It was impossible not to be amused with Balbir Punj’s impassioned take-down of Aurangzeb (‘The Aurangzeb we know’, IE, March 27) and the Mughals (read Muslims) and one should offer thanks that he is not and probably never has been a teacher or a student of history! If he were, he would know that Islam did not appear in India with the Mughals but centuries before them on the Malabar coast, and there’s definitely no record of temples being destroyed or the citizenry being compelled to embrace the new religion at that time. And if he delves into his own lineage, I think the odds would be stacked against him: He would discover that he too is a sixth-generation Hindustani, born and brought up here just as Aurangzeb was. Does that make him an invader too?

In a series of staggering generalisations, Punj blames the disappearance of non-Muslim communities from neighbouring countries on the “invaders” who left those countries and came to India. The Mughals, according to him, brutalised our country by succeeding “to an extent in their objective of obliterating the symbols of local inclusive plural culture and decimating the followers of........

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