Somnath Temple’s Tale of Desecration and Destruction
Somnath Temple is an expression of fire which renders beauty and luster. You see, the idea of divine in all societies was a culmination of the culture and a way of life. It was not the starting point. Whatever a culture – based on the geography, local dynamics, the social values and mores – held most dear or the highest was known to be the defining characteristics of their idea of god or divine as well.
Some societies, in the East for example, where the idea of seeking for the Truth of existence came about, the definition of what was divine took a more profound exploration. It was no longer a belief in the Sea or the Sun to be the god but the seeking took man to the very levels of being god himself! It was no longer enough to learn what Buddha said. It was important to BE a Buddha! Like Prahalad says in Yoga Vasistha – the benefit of worshipping Vishnu is ONLY when one is Vishnu himself!
Somnath's Tale of Desecration and Attempt to Destroy Dharma in India Click To Tweet
When Divine was Attacked by Those of Manufactured gods
When the idea of divine or god as formed by the cultural ethos of a place was attacked by those who had manufactured a strait-jacketed idea of a geo and history centric god, then a culture was attacked. A cultural ethos with the idea of the divine at the culmination of its experience was sought to be replaced by that manufactured idea. It was not as if just the god was replaced by those who had a manufactured god. Even the culture that manifested the earlier idea of divine was shamed and humiliated and destroyed.
When Moinuddin Chisti came to India along with Mohammad Ghori and repeatedly would cut a cow – along with his followers – and eat beef openly in front of a destroyed temple, it wasn’t because it was his culinary habit. There are after all no cows in Arabia! It was an attempt to hoist a manufactured god by humiliating the local culture. By attempting to destroy it. That is why, the first act on conversion to Islam and Christianity from Hinduism even today is to make the converted eat beef.
Whatever is central to the local culture and values was attempted to be destroyed to ensure the newly manufactured god could be “safe”.
That is the backdrop of conversion by those of Abrahamic beliefs.
Millions of Yogis seeped in search of Truth did unimaginable work on the Spiritual front. Something that had never been done anywhere in the world. And they intertwined their work in the local culture and people in ways that were deeply interconnected. From birth to weddings to death to eating – everything was connected by that one thread of raising the consciousness.
When the Islamic invaders along with their conniving Sufis and Europeans with their scheming missionaries arrived at India’s borders, they didn’t just bring their manufactured gods. They brought a zeal to destroy the culture and its values. To destroy what was held dear by the people. To humiliate the locals. For, hoisting a god was not enough. It couldn’t be safe you see. It had to be accompanied by destroying the local ethos along with it.
Breaking India was as important as Converting India. They understood that latter was not possible without the former.
After all, in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Australia/New Zealand, the whole of Europe – those who could be converted were converted and those who could not, were killed in a genocide that any human, forget god, will be ashamed of. India, somehow, held out.
Somnath Temple’s Tale of Destruction
If there is one icon of resistance of Indian Spiritual ethos to the onslaught of the purveyors of the Abrahamic manufactured god, then it is the Somnath Temple!
It has been destroyed and defiled time and again. only to be reconstructed and redone.
First destruction – 725 CE, Al-Junayd, the Arab governor of Sindh during his invasion of Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Reconstructed – 815 CE, by Gurjara-Pratihara king Nagabhata
Second Destruction – 1024 CE, by Mahmud of Ghazni who plundered and destroyed the Jyotirlinga. Took wealth worth 20 million dinars!
Reconstructed – 1169, by Kumarapala with stone and jewels studded in it
Third Destruction – 1299, by Alauddin Khalji’s army, led by Ulugh Khan – who took the main idol with him to be trampled under the feet of Muslims in Delhi – as documented by Amir Khusrau’s Khazainul-Futuh, Ziauddin Barani’s Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi and Jinaprabha Suri’s Vividha-tirtha-kalpa
Reconstructed – 1308, by Mahipala Deva, the Chudasama king of Saurashtra
Fourth Destruction – 1395, by Zafar Khan, the last governor of Gujarat under the Delhi Sultanate and founder of the Gujarat Sultanate
Fifth Destruction / Desecration – 1451, by Mahmud Begada, the Sultan of Gujarat
Sixth Destruction / Desecration – 1546, by Portuguese
Seventh Destruction – 1665, by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb
Final reconstruction of Somnath
was done in 1950-51 led by Sardar Patel and KM Munshi. The main ceremony for starting the temple was attended by the then President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad – against the wishes of Nehru.
Attacks on and use of Somnath to humiliate the Indian traditions and people have been the consistent strategy and way of both, the Islamic and Christian believers. That is hard to believe that Rahul Gandhi, the Roman Catholic jester of a scheming Catholic Mother went to Somnath Temple out of a sense of devotion.
Instead, the temple hopping is a maneuver to capture power, which he last used to create the false specter and narrative of “Hindu Terror”. When he was working along with the ISI and LeT to not just attack India but to find a way to subjugate the very way of Hindu life. Every Islamic terrorist – in the mold of Khilji and Ghazni – were sanitized to unleash a reign of untold atrocities on innocent Purohit and Pragya.
That he is a non-Hindu is not the point. The point is that he is a Hinduphobic Catholic Bigot who wanted to sanitize Lashkars of Islamic terrors while jailing those who were working for Indian security like Purohit. He is doing exactly what Ghazni, Khilji and Catholic Portuguese did before him.
So, Somnath Temple’s Eighth Desecration – 2017, by Rahul Gandhi.