There is a narrative that is being spread by some of the leftist historians that all the Islamic invaders came to India were only for the sake of gaining power and Jihaad has nothing to do with the same. All the atrocities or wars they played here on the soil of India were only to capture the maximum part of India. Well, they can certainly create such a narrative to please their 'Aakas' but the primary historical evidence doesn't suggest the same. In this blog, we will discuss the atrocities of Babur on the Hindus of India.
| Babur |
So whether the Mughal king Babur was secular? The answer is a big NO!! Babur was anything but secular towards Hindu. If we consider here the demolition of temples then it had been the order of the day ever since the advent of Islam, and there is no reason to believe that Babur struck out an opposite line for himself. By all accounts, he continued the policy of his predecessors in an orthodox fashion, except possibly for hitting the Hindus a little harder by subjecting them to pay 'tamahghah' (Stamp duty) over and above the Jizyah and pilgrimage tax already imposed on them to the exclusion of the Muslims.
He raised a tower of Hindu skulls at Fatehpur Sikri and Chanderi and assumed the title of Ghazi (killer of infidels in Jihad). After his win over Rajputs, Ghazi (Victor in a Holy-war) was written amongst the royal titles.
Babur writes, "Below the titles (tughra) entered on the Fath-Nama, I 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. - (Baburnama Vo. II pg. 575)
A PORTRAIT OF THE MUGHAL EMPEROR BABUR (R. 1526-30) |
One of his officers, Hindu beg is said to have converted a Hindu temple at Sambhal into a mosque. His Sadr, Shaikh Zain, demolished many Hindu temples at Chanderi when he occupied it. By Babur's order, Mir Baqi destroyed the temple at Ayodhya commemorating Rama's birthplace and built a mosque in its place in 1528-29. He destroyed Jain idols at Urva near Gwalior.
There are so many more examples also if we try to dig further but you get the idea about Babur's policy towards Hindus. A similar type of behaviour was observed in Humayun, Akbar, Shahajan, Aurangzeb as well.
of course, this is past now so we should not target Muslims from such shreds of evidence but at least people of India should know the true history and true colours of the Islamic invaders.
References -
- Annette Beveridge, The Babur-Nama in English, 2 v. (London, 1921)
- S. R. Sharma, Mughal empire in India.
- The religious policy of Mughal emperors - S. R. Sharma
© 2020, Shantanu Paranjape
