Richard M. Eaton

"When Firuz Tughluq invaded Orissa in 1359 and learned that the regions most important temple was that of Jagannath located inside the rajas fortress in Puri, he carried off the stone image of the god and installed it in Delhi in an ignominious position."

"One Western author who has become very popular among Indias history-rewriters is the American scholar Prof. Richard M. Eaton. Unlike his colleagues, he has done some original research pertinent to the issue of Islamic iconoclasm, though not of the Ayodhya case specifically. A selective reading of his work. focusing on his explanations but keeping most of his facts out of view, is made to serve the negationist position regarding temple destruction in the name of Islam. Yet, the numerically most important body of data presented by him concurs neatly with the classic (now dubbed “Hindutva”) account."

"One intriguing thing about Eaton is that his own research of the medieval literatures on Indian Sufis for his Ph.D. thesis, published in Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700, failed to find any trace of peace in the views and actions of Sufis and in their method of conversion. He found that all the revered Sufis, particularly the earlier ones to arrive at Bijapur, were fierce Jihadis and persecutor of Hindus.."

"Regardless of this change in emphasis, it is important to note that not all Western Sufi scholarship of the last half century avoids discussing Sufi support of and active involvement in the martial jihad; in fact, there are some notable exceptions. In particular, Richard Eaton’s study of Sufi s in the Deccan region of India, The Sufi s of Bijapur: 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufi s in Medieval India (Princeton, 1978) stands out in Western Sufi scholarship, in that it argues convincingly in the chapter “Sufi s as Warriors” that Sufi s were at the forefront of the conquest that brought Islam to the Deccan region of India. Eaton makes an important point in his book with regard to the methodology necessary for studying the social roles of Sufi s in that he critiques the “classical approach to Sufi studies.”... Eaton also points out the error of most Western scholarship in assum- ing that mysticism necessarily precludes martial endeavors. 10 Eaton’s book was the first significant Western study of Sufis to discuss at length the phenomenon of Sufis as warriors and to make use of sources from the popular tradition, such as vernacular hagiography; however, it concentrates solely on Sufi s in India and does not pretend to be a monograph on the history of Sufi jihad. Though Eaton’s book was well received, it was not without its critics."

"According to the cover text on his book, Eaton is professor of History at the University of Arizona and “a leading historian of Islam”. Had he defended the thesis that iconoclasm is rooted in Islam itself, he would have done justice to the evidence from Islamic sources, yet he would have found it very hard to get published by Oxford University Press or reach the status of leading Islam scholar that he now enjoys. One can easily become an acclaimed scholar of Hinduism by lambasting and vilifying that religion, but Islam is somehow more demanding of respect."

"But as I mentioned in my published essay, the tables and maps I presented “by no means give the complete picture of temple desecration after the establishment of Turkish power in upper India.” And I concluded that “we shall never know the precise number of temples desecrated in Indian history.” All we can talk about are instances for which there is contemporary evidence, whether it appears in the archaeological record, in the epigraphic record, or in contemporary chronicles. And even those data must be closely interrogated."