The raging controversy on Aurangzeb’s role in Indian history has been further exacerbated following the publication of an article in the Indian Express ‘The Mughals You Don’t Know’ (April 1)— by actor Naseeruddin Shah, who often perceives ‘Muslims as being insecure in India’. Naseeruddin’s rant in IE is part of a chain action-reaction that blazed following the glorification of Aurungzeb, a ruthless bigot, by a senior leader of the Samajwadi Party and Maharashtra MLA, Abu Asim Azmi, last month.
Here is a little recall. On March 3, 2025, Azmi made a statement that exalted Aurangzeb, leading to his suspension from the Maharashtra assembly Budget Session and massive outrage nationwide, particularly in Maharashtra. Nagpur was on the boil, leading to communal clashes and the outbreak of violence. I wrote about the controversy in an article titled ‘The Aurangzeb We Know’— in the Indian Express of March 27. Subsequently, on April 1, the IE published a rejoinder by Naseeruddin. A day later (April 2), the IE published my response to Naseeruddin Shah’s diatribe in its ‘Letters To Editor’ column. My response to Naseeruddin’s rejoinder, edited heavily because of space constraints, did carry the gist of everything I had said.
Why give so much importance to what the likes of Azmi and Naseeruddin say? After all, who are they and who do they represent? Azmi’s praise of Aurangzeb, the prompt support he got across the political-social spectrum and Naseeruddin’s harangue in the Indian Express aren’t some random isolated events. After Azmi made the incendiary statement, he got ready backing from former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and several Congress leaders. In a TV interview, a Congress MP, Imran Masood, said historical facts cannot be erased. He accused the movie Chhava of distorting history. Masood also claimed that India’s GDP was very high during Aurangzeb’s rule. Another congressman, Udit Raj, supported Azmi’s statement. He said, “I support Abu Azmi’s statement. He has not said anything wrong…”
A Toxic Mindset
Taken together, this cabal (in India and Pakistan) represents a mindset that is responsible for the blood-soaked partition of the country, unending hostility between India and Pakistan and ongoing tension between Hindus and Muslims in residual India. It’s for nothing that Aurangzeb enjoys a huge fan following in Pakistan as well. During my visits to the Islamic nation, I frequently came across those who invariably described Aurangzeb as an ideal ruler who faithfully followed Islamic tenets of austerity piety and fought lifelong battles to spread the footprint of the faith.
Glorifying or condemning Aurangzeb isn’t only a Hindu-Muslim issue. Its ramifications go far and wide. It’s essentially a civilisation question. One’s stand on the issue determines a society one wants. After all, the societal norms of a nation are shaped by the heroes it worships and the values it upholds. Can figures like Mahmud Ghazni, Ghori, Timur, Aurangzeb, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pot Pol, Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, or Nathuram Godse (the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi) be role models of any civilised society?
Unlike Azmi, who praised Aurangzeb without reservation, Naseeruddin was circumspect in his choice of words while sharing his opinion about the Mughal emperor. He hailed him as “an ascetic” while conceding that Aurangzeb was “a bigot and a rabid fundamentalist”. But Naseeruddin remained conspicuously silent on why a segment of the Muslim community & self-proclaimed secularists in the subcontinent continue to glorify Aurangzeb when, in his reckoning, he was so nasty. In his convenient silence lies the rub.
The Role Of Mughals
This is not the first time Naseeruddin has admired the Mughals. On multiple occasions in the past, he has referred to these Islamic invaders as “refugees”, “didn’t come to India to loot, but to settle”, and “contributors to nation-building”. Naseeruddin frequently endeavours to assert that the Mughals were not responsible for any acts of brutality and that the extensive historical evidence to this effect is either a product of imagination or a manifestation of Islamophobia.
Naseeruddin asserts, “…Timur, Nadir Shah and Mahmud Ghaznavi who only came to plunder…” Is that so? The autobiographies of Islamic rulers and the accounts recorded by contemporary historians make it unequivocally clear that, from the eighth century onward, Muslim invaders in India carried out forced religious conversions, massacres, brutal exploitation, destruction of places of worship, and desecration of sacred symbols—all acts that were considered praiseworthy from an Islamic perspective. The Mughal era was no exception to this historical pattern.
To whitewash the sins of Muslim invaders, their apologists (Communists and Islamists) essentially make the following claims: the Islamic rule in India was a benevolent one; the accounts of temple demolition and forced conversions to Islam are either highly exaggerated or inventions of the British & Sangh Parivar; even if there were some attacks on the temples, the invaders intended to loot the massive wealth stored there, sans any religious angle and the fight between the Islamic invaders and Indigenous rulers was for power, without any civilisational angle. To buttress this point further, names of Hindus fighting for the likes of Aurangzeb and those of Muslims who worked for Hindu kings, such as Maharana Pratap, are quoted.
When tested against facts and logic, all these claims prove bogus and ignite the fury and rage of those who consider themselves inheritors of the timeless plural Sanatana traditions of the subcontinent. In reality, this entire episode not only reflects the deeply entrenched ideological toxicity prevailing in the Indian subcontinent but also reopens historical wounds that have fuelled tensions in Hindu-Muslim relations for centuries.
The pulverisation of temples and forced conversions of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains into Islam by successive Islamic rulers is a hard reality and not a creation of either the British or the Sangh Parivar. The Muslim invaders themselves, or their contemporaries, have left vivid accounts of their exploits – razing of Hindu temples, raising of mosques in their place, calling non-Muslims to accept Islam or face death and ravaging entire regions to dust.
What Does History Say?
According to Historian Abraham Eraly (The Age of Wrath), “Mahmud had, during the solemn ceremony of receiving the Caliphate honours on his accession to the throne of Ghazni, taken a vow to wage jihad, holy war, every year against the idolaters of India. He could not keep that vow in the letter, but he led more than a dozen campaigns in India during his 32-year reign. The sultan had two motives in his Indian raids: to slaughter heathens and to gather plunder. These were, however, interconnected motives, each reinforcing and energising action in the other.”
Ghazni invaded India repeatedly. According to the ‘Tarikh-I-Sultan Mahmud-I-Ghaznavi: Or the History of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni’ (Translated 1908) by G. Roos-Keppel, Qazi Abdul Ghani Khan, when offered a vast ransom by a vanquished Hindu king, Mahmud replied, “In the religion of the Musalmans it is (laid down that this is) a meritorious act that anyone who may destroy the place of worship of the heathen he will reap great reward on the day of judgment, and I intend to remove entirely idols from the cities of Hindustan…”
Several accounts of Mahmud’s intent and destructive actions are available. His contemporary, Alberuni, says: “Mahmud utterly ruined the country’s prosperity (of Bharat) and performed those wonderful exploits by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions.” Al-Biruni also noted, “The image was destroyed by the prince Mahmud; may God be merciful to him! In AH 416, he ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghazni, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Chakrasvamin, an idol of bronze brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somanath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghazni, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.”
Mahmud’s Somnath expedition is a ‘celebrated achievement’ in Islamic history because of the destruction and humiliation it caused to the Hindus. Mahmud’s exploits elated the Islamic world, and the Caliph of Baghdad honoured the Sultan, his sons, and his brothers by conferring titles on them. Well-known authors and bards composed odes to immortalise this victory of Islam over the kafirs. Mahmud’s bigotry wasn’t a misguided individual’s behaviour— it had widespread acclaim in the then-Islamic world. He is still hailed for his hate crimes and depravity. as a hero by a section of sub-continent Muslims. Ironically, most of them are progenies of those Hindus who converted to Islam to escape the sword.
Invaders attacked India with twin objectives: to plunder India’s fabled wealth and earn religious merit. In ‘Tuzuk-e-Taimuri’, Timur (who invaded India in 1398) stated, “My principal object in coming to Hindustan…has been to accomplish two things. The first was to war with the infidels, the enemies of the Mohammedan religion, and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was…that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels: plunder in war is as lawful as their mothers’ milk to Musalmans who war for their faith, and the consuming of that which is lawful is a means of grace.”
There were about one lakh Hindu prisoners in Timur’s custody. In his words, “…throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners was to put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolators, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasir-ud-din Umar, a counsellor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives.”
The Persian historian Minhaj-I-Siraj, in his chronicle the ‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri’, reported that thousands of monks were killed as Islamic fanatic Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji tried his best to uproot Buddhism and plant Islam by the sword; the burning of the library continued for several months, and smoke from the burning manuscripts hung for days like a dark pall over the low hills. Minhaj wrote of the 1193 CE Bihar Attack:
“Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar, by the force of his intrepidity, threw himself into the postern of the gateway of the place, and they captured the fortress and acquired great booty. The more significant number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven, and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there, and when all these books (Hindus) came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned several Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books, but the whole of the Hindus had been killed. On becoming acquainted [with the contents of those books], it was found that the whole fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindu tongue, they call a college Bihar.”
After Khanwa’s (1527 Victory over Rana Sanga) success, Babur Assumes the ‘Ghazi’ (Victor in a Holy war) Title. He writes, “Below the titles (tughra) entered on the Fath-nama, I (Babur) wrote the following quatrain: — For Islam’s sake, I wandered in the wilds, prepared for war with pagans and Hindus, resolved myself to meet the martyr’s death. Thanks be to God! A ghazi I became.” Babur, by his admission, was a religious warrior, a Ghazi, committed to the cause of Islam and the annihilation of non-believers and the destruction of their revered icons. He lived his beliefs and celebrated his ‘achievements’.
The Islamic court historian Muhammad Saqi Mustaid Khan, in ‘Maasir-e-Alamgiri’ (1731), documented that Aurangzeb issued a decree ordering the demolition of the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the construction of a mosque in its place. He also commanded forced conversions of Hindus, destroyed the Kesava Rai temple in Mathura, and, after demolishing several temples in Jodhpur, buried their remains beneath the steps of the Jama Masjid.
Naseeruddin, downplaying the destruction of temples by Islamic invaders, wrote, “No doubt temples were destroyed in their time, just as cathedrals and mosques were destroyed in the USSR, and a mosque in China today has been turned into a urinal.” So, you would use the destruction of Mosques elsewhere in the world to justify the ruination of temples by perverted Islamic invaders in India! In contrast, when Islam came to India through traders, it was given a red carpet-welcome.
Arnold Toynbee, one of the great historians of the past century, while delivering the Azad Memorial Lecture in February 1960, said, “…In the course of the first Russian occupation of Warsaw (1614-1915), the Russians had built an Eastern Orthodox Christian Cathedral on this central spot in the city that had been the capital of the once independent Roman Catholic Christian country, Poland. The Russians had done this to give the Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were now their masters. After the re-establishment of Poland’s independence in 1918, the Poles had pulled this cathedral down.”
The highly respected historian and philosopher said, “Aurangzeb’s purpose in building those three Mosques was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to develop their Orthodox Cathedral in the city centre at Warsaw. Those three Mosques were intended to signify that an Islamic Government was supreme, even over Hinduism’s holiest of holy places. I must say that Aurangzeb had a veritable genius for picking out provocative sites. Aurangzeb and Philip II of Spain are a pair. They are incarnations of the gloomily fanatical vein in the Christian-Muslim-Jewish family of religions. Aurangzeb–a poor, wretched, misguided, evil man–spent a lifetime of hard labour raising massive monuments to his discredit. Perhaps the Poles were kinder in destroying the Russians’ self-discrediting monuments in Warsaw than you have been in sparing Aurangzeb’s Mosques. It is Aurangzeb and not the Hindu holy ground on which his Mosques are planted that suffers from their very conspicuous presence.”
According to Arnold Toynbee, the Poles were fully justified in pulling down the church forced into their land by the victorious Russians. This is precisely what the karsevaks did to the Babri structure on December 6, 1992. This is why there are repeated pleas to restore the temple sites in Kashi and Mathura to Hindus, where wily Aurungzeb raised mosques after the legendary temples had been demolished.
Naseeruddin Shah’s Lineage
In his rejoinder, Naseeruddin Shah has questioned my lineage. Here is Naseeruddin Shah’s family background. His great-great-grandfather, Jan-Fishan Khan, was an Afghan mercenary who fought for the British during the 1857 Indian uprising, and that got him land, a pension and the title of Nawab of Sardhana. In his autobiography ‘And Then One Day: A Memoir’ Naseeruddin Shah wrote, “Ammi … and Baba were from different branches of the same family, spawned by Agha Syed Mohammed Shah, a soldier of fortune from Paghman, near Kabul, who arrived in India sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century, fought for the British in the 1857 War of Independence and was rewarded with the estate of Sardhana, near Meerut, and the title of Nawab Jan Fishan Khan.” (p.2)
Naseeruddin is part of the cabal that, since May 2014, has consistently propagated the narrative that “Muslims feel insecure in India.” According to him, “Today, the death of a cow is given more importance than that of a human… I fear for the safety of my children.” Is Pakistan, with its 96% Muslim population, not plagued by a sense of “insecurity”? Do Muslims feel safe in China and the United States? We frequently hear statements from Muslims worldwide about the so-called “oppression of Islam” in the US. Despite Pakistan’s close ties with China, the dissatisfaction and insecurity experienced by Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province are evident from the ongoing conflict between the Uyghur community and the Chinese government. Are Iraq and Syria safe for Muslims? Is even Pakistan safe for Muslims? Ask this question to Muslims in Balochistan or to an Ahmadiyya or a Shia to know the truth.
Naseeruddin, in his autobiography, recounts how his father found “Hindu India” less appealing after the British left and the country was partitioned in the name of Islam. He wrote: “Baba had had a peripatetic life before finally settling down to serve the British government in the Provincial Civil Service when Freedom’s dawn, Independence and Partition hit the country… Baba possessed no property in India and thus could not in any conscience claim any across the border; leaving a secure job and starting a new life when somewhat past his prime must have been less appealing to him than staying on in this newly independent ‘Hindu country’.” (pp. 1-2)
Naseeruddin and his ideological associates often hold Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP accountable for alleged Muslim persecution and their sense of insecurity. But Naseeruddin Shah’s father did not find it “appealing” to stay in a “Hindu country” when Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru were the dominating figures. If Gandhiji, who sacrificed his life while advocating for non-violence and the protection of Muslim interests, failed to eliminate the sense of insecurity among Muslims, can Prime Minister Narendra Modi realistically be expected to succeed in doing so? The truth is that whenever a devout Muslim is denied the right to strictly follow the Quran—which, by the concept of ‘kafir’ and ‘kufr’, legitimises the persecution and even killing of non-Muslims—it is immediately labelled as ‘Islamophobia’ or equated with the claim that “Muslims are unsafe”. Indeed, this mindset did not emerge suddenly; its roots run deep.
British-Islamists, Both Invaders
Were the Mughals and other foreign Muslim rulers who came to India invaders or nation-builders, as Naseeruddin Shah would have us believe? How should we categorise British rule? The British were foreign occupiers who plundered India for over two centuries, intellectually distorted its Indigenous Sanatan culture, and eventually departed. The conduct of Islamic invaders, however, was somewhat different. Initially, they came as looters, plundering India’s immense wealth and retreating. But later, successive waves of Islamic rulers seized control of the land.
In essence, the plunderers became the masters of the house, while its original inhabitants were reduced to servitude. They systematically destroyed India’s pluralistic cultural fabric, trampling upon its civilisational identity and social institutions. Afghanistan, Pakistan & Bangladesh, once parts of a broad Indian cultural swathe, have now hardly any traces of pre-Islamic civilisation or its followers left intact. Undoubtedly, this civilisational genocide is the legacy of successive Islamic rulers, including the Mughals. Pakistan’s ideological foundation aligns with that of Muslim invaders; its curriculum calls Muhammad bin Qasim the “first Pakistani” and Sindh the first “Islamic province”. Pakistan’s missiles and warships are named after figures like Ghazni, Ghori, Babur, and Tipu Sultan, reflecting this mindset.
There is yet another crucial distinction between the British and Islamic plunderers. In 1947, the British left India impoverished, handing it over to their ideological successors before departing. In contrast, the religious descendants of the Islamic invaders continue to occupy more than one-third of the Indian subcontinent—Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. In these regions, there is no place for the subcontinent’s original culture, its indigenous people, or the Sanatan values of democracy, pluralism, and secularism.
It’s A Civilisational War
Was the conflict between Islamic invaders and Hindu-Sikh rulers merely a power struggle? No, it was a civilisational war. But didn’t Hindus serve in Muslim courts and vice versa? It is an absurd argument. Indians largely sustained the British Empire, but that didn’t make it Indian. At the same time, many Englishmen supported India’s quest for independence. Does this mean the Indian freedom movement was a mere power struggle, not a fight for freedom?
But didn’t the Mughals build Hindu temples? It may be true in a few cases, but does it absolve them of their numerous crimes? Even the British renovated many mosques and temples as a part of their administrative policies. The British introduced railways and telegraph and constructed grand buildings. Despite these contributions, they remain exploitive colonialists who ruthlessly looted India’s wealth and colonised Indian minds.
How did millions of Hindus and thousands of temples survive if Islamic invaders were so intolerant? Two reasons. One, the local population never wholly give in to the aliens. It struggled under the leadership of successive legendary figures such as Maharana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Rana Sanga, Maharaja Chhatrasal, the Sikh Gurus, and countless other warriors. Two, the number of foreign invaders was abysmally small compared to the vast local populace, and there were no weapons of mass destruction available to despots in those days.
The invaders did succeed to an extent in obliterating the local inclusive plural culture. The near-total disappearance of Hindu-Buddhist-Sikh communities from Afghanistan and Pakistan and a drastic fall in their population in Bangladesh is a stark testament to this persecution. Over the past thousand years, wherever indigenous faiths were decimated in the subcontinent, pluralism, secularism, and coexistence also died.
Can anyone explain why most ancient temples in northwestern India do not exist in their original form? While the sites are ancient, the structures we see today are usually less than 200-250 years old, a result of continuous cultural revival efforts that mostly started following Aurangzeb’s demise in 1707.
Preposterous Logic
A ludicrous argument is used to silence the critics of Islamic rule: If Mughals were so bad, why love Mughlai food? Relishing Mughlai cuisine doesn’t automatically translate into hailing Aurangzeb, endorsing his forced conversions, extraction of Jizya from infidels or razing and looting temples.
I am using an Apple iPad to write this article. Does it imply that I support Trump’s new world order? Several Europeans enjoy Indian cuisine; do they necessarily have to admire Modi and his policies? Those Indians who love Chinese food do not have to agree with Xi Jinping’s plans to annex Taiwan or Chinese suppression in Tibet.
Who Breeds This Toxicity?
An obvious question: in this land where ‘Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti’ (Truth is one, the wise call it by many names) is the signature tune of the timeless civilisational ethos, what is that breeds a hateful mindset, divisive thinking and bigoted outlook? There may be any number of reasons. But I can think of three— misplaced pride in the past (stuck in a time warp), prospects of living as equals in a democratic set-up with Hindus (second-class citizens under successive Islamic states) and theological toxicity spread by educational institutions, particularly Madrasas. Naseeruddin Shah and several family members have received their education from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
It is a fact, as acknowledged both on AMU’s official website and in a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, that this university is the intellectual legacy of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. But who was Sir Syed? If Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal are regarded as the ‘founder’ and the ‘ideologue’ of Pakistan, respectively, then Sir Syed Ahmad Khan can be considered its true ‘progenitor’.
When the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, demands for complete independence and democratic governance began to gain momentum; Sir Syed—known for his allegiance to the British—actively sought to distance Muslims from the national movement. He ignited religious sentiments among Muslims by raising divisive issues such as ‘Hindu-Muslim,’ ‘Hindi-Urdu,’ and ‘Sanskrit-Persian,’ reinforcing the notion that it was a Muslim’s divine duty to remain close to the British while staying away from the Congress. His efforts largely succeeded, as a significant section of the Muslim community was alienated from the national mainstream and, in later years, became mobilised for the creation of Pakistan. Sir Syed laid the foundations of this ideological movement on March 16, 1888, when he delivered a provocative speech in Meerut.
He said, “Is it possible that under these circumstances, two nations – the Mohammedans and the Hindus – could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible and the inconceivable… No Mohammedan can say that the English are not ‘people of the Book’. No Mohammedan can deny this: that God has said that no people of other religions can be friends of the Mohammedans except the Christian”.
Sir Syed often dismissed the Congress and its Hindu leadership as “Bengalis,” a derogatory reference stemming from the fact that much of the Congress leadership at the time hailed from Bengal. Against this ideological backdrop, he established the ‘Madrasatul Uloom Musalmanan-e-Hind’ and the ‘Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College’ in Aligarh between 1875-77. Following his death, 22 years later, the British government elevated this institution to the status of AMU, a fact also noted in a November 2024 ruling by the Supreme Court.
What was AMU established initially for? After conceptualising Pakistan between 1930-33, AMU became the Muslim League’s unofficial political and ideological stronghold. In 1941, AMU’s student union passed a resolution endorsing a religion-based partition, labelling the Congress as a fascist organisation. Overwhelmed by the successful propagation of Sir Syed’s divisive ideology, Jinnah famously referred to AMU as “the arsenal of Pakistan” on March 10, 1941. That same year, in August, Pakistan’s future Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, addressed AMU students, stating, “We look to you for every kind of ammunition to win the battle of independence for the Muslim nation.” In subsequent elections, AMU students and faculty members supported the Muslim League.
Those Muslim leaders who opposed partition, such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Professor Humayun Kabir, were attacked by AMU students, who viewed them as enemies of Islam. Following independence and partition, AMU was expected to either be shut down or undergo a fundamental ideological transformation. However, this did not happen. When Pakistani forces invaded Kashmir on October 22, 1947, reports indicated that AMU students had been enlisting in the Pakistani military up until the day before. Concerned by these developments, the then-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Govind Ballabh Pant, wrote to Home Minister Sardar Patel, leading to restrictions on Pakistani military personnel entering the university.
In May 1953, AMU’s then-Vice Chancellor Zakir Husain informed the Nehru government that several Pakistani nationals were enrolling at the university. In August 1956, AMU students raised slogans of “Hindustan Murdabad” (Death to India) and “Pakistan Zindabad” (Long live Pakistan). The growing influence of separatist elements within the university eventually led Zakir Husain to resign as Vice-Chancellor. When Nawab Ali Yawar Jung was appointed as his successor in 1965, he was later subjected to a violent attack by students, sustaining 65 injuries. AMU has a long and troubled history marked by such incidents, reflecting its deep entrenchment in ideological conflicts and its role in fostering separatist sentiments.
The Way Ahead
Can’t we forget history— however painful it may be— and move ahead? It’s undoubtedly not wise to fight history or try to settle historical wrongs. But it’s even more stupid to either distort history or make efforts to justify injustices of the past based on manufactured narratives and specious facts. Can we bridge the chasm that exists between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent? Here is a counter-question. Is it possible to build an amicable relationship between Jews and those who laud Nazis and hail Hitler as a great leader? When the occasional glorification of Godse by some madcaps rightly evokes outrage, then how can any civilised society accept the celebration of brutal invaders like Aurangzeb and other Islamic bigots? No rational person would blame present-day subcontinent Muslims for the actions of Islamic invaders. But should contemporary Muslims identify with these invaders and seek to justify their misdeeds of the yore?
Senior RSS leader Suresh ‘Bhaiyyaji’ Joshi said in Nagpur on March 31 that the issue of Aurangzeb’s tomb was unnecessarily being raked up. He is right. Aurangzeb’s tomb may be an eyesore, but is irrelevant to the present context. Those who celebrate his legacy are the real threat to India’s plural ethos.
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