| P.n. Oak |
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LIFE Dozens of websites refer to him as "Professor P. N. Oak" BBC Blog (h2g2) page that can be created by any user, is often referred to as BBC 's having accepted the Oak claims. See the sulekha.com and garysellers citations. http://vinram.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/08/bbc-says-about-taj-mahal-hidden-truth-never-say.htm http://garysellers.blogspot.com/2005/03/taj-mahal-not-made-by-shahajahan-bbc.html, but he does not appear to have any academic credentials. According to his own account, he was born in Indore , Madhya Pradesh . After completing his M.A. ( Agra ) and L.L.B ( Mumbai , he joined the Indian army during World War II . He was in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese, and thereafter he joined the Indian National Army and was involved in Radio bulletins. "From 1947 to 1974 his profession has been mainly journalism having worked on the editorial staffs of the Hindustan Times and The Statesman , as a Class I officer in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and as editor in the American Embassy's Information Service." Oak's account of his own life THEORIES He has written several books and articles about the history of India. His interest in rectifying what he believes to be "the biased and distorted versions of India's history produced by the invaders and colonizers" encouraged him to start the Institute for Rewriting Indian History on June 14 1964 . He says that in modern India secular and Marxist historians fabricated "idealized versions" of India's past and drained it of its Vedic context and content. Oak's work typically seeks to proclaim the virtues and achievements of Hindu culture and religion over other traditions. He claims that both Islam and Christianity originated as distortions of Vedic beliefs.
He also says that the in Mecca, and Stonehenge — were also Hindu temples or palaces.
Considering the possibility that the Taj Mahal was ''not'' a Shiva temple, Oak says that it might then have been the palace of a '', April 29, 2001.. Often, his claims are saidhttp://vinram.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/08/bbc-says-about-taj-mahal-hidden-truth-never-say.htm http://garysellers.blogspot.com/2005/03/taj-mahal-not-made-by-shahajahan-bbc.html to be based on a BBC report, but it turns out the page referred to is in the blog area (h2g2) at the BBC site, where pages can be put up by any reader. Criticism of Oak's theories Oak's theories, viewed as 'eccentric' fringe scholarship, have rarely been directly discussed by mainstream scholars. Carl Ernst and Annmarie Schimmel write: : "The more extreme manifestations of anti-Muslim sentiment are visible .... ; examples that come to mind include .... the eccentric P. N. Oak, whose "Committee to Rewrite Indian History" maintains that there is no Islamic architecture in India, only defaced Hindu buildings." (p. 36) 4 Rebecca Brown of the University Of Redlands cites his work as an "example of ... revisionist history as subtle as Captain Russell 's smirkRebecca Brown, ''Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies'' 34.1 (2004) 78-80. K. N. Panikkar , a well known historian said in an address at Stanford on Rewriting History that Oak's "main contribution is the identification of every medieval monument as a Hindu structure" Stanford India Association . , 2003. According to Akbar S. Ahmed : The Taj has recently entered a controversy which reflects the politics of modern India. Hindu fundamentalists, wishing to deny any positive role of Muslims in India, argue that it was not built by Shah Jahan. They claim Hindu rulers in the fourth century built it. Books with titles such as ''Taj Mahal Was a Rajput Palace'' (P.N. Oak, 1965) further argue this position. There is no merit in the argument, but it has acquired something of a popular following in India." 5 Muslim critics have criticized Oak's "creative" etymology of Islamic terminology. According to Mujlisul-Ulema: Oak betrays his ignorance of Islam in similar fashion by tendering the following point in substantiation of the "dish" theory: Support for his theories P. S. Bhat and A. L. Athawale in wrote "The question of The Taj" in "Itihas Patrika, Vol. 5 1985", a publication of the so-called "Institute for Rewriting Indian History" in support of Oak, saying his writings "place in perspective some of the pertinent questions that arise on the subject." It does not appear that he has much support outside this Institute founded by him, certainly not in the main community of Indian historians. LEGAL ACTION In 2000, the India's Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Oak that sought to declare that a Hindu king had built the Taj Mahal. The court reprimanded him for bringing the action, saying he had a "bee in his bonnet" about the Taj. Oak had sued to break open the s or other temple items were hidden by Shah Jahan. According to Oak, the Indian Government 's refusal to allow him unfettered access amounts to a Conspiracy against Hinduism. In 2005 a similar petition was dismissed by the Allahabad High Court . This case was brought by Amar Nath Mishra, a social worker and preacher who says that the Taj Mahal was built by the Hindu King Parmar Dev in 1196. NOTES LIST OF BOOKS BY P.N. OAK
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