Sri Ram Sharma Quotes

In Orissa some time before 1670 the temple at Kedarpur was demolished and converted into a mosque.

Fireworks of all kinds were prohibited. It was laid down in the Faiawa-i-Alamgiri that the Hindus should not be allowed to look like Muslims. In furtherance of this it was ordered in 1694 that, except Rajputs and Marathas, no Hindus were to be allowed to ride an ‘Iraqi or Turani horse, an elephant, nor to use a palanquin. A Hindu disobeying this order in 1 694 in Multan had his horse and saddle confiscated. The deshmukh of Ahmadnagar was discovered in 1703 riding a palanquin and at once the imperial orders were enforced against him. It seems, thus, that the exception in favour of the Marathas was not always respected. In 1702 orders were given that the Muslim engravers be not allowed to engrave the names of Hindu gods and goddesses on the seals of the Hindus’ rings. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri assigns to the year 1693-94 the order prohibiting the carrying of arms in public by the Hindus.

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.

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.

In the ninth year a magnificent temple built by Bir Singh Bundela at Urchha was destroyed during the course of military ; operations against Jujuhar Singh Bundela. Several other temples suffered the same fate or were converted into mosques. When the ' fort of Khata Kheri was conquered and taken from its Bhil ruler Bhaglrath in 1632, Muslim rites were performed there just as had happened in the temple of Kangra on its conquest by Jahangir. The fort of Dhamuni under Jujuhar Singh was similarly desecrated in A.D. 1644-45 (1045 a.h.). Earlier, in a.d. 1630-31 (1040 a.h.) when Abdal, the Hindu chief of Hargaon in the province of Allahabad, rebelled, most of the temples in the state were either demolished or converted into mosques. Idols were burnt. Prince Aurangzeb while viceroy of Gujarat (February, 1645 to January, 1647) was responsible for the demolition of several temples. In Ahmedabad and elsewhere in Gujarat and Maharashtra many temples were destroyed, among them being the temple of Khandai Rai at Satara, and the temple of Ghintaman close to Sarashpur. Probably after Aurangzeb’s departure in 1647 many of these temples were again taken possession of by the Hindus.

This was not an isolated instance of popular feelings. The spirit of the age sanctioned such and even worse practices. Mubarak, a scholar of no mean repute, was persecuted even though he was a Muslim, for holding rather unorthodox views. Mir Habshi was executed for the offence of being a Shi'a. Khizar Khan met his death on a charge of blasphemy there were others as well who shared a similar fate. As BadayunI tells us, it was customary 'to search out and kill heretics’, let alone non-Muslims.’ The popular attitude towards heretics and non-Muslims can be well understood by several incidents of Akbar’s reign itself. In 1569-70 (977 a.h.) Mirza Muqlm and Mir Ya'qub were executed for their religious opinions. Hemu’s father, when captured, was offered his life if he turned Muslim, Even in 1588 when the murderer of a Shi'a was executed, the people of Lahore showed their religious sentiments by desecrating the tomb of his victim. Feelings towards the Hindus could not be restrained — ‘Abdun Nabi executed a Brahman for blasphemy on the complaint of a Qazl. Husain Khan, the governor of Lahore who died in 1575-76 (983 a.h.), made his government famous by ordering that the Hindus should stick patches of different colours on their shoulders, or at the edge of their sleeves, so that no Muslim might be put to the indignity of showing them honour by mistake. Nor did he allow Hindus to saddle their horses but insisted that they use packsaddles when riding. The Akbar Nama, the An-i-Akbarl and Badayuni are all agreed that prior to 1593, some Hindus had been converted to Islam forcibly. When Todar Mai was appointed Finance Minister, Akbar had to defend this appointment of a Hindu to such a high office by reminding his Muslim critics that they were all utilizing the services of Hindu accountants in their own households.

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.

But Firoz himself claims here that he built only 40 mosques in his entire reign. His language seems to emphasize that whereas his predecessors allowed temples to be built, he razed 40 temples to the ground and built mosques in their places rather than that he destroyed all temples and built mosques in their places.

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.

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.

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.

Aurangzeb seemed to have followed a threefold policy with regard to the high Hindu mansabdars. There was a general reduction in the number of Hindus holding high mansabs. Hindus were not appointed to high executive office, nor called upon to discharge responsible military duties. Usually the heads of various hereditary houses were not given the same status as had been held by their predecessors. The petty officials could expect to fare no better. Various orders were passed to break the monopoly of the Hindus in the routine jobs in the revenue department and in the clerical establishment. There is a general order in the Kalimat-i-Ta'yyibat forbidding the employment of the Hindus, Then there is the order preserved in the Maasir-i-'Alamgiri and Muntakhih-id-Luhah forbidding the employment of the Hindus in the revenue department and as personal assistants to various executive heads. An attempt was made to enforce these orders.

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.

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.

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.