Mughal Museum or Shivaji Museum?

 

The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath recently announced the Mughal museum being set up in Agra would be renamed after the legendary Maratha ruler Chatrapati Shivaji. To state this set a cat among the pigeons is perhaps an understatement. There are reams of articles that are appearing in the mainstream highlighting the alleged contributions of the Mughals to the Indian society. News channels gave space perhaps more than sufficient enough to demonstrate the virtues real or imagined of the Mughal rulers. There was further talk of how Mughals are intrinsic to enrichment of Indian culture. There were in parallel attempts to portray Shivaji as a ruler of Marathas with little to contribute to Uttar Pradesh. This despite the fact, Shivaji’s empire was expanded by his successors, the Peshwas to cover significant portion of present day Uttar Pradesh.

 

Nothing should surprise us. In an earlier post, it has been highlighted that how Mughal Man’s Burden was demolished through the Bhumi Puja for the Ram temple at Ayodhya. To the Indian liberals, akin to the White Man’s Burden, there is something called the Mughal Man’s Burden. Before Mughals arrived, India was perhaps a land of uncivilized natives. If one were to read the liberal narratives, everything that India possesses seemed to be a contribution of the Mughals. This conflict between the top down imposition of so called Mughal contributions and the bottom up narratives shaped over centuries over Mughal excesses reflects the nature of political left-liberalism in the country. While the top down approach ostensibly aiming at deracinated class might have found traction in the early years after independence, the recent years and the last 2-3 decades in particular have seen resistance against this narrative in varying forms. The current round seems to be burying the last vestiges of Mughal burden. Yet to claim the battle has been won would be premature.

 

It was in this context an interesting article appeared in The Print written by Aabhas Maldahiyar. The author puts up a spirited defence of the decision to rename the museum. He contends the Mughals were as worse as any other Islamic ruler that ruled from Delhi or other places in their nearly 800 years of their conquest and rule. In fact, the existence of independent Pakistan itself points towards the remains of the Islamic rule. At its height, India had spread from Burma to Afghanistan into Central Asia and from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka and into South East Asia. The Mughal rule of 300 years (in reality, <200 years of hard rule) but it seemed to our liberal they are everything. To the liberals it is perhaps a necessity to counter every point of the right and thus glorify Mughals. They seem desperate in this aspect, probably a need to appease a community, something in a slightly unrelated context, has been termed as Bakasura phenomenon.

There is no dispute that Mughals are part of the Indian civilizational history either way. Yet as Aabhas contends in his piece, the over romanticization is an issue. He cites the instance of Prayagraj that was renamed as Allahabad. Rather than yogi seeking to turn the clock back, it was Akbar who decided to build Illahabas which soon became Allahabad on what for millennia had been known as Prayagraj. It had a symbolic influence for Hindus and Akbar chose to destroy it. This instance is sufficient to cite Akbar as similar to the other Islamic rulers and not someone who is glorified for his tolerance, diversity etc. Akbar, as Maldahiyar contends, Akbar described himself as Ghazi in 1578 some twenty years into his rule.

 

Travelogues cite of Akbar’s decision to reward his associate and historian Badauni with gold coins for his stated preference to soak his beard with the blood of the Hindu infidels. It is perhaps a mystery that how this reflects Akbar’s tolerance towards his Hindu subjects. As historian Henry Elliot points out in his writings cited by Aabhas, Akbar allowed slaying of ten scores of cows whose blood would be used to smear the walls of the Hindu temples. James Todd, again cited by Aabhas, talks about how Akbar used to measure the killings of his enemies through the weight of their janeu.  If this was Akbar, the supposedly most tolerant and secular of the Islamic rulers, then one can imagine the tolerance or otherwise of the other Islamic rulers. Besides sending abundant money to Mecca, Akbar’s idea of Meena Bazaar was to secure concubines for himself rather than being a project of women’s empowerment as positioned and circulated by the friends of the left liberal ecosystem. Aabhas strongly disputes the idea to romanticise Agra, which in fact was the seat of Mughals for less than hundred years. This is something in contrast to cities like Kashi or Prayagraj which have been the cultural seat of Hindus for millennia.

 

While Angus Maddison estimated India’s GDP growth rate to be negative during the later years of Aurangzeb, the fact, that Jaziya contributed nearly a sixth of the revenues of the empires illustrates the burden on Hindu subjects. It was thus not surprising to find Hindus especially among the lower income groups converting to Islam. As an aside it is a tribute to the Hindus that they managed to save the religion inspite of such adversity. Slavery was common and slaves especially Hindus would have no rights. Their evidence was not admissible in the court of law. In fact, if Akbar abolished Jaziya it was perhaps due to geopolitical considerations. The inability to weave Hindus into the ruling coalition undid many an Islamic empire. To his credit, Akbar’s realpolitik perhaps ensured his dynasty survived a little longer than others.

 

Aabhas also strongly tears into the Mughal defence of Taj Mahal. In fact, as he points out, the history of architecture predates Mughals by thousands of years. It is somewhat puzzling to find Taj Mahal as symbol of love given the fact, forced labour was used to construct it. Moreover, the impact on the economy given the resources diverted to its construction might have been responsible for the decline in the GDP growth rate. Moreover, it was hardly a symbol of love for which it has been positioned currently.

 

Therefore, as Aabhas has rightly contended, that Mughal history for its contributions real or imagined, has its dark sides which are uncomfortable to discuss for the left liberal ecosystem. All that the left-liberals need is something to rant against the Hindu narrative. If Hindus believe Shivaji is great, they must position Aurangzeb as equally great. They have to create false equivalences to sustain their narrative that is increasingly becoming indefensible. Mughals were just another dynasty invading from Central Asia and Kabul and treated India as a colony. The very fact, that Shahjahan chose Imam from Bukhara in Central Asia to lead prayers at the Jama Masjid, his construction, showed the differentials between the native Muslim converts and the ones who came from Central Asia or Persia or Arabia. These differences were later glossed over as they prepared to challenge the Congress hegemony in freedom struggle. Therefore, contrary to myths, it is indeed something pleasing to find history being given its rightful place in the current scheme of things.