Farming Hatred in the Name of History — Aurangzeb, Temples and Today’s Hollow Speeches

Imagine driving your car at a speed of 100 kilometres per hour on a modern highway.

If, instead of looking at the vast road ahead, the driver keeps their eyes glued constantly to the car’s tiny ‘rear-view mirror’, what would happen? Within mere seconds, the car would crash into a divider or a tree and be smashed to pieces!

The purpose of a rear-view mirror is merely to catch a quick glimpse of what lies behind while making a turn; you can never journey forward while looking backward.

Today, this very same lethal game is being played with the politics of our beloved nation, India!

In the 21st century, when the world is engaged in a race for artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductor chips, cancer cures, and establishing colonies in space—what are the subjects of the speeches delivered from morning to evening every day across our country’s TV channels, in Parliament, and at election rallies?

• “What did Aurangzeb do four hundred years ago?”
• “Which monument did Babur demolish five hundred years ago?”
• “What did Alauddin Khalji eat and wear seven hundred years ago?”

In a country where 45% of the youth wander about unemployed, where every exam paper gets leaked, where children die in government hospitals due to a lack of oxygen—why does the politics of that country want to keep the public occupied in digging up 400-year-old graves?

---

The Weaponisation of History: An Infallible Formula for Masking Failures

In his book ‘Anokha Bharat’ (Incredible India), author N. Singh offers a psychological and sociological analysis of this political misuse of history:

1. Fleeing from Present Accountability: For any incompetent and corrupt government, providing jobs to today’s youth, ensuring fair prices for farmers’ produce, and controlling inflation is immensely difficult work. It demands tough decisions and sound policymaking. But delivering incendiary speeches in the name of Aurangzeb and Babur costs absolutely nothing! It incurs no budgetary expenditure, and the public, caught in the frenzy of hatred, forgets their empty pockets and unemployment.
2. Selective Interpretation of History: History is never black and white; it is grey. The wars fought between kings in medieval times were not religious, but purely wars of ‘imperial expansion and power’. The Mughal army boasted prominent Hindu generals such as Man Singh, Mirza Raja Jai Singh, and Jaswant Singh; and the master gunner of Maharana Pratap’s artillery was Hakim Khan Sur! The head of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s navy, Dariya Sarang, was a Muslim. Yet, today’s opportunistic leaders conceal these facts and reduce all of history into nothing more than a ‘Hindu versus Muslim’ riot.
3. Peddling Psychological Inferiority: Fear is drilled into the minds of the people that you are in danger, that your religion is in danger. A frightened person never thinks about their rights, education, or employment; they merely search for a ‘protector’, and Netaji [the political leader] presents himself as that very messiah.

---

A Society Chasing History versus a Society Building the Future

---

The Bitter Truth from the Book: N. Singh’s Direct Warning

Author N. Singh writes in the chapter ‘The Ghost of History and the Ruin of the Present’ of his book ‘Anokha Bharat’:

“The problems of the present cannot be tackled by digging up the graves of the dead. The very politics that cannot provide employment to today’s youth is the politics that peddles them the intoxication of four-hundred-year-old hatred. Aurangzeb has already paid for his deeds and turned to dust; Babur’s empire has long ended. As of today, India’s real enemy is no medieval sultan; today, India’s real enemy is malnutrition, illiteracy, unemployment, crumbling hospitals, and that corrupt system which is murdering the dreams of every youth! If we do not come to our senses even now, future generations will revile not our history, but this madness of ours—that when the country needed scientists, we were measuring temples and mosques among the ruins!”
— N. Singh (Anokha Bharat, pp. 234–235)

The author goes on to ask a deeply poignant question:

“Can a patient gasping on a ventilator in a hospital ICU be saved by asking which king demolished what four hundred years ago? Medicine will come from the present, not from the hatred of history!”
— (Anokha Bharat, p. 238)

---

Four National Steps to Break Free from This Frenzy

1. Strict Enforcement of the Places of Worship Act (1991): The law mandating that any place of worship be maintained in the exact status it held on 15 August 1947 must be adhered to in letter and spirit, so that fresh disputes are not manufactured each day.
2. Emphasis on the Scientific Study of History: Instead of reducing history to mere sagas of kings and battles, it must be taught objectively through the perspective of socio-economic development, art, literature, and the lives of ordinary people.
3. Questioning Leaders on Their Present Report Card: Whenever any politician seeks votes in the name of history, the public should fold their hands and ask them—“Netaji, first tell us: how many government hospitals and colleges were built in our district over the last five years?”
4. Stringent Penalties for Media Spreading Communal Hatred: Strict legal action must be taken against the broadcasting of TV channels that stage Hindu–Muslim debates for TRPs and inject poison into society.

---

A Question for Reflection (The Book’s Message)

Do we want to give our children an India where they keep polishing the swords of hatred in the rubble of history, or an India where, on the strength of science and knowledge, they lead the world?

To be wary of the political stratagems of history and to understand the blueprint of India’s golden future, every young person and student must make it a point to read this chapter of N. Singh’s timeless book ‘Anokha Bharat’.