MISIDENTIFIED HINDU BUILDINGS IN OTHER AREAS

By Stephen Knapp

There are also many other Hindu forts and temples that have been misidentified as being of Muslim origin. Take the Allahabad Fort, which is ascribed to Akbar again. When you consider the intricate design and the ornamental pattern of the windows overlooking the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges rivers, the intricate carvings in some of the inner chambers, the existence of the Ashok Pillar, the Pataleshwar temple, and the Akshayya Wat (immortal banyan tree) inside the fort, this is adequate proof that the fort was built long before the Muslims arrived. Certainly, if it was of Muslim origin there would not have been any temples in the fort, and there would have been no regard for the banyan tree and Ashok Pillar. This is a typical instance of how Indian history has become distorted by the slippery guesswork of some blundering authors. Therefore, the fort was not built by Akbar, but he only occupied it in 1584. In fact, as many as 48 Hindu temples were destroyed by Shahjahan in Allahabad, as he claims in his Memoirs. Thus, his pride was toward destroying what the Hindus had built.

Other places that have experienced great Vedic temples being turned into mosques include Mathura at Krishna’s birth place where Aurangzeb destroyed the temple and built a mosque in its place. The same thing happened at Banaras (Varanasi) where Aurangzeb destroyed the original Vishwanatha Shiva Temple as well as the Bindu Madhava Krishna Temple. Both important temples were destroyed and mosques were put in their places. Smaller Vedic temples had to be rebuilt in those places again. In Ayodhya, the Babri Masjid mosque was built 500 years ago where a Rama temple once stood. This had been greatly debated, but recent archeological evidence shows that a beautiful Vishnu temple did once stand there. In Pune, the former Punyeshwar and Narayaneshwar temples are now known as Sheikh Salla Dargahs. The so-called Ganesh Peth in Pune is a captured Dattatreya temple. For the past few years it has been reluctantly admitted that the Kamalmaula mosque at Dhar in Central India is the ancient Saraswati Kanthabharana. The falling of the camouflaging plaster has revealed the stone panels with Sanskrit dramas inscribed on them. These are just a few of the places, besides the ones already mentioned, that are scattered across India where there has been the attempt to destroy Vedic culture.

One question we could ask: If there are so many historic buildings in Delhi, Agra, Ajmer, Ahmedabad, Bijapur, Gulbarga, Bidar, Mysore, Bangalore, Srirangapatnam, Aurangabad, and so many other places that are ascribed to Muslim invaders, then what is left to be claimed by the millions of Hindus who have lived here for thousands of years? Should we think that they were simply content to live in tents amidst forests, fields and wild beasts? Just by a short study of the ancient Vedic texts and the depth of knowledge and spiritual understanding that they have, we can understand that such would never be the case. Thus, we must conclude that much of what was once a part of Vedic culture has been hidden, or attempted to be kept secret, by the deliberate manipulation of the true history of India. It is time to uncover that history as we have tried to do in presenting the above information.