“Thus, the way Romila Thapar equates Mahmud Ghaznavi with Harsha of Kashmir (twelfth century) as being both temple plunderers, can be shown up to be in gross conflict with the contemporary testimonies about the two….. Romila Thapar's explanation that Ghaznavi's behaviour was essentially the same as Harsha's, can only rest on an utter incompetence in reading the source material, or in a deliberate attempt to distort history. What is more, if at all one wants to compare Harsha's behaviour with that of the Muslim rulers, one should face the connection that the contemporary historian Kalhan explicitly makes. Commenting on Harsha's temple plundering, he writes :"Prompted by the Turks in his employ, he behaved like a Turk"…. Kalhan is simply saying that the very idea that a temple need not be respected, was borrowed by Harsha from the Muslim Turks. These already had a well-established reputation for temple desecration, and that is a fact to which the Nehruvian historians prefer not to draw the readers' attention….. So, here we have a case of a history professor who does not realize that the proofs he cites have hardly any logical connection with the thesis he proposes; or who is so assured about his eminence that he doesn't expect readers to notice the faulty reasoning.”

Koenraad Elst 1991: Ayodhya and after: issues before Hindu society.

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“Interestingly, she [Romila Thapar] has refrained from mentioning the persecution of Buddhists by Pushyamitra Shunga… and the melting of idols by king Harsha of Kashmir, which had so far figured most prominently in the writings of her school. I wonder whether she has realized that those allegations have no legs to stand upon, even though others of her school continue to harp on them.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Sita Ram Goel, Hindu Temples - What Happened to Them?, Appendix IV

“According to the Rajatarirgini of Kalhana, King Harsha of Kashmir plundered Hindu and Buddhist temples in his lust for the gold and silver which went into the making of idols. This fact is played up by the Marxist professors with great fanfare. But they never mention Kalhan’s comment that in doing what he did Harsha “acted like a Turushka (Muslim)” and was “prompted by the Turushkas in his employ.””

Harsha of Kashmir

S.R. Goel, Some Historical Questions (Indian Express, April 16, 1989), quoted in Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them.

“Harsha was a fellow-traveller: not yet a full convert to Islam (he still ate pork), but quite adapted to the Islamic ways, for "he ever fostered with money the Turks, who were his centurions"…. This behaviour was so un-Hindu and so characteristically Islamic that Kalhana reports: "In the village, the town or in Srinagara there was not one temple which was not despoiled by the Turk king Harsha."”

Harsha of Kashmir

Raiatarangini 7:1095; translation by R.S. Pandit, quoted in Elst, K. (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism.

“A third story, about a 12th century king Harsha of Kashmir, is apparently true but has nothing to do with religious persecution: he plundered Hindu temples of all sects including Buddhism, in his own kingdom, without bothering to desecrate them or their keepers apart from lucrative plunder. It is the one geunine case of a ruler plundering not out of religious motives but for the gold. There is no known case of a Muslim marauder who merely stole from temples without bothering to explicity desecrate them, much less of a Muslim ruler who plundered the sanctuaries of his own religion. Moreover, Kalhana's history book Rajatarangini relates this story with the comment: "Promoted by the Turks in his employ, he behaved like a Turk." This Harsha employed Turkish mercenaries (which his successors would regret, for they spied and ultimately grabbed power), and these Muslims already had a firm reputation of plundering temples with a good conscience.”

Harsha of Kashmir

Elst, Koenraad Negationism in India: concealing the record of Islam. 1992

“It is true that in the decades in which India was ruled imperiously by the Congress, the task of writing history textbooks was allotted to Leftist historians who chose to view India’s past through a distorted lens. The most celebrated of these historians, Romila Thapar, has gone so far as to deny that Muslim invaders destroyed the temples of us idolatrous infidels. Undoubtedly, if she were writing about more recent history, she would deny that the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan — and would say that they fell to pieces of their own accord.”

Tavleen Singh (1950) Indian journalist

Tavleen Singh, Fifth column: Cultural renewal Indian Express https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-cultural-renewal/99/ 2019

“Proposals to include Sanskrit in the course offerings were rejected numerous times by scholars who wanted to protect JNU from what they considered to be a majoritarian or Hindu Nationalist agenda. When I questioned Romila Thapar, a well known historian from JNU, about this issue in July 2000, she explained that if students want to learn Sanskrit, “there are so many Maths and Piths around where they can go.””

Yvette Rosser (1952) American activist

She added that “most of the regional colleges have some kind of Sanskrit program”.
Rosser, Yvette Claire (2003). Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Dissertation). University of Texas at Austin.