Sri Ram Sharma Quotes

In a small village in the sarkar of Sirhind, a Sikh temple was demolished and converted into a mosque. An imam was appointed who was subsequently killed. Several other Sikh temples were also destroyed.

The private house of a Rajput, Devi Singh, in the pargana of Alup, which was used as a temple, was converted into a mosque.

Thus Aurangzeb deliberately worsened the position of the Hindus in the public services. Higher offices were closed to them ; the Muslims were openly preferred. A wholesale dismissal of the Hindus from the revenue department was attempted without much success.

Muhammad Shah, censor attached to the army, reported that many soldiers went to worship idols in the temple at Purandhar. On 2 January, 1705, orders were given that the temple be desecrated and demolished. The temple of Wakenkhera in the fort was demolished on 2 March, 1705.

Shah Jahan changed the spirit of religious toleration that had characterised the Mughal government so far in several other ways as well . To begin with, the emperor forbade the completion of certain temples that had been started during his predecessor’s reign. Repairs to old temples were prohibited and the building of new temples was forbidden. Complaints against the Hindus on the frontiers of the Punjab had been received. It was alleged they had rebuilt seventy temples using the material of the mosques ; which had been in their turn built utilizing the material of the temples which had originally stood there. All these temples were ordered to be destroyed and mosques built in their place. Shah Jahan now embarked on a campaign of complete destruction of the new temples of the Hindus. Three temples were destroyed in Gujarat, seventy-two temples in Banaras and its neighbourhood, and probably four temples elsewhere in the province of Allahabad, Some temples in Kashmir were also sacrificed to the religious fury of the emperor. The Hindu temple of Ichchhabal was destroyed and converted into a mosque. This betokened a rather serious fit of religious frenzy which Akbar’s reign seemed to have made impossible. The materials of some of the Hindu temples were used for building mosques.

Under some Muslim rulers there were series of fierce persecutions. Forced conversion to Islam took place, sometimes in thousands, as it did under Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir. Those who defied their fanatic persecutors were slain or had to seek safety in death. Jalal-ud-Din of Bengal (1414 to 1430), a convert himself, with a new convert’s zeal, forcibly converted hundreds of his Hindu subjects and persecuted the rest. Most of the Tughlaqs possessed a persecuting strain and Sikandar Lodi suffered from the same defect. It is consoling to find, however that very few Muslim rulers tried to play the part of fanatical persecutors.

When Man Singh was appointed the leader of the expedition against Maharana Pratap, the appointment caused some resentment in the Muslim military circles. Badayuni accompanied Man Singh in this expedition. On the battle-field he failed to distinguish between the Imperial Rajputs and those led by Maharana Pratap. He consulted a Muslim friend nearby who told him that he need not worry. He should shoot indiscriminately ; whosoever would be killed would mean one Rajput less and hence Islam would gain.

About this time, on 14 April, 1692, orders were issued to the provincial governor and the district fojdar to demolish the temples at Rasulpur. In 1693, the Haitheswar temple at Bar Nagar in Gujarat was demolished.

At Jahangir’s accession, the Muslim theologians, who had not been pleased very much with Akbar’s attempt at secularizing the State, seem to have tried to win back their lost influence, Mulla Shah Ahmad, one of the greatest religious leaders of the age, wrote to various court dignitaries exhorting them to get this state of things altered in the very beginning of the reign because otherwise it would be difficult to accomplish anything later on. His efforts seem to have been successful to some extent. Jahangir gave orders to Shaikh Farid to submit to him names of four scholars who should see that nothing that was against the Shari'at should take place. Here was the rub. Mulla Ahmad protested to Shaikh Farid that this would not work. No four scholars would ever agree. He suggested therefore that only one scholar be appointed for the purpose. Nothing however seems to have come out of this suggestion. The orthodox seem to have greater faith in Jahangir than in his father. He was said to be less favourably inclined to the Hindus, and, the Muslims in general were asked to make persistent efforts to wean him away from Hindu customs and ceremonies.

Sikandar Lodhi has been credited with following the law by some of his chronicler to such an extent that Nizam-ud- Din finds those accounts hard to believe. He is willing to assert however that he destroyed all Hindu temples, released offenders if they embraced Islam, admonished a Muslim officer showing consideration to a Hindu and prohibited pilgrimage to sacred places.

The Sultanate in India was based on the distinction between its Hindu and Muslim subjects. The Muslims formed the ruling caste. Naturally, the position of the Hindus differed in many respects from that of their Muslim neighbours. Ahkam-ul-Salatinya of the Almawardi lays down 6 compulsory stipulations for non- Muslims living under a Muslim ruler : (i) no criticism of the Quran, (ii) nor of the Prophet, (iii) nor of Islam, (iv) no marriage or adultery with Muslim woman, (v) no seduction from the true faith, and (vi) no help to the enemies of Islam. The non-compulsory demands include a special dress for non-Muslims, prohibition against religious propaganda among Muslims, the sounding of ‘Nagus’ so loudly as to reach Muslims ears, building houses higher in height than neighbouring Muslims houses, drinking in public and riding fine horses and the stipulation that they should bury their dead without openly chanting religious prayers. The building of new temples could be prohibited. The non-Muslims were permitted to have their cases decided by their own judges.

By 1679 Aurangzeb had advanced so far on the path of Puritanism that it was possible for him to order the levy of the Jizya on non-Muslims on the representation of Anayat Khan, Diwan-i- Khalsa. It was to be paid by all and sundry in Muslim India and Rajput States, by officials, and non-officials, Brahmans and non-Brahmans, clerks and lighters. Aurangzeb’s imposition differed ’ from all earlier impositions in that it was laid on the persons living in feudatory states as well. The imposition was followed by a public protest by the Hindus at the capital and in the suburbs. They waited till Friday and when the emperor rode out on an elephant to say his Friday prayers in the Friday Mosque, they : made a demonstration and blocked the path of the royal elephant. For some time Aurangzeb was non-plussed. As all efforts at securing a path for him failed, after a delay of an hour or so, he ordered the march to be resumed trampling underfoot many of the protestants, Abu’l Fazl Mamurl, who himself witnessed the incident, tells us that this continued for several days and many lost their lives fighting against the imposition.

Besides the measures Aurangzeb took for the purpose of reducing the number of the Hindus in the public services, many other restrictions were imposed on them. The pilgrimage tax was reimposed. Bernier tells us that at the time of an eclipse of the Sun three lakhs of rupees were paid to the state. Rupa Brahman offered to pay to the state Rs. 1 ,000 in a lump sum on behalf of the pilgrims visiting Pushkar (near Ajmer) in order to save them the indignity inflicted on them during the collection. This was accepted. The celebration of some religious festivals was stopped. The Holi ceased to be celebrated by imperial orders issued on 20 November, 1665. It was not a police order alone, promulgated for the purpose of keeping peace and order during the Holi days as Sir Jadu Nath Sarkar has suggested. Raja Bhim of Banera and Kishen Singh while serving in South India in 1692, made arrangements for the celebration of Holi. The censor tried to stop the celebration, but as Bhim and Kishen Singh were officers of high status, the censor’s attempts were of no use. He reported the matter to the emperor by whose order the celebrations were stopped. In 1704, 200 soldiers were placed at the disposal of the censor for the purpose of preventing the celebration of the Holi. Of course the emperor was not always able to stop the celebrations. In 1693 there was a riot in Agra during the celebrations and many persons were wounded. The celebration of Dipavali also was prohibited in 1665. In 1703 Hindus were not allowed to burn their dead on the banks of the river Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. An earlier order issued in 1696 had imposed similar restrictions with regard to the Jamuna in Delhi.

This lull was broken in 1679, when Aurangzeb’s fury broke out with a vengeance. Maharsja Jaswant Singh died on 10 December, 1678, When Aurangzeb heard of his death towards the end of the month, he waited patiently for some time and then on 9 March, 1679, orders were given for the sequestration of the state to the crown. About this time DorSb Khan had been sent to Khandela where he demolished various temples in the neighbourhood on 8 March, 1679. This was followed by the despatch of Khan-i- Jahan to Jodhpur. He destroyed many temples there early in 1679 and as an evidence of his ‘meritorious conduct’ he brought cart- loads of idols to Delhi. These were placed in public places in the court and the Friday Mosque. Aurangzeb was not yet at war with Jodhpur which had really been converted into a crownland property. The destruction of its temples therefore was not an act of warfare. It was an announcement that the state was no longer being governed by a Hindu Raja but had now passed into imperial hands.

It is not wholly true to say that Shah Jahan’s reign was a prelude to what followed under Aurangzeb. Much of what his successor did constituted a vote of censure on Shah Jahan for failing to do, in its entirety, what the Muslim law and tradition demanded of a Muslim king. It is true that the five years from the sixth to the tenth of his reign gave the Hindus a foretaste of what might happen if the Mughal throne happened to be filled by an orthodox king who insisted on following in their entirety the contemporary Muslim practices. Shah Jahan — despite the praises showered on him by his court poets and annalists — was never consistently or for long a persecutor. Towards the end of his reign, we actually find him restraining the religious zeal of Aurangzeb and overriding him in many important matters. It must, however, be admitted that Akbar’s ideal of a comprehensive state’, was gradually being lost sight of, although only partially.