| ஒத்திசைவு | प्रत्याह्वय | resonance |

We all know that Dalrymple is one of the finest Twistorians that we have been fortunate enough to have in our midst. We also know that he is a skilled Whitewasher, that is, a White lovingly helping us Whitewash the macabre deeds of the Mughals. Thanks so much!

And, as my humble offering, here is an even more loving attempt at annotating & debugging one of his tweets.

As usual, with his overflowing love and affection for Mughals, this time it is the turn of Holy Babur to receive accolades; therefore, the gent had posted a scholarly tweet.

Um, may be he did this, because he gets his sustenance & keep from servicing the memories of Mughals by publishing whitewashed twistories.

(twitter.com/DalrympleWill/status/1125482695369400322)

In which, he unnecessarily dragged in his beloved ‘Sanghis’ – perhaps, they are the ones who have the moral authority and intellectual integrity to question his lies and deceit.

But, tossing that slander aspect aside, let us look at what else has he blathered.

1. “…he never uses the word Allah“

2. “According to his biographer Stephen Dale, “Babur scarcely refers to Islam.“

I responded to his lies in terms of a few tweets – and am capturing all of them here, for the sake of recording them in someplace more permanent – considering the fact that, I have already received a notice from Twitter. ;-)

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I noticed the aforesaid tweet via @IndiaSpeaksPR.

My response, in the following tweets:

Babur VERY MUCH used the term Allah. He was an Islamist. More than that, he was a Sunni supremacist; hater of Shi’ites. Also  proudly called himself a Ghazi.

Far from not mentioning Allah, he actually MINTED coins extolling the virtues of Allah and the twelve Imams.

Here is a proof for Babur minting coins in the name of Allah, from the same Stephen Dale, quoted by Dalrymple.

…Because Dalrymple has NOT read the originals of Baburnama (am doubtful whether he has even read the whole of any english translation of Tuzuk-i-Baburi) he says fanciful things; Insha allah appears manytimes in it. Even in the Annette Susannah Beveridge translation it does. Especially in the second volume.

The thing is, the english translations have translated this word/phrase also – so, the word Allah does not appear as Allah, but as ‘bountiful’ or ‘merciful’ and some such ‘translations.’

(Full disclosure: I do not know Persian either; but, my Persian knowing friend confirms my stance)

If Babur were oh so secular that he did not even use the term ‘Allah,’ why would he lovingly name his son after Islamic terms? (Note: There was an error in the year quoted it should be 6th March, 1508 instead of 1911; have corrected it too. Please read the comment section for details)

And, Babur did not use the term Tengri or even Khuda/Kheda in preference to Allah in Baburnama or anywhere else. (Khuda (Persian “Khoda“) and Tangry (Mongolian “Tengri“))

Can the Whitewasher, even provide a single reference for the Tengri disinformation? At least one single shard of an evidence even? (He is doing all this to prove that Babur was steeped in the steppe beliefs, nature worship and all that – so he is indeed noble)

I am of course very impressed with the scholarly erudition of Dalrymple. :-)

Again… Babur – as a trueblood extremist Sunni, regarded Shias as infections and held them in contempt.

END

Referenced threads:

1. twitter.com/othisaivu/status/1125755317319372800
2. twitter.com/othisaivu/status/1125933914558586880