[Reader-list] truth about Aurangzeb

Mon Feb 19 15:50:08 IST 2007

 Hi All.

The article was not based on true facts, it was a white lie that Aurangzeb had destroyed temples and built mosques, beheaded non-muslims, etc. Most of the historian of international repute have praised Aurangzeb and his reign. It is very muhc true that Aurangzeb has been maligned by Hindu fundamentalists'. Even Indian politicians are ignorant of Aurangzeb's evil deeds. Indian scholars might have known about him, but for their own reasons chose to keep quiet and allowed he so called historians to write Aurangzeb's destructive drive. 

  In histroy written by international author, Aurangzeb have donated many lands in Banaras to hindus for temples, he brought justice for all and freedom to speech and practice. He took stern steps to prevent the division of Hindustan, the mughal empire. At hat Sikhs were trying to alineate from he empire and so they met with drastic consequences, it was political. Today Indian government is also doing the same, when the Kashmiri wants freedom, north eastern states want separate land, even the people who raised voice agianst the government and demand freedom from India, are dealt with iron hand.   

  Is keeping the nation intact and undivided a crime then ofcourse Aurangzeb had done the crime, if brnging taritors to justice is crime then Aurangzeb was criminal...but think is the Indian government not acting the same way, Muslism were orderd to not use louspeakers for Fazr Azaan, not sacrifice animals on Eid, dmeolished Babri mosques in the name of religion, Christains were told to stop preaching their religion, to make donations, etc. 

  Now people have understood the real motif behind the malighning of Aurangzeb. He was the king of just, he didn't take single penny from the national treasure for his expenses, he used to manage his expenses from writing copies of Holy Quran, etc. He is rightly called the Sufi Emperor, because he believes "Jo Fakiri mein maza hai Kab woh sultani mein hai". 

  Review your history .......before maligning anyone....

S Fatima <sadiafwahidi at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
  The truth about Aurangzeb
Francois Gautier

February 16, 2007

FACT, the Trust which I head, is holding an exhibition
on 'Aurangzeb as he was according to Mughal
documents', from February 16 to 20 at New Delhi's
Habitat Center, the Palm Court Gallery, from 10 am to
9 pm.

Why an exhibition on Aurangzeb, some may ask. Firstly,
I have been a close student of Indian history, and one
of its most controversial figures has been Aurangzeb
(1658-1707). It is true that under him the Mughal
empire reached its zenith, but Aurangzeb was also a
very cruel ruler &#65533; some might even say
monstrous. 

What are the facts? Aurangzeb did not just build an
isolated mosque on a destroyed temple, he ordered all
temples destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishwanath
temple, one of the most sacred places of Hinduism, and
had mosques built on a number of cleared temple sites.
Other Hindu sacred places within his reach equally
suffered destruction, with mosques built on them. A
few examples: Krishna's birth temple in Mathura; the
rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujarat; the
Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now
overlooking Benares; and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in
Ayodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb
is counted in four, if not five figures. Aurangzeb did
not stop at destroying temples, their users were also
wiped out; even his own brother Dara Shikoh was
executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion;
Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because he
objected to Aurangzeb's forced conversions.

Yet, Percival Spear, co-author with Romila Thapar of
the prestigious A History of India (Penguin), writes:
'Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than
a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the
erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.'
L'histoire de l'Inde moderne (Fayard), the French
equivalent of Percival Spear's history of India,
praises Aurangzeb and says, 'He has been maligned by
Hindu fundamentalists'. Even Indian politicians are
ignorant of Aurangzeb's evil deeds. Nehru might have
known about them, but for his own reasons he chose to
keep quiet and instructed his historians to downplay
Aurangzeb's destructive drive and instead praise him
as a benefactor of arts. 

Since then six generations of Marxist historians have
done the same and betrayed their allegiance to truth.
Very few people know for instance that Aurangzeb
banned any kind of music and that painters had to flee
his wrath and take refuge with some of Rajasthan's
friendly maharajahs.

Thus, we thought we should get at the root of the
matter. History (like journalism) is about
documentation and first-hand experience. We decided to
show Aurangzeb according to his own documents. There
are an incredible number of farhans, original edicts
of Aurangzeb hand-written in Persian, in India's
museums, particularly in Rajasthan, such as the
Bikaner archives. It was not always easy to scan them,
we encountered resistance, sometimes downright
hostility and we had to go once to the chief minister
to get permission. Indeed, the director of Bikaner
archives told us that in 50 years we were the first
ones asking for the farhans dealing with Aurangzeb's
destructive deeds. Then we asked painters from
Rajasthan to reproduce in the ancient Mughal style
some of the edicts: the destruction of Somnath temple;
the trampling of Hindus protesting jaziya tax by
Aurangzeb's elephants; or the order from Aurangzeb
prohibiting Hindus to ride horses and palanquins; or
the beheading of Teg Bahadur and Dara Shikoh.

People might say: 'OK, this is all true, Aurangzeb was
indeed a monster, but why rake up the past, when we
have tensions between Muslims and Hindus today?' There
are two reasons for this exhibition. The first is that
no nation can move forward unless its children are
taught to look squarely at their own history, the good
and the bad, the evil and the pure. The French, for
instance, have many dark periods in their history,
more recently some of the deeds they did during
colonisation in North Africa or how they collaborated
with the Nazis during the Second World War and handed
over French Jews who died in concentration camps (the
French are only now coming to terms with it). 

The argument that looking at one's history will pit a
community against the other does not hold either:
French Catholics and Protestants, who share a very
similar religion, fought each other bitterly.
Catholics brutally murdered thousands of Protestants
in the 18th century; yet today they live peacefully
next to each other. France fought three wars with
Germany in the last 150 years, yet they are great
friends today. 

Let Hindus and Muslims then come to terms with what
happened under Aurangzeb, because Muslims suffered as
much as Hindus. It was not only Shah Jahan or Dara
Shikoh who were murdered, but also the forefathers of
today's Indian Muslims who have been converted at 90
per cent. Aurangzeb was the Hitler, the asura of
medieval India. No street is named after Hitler in the
West, yet in New Delhi we have Aurangzeb Road, a
constant reminder of the horrors Aurangzeb perpetrated
against Indians, including his own people.

Finally, Aurangzeb is very relevant today because he
thought that Sunni Islam was the purest form of his
religion and he sought to impose it with ruthless
efficiency -- even against those of his own faith,
such as his brother. Aurangzeb clamped down on the
more syncretic, more tolerant Islam, of the Sufi kind,
which then existed in India. But he did not fully
succeed. Four centuries later, is he going to have the
last word? I remember, when I started covering Kashmir
in the late '70s, that Islam had a much more open
face. The Kashmir Muslim, who is also a descendant of
converted Hindus, might have thought that Allah was
the only true God, but he accepted his Kashmiri Pandit
neighbour, went to his or her marriage, ate in his or
her house and the Hindu in turn went to the mosque.
Women used to walk with open faces, watch TV, films. 

Then the shadow of Aurangzeb fell on Kashmir and the
hardline Sunnis came from Pakistan and Afghanistan:
cinemas were banned, the burqa imposed, 400,000
Kashmiri Pandits were chased out of Kashmir through
violence and became refugees in their own land and the
last Sufi shrine of Sharar-e-Sharif was burnt to the
ground (I was there). Today the Shariat has been voted
in Kashmir, a state of democratic, secular India, UP's
Muslims have applauded, and the entire Indian media
which went up in flames when the government wanted
Vande Mataram to be sung, kept quiet. The spirit of
Aurangzeb seems to triumph. 

But what we need today in India -- and indeed in the
world -- is a Dara Shikoh, who reintroduces an Islam
which, while believing in the supremacy of its
Prophet, not only accepts other faiths, but is also
able to see the good in each religion, study them,
maybe create a synthesis. Islam needs to adapt its
scriptures which were created nearly 15 centuries ago
for the people and customs of these times, but which
are not necessarily relevant in some of their
injunctions today. Kabir, Dara Shikoh and some of the
Sufi saints attempted this task, but failed. Aurangzeb
knew what he was doing when he had his own brother
beheaded. And we know what we are saying when we say
that this exhibition is very relevant to today's
India.

May the Spirit of Dara Shikoh come back to India and
bring back Islam to a more tolerant human face.

Francois Gautier

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/feb/16francois.htm

__________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/
_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

---------------------------------
Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20070219/70779d6b/attachment.html 