Sri Ram Sharma Quotes

A Jaipur letter dated 14 February, 1690, reported that in Kanwar in Jaipur, where the temples had perhaps already been demolished, a religious fair was held and idols were publicly worshipped. This happened three times in the course of a year. The censor complained to the emperor so that suitable action might be taken against those responsible for it.

Ghulam Muhammed, a news-writer, accompanying the expedition against the Jats reported on 28 May, 1690, to the emperor that Mohan Singh, one of the Rajput chiefs accompanying Bishan Singh, had set up a temple in the house of Sardul Singh. In December, 1690, a complaint was made to the emperor 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.

Jahangir continued, with some exceptions, his father’s practice of allowing non-Muslims to build public places of worship. His friend, Bir Singh Bundela, built a magnificent temple at Mathura, which was now once again rising into prominence as the sacred city of the Vaishnavas. He raised another magnificent place of public worship in his own State as well. More than seventy new temples were built in Banaras alone towards the end of his reign. They were, however, not yet complete when Jahangir died. He allowed the Christian Fathers to open a church at Ahrnedabad in 1620 and another at Hugh. At Lahore and Agra public cemeteries for the Christians were allowed to be set up. But when he made war on the Hindus and the Christians these ; considerations were sometimes given up. When Mewar was invaded, many temples were demolished by the invading Mughal army...
Sometimes his fury would break out even without the aggravating cause of war. When he visited Ajmer in the eighth year, the temple of the Boar god, Varsha, was destroyed and the idols were broken. Probably these instances made a contemporary poet of his court sing his praises as the great Muslim emperor who converted temples into mosques. These exceptions apart, Jahangir usually followed the path shown by his father. It is interesting to note that some of the Hindu shrines of Kangra and Mathura continued to attract a large number of Muslim pilgrims besides their Hindu votaries.

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.

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.

When Sarmad, a famous Sufi, came to Delhi from Hyderabad towards the end of Shah Jahan’s reign, DSra Shikoh had sought his company and paid him many marks of respect. But when Aurangzeb came to the throne, the things took a different turn. Sarmad cried out ‘whoever gained the knowledge of His secret became able to annihilate distance. The Mulla says that the Prophet ascended to the heavens, Sarmad declares that the heavens came down to the Prophet’. The Mullas now found their opportunity. But Sarmad did not deny the ascension of the Prophet. Aurangzeb sent the chief Qazi to Sarmad to question him about his nudity. Sarmad explained it by declaring that the devil had the upper hand. His answer was so worded as to offend the theo- logian by a pun on his name. But this in itself was not enough. Sarmad was summoned to the royal court and asked to repeat the whole of the Muslim creed . Sarmad went so far as to declare that there is no God. When asked to repeat the rest he said his realization went no further. He could now be easily condemned . When the executioner brought forth his axe for his hateful task, Sarmad welcomed it crying ‘I know You in whatever form You care to come’ and embraced death like a martyr. His contemporaries associated many miracles with his death and his tomb is still venerated as that of a great saint

The Mughals, however, had captured a prize in the two sons of the Guru [Guru Goving Singh] who had got separated from him when he had escaped from the Mughals at Kot Nahang on the Sirsa. They were asked to embrace Islam and at their natural refusal were executed at Sirhind. Their martyrdom was very much utilized by Banda in his campaign against the Muslims in the Punjab.

Aurangzeb contributed to the widening of this gulf between the Hindus and the Muslims further by ordering on 19 November, 1702 that “no Hindu in the army was to employ Muslim servants…“

Soon after the order was issued, reports of the destruction of temples from all over the empire began to arrive. A royal messenger was sent to demolish the temple of Malarina (now in Jaipur but probably then included in the imperial district of Ajmer) in May, 1669. In August, 1669, the temple of Visvanath at Banaras was demolished. The presiding priest of the temple was just in time to remove the idols from the temple and to throw them into a neighbouring well which thus became a centre of pious interest ever after. The temple of Gopi Nath in Banaras was also destroyed about the same time, He is alleged to have tried to demolish the Shaiva temple of Jangamwadi in Banaras. The tradition has it that his attempt failed because of the opposition which the heavenly hosts of Shiva threatened to put up if he persisted in his designs.

To sum up, Shah Jahan was a more orthodox king than his two predecessors. During the sixth to tenth years of his reign he embarked upon the active career of a persecuting king. Several orders were issued during these years for the purpose of achieving his end. New temples were destroyed, conversions were stopped, several Hindus were persecuted for religious reasons, and probably the pilgrimage tax was reimposed. Soon however his religious zeal seems to have spent itself. Shah Jahan’s ardour as a great proselytizing king cooled down when he discovered in the heir-apparent, and his deputy in many state affairs, a religious toleration equalling that of his grandfather Akbar. Of course the discontinuance of certain court ceremonies which smacked of Hindu practices was permanent.

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.

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 thus reverted to the practice of systematically desecrating the religious shrines of rebel chiefs and enemies. He also tried to enforce the Muslim injunction against new place of worship being built by non-believers. But it seems that his fury did not last long. Though in general terms some of the chroniclers of the reign remember the emperor as the destroyer of temples, no more specific cases find mention in the later part of his reign. Probably due to Dara’s increasing influence we find Shah Jahan reversing this policy. The prince presented a stone railing to the temple of Kesho Rai at Mathura. A letter written during the year a.d. 1643-44 (1053 a.h.) to Jai Singh, Raja of Jaipur, conceded to him full liberty to appoint the presiding priest at the temple of Brindaban built by Man Singh. Man Singh’s mother had died in Bengal and by a letter dated August, 1639, Shah Jahan granted two hundred digkas of land to be attached to her mausoleum in order to ensure its upkeep. The restoration of their temples to the Hindus of Gujarat, however, took place after 1647.

When, the Sikh Guru, Hargobind, took up his residence at Kiratpur in the Punjab, he succeeded in converting a large number of Muslims some time before 1645. In the words of Dabistana-Maznhib, not a Muslim was left between the hills near Kiratpur and the frontiers of Tibet and Khotan. The Mughals conquered Kiratpur in 1645 and it is possible they might have made some efforts at reconverting the people. But the Muslim chroniclers are silent about the fate of any such attempt.

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.