Before embarking on an exploration of the different perceptions of this event in history, we must first understand and acknowledge that the destruction of temples or other places of worship was not an unknown phenomenon in Indian society. Grand temples were built by rulers and were maintained by their successors as symbols of the might and glory of their dynasties. These temples were built with huge royal grants, and revenues from entire villages and estates were dedicated for their upkeep (Thapar, Early India, pg 427). In addition to performing the principal function of serving as places of worship, these temples exhibited the power and generosity of their royal patrons. As such, whenever a ruling dynasty was overthrown or a place conquered by an invader, many of these temples or other places of worship were sometimes destructed as bold statements of control by the incoming regimes, symbolizing an end of the previous government and the new rival government’s contempt for it. This destruction also served the additional purpose of impressing upon the masses that a similar fate awaited their other places of worship if they were not loyal to the new regime. The Rashtrakuta King, Indra III, destroyed a Pratihara temple in Kalpa when he defeated the Pratiharas. Similarly, Subhatavarma, the Paramara king of Malwa, destroyed the Chaulukyas’ temples, as well as the Jaina temples and Arab mosques that were built under Chaulukya patronage (Thapar, Early India, pg 428). Not only this but these temples were repositories of massive treasures, accumulated there from the offerings and taxation of pilgrims, revenues dedicated by entire villages, as well as the trade in which many of these temples themselves engaged. Inevitably, these temples attracted the plundering armies of various greedy rulers. The kings of Kashmir are known to have engaged in plundering temples, and one of them, Harshadeva, had a minister especially appointed for this purpose of sacking temples. Many such instances of temple destructions are on record (Thapar, Early India, pg 428).
We now come to examine the reasons behind Mahmud of Ghazni’s seventeen or so raids into India. There were several political developments in the Middle East at this time. The Seljuk Turks were rising in power and there were tensions with the Christians of Europe in the prelude to the Crusades (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 50). Mahmud needed to consolidate his rule in Central Asia. He had come to power by usurping his brother’s throne (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 49) (he defeated his brother Ismail in 997 A.D. in a battle and ascended the throne; his brother had inherited the throne from their father Subuktigin who had nominated Ismail as his successor) 1. He needed legitimacy in the eyes of his people as their king as well as finances to establish his authority (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 40). He also wished to develop his capital at Ghazni into a rich commercial and cultural centre to match the glories of Baghdad, and for this he needed wealth and craftsmen (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 41, 48). He needed elephants and slaves to maintain his army (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 39). The raids into the Indian Subcontinent were an ideal means to achieving all these ends. India was a wealthy, trading country and its temples were a rich source of wealth for replenishing the treasury at Ghazni. One entire raid of Mahmud was conducted for the sole purpose of acquiring a special kind of elephants for his armies (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 48). Also, at this time, horse trade was a very profitable business in India (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 30-31). Good quality horses were not bred in India and were imported instead from the Orient and Central Asia. Arabs were more dominant over the horse trade in Gujarat due to their sea trade than the Central Asians who traded over land with India. One possible reason for Mahmud’s invasion of Gujarat may have been to break the Arab monopoly over horse trade in the region (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 48). The raids, many of whose accounts were exaggerated by Mahmud himself in his letters to the Abbasid caliph, also helped Mahmud gain the caliph’s recognition and commendation which gained him respect and awe in the Muslim world as a champion of the Muslims. The Caliph Al-Qadir Billah lavished titles on him (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 51) such as “Yamin-ud-Daula” (after which his house became known as the Yamini dynasty) and “Amin-ul-Millat” between 1026 and 1029 A.D 2. The motives behind the raids of Mahmud into India were therefore mainly political and economical. To some extent, the raids of Mahmud were also based on religious iconoclasm. Mahmud did not only destroy Hindu temples as his Jihad against the infidel; he, being a staunch Sunni, also destroyed the Shiite and Ismailia places of worship in Multan, regarding any form of Islam other than Sunni Islam as being heresy (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 42, 48, 50; Thapar, Early India, pg 427).
The narratives of this event vary in their extent of underlining the importance of this event. The most fanciful and the most filled with contradictions are the narratives that come from the Muslim historians in Turko-Persian accounts. The Muslim historians tended to glorify this raid as being a huge achievement of the Muslims and of Mahmud. Many things in these narratives seem to be fantasies and on many counts it happens that the contradictory accounts of one historian cancel out those of other historians. For instance, some Turko-Persian historians mention that the idol had a human form (Thapar, pg 52, 56). The idol was meant as a lingam and as such it would be unprecedented in India if this was true (Thapar, pg 47-48). A lingam idol is supposed to be in the form of a stump or a column (Thapar, pg 56). Some Turko-Persian historians say that the idol’s form was such that it was partly inside the ground whereas the other parts were protruding outside (Thapar, pg 52). Still others think it used to hang in the air under the influence of magnetic fields. These claims contradict each other (Thapar, pg 52). Many accounts say that the idol was hollow and was filled with jewels inside. This too would be unprecedented in Hindu tradition, lingams are never hollow (Thapar, pg 52). Various Turko-Persian accounts exaggerate the implications of the raid when they state that the Gujarati economy was totally devastated by Mahmud’s raid when infact, historical evidence sees a flourishing economy in Gujarat at and after this time period. Some Turko-Persian accounts also exaggerate the number of villages that were dedicated to serving the Somanatha temple by putting their number upto 10,000 villages. The largest recorded number of villages dedicated to serving any major temple in India was 300 (Thapar, pg 54). Some Turko-Persian accounts claim that there were 30 rings marked around the idol, each ring representing 1,000 years of worship of the idol. This would put the age of Somanatha to 30,000 years, which is clearly an exaggeration (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 52). There are also many myths in the Turko-Persian traditions about the events that took place when Mahmud captured the temple; for example, it is said that Mahmud burnt the idol instead of smashing it and having reduced it to lime, he gave it to the priests in a betel leaf to eat (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 53). The amount of riches looted from the temple is also exaggerated; if it was true then Somanatha’s treasures would be greater than treasuries of states (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 42, 43, 51). In the letters which Mahmud sent to the Caliph in Baghdad, Mahmud almost always used to say that he had killed 50,000 of the enemy’s men. This number was repeated time and again in his letters no matter which conquest he made and against whom. It is an exaggerated amount, a formulaic number (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 51; Thapar, Early India, pg 427).
Coming to the Sanskrit accounts from Somanatha and its surrounding areas of Gujarat, we find no mention at all of Mahmud’s destruction of the temple. While the people of the area had not forgotten about the raid, it seems to be an event that generally did not arouse much interest and was therefore not warranted much attention. The Kadamba King came via the sea on a pilgrimage to Somanatha from the area around Goa in 1038 A.D. His account of the pilgrimage does not even mention Mahmud’s raid which had occurred about eleven years previously, nor does he mention any scenes of destruction or a devastated economy in the region, which is surprising if we consider the Turko-Persian narratives of the amount of destruction carried out during Mahmud’s raid (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 75). The first known inscription that actually mentions Mahmud’s raid comes from 1263 A.D.; 237 years after the raid had taken place. This inscription very briefly mentions in passing that Mahmud had left behind a governor at Somanatha after capturing the area (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 95). Another inscription which dates back to 1264 A.D. mentions an Arab trader who was given land in the vicinity of the Somanatha temple to build a mosque (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 84). The statements in the inscription show us that the people of the region were on friendly terms with the Arabs and there was a thriving trade between the two communities. The existence of mosques shows us that a reasonable number of Muslims were living in the area (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 97). Sanskrit inscriptions of the time seldom mention attacks into India by Turks, not mentioning Mahmud’s attack on Somanatha at all (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 83, 99). One might say that perhaps the Hindus deliberately do not mention attacks by Muslims on Hindu temples out of shame. This argument is offset by the fact that the inscriptions mention attacks on temples by Hindu rulers more frequently than they mention the Muslim attacks over India.
It should be noted here that Hindus at that time did not view the raids by Mahmud or other Muslims into the Subcontinent as being “Muslim” attacks (Thapar, Somanatha, 98, 164). Rather, they tended to think of them in terms of the invaders’ nationalities. The attacks were perceived as being attacks by Turks, Central Asians etc as such, and there was no such antagonism amongst the Hindus. They did view the attacks with distaste but there was no Hindu versus Muslim antagonism, and there was no trauma amongst Hindus as such over the attacks. They were used to invasions for a long time (the Greeks, Huns, Kushans and many others had invaded India in the past). One reason why the Hindus of Somanatha at that time might not have been so bitter about the destruction of the temple might be because the effects of the destruction were very short lived, the region slipped back into Hindu control very soon, and the economy thrived so much so that it reached a peak that was never seen before Mahmud had invaded the region. Perhaps all this covered up the initial short-lived resentment that might have been there amongst Hindus. Sanskrit inscriptions state that the temple of Somanatha was reconstructed and renovated several times over the ages. However, they state that this was done because the temple was withering away with age, they do not say that reconstructions were done because the temple got attacked (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 81, 189).
We now come to the British versions of Mahmud’s raid on Somanatha. The British tended to take for granted that the versions of history coming from Muslim historians, particularly Farishta, were accurate (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 163-164). They did not consider the Sanskrit accounts or versions of history available in other regional languages. The British, like other Europeans, looked upon the Muslims as being barbarians. They came up with the notion that Mahmud had turned the greenery of India into deserts, and that the British were now there to return to India its gardens (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 164). They tried to understand the Indian society in terms of being characterized by a clear-cut dichotomy between the Muslims and Hindus, and hence came up with the notions of “Hindu rule” and “Muslim rule” over the Subcontinent (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 164). In order to prolong their presence in India, they used the “divide and rule” strategy and started up the Hindu versus Muslim antagonism. The version of Mahmud’s raid on Somanatha which is today believed to be a source of deep antagonism between Hindus and Muslims was fanned during the British rule over India. To some extent, it can be said that Muslim historians are to be blamed too because it is infact their version which the British used to propagate. However, we must remember that these versions were largely exaggerated.
It should be mentioned here about the controversy of the gates of Somanatha temple. In about 1842, Lord Ellenborough came up with “The Proclamation of the Gates” and a debate arose in the House of Commons (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 166). The British had went to war in Afghanistan, and at Ghazni, they plucked out the gates from Mahmud’s tomb, bringing them back to India as trophies, proclaiming them to be gates of the Somanatha temple. How Lord Ellenborough came to think of these gates as being from the temple of Somanatha remains a mystery as there are no historical accounts in Turko-Persion sources of Mahmud taking any gates from the temple with him back to Ghazni (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 167). Even the design of the gates was not Indian (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 168). The British brought these gates to India with a huge publicity, hoping to win over loyalties of the Hindus by showing themselves as their saviors and protectors of their interests in India (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 169-170). The impact was not up to their expectations as the Hindus were not incited against Muslims as that time (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 169), which makes one think that the present Hindu-Muslim antagonism probably arose after the Indian War of Independence in 1857. Matters concerning India were of much interest in the House of Commons at that time; Macaulay’s “Minute of India Education” to establish English as the medium of instruction in India had been discussed a few years back. People in the House debated about what motivated Ellenborough to start the controversy, whether it was right to use religious differences to fuel Hindu-Muslim antagonism or would it be in their national interest (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 171). Whatever the case, the story of the so-called gates of Somanatha did not yield the desired results at that time and the story was abandoned subsequently. The gates today lie abandoned in a room in the Agra Fort.
The present Somanatha temple was constructed after Independence in 1951 (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 186). The reconstruction required clearing away of the ruins from the site. Archeologists and historians protested at the idea as they thought as they did not want past politics to destroy the historical site. Their efforts were overruled and the site was identified as a Hindu national monument. Munshi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel used the temple as a symbol of the resurgence of ‘Hindu’ nationalism and liberty from Muslim ‘foreign’ oppression. The non-Hindus were not allowed to worship in the new temple. Munshi spoke of the rebuilt temple as being associated with the Government of India and this stance was vehemently opposed by Jawaharlal Nehru since it went against his policy of a secular government ruling over India. This position of Nehru was different from that of Vallabhbhai Patel who was the Home Minister from Gujarat (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 190). Nehru was adamant that the funding for rebuilding the temple should come from public donations and not from the Government of India (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 191).
The ratha-yatra of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Janata Party offset the secular credentials of Indian government. It was designed to mobilize support for the destruction of Babri Mosque and it began its journey from Somanatha in September 1990. The second gathering in 1992 resulted in the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya, leading to the violence which ended in the killings in Gujarat in 2002. The motivation behind all this was the theory of antagonism that had always existed between Muslims and Hindus, a theory fanned by the British in India. It was the result of the debate in the House of Commons and the resulting religious nationalisms which arose from it (Thapar, Somanatha, pg 194).
In the end, it can be concluded from the research that Mahmud’s raid on Somanatha was not historically a significant event. However, in subsequent years it was made to seem to be so crucial in Indian history that it has today infact become important.
Research based on:
1. "Mahmud of Ghazna: Biography from Answers.com." Answers.com: Wiki Q&A Combined with Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Encyclopedias. Web. 14 May 2010.
2. "Muslims Invade India." Voice of Dharma. Web. 14 May 2010.
2. http://www.cyberistan.org/misub28294445.pdf
Thapar, Romila. Penguin History of Early India: from the Origins to A.D.1300. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Thapar, Romila. Somanatha: the Many Voices of a History. London: Verso, 2005. Print.
Tarikh-i Farishta (Call number KIC 954.022 M952T, available in LUMS Library).
The life and times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna / Muhammad Nazim (Call number KIC 958 M952L 1971, available in LUMS Library).
Somnath ki Fatah, by Muhammad Husain Azad. From an Urdu textbook used in the curriculum of Matric Board of Karachi.
(This article was written by me for my Themes in South Asian History class, taught by the acclaimed historian Dr Ayesha Jalal at LUMS in my Junior year.)
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