History waiting to repeat?

The family visit to Agra last week was for the benefit of my two young nephews aged 9 and 7 years who had never seen the Taj. Strangely the visit for me turned out to be a morose one. The Taj did not seem as splendorous as it used to. The grandeur of its marble seemed to have been visibly effected, presumably, by pollution since I last saw it around two and half years ago. The badly lit inside was depressing and too claustrophobic. The too well known story of 22,000 craftsmen having their hands cut off upon the orders of the Emperor after the completion of the monument seemed to stain the beauty of the Taj as I looked at it.

Visit to the Agra Fort was no better. How Akbar, the so called ‘emperor’ died suspected to have been poisoned by his own ambitious son Jahangir. How Jahangir blinded his own son Khusraw, a contender for the throne as per Akbar’s will. Shah Jahan, Jahangir’s son killed his own brothers to secure the throne and was finally imprisoned by his own son Aurangzeb in this very Agra Fort ! Listening to the guide giving the tales of treachery, deceit, barbarism, cruelty and ruthless ambition that was played out in these monuments of Moghul historicity, I wondered how this land of Vedic culture based on truth and dharma gave way to such lowly culture of killings, loot, plunder and lust!

Greed, lust, cruelty and barbarism reflected in every story told by the guide. He showed us the phansi ghar in the basement (not open to public so we could just peep in) just below the Jahangiri Palace which incidentally was a place for rest and pleasure for the women in the emperor’s harem. It made me wonder why a phansi ghar was situated inside the living quarters and just below the place where the emperor indulged in pleasures. I was then told by the guide that this was the place where the women (queens) of the harem who fell out in disfavour were tortured and executed! Only a Moghul emperor could drink the choicest of wines and enjoy pleasures sitting atop a dungeon where hapless and screaming women were being tortured and tormented.

Looking down from the Fort we were shown a tank like structure and were curious. The guide related the story. It was a favourite sport of the members of the royal family. Elephants were kept around the tank deprived of water in hot seasons. They were drugged to make them thirstier. In that state after days of deprivation of water, they were led to this tank which was filled with alcohol. As they drank the alcohol, in that inebriated state of extreme thirst, they bloodied each other as the emperor and other royals watched with pleasure!

This was the culture that invaded the land where Sanatan Dharama was practiced. A land where animate and inanimate were revered, where birds, animals and even rivers, mountains were worshipped!

That Hindu India was prosperous and full of riches has been chronicled by various travellers. It was a coveted land. One is told of how rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds were embedded in the walls of the Moghul monuments and mausoleums creating ornate designs. Jewels were set into the floors across the vast marble. The splendour and wealth of the Moghul courts has been narrated over the years. Where did all this wealth come from? Obviously plundered and looted from the people of the land. Babur the first Moghul was a nomad and obviously did not bring it from his country. The wealth was plundered from the temples, state treasuries and the peoples of this land. It was the wealth of the Hindu land conquered by the invaders given to plunder and loot.

Even before Muslims came to India, there were wars and battles between the Kings. There were conquerors and there were the conquered. However, the wars were mainly fought between the martial classes. Strange as it may sound today, the Kings and princes observed time honoured conventions that were sanctioned in Shastras. For example, places of worship were never touched. The Brahmins and the learned were not harmed, women were not violated, and cows were not killed. In fact, non combatant civil population were never killed or captured as the battles were mostly fought in open spaces. The local population was never plundered and war booty was an unknown concept in wars and battles fought then. The kings had a code of honour and violating this code was considered reprehensible and kings found it worse than death.

However, Muslim invaders came with a different code. They would fall upon unarmed, hapless civil population after a victory on the battlefield. They would burn down villages and towns after the defending martial warriors had been killed. They went in for mass murders of the civil population and Brahmins were their special targets. They pillaged and looted even from the bodies of the dead. They raped and captured women who were considered a part of the booty. Those who were not killed were sold as slaves. This was the code of the Muslim invaders – code of their Prophet. They did it all for their Prophet as ‘holy warriors’. The world famous historian, Will Durant has written in his Story of Civilisation that "the Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history". The Hindus found it very hard to understand the psychology of this new invader which they were witnessing for the first time in history. If one were to read the chronicles of those times, advent of the Muslims into India became possible only through deceit and treachery and not out of valor or greater prowess.

Then came the British and the plundering of this hapless people continued and more than ever before. It was not a plundering for a short while. It lasted for a full 200 years from the battle Plassey in 1757 to Independence in 1947. So much so that a country which even after being ruled over by the Muslim invaders for so long was considered the “brightest jewel in the British Crown”, at the beginning of the 20th century, India was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income! After 1000 years of attacks against Hinduism, India gained Independence but at the cost of partition of the land with hundreds of thousands of Hindus killed and driven out of their homes by Muslim claimants to the North Western part of the country.

Last 60 years India has tried to regain its self with economic progress on all the fronts. Today, it is being projected as the 'Superpower' of tommorrow. It has tried to forgive and forget the wounds afflicted since the days of Mohd bin Qasim. It has been trying to think of a better future for its people. Hindus accepted a large part of Muslim population within even though a separate state Pakistan was carved out as homeland for Muslims. They embraced the followers of Christianity which had bled them and ruled over them for over 200 years. All because Hindu way of life is inherently tolerant and accepts all diversity with a vision of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam (world is one family). However, it has again become a target of these two monotheistic religions. For over a decade now Islamic terrorists have been attacking mainly the Hindu population. The objective of the ‘jihadi’ terrorists is to divide India once again on the basis of religion and create what they envision as Mughalistan. On the other hand, the poor and underprivileged are constantly being targeted by the Christian evangelists, converting them to Christianity against lure of money brought in from the affluent West. These conversions have assumed alarming proportions in the last couple of years.

Is history waiting to repeat itself ?