Aurangazeb and Kashi temple

08-11-2000, 04:16 AM

Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath
by Koenraad Elst

During the Ayodhya controversy, there were occasional
statements in the
Hindutva camp confirming (VHP) or denying (BJP) that
apart from Ram
Janmabhoomi, two other sacred sites should also be
"liberated" from
Islamic "occupation": Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and
Kashi Vishvanath
in Varanasi. Though the Hindu business community in
central Varanasi has
made it clear that it refuses to suffer the inevitable
losses which would
accompany an agitation in their densely populated
neighbourhood, the
liberation of Kashi Vishvanath is still on the VHP's
agenda. Therefore,
some authors have tried to "do an Ayodhya" on Kashi,
viz. try to make
people believe that there never was a Hindu temple at
the disputed site.

Syed Shahabuddin asserts that Muslims cannot possibly
have destroyed any
Hindu temple, because "pulling down a place of worship
to construct a
mosque is against the Shariat"; claims to the contrary
are all "chauvinist
propaganda" (1); Arun Shourie has confronted this claim
with the
information given in the official court chronicle,
MaasiriAlamgiri, which
records numerous orders for and reports of destructions
of temples. Its
entry for 2 September 1669 tells us: "News came to court
that in
accordance with the Emperor's command his officers had
demolished the
temple of Vishvanath at Banaras".(2); Moreover, till
today, the old Kashi
Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls
of the Gyanvapi
mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.

In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to
challenge facts
headon. It is better to minimize or to justify them.
Thus, Percival Spear,
co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious
Penguin History of
India, writes: "Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is
little more than a
hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the
erection of a mosque on
a temple site in Benares.(3); But a perusal of the same
Moghul chronicle
thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion: Aurangzeb
had thousands of
temples destroyed. And other chronicles, diaries and
other documents
concerning Muslim rulers in India prove that the
practice was not a
personal idiosyncrasy of Aurangzeb's either.

Therefore, a more promising way of defusing the conflict
potential which
the mosque at the Kashi Vishvanath site carries, is to
justify the
replacement of the temple with a mosque. Maybe the
owners and users of the
temple had brought it on themselves? Maybe Islam can be
disentangled from
this act of destruction in favour of a purely secular
motive?

JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out:
"the destruction of
the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It
appears that a nexus
between the sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple
existed and it was
primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered
action against the
temple(4); The eminent historian quotes no source for
this strange
allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk
with Mlecchas, let
alone to concoct intrigues with them.

Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated
variation, now
regularly reproduced in the media: "Did Muslim rulers
destroy temples?
Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of
a local princess
by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb
ordered the total
destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby
site. And this is the
only temple he is believed to have destroyed.(5) This
story is now
repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim
press and in the
secularist press but also in academic platforms by
"eminent historians".
It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi
Chakravartty, who also
reveals the source of this story.

She introduces the quotation as follows: "Much has been
said about
Aurangzeb's demolition order of Vishwanath temple at
Banaras. But
documentary evidence gives a new dimension to the whole
episode:" (6) What
follows is the theory launched by B.N. Pande, working
chairman of the
Gandhi Darshan Samiti and former Governor of Orissa:

"The story regarding demolition of Vishvanath temple is
that while
Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to
Bengal, the Hindu Rajas
in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a
day, their Ranis
may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay
their homage to Lord
Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were
posted on the five
mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on the
Palkis. They took
their dip in the Ganges and went to the Vishwanath
temple to pay their
homage. After offering Puja all the Ranis returned
except one, the
Maharani of Kutch.

"A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but
the Rani was to be
found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was
very much
enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the
Rani. Ultimately,
they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in
the wall was a
moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a
flight of stairs that
led to the basement. To their horror, they found the
missing Rani
dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments.
The basement was
just beneath Lord Jagannath's seat. The Rajas expressed
their vociferous
protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded
exemplary action.
Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have been
despoiled, Lord
Vishvanath may be moved to some other place, the temple
be razed to the
ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.(7);

The story is very bizarre, to say the least. First of
all, it has
Aurangzeb go to Bengal. Yet, in the extant histories of
his life and
works, no such journey to Bengal, or even any journey as
far east as
Varanasi, is recorded. Some of his generals were sent on
expeditions to
Bengal, but not Aurangzeb himself. There are fairly
complete chronicles of
his doings, day by day; could B.N. Pande or any of his
quoters give the
date or even the year of this remarkable episode?

Neither was Aurangzeb known to surround himself with
Hindu courtiers. And
did these Rajas take their wives along on military
expeditions? Or was it
some holiday picnic? How could the Mahant kidnap a Rani
who was there in
the company of other Ranis, as well as the appropriate
courtiers and
bodyguards? Why did he take such risk? Why did the
"Rajas" wait for
Aurangzeb to take "exemplary action": did they fear his
anger if they
punished the priests or destroyed the temple themselves?
And since when is
demolition the approved method of purifying a defiled
temple, an
eventuality for which the Shâstras have laid down due
ritual procedures?

One question which we can readily answer is, where did
B.N. Pande get this
story from? He himself writes: "Dr. Pattabhi
Sitaramayya, in his famous
book The Feathers and the Stones has narrated this fact
based on
documentary evidence.(8) So, we have to go one more step
back in time to
find this intriguing "documentary evidence". Let us turn
to this book, now
hard to find, to see what the documentary evidence is on
which this whole
wave of pro Aurangzeb rumours is based, but which no one
has cared to
reproduce or even just specify. This is what Gandhian
Congress leader
Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote in his prison diary:

"There is a popular belief that Aurangazeb was a bigot
in religion. This,
however, is combated by a certain school. His bigotry is
illustrated by
one or two instances. The building of a mosque over the
site of the
original Kasi Visveswara Temple is one such. A like
mosque in Mathura is
another. The revival of Jazia is a third but of a
different order. A story
is told in extenuation of the first event.

"In the height of his glory, Aurangazeb like any foreign
king in a
country, had in his entourage a number of Hindu nobles.
They all set out
one day to see the sacred temple of Benares. Amongst
them was a Ranee of
Cutch. When the party returned after visiting the
Temple, the Ranee of
Cutch was missing. They searched for her in and out,
East, North, West and
South but no trace of her was noticeable. At last, a
more diligent search
revealed a Tah Khana or an underground storey of the
temple which to all
appearances had only two storeys. When the passage to it
was found barred,
they broke open the doors and found inside the pale
shadow of the Ranee
bereft of her jewellery.

"It turned out that the Mahants were in the habit of
pick ing out wealthy
and bejewelled pilgrims and in guiding them to see the
temple, decoying
them to the underground cellar and robbing them of their
jewellery. What
exactly would have happened to their life one did not
know. Anyhow in this
case, there was no time for mischief as the search was
diligent and
prompt. On discovering the wickedness of the priests,
Aurangazeb declared
that such a scene of robbery could not be the House of
God and ordered it
to be forthwith demolished. And the ruins were left
there.

"But the Ranee who was thus saved insisted on a Musjid
being built on the
ruined and to please her, one was subsequently built.
That is how a Musjid
has come to exist by the side of the Kasi Visweswar
temple which is no
temple in the real sense of the term but a humble
cottage in which the
marble Siva Linga is housed. Nothing is known about the
Mathura Temple.

"This story of the Benares Musjid was given in a rare
manuscript in
Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla
who had read it
in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and
give the Ms. to a
friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without
fulfilling his
promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we
are told, against
Aurangazeb persists.(9)

So now, we finally know where the story comes from: an
unnamed mullah
friend of an unnamed acquaintance of Sitaram ayya's knew
of a manuscript,
the details of which he took with him in his grave. This
is the "document"
on which secularist journalists and historians base
their "evidence" of
Aurangzeb's fair and secularist disposition, overruling
the evidence of
archaeology and the cold print of the MaasiriAlamgiri,
to "explode the
myth" of Islamic iconoclasm spread by the "chauvinist"
Hindutva
propagandists.(10) Now you just try to imagine what the
secularists and
their mouthpieces in Western academe would say if Hindus
offered evidence
of this quality.

(c)Koenraad Elst , 1999

vullaganti_india · 03-17-2009, 05:02 AM

bull shit

Kali_Upasaka · 03-17-2009, 09:42 AM

Talking about Kashi temple, did any one wonder why Rani Ahilya Bayi Holkar ( who constructed the present temple) did not demolish the mosque and construct the temple in its original place? The Mahrattas were ruling Kashi at that time. The nominal King was the King of Kashi who was a Hindu.

It is because she was a devout Hindu who went by the Sasthras. The Sasthras lay down clearly where a temple can be constructed. Once a mosque is constructed in a place, it becomes polluted and no temple can be constructed in that place. That is the reason why the temple was constructed in a nearby site.

BTW the Mahrattas constructed the Annapurna temple also. Though the rulers were Mahrattas, the real power was with the Peshvas who were Brahmins.

Rani Ahilya Bayi Holkar also constructed a new temple at Somnath.

Durgaputra · 03-17-2009, 01:43 PM

Indian communist historians and their western masters agreeing on doing in Indians- surprised ? This has been what they specialise in since 1935. JNU is a hotbed of these fifth columnists and their so called intelligencia.

angelic_devil · 03-17-2009, 09:17 PM

crap no hindu queen will ever say demolish temple n build a mosque .

Kali_Upasaka · 03-18-2009, 02:14 AM

Aurangazeb also destroyed the ancient Bindu Madhav temple which was the highest spot in Kasi and constructed a mosque in its place. But then the temples of Banares have been destroyed by all Muslim invaders. This article gives a brief history of Banares.

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/concepts/kasi.asp

We find in history instances where a particular Muslim ruler patronized a temple and then later destroyed it.

A lot of research has been done about this. Many of these are not known outside the academic circles.

The main cause of the destruction of the temple was not religion but the wealth accumulated by the temples. It is the legendary wealth of the Somanath and Bajreswari temples which led to Muslim marauders coming from Afghanistan.

The local Muslim rulers also had another reason. Temples were the meeting place of the people. When a group of people hostile to the ruler gathered, they could plot against the ruler. This could be called political reason.

It is a combination of religious, economic and political factors.

In the case of Aurangzeb, he inherited a bankrupt state. Shahjahan had spent huge amount of money in constructing monuments. Aurangzeb also stripped most of the gold covering of Delhi and Agra forts.

Again Aurangzeb got the most popular Sufi saint of that time murdered because he thought he could lead an uprising.

Aurangzeb had killed his brothers, imprisoned his father to ascend the throne.

It is our country's misfortune that Dara Shikoh the brother of Aurangzeb who was Shahjahan's favorite son , and the heir apparent did not become the ruler. Dara Shikoh completed his translation of fifty-two Upanishads in 1657, two years before he was executed.

http://www.boloji.com/perspective/327.htm

Kali_Upasaka · 03-18-2009, 02:36 AM

The story on the web site is from M.A. Sherring's book about Banares. Historians and reserch scholars do a lot of research, many of them motivated by the urge to prove something. Political motivations also. They get their work published. But that does not mean it is an incontrovertible fact.

I saw a book recently in which the author has tried to prove that Durga is a Vaishnavite deity who evolved from Radha. He has based it on one single sculpture in south India. Interesting read. That is what I would say.

Again we have books which claim that Tamilians conquered Polynesia and how Hinduism was the religion of the Aztecs and Incas. Theories abound.

Like Erich Von Daniken's books.

These are theories. That is all.