Taj Mahal: a Long-Standing Dispute Between Hindus and Muslims
Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Sangeet Som has sparked a heated debate by stating that the Taj Mahal, which is regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, does not merit to be included in India's history. His observations are the result of a recently held dispute over the exclusion of the Taj Mahal as one of the state's main sightseeing attractions in Uttar Pradesh's tourist booklet. Addressing a public gathering in Meerut, he said the Taj Mahal was a blot on the Indian culture and that its creator wanted to wipe out Hindus.
Sangeet Som's remarks about the Taj Mahal have disturbed an overwhelming majority of Agra's residents, particularly those in the hospitality and tourism sector who are soliciting an outright apology from him. It has been widely stated that the government must take action to end all controversies over the Taj Mahal that are causing tourists to leave affecting negatively the tourism sector.
The historical context of Taj Mahal
To better understand the dynamics of the dispute we must go back in time.
The Taj Mahal is an 18th-century building located in Uttar Pradesh, north India. At that time, in northern India, the reigning dynasty was the Mughals. The very first emperor, Bâbur, had direct ancestors coming from Mongols, particularly Genghis Khan and the Timur generation.
The Mogul Kingdom was first established in 1526 when Bâbur had successfully defeated the late Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, when the battle of Pânipat took place. As a result of his victory, he founded an empire in which he introduced the Muslim religion, as he himself had Turkish ascendants. Bâbur was open to the practice of other religions on his territories and was consequently a precursor of the wide-ranging vision. His successors later adopted the same approach, which was one of the most important factors of the prosperity of this Empire in relation to the others. It is worth mentioning that it was exactly when one of the emperors adopted a rigid vision of Islam that the Empire started to decline.
Shah Jahan, the fifth Emperor of the Mughals dynasty, was the one who initiated the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan promoted the principle of equality between Hindus and Muslims. He also implemented several new measures to integrate all religions. As a consequence, his Empire was successful for over 30 years. He was accustomed to commemorating all the celebrations of Indian origin and would always attempt to converse with each issue. It was in his court that Hindavi, the origin of the Hindi language, was first introduced. After noting that not everyone could speak Persian, he brought in a new court language, that retained a well-balanced mixture of Sanskrit and Persian.
Shah Jahan married 3 women, the third, Mumtaz Mahal, a Persian princess, was his favorite. She was both a friend in difficult and good times and also a great counselor for her husband. While accompanying Shah Jahan on one of his military expeditions, Mumtaz Mahal died while giving birth to her 14th child. Shah Jahan was devastated and was, so heartbroken that he locked himself up in a room for two years. It is believed that at the time when Shah Jahan finally recovered after two years of grief, his hair had turned white. A while after her death, Shah Jahan decided to build the most beautiful memorial as a symbol of his eternal love for his wife. This is how the construction of the Taj Mahal began.
A commission of the best architects from all over the world has been selected to design the Taj Mahal. A workforce of approximately 20,000 craftsmen from the entire country was employed and it required around 22 years to complete the construction of the monument. When the memorial was finally built, Mumtaz Mahal's tomb was transferred to the funerary chamber in the inferior part of the Taj Mahal.
Shah Jahan became seriously ill in September 1657. This event triggered a war of succession between his four sons during which his third son, Aurangzeb, was victorious. hah, Jahan healed from his medical condition, but Aurangzeb kept his father under house arrest at Agra Fort from July 1658 until his death in January 1666. Aurangzeb ordered his father to be buried with Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt under the Taj Mahal.
Aurangzeb took some decisions that were opposite to those of his predecessors. During his first year of reign, he promoted his faith and commanded Islam to be the only religion in the Kingdom. The imposition of Islam was very negatively perceived, particularly because he had the Hindu temples destroyed. The imposition of Islam into all spheres of society has made the situation more difficult and fragile. The Mughal Empire, therefore, started to decline, with the following emperors becoming weaker.
A religious matter?
Uttar Pradesh, located in the north of India and bordering with India’s capital New Delhi, is one of the most famous and well-established tourist destinations for both locals and foreigners. As India's most populous state, it hosts a large number of cultural monuments and places of religious significance. Uttar Pradesh is India's leading state in terms of domestic tourist arrivals among all states and it is also home to three World Heritage Sites: the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, and the nearby Fatehpur Sikri.
Uttar Pradesh is believed to be the home of Hinduism. As a matter of fact, it is home to the city of Varanasi, which is one of the most ancient and holy cities in India. The city is valuable to Hindus since it is consecrated to the god Shiva. It is situated on the banks of the River Ganges and many pilgrims travel thousands of miles to plunge themselves into the holy river. According to Hindu legend, Lord Shiva, one of the most influential of the Hindu pantheon, unleashed the Ganges from the knot of his hair. It is believed that swimming in the Ganges will eventually purify them and wash away their sins.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that Hindus are a majority in the Uttar Pradesh state. Hinduism accounts for 79.73% of the population of Uttar Pradesh and the current government is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing party whose policy has traditionally represented Hindu nationalist positions. Today, the BJP is one of the two major Indian political groups and advocates Hindutva ('Hindu-ness'), an ideology that has attempted to shape Indian culture in relation to Hindu values.
India was founded in 1947 as a pluralist nation, motherland of people of multiple religions, cults, and ethnic groups. The largest religious minority is the Muslim community. At the elections, a large part of the Hindus voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which attempts to convert India into a Hindu nation. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been ruling in Uttar Pradesh, the tensions between Hindus and Muslims have increased. It is thus thought that behind the assault of Taj there are religious chauvinism reasons.
There are many reasons for this resentment against Muslims. It is thought that the roots go back to the history of India: resentment against the Islamic occupation of India during the Middle Ages, the policies instituted by the British colonizers of the country, and the violent division of India into an Islamic state of Pakistan along with a secular India with a Muslim minority. Several scholars consider that the anti-Muslim episodes of violence are politically driven by Hindu nationalists such as the well-known Bharatiya Janata party.
As a matter of fact, Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, a Hindu monk and nationalist named Yogi Adityanath began the assault on the Taj Mahal way before by denouncing the state government's previous practice of providing Taj Mahal models as a present to foreign officials. Stating that the building does not 'reflect Indian culture', Adityanath reported that the government would instead distribute copies of the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita.
Following this erasure, the Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism published a booklet on the state's main sightseeing attractions but excluded the Taj Mahal, the state's and the country's most important tourist landmark. The government, opting instead to support Hindu religious tourism, such as the landmarks of the sacred city of Varanasi, has withheld any funding of cultural heritage from the Taj Mahal. More recently Sangeet Som, a BJP legislator and widely acclaimed figure among the Hindu population in the region, stated that the memorial was built by 'traitors' and is a 'stain on Indian culture'.
'Many people were worried that the Taj Mahal was removed from the list of historical places in the UP tourism booklet. What history are we talking about? The man who built the Taj Mahal imprisoned his father. He wanted to massacre Hindus. If this is history, then it is very unfortunate and we will change this history, I guarantee you' said Mr. Som in a speech addressed to Meerut city supporters. Time later, Mr Som provided a further clarification. 'I don't oppose Taj Mahal. It's a beautiful heritage. I oppose the Mughals who built it and how they've been portrayed in history,' he said.
Many believe that the comments made by leaders like Sangeet Som only serve to deepen the rift between Hindus and Muslims in the region. The BJP's assaults on the Taj Mahal are only a reflection of the party's policy of hatred against everything related to the history of Muslim rule in India. Adityanath, for example, brought attention to himself through his inflammatory anti-Muslim speeches - he was sent to prison for 11 days in 2007 for instigating religious tensions. Mr. Som is also known for his incendiary speeches and is one of the politicians accused of unleashing riots that have caused over 60 dead in Muzaffarnagar in 2013.
For the true believers of the BJP, the Muslims who dominated India for centuries were foreign intruders who stripped a flourishing land, demolished temples and palaces, slaved and discredited Hindus, assaulted Hindu women, and converted millions of people to Islam. As demonstrated above, Indian history has been mainly marked by assimilation and coexistence rather than by religious strife. However, this does not interest the Hindu chauvinists who represent most of the electoral base of the BJP.
Hindu extremists in India have for a long time felt it humiliating that a memorial erected by a Muslim ruler could be the most recognizable landmark in India with a Hindu predominance. The only difference today is that this is no longer a marginal group; its members are now in control of Uttar Pradesh, with enablers leading Delhi’s government.
Taj Mahal is at the center of the debate not only as a monument 'built by traitors' but also for another reason traceable to Som's statement who claimed that he would 'change' history. As a matter of fact, even though Taj Mahal is known to be a Muslim mausoleum built by a Mughal emperor to honor his dead and beloved wife, there are statements between Hindu nationalists that the UNESCO world heritage site of the city of Agra had originally been a temple called Tejo Mahalaya dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.
