Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that the attacks on the Somnath Temple were not merely about economic loot, as the attackers would have stopped after the first major plunder if that had been the case.
Addressing a gathering on the final day of the four-day Somnath Swabhiman Parv, Modi said, “If the attacks on Somnath were only for economic loot, they would have stopped after the first major plunder a thousand years ago. But that did not happen.”
He said that after Independence, efforts were made to “whitewash” foreign attacks and present them as routine acts of plunder. “The temple was attacked again and again, its idols were broken, its form was altered repeatedly, and yet we were taught that it was only about loot,” he said.
The Prime Minister alleged that the “contractors of appeasement” had raised objections when the temple was being reconstructed in 1951.
“The contractors of appeasement bowed before radical thinking. When India was freed from the shackles of slavery, and when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel took the oath for the reconstruction of Somnath, attempts were also made to stop him. In 1951, objections were also raised when Dr Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India, visited the temple,” he said, in a veiled attack on former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
“Unfortunately, even today, forces remain active in the country that opposed Somnath’s reconstruction,” Modi added.
The Prime Minister said that the history of Somnath is not one of destruction and defeat, but of victory and reconstruction.
“A thousand years ago, those tyrants thought they had conquered us. But even today, a thousand years later, the flag fluttering atop the Somnath Mahadev Temple proclaims to the entire world the power and might of Hindustan,” he remarked.
Modi said that the Somnath Swabhiman Parv, held to mark 1,000 years since the first invasion of the Somnath Temple in 1026 by Mahmud of Ghazni, is a commemoration of continuity.
“This festival is not merely a remembrance of the destruction that occurred a thousand years ago. It is a celebration of a thousand-year journey, and of India’s existence and pride,” he added.