How Bibek Debroy helped revive a forgotten aspect of the Qutub Minar complex

Soon after, the ASI took up the Anang Tal. People abruptly seemed to retrieve that it was the ASI nether legendary archaeologist B R Mani which excavated the tract and recorded its historicity. A fewer months on, the large king of Delhi’s memorial was gazetted arsenic a nationalist monument, with different authorities agencies acting accelerated to person the country cleaned up. This, I know, was acknowledgment to Bibek da.

The Qutub analyzable had Hindu Vedik and Jain iconography — sculptures and beauteous murals of Ganga, Yamuna, Navagrahas, Krishna’s birth, Mahavira, Tirthankars, a calf with its parent — that remained unseen. This was a effect of the demolition of 27 temples of King Anang Pal Tomar’s Vedic and Jain temples by Qutb ud-Din Aibak. The icon of Hindu technological cognition and technology, the robust pillar that does not rust was primitively known arsenic Vishnu Garud Dhwaj — the accepted temple emblem pillar. It stood successful the beforehand courtyard of the temples that were demolished to physique a Qutub mosque. The beforehand doorway to the “mosque” tract declared proudly successful Arabic however Qutb ud-Din demolished these 27 temples to go a ghazi. That declaration was besides ne'er brought to the cognition of the visitors by apologists.

I told Bibek da that this minar indispensable not simply beryllium a spot to instrumentality pridefulness and person picnics in. It is simply a spot of mourning that reverberates with the symptom and cries of our subjugated ancestors.

Bibek da spent 2 hours with our NMA team, seeing each partition and the chromatic astatine the Qutub analyzable — Suparna ji with him. Soon, the Ministry of Culture swung into enactment to person these icons decently explained and identified for visitors — doing justness to information and objectivity.

Later, helium was instrumental successful bringing retired a important argumentation thesis — nether the authorship of his beloved person Sanjeev Sanyal — titled ‘Monuments of National Importance: The Urgent Need for Rationalisation’. Bibek da gave maine the privilege to beryllium interviewed connected his hour-long Lok Sabha TV show, Itihasa, connected however we are ignoring monuments of triumph and valour portion highlighting irrationally the monuments of invaders and those that correspond our colonisation.

Bibek da understood the psyche of Bharatvarsh. He translated Mahabharata and was arsenic fluent successful Sanskrit arsenic successful English. With Itihasa, helium gave america an instauration to facets of India that we knew small about. His passing distant has near the federation bereft of a sage who re-interpreted a Sanatan Bharat for billions of Indians.

The writer is simply a erstwhile Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP and erstwhile president of the National Monuments Authority