So the impetus for this post came from what seems to be a copy-paste comment circulating on right wing nationalist Indian forums:
https://www.change.org/p/bring-back-king-prithviraj-chauhan-s-remains-from-afghanistan
Yes – even a petition was created to raise awareness for that comment. Scrutinise it, however, and you’ll find a trove of false, revisionist history being peddled as “fact”.
To provide some context for this comment, Prithvi Raj Chauhan was an Indian king who ruled parts of north-western India in the late 12th century. His rule was marked by conflicts against neighbouring Hindu kingdoms as well as against Sultan Muhammad of Ghor. The Ghors, or the Ghurid Dynasty, ruled a predominantly Islamic kingdom stretching from modern day Iran to north-western India at its apex. In 1191 and 1192, the Ghurids clashed with Chauhan’s forces in the 1st and 2nd battles of Tarain. The first battle ended with a Ghurid defeat and withdrawal, while the second resulted in a decisive Ghurid victory. The 2nd battle of Tarain also led to the vassalization of Chauhan’s former kingdom by the Ghurids.
–Rant begins (the italicised bits are from the offending source)
According to reports, it is now a part of the tradition in Afghanistan that those who pay visit to the tomb of Mohammad Ghori first disrespect the grave of pridhvi raj chauhan by stamping and jumping on the place, where the Indian emperor’s mortal remains are buried. The inscription on the tomb reads: “Here lies the Kafer king of Delhi.”
It’s very telling if the first claim made in any historical post is inaccurate. It shows that on a very basic level, the post doesn’t really have any substantial, contemporary impetus that warrants a proper discussion. And that is pretty much the case here: There are no substantiated claims of Chauhan’s mysterious Afghan grave. The only sources that echo this claim are a few far right blogs and websites which parrot Sher Singh Rana’s assertion of a heavily abused grave in Afghanistan.
For some context, Rana is a politician who was convicted of the vendetta-related murder of politician Phoolan Devi in 2014. It is fairly easy to see why someone like Rana has an obvious incentive to distort the truth, or to straight up falsify his observations in order to garner public support. Between him and the lack of credible, archaeological evidence, I’d say that Chauhan’s grave probably does not exist in the exaggerated manner depicted.
Prithvi Raj defeated Ghori (In the first battle of Tarain in 1191) and captured him.
Ghori begged Prithvi for mercy and release. Prithviraj’s ministers advised against pardoning the aggressor. However, the chivalrous and valiant Prithviraj respectfully released the vanquished Ghori.
The comment then tries to depict a fairly clichéd comparison between Chauhan and Muhammad of Ghor. Chauhan is often portrayed as the paragon of virtue, and a righteous defender of the Hindu faith who held back an “evil, immoral” Muhammad. A lot of sources also tend to refer to him as the “last Hindu King” – invoking a portrayal of him as the last bastion against a flood of Islamic conquerors. To begin with, this narrative isn’t even grounded in factual accuracy. Muhammad was never captured, only to be released by a kind, chivalrous Chauhan. It can be difficult to glean the truth from the various biased and dramatized sources of that era, but none of them support that narrative. The capture of a major Muslim ruler would have been widely reported – and it just isn’t there.
As a prisoner in afganistan Prithvi Raj haughtily looked straight into the Ghoris eyes. On this Ghori made Prithvi blind. Even after loss of his sight, he did not lose courage. He along with his poet friend Chand Bardai killed Ghori through blind archery and then stabbed themselves to put a chivalrous life to an end.
There are a lot of other inaccuracies in this comment I’d have liked to deal with properly. But the biggest problem with this comment is the history surrounding Chauhan’s demise. We know for a fact that Chauhan did not kill Muhammad – the sources that we have access to pinpoint Muhammad’s death years later. The “blind archery contest” and ritualistic suicide are blatant exaggeration, once again not backed up by any credible source. Rather, we now know that Chauhan was to originally be reinstated as a vassal lord under Muhammad. We don’t know what happened that led to Chauhan’s eventual execution – but we do know that his son, Govindaraja IV, was appointed as a vassal ruler over Chauhan’s former kingdom (in Chauhan’s place). In all likelihood, the Ghurid Sultan didn’t simply torture and kill Chauhan just because he looked him in his eye, as Chauhan fit into the Sultan’s plan for governing a subjugated, Hindu-majority region. Maybe Chauhan tried to rebel, or he took his own life – we do not know.
A common thread in my post has been the refrain “we don’t know”. But that’s the thing about history – we may not know what happened to the fullest extent. Historians fill in this gap by logically interpreting the few sources we have access to. The problem with this comment – and with many other revisionist comments, is that a falsified version of history is inserted into the current gaps in our knowledge. It is a version of history that panders to a toxic public sentiment seeking to blame India’s historical weakness entirely on “evil foreigners” who circumvented “good and virtuous” Hindu rulers with their immorality and heresy. To me, it is a version of history that puts our unique and fascinating history to shame, and is at the very least a betrayal of what it means to be Indian.
Historia Populi 