In Modi's India, Muslim rulers of the past 'can't be heroes' as Mughal museum renamed
For 300 years from the 16th century onwards, India was ruled by the Mughal dynasty - yet a new museum meant to celebrate this part of the country's history has become the subject of furious debate.
The Mughal Museum, as it was originally called, is being built in Agra - home of India's famed Taj Mahal.
Designed by the Berlin firm of British architect David Chipperfield, it was envisaged as a showcase of Mughal artefacts and culture - until one of the most rabble-rousing members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party got involved.
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Yogi Adityanath is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, where Agra is located, and on Monday he announced that the museum would be renamed after Shivaji - a Hindu warrior-king whose links to the city are tenuous at best, according to historians.
Yogi Adityanath pictured speaking with Modi in March 2019. Photo: AP
"How can Mughals be our heroes?" said Adityanath while announcing the name change, adding that "anything which smacks of a subservient mentality" will be done away with by the BJP - a reference to the belief that the Mughals were "foreign invaders" who "enslaved" Hindus.
Historians have reacted with dismay to the announcement, if not surprise. Since the BJP came to power in 2014, it has routinely disparaged the Mughals as vile Muslim invaders and extolled the virtues of pre-Mughal Hindu civilisations instead. The Mughal Empire eventually fell in 1857 after a long period of decline, after which the British Raj became the paramount power in India.
Manimugdha Sharma, author of a recent book on early Mughal emperor Akbar the Great titled Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today's India" called Adityanath's refusal to see the Mughals as heroes ironic.
"How can he say the Mughals are not heroes when, among their immense contribution over centuries, they gave us the Taj Mahal, the most famous monument in the country?" he asked.
"Even if you disregard all else, the Mughals gave us the monument that symbolises India to the rest of the world so how can you reconcile all that?"
Civil rights activist Srinath Rao further pointed to how "Modi stands on top of the Red Fort in New Delhi to address the nation" every year to celebrate Independence Day. "If he feels so strongly, he should look for another venue," he said.
Modi's critics see the renaming of the Mughal Museum as yet another attempt to divide India's heritage into Hindu and Muslim. They say the BJP cannot stop playing communal politics, vilifying the country's 200 million Muslims - who account for some 14.2 per cent of the population - and their ancestors to win Hindu votes. The party's supporters routinely take to Twitter to describe Muslims as "Hindu-hating and Hindu-killing invaders".
Hindu civilisation, in turn, is portrayed as special and unique, while the British colonisation and rule of India for almost a century fails to attract the same indignation as the Mughal conquest.
Adityanath - a Hindu monk who wears saffron robes and makes no secret of being a religious, rather than secular, leader - has replaced the names of several towns in his state with Hindu names, despite non-Hindus making up around one-fifth of Uttar Pradesh's population.
Soon after being made chief minister in 2017, he threatened to kill 100 Muslims "if they kill even one Hindu", has argued that Hindu religious idols should be forcibly placed inside mosques and last month said he would never accept an invitation to inaugurate a mosque "because I am a Hindu".
Such words have alarmed India's Muslims if for no other reason than Adityanath heads India's most populous state, home to some 200 million people.
According to some estimates, almost 400 villages and towns in Uttar Pradesh are named after the Mughals, and Adityanath has already changed the official names of major cities such as Allahabad and Faizabad to Hindu alternatives.
His party's ideological fountainhead, the RSS, has called for a slew of towns and airports to be renamed while some Hindu academics have even claimed that the Taj Mahal - commissioned by a Mughal emperor as a mausoleum for his wife - was originally a Hindu temple.
Adityanath's aversion to the landmark, which in normal times attracts more than 7 million visitors annually and generated almost 900 million rupees (US$12.2 million) in tourism revenue last year, is such that his government published a tourism brochure in 2017 which left out all mention of it.
One Indian museum curator, who asked to rename anonymous for fear of retribution, said it was wrong of Adityanath to attempt to eradicate the country's Islamic legacy.
"All civilisations are palimpsests and India's heritage comprises many layers," he said, using the academic term for a manuscript, tablet or other piece of writing material that has been used more than once.
People take pictures with their mobile phones near the Taj Mahal in Agra on September 8. Photo: AFP
"No one has the right to erase any of those layers. How can everything about Shivaji be lauded and everything about the Muslims be denigrated? They are all part of Indian heritage"
Historians are concerned that museum authorities will feel pressured to fill the building with artefacts connected to Shivaji - whose only link to Agra, centre of the Mughal Empire for almost a century, was that he was once imprisoned there - now that his name is going to be on it.
Author Mehru Jaffer, who lives in Uttar Pradesh's capital of Lucknow and has visited many of the world's top museums, said she worries about the one being built in Agra.
"Will it be a cut-and-paste history built at the expense of the taxpayer? Or will it be the home of intelligent and educative information about our shared past?" she asked.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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