Did Aurangzeb build more temples than he destroyed?: Part 2
- In History & Culture
- 08:34 PM, Mar 03, 2016
- S Nitin
Aurangzeb did not confine his iconoclastic activities to the warring states alone. Read Part 1 of the piece to find out more about the iconoclastic activities in Mewar and other places (https://www.myind.net/did-aurangzeb-build-more-temples-he-destroyed-part-1). He gave orders to demolish Hindu temples in the friendly state of Jaipur as well. An imperial agent, Abu Turab, was sent for this purpose. Though he was able to destroy most of the temples easily, there was some opposition by Rajputs in a temple in Goner village. The imperial agent could destroy that temple only after killing all the Rajputs.47 After finishing his mission, Abu Turab reached the court on 10 August 1680, and reported that he had demolished as many as 66 temples in Amber.48 A letter from one Bhagwan Das to Raja Ram Singh written probably about this time mentions the destruction of Karor temple in Amber by Dalair, an imperial messenger.49
On the 13th April, 1680, Aurangzeb ordered Saadat Khan to demolish the big temple of Mandal, in Mewar, and build a mosque in its place.50
In the same month, Ali Raza Arab, the commandant of the fortress of Kalyani in the Deccan, wrote to the Emperor that he had destroyed the great temple of the place and was building a mosque using the temple material.51 He was commended by Aurangzeb who had himself seen the temple earlier.52
A report from Sirhind in June 1680 mentions that as per the imperial orders, mosques were to be built from the material of the demolished temples.53 However, Kahu Raj, Chaudhari (village head) of the place, had prevented the demolition of other temples and thrown out the beldars. Aurangzeb ordered Asad Khan, the Wazir (prime minister), that the Chaudhari be imprisoned and brought to the Court.54
The temple of Someshwar in western Mewar was ordered to be destroyed in August, 1680.55
Aurangzeb received news from the wakia-navis (news writer) of Bawal (now in Rewari, Haryana) regarding the existence of a very large number of temples there. In October 1680, a mace-bearer and three beldars were sent for their demolition.56
On 4th February 1681, Bahadur Ali Khan, a Mughal officer, reported that when he went hunting towards Malpura in the state of Jaipur, he reached the village of Dalak in the jagir of Man Singh Rathore, the Maharaja of Kishangarh.57 There he found a temple of Sati and demolished it. The villagers, as if to take revenge, stole his four thousand rupees and grain at night. Their attempt to kill him, however, didn’t succeed as he was on the alert. On 13th March, Sayyid Abdulla reported that he had investigated into the whole case and found the account of temple demolition to be true. Interestingly, ‘the only decision given by Aurangzeb was the imposition of a fine of one thousand rupees on the vakil of Man Singh for the crime of theft committed by the villagers’.58
On 17 May 1681, Aurangzeb received the news that Mir Khan who had succeeded Raja Mandhata as the Thanedar of Ghorband, a Mughal military outpost near Kabul, had demolished the temple in the fortress and built a mosque on its ruins.59 The temple had been built by the Raja for his worship.
Hasan Ali Khan Bahadur reported to the Court in May 1681 that he had demolished a temple in Mathura and rehabilitated another village, Hasanpur.60 As per his request, Aurangzeb agreed to issue a farman in that connection.
After the end of Rajput War, Aurangzeb decided to leave Ajmer for the Deccan. During his journey from Ajmer to Burhanpur, Aurangzeb, on 21 September 1681, asked Jawahar Chand, superintendent of hatchet-men, to demolish all the temples on the way.61 Sometime after, Manawar Beg, a mason, was sent with thirty artisans to demolish the temples of the Rajputs.62 On 27 September 1681 the Emperor issued orders for the destruction of the temples at Lakheri near Ajmer.63 On 13 October 1681, Qamar-ud-din Khan suggested that though all the temples in Burhanpur district of Khandesh had been closed, they should be destroyed. But Aurangzeb was ‘content with closing them down and ordered that they be allowed to stand as there were no Muslims living in that area’.64
On 5th November, 1681, Sayyid Amjad, Muhtasib, was ordered to appoint persons for the demolition of the temple of Alora (Maharashtra).65 The newsletter also mentions in detail the number of different persons ordered for the operation.
On 30th March, 1685, Aurangzeb received a letter from Sadr-ud-din, Faujdar of Gwalior, that 5000 rebels of the tribe of Tanur had gathered in the village of Sadhia.66 He had then fought those rebels, killed several of them and demolished all the temples that were found in the pargana. His action was praised by the Emperor.67
After the conquest of Golkonda in 1687, the Emperor appointed Abdur Rahim Khan as censor of the city of Hyderabad with orders to stop the infidel practices and destroy the temples and build mosques on their sites.68 However, in the case of Bijapur, the Muntikhabul-Lubab states that the destruction of temples seems to have been delayed for several years after its conquest, probably till 1698.69 The Ma’asir-i-Alamgiri records, “Hamid-ud-din Khan Bahadur who had been deputed to destroy the temple of Bijapur and build a mosque (there), returned to Court after carrying the order out and was praised by the Emperor”.70a Significantly, after the fall of Bijapur, Aurangzeb had ordered some rare paintings in the palace of Sikandar Adil Shah to be destroyed as the sharia did not permit them.70b
In the South, Francois Martin, the French Governor of Pondicherry, noted in October 1689 that ‘the Hindus in the Karnatik were alarmed by reports that Aurangzeb had sent orders to pull down and ruin all temples in the region’.71 John F Richards writes, “In the context of the conflict with the Marathas at Jinji and the possibility of a Maratha/Telugu alliance, it is difficult to understand Aurangzeb's heavy-handed orders to destroy the temples of the Karnatik. Surely, with his long experience in the south he must have realized that even the faintest threat against shrines like Tirupati would arouse immediate resistance. Nevertheless, in November, the Mughal armies tried to carry out their orders but the local zamindars rose to defend the temples.”Eventually, after a number of casualties occurred, the Mughals retreated.72
Aurangzeb received a complaint in December 1690 that ‘the temples in Marwar that had once been converted into places of residence by the Muslim Jagirdar had again been opened for public worship.’73
In 1692, Aurangzeb sent order to Ekram Khan, the Mughal Governor of Orissa, to demolish the Jagannatha temple. But the Raja of Khurda, the guardian of the temple, met the Governor at Cuttack and agreed with him to arrange a mock destruction under his own supervision.74 After some minor demolitions, a faked image of Jagannatha was sent to Aurangzeb at Bijapur where it was destroyed and thrown on the steps of a mosque. Though the main gate of the temple was closed, ‘the daily rituals of the cult were continued by priests who entered the temple through a secret side door in the southern temple wall’.75 A few months later, the suspicious Emperor recalled the Governor and sent a high officer to examine the situation at Puri. But according to an Oriya chronicle, the Raja of Khurda managed to bribe even him with a gift of thirty thousand rupees.76 Till the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 A.D., the temple of Jagannatha remained officially closed.
On 14 April 1692, orders were issued to the provincial governor and the district faujdar to demolish the temples at Rasulpur in Mathura.77 In 1693, the Hatheswar temple at Vad Nagar in Gujarat was demolished.78 In the same year, Sankar, a messenger, was sent to demolish a temple near Shevgaon in Ahmednagar (Maharashtra). He came back after pulling it down on 20 November 1693.79
In April 1694, the secret news-writer of Shahjahanabad (now Old Delhi) wrote to the Emperor that in the village of Jaisinghpura, near Aurangabad (Maharashtra), Bairagis were carrying on idol-worship.80 Hearing the news, the Muhtasib (censor of public morals) went to the village, arrested three elderly Bairagis and brought the idols along with the prisoners to his house. This angered the Rajputs of the place who then attacked him and forced him to release those Bairagis. The idols were, however, sent to the Court. Aurangzeb ordered Bahrahmand Khan, Mir Bakshi, to write to Adil Khan, the Governor of the province, to explain his failure in providing necessary help to the Muhtasib during the fight.81
Similarly, it was reported that in a temple in the neighbourhood of Ajmer, Bijai Singh and several other Hindus were conducting public worship of idols. On 23 June 1694, Aurangzeb ordered the Governor of Ajmer to destroy the temple and stop the public celebration of idol worship.82 In 1696-97(1108 AH), orders were issued for the destruction of the major temples at Sorath in Gujarat.83
At the Diwan-i-Mazalim Court, held on 3rd December 1701, in Malkapur village of Berar subah, Aurangzeb got the report that Hindus were indulging in idol-worship in the temple at Bijaigarh in Aligarh district.84 The Emperor ordered Ruhullah Khan, Mir Bakshi, to write to the Governor of the province about that matter.
On 1 January 1705, Aurangzeb summoned Muhammad Khalil and Khidmat Rai, superintendent of hatchet-men, and ordered them to demolish the temple of Pandharpur.85 Also, he ordered to take the butchers of the army camp there and slaughter cows in the temple. It was done as per his order.86 The temple of Wakenkhera in the fort was demolished on 2 March 1705.87
Apart from these instances of temple destruction, there are others where the dates are not definitely known. The Juma Masjid at Irach in Bundelkhand was built during Aurangzeb’s reign.88 The materials used in its construction seem to have been taken from a Hindu temple. Likewise, it is said that Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of a Saiva temple which he saw while passing through Udaipur in Bundelkhand (about 1681).89 However, the order was modified and the temple was converted into a mosque. The temples at Gayaspur near Bhilsa and the temple of Khaundai Rao in Gujarat were also destroyed.90
Hindu temples were not the only ones that invited the wrath of the Mughal ruler. The contemporary chronicler Khafi Khan records that the Sikhs had built temples in all towns and populous places in the empire and that the deputies (‘masands’) of their Guru, presiding in each temple, used to collect offerings from his followers and scrupulously forward to him.91 When Aurangzeb came to know about these activities, he ordered the agents to be driven out of the temples and the temples to be demolished.92 In the town called Buriya in the sarkar of Sirhind, the local administrator demolished a Sikh temple in compliance with the imperial orders and built a mosque in its place. In retaliation, the Sikhs demolished that mosque and killed the newly appointed imam.93
In Orissa, sometime before 1670, the temple of Kedarpur was demolished and converted into a mosque.94 In the pargana of Alup, the private house of a Rajput, Devi Singh, which was used as a temple, was converted into a mosque.95
In the South, after the conquest of Karnatik, Aurangzeb allowed the famous temple at Tirupati to stand, records contemporary Italian traveler Niccolao Manucci in ‘Storia do Mogor’. 96 Manucci cites two reasons for this – the large revenue that the Mughal ruler is said to have derived from the offerings of Hindu pilgrims to the temple and the fear that its destruction might cause a rebellion difficult to suppress.97
The Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, a collection of Aurangzeb’s letters and decrees, shows that even age could not abate the Emperor’s religious zeal. When he was over eighty, he wrote to the officers in Gujarat, “The temple of Somnath was demolished early in my reign and idol worship (there) put down. It is not known what the state of things there is at present. If the idolaters have again taken to the worship of images at the place, then destroy the temple in such a way that no trace of the building may be left and also expel them (the worshippers) from the place.”98
Incidentally, the same text contains a letter of Aurangzeb, written to his grandson Bidar Bakht, in which he reminisces about the demolition of a temple during his second Governorship of the Deccan, “The village of Satara near Aurangabad was my hunting ground. Here on the top of a hill, stood a temple with an image of Khande Rai. By God’s grace I demolished it, and forbade the temple dancers (muralis) to ply their shameful profession”.99
The Kalimat-i-Aurangzeb records that Aurangzeb, during the last decade of his reign, ordered the appointment of an officer specially for the purpose of destroying the Hindu temples of Maharashtra. His order to Ruhullah Khan read, “The houses of this country (Maharashtra) are exceedingly strong and built solely of stone and iron. The hatchet-men of the Government in the course of my marching do not get sufficient strength and power (i.e., time) to destroy and raze the temples of the infidels that meet the eye on the way. You should appoint an orthodox inspector (darogha) who may afterwards destroy them at leisure and dig up their foundations.”100
Aurangzeb also destroyed the temples at Mayapur (Haridwar) and Ayodhya.101 Besides, he stopped the public worship at the Hindu temple of Dwaraka.102
The destruction of a temple in the pargana of Bhagwant Garh in the state of Jaipur was reported by a newswriter of Ranathambore.103 Similarly, imperials orders for the destruction of temples in Malpura and Toda were received and two officers were assigned for the purpose.104
About Aurangzeb’s policy of temple destruction, S.R.Sharma in his painstakingly researched ‘The religious policy of the Mughal emperors’ observes:
But India is a big country. Not even Aurangzeb’s zeal was equal to the task of destroying all the temples in the country. From time to time, he had to issue orders modifying the general orders passed in 1669. Thus we find that though he gave orders for the destruction of all Hindu public temples, yet he was content with closing down those that were built in an entirely Hindu population. If the English factors are to be believed, his officers allowed the Hindus to take back their temples from them on payment of large sums of money. In the South, where he spent the last twenty seven years of his life, Aurangzeb was usually content with leaving many Hindu temples standing as he was afraid of rousing the feelings of his Hindu subjects in the Deccan where the suppression of rebellions was not an easy matter.105
Similarly, the Marxist historian Harbhans Mukhia opines:
Moved as Aurangzeb was by excessive religious zeal, which for him implied attempts to demolish temples of the non-believers in the land ruled by a pious and orthodox Muslim ruler, the number of temples destroyed by him probably exceeds the number desecrated by any other ruler in medieval India. Yet it was far beyond even his capacity to do what would perhaps have given him great joy: to wipe out infidelity from the land of which he was the master. The Italian traveller Manucci recorded the emperor’s failure on this count with a touch of irony:
‘In this realm of India, although King Aurangzeb destroyed numerous temples, there does not thereby fail to be many left at different places, both in his empire and in the territories subject to the tributary Princes. All of them are thronged with worshippers; even those that are destroyed are still venerated by the Hindus and visited for the offering of alms.’106
By now, it must be quite obvious to readers that the claims such as ‘‘temples are rarely destroyed and, if they are, the reason is political’ do not come anywhere near the realm of truth. In fact, the fraudulent argument that Aurangzeb destroyed temples only to punish the rebels was debunked decades ago by none other than Sir Jadunath Sarkar himself. In an essay titled ‘The condition of Hindus under Muslim rule’, Sarkar wrote:
It has been urged by this pious Emperor's ignorant admirers that temples were destroyed only when they were strongholds of rebels and centres of plots hatched by his political enemies. A Persian report, written from Delhi and preserved among the state records of Jaipur, tells us that Aurangzib had sent an order to the ever-loyal Raja of Jaipur to demolish a large number of temples in his dominions, and when His Majesty read the Muhtasib's report that the order had been faithfully carried out, he cried out in admiration, "Ah, he (i.e. Raja Ram Singh Kachhwa) is a khanazad, i.e., a hereditary loyal slave.”So much for his modem apologists.107
Moreover, the apologist argument ascribing political motive to temple destruction breaks down when the fate of mosques associated with rebellion are considered. For, the Muslim rulers never indulged in destruction of mosques to punish rebels belonging to their own community. Even Richard Eaton, a well-known Aurangzeb apologist, admits, ‘’No evidence, however, suggests that ruling authorities attacked public monuments like mosques or Sufi shrines that had been patronised by disloyal or rebellious officers. Nor were such monuments desecrated when one Indo-Muslim kingdom conquered another and annexed its territories.’’108 (Dr.Koenraad Elst brilliantly takes down Eaton’s apologist piece ‘Temple desecration and Indo-Muslim states’ in his ‘’Ayodhya: the case against the temple”)
Some historians have even tried to portray Aurangzeb as a ‘secular’ ruler, devoid of religious bigotry. They point out that he himself allowed construction of some temples and gave land grants to Hindu saints and priests of temples. However, these historians conveniently gloss over the fact that while hundreds of cases of temple destructions have been documented, very few cases of temple construction during Aurangzeb’s reign are on record. As for the grants of land or concessions to Brahmans and Hindu saints, it’s true that many such cases have been found. But here too, facts have been grossly misinterpreted. Some of the grants were either the confirmation or renewal of the land already held by the grantees.109 Thus, ‘the issue was a legal or administrative one rather than a case of liberalism vs religious orthodoxy as such’.110 In some cases, concession was in return of some service rendered, military or otherwise, as in the case of Jain temples at Shatrunjay and Mount Abu (1658).111 Similarly, in the case of Gorakhnath Yogis of Jakhbar, it’s evident that Aurangzeb desired to use them as a source of support.112 In fact, the Jains and the Yogis were those groups which none of the Mughal rulers wished to alienate; “many of the former were rich merchants and bankers who provided with ‘men, money and resources’ to the state, while the Yogis held sway over extensive tracts of land in the Punjab”.113 Again, in some other cases, Aurangzeb gave grants to certain individuals ‘to win them over and use them as pawns in his game of diplomacy’.114 For instance, he patronized Ram Rai, the disinherited son of Guru Har Rai, and gave a grant of land in Dehra Dun with the intent of using him for weakening the Sikh movement. 115
A mention may be made here about the land grant given to the Gayawal Pandas (superior priests having monopoly over the performance of ‘Pindadan’ rituals) of Gaya. Contrary to popular belief, Aurangzeb did not gift the land to the Pandas.116 It was gifted to a former Panda who converted to Islam during Aurangzeb's reign. However, the land subsequently came into the possession of the Pandas. Similarly, Aurangzeb did not gift landed property to the Bodh Gaya Mahant, head of the Shaivite monastery in Bodh Gaya. It was Muhammad Shah, a later Mughal ruler, who gifted the land to the Mahant. 117
Clearly, our ‘secular’ historians and their minions have gone to extreme lengths to whitewash Aurangzeb’s iconoclasm. Facts have been suppressed and falsehoods spread to uphold their perverted notion of secularism. Today, the very tormentor of our ancestors inspires admiration in many of us, thanks to their falsification of history. But there is an even more tragic side to this skulduggery. While these charlatans sing paeans to the ‘Mughal Voldemort’, the valiance of the Hindu warriors who died defending their temples remains largely unknown and unsung. It’s high time our history stopped glorifying the tyrants and started reflecting the bravery of such martyrs.
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