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royal temples in Udaipur and Chitor patronised by Rana Raj Singh after it was learned that that Rajput chieftain had withdrawn his loyalty to the Mughal state (nos. 71-74).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:
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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
