Sanctified Vandalism As A Political Tool

The recent destruction of a centuries-old mosque in a small town inRajasthan and the construction of a temple in its place points to arecurring theme in India’s history--the use of sanctified vandalism as apolitical tool.

In recent years, ever since the campaign to destroy theBabri Masjid was launched, we have been fed with constant propaganda thatthe destruction of places of worship was a fine art that Muslims, fired withan irrepressible iconoclastic zeal, had mastered. Yet, as the recentRajasthani case so clearly suggests, others have been, and continue to be,guilty of the sin as well.

It is true, as the historical records show,that some Muslim kings did indeed destroy Hindu temples. This even Muslimsthemselves would hardly dispute. In assessing the historical record,however, certain precautions are necessary. Most importantly, a distinctionmust be made between Islamic commandments, on the one hand, and the acts ofindividual Muslims on the other.

The Qur'an in no way sanctions the destruction of the places of worship ofpeople of other faiths. For the most part, Muslims have abided by theQur'anic injunction that ‘there is no compulsion in religion’. Thus, forinstance, after Muhammad bin Qasim, leading the first Muslim army to India,had subdued Sind, he granted the local Hindus and Buddhists full religiousfreedom and guaranteed the protection of their shrines.

Or, for that matter,when Sultan Sikander of Kashmir, egged on by his Brahmin Prime Minister,Suha Bhat, set about pulling down temples on a large scale, the leadingKashmiri Muslim Sufi , Hazrat Nuruddin Nurani, bitterly protested, arguingthat Islam did not sanction this. This opinion was shared by several otherMuslim ‘ulama and Sufis as well. Thus, the Tabaqat-e-Akbari tells us thatwhen they heard that Sultan Sikander Lodi (r. 1489-1517) was planning todestroy some temples, a group of high-ranking ‘ulama protested, saying,‘It is not lawful to lay waste ancient idol temples’.

Caution must beexercised in accepting the narratives provided by medieval writers about theexploits of kings, including their ‘feats’ of temple destruction. Mosthistorians were employees of the royal courts, and they tended to exaggeratethe ‘exploits’ of the kings in order to present them as great champions ofIslam, an image that hardly fits the facts that we know about them.

Thus,for instance, the author of the late eighteenth century ‘Riyad-ul Salatin’claimed that Muhammad Bakhtiyar demolished several temples in Bengal when hecaptured the province in 1204, although there is no evidence to suggest thatthis had indeed been the case.

In his recent book, Essays on Islam andIndian History , the well-known historian Richard Eaton points out that ofthe sixty thousand-odd cases of temple destruction by Muslim rulers cited bycontemporary Hindutva sources, one may identify only eighty instances ‘whosehistoricity appears to be reasonably certain’.

Eaton clearly shows that cases of destruction of places of worship were notrestricted to Muslim rulers alone. He recounts numerous instances of Hindukings having torn down Hindu temples, in addition to Jaina and Buddhistshrines. He says that these must be seen as, above all, powerful politicallysymbolic acts.

Typically, cases of shrine destruction are reported in the wake of theoverthrow of a powerful enemy and the annexation of his territory. The royaltemple of the enemy was often pulled down to symbolize the enemy’s defeat.Thus, for instance, the historical records speak of the seventh centuryHindu Pallava king Narasimhavarman I, who looted an idol of Ganesha from theChalukyan capital of Vatapi.

Fifty years later, the Hindu Chalukyan armybrought back with them idols of Ganga and Jamuna, looted from temples oftheir fellow Hindu enemies to the north. In the eighth century, a BengaliHindu army is said to have destroyed an idol of Vishnu belonging to theirimperial foe, the Hindu king Lalitaditya of Kashmir. In the tenth century,the Hindu Pratihara king Herambapala defeated the Hindu Shahi king of Kangraand looted a solid gold idol of Vishnu from the Kangra royal temple.

In theeleventh century, the Chola ruler Rajendra I furnished his capital withidols of Hindu deities that he had captured from his enemies, the Chalukyas,the Palas and the Kalingas. The sixteenth century Vijaynagara ruler, KrishnaDeva Raya, is reported to have looted an idol of Krishna from Udaygiri afterinflicting on it a crushing defeat. He is also said to have looted a Vittalaidol from the famous Pandharpur temple.

Besides looting idols from thetemples of their fellow Hindu enemies, several Hindu kings are reported tohave destroyed the royal temples of their vanquished foes to signal theirvictory. Thus, the tenth century Rashtrakuta king Indra III destroyed thetemple of Kalapriya at Kalpa, after defeating his dreaded enemies, theRashtrakutas. Likewise, Kapilendra, the founder of the Suryavanshi Gajapatidynasty in Orissa is said to have sacked several Hindu temples in the courseof his military campaigns in the Tamil country. These are instances of Hindukings looting Hindu idols and destroying Hindu temples for politicalpurposes.

The number of Jaina and Buddhist shrines destroyed by Hindu kingsmust certainly be much greater. Because royal temples served as powerfulpolitical symbols and centres—where often kings were worshipped as forms ofthe deities—they seem to have been the particular object of attack byinvaders, irrespective of religion. As Eaton remarks, ‘It is clear thattemples had been the natural sites for the contestation of kingly authoritywell before the coming of Muslim Turks to India. Not surprisingly, Turkishinvaders, when attempting to plant their own rule in early medieval India,followed and continued established patterns’. He further adds, ‘Whateverform they took, acts of temple desecration were never directed at thepeople, but at the enemy king and the image that incarnated and displayedhis state-deity’.

As in the case of Hindu rulers’ attacks on temples,Eaton says that almost all instances of Muslim rulers destroying Hindushrines were recorded in the wake of their capture of enemy territory. Oncethese territories were fully integrated into their dominions, few templeswere targetted. This itself clearly shows that these acts were motivated,above all, by political concerns and not by a religious impulse to extirpateidolatry. The essentially political, as opposed to religious or communal,nature of these acts is clearly suggested in the details that the historicalchronicles provide. Thus, for instance, we hear of the army of the GolcondaMuslim Sultans, led by the Marathi Hindu Brahmin general, Murahari Rao,which conquered a large swathe of territory up to the Krishna river.

Rao is said to have sacked the famous Ahobilam temple, and looted itsruby-studded idol, which he presented to the Sultan as a war trophy.Likewise, we are told that Sultan Sulaiman Karrani of Bengal dispatched anarmy to Orissa against the Hindu Gajapati Raja to punish him for enteringinto a pact with the enemies of the Sultan, the Mughal Emperor Akbar and thePathan Ibrahim Sur. The army, after defeating the Raja, then set aboutlooting the Jagannath temple, the main royal shrine. As Eaton shows, it wasusually the large royal temples that were targetted, for not only were theysymbols of political power, but were also richly endowed with jewels, goldand other precious metals.

In the wake of these attacks on enemy power, ordinary people were rarelytargetted. Thus, for instance, when a Mughal army attacked Kuch Bihar innorthern Bengal and destroyed the idol of the state-deity of Raja BhimNarayan, the chief Mughal qazi of Bengal, Sayyid Muhammad Sadiq, issued anorder to the Mughal soldiers that, ‘nobody should touch the cash andproperty of the people’, laying down that those who infringed this orderwould have their hands, ears or noses lopped off.

If the destruction oftemples were, above all, powerful political acts, so too were instances ofpatronage extended to temples by rulers. Thus, in addition to Hindu rulers,many Muslim kings endowed temples with large land grants. A fourteenthcentury Sanskrit inscription records that thirteen years after hisannexation of the northern Deccan, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq appointed aMuslim official to repair a Shiva temple at Kalyana.

The much-malignedAurangzeb, who is said to have destroyed some Hindu temples, is also knownto have made extensive grants to other Hindu shrines. Thus, in 1659 in aroyal order issued to his officers in Benaras, he wrote:‘In these days, information has reached our court that several people have,out of spite and rancour, harassed the Hindu residents of Benaras and nearbyplaces, including a group of Brahmans who are in charge of ancient templesthere. These people want to remove those Brahmans from their charge oftemple-keeping, which has caused them considerable distress. Therefore, uponreceiving this order, you must see that nobody unlawfully disturbs theBrahmans or other Hindus of that region, so that they might remain in theirtraditional place and pray for the continuance of the Empire.’ Aurangzebfurther added, ‘According to the Holy law [shari’at] and the exaltedcreed, it has been established that ancient temples should not be torndown’.

Eaton, after closely examining the historical record, shows that the templeswhose destruction Aurangzeb had ordered had been associated with hispolitical rivals. If temples belonging to Hindu political rivals weretargetted by Muslim kings, they did not desist from similarly brutallyattacking their fellow Muslim foes and rebels.

The history of Muslim rule inIndia is replete with stories of Muslim kings fighting among themselves.Muslim rebels were treated with equal severity as their Hindu counterparts.Thus, Isami writes in his Futuh us Salatin that when the Muslim generalBahauddin Gurhasp joined hands with the Hindu Raja of Kampila and rose inrevolt against Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, his own first cousin, he wasflayed alive, after which his skin was stuffed with straw and paradedthrough the streets, after which his body was filled with rice and fed tothe royal elephants.

Hindus and Muslims alike, then, have been equally guiltyof destroying places of worship, and, in this regard, as in any other,neither has a monopoly of virtue or vice. The destruction of the mosque inRajasthan and building a temple in its place, like the tearing down of theBabri Masjid by Hindutva zealots or the vandalism of the Bamiyan Buddhas bythe Taliban, shows how sanctified vandalism and medieval notions of thepolitics of revenge are still alive and thriving in our part of the world.