The idea of Indian Muslim heritage — especially its architectural manifestations, such as historic mosques, tombs, shrines and so on situated in different parts of the country — has become a highly disputed political entity. Hindutva politics defines it as a symbol of Hindu subjugation under Islamic rule. Hindu communities are mobilised to give up any possible association with Muslim-built heritage and to reimagine their historical existence purely in Hindu terms.
This aggressive Hindutva politics of heritage has posed a serious challenge to Nehruvian liberals and non-BJP parties. They take refuge in the age-old idea of composite nationalism to expose the divisiveness of Hindutva politics. This important criticism of Hindutva, however, is not supported by any argumentative politics of secularism. Consequently, the non-BJP parties prefer to remain silent on the question of Muslim heritage, while a few self-declared liberals unnecessarily start defining controversial figures such as Aurangzeb.
In both cases, Muslim communities are forced to associate themselves with a few medieval Muslim rulers. Hindutva wants them to think of the Qutub Minar or the Taj Mahal as symbols of their atrocities even as a section of liberals celebrates everything associated with Mughals in the name of secularism and minority rights.
Historically speaking, the notion of ‘Indian Muslim architectural heritage’ was coined by colonial authors and archaeologists in the 19th century. Treating Indian historic buildings as authentic sources to write a factual history of India, the colonial scholars categorised Indian buildings on a religious basis. The classification of Indian history into ‘Hindu-ancient’, ‘Muslim-medieval’ and ‘British-modern’ was the dominant framework in which monuments of each religious group had to be placed.
As a result, a contested notion of Muslim architectural heritage emerged in the early 20th century. This was exactly the time when the process of monumentalisation — the transformation of Indian historic buildings into legally protected monuments — began to take political shape.
The Muslim heritage, in this sense, was ‘contested’ on two grounds. First, there was a historical argument. Colonial authors such as Thomas Maurice, who wrote the famous book, Indian Antiquities (1794), recognised the desecration of Hindu temples by Muslim invaders as one of the determining forces for historical change in the Indian subcontinent. This historical ‘finding’ transformed every historic building or site that had any connection with Indian Islam into a historically controversial entity.
The second, related argument was archaeological in nature. The conservation of Indo-Islamic sites as ‘protected monuments’ by the colonial authority contradicted the stated objective of colonial archaeology — the search for a real Hindu past. For this reason, the Muslim heritage was to be protected in such a way that the possibility to excavate the Hindu past from the same site could remain an option. This author has tried to offer a historical overview of this paradoxical process in his book, Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation.
Hindutva politics, especially after the re-opening of the Babri Masjid for regular Hindu worship in 1986, appropriated these colonial arguments in a selective manner. The ‘search for a real Hindu past’ is identified as an unfinished project to produce anti-Muslim controversies on a regular basis. Hindutva groups only focus on those mosques, tombs and historic structures, which have a contentious, communal past. They are not interested in undisputed, non-controversial sites, such as old temples, to enrich the archaeological map of India even from their own point of view. That is the reason why the proposed Ram temple project in Ayodhya does not encourage any archaeological excavation related to those sites that are mentioned in the Ramayana but do not have any Muslim connection.
Contemporary Hindutva problematises the notion of Muslim heritage in three ways. First, there is a civilisational argument. The temple-mosque controversies in Ayodhya, Banaras, and Mathura are revealing examples of this attitude. It is claimed that Muslim rulers destroyed sacred Hindu temples simply to establish the civilisational supremacy of Islam over Hinduism. Therefore, there is a need to reconvert these mosques into temples, once again, in order to recover the authentic Hindu civilisation.
Second, there is a class argument. Hindutva’s polemical position on a few famous historic buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, Jama Masjid and Qutub Minar, represents a different yet strategic attitude. An imaginary dividing line between the artistic values associated with these buildings and the religious-social formation in medieval India is drawn. It is claimed that these buildings symbolise the creative aptitude of Indian artisans; hence, these aesthetic attributes must be appreciated. At the same time, we are told that the class structure of that society should also be kept in mind. After all, Muslims were the ruling elites, while Hindus/Indians were the subalterns in medieval times. Yogi Adityanath’s comment on the Taj Mahal is a good example in this regard.
Finally, there is the highly ambiguous Hindutva attitude towards the Sufi shrines, such as the dargah of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer or the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi. It is worth noting that the Sufi tradition might also be seen as a kind of Indianisation of Islam, something that goes well with the old Jana Sangh/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh argument. The Bharatiya Janata Party has also been quite proactive in recognising the contribution of Sufis. The growing interest of the sangh parivar in Dara Shikoh underlines this fact. However, one also finds a kind of unease with Sufism in the Hindutva discourse. The RSS’s careful response to the debate on Sai Baba is a good example of this line of thinking. This unease is also reflected in the government’s attitude towards small shrines, especially in northern states. Many mazars of unknown Sufis, which have been worshipped as dargahs by local communities for a considerable amount of time, have been demolished by the authorities to protect public land.
The opponents of Hindutva do not pay attention to this diversity of Hindutva politics. Their intellectual laziness does not allow them to recognise the inherent weakness of Hindutva’s critique of Muslim heritage. Nehru’s melting pot thesis is still relevant to offer a positive meaning to the contribution of different cultures, races, religions, civilisations in the Indian context. Hindutva politics cannot ignore the symbolic presence of the Taj Mahal as an Indo-Islamic building. Obviously, every Hindu of Agra might be aware of the fact that Taj has a functional mosque and it is a Muslim structure. Yet, he/she does not hesitate to make a cultural claim on it. In other words, the contradiction between Muslim legacy and Indian traditions disappears when historic buildings and sites are envisaged as people’s heritage.
Hilal Ahmed is Associate Professor, CSDS, New Delhi
