🌹All Mughal Emperors (barring Babar and Humayun; but their reigns were too short) were great patrons of arts, literature and culture inspired by the Vaishnava tradition (pic shows a miniature of the celebration of Diwali Jashn-e-Chiraghan at the Mughal Court)
🌹If that had not been the case it would have been impossible for the Mughal Empire to become as strong, as large and as wealthy as it did!
🌹Emperor Akbar was a patron of the Vaishnava tradition and was known for his many grants and endowments — the earliest being in 1565 to the priest of Govindadeva temple (Burchett 2019, p. 118). Akbar kept granting lands to temples till the last years of his reign.
🌹This is evident from how he “enlarged and consolidated all grants to temples and temple-servants in the Mathura region by his farmans of 4 and 19 Shahriwar 43 Ilahi year (27 August and 11 September 1598), which provided for a total grant of 1,000 bighas of land to 35 temples in Mathura, Vrindavan and their environs” (Mukherjee and Habib 1988, pp. 287-300).
🌹It is also interesting to note, as Pika Ghosh points out to demonstrate the Hindu-Muslim syncretism of the site, “the series of five early temples (Madanmohan, Gopinath, Radha Vallabh, Jugal Kishor, and Govindadeva)… flaunt the red sandstone marked unmistakably by their immediately precedent use at Akbar’s capital at Fatehpur Sikri” (Ghosh 2002, p. 205).
🌹Further evidence suggests that “Vaishnavas belonging to different sampradayas (communities) — including Bengalis of the Chaitanya sect — who… gathered in Mathura–Brindavan, quite regularly petitioned and lobbied the imperial durbar for the settlement of grievances as well as for additional land and other material grants” (Chatterjee 2009, p. 156).
🌹For Emperor Akbar Sulh- i-kul ( Arabic for “PEACE FOR ALL) was to become his method of judging what was legally right or wrong within his empire and was created because Akbar understood that he was trying to build political institutions for predominately non-Muslim society. Thus, in his empire, the beliefs and opinions of the orthodox mullahs were not to be the critical test for his rule because he wanted all of his subjects to be judged equally before the law.
🌹 Akbar established separation of state and religion and opened government positions to members of all religions. He abolished the jizya on non-Muslims and the forced conversion of prisoners of war to Islam. He converted the meetings of Muslim clerics into open discussions between Islam, Hindu, Parsi and Christian scholars and in 1579 issued an edict that made him the highest authority in religious matters.
🌹In Civil courts Akbar abolished laws that discriminated against non-Muslims. He raised the Hindu court system to official status side by side with Muslim law and reformed the legislation with the aim to maximize common laws for Muslim and Hindu citizens.
🌹Of Emperor Akbar’s Experiments With Religion some other time…
🌹Akbar was, however, not alone in his household in his support for Vaishnavism.
🌹 #HamidaBanu, Akbar’s mother, had particularly supported the Vallabha sampradaya.
🌹In 1581, in no uncertain terms, she ordered that “the cows of Vithaleshwar may graze wherever they are and not a single individual of the Khalisa and jagirdar should molest them or prevent them. They must allow his cows to graze and the aforesaid person should feel perfectly at ease” (Edicts from the Mughal Harem 2009, p. 4).
🌹Jahangir not only continued Akbar’s grants but added considerably to it. He turned Todar Mal’s 1584 grant of 100 bighas into a permanent imperial grant “in favour of Srichand, Gopaldas’s successor, as sevak of the temple of Madan Mohan. That is, it was no longer resumable by jagirdars” (Mukherjee, Habib 1988, p. 288).
🌹He also financed the construction of two temples, one in Vrindavan and another in Mathura, and issued a number of grants to the influential gurus: Kamadev Acharya and sons received 24 bighas in 1612, Narayan Das and sons 12 bighas in 1612, Brindaban Das and Nanda Lal 50 bighas in 1612, Swamidas 20 bighas in 1613, and Shyam Krishan 15 bighas in 1615 (Mukherjee, Habib )
🌹Emperor Shahjahan, faced with a dwindling treasury, wasn’t nearly as open-handed as his predecessors when it came to temple-grants, but he nonetheless preserved the earlier ones (Mukherjee, Habib p. 288)
🌹Shah Jahan however can take all the credit for the Mughal tradition of the elaborate fireworks display on the banks of the Yamuna on the festival of Diwali
🌹I have have talked about this before in an article on Aurangzeb but here goes nothing “In 1687, the Emperor Aurangzeb (much maligned from all sides) gave some empty land on a ghat in Benares (which was, incidentally, near a mosque) to Ramjivan Gosain in order to build houses for “pious Brahmins and holy faqirs.”
🌹In 1691 Aurangzeb conferred eight villages and a sizable chunk of tax-free land on Mahant Balak Das Nirvani of Chitrakoot to support the Balaji Temple.
🌹In 1698 he gifted rent-free land to a Brahmin named Rang Bhatt, son of Nek Bhatt, in eastern Khandesh in central India.
🌹The list goes on and includes temples and individuals in Allahabad, Vrindavan, Bihar, and elsewhere.
🌹Aurangzeb enacted similarly favourable policies towards Jain religious institutions. Again following Akbar’s example, Aurangzeb granted land at Shatrunjaya, Girnar, and Mount Abu—all Jain pilgrimage destinations in Gujarat—to specific Jain communities in the late 1650s. He gave Lal Vijay, a Jain monk, a monastery (poshala), probably sometime before 1681, and granted relief for a resting house (upashraya) in 1679.
🌹So what’s with the Mughal era being branded the Muslim period with poor Hindus being persecuted for the presence of a foreskin?
🌹It’s such a dimwitted droll story lapped up by dimwitted dunces…”Aurangzeb Hated Hindus” And that’s one thing both the Hindu and Muslim Right agree on totally
🌹I have been abused thoroughly by both by trying to bring out what the Mughals did to consolidate their rule in integrating the entire population of the Empire in loyalty to the Emperor
🌹The Hindu Right is convinced I am a Paki/Muslim fifth columnist
🌹The Muslim Right is sure I am in fact an RSS agent sent into their midst to try and Hindu-ise that anti-Hindu idol Emperor Aurangzeb
🌹As for me I feel depressed the day I don’t get abused at least fifteen times by ignoramuses who either forgot all they were taught in school or who never went to school
🌹Either way I am ONE HAPPY MAN!
