU: Author Amish Tripathi during the launch of his new book, ‘The Chola Tigers’, on Monday, dubbed the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute not one between Hindus and Muslims, but an Indian-foreigner one.
In a chat with Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Co-Founder at Teamlease Services, Tripathi recalled a conversation he had with KK Mohammad, former regional director of Archeological Survey of India.
Tripathi said Mohammad is one of the greatest living archaeologists of India. “He told me, ‘Babar was an Uzbek, I’m an Indian Muslim; what do I have to do with him?’ And he said that we are wrongly looking at the Ram Janmabhoomi temple as a Hindu-Muslim issue. It’s an Indian-foreigner issue. A foreigner attacked one of our places of worship. That’s the way to see it,” he said.
Tripathi said the British colonial rule is not called the “Christian invasion”, but Turkey’s colonial rule is called an Islamic invasion. He said this mischaracterisation was “mischievous” and understandable on the part of British historians, further questioning why this was not discredited by the Indian historians that followed.
In ‘The Chola Tigers’ Hindu and Muslim characters are equally aggrieved about a temple raid by Mahmud of Ghazni. Together, they “fight the good fight”, says Tripathi.