Aurangzeb vs Kalamqutub_mamajiwala wrote:Aurangzeb Employed Thousand People to Destroy This Temple for 3 Years. Read He Failed Miserably
http://satyavijayi.com/aurangzeb-employ ... miserably/
The renaming of a road is part of a wider pattern of strategic messaging by the NDA.
Aurangzeb’s track record as an Indian-born Mughal ruler is full of contradictions: there are instances when he showed extreme intolerance to pluralism, but also examples of his patronage and largesse towards other religions. If Aurangzeb decided to impose Islamic rule, it was to seek legitimacy from those who had supported him in decimating his brothers and seizing power. It can be understood even in today’s context, with the RSS-controlled government’s frequent attempts at making India a Hindu rashtra. If Aurangzeb decided to demolish temples that became political centres, he also funded the repair of the Chitrakoot temple, the Mahakal temple and several gurdwaras. Are we to judge him by the temples he demolished or by the temples he supported? Didn’t the BJP rise to electoral prominence after demolishing a mosque, and promising to demolish more — “abhie toh pehli jhaanki hai, Mathura, Kashi baaki hai” ? Are we to judge Aurangzeb by his decision to make Sambhaji a mansabdar in the contest against the Bijapur Sultanate, or by his many contests against the Marathas? Should Aurangzeb be judged by the jizya tax imposed on able-bodied non-Muslims who did not volunteer to be in the army or by the zakat, ushr, sadaqah, fitrah and khums he collected from only Muslims? Aurangzeb needed to finance his various wars. He seized the throne in 1658, whereas jizya was imposed in 1679.
Aurangzeb banned the consumption of alcohol, gambling, music, nautch girls, narcotics, castration, etc. If we are to judge him by the bans he imposed, how should we judge the present ruling party, which has banned beef in some parts, come dangerously close to banning porn sites, is in the process of banning some NGOs, banned a film on the December 16 gangrape case, banned the word “lesbian” from films (among 28 other “swear words”)?
Without an approximate understanding of the historical and political context of that era, are we to judge at all? History will judge us by the way we judge history. And if in judging history, we were to include the good, the bad, the ugly, the black, the white and the grey, our heart will neither bleed for Aurangzeb nor throb for Kalam.
Ironically, the BJP’s office is on a road named after a king who converted millions of Hindus and Jains to Buddhism. If Aurangzeb must be exorcised, what about Ashoka? Did he not indulge in largescale killings of Hindu Ajivikas and Jain Nirgranthas, especially after converting to Buddhism?
Having failed to take corrective action against then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his controversial role in the post-Godhra riots in 2002, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was losing his sheen as the secular mascot of the BJP. Vajpayee’s troubleshooters advised him to nominate Kalam as the NDA’s presidential candidate. By accepting to become president, and thus whitewashing the taint of the ruling establishment, Kalam weakened the losing cause of pluralism in India. He failed the countless victims of communal violence in the country. A brilliant scientist and a fine human being, as the 11th president of India, Kalam willingly became a shield for a government desperately seeking cover after the shameful role played by its party in Gujarat.
It may not have electorally benefited the NDA in 2004, but in terms of a political strategy, appointing Kalam as president was perhaps the best perception-management option that the NDA’s street-smart managers had.
The renaming of Aurangzeb Road to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road is part of the same strategic messaging: you are a good Muslim if you further our agenda or shield our real face. The rest are bad Muslims, and for them, the messaging shall come from Pravin Togadia, Giriraj Singh and Sadhvi Pragya.
FULL ARTICLE :-
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... -vs-kalam/
As Aurangzeb is Erased, Here are Some Tales From the Flip Side of History
Even as the medieval period of Indian history is remembered by some only for the demolition of Hindu temples and the conversion of Hindus to Islam, we hardly stop to notice some instances to the contrary – when mosques were demolished and replaced by temples and when Muslims were converted to Hinduism, either by way of the medieval version of ghar wapsi or directly. Surely that’s something the sangh parivar can feel happy about.
Sher Shah, the Afghan ruler who had snatched the Mughal empire from the hands of Humayun in 1540, vowed to punish the Hindu zamindars who, according to him, had, “after destroying the mosques and places of worship of the Mussalmans converted them into places of idol-worship”. Earlier on, in the port city of Cambay in Gujarat, the Parsis ‘instigated the Hindus to attack the Mussalmans, and the minaret atop (a mosque) was destroyed, the mosque burnt and eighty Mussalmans killed’. To the credit of the Hindu ruler, who checked the facts and found them to be true, he had the mosque restored to its old state.
In Akbar’s time, the theologian Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi complained that “the Hindus are demolishing mosques and are building their own places of worship in their stead”. Shah Jahan is also on record having seized seven mosques “from their unlawful proprietors” who had “violently seized and appropriated them for their own use in Punjab”. Aurangzeb too refers to one of his two Rajput nobles with the highest mansab of 7000 given to any noble – Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur – who had in around 1658-59 “destroyed mosques and built idol-temples in their stead”. Yet, the two worked together for the next 20-odd years until the Rajput’s death in 1679.
Similarly, there is testimony for reverse conversions from Muslims to Hinduism, unthinkable in a theocratic Islamic state.
Mahmud bin Amir Ali Balkhi, a Central Asian traveler to India in Jahangir’s reign was horrified to see a group of 23 Muslims in Banaras who had deserted their religion and turned Hindu, having fallen in love with Hindu women. “For some time”, he records, “I held their company and questioned them about their mistaken way. They pointed towards the sky and put their fingers on their foreheads. By this I understood that they attributed it to Providence”, Balkhi concludes ruefully.
Zain al-Abidin, pre-Mughal ruler of Kashmir (1420-70) formally permitted Muslim converts to return to their Hindu faith if they so wished. As did Akbar later on, who also decreed that a Hindu converted against his will at any age “could return to the religion of his forefathers”. The eminent 15th-16th century saint-poet Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reconverted the Muslim governor of Odisha and converted a group of Pathans, who were not Hindus in the first instance, even as Hinduism is not a proselytising religion. They earned the sobriquet of ‘Pathan Vaishnavas’.
The Persian language text of the 17th century, Dabistan-i Mazahib, written by a Zoroastrian, Mobed, implies the considerable existence of reconversion at the higher levels and mentions, among others, two high nobles of Shah Jahan’s court – Mirza Salih and Mirza Haidar – who had converted from Hinduism and then returned to their original religion. Neither was punished.
At the mass level, Shah Jahan discovered that in the Bhimbhar region of Kashmir, it was common for Muslim boys to marry Hindu girls, with the boys then converting to Hinduism. He tried to stop it but found that his diktat had no effect. The Sikh Guru, Guru Hargobind, also reconverted a large number and the Dabistan mentions this with some hyperbole: “Not a Muslim was left between the hills of Kiratpur in Punjab and the frontiers of Tibet and Khotan’.
History is never simple, you see.
http://thewire.in/2015/09/04/as-aurangz ... tory-9943/