Eminent Historians by Arun Shourie

"Eminent Historians: Their Techniques, Their line, Their Fraud" is a noble effort by Arun Shourie to counter the lies and propaganda that has been peddled by communist historians. Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, D.N. Jha and Bipin Chandra etc have all been accused of whitewashing history so that their masters the Nehru-Gandhi family and Congress can rule without anyone questioning them and several generation of Indians are brainwashed into believing that their servitude towards the Congress is a virtue.

 Communists authors are in powerful positions in Universities, historical boards and committees. The government has been unusually kind to them, The Congress governments and these historians are symbiotic organisms, both feeding of each other. These historians have created an oligarchy in the history field in India, where they keep promoting each other and each other's work. The author has also accused them of not only toying with history but also of being corrupt and inefficient. Something to ponder over as you turn page after page of evidence that the author brings to light i.e. the money that they took from the government for completing historic projects and gave nothing in return.

All of us, who have read history outside NCERT text books know that a lot of important events in our history like the Emergency imposed by Congress, anti Sikh riots, Sikh struggle against Muslims rulers etc are completely skipped over in text books. So we always had an inkling of tampering of history but only after reading this book will you get an idea on how inordinately large this fraud is, and how anti Hindu subtle messaging in text books is a work of clever planning and organization.

Communists authors, who Shourie keeps referring to as 'Eminences' have spent a life time in coercing Indian history and culture. Communist line dictates that in order for communism to take hold people or sheeple (as communists like to really think about us) have to be made to think that their own culture and history is nothing but lies and shameful acts by their ancestors. Communist authors have gone great length to prove in text books taught at schools that:

a) Cow was eaten in ancient India(they seem to be particularly concerned about this).

b) Mughal and Muslim ruler were benign and Aurangzeb was a paragon of Muslim virtue, he re-imposed Jizya as a political tool rather than religious one.

c) Destruction of Hindu temples has been greatly exaggerated and mostly they were damaged and not destroyed.

d) Hinduism was a term coined by British and Hinduism is not a real religion.

e) India was never one country, and only when Congress started the freedom struggle did a notion of India came into existence.

f) Hindus wiped out the ancient Jain and Buddhist civilizations and kingdoms.

g) The advent of Islam was a revolution and it is a peaceful religion which advocated and practices equality unlike Hinduism which is dominated by Brahmins.

Mr. Arun Shourie, the right wing idealouge, takes these above notions of communist authors and peels them one by one. He also goes into gory details of how several Hindu temples were destroyed and using the idols of Hindu temples mosques were built on top of those temples, not to forget Hindu idols were taken to Mecca, where the faithful trampled on the Hindu gods and goddesses. It is a dark side of Indian history that has been skipped over to keep the masses ignorant. Several centuries of servitude, first to Muslim rulers, then to Britishers and recently to Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have made the Indians lose their self respect and pride. We have been brainwashed into believing these lies that the communists have been feeding our children.

As far as the book goes it feels protracted and repetitive. It feels like reading one of the text books by these Eminences. Also, the author could have refrained from giving moral sermons at the end of the book. 

I will give this 3.5 stars out of 5, because Shourie touches a topic which takes a lot of courage and scrutiny to even mention, let alone write an illuminating book about it.