Purushottam Nagesh Oak

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Purushottam Nagesh Oak (born 2 March 1917), usually known as P. N. Oak, is a Maharashtrian Brahmin historian associated with the Hindutva movement.

According to the introduction of one of P. N. Oak's books, he was born in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. He obtained M.A and L.L.B degrees from Mumbai University. From 1947 to 1953 he was a reporter for the The Hindustan Times and The Statesman newspapers. From 1953 to 1957, he worked in India's Central Radio and Public Ministry. From 1959 to 1974, he worked at the American Embassy in New Delhi. ^{[citation needed]}

He has written several books and articles about the history of India. His interest in rectifying what he believes to be "the biased and distorted versions of India's history produced by the invaders and colonizers" encouraged him to start the Institute for Rewriting Indian History in June 14, 1964. In modern India, he claims, secular and Marxist historians fabricated "idealized versions" of India's past and drained it of its Vedic context and content. Oak's work typically seeks to proclaim the virtues and achievements of Hindu culture and religion over other traditions. He has claimed that both Islam and Christianity originated as distortions of Vedic beliefs. He insists that the word Islam itself derives from the Sanskrit term "Ishalayam" meaning the Temple of God. He alleges that Kaaba in Mecca was originally a shrine to Shiva,^[1] and that Christianity began as a form of devotion to Krishna. According to Oak, "Christianity is a mal-pronunciation of the Sanskrit term Chrisn-nity also spelled as Krishna-neeti. Since Bhagavad Geeta is the book of Krishna-neeti, what we know as Christianity is a fossiled, broken branch of the Vedic tree, and in fact the ancient Bhagavad Geeta cult."

Oak further claims that the Papacy was "a Vedic priesthood" until Constantine the Great killed the Vedic pope to replace him with the head of the hitherto unimportant Christian sect. This instantly ensured the Europe-wide triumph of Christianity because of the "sacred sway of the holy hoary Vedic priest known as the Shankaracharya".^[2]

He has also claimed that the Taj Mahal and other buildings ascribed to Muslim Indians were actually converted shrines to Hindu deities.

His methods and his version of Indian history have been rejected by some people:

"From the 1970s onwards 'Social Studies' textbooks were written in Pakistan to reflect the official ideological line. For example, all history that concerned events prior to the arrival of Mohammad bin Qasim (711 AD) was eliminated. Such misrepresentation has been well documented in 'The Subtle Subversion', a recent study by the SDPI in Islamabad. In India this process began in the 1950s through private organisations like the Institute for Rewriting Indian History. Amongst many interesting claims made while distorting history is one stating that the Taj Mahal was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to lingam worship." — (Zeenut Ziad)
"Oak, Gautier and those of their ilk have a number of absurd theories." — (Faisal Kutty)
"Poor old Erich von Däniken was clapped in irons and marched off to prison but Mr Oak would appear to be the guiding spirit behind a new school of Indian history, what might be called The Hindus Did Everything (But The Muslims Stole The Credit) school of HRD/NCERT scholarship. ... History is now no longer about telling us what really happened. It is about perpetuating a bogus view of the past to shore up a present-day political ideology." — (Vir Sanghvi)

Nevertheless, none of them provided any concrete reasons aginst the observations made by PN Oak.

On July 14, 2000 the Supreme Court in New Delhi dismissed a petition brought by Oak that sought to force a declaration that a Hindu king built Taj Mahal, as he has claimed. The court reprimanded the petitioner.^[3] In 2005 another petition brought by Amar Nath Mishra was also dismissed.^[4]