The only universal emotion common to man and beast is fear of death. Except for rare individuals like Oscar Wilde who always wanted the last word— “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go”—the general emotion the Grim Reaper evokes is fear. Fear’s subsequent consequence is reverence. Hence we build monuments to dead rulers, reliquaries for the wealthy and powerful, and memorials to fallen heroes. Hindus are the general exception unless you consider statues and paintings as tributes. The whole world is a graveyard that unites mankind. Or divides, as is the case with statues of pro-slavery Confederate generals in America’s Bible Belt and Aurangzeb’s tomb in Maharashtra.
BJP neta Nitish Rane has called for the destruction of the Mughal emperor’s grave. The Great Bigot who died in March 1707 is buried in Khuldabad. His tomb is protected as a Monument of National Importance by the Archaeological Survey of India under a 1958 law, which prohibits it from demolition. If any Mughal criminal was the worst for the dynasty’s PR, it is Aurangzeb. Though Mohan Bhagwat disapproved of the prevalent North Indian practice of the saffron species of finding shivlings under old mosques, Rane has a point. Honouring Aurangzeb’s tomb is like placing flowers and snapping Nazi salutes at Adolf Hitler’s grave. (Fortunately the Soviets took care of it.) Or erecting a memorial pillar on Idi Amin’s grave. The legacy of Aurangzeb aka Muhi-al-Din Muhammad does little credit to his forebears like Emperor Akbar. Nor is it a credit to democratic India.
Scholars have argued that India’s last powerful emperor was a pragmatist, not a fanatic. He forged alliances with Hindu kings and gave jobs to Rajputs in his administration. These actions do not necessarily prove his secular credentials, because it is what any ruler of a vast empire would do: hold your friends close, hold your enemies closer, as Michael Corleone remarked in Godfather II. The American historian Will Durant’s decryption of Aurangzeb in his book, Our Oriental Heritage is telling: “Aurangzeb cared nothing for art, destroyed its “heathen” monuments with coarse bigotry, and fought, through a reign of half a century, to eradicate from India all religions except his own.” His two driving forces were Islam and power; it is too well known he reintroduced jaziya, tax on Hindus. With joylessness disguised as piety, he banned alcohol, music and dancing on royal premises. He led his armies on conquests, spreading famine and death by ravaging the countryside, while he knitted skull caps and copied the Koran in his spare time. Maasir-i-Alamgiri, the account of Aurangzeb’s reign composed by Saqi Musta’d Khan, describes the destruction of the birthplace of Lord Krishna, upon which he built the Shahi Idgah mosque. He tortured Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur and threw him in an iron cage. When the Guru rejected the offer to convert to Islam, Aurangzeb ordered his beheading.
Christianity and Islam, for all their virtues, have a common failing. Convert non-believers using any means ‘to save their souls.’ The mark of civilisation is greatness built, not destroyed. The Mughals amalgamated Persian and Hindustani aesthetics, to create great music, dance, textiles, art and architecture. But Aurangzeb would be proud of the Taliban which destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, and the IS, which demolished Iraq and Syria’s historic artefacts; because they were ‘un-Islamic.’ Rane and his cohort’s call to demolish the tyrant’s grave represents neither nationalism nor saffron savagery. It is justice for lost history, pure and simple.