This refers to the column titled "Reversing 800 years of history" by PML-N parliamentarian Mr. Ayaz Amir that was recently printed in the national press. The columnist has taken a rather adverse view of the Muslim rule in India. First he claims that all Muslim rulers of India were Caucasian in origin and this region had only one non-Caucasian king, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. "Ranjit Singh's kingdom of Punjab is more relevant to our present." he says. Does he know Ranjit had an obsession with the military power? When one European visitor of the time asked him as to why roads were so bad in Punjab, he said because it helped retard the invading armies. The British Viceroy's sister records a visit to Ranjit Singh's palace where she was introduced to a room full of Maharanis including some consorts that were forcibly married after plucking them from Muslim families. Purgana governors were actually tortured for cash in Ranjit's realm. Mr. Ayaz Amir's other claim that all Muslim rulers were Caucasian is an attempt at creating sympathy for the likes of Ranjit and other Hindu Rajas of ancient ancestry by invoking racial prejudice. But this too, is incorrect in view of both racial mingling of over a 1000 years between the ruling families and also on the basis of genetic science. The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) decided that "Asian Indians, unlike Europeans and Middle Easterners, were Caucasian but not white. This is because most lay people did not consider them to be white people". Carleton S. Coon in his tome The Races of Europe that he wrote in 1939 classified the Dravidians as Caucasoid. M. SHAIKH, Islamabad, September 26.