Thread:
“ Was Aurangzeb a Destroyer of Temples or an Overseer of Hindu Religious Communities? ”

Aurangzeb described the Hindu,Jain, and Buddhist temples at Ellora in following words:

"Ellora is one of the finely crafted marvels of the real, transcendent Artisan"

(contd)

Of the tens of thousands of Hindu and Jain temples located within Mughal domains, most, although not all,still stood at the end of Aurangzeb’s reign.

Throughout his reign Aurangzeb’s policy was to ensure the well-being of Hindu religious institutions and their leaders.

(contd)

He issued dozens of orders that directed officials to shield temples from unwanted interference, granted land to Hindu communities, and provided stipends to Hindu spiritual figures.

(contd)

In one of his early acts as emperor, Aurangzeb issued an imperial order (farman) to local Mughal officials at Benares that directed them to halt any interference in the affairs of local temples.

(contd)

Writing in February of 1659, Aurangzeb said he had learned that:

“several people have, out of spite and rancour, harassed the Hindu residents of Banaras and nearby places, including a group of Brahmins who are in charge of ancient temples there.”

(contd)

The king then ordered his officials:

“You must see that nobody unlawfully disturbs the Brahmins or other Hindus of that region, so that they might remain in their traditional place and pray for the continuance of the Empire.”

(contd)

In the ninth year of his reign, Aurangzeb dispensed a farman to the Umanand Temple at Gauhati in Assam confirming an earlier land grant and the associated right to collect revenue.

(contd)

In 1680 he directed that Bhagwant Gosain, a Hindu ascetic who lived on the banks of the Ganges in Benares, should be kept free from harassment.

(contd)

In 1687 the emperor gave some empty land on a ghat in Benares (which was, incidentally, near a mosque) to Ramjivan Gosain in order to build houses for “pious Brahmins and holy faqirs.”

(contd)

In 1691 Aurangzeb conferred eight villages and a sizable chunk of tax-free land on Mahant Balak Das Nirvani of Chitrakoot to support the Balaji Temple.

In 1698 he gifted rent-free land to a Brahmin named Rang Bhatt, son of Nek Bhatt, in eastern Khandesh in central India.

The list goes on and includes temples and individuals in Allahabad, Vrindavan, Bihar, and elsewhere.

Aurangzeb enacted similarly favorable policies toward Jain religious institutions. Again following Akbar’s example, Aurangzeb granted land at Shatrunjaya, Girnar,

(contd)

and Mount Abu—all Jain pilgrimage destinations in Gujarat—to specific Jain communities in the late 1650s. He gave Lal Vijay, a Jain monk, a monastery (poshala), probably sometime before 1681, and granted relief for a resting house (upashraya) in 1679.

(contd)

As late as 1703, Aurangzeb issued orders prohibiting people from harassing Jina Chandra Suri, a Jain religious leader. Given such actions, it is unsurprising that we find laudatory descriptions of the emperor in vernacular Jain works of this period, such as

(contd)

“Aurangzeb Shah is a brave and powerful king”
(mardano aur mahabali aurangasahi naranda)

Richard Eaton, the leading authority on the subject, puts the number of confirmed temple destructions during Aurangzeb’s rule at just over a dozen.

(contd)

The question arises why were few out of the tens of thousands of temples were razed by Aurangzeb?

(contd)

Temples were widely understood—by both Hindus and Muslims—as linked with political action.

The Sanskrit Brihatsamhita, written perhaps in the sixth century, warns:

(contd)

“If a Shiva linga, image, or temple breaks apart, moves, sweats, cries, speaks, or otherwise acts with no apparent cause, this warns of the destruction of the king and his territory.”

(contd)

Acting on this premise that religious images held political power, Hindu kings targeted one another’s temples beginning in the seventh century, regularly looting and defiling images of Durga, Ganesha, Vishnu, and so forth. They also periodically destroyed each other’s temples.

Some Hindu kings even commissioned Sanskrit poetry to celebrate and memorialize such actions. Indo-Muslim rulers, such as Aurangzeb, followed suit in considering Hindu temples legitimate targets of punitive state action.

(contd)

The bigotry against Aurangzeb has roots in colonial-era scholarship, where positing timeless Hindu-Muslim animosity embodied the British strategy of divide and conquer.

History proves that Aurangzeb was not a destroyer of temples but an overseer of Hindu religious community.

Reference:

@AudreyTruschke,
AURANGZEB: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King