New Delhi: Those “forces that had opposed the reconstruction of the Somnath temple” after India’s independence “still exist and are active”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the temple town in Gujarat on Sunday (January 11) in a veiled reference to Jawaharlal Nehru, while claiming that “conspiracies” are afoot to “divide India” by means ‘other than the sword’.Speaking on the final day of the ‘Somnath Swabhiman Parv’ (Somnath Self-Respect Festival) that the government has said is meant to mark a millennium since Mahmud of Ghazni’s pillaging of the Somnath temple, Modi also claimed that the numerous attacks on the temple by Muslim chieftains since then represent a “mentality of religious fanaticism” that some historians and politicians have tried to “whitewash” as plundering raids.Addressing the crowd after Gujarat deputy chief minister Harsh Sanghavi and chief minister Bhupendra Patel, Modi, who noted that he is also president of the Somnath Temple Trust, said that the atmosphere at the event was “marvellous”.“On the one end there is the lord of lords Mahadev himself. On the other end there are the great waves of the sea, the rays of the sun, the echoes of mantras, this surge of faith. And in this divine atmosphere, the presence of all of you devotees of Lord Somnath is making this occasion divine and making it grand,” Modi said.As he spoke to the crowd the prime minister said he wondered what the atmosphere would have been like at the temple a thousand years ago, where “your ancestors, all of our ancestors, had risked their lives and “sacrificed everything for their faith, their beliefs and their Mahadev”.“A thousand years ago, those tyrants were thinking that they had won over us. But even today, a thousand years later, the flag waving atop the Somnath Mahadev temple is calling out to the entire universe: what is the power of Hindustan? What is its capability?”Claiming that the various attacks on the temple by Muslim chieftains had also involved attempts to turn it into a mosque – although professional historians have not found any evidence to buttress such a claim – Modi said that the temple was repeatedly rebuilt despite “attacks of religious terror” (mazhabi aatank) displaying a ‘capability of one’s culture’ that is ‘difficult to see elsewhere in the world’.Some historians and politicians have “tried to whitewash” these attacks, Modi went on to say. “Books were written to conceal the mentality of religious fanaticism by explaining it away as just plundering,” he said.“If the attacks on Somnath had been only for economic plunder, they would have stopped after the first major plunder a thousand years ago … The sacred idol of Somnath was destroyed. Repeated attempts were made to alter the temple’s appearance,” claimed the prime minister.Among the many historical works on Somnath, eminent historian Romila Thapar’s study stands out. She has referred to a range of Persian, Jain and Sanskrit primary sources, including to argue that the Somnath temple’s destruction was motivated more by wealth and political considerations than “religious fanaticism” as being depicted by the prime minister and his colleagues in the Sangh parivar.She concludes that the raid on Somnath isn’t the singular reason why it declined over time. She argued that the raid didn’t affect communal relations, and that Hindu-Muslim ties remained amicable for years. She believes that the temple’s decline was also an outcome of natural causes and years of neglect, and that Somnath could not be the signifier of religious conflict that the Sangh parivar projects it to be.However, Modi remained insistent in his political belief that the raid on Somnath temple was a result of religious fanaticism.Moving to the temple’s post-independence history, he said that ‘an attempt was made to stop’ Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s resolve to rebuild the temple as well as then-president Rajendra Prasad’s wish to inaugurate the reconstructed structure.Modi was referring to then-prime minister Nehru’s opposition to the temple’s reconstruction at the time as well as to Prasad’s attendance at the new structure’s consecration ceremony.Nehru had written to Prasad in March 1951, historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in his book India After Gandhi, saying he believed that “this was no time to lay stress on large-scale building operations at Somnath” and that “this could have been done gradually and more effectively later”.He was opposed to the prospect of Prasad attending the consecration ceremony due to his belief that ‘public officials should never publicly associate with faiths and shrines’, Guha wrote. The president, being of the view that the state ‘should be equally and publicly respectful of all’, ultimately visited the function.The prime minister emphasised on Sunday that the “forces” who had “opposed the Somnath temple’s reconstruction” in 1951 still exist today and remain active.“Today, instead of swords, conspiracies are being hatched against India through other vile means, and that is why we have to be more careful. We must strengthen ourselves. We must stay united. Every force that harbours conspiracies to divide us must be defeated,” Modi said, not naming who or what these “forces” or “conspiracies” are.“When we remain connected to our faith, stay connected to our roots, preserve our heritage with complete self-respect and are mindful of our heritage, then the roots of our civilisation also remain strong. And therefore, the journey of the last 1,000 years should prepare us for the next 1,000 years,” Modi said, adding that the “cultural reawakening” in India is “filling crores of citizens with a new belief”.The prime minister has previously said that India has endured “a thousand years of slavery”, an oft-repeated claim by the Sangh parivar suggesting that even the Mughal regime preceding the British colonial government represented a foreign rule in the Indian subcontinent.