Sorry Rana Safvi, your explanation does not justify your silly claim. Raksha Bandhan is as Sanatani as it can get

Yesterday was the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan; but as is the case with most left-liberal historians in India who cannot fathom a Hindu festival being celebrated in its full glory, Raksha Bandhan, just like other Hindu festivals has been at the receiving end of such vitriol trolls over the years. Apart from mind-numbing schemas like terming Raksha Bandhan a patriarchal festival, the liberals also came up with an agenda to have their way out. They dubbed Raksha Bandhan as a Mughal festival and went even a step ahead and claimed that Rakshabandhan was a gift of Mughals to the Hindus.

Rana Safvi, who has a backlog of making dubious claims over the years (Read: Mughals brought riches to India) has been in the news for wrong reasons. This time around, a snippet of an excerpt from her book ‘City of my Heart’ has surfaced with a headline ‘How Mughal Delhi gave birth to Raksha Bandhan.’

The article quotes Rana Safvi, “Not many people know that RakshaBandhan is actually a Mughal festival that originated in the heart of Delhi”. The article cites a historical legend from Safvi’s book where a Hindu lady retrieves Mughal emperor Alamgir’s body from a river until help arrived. Later, Shah Alam II, Alamgir’s heir, called upon her, declared her sister, and rewarded her generously.”

The article states the day was celebrated as Raksha Bandhan every year until Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled from the Red Fort after 1857.

However, the moment this snippet of her book went bust on the social media platforms, especially Twitter, a huge controversy erupted over the genesis of the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan and how Rana Safvi conveniently chalked up a convoluted storyline with gaping loopholes to paint the Mughals in a good light.

https://twitter.com/GabbbarSingh/status/1290172334934913024

However, Rana Safvi did come up with a clarification in 2018 saying that the newspaper had printed a misleading headline and blurb. Even if Rana Safvi claims that she didn’t write that Mughals invented Raksha Bandhan, her article clearly insinuates that Raksha Bandhan became a bigger institution under Mughals who encouraged celebrating the festival.

‘True Indology,’ a twitter user who is famous for mercilessly taking the left-liberal, Marxist, and other secular historians to the cleaners, came up with a twitter thread that systematically destroyed and debunked Rana Safvi’s dubious claims.

The timeline presented by Rana Safvi was completely off the rails. Her claims of Shah Alam II succeeding Alamgiri II and coining Ram Kumari (a character purely invented by Safvi) as her Sister were seriously disputed, as Shahjahan III had succeeded Alamgiri II.

It seemed like Rana Safvi couldn’t catch a break, as her ‘typos’ were being called out time and again.

Raksha Bandhan’s relation with ancient Hindu characters

The history of Raksha Bandhan dates back to ancient times. The Hindu epic of Mahabharata mentions the brother-sister bond between Lord Krishna and Draupadi. Draupadi had torn her saree and tied a piece of cloth around Lord Krishna’s wrist to stop the bleeding. In return, Krishna promised to take care of her as a brother and later saves her from being disrobed by Dushasana.

There has also been mention of Yamraj’s sister- Yamuna tying the holy thread on Yamraj’s hand. Besides, the ancient legend of BhavishyaPurana refers to the bond between Indra Dev and Sachi, and BhagavataPurana and Vishnu Purana mentions the brother-sister love between King Bali and Goddess Lakshmi.

Left historians and the romanticization of the Mughals

The left-liberal historians for long have romanticized the Mughals as some exotic beings who came to India for uplifting it to unprecedented heights and gave India everything from culture to food to money–all of which can be strategically countered by a customary look into the history, not the one peddled by these progressive thinkers but the original, unabridged and unadulterated version.

The Mughals might have disappeared from the face of Earth, but they have left their PR-reps in the likes of Rana Safvi who hogwash the unspeakable atrocities of Mughals on the Hindus.

From imposing the cruel Jaziya tax to plundering and pillaging the Holy Hindu temples and sites, the Mughals abhorred Hindus and whatever stories you hear about their generosity and Ganga-Jamuna-Tehzib is fostered and peddled by such Historians.

From the demonic Ghazni to the vicious Aurangzeb, Hindus have weathered the carnages of such Muslim rulers over the years.

The Islamic rulers in the medieval era had only one aim, the expansion of Islam at any cost. Unfortunately, India also became a victim of this expansionist population and the most immediate consequence of the Islamic invasion was the mass conversion of the Hindus and utter desecration of the Hindu places of worship.

Some of the most wilful destruction occurred during the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni, from Afghanistan, who raided India numerous times from 1000-1030. According to several historians, Mahmud ‘utterly ruined the prosperity of Hindustan’when he attacked Mathura.

The holy temple of Somnath in Gujarat is the biggest reminder to Hindus that how centuries after centuries, the marauders and plunderers tried their level best to demolish the identity of Hindus.

Mahmud sacked the Somnath Temple for the first time in 1025 and it was again destroyed in 1299 by AllauddinKhilji of Delhi. After being rebuilt, it was destroyed again in 1395 by the Muslim governor of Gujarat. In 1665, another reincarnation of the temple was destroyed by the Aurangzeb—one of the biggest Hindu-hater to have walked the face of the earth.

It was on Aurangzeb’s orders that in 1669, one of the holiest temples of the Hindus, the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi (then Prayag) was demolished and a mosque built on its spot.

The Gyanvyapi Mosque as it is called, still shares the boundary with Kashi Vishwanath and the cries have been rallying over the years from Hindus to take back what was once theirs.

The Mughals would be laughing and wheezing in their graves at the Muslims of India who is turning these barbarians into the motif of Indian Muslim identity. The same Muslims whose ancestors were converted forcefully into Islam. But the likes of Rana Safvi suffer from a severe identity crisis. The original Muslims of the Arb world detest the Indian Muslims and so they have no alternative but to turn to barbaric Mughal emperors and turn them into their false idols.

To further gain acceptance amongst the masses, such stories are routinely marketed where pure Hindu Sanatani festivals like Raksha Bandhan are attached to Muslims and Mughals by using convoluted and at times fake storylines.

Rana Safvi might have got away by pushing the newspaper at the front to weather the storm; the fact remains clear as a day that such historians have for long maligned our history and that’s why the new Education policy assumes such paramount importance because the fake-history needs to be weeded out of the classrooms.