THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS MOGUL EMPEROR AURANGZEB by Mike Gandhi on Apr 16, 2007 11:34 PM | Hide replies | Hide message
About the same time, serious Jat rebellions broke out in the area around Mathura, in which the patron of that city's congregational mosque had been killed. So in early 1670, soon after the ring-leader of these rebellions had been captured near Mathura, A urangzeb ordered the destruction of the city's Keshava Deva temple and built an Islamic structure (`idgah) on its site (no. 70).12 Nine years later, the emperor ordered the destruction of several prominent temples in Rajasthan that had become associated with imperial enemies. These included temples in Khandela patronised by refractory chieftains there; temples in Jodhpur patronised by a former supporter of Dara Shikoh, the emperor's brother and arch rival for the Mughal throne; and the royal temples in Udaipur and Chitor patronised by Rana Raj Singh after it was learned that that Rajput chieftain had withdrawn his loyalty to the Mughal state (nos. 71-74).
Considerable misunderstanding has arisen from a passage in the Ma'athir-i `Alamgiri concerning an order on the status of Hindu temples that Aurangzeb issued in April 1669, just months before his destruction of the Banaras and Mathura temples. The passage has been construed to mean that the emperor ordered the destruction not only of the Vishvanath temple at Banaras and the Keshava Deva temple at Mathura, but of all temples in the empire.13 The passage reads as follows:
MAP 2
Orders respecting Islamic affairs were issued to the governors of all the provinces that the schools and places of worship of the irreligious be subject to demolition and that with the utmost urgency the manner of teaching and the public practices of the sects of these misbelievers be suppressed.14
by Mike Gandhi on Apr 16, 2007 11:40 PM | Hide replies | Hide message
The order did not state that schools or places of worship be demolished, but rather that they be subject to demolition, implying that local authorities were required to make investigations before taking action.
More importantly, the sentence immediately preceding this passage provides the context in which we may find the order's overall intent. On April 8, 1669, Aurangzeb's court received reports that in Thatta, Multan, and especially in Banaras, Brahmins in "e stablished schools" had been engaged in teaching "false books" and that both Hindu and Muslim "admirers and students" had been travelling over great distances to study the "ominous sciences" taught by this "deviant group." 15 We do not know what sort of teaching or "false books" were involved here, or why both Muslims and Hindus were attracted to them, though these are intriguing questions. What is clear is that the court was primarily concerned, indeed exclusiv ely concerned, with curbing the influence of a certain "mode" or "manner" of teaching within the imperial domain. Far from being, then, a general order for the destruction of all temples in the empire, the order was in response to specific reports of an educational nature and was targeted at investigating those institutions where a certain kind of teaching had been taking place.
In sum, apart from his prohibition on building new temples in Banaras, Aurangzeb's policies respecting temples within imperial domains generally followed those of his predecessors. Viewing temples within their domains as state property, Aurangzeb and Ind o- Muslim rulers in general punished disloyal Hindu officers in their service by desecrating temples with which they were associated.
How, one might then ask, did they punish disloyal Muslim officers? Since officers in all Indo-Muslim states belonged to hierarchically ranked service cadres, infractions short of rebellion normally resulted in demotions in rank, while serious crimes like treason were generally punished by execution, regardless of the perpetrator's religious affiliation. No evidence, however, suggests that ruling authorities attacked public monuments like mosques or Sufi shrines that had been patronised by disloyal or re bellious officers. Nor were such monuments desecrated when one Indo-Muslim kingdom conquered another and annexed its territories.
On the contrary, new rulers were quick to honour and support the shrines of those Chishti shaikhs that had been patronised by defeated enemies. For example, Babur, upon seizing Delhi from the last of the city's ruling sultans in 1526, lost no time in pat ronising the city's principal Chishti tomb-shrines. 16 The pattern was repeated as the Mughals expanded into provinces formerly governed by Indo-Muslim rulers. Upon conquering Bengal in 1574, Mughal administrators showered their most lavish patronage on the two Chishti shrines in Pandua - those of Shaikh `Ala al-Haq (d. 1398) and Shaikh Nur Qutb-i `Alam (d. 1459) - that had been the principal objects of state patronage by the previous dynasty of Bengal sultans.17 And when he extended Mughal dominion over the defeated Muslim states o f the Deccan, the dour Aurangzeb, notwithstanding his reputation for eschewing the culture of saint-cults, made sizable contributions to those Chishti shrines in Khuldabad and Gulbarga that had helped legitimise earlier Muslim dynasties there.18
TEMPLES AND MOSQUES CONTRASTED
Evidence presented in the foregoing discussion suggests that mosques or shrines carried very different political meanings than did royal temples in independent Hindu states, or temples patronised by Hindu officers serving in Indo-Muslim states. For Indo- Muslim rulers, building mosques was considered an act of royal piety, even a duty. But all the actors, rulers and the ruled alike, seem to have recognised that the deity worshipped in mosques or shrines had no personal connection with a Muslim monarch. N or were such monuments thought of as underpinning the authority of an Indo-Muslim king, or as projecting a claim of sovereign authority over the particular territory in which they were situated. One can hardly imagine the central focus of a mosque's ritu al activity, the prayer niche (mihrab), being taken out of the structure and paraded around a Muslim capital by way of displaying Allah's co-sovereignty over an Indo-Muslim ruler's kingdom, in the manner that the ritual focus of a royal temple, th e image of the state-deity, was paraded around pre-modern Hindu capitals in elaborate "car" festivals.
In sum, apart from his prohibition on building new temples in Banaras, Aurangzeb's policies respecting temples within imperial domains generally followed those of his predecessors. Viewing temples within their domains as state property, Aurangzeb and Ind o- Muslim rulers in general punished disloyal Hindu officers in their service by desecrating temples with which they were associated.
How, one might then ask, did they punish disloyal Muslim officers? Since officers in all Indo-Muslim states belonged to hierarchically ranked service cadres, infractions short of rebellion normally resulted in demotions in rank, while serious crimes like treason were generally punished by execution, regardless of the perpetrator's religious affiliation. No evidence, however, suggests that ruling authorities attacked public monuments like mosques or Sufi shrines that had been patronised by disloyal or re bellious officers. Nor were such monuments desecrated when one Indo-Muslim kingdom conquered another and annexed its territories.
On the contrary, new rulers were quick to honour and support the shrines of those Chishti shaikhs that had been patronised by defeated enemies. For example, Babur, upon seizing Delhi from the last of the city's ruling sultans in 1526, lost no time in pat ronising the city's principal Chishti tomb-shrines. 16 The pattern was repeated as the Mughals expanded into provinces formerly governed by Indo-Muslim rulers. Upon conquering Bengal in 1574, Mughal administrators showered their most lavish patronage on the two Chishti shrines in Pandua - those of Shaikh `Ala al-Haq (d. 1398) and Shaikh Nur Qutb-i `Alam (d. 1459) - that had been the principal objects of state patronage by the previous dynasty of Bengal sultans.17 And when he extended Mughal dominion over the defeated Muslim states o f the Deccan, the dour Aurangzeb, notwithstanding his reputation for eschewing the culture of saint-cults, made sizable contributions to those Chishti shrines in Khuldabad and Gulbarga that had helped legitimise earlier Muslim dynasties there.18
TEMPLES AND MOSQUES CONTRASTED
Evidence presented in the foregoing discussion suggests that mosques or shrines carried very different political meanings than did royal temples in independent Hindu states, or temples patronised by Hindu officers serving in Indo-Muslim states. For Indo- Muslim rulers, building mosques was considered an act of royal piety, even a duty. But all the actors, rulers and the ruled alike, seem to have recognised that the deity worshipped in mosques or shrines had no personal connection with a Muslim monarch. N or were such monuments thought of as underpinning the authority of an Indo-Muslim king, or as projecting a claim of sovereign authority over the particular territory in which they were situated. One can hardly imagine the central focus of a mosque's ritu al activity, the prayer niche (mihrab), being taken out of the structure and paraded around a Muslim capital by way of displaying Allah's co-sovereignty over an Indo-Muslim ruler's kingdom, in the manner that the ritual focus of a royal temple, th e image of the state-deity, was paraded around pre-modern Hindu capitals in elaborate "car" festivals.
This point is well illustrated in a reported dispute between the Emperor Aurangzeb and a Sufi named Shaikh Muhammadi (d. 1696). As a consequence of this dispute, in which the shaikh refused to renounce views that the emperor considered theologically devi ant, Shaikh Muhammadi was ordered to leave the imperial domain. When the Sufi instead took refuge in a local mosque, Aurangzeb claimed that this would not do, since the mosque was also within imperial territory. But the shaikh only remarked on the empero r's arrogance, noting that a mosque was the house of God and therefore only His property. The standoff ended with the shaikh's imprisonment in the Aurangabad fort - property that was unambiguously imperial.19
This incident suggests that mosques in Mughal India, though religiously potent, were considered detached from both sovereign terrain and dynastic authority, and hence politically inactive. As such, their desecration would have had no relevance to the bus iness of disestablishing a regime that had patronised them. Not surprisingly, then, when Hindu rulers established their authority over the territories of defeated Muslim rulers, they did not as a rule desecrate mosques or shrines, as, for example, when S hivaji established a Maratha kingdom on the ashes of Bijapur's former dominions in Maharashtra, or when Vijayanagara annexed the former territories of the Bahmanis or their successors.20 In fact, the rajas of Vijayanagara, as is well known, bu ilt their own mosques, evidently to accommodate the sizable number of Muslims employed in their armed forces.
By contrast, monumental royal temple complexes of the early medieval period were considered politically active, inasmuch as the state-deities they housed were understood as expressing the shared sovereignty of king and deity over a particular dyna stic realm. Therefore, when Indo-Muslim commanders or rulers looted the consecrated images of defeated opponents and carried them off to their own capitals as war trophies, they were in a sense conforming to customary rules of Indian politics. Similarly, when they destroyed a royal temple or converted it into a mosque, the ruling authorities were building on a political logic that, they knew, placed supreme political significance on such temples. That same significance, in turn, rendered temples just as deserving of peace-time protection as it rendered them vulnerable in times of conflict.
