Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi’s invasion and its consequences

	A 17th century depiction of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi holding court
	The ill-fated Somnath temple, restored many moons later
	Ghaznavi’s tomb
	Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi
	The medieval Ghazni
	Romila Thapar, the renowned historian of antiquity, argues that the temple of Somnath may never have been attacked by Mahmud or that his attack was of little significance. It was the British House of Commons that brought it to life by demanding that the gates of Somnath be brought back from Ghazni. The funny thing is that when these gates arrived from Ghazni in India it was found that they were made in Turkey. The gates were then put in storage for white ants to feast upon!
	Instead of ending caste-ism, the new Muslim rulers of Punjab added another layer to it: they became a super caste overriding all others … while the converted peasantry continued to till the land for the benefit of Muslim warlords from the north, lower class neo-Muslims were employed in court stables and other lowly jobs. Nothing changed for the newly converted Muslim peasantry

Dr Manzur Ejaz writing for The Friday Times’ series entitled: People’s history of the Punjab

Punjab’s fate started changing in the 11th century when Abu Mansur Sebüktegin, a slave king of Ghazni, began invading Raja Jaypal’s Punjab empire which stretched from Kabul eastwards, covering most of northern India. After two inconclusive wars between Jaypal and Sebüktegin, the latter died and his son Mahmud (971-1030) ascended the throne in Ghazni. It was during Mahmud’s several incursions into the Punjab that Muslim rule was established and Lahore became the province’s capital.

Ghazni and areas around it mainly depended upon trade of various goods as well as slaves for its commerce. Renowned from Ghazni to Central Asia these slave markets dealt mainly in slaves captured in remote parts of Central Asia and Russia and later, most numerously, in India. Mahmud’s father, Sebüktegin was himself a Turk slave captured when he was 12 and sold to Alaptigin. When he grew up, his talents were recognized and he married Alaptigin’s daughter and became his general and then his successor. Ghazni and its adjoining areas needed abundant agricultural products and slaves to prosper. This was one of the main reasons why the Punjab, with its rich resources and large population of would-be-slaves, was such an attractive target for the Ghaznavids.

Legend has it that Jaypal, to uphold his honour, burned himself on a pyre after Mahmud defeated him twice (and according to some thrice). Some Hindutva historians maintain that Jaypal and his family were enslaved and taken to Ghazni but the great Raja committed suicide before he was put on the market. However, this is probably not true because after Jaypal, his son Anandpal took over the reins of the empire and continued resisting Mahmud. Eventually, Anandpal was overwhelmed and Mahmud established a government in Lahore.

Mahmud did not only overwhelm Punjab’s Hindu dynasty, he also attacked Multan’s Muslim state in the same manner. Muslim apologists who consider Mahmud a but shikan (an idol destroyer) and great preacher of Islam forget to mention his destruction of Muslim rulers in Multan and elsewhere. And hardline Islamists go further, and vigorously support his invasions because Multan was ruled by Shias and Ismailis whom they do not consider to be real Muslims. Present-day Taliban are following this same tradition.

Sultan Mahmud may have been made a grandiose Muslim icon by the later historians of the Slave Dynasty to legitimize their own rule in India. Similarly, Hindu nationalists exaggerated his killing and plundering to support their own agenda. Muslim historians claim he looted unbelievably large amounts of gold, silver and diamonds from Hindu temples (as in the alleged two hundred maunds of gold from Nagarkot mandir). Hindu nationalists take the same exaggerated numbers and give it their own spin. Muslims call Sultan Mahmud an iconoclast because of his destruction of Somnath temple while Hindus take it as the greatest insult to their religion. However, Romila Thapar, the renowned historian of antiquity, after examining Persian, Gujrati and Sanskrit texts and manuscripts from the temple itself argues that Somnath may never have been attacked by Mahmud or his attack was of little significance. It was the British House of Commons that brought it to life by demanding that the gates of Somnath be brought back from Ghazni. The funny thing is that when these gates arrived from Ghazni in India it was found that they were made in Turkey. The gates were then put in storage for white ants to feast upon!

Sultan Mahmud’s character may have been idealized or demonized by opposing ideologues but it is clear that he targeted Hindu temples that were known for hoarding wealth. Hindu temples were known as depositories of accumulated wealth because they levied high taxes on worshippers and invested heavily in trade, reaping profits from, in most cases, Arab Muslim traders who had settled in the coastal cities of India much before Mahmud was born. In addition, Mahmud’s conquest of Punjab provided multitudes of slaves for Ghazni’s slave market. These slaves were used for private pleasure and for different craft industries manufacturing for the Silk Route trade.

Mahmud’s duels with Indian rulers and elites were very interesting. High caste Hindus, ready to be co-opted or to spy for him, were left alone to stick to their own religion. Many high caste Hindus opportunistically converted to Islam: we have seen the same phenomenon of opportunism during the Muslim rule that followed and even during the Sikh Raj in the Punjab. Therefore, by and large, the same ruling elite retained power after Mahmud established his writ in the Punjab. Nonetheless, many scholars and skilled and talented people ran away towards the south. Al-Beruni, Mahmud’s chronicler wrote: “Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country …This is the reason too why Hindu sciences have retired far away from parts of the country conquered by us and have fled to places, which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benaras and other places.”

Al-Beruni also notes the change in gender relations after Mahmud’s conquest of the Punjab. According to his observation, Punjabi men always used to consult their wives about important matters. However, in Central Asian male chauvinistic society, women were not considered worthy of advice or consideration in important matters. After Mahmud’s occupation of Punjab, women began to lose their previous important status.

Most of all, the Hindu peasants, artisans and those belonging to lower castes bore the brunt of Mahmud’s invasions. After every conquest, most of the fighting men were killed and women and children were taken as slaves to be sold in the Ghazni market. Keeping in mind his talent for exaggeration, the famous historian

Ramachandra Guha’s Lahore Diary

Lahore Diary by Ramachandra Guha (published by Outlook)

A Frontier Malgudi
The day before I was due to depart for Lahore, a publisher friend sent me a story by a writer she referred to as “a sort of Pakistani R.K. Narayan”. I read it on the flight, and found that for once a publisher had sold an author short. Through the character of an ordinary electrician, Daniyal Mueenuddin had uncovered the violence and callousness of everyday life in rural west Punjab of Pakistan. True, the elegance of the prose matched that of the Mysore master. But the world was more brutal, and hence more credible. However, the world I was about to enter was altogether more civil and genteel. Lahore is Pakistan’s most cultured city. In three intense days, I met a cross-section of Pakistan’s thinking classes—journalists, activists, lawyers and economists. Naturally, our talk was dominated by the tensions then prevailing. I sensed, among these sensitive and hospitable people, a triple fear: the fear of their city being overrun by Taliban-style fundamentalists; the fear of their government being taken over once more by the military; the fear that after the recent terror attacks, their country would be shunned and scorned by India, and the world.

Critical Mass Lahore

Critical Mass is a cycling event that takes place in over 200 cities around the world. Lahore has just become a Critical Mass city. The purpose of Critical Mass is to raise awareness, to be healthy and to have fun.

This Sunday’s event is Lahore’s second ever Critical Mass Event.  It’s open to anyone with a road worthy bicycle and a healthy sense of fun. See you there!!!

Lahore band brings revolutionary poetry to life

by Xari Jalil (the NEWS)
Karachi

Laal, a Lahore-based band, held a conference at The Second Floor (t2f) on Friday, during which for the first time, they talked about their upcoming album, expected in February and their music and inspirations.

“It is time you should be seen and not just heard,” said Geo TV Network President Imran Aslam, addressing the band’s members. “I look at you and reminisce our days when we were full of zest and used to be active, but unfortunately a lot of us dropped out of that lifestyle.” He termed the band being an “inspiration” for people, especially the youth, to become active and to think more progressively.

MY FRIEND, THE ENEMY

- The middle class of Lahore feels encircled and beleaguered

The Telegraph – POLITICS AND PLAY RAMACHANDRA GUHA

A tiny slice of life

In the summer of 2008, I accepted an invitation to participate in a meeting of historians to be held in Lahore. On November 24, after months of trying, I finally got a visa from the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi. Two days later, terrorists based in or coming from Pakistan struck in Mumbai. Inevitably, tensions escalated between the two countries.

My meeting was scheduled for the first week of January. Should I go? Must I go? With these questions on my mind, I went off to the Niligiris on a family holiday. A few days before the new year dawned, the ministry of external affairs issued a travel advisory, asking Indian citizens not to travel to Pakistan. My mother, for whom this 50-year-old is, well, still a boy, urged me to heed the advisory. An aunt added that I had no business to visit an “enemy country”, one which, as she put it, “was full of Muslims”. But their sentiments and reservations were vetoed by my teenage daughter, who insisted that I must go to Pakistan, if only to show that “not all of us hate all of them”.

If I chose finally to go ahead with my visit, it was partly out of a sense of professional obligation — some colleagues had been kind enough to invite me, and I could not let them down — and partly out of curiosity — what would Pakistan be like at a time like this?

AN EVENING OF DANCING LIGHTS

Celebrating Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Jahanara

18th January 2009

4pm to 8pm

Upstairs – 1 Bawa Park

please bring a candle and a rose

SIR GANGA RAM: A Brilliant Man of Punjab

Ranpreet Singh Bal ji has sent this exclusive post for Lahore Nama. I am most excited about the fact that Lahore Nama is inviting contributions and increasing readership. Raza Rumi

Ganga Ram was an engineer who designed majestic buildings of Lahore, Amritsar, Patiala and other cities in joint India. He had his early schooling from Amritsar.

This fact has been highlighted in his biography “ Sir Ganga Ram” A man for all seasons, authored by Dr. F.M. Bhatti and reprinted by Sir Ganga Ram heritage foundation Lahore.

While Sir Ganga Ram is still an icon for the residents of Lahore where he got higher education and constructed beautiful structures there.

Ganga Ram was born in 1851 in Mangtanwala about forty miles from Lahore and fourteen miles from Nankana Sahib, his father who was Assistant Sub inspector at a Police station later moved to Amritsar.

He was sent to nearby private school near Darbar Sahib in Amritsar. Sir Ganga Ram mastered in calligraphy and Persian. He passed his matriculation from Government High School and joined the Government College Lahore in 1869.

Afterwards he obtained a scholarship to the Thompson Engineering College Roorki in 1871, where he passed with the Gold medal in 1873.

Lahore Canal to developed into a picnic spot?!

Lahore Branch Canal

LAHORE: The Punjab Irrigation Department will rebuild the Lahore Branch Canal (LBC) in coordination with the Parks & Horticulture Authority (PHA) to promote the canal as a picnic spot.The project aims at adding to the natural scenic beauty of the canal, said Senior Minister Raja Riaz Ahmad while inspecting the desilting of Lahore Branch Canal. Secretary Irrigation Babur Bharwana, Chief Engineer Irrigation Lahore Zone Waqar Ahmad and other concerned officials of the Irrigation Department were also present on the occasion who apprised the senior minister about the pace of desilting works.

Exhibition – A tribute to old Lahore

Laws of learning

A former Punjab University student shares his experiences on the campus

By Rab Nawaz

I belong to the rural upper-class of central Punjab. Despite my mediocre schooling, I developed a profound interest in learning. By the time I knew what academic life could be, I started dreaming of university education. After graduation, the prospect of studying law in Pakistan’s largest university, Punjab University, was nothing short of a dream. At the end of my programme, I cannot help sharing with you my experience.

Lahore in Lucknow

EXPRESS FEATURES SERVICE

NSD’s theatre festival promises dramatic delightsThe play ‘Jinnay Lahore Nahin Vekhya…’ has been translated into several languages and staged innumerable times across the world. Its debut in Lucknow is an opportunity no theatre buff should miss, not just because it is highly acclaimed, but for the reason that it portrays the pain of a family uprooted from Lucknow during Partition and resettled in Lahore.

National School of Drama’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav, popularly known as ‘Bharangam’, is held every year in New Delhi and in one other place. This year, Lucknow has the pride of being part of the festival and patrons here get the chance to see choicest plays from, besides various Indian states, Czechoslovakia, Israel, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. To ensure that the festival is a big draw, the organisers have decided to allow entry free and even offer a bus service to ferry patrons from one venue to another.

A people’s history of the Punjab: Rise of the middle class

Dr Manzur Ejaz says the arrival of the British Raj and their establishment of institutions of education unleashed the province’s creative potential

	Government college Lahore, founded in 1888: the foremost institution to educate the Punjabi middle class
	Sardar Dayal Singh Majithia – a proud son of Lahore
	The British crushed protests ruthlessly
	The Forman Christian College University, Lahore, remains a training ground for the middle classes
	In the Punjab, the Khatris were the dominant caste unlike in the rest of India where Brahmans dominated. Centuries of Muslim rule had weakened the caste system in the Punjab, therefore the Khatris with their education and hard work began to dominate civic life. With the exception of communities of Kashmiri Pandits, in the Indus Valley, the area that now constitutes Pakistan, non-Brahman Hindus enjoyed a more egalitarian existence than elsewhere in India
	Enterprising and robust by nature, urban Punjabis flocked to schools, colleges and universities and many intellectuals from Delhi sought refuge in Lahore after the Mutiny of 1857. By the 1870s, Lahore was way ahead in education and Urdu and Persian literary activity than any other urban centre in North India

After hundreds of years of invasions from the north, the Punjab became stable and at peace with itself under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, notwithstanding the ten year anarchy after his death from 1839-1849. However, when the British conquered the Punjab and made Lahore their capital, the province prospered with huge opportunities opening up for the rising middle class. In a mere fifty years, Lahore’s middle classes entered all sorts of modern professions as well as the government bureaucracy. Many who became lawyers, barristers, doctors, scientists, academics and businessmen came from humble backgrounds and climbed the ladder through their integrity and industry, attributes which were prized by the British.A

Most of the new opportunities were availed of by the Hindu Khatris, and amongst them by the subcastes of Banias and the Aroras. In the Punjab, the Khatris were the dominant caste unlike in the rest of India where Brahmans dominated. Centuries of Muslim rule had weakened the caste system in the Punjab, therefore the Khatris with their education and hard work began to dominate civic life. With the exception of communities of Kashmiri Pandits, in the Indus Valley, the area that now constitutes Pakistan, non-Brahman Hindus enjoyed a more egalitarian existence than elsewhere in India. Writing about the Khatris, a British observer of the time maintained: “besides monopolizing the trades … they are in the Punjab civil service, and have all the literary work of the province on their hands”. At the end of the First World War, 45,000 individuals out of a total population of 280,000 were dependent on business and the civil services whilst other professions employed about 42,000 of which around 5,000 were in medicine and education. These figures show how forward looking Lahore had become.

The socio-religious background of the individuals in these professions is revealing. Although 149,044 (53%) of Lahore’s total population of 280,000 in were Muslim, they were almost absent from business, the civil services or other modern professions. The majority of Muslims were either artisans or workers employed in the craft and manufacturing industries. The backwardness of Muslims was a stark phenomenon in the business savvy city of Lahore.

Some historians maintain that since Punjab’s Sikh rulers were reluctant to hire Muslims in government services, they lagged behind in the acquisition of skills. This does not seem to be valid because the Sikh Raj was too short, about fifty years in total, and many Muslims like the Faqir family occupied the highest offices in Ranjit Singh’s darbar. Similarly, Jarnail Ilahi Bakhsh was the chief of Ranjit Singh’s topkhana (artillery).

Other than the Persian speaking foreign elite, locally converted Muslims were not given jobs in the Mughal administration in preference to better qualified Hindus. Low caste converts to Islam were referred to generically as “Julaha” (weavers) and were looked down upon by the Persian-speaking Mughal elite. A Mughal era historian, Zia-ud-din advised Muslim rulers not to educate the “lowly converts to Islam” because, in his view, it would “bring more evil than good to the empire”. The Mughals much preferred to hire upper caste Hindu converts to Islam and therefore, the backwardness of the Muslim masses had its roots in the system established by the Mughals.

Opportunity presented itself with the opening up of the educational system by the British. Being enterprising and robust by nature, urban Punjabis flocked to schools, colleges and universities and many intellectuals from Delhi sought refuge in the Punjab after the Mutiny of 1857. By the 1870s, Lahore was way ahead in education and Urdu and Persian literary activity than any other urban centre in North India. The Punjab’s first medical college was established in 1860 and the first law college in 1870. Other than these professional institutions, Government College was founded in 1888, Forman Christian College in 1866, Dyanand Anglo-Vedic College in 1888, Islamia College by the Anjmun-i-Himayat-i-Islam in 1892 and Dayal Singh College was established in the same period by the Brahmo Samaj. Besides these, Kinnaird College for Women came into being in 1932 and Aitchison Chiefs’ College was established in 1888 to educate the feudal aristocracy of the Punjab.

This rapidly educating middle class also gave a new boost to industry, commerce and finance. The Land Alienation Act of 1900 that prohibited non-agrarians from owning land – a measure meant to save farmers from moneylenders – also diverted capital towards industry and finance. Industries in Lahore increased from 50 in 1901 to 155 in 1913. The capital invested in such companies increased from Rs. 15,681,000 to Rs. 63,566,941 in a mere decade.

Punjabi entrepreneurship was exemplified by tycoons like Lala Harkishan Lal who was born into a poor family of Khatris from a far flung place called Layyah. He was educated in Lahore and then at Cambridge University. Lal returned to India after finishing his studies and taught at Government College Lahore for a while, but he was an entrepreneur at heart and he floated several financial companies to provide capital to indigenous industries. However, till the Land alienation Act was promulgated none of his ventures prospered. It was a different story after the Land Alienation Act. Between 1901 and 1906 Lal’s financial empire grew to include banks, insurance companies, real estate, soap-making, brick kilns, saw mills and ice factories. And, by no means was he the only entrepreneur: the rapid increase in the number of Punjabi companies indicates the emergence of a large pool of people like him.

Goodbye, Walton

by Ahmad Rafay Alam

This summer I was the lucky recipient of a very special birthday gift: a charter flight over Lahore. I recommend the experience to everyone, more so now, given the tale that is to tell.

While approaching the Walton Airport runway – Walton is Lahore’s original airstrip and is the home of the erstwhile Lahore Flying Club (est. 1930) – and about where our tiny single-propeller Cessna, the Suzuki Alto of the air, crossed Ferozepur Road, I noticed a very large ditch almost directly under the flight path.

Lady of the mosque

The half-encroached Begum Shahi mosque exists as only a figment of Mughal grandeur

By Naila Inayat and Sarah Sikandar

It was a bright winter morning when we undertook to locate the “oldest Mughal mosque in Lahore”, on our own. Not quite familiar with the walled city, we were lost as soon as we entered through the Sheranwala Gate. We kept asking around for Maryam I’Zimani or Maryam Al Zamani mosque also known as the Begum Shahi mosque and were only greeted by don’t-know-what-you-are-saying expressions. Someone in the area told us to take the Moti Bazaar route. We fell for it to find that it was only a good exercise all the way through uncovered drains. The easiest way to locate this mosque is to follow the street opposite Masti Darwaza, right in front of the Akbari gate of the Lahore Fort.

Before going into the predicament of the mosque – hidden behind the encroached houses and markets – let us locate this mosque in the pages of history. According to The Empire of the Great Mughals by Anne Marie Schimmel “One of the most influential women [in the Mughal court] was the Rajput Manmati, who as Jehangir’s mother was honoured with the title Maryam-i-Zimani. She founded the Begum Shahi Mosque in Lahore (1611-14) and constructed the cascading fountain near the idgah in Bayana(1612). When she died in 1623, she was buried in Sikandra, the final resting place of her husband.”

The records are slightly different in The New Cambridge History Of India according to which Begum Shahi mosque is “the city’s oldest surviving Mughal mosque. Located near the fort’s Akbar-period Masti gate, this mosque was probably built as the Jami mosque for those