Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visit to the Taj Mahal this week was yet another indignity the legendary monument of eternal love had to endure.
Netanyahu and his wife Sara, donning a flagrantly scarlet dress, roamed about the classic white marbled beauty for over an hour. The couple posed for a photograph at the famous central Taj bench, renamed the Diana bench. It is where the lonely princess had posed for that famous photograph, drenched in melancholy as she stared into silent solitude. The forlorn snapshot announced to the whole world in subtle yet evident terms the state of her gilded yet loveless life. Ten months after that portrait, the royal couple formally announced their separation.
Netanyahu was received by Yogi Adityanath, the Hindu-priest-turned-CM of Uttar Pradesh (UP), province where the Taj Mahal is located in Agra. The Jewish prime minister flashed well-choreographed smiles as he described the Taj as an “unforgettable monument of love”, whose magnificence and beauty he deeply appreciated. It must have been pretty painful for Netanyahu to say that even if it was meant for public consumption, for it must be extremely rare for any Israeli politician to appreciate the beauty and splendour of a Muslim heritage site, something the Zionist state has been relentlessly and religiously destroying for the ever-expanding Israel project.
However, the visiting dignitary might have drawn some solace from the fact that the Hindu-right-wing BJP government, both at the national and provincial levels, has similar designs. Chief Minister Adityanath who hosted Netanyahu at the site has already expressed his abhorrence for the Taj Mahal as he previously said the icon did not ‘reflect the Indian culture’.
Spanned over centuries, the Taj Mahal has inspired generations of people from all races and continents. Since independence, not only has it remained central to India’s past splendour but also serves as the country’s mascot to attract foreigners, including almost all the visiting state dignitaries. However, since churning hate has become the right-wing Hindutva’s method to advance in electoral politics, the Taj Mahal has received its share of relentless loathing. The attacks became organised and vicious around the time Narendra Modi, known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, took over as India’s prime minister in mid-2014.
Barely six months after his ascendance to power an Indian court admitted a lawsuit from a group of lawyers who claimed the Taj was a Hindu temple called Tejo Mahalaya, dedicated to Lord Shiva – one of the three important Hindu deities. The petition asked the court to allow the devotees to access the inner premises of the monument to perform ‘Darshan’ and ‘Aarti’, Hindu acts of worship. Harishankar Jain, the main petitioner, also sought a direction from the court to remove all alleged burials from under the building; as well as restrain worship by Muslims. In 2000, the Indian Supreme Court had quashed a similar petition that wanted it declared that the Taj Mahal was built by a Hindu king.
The attacks escalated after the BJP won over UP, the largest Indian province with a population over 20 million. This has given tremendous confidence to Hindu extremists, including the ruling party politicians, to target every symbol of Muslim faith and heritage without fear of any consequences. Not long ago, after Yogi Adityanath took over the reins in March last year, he launched a tirade against the Taj and tried to blemish its character. He claimed the monument was, “Made by the blood and sweat of Bharat Mata’s sons”, depicting a ghoulish image against its current veneer of love and affection. Soon after, his government presented its first budget for 2017-2018, and there was no mention of the building under the cultural heritage section.
In October last, the monument was dropped from the official tourism department’s booklet. The 32-page booklet, Tourism: Its High Potential, that was released by the state tourism minister, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, mentioned a number of Hindu and Buddhist religious places but missed out one of the world’s seven wonders. During a discussion on TV, one of the BJP’s spokespersons, Anila Singh, justified the removal on the basis that, “[The] days of all those people who have crushed the feelings of Hindus has come to an end. What Hindus want, we are going to do that.”
Despite its international appeal and a site that attracts more tourists than any other site in India, the government is choking its funding. This is despite the fact that more than 20 percent of all tourism revenue in UP generates from the Taj Mahal. Although there has been a steady drop in the number of visitors, 6.2 million visited the monument last year, maintaining the record for being the second best Unesco world heritage site.
But this does not seem enough. Sangeet Singh Som, a UP Assembly member and a well-known rabble-rouser while justifying the drop of the Taj from his government’s tourist guide described the white marbled building as, “A blot on Indian history and culture.” He even accused the Mughal King Shah Jahan, who commissioned the building to commemorate his dearest dead wife, Mumtaz Mahal, as a person who wanted to massacre Hindus. “If this is history, then it is very unfortunate… I can tell you with complete guarantee that history will be changed.”
Postscript: One of my most memorable visits to the Taj was with my family in the mid-80s. Inside the compound, I struck up a conversation with an elderly Kashmiri lady who was aghast at how ‘all sorts of people’ were defiling the ‘Muslim shrine’. For years, we would repeat her words and laugh. But now – as an unreasonable xenophobic discourse takes centre stage, amid the formation of a ‘new history’ conveniently cast in faith – the Taj may soon have to really surrender.
Twitter: murtaza_shibli