Many other instances of Aurangzeb’s fanatical cruelty are described in the Islamic record of Maasir-i-Alamgiri, such as when Aurangzeb plundered Mathura and destroyed the famous Keshava Rai temple in January 1670.

This temple marked the birthplace of Lord Krishna, a most important temple in the Vedic tradition, and he replaced it with a mosque.

It is said that the richly jewelled deities were taken to Agra and placed beneath the steps leading to the Nawab Begum Sahib’s (Jahanara’s) mosque so that the Muslims could trample on them. Mathura’s name was changed to Islamabad at the time because it had destroyed the very foundation of deity worship.

The Soron Sita-Rama temple, as well as the Devi Patan temple in Gonda, were both destroyed in the same year. Under Aurangzeb’s command, the local governor of Malwa dispatched 400 troops to destroy all the temples in Ujjain. Furthermore, as described in Muraqat-i-Abul Hasan, soldiers and assistants from Cuttack, Orissa, and on to Medinipur, Bengal, were ordered to destroy every house built in the previous 12 years with a Vedic deity. Renovations to such temples were not permitted. These types of atrocities occurred on a regular basis, and many more descriptions could be provided. Many of these towns and cities had temples that had been destroyed twice or three times.

Tegh Bahadur appointed his son Govind Rai as the next guru and then travelled to Delhi with a few of his associates to take up the case of the Brahmanas. However, on July 12, 1675, they were arrested and taken to Sirhind, where they remained for about four months before being transferred to Delhi on the orders of Aurangzeb.

Guru Tegh Bahadur was tortured while imprisoned in Sirhind before being transported to Delhi in an iron cage on November 5, 1675. The Subedar of Delhi and the royal Kazi issued an order to the Guru and his five disciples to perform miracles, accept Islam, or face death. He denied any special abilities and refused to convert.

They were prepared to die. Bhai Mata das was tied upright between two logs and sawed in half from the head down. Dayal Das was boiled to death in a water cauldron. While Sati das was wrapped in cotton and roasted alive. Guru Tegh Bahadur was then chained and beheaded on November 11. In his final days, he would tell his disciples that they should give up their lives but never their faith.

We can only imagine the level of insanity and sadistic cruelty required to order such types of executions on people simply because they refused to convert to another religion. However, given the savage methods that were forced on Hindus and non-Muslims, this was not unusual.

Muslim governors in Punjab murdered hundreds of Sikh children and forced Sikh women to eat the flesh of their own murdered children.

Banda was another great Sikh who took over as Guru Govind’s successor as Sikh leader. He was apprehended and taken to Delhi by the Muslim emperor Bhadur Shah. His son was murdered in his presence, and he was forced to eat the flesh of his own children, who had been murdered in front of his eyes. Banda was later killed when he was crushed under the foot of an elephant. Any Muslim who brought the head of a deceased Sikh was also rewarded financially.

The jizyah tax was imposed again on all Hindus in 1679 to help raise funds for the spread of Islam and to stamp out all “infidel” practises. To protest, Hindus organised a Friday blockade of Aurangzeb’s way to the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi. Aurangzeb directed his men to lead the elephants through the crowd, trampled many men to death.

According to the Mirat-i-Ahmadi, Darab Khan was dispatched with a large army to punish the Rajputs and destroy the Vedic temples of Khandela.

He attacked in March 1679, destroying numerous temples in Khandela and Sanula. According to the Maasir-i-Alamgiri, Khan Jahan Bahadur arrived from Jodhpur in May 1679 with several carts of deities from destroyed Hindu temples. Many had precious stones on them, giving Aurangzeb reason to praise him.

Aurangzeb ordered that some of these deities be cast away, while others were placed beneath the steps of the mosque to be trampled, where they remained until any resemblance of them was gone, and where fragments may still be found to this day.

According to the Maasir-i-Alamgiri, prince Mohammad Azam and Khan Jahan Bahadur were authorised to travel to Udaipur in January 1680. Ruhullah Khan and Yakkattaz Khan also went, and there they destroyed many temples, some of which were considered wonders of the time.

Aurangzeb visited the tank of Udayasagar and ordered the destruction of all three Hindu temples there.

Then Hasan Ali Khan arrived, claiming that 172 temples in the surrounding area had also been destroyed. In February, Aurangzeb went to Chitor, where it was reported that 63 more temples had been demolished. During that time, Abu Tarab also reported the destruction of 66 more temples in Amber, near Jaipur. Later, the important Someshwar temple in Mewar was also destroyed.

In 1684, he led an army of 80,000 troops south to Bijapur.

After a desperate siege that lasted over a year, the city and its sultan finally surrendered. The kingdom’s sultan was imprisoned, and the kingdom became a Moghul province. In 1685, he moved on to Golconda, which fell and became part of the empire in 1687.

However, in the Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, Aurangzeb complained to Zulfiqar Khan about how strongly Maharashtra’s temples were built and how he did not have enough manpower to pull them all down efficiently. He proposed two teams: one to find the temples and another to stay and pull them down at their leisure.

Aurangzeb’s southern campaign reached a climax in 1688, when they ambushed Shambaji and his Brahmana chief minister. He was the great Hindu hero Shivaji’s heir. They were taken to the imperial camp, where Shambaji heaped insults on both the emperor and the Prophet. Aurangzeb then tortured him cruelly by dismembering him at each joint of each limb.

If nothing else, this demonstrated Aurangzeb’s inhumanity.

Temple destruction remained one of Aurangzeb’s favourite pastimes. In his Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, Khafi Khan records that in 1690, he ordered the destruction of all temples in Ellora, Tryambakeshwar, Narasinghpur, and Pandharpur, all significant and holy places in Vedic tradition. Then, in 1698, he returned to Bijapur for more of the same. Even two years before his death, in 1705, Aurangzeb directed Muhammad Khalil and Khidmat Rai, two of his most notorious hatchet-men, to proceed to Pandharpur and demolish the famous temple there, and then take the camp butchers and slaughter cows on the site, thereby preventing the temple from being rebuilt.

Aurangzeb also plundered Ayodhya, particularly the Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi, or the location where Lord Rama is said to have been born in this world during the Treta-yuga, many years before the appearance of Lord Krishna. This is another important Hindu temple that was demolished by Aurangzeb, who replaced it with a mosque 500 years ago. It appears clear that if Muslims today truly wanted to maintain peaceful and progressive relations with Hindus in India, they would not mind returning these important Vedic sites.

However, when Hindus want to defend their culture and holy places such as Ayodhya, they are treated as fundamentalists, and great protests are heard throughout the Muslim world over a place that was originally Hindu all along, as if they had not done enough damage already, as evidenced by the destruction of hundreds and thousands of Hindu temples by Muslims.

 

 

Source: Crimes against India by Stephen Knapp

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