The history of the Indian subcontinent is a long, winding one, with many distortions by historians. Hindus, the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, faced many savage attacks from foreign invaders from ~600AD till independence (1947). The Islamic invaders, who were extremists and cruel to Hindus, waged numerous wars on Hindu kings. Far worse than that, they defiled and destroyed Hindu temples, especially mutilating or breaking the deities. They took Hindu women and children as their slaves after the war, who were forcibly converted to Islam. Their ideology taught them that Hindus worship a “false” god. Idolatry was against their religious ideas and they took measures to destroy Hindu temples when not necessary.One can get an estimate of the extent of damage that was done during the period of the Islamic invaders from the actions of one Islamic invader: Mahmud Ghazni, one of the most savage invaders, had vowed to destroy the idol worship of India.Ruins of the Somnath Temple After Mughal AttacksTo achieve this, he invaded many cities, and destroyed all their temples. One of the chief deities of the city of Thanesar was taken back to Ghazni, where it was thrown into the public streets, to be trampled on desecrated by ‘faithful’ Muslims. He invaded Mathura, where he burnt the Keshav Rai Temple, the birthplace of Bhagwan Krishna, to the ground, and looted all the wealth of the temple. He destroyed the Somnath temple, looted about 20million dirhams of gold, silver and jewels, and defiled the main deity.