With an army of 80,000 men, Aurangzeb turned south to Bijapur in 1684.
After a long and frantic siege that lasted almost a year, the city and its sultan finally submitted. The kingdom’s sultan was imprisoned while it became a province of the Moghuls. Then, in 1685, he quickly moved on to Golconda, which was overthrown and incorporated into the empire in 1687. However, in the Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, Aurangzeb lamented to Zulfiqar Khan about how densely constructed the temples in Maharashtra were and how he lacked the manpower to demolish them all quickly enough. He advised two teams: one to locate the temples and the other to remain and slowly remove them on their own time.

When they ambushed Shambaji and his Brahmana chief minister in 1688, Aurangzeb’s southern campaign reached a pinnacle. He was Shivaji’s successor as a renowned Hindu hero.

They were taken to the imperial camp, where Shambaji hurled insults at both the emperor and the Prophet with tremendous defiance. He was subsequently subjected to the cruelest form of torture by being severed at each joint of each limb by order of Aurangzeb. At least via this, Aurangzeb’s cruelty was made obvious.
Aurangzeb continued to enjoy destroying temples as a pleasure. In his Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, Khafi Khan reports that in 1690, he gave the order to demolish every temple in important Vedic sites such as Ellora, Tryambakeshwar, Narasinghpur, and Pandharpur. Then, in 1698, he returned to Bijapur for more of the same.

Even two years before he passed away, in 1705, Aurangzeb gave the most notorious of his hatchet men, Muhammad Khalil and Khidmat Rai, orders to travel to Pandharpur and destroy the well-known temple there. He then instructed them to take the camp’s butchers and slaughter cows on the site to prevent the Hindus from ever wanting to rebuild a temple there.
Aurangzeb also pillaged Ayodhya, particularly the area known as Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi, or the site where Lord Rama is said to have been born during the Treta-yuga, many years before the arrival of Lord Krishna. Another extremely significant Hindu temple that Aurangzeb destroyed and replaced with a mosque 500 years ago is this one.

It is obvious that if the Muslims of today truly desired to retain cordial and forward-thinking relations with the Hindus of India, they would not object to returning these sites, which are significant to the Vedic tradition. However, if they are not truly interested in developing happy relationships, they will not care about returning to these locations. It appears that the latter is the case. However, when Hindus want to defend their traditions and sacred sites like Ayodhya, they are treated as fundamentalists, and loud protests are heard throughout the Muslim world over a location that had always been Hindu as if Muslims had not already caused enough harm as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Hindu temples they had destroyed throughout history.

In relation to the Sikh Guru Govind Singh (1675–1708), Raja Ajmer Chand, who was in the Deccan, sent a report to Aurangzeb about the anti-state acts of the Guru. Raja Ajmer Chand is the son of Guru Tegh Bahadur. According to this, the Guru had established a brand-new religion and was urging all Hindus to side with him in a conflict with the Moghul Empire. Anandpur, where the Guru was residing, was under siege for seven months as a result of Aurangzeb’s order to transfer all available men from Delhi, Sirhind, and Lahore and join Wajid Khan’s command. On December 5, 1705, Guru Govind Singh fled Anandpur after numerous attempts to convince him to leave the fort under assurances of a safe journey. But the Moghuls abandoned all their vows and pursued the Guru relentlessly.

When the Guru arrived in Sirsa, he gave another Sikh charge of taking his mother and two young kids to Delhi so they may join his wives there. They encountered Ganga Ram Kaul, a Kashmiri Brahmana who had worked as a domestic servant for the Guru, along the road. Instead, he led them to his hometown of Saheri, where he stole the valuables that the Guru’s mother was carrying and turned them over to the Khan of Morinda, who gave them to Wazir Khan of Sirhind.
As it was against Islam, Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan of Malerkotla opposed any damage occurring to the two young boys of the Guru who were under the age of 10. However, Dewan Sucha Nand Bhandari Khatri harbored a deep-seated enmity towards the Guru and the Sikh Khalsa order. The two young lads were so tortured for four days after rejecting Islam before being bricked alive. On December 12, 1705, their throats were cut when the brick wall collapsed when it reached the height of their necks. In shock after learning the news, the Guru’s mother passed away. The Guru’s escape was only made possible after fierce combat and the deaths of many Sikh soldiers.
Guru Govind Singh subsequently altered the Sikh mentality. He also said that the sacred Granth will serve as the guru moving forward. He was stabbed in 1708 by an unidentified Afghan.

He entered an enclosure to depart from this world in the same way as the Hindu gurus after realizing he was close to death.
Some accounts claim that before Aurangzeb passed away on February 21, 1707, as described in Vincent Smith’s History of India, he was overcome with regret for at least some of what he had done. He had written to his sons Tara Azam and Kam Bakhsh, “I know not who I am, where I shall go and what will happen to this sinner full of sins. My years have gone by profitless. God has been in my heart but my darkened eyes have recognized not His light. There is no hope for me in the future. How should I act when I’ve given up on myself how can I have
hope in others. I have greatly sinned and I know not what torments await me
(in the afterlife).” It seems that despite all of his evil activities and the misery he inflicted upon others in the name of Islam and Allah, these things were unable to provide him comfort or peace of mind.

 

 

Source: Crimes against India by Stephen Knapp

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