The tale of two Somnaths

Loud discussions on how Muslim raiders from Ghazni plundered Somnath temple, on the Gujarat coast a thousand years ago, ignore how Jain ‘basadi’ in Karnataka were replaced by Somanatha Shiva temples around the same time. This is also the time when Rajaraja Chola marched up the eastern coast of India, plundering the kingdoms of Andhra, Odisha, and Bengal and bringing back images of Bhairava and Kali.

The right-leaning historian prefers the Hindu-Muslim tales and ignores the Jain-Hindu or Hindu-Hindu conflict. The left-leaning historian uses the same information to downplay the religious motivation underlying the Turkish raids.

In academic and political circles today, the discussion around history rarely remains just a discussion. It quickly turns into a contest – a struggle to win, to prove that one’s point of view is the only legitimate truth and everyone else is either ignorant or malicious. The culture of argument and debate, which was meant to refine knowledge, has been weaponised to destroy nuance.

When scholars debate, they are often not just presenting ideas; they are trying to triumph over other ideas. This was never the purpose of academic debate. The point of intellectual confrontation was once to push boundaries, to refine old knowledge by bringing in new perspectives. Today, however, the trend is to mock alternative viewpoints, to caricature opposing interpretations rather than understand them. What begins as intellectual one-upmanship in classrooms and conferences slowly seeps into the political sphere and then into popular discourse.

The study of history, especially in India, has suffered enormously from this attitude. One can see this in the polarised way historical figures and episodes are discussed. When a ruler’s legacy is invoked, there are only two acceptable narratives. One side glorifies, the other demonises, and the space for critical, balanced analysis disappears.

Consider the case of Tipu Sultan, a ruler who has become a lightning rod for modern ideological battles. On one side, right-wing narratives portray Tipu as a barbarian who oppressed Hindus and destroyed their temples. On the other, left-leaning narratives describe him as a proto-secular ruler who treated Hindus and Muslims equally, who funded temples and mosques alike, and was no different from a Hindu king.

When one examines historical records closely, both positions are misleading. Tipu Sultan patronised temples in his core Mysore territories, such as the Chamundeshwari Temple and the Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangapatna, granting funds and protecting their rituals. At the same time, his armies looted temples during military campaigns in Malabar, as seen in the case of the Guruvayur Temple, though the idol was saved.

Neither story – the hero nor the villain – captures the complexity of a ruler who acted as both a patron and a plunderer, depending on political expediency and ideological context. But both the right and the left refuse to accept this layered reality because each side is less interested in history and more invested in an agenda.

The same distortion applies to another lesser-known historical story: the Somnath temple in Karnataka.

Popular imagination focuses on the 10th-century raid of the Somnath temple in Gujarat by Mahmud of Ghazni – an episode repeatedly invoked to depict Islamic iconoclasm. But very few mention that in 12th-century Karnataka, Jain shrines were gradually replaced or converted into Shaiva (Shiva) temples, like the Somnath temple at Lakshmeshwara. This shift reflected changing religious patronage as Shaivism rose and Jainism declined in political power.

The Shaiva-Jain conflict was not a minor footnote in medieval Karnataka’s history. It was a structural transformation of society and religion. But it rarely features in mainstream political debates because it doesn’t fit either side’s neat storyline. What these two examples reveal is not simply distortion of historical facts, but a crisis in how we approach knowledge itself. Debate, which should ideally lead to greater understanding, has become a tool for triumphalism. Instead of absorbing multiple perspectives and creating a fuller picture, academic and political debates encourage mutual exclusion: if one side is right, the other must be entirely wrong.

A nation-state needs loyal citizens, especially when it is surrounded by hostile nation-states. This poses a problem for historians. Should history indulge the needs of the nation? Or should it criticise the nation’s past in the pursuit of truth? Should we downplay conflicts of the past that can threaten the nation’s fabric?

For the right-leaning, it is all about religion. For the left-leaning, religion is just cultural whitewashing; the real reason is wealth and power. The former insists they are nationalists, which makes their opponents anti-national. The latter insists they are truth-seekers and justice-seekers, despite being driven by ideology. History remains more belief-based, i.e. mythical, than academicians are willing to admit.

The writer works with gods and demons who churn nectar from the ocean of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, Christian, even secular mythologies.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.