Besides being on the top of the world's 'Wonders List', the Taj Mahal also ranks high on the list of monuments connected to controversies. Apart from being the primary cause of the industrial denudation of its host city Agra, the Taj Mahal is also at the centre of a debate over its alleged origin as a Hindu temple.
Although the higher courts, including the UP High Court and the Supreme Court, have refused to entertain any litigation over the monument's history, there is no dearth of cases being filed in the lower courts by religious zealots, demanding that the Taj Mahal be declared a Hindu temple.
Following the dismissal of a petition demanding that the Taj Mahal be declared 'Tejo Mahalay', based on the half-baked theories postulated by P N Oak in his book published almost four decades back, another case has now been filed in the Agra district court by a group of lawyers, who claim that the Taj Mahal is actually 'Agreshwar Mahadev' temple and have petitioned the court to declare the Mughal-era tomb as a temple.
THEORIES ABOUT TAJ MAHAL'S ORIGIN
In 2015 too, a group of 6 lawyers had petitioned the Agra district court on the same issue, based on the 'evidence' given by P N Oak in his book 'True Story of The Taj'. They had demanded that the basement of the Taj Mahal be opened and all rooms be searched for the evidence of Taj Mahal's Hindu origin. BJP MP Subramanian Swami had also made a similar demand.
However, historians have raised their doubts on P N Oak's theory which claims that the Taj Mahal has a large number of architectural points of Hindu origin. Prof. Sugam Anand, who heads the history department of Dr. B R Ambedkar University, Agra, said that it is a fact that the land on which the Taj Mahal now stands, belonged to Raja Jai Singh, who surrendered it to Emperor Shahjahan on his demand and accepted a 'Jagir' a few kilometres away in lieu of the land. Before the Taj Mahal was built on this land, it was a palace of Raja Jai Singh and there could have been a Shiva temple in the palace premises.
However, to claim that the Taj Mahal itself was a temple and was modified by Shahjahan to inter his wife Mumtaz in it, is doubt worthy, as there is no historical evidence that points in this direction. Whereas there is ample historical evidence that documents the construction of the Taj Mahal on this spot, he said.
A similar theory was postulated by historian Dr. Tarun Sharma who said that it was customary for Hindu kings to build temples inside their palaces which were surrounded by a garden. So there is a possibility that there was a Shiva temple in the palace that was acquired by Shahjahan to build the Taj Mahal and if the Taj Mahal was indeed a temple, the opening of the basement rooms could throw some light on this.
SHIVA STATUES AT TAJ MAHAL
There are some claims that Shiva statues had been seen inside the Taj by a visitor in 1934 and three statues were seen in the basement in 1962, however, there is no tangible evidence to this. Although it remains a fact that the basement rooms of the Taj Mahal were sealed by the ASI after the publication of P N Oak's book, which had incidentally been banned by the then Central government. Stephen Knepp, another historian, has also posted some pictures online that point towards the Hindu origins of Taj Mahal's architecture.
Commenting on the controversy, Agra Tourist Welfare Chamber Secretary Vishal Sharma said that whether the Taj Mahal was a temple or a tomb is a moot point now, as the world knows it as the tomb of the Empress of India Mumtaz Mahal. Besides, the evidence that is being cited to claim that the Taj Mahal was a temple in the past, is circumstantial at best, since it only points out at the 'Hindu-like' design elements of the Taj Mahal, not allowing for the fact that the Mughal architecture was actually a fusion of Indo-Persian architectural forms that incorporated a number of local elements. This is evident in the architecture of Humayun's tomb in Delhi, which has been constructed in a similar fashion as the Taj, although it predates the Taj Mahal by a good 50 years.
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