Folksutra

It is refreshing to see the term “Timurid” being used instead of “Mughal” by important voices in history.

Haha… is she Bengali enough by culture? The “Śrīrām Pācālī” by poet Krittibas Ojha exclusively has Shri Ram worshipping Maa Durga. Only the uncultured would make such a statement about a polytheistic system.

Sadar Pranam Pradhansewak @narendramodi ji! I humbly seek your attention towards a matter where your own words and vision were misrepresented to justify the curtailment of my Freedom of Expression. It has now been 115 days since I first wrote this letter (in quoted post). I understand fully that, as the leader of Bharat and one of the most important statesmen in the world, your responsibilities are immense. Yet every citizen, however small, seeks justice and dignity; and today I write with that hope. Over the years, through extensive work with primary historical sources; including learning Farsi to read original manuscripts myself; I attempted to bring forward uncomfortable but documented truths regarding the Timurids (wrongly termed “Mughals”) and medieval Indian history. My research exposed (I’m first Indian to do these): A) Each and every documented atrocities and actions of Babur against Hindus B) The fabricated “Bhopal Wasiyat of Babur,” falsely used to establish secular credentials C) Myths surrounding the destruction of the Ram Mandir, including identifying the actual perpetrators D) How the Timurids systematically extracted wealth (and even transferred out of India) from Bharat and impoverished Bharatiyas E) That the Timurids never truly viewed Bharat as their homeland F) Capital punishment imposed upon Hindus during Timurid rule for marrying Muslim women — exposing the hollow romanticism around so-called “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb” G) The devastating famine under Shahjahan, where deaths are estimated to have exceeded even the Bengal famine associated with Churchill …among many other findings rooted in archival evidence. For this scholarship, I was met not with debate, but with intimidation, defamation, and organised attempts to silence me. Threats were issued to burn my books. Under the watch of @CMMadhyaPradesh, my works were effectively banned from a literature festival. Officials including the Director of Sahitya Akademi and the Vice Chancellor of @MCNUJC_Bhopal openly justified suppressing my participation at @bhopal_lit_fest. Most painfully, the Vice Chancellor of the university, @vijaye9, even invoked and misrepresented your own words and principles in an Op-Ed published in @OpIndia_in to justify curbing my session. Link: hindi.opindia.com/opinion/so… I had also written in detail to Education Minister @dpradhanbjp regarding these actions, but unfortunately nothing changed. What saddened me most was not merely the opposition from ideological adversaries, but the silence and hostility from those who claim to stand for civilisational truth. For decades, we lamented the distortion of Bharat’s history by Leftist academia. Yet today, even genuine archival scholarship is often abandoned in favour of slogans and optics. The entire episode turned the so-called Right Wing into a spectacle before the same Left-liberal ecosystem, which once again found an opportunity to portray organisations like Bajrang Dal and VHP as intolerant aggressors — especially when threats were openly made to disrupt my session and burn my books. This experience has deeply shaken me. Five years ago, I had promised readers a comprehensive historical series on every Timurid emperor. My two-volume work (covers attached) on Babur was only the beginning. I was preparing to continue with Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjahan, and Aurangzeb. But today, I genuinely wonder whether serious indigenous scholarship in Bharat has any institutional support at all. If voices working directly with primary sources are isolated, vilified, and silenced, then perhaps our future generations are destined to inherit history solely from authors like Audrey Truschke; who have already laboured extensively to sanitise figures like Aurangzeb. I still hope that your esteemed office will look into this matter and uphold the principles of intellectual freedom, honest scholarship, and civilisational self-respect. CC @AmitShah @MinOfCultureGoI