Why Seventeenth-century emperor Aurangzeb’s grave is India’s newest flashpoint | Politics

New Delhi, India – Datta Shirke has not left his residence for 2 days and fears for the security of his household. Automobiles parked within the lane the place he lives have been torched in Hindu-Muslim sectarian clashes.

Barely a mile (about 1.5km) away, Aslam, who requested to be recognized by his first title solely, is equally terrified. He’s avoiding going again residence, the place he lives together with his spouse and mom, as a result of he fears being arrested by the police, who he says are detaining harmless Muslims. “I’ve performed nothing. However when police come, their eyes search our blood,” he stated.

They’re each residents of Nagpur, a metropolis of three million individuals within the western Indian state of Maharashtra, the place violence erupted on Monday over the way forward for the tomb of the Seventeenth-century Mughal ruler Aurangzeb.

Police have imposed a curfew, and greater than 50 individuals – principally Muslims – have been arrested in raids prematurely of a deliberate March 30 go to by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Nagpur. Town additionally hosts the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mum or dad of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) and its Hindu majoritarian allies.

So why did a metropolis in any other case famed throughout India for its oranges explode into interreligious clashes? Who was Aurangzeb? And why does his legacy nonetheless divide India?

Why did Nagpur erupt in violence?

Final week, a BJP parliamentarian from Maharashtra referred to as for the excavation of the Mughal emperor’s grave.

Practically 100 volunteers related to the far-right group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) staged a protest in Nagpur on Monday, demanding the demolition of the grave of Aurangzeb, who they stated discriminated towards Hindus and attacked their locations of worship throughout his reign from 1658 to 1707.

“That grave is a black spot in our homeland,” stated Amit Bajpai, a spokesperson for the VHP who was additionally one of many organisers of the protest. “We gathered close to a sq. and burned the effigy of Aurangzeb wrapped in a inexperienced material within the presence of the police.”

“It’s our democratic proper to demand for what we really feel proper,” he added.

However onlookers, together with Muslim shopkeepers, demanded that the police cease the demonstration, particularly through the holy month of Ramadan, stated Asif Qureshi, a lawyer and former chairman of the Maharashtra Bar Council who lives within the neighbourhood.

Rumours unfold that the inexperienced material used to wrap the effigy had Quranic verses written on it, angering Muslims. That night, after breaking their quick and providing Maghrib prayers, teams of Muslims held a counterprotest, demanding that the police register a case towards the VHP members.

“Sadly, quickly, issues acquired out of hand, and indignant individuals began clashing,” Qureshi advised Al Jazeera.

Since then, a curfew stays in place with police barricades dotting the a part of town the place clashes have damaged out. And a police crackdown has adopted. Qureshi stated the police should arrest Muslims who participated in clashes however as a substitute “have arrested innocents who had been simply out to supply prayers”.

After the clashes, Bajpai of the VHP stated he was fuming. “Now we’ll resist even tougher. Why do they [Muslims] suppose that they’ll scare us by rioting? We would like Aurangzeb gone from right here.”

On Tuesday, Maharashtra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, appeared to counsel {that a} current Bollywood movie that portrays Aurangzeb as a villain may need performed a task in inflaming Hindu sentiments. The movie Chhaava fictionalises the battles between the Mughal ruler and the Marathas, who dominated massive components of what’s at this time Maharashtra. The movie, Fadnavis stated, introduced “the general public anger towards Aurangzeb” to the fore. Fadnavis belongs to Modi’s BJP.

Who was Aurangzeb?

Aurangzeb was probably the most highly effective rulers to have ruled the Indian subcontinent, and his grave just isn’t in Nagpur. It’s positioned greater than 450km (280 miles) away in a metropolis that till 2023 was named after the ruler – Aurangabad – and has since been renamed Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.

The title was modified beneath strain from Hindu majoritarian teams, which have lengthy seen Aurangzeb because the bloodiest villain in India’s trendy historical past. However historians argue he has a extra advanced legacy than the portrayals of Aurangzeb that at this time dominate India.

Aurangzeb inherited a robust empire when he ascended the throne after imprisoning his father and having his elder brother killed. However the power-hungry emperor was additionally unmatched on the battlefield in his time and glorious at constructing alliances, stated Audrey Truschke, historian and writer of the e-book Aurangzeb: The Man and the Fable.

His insurance policies had been closely influenced by one other Mughal emperor, his great-grandfather Akbar, Truschke stated.

“Aurangzeb introduced every kind of teams within the empire. As a prince, he travelled all around the empire and skim. He solid his connections with all teams, from Marathas to Rajputs, and later gave them essential positions in his cupboard,” she stated, referring to main Hindu communities in western India.

However Aurangzeb additionally imposed powerful Islamic legal guidelines and a discriminatory tax that Hindu residents wanted to pay in return for cover. “Aurangzeb was a really difficult king with many sides to him,” Truschke stated.

Whereas the Hindu far proper usually portrays Aurangzeb as a non secular zealot, Truschke stated, the Mughal emperor repeatedly confirmed throughout his reign that he was pushed not by religion however by energy. “Every time piety and energy conflicted, he selected energy,” she stated. “Each single time.”

Why is Aurangzeb so divisive in India?

Many historians have identified that kings, as a rule, weren’t democratic on the time. In some ways, Truschke stated, “Aurangzeb was not notably deviant from Indian kings within the pre-modern interval.”

However British colonialists vilified him, she stated. The Hindu nationalist motion that the BJP and the RSS belong to “are primarily repeating colonial-era propaganda”, she added.

That anti-Aurangzeb sentiment is more and more enjoying out in aggressive, even violent methods.

In 2024, 4 individuals had been arrested for elevating posters of Aurangzeb in a procession. In June 2023, an Instagram put up on the ruler landed a 14-year-old Muslim boy in jail. In 2022, Modi’s authorities modified center college and highschool historical past textbooks, reducing chunks from chapters concerning the Mughal Empire, together with eradicating a desk detailing the accomplishments of emperors corresponding to Aurangzeb and his ancestors.

To many supporters of Modi and his politics, Aurangzeb is not only historical past. He’s extensively believed to have championed the demolition of many temples – however can be identified to have offered grants and land to different Hindu shrines.

Now, Hindu nationalists have laid a declare to the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Modi’s parliamentary constituency within the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. They declare that the mosque was constructed on the ruins of the Vishwanath Temple, a grand Sixteenth-century Hindu shrine destroyed in 1669 on Aurangzeb’s orders.

Addressing an occasion in Varanasi in 2022, Modi spoke about “Aurangzeb’s atrocities, his terror”, including that “he tried to vary civilisation by the sword. He tried to crush tradition with fanaticism.” Modi has since invoked his title a number of extra occasions.

A day after the clashes in Nagpur, Fadnavis stated: “It’s unlucky that the federal government has to take accountability for the safety of Aurangzeb’s grave regardless of his historical past of persecution.”

Aurangzeb’s tomb is safeguarded as a Monument of Nationwide Significance by the Archaeological Survey of India beneath a 1958 legislation, which protects it from unauthorised alterations or demolition.

As tensions proceed to simmer in Nagpur, residents and native activists worry extra violence may be across the nook.

“There is no such thing as a belief or religion in one another,” Shirke stated. “I can not belief that my neighbour just isn’t ready to hurt my household the subsequent probability they get.” Muslim residents stay in worry of raids, Qureshi stated, and hope that the state authorities will cope with the scenario with out bias.

For Truschke, although, the Hindu majoritarian obsession with historical past is about that motion’s hatred for Muslims, whether or not up to now or the current. Figuring out historical past is essential to understanding how communities and nations have been formed, she stated. “However litigating for what might have occurred within the Seventeenth century is an insane thought.”