How tales of Hindu ‘valour’ in the face of Muslim ‘invasions’ or Muslim bravery against Hindu 'cowardice' have become national truths in both India and Pakistan
Partitioned along religious lines in 1947, India and Pakistan became Hindu and Muslim-dominant countries respectively, resulting in the exodus of a large Hindu population from Pakistan into India, and vice versa. In the years to come, as these two countries constructed ‘national stories’, history with all its characters was also partitioned into Pakistani and Indian versions.
This framework of extolling Muslim kings also crept into archaeology and heritage preservation. In the 1970s the populist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ordered the renovation of the much-neglected mausoleum of Qutubuddin Aibak in Lahore. King of north India for a short period of time in the 13th Century, Aibak rose to power from the humble origins of being a slave, his story neatly fitting into the narrative of comparing the ‘democratic’ spirit of Islam with a ‘caste-ridden’ Hinduism.
This process of historical appropriation has only gained momentum under the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party which has been in power since 2014. As part of the same process, the Punjab government on June 27, in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, inaugurated the statue of Ranjit Singh, an 18th-century Sikh ruler who has long been portrayed as a villain in Pakistani historiography, celebrated in India. This was a rather remarkable step for a state that has demonised non-Muslim kings and history since its inception.
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