Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them (Vol. 1, 1991; Vol. 2, 1991; second enlarged edition 1993) is a landmark two-volume work compiled and edited by Sita Ram Goel, with contributions from Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi, and Ram Swarup. It documents the systematic destruction of Hindu temples by Muslim rulers across the Indian subcontinent over a millennium.

Volume I: Hideaway Communalism

Volume I opens with Arun Shourie’s essay “Hideaway Communalism”, which exposes how a book by Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai of Nadwatul-Ulama, Lucknow, listing seven famous mosques built on temple sites, had its controversial passages censored in the English translation supervised by his son, Maulana Abul-Hasan Ali Nadwi (Ali Mian). The volume includes:

  • A list of over 2,000 Muslim monuments built on the sites and/or with materials of Hindu temples
  • Articles by Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi, Ram Swarup, and Sita Ram Goel
  • Analysis of the Ramajanmabhumi movement at Ayodhya

Volume II: Islamic Evidence

Volume II is devoted exclusively to Islamic evidence—historical and theological—for the pattern of iconoclasm. Key contents:

  • Theological basis for temple destruction in the Quran, Hadis, and Shariat
  • The doctrine of jihad and its application to Hindu places of worship
  • Historical accounts from Muslim chroniclers of temple destruction from Mahmud Ghaznavi to Aurangzeb
  • A critical appendix on the meaning of the word “Hindu”
  • Correspondence between Sita Ram Goel and Romila Thapar on the Marxist interpretation of temple destruction

Central Thesis

The destruction of Hindu temples was not an incidental byproduct of war but a religious obligation flowing from Islamic theology’s conception of idolatry (shirk) and the duty of jihad. Goel argues that Islam as an ideology of terrorism and genocide masquerading as religion is at the root of this historical pattern.

See Also