FACT, theTrust which I head, is holding an exhibition on 'Aurangzeb as he wasaccording to Mughal documents', from February 16 to 20 at New Delhi'sHabitat Center, the Palm Court Gallery, from 10 am to 9 pm.Whyan exhibition on Aurangzeb, some may ask. Firstly, I have been a closestudent of Indian
history, and one of its most controversial figureshas been Aurangzeb (1658-1707). It is true that under him the Mughalempire reached its zenith, but Aurangzeb was also a very cruel ruler �some might even say monstrous. What are the facts? Aurangzebdid not just build an isolated mosque on a destroyed
temple, he orderedall temples destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishwanath temple, one ofthe most sacred places of Hinduism, and had mosques built on a numberof cleared temple sites. Other Hindu sacred places within his reachequally suffered destruction, with mosques built on them. A fewexamples: Krishna's birth temple in Mathura; the rebuilt Somnath templeon the coast of Gujarat; the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgirmosque now overlooking Benares; and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple inAyodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb is counted infour, if not five figures. Aurangzeb did not stop at destroyingtemples, their users were also wiped out; even his own brother DaraShikoh was executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion; Sikh GuruTegh Bahadur was beheaded because he objected to Aurangzeb's forcedconversions.Yet, Percival Spear, co-author with Romila Thapar of the prestigious A History of India (Penguin),writes: 'Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than a hostilelegend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on atemple site in Benares.' L'histoire de l'Inde moderne(Fayard), the French equivalent of Percival Spear's history of India,praises Aurangzeb and says, 'He has been maligned by Hindufundamentalists'. Even Indian politicians are ignorant of Aurangzeb'sevil
deeds. Nehru might have known about them, but for his own reasonshe chose to keep quiet and instructed his historians to downplayAurangzeb's destructive drive and instead praise him as a benefactor ofarts. Since then six generations of Marxist historians havedone the same and betrayed their allegiance to truth. Very few peopleknow for instance that Aurangzeb banned any kind of music and thatpainters had to flee his wrath and take refuge with some of Rajasthan'sfriendly maharajahs.Thus, we thought we should get at the rootof the matter. History (like journalism) is about documentation andfirst-hand experience. We decided to show Aurangzeb according to hisown documents. There are an incredible number of farhans,original edicts of Aurangzeb hand-written in Persian, in India'smuseums, particularly in Rajasthan, such as the Bikaner archives. Itwas not always easy to scan them, we encountered resistance, sometimesdownright hostility and we had to go once to the chief minister to getpermission. Indeed, the director of Bikaner archives told us that in 50years we were the first ones asking for the farhans dealingwith Aurangzeb's destructive deeds. Then we asked painters fromRajasthan to reproduce in the ancient Mughal style some of the edicts:the destruction of Somnath temple; the trampling of Hindus protesting jaziyatax by Aurangzeb's elephants; or the order from Aurangzeb prohibitingHindus to ride horses and palanquins; or the beheading of Teg Bahadurand Dara Shikoh.People might say: 'OK, this is all true,Aurangzeb was indeed a monster, but why rake up the past, when we havetensions between Muslims and Hindus
today?' There are two reasons forthis exhibition. The first is that no nation can move forward unlessits children are taught to look squarely at their own history, the goodand the bad, the evil and the pure.The French, for instance, have manydark periods in their history, more recently some of the deeds they didduring colonisation in North Africa or how they collaborated with theNazis during the Second World War and handeo diedin concentration camps (the French are only now coming to terms withit). Let Hindus and Muslims then come to termswith what happened under Aurangzeb, because Muslims suffered as much asHindus. It was not only Shah Jahan or Dara Shikoh who were murdered,but also the forefathers of today's Indian Muslims who have beenconverted at 90 per cent. Aurangzeb was the Hitler, the asura ofmedieval India. No street is named after Hitler in the West, yet in NewDelhi we have Aurangzeb Road, a constant reminder of the horrorsAurangzeb perpetrated against Indians, including his own people.Finally,Aurangzeb is very relevant today because he thought that Sunni Islamwas the purest form of his religion and he sought to impose it withruthless efficiency -- even against those of his own faith, such as hisbrother. Aurangzeb clamped down on the more syncretic, more tolerantIslam, of the Sufi kind, which then existed in India. But he did notfully succeed. Four centuries later, is he going to have the last word?I remember, when I started covering Kashmir in the late '70s, thatIslam had a much more open face. The Kashmir Muslim, who is also adescendant of converted Hindus, might have thought that Allah was theonly true God, but he accepted his Kashmiri Pandit neighbour, went tohis or her marriage, ate in his or her house and the Hindu in turn wentto the mosque. Women used to walk with open faces, watch TV, films. Thenthe shadow of Aurangzeb fell on Kashmir and the hardline Sunnis camefrom Pakistan and Afghanistan: cinemas were banned, the burqa imposed,400,000 Kashmiri Pandits were chased out of Kashmir through violenceand became refugees in their own land and the last Sufi shrine ofSharar-e-Sharif was burnt to the ground (I was there).
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