Under some Muslim rulers there were series of fierce persecutions. Forced conversion to Islam took place, sometimes in thousands, as it did under Sik… - Sri Ram Sharma

Babur inherited his religious policy from the Lodis. Sikandar Lodi’s fanaticism must have been still remembered by some of the officials who continued to serve when Babur came into power. Babur was not a great administrator. He was content to govern India in the orthodox fashion. He projected no great changes in the government of the country except the design of a royal road from Agra to Kabul. But the Hindus, he met with, occupied no humble position. Rana Sanga, a Hindu, led a host wherein even Muslim armies were present under disaffected Pa than chiefs. It was Babur’s success at the battle of Khanava against Rana Sanga that enabled him to remain in India as her ruler. These two factors seem to have governed his religious policy. Babur, the born fighter against heavy odds, knew he was at a great crisis in his life on the eve of his battle against Rana Sanga. In order to conform strictly to the Muslim law he absolved Muslims from paying stamp duties thus confining the tax to Hindus alone. He thus not only continued, but increased, the distinction between his Hindu and Muslim subjects in the matter of their financial burdens. One of his officers, Hindu Beg, is said to have converted a Hindu temple at Sambhal into a mosque. His Sadr, Shaikh Zain, demolished many Hindu temples at Ghanderi when he occupied it. By Babur’s orders, Mir Baqi destroyed the temple at Ayudhya commemorating Rama’s birth place and built a mosque in its place in 1528-29. He destroyed Jain idols at Urva near Gwalior. There is no reason to believe that he did anything to relax the harshness of the religious policy which he found prevailing.

The newswriter of Ranthambore reported the destruction of a temple in Parganah Bhagwant Garh. Gaj Singh Gor had repaired the temple and made some additions thereto.'...'Royal orders for the destruction of temples in Malpura Toda were received and the officers were assigned for this work.

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.