By P.K. Balachandran/Daily News
Colombo, November 3 – “The Taj Story”, a Bollywood film released on October 31, has become controversial because it proposes that the Taj Mahal in Agra was built by the Muslim emperor Shahjahan over a destroyed Hindu temple.
The film’s claim is in line with the popular Hindu nationalistic theory that several mosques/mausoleums built by Muslim rulers during their 800-year rule over North India, stand over destroyed or partly destroyed Hindu temples.
As a result of this theory, a Hindu mob destroyed the 16 th. Century Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. A temple for Lord Rama was built in its place and was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024.
The “Taj Story” is the latest commercial film challenging the notion fostered by leftists, liberals and the Congress party, that India’s past was “inclusive” with Hindus and Muslims living in harmony. The liberals hold that Muslim rule was largely peaceful and benign, and that any attempt to “reverse” this history will destroy communal harmony.
But the advocates of Hindu nationalism or Hindu majoritarianism see the above mentioned notions as “contrived and dishonest”, meant only to serve the narrow political interest of “liberal” and left wing political parties like the Congress.
Hindu nationalists are eager to show that many events of the past were wrongly portrayed to hide “atrocities” committed by the Muslims. Such “unreal” notions also showed the Hindu majority as having been weak and easily subjugated by Muslim powers, a portrayal which ill-fits today’s resurgent India.
The Series
Films like “Kashmir Files” on the expulsion of Hindus from the Kashmir valley; “The Kerala Story” on the alleged conversion of Kerala Hindu girls to make them ISIS terrorists; and “Bengal Files” on the Great Calcutta killings in 1946, when Bengal Presidency was ruled by the Muslim League, are examples of the Hindu backlash.
“The Taj Story” is but the latest in this series.
According to The Telegraph of Kolkata, Vivek Agnihotri’s “Kashmir Files” was an unexpected superhit ,raking in an impressive INR 2500 million despite being panned by critics as pandering to the worst Muslim stereotypes. Sudipto Sen’s “The Kerala Story” become 2023’s giant winner, earning INR 2400 million, even though the movie was savaged by reviewers who said it contained gross distortions. It also faced bans and court cases.
“The Taj Story’s” box office performance is yet to be ascertained, but critics have trashed it. The Hindu says that the film is formatted to foment the majority’s fear of Muslims and project the latter as the “other”. It describes the Taj Mahal as a “symbol of atrocities and genocide” and accuses leftist historians of “intellectual terrorism.”
The Indian Express says that the film trudges on without offering any real answers to the questions it raises. “Instead, it merely stirs the pot, blending fact and fiction to serve an agenda far removed from historical inquiry.”
The Claim
Claims that the Taj Mahal was earlier a Hindu temple have surfaced periodically, either from lone Hindu mavericks, revisionists, or extremist Hindu groups ever since P.N.Oak, an Indian writer, published his book “Taj Mahal: the True Story” in 1989.
Oak claimed that the Taj Mahal was built before Muslim invaders came to India in the 12 th.Century . Proponents of this theory argue that since some of the Mughal invaders destroyed Hindu temples or converted them into mosques, the Taj Mahal must have been a Hindu structure originally.
P.N.Oak maintained that the monument was in fact a Shiva temple named “Tejo Mahalaya”. The “Tejo Mahalaya” eventually got corrupted under the Muslim rulers, to become “Taj Mahal”, he said. In 2000 he petitioned the Supreme Court about this, but was ticked off by the judges.
“Our written statement (to the court) called the claims concocted. We asked the court to dismiss the petition,‘’ Vikrama told The Guardian.
In May 2022, the Allahabad High Court dismissed a petition filed by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, Rajneesh Singh, that asked for a fact-finding panel to establish “the real History of Taj Mahal”, and for more than 20 sealed “rooms” to be opened to look for the possible presence of idols of Hindu gods.
P.N.Oak too had demanded the opening of the “sealed chambers” of the Taj. “It is my feeling that some very decisive evidence lies hidden in those sealed chambers. They could contain Sanskrit inscriptions, Hindu idols, scriptures and coins laying bare the pre-Shahjahan history of that building,” he had written.
According to Oak, in 1212, Raja Paramardi Dev had built the Tejo Mahalaya temple palace (presently Taj Mahal). This temple was later inherited by Raja Maan Singh, the then Maharaja of Jaipur in Rajasthan. After him, the property was held and managed by Raja Jai Singh but was annexed by Shah Jahan and converted into a memorial for his wife Mumtaz Mahal in 1632.
In 2015, a petition was filed in a district court in Agra demanding that Hindus should be allowed to worship in the “temple”.
But according to archaeologists, the so-called “22 rooms” in the basement of the Taj Mahal are not really rooms, but rather a long-arched corridor along which doors were fixed so that the space could be utilised better. There is nothing there now. ASI staff regularly clean the “rooms”.
A retired ASI official told the media that since the “rooms” were not of tourist interest, they were kept locked to prevent unnecessary movement of people. “There is no secret history in the basement, it is for security reasons that the area is kept out of bounds for visitors,” the official said.
The noted archaeologist, K. K. Muhammed, who retired in 2012 as the ASI’s Regional Director (North), told the Indian Express that he had seen no religious motifs inside the basement of the Taj. Such rooms, he said, were not uncommon in Mughal-era structures of a similar nature.
“The ASI maintains all these basement rooms. The walls are bare, there are no motifs; it’s just a structural element to raise the plinth on which the main mausoleum and the minarets stand,” Muhammed explained.
Censor Certificate
In the latest public interest litigation filed in the Delhi High Court, the grant of a censor certificate to “The Taj Story” was challenged on the grounds that film was based on fabricated material meant to disturb harmony between Hindus and Muslims.
Petitioner Shakeel Abbas urged the court to ensure that an appropriate display of a disclaimer clearly mentioning that the movie “deals with a contested narrative and does not claim to be a definitive historical account” was shown.
However, the court declined to entertain the petition saying that it could not act as a “super Censor Board”. A Bench of the Chief Justice of Delhi HC Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya noted that the Cinematograph Act, 1952 contained no provision for reviewing certifications given by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). However, the bench stated that since Section 6 of the Cinematograph Act provided for revisions by the censor board, the petitioners could approach the board.
Not Divisive
Paresh Rawal, who played the lead role in the film, told the media that the film was factual and that the makers had made sure that there would be no communal jingoism in this film.
He pointed out that there was even a dialogue where a character says, ‘There’s no Hindu-Muslim conflict here. This is about shared history.” In another scene, a character says, ‘We are not the ones who destroy. Not even a scratch should come to the Taj. Every problem cannot be solved by breaking or destroying things. Sometimes, acceptance itself is a big thing.”
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India, Taj Mahal, Maudoleum over a Shiva temples, Hindutwa theories, P.N.Oak’s theory, Muslim rulers’ temple destructive spree, Communal harmony theory challenged, Paresh Rawal, The Taj Story,
