Your question in itself is very leading, but nevertheless, let me try and address some of the points raised in the article by Romila Thapar.

Now, it is important to note that Thapar has her own biases that she flogs and this article is indicative of the Interpretative way of studying history as opposed to the more grounded in facts and objective Rankean method. Let us try and deconstruct some of her arguments,

Broadly though her argument is,

"Persian / Arab sources talk about an ancient Persian god and hence not reliable, Jain sources talk about how Shiva temples have lost their potency but not Jain temples and later Sanskrit / Hindu sources, written some 150 years after the fact do not mention this raid at all, but talk about an old, decrepit temple being restored"

From this she jumps to how Mohd might have wanted to end the Arabian horse trade via the sea ports of Western India (one that continued for centuries) and shift it to Ghazni - which is in her own article, an unsourced leap in logic.

If you consider Suba of Kabul under the Mughals by Farah Abidin, he says specifically that the horse trade was complementary. When the land route was disturbed thanks to political unrest or wars sea routes were used and vice versa. He also says that the markets for Afghani vs Arabian horses were different on account of costs involved.

This was during the Mughal rule, but we do not have any direct references to Afghani horse trade during Mohd of Ghazni's era, but no reason for us to not assume that the above also held during his period.

Using this specous and tenous logic, she jumps to another conclusion that, "raids were common by Hindu rulers also and hence this wasn't new". The sources she mentions talk about brigandage and road tolls levied by local kings, nothing about raids on Somnatha itself, yet she uses this as an important piece of evidence to frame her argument.

The last piece of disingenuous, interpretative thinking is quite breathtaking really,

In 1169, an inscription records the appointment of the chief priest of the Somanatha temple, Bhava Brihaspati.29 He claims to have come from Kannauj, from a family of Pashupata Shaiva brahmanas and, as the inscriptions show, initiated a succession of powerful priests at the Somanatha temple. He states that he was sent by Shiva himself to rehabilitate the temple. This was required because it was an old structure, much neglected by the officers and because temples in any case deteriorate in the Kaliyuga. Bhava Brihaspati claims that it was he who persuaded Kumarapala to replace the older wooden temple with a stone temple.

AGAIN no mention is made of the raid of Mahmud. Was this out of embarrassment that a powerful icon of Shiva had been desecrated? Or was the looting of a temple not such an extraordinary event? The Turko-Persian chronicles may well have been indulging in exaggeration. Yet the looting of the pilgrims by the local rajas is repeatedly mentioned. Was Kumarapala's renovation both an act of veneration for Shiva and a seeking of legitimation? Was this, in a sense, an inversion of Mahmud seeking legitimation through raiding the temple? Are these then counter-points of legitimation in viewing the past?

This - her leap in logic is quite frankly astounding. The temple was in a decrepit state, no mention was made of the raid of Ghazni (she glosses over the fact that this was some 150 years after the invasion, so not sure why it needed a mention) and hence such raids must have been common.

The whole article is conjecture and smoke and mirrors using tenous links and massive leaps in logic to arrive at the conclusion that Mohd's raid was only commerical and nothing religiously motivated at all.

It is even more dishonest when you consider that she outright rejects contemporary Muslim sources who talk clearly about the destruction of the temple and the desecration of the idol as some sort of glory seeking post facto tale.

I would strongly recommend that you read multiple sources when it comes to Indian history as modern Indian historians have had their agendas to flog and they often do flog those agendas.

Classic case being Aurangazeb - Jadunath Sarkar whose very objective, grounded in facts work on Augrangazeb clearly identified his bigoted traits and rule, yet later Indian historians first ostracised Sarkar and wrote revisionist versions - very similar to the one above - which cloaked his bigotry as business as usual traits rooted in economics and politics rather than religion.