> The Ayodhya mosque-temple riots are another facet of this clash. Western commentators glibly say 'Hindus are anti-Muslim'. The issue in India is so much more nuanced than that; there is bad blood on both sides going back a thousand years. Islam cannot escape from these charges: the religion is fundamentally intolerant of non-Abrahamic ones, especially ones with liberal iconography (like Hinduism and Buddhism).
Bhaktiyar Khilji burned down Nalanda University but there is a town (Bhaktiyarpur) nearby named after him! I guess this can happen only in India. Now if you try to change the name of the town it will be called anti Muslim move.
One of the big problems with trying to fix history(which is impossible as past can't be changed) as a means for emotional relief for your current pains due to bad politics is you run in all sorts of contradictory situations, where any principle you take today will be in total opposition to a principle you will have to take days from now.
Wars happen because any political power over any region looks at war as a means to expand administrative control. When such wars happen they have to pull down power centers in conquered lands and rebuild their own ones. In many such contexts the seat of political power to a significant degree rests with the land's religious authority.
I guess if you took a step back to shoot a panoramic perspective of India's history you would find everybody was attacking everybody.
It is also stupid to blame the rulers of the past for making decisions that give you emotional pain in the present.
Who was ruling Surat when Shivaji sacked the city? Shivaji sacked Surat when it was ruled by Mughals. I am not sure why you have failed to take that into account. When Shivaji attacked, did he carry out a general massacre of non-combatant population like the invaders did?
Conflict among Hindu kings were rarely deadly for the conquered population. But conflict with invaders mostly resulted in massacre, loot, and slavery. So they are not the same.
Recently Aurangabad and Osmanabad in MH were renamed to Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv. So the only people who will oppose are those without understanding of history or those who have not read Aurangzeb's own historian's words and how everything he did was sanctioned by the holy scriptures including killing, subjugating people from other religions
Bhaktiyar Khilji burned down Nalanda University but there is a town (Bhaktiyarpur) nearby named after him! I guess this can happen only in India. Now if you try to change the name of the town it will be called anti Muslim move.