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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
@Aabhas24
Feb 5, 2019 • 77 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X
Sadar Pranam to the God within you @tufailelif ji. I’m sorry but Tipu Sultan & his father weren’t actually fighting British. In thread below, I explain how not👇🏼.You may respond in your full capacity. Cc @Sanjay_Dixit @vivekagnihotri @ippatel
2/n There are enough writers who indulge in false glorification of Tipu, thru secular & tolerant make up they have applied to his face.Kavesh Yazdani in one such subtle whitewasher.
In an article,Yazdani says(3n onwards. I attach SC of @tufailelif tweet(he has already blockd me)
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3/n “Tipu was also aware of American War of Independence & reportedly uttered, 'Every blow that is struck in the cause of American liberty throughout the world,in France,India & elsewhere & so long as a single insolent & savage tyrant remains, the struggle shall continue.'
4/n Reference for 3/n
Click link, Volume 38, Issue 02, August 2014, page 106.)
Yazdani's reference to this statement given in end note 62 is “Kausar, Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan, 306.” academia.edu/8701791/Haidar…
5/n So Now let’s look up Kabir Kausar's book cited by Yazdani. The statement, indeed, was there. It is in Appendix F entitled “Tipu Sultan's Observations (Compiled from fifth edition of 'The Sword of Tipu Sultan' by Bhagwan S. Gidwani).” Link to book archive.org/stream/in.erne…
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6/n (Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan, page 303.) The first sentence in the appendix is: “The quotations given below show different facets of Tipu's philosophy and character.” Then the quotations were given under different headings.
7/n In the fourth section entitled “Tipu's Views on the American Declaration of Independence” we can find the following quotation:
8/n “Every blow that was struck in the cause of American liberty throughout the world, in France, India and elsewhere and so long as a single insolent and savage tyrant remains, the struggle shall continue. (p. 210).” (Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan, page 306.)
9/n There is nothing secret about the correspondence of Tipu given in the book. Why Kausar has called it Secret?Perhaps, he might have thought it would attract attention. But that, at least, is not Gidwani's fault! It is Kausar's in the first place.
10/n The sentence as quoted, or rather misquoted, by Kausar, and repeated by Yazdani, is from Gidwani's novel on page 210. “(The Sword of Tipu Sultan, page 210. Italics mine. Italicized words were omitted by Kausar; Yazdani blindly followed him.)
11/n In the novel this is the last sentence in Tipu Sultan's address to a large assembly of Indian and French officers. It is not an actual address delivered by Tipu; it is an address which Gidwani has made Tipu to deliver in the novel.
12/n Kausar believes that such imaginary quotations will “show different facets of Tipu's philosophy and character!” And, praising Kausar in the foreword to his Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan, B. R. Grover, the then Director of Indian Council of Historical Research, says:
13/n “Compiled by an Archivist in his methodical & scientific approach this work is a welcome addition to the source material of the late 18th century history of India. It affords fresh ground for an assessment of the character & activities of Tipu Sultan & his place in history.”
14/n There is more; but I don’t want to keep mentioning them here.
But we must grant Kavesh Yazdani one thing: His is a novel way of Historical research which has now become narrative of most Tipu loving historians.
15/n Tipu: freedom fighter?

It has been claimed that Tipu was the first freedom fighter,for India's independence from British Rule! Some writers have suggested this in a more subtle manner. Let’s inspect👇🏼
16/n An anthology of essays, edited by Irfan Habib, has been named Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, as if it was Tipu who was confronting Colonialism! What could be further from truth?
17/n Tipu fought just to save his kingdom and failed. Why should that make him a martyr in the cause of India's independence? Hitler, too, fought against the British. He did so, not for Germany but because they were a hindrance to his plan of enslaving the Poles & the Russians.
18/n Francois R,captain of a French Ship dismasted in Feb1797 &put in Mangalore was a conman who represented himself as second-in-command at Mauritius,then under French rule,authorized to discuss Mysorean cooperation with a French force already assembled to expel Brit from India.
19/n Tipu fell for it and initiated correspondence with the French authorities. His proposal to the French, dated 2nd April, 1797, inserted in his instructions to his envoys, was👇🏼
20/n ...that the French should send “10,000 [French] soldiers” and “30,000 Blacks” to support Tipu and in return the territory and property which might be captured from the British and the Portuguese were “to be equally divided” between the French and Tipu.
21/n Reference for above:
(The Asiatic Annual Register, for the year 1799, page 195 in the section entitled 'Supplement to the Chronicle'.)
😂So this was Tipu's idea of his so called confrontation with colonialism: replacing the British by the French!
22/n If we refer to his letter to Zaman Shah, the ruler of Afghanistan, dated 5th February, 1797: They were to unite in a jihad against the infidels and free the region of Hindustan from the contamination of the enemies of Islam.
23/n The Shah was to expel the Marathas from Delhi & then the Afghan army from the north & Tipu's from the south were to crush the remaining power of the Marathas in the Deccan.
🤔This was Tipu's so called anti- colonialism: reestablishment of Islamic rule in India.
24/n Tipu carried away from their homeland thousands and thousands of Canarese Christians & Kodavas (Coorgis) and converted them by force;, by his own admission, he had converted lakhs of Nairs to Islam.
25/n Several books written under his patronage exhort his Musalman subjects to wage war against the infidels, that is non-Musalmans, and to persecute the Hindus and extirpate the Christians.

I’ll explain further from 26/n in sometime.
26/n His revenue regulations lay down that every person who should become a convert to Muhammadan faith was to pay only half the tax charged on others and was to be exempt from house tax. He is known to have destroyed a large number of temples.
27/n All this shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that his was an Islamic state. There was nothing anti-colonial in it. Tipu's struggle was against the infidels (non- Musalmans), not against colonials or colonialism.
28/n Let’s now break myth: Tipu, a donor of grants to Hindu institutions?

B. Sheik Ali in his Tipu Sultan: a Crusader for Change, page 3, states: “Tipu gave liberal grants to the temples. Records show as many as 156 temples received grants [from him].”
29/n Interestingly,he has not cited any records to support this statement. But it is evident that it is based on B. N. Pande's Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan, page 14.
30/n B.N. Pande says there: “Prof. Srikantiah supplied me with the list of 156 temples to which Tipu Sultan used to pay annual gifts.” (His name is also spelt Srikantia and Srikantis on the same page. Let us stick to Srikantiah.
31/n Mr Pande has not reproduced the list,nor has he mentioned the date on which it was sent to him. Sir Brijendra Nath Seal,the then VC of Mysore University, had forwarded Pande's letter to Prof. Srikantiah & he had responded by giving Pande this list and some other information.
32/n Seal was VC of Mysore University from 1921 to 1929. So Pande must have received this list in or before 1929. He first mentioned that list in his lecture on Tipu, delivered on 18th November 1993, that is 64 years after he received it.
33/n That lecture and the one on Aurangzeb, delivered on 17th November, 1993, were delivered
Refutation of Tipu's False Glorification 79
under the auspices of the Institute of Objective Studies in the Academic Staff College, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi.
34/n These two lectures were printed in the form of a booklet under the name Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan.

So this is the source of the list of temples-yes, 156 temples-which, we are supposed to believe, as Sheikh Ali believes, received annual gifts from Tipu.
35/n The list was provided by Prof. Srikantiah to Pande in or before 1929 and Pande recalled it 64 years later. Believe it or not. 🤔
Before moving further I would like to give the one more example of his art.
36/n In his paper on Aurangzeb, Pande has told the following story: Once while Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal a halt was made to let the Ranis of the Hindu Rajas in the emperor's retinue have a dip in the Ganges and pay their homage to Lord Vishvanath.
37/n After performing the rituals the Ranis, except the Rani of Kutch, returned. After a search it was found that there was a secret underground chamber just beneath Lord Vishvanath's seat and they found the Rani there, “dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments.”
38/n The enraged Rajas demanded exemplary action. So Aurangzeb issued orders to raze the temple to the ground and punish the Mahant. (Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan, page 12).
39/n After enthralling the readers with this moving story, Pande adds: “”Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in his famous book. 'The Feathers and the Stones' has narrated this fact based on documentary evidence.” So Pande raised the story to the status of fact. 😂
40/n He got the name of Sitaramayya's book wrong: It is actually ‘Feathers and Stones’. 😂

The story told by Pattabhi Sitaramayya in his memoirs, Feathers and Stones, is briefly as follows:

One day Aurangzeb's Hindu noblemen went to see the sacred temple at Benares (Varanasi).
41/n When the party returned it was noticed that the Rani of Kutch was missing.After a search she,bereft of her jewelry,was found in a secret underground chamber. It turned out that it was the doing of the mahants who used to rob the pilgrims in this fashion.
42/n On discovering their wickedness, Aurangzeb ordered the temple to be demolished. But the Rani insisted on a Masjid being built on the ruins of the temple and “to please her, one was subsequently built.” (Feathers and Stones, pages 177-78.). Sitaramayya adds:
43/n “The story Benares Masjid was given in a rare manuscript in Lucknow which was in possession of a Maulana who had read it in the Ms and who though he promised to look it up & gave the Ms to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling his promise.”
44/n So this is the stupid story Sitaramayya believed and also wanted others to believe. His expectation came true. Bingo! There was at least one person who believed it: B.N. Pande! Not only did he believe it, he embroidered it further.
45/n In Sitaramayya's story the Rani lost her jewelry only, Pande made her lose her honour as well! I leave it to the readers' judgment whether to believe Pande's story of “the list of 156 temples to which Tipu Sultan used to pay annual gifts.”
46/n As for Sheik Ali, the believer, the less said the better.
B. A. Saletore's article 'Tipu Sultan as Defender of the Hindu Dharma' was first published in (Medieval India Quarterly, Vol. I, No. 1, pages 43-55.) It is reprinted in Confronting Colonialism, pages 115-30.
47/n The first document discussed in the article is a Kannada sanad, issued under Tipu's seal, about a dispute regarding worship in a temple at Mysore.
48/n Saletore, who believes that it illustrates “Tipu's role as a legislator in Hindu religious matters,” and “not only remedies the injustice done by his own official, but also rectifies an omission made by a previous Hindu ruler of Mysore”,...contd
49/n ...waxes eloquent in praising Tipu for his knowledge of Hindu religious practices. But, alas, the date of the document shows that it was issued, if ever, after Tipu's death!
50/n Saletore says that “the second line of the sanad contains merely the Hindu cyclic year and the month and the day (Siddhartha saum. Bhadrapada ba. 5) which corresponds to 15 September 1783.” (Confronting Colonialism, page 116.)
51/n But here he is in error. The cyclic year Siddhartha which occurred only once during Tipu's life corresponds with Shaka year 1721. Bhadrapada Badi 5 of the year named Siddhartha, Shaka year 1721 corresponds with 19th September, 1799.
52/n Tipu had died on 4th May, 1799. The Sultan, the inscription on whose sword read, “My victorious sabre is lightening for the destruction of the unbelievers”, would have turned in his grave had he learnt that Saletore was calling him 'Defender of the Hindu Dharma'!
53/n (For inscription see History of Mysore, Vol. III, page 1073.)
S. Subbaray Chetty's article, 'Tipu's Endowments to Hindus and Hindu Institutions' first published in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, pages 416-19, is reprinted in Confronting Colonialism, pages 111-14
54/n It is a half-baked piece. At several places he cites Local Records as his source without giving sufficient details.
55/n He sets out to give a list of charities and endowments Tipu made to Hindus and Hindu institutions, but at least one of these is a permission for the construction of a mosque on the “site of a temple got from the Brahmins with their goodwill”.
56/n And two are grants to Dargahs, one at Penukonda and the other near Tonnur. Most of the other records cited are merely memorandums of grants, not the original farmans or their copies. There is no way, therefore, of examining their authenticity.
57/n In most cases dates are lacking, or are not given. Some of the grants are made to astrologers; these cannot be regarded as evidence of Tipu's tolerance or respect for other religions.
58/n Nevertheless it is true, though strange, that Tipu gave grants to some Hindu temples, and employed the Brahmans to perform japa (incantations), penances and other rites, to ensure his victory. Wilks rightly observes:👇🏼
59/n “That Haidar himself, half a Hindu, should sanction these ceremonies is in the ordinary course of human action; but that Tipu, the most bigoted of Mahomedans, professing an open abhorrence and contempt for the Hindu religion,...
60/n and the Brahmans, its teachers, destroying their temples, and polluting their sanctuaries, should never fail to enjoin the performance of the jebbum (japam) when alarmed by imminent danger is, indeed, an extraordinary combination of arrogant bigotry and...
61/n ..trembling superstition; of general intolerance, mingled with occasional respect for the object of persecution.” (Historical Sketches of the South of India, Vol. I, pages 813-14, footnote.)
62/n This superstition of the tyrant became particularly manifest since 1790 as utter destruction stared him in the face.
In April 1791 the freebooters (called Pindaris) who followed in the wake of the Maratha army plundered the Shankaracharya's math at Shringeri.
63/n This was certainly a most reprehensible act. But to place it in its proper context, it must be remembered that such freebooters followed all non-European armies in India.
64/n It was common practice to let them loose to devastate the enemy's territory and thus, by destroying his economy, compel him to sue for peace. It was something like strategic bombing of the Second World War. It brings to mind Sherman's famous dictum “War is hell.”
65/n Such freebooters, called looties by the British, followed Tipu's army also. Even the grain dealers supplying the British army in India indulged in plunder.
66/n But there is a difference: the atrocities against the Hindus and Christians, and their religious institutions, committed by Tipu's soldiers were the result of Tipu's specific orders; the math at Shringeri was plundered by freebooters, no Maratha officer had ordered the act.
67/n In fact the Maratha officers were anguished by it and some efforts were made to restore the plundered goods and appease the Shankaracharya.
68/n Dr. A. K.Shastry,the editor of The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana,observes: “However Peshwa Madhavrao Narayan(popularly known as Sawai Madhavrao, AD 1774-95)conducted an enquiry & ordered Parasuram Bhau to give compensation & return the looted articles to the Matha.
71/n ref: (The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana, pages 171-72.)
Tipu, naturally, was quick to capitalize on the event. (So are his modern apologists and admirers!)
72/n He had already requested the Shankaracharya to offer prayers to Lord Ishwara (Shiva) for the defeat of the enemies. (The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana, Letter Nos. 86-87, 3rd April and 20th June 1791.)
73/n When he came to know that the math was plundered by the Maratha cavalry (in fact, by the Pindaris) he made a grant of money for the restoration of the temple and reinstallation of the idol.
74/n He did not forget to request the Shankaracharya to perform penance for the destruction of the enemies and prosperity of the government. (The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana, Letter No. 88, 6th July, 1791.)
75/n This was the same Tipu who had carried away from Canara thousands of Christians and forcibly converted to Islam, who had carried away from Coorg thousands of Hindus and forcibly converted them to Islam, who had forcibly converted lakhs of Hindus in Malabar.
76/n He is the same Tipu who had commissioned several books which exhorted his subject Musalmans to wage jihad against the non- Musalmans, who had desecrated and destroyed several Hindu temples and Christian churches, and who had forced many Hindu women into his harem.
77/n This bigoted tyrant was lamenting because the Shankaracharya's math was looted by some freebooters! Could there be a better example of the proverbial crocodile tears?
78/n Such is the brief history of Tyrant Tipu who never fought for India nor donated to temples holistically. I will also bust the myth of ‘Tipu the Misslile Man’ some other time. Till then you can care to respond to above thread where I have busted the myth of’Tiger Tipu Sultan’
N/n In above thread of 78 tweets I have busted the myth as claimed by @tufailelif . Refer SC👇🏼. Request to help me reach this rebuttal to him since he has already blocked me. Cc @ShefVaidya @KanchanGupta @RatanSharda55 @GitaSKapoor @_NAN_DINI Image

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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
Nov 2
1/4 Long Thread!

Since #TheTajStory starring @SirPareshRawal directed by @TusharAmrish has released, countless people have rushed to make podcasts and articles trying to discredit everything the film presents.

So, I thought it’s time to begin a detailed thread on “The Real History of the Taj Mahal”, one that may unsettle many popular beliefs.

Before diving into historical documents, let’s clear one thing: the Taj was never built as a symbol of love. That romantic tale is pure fabrication.

Even the most cited scholarly work; “Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb — An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and European Documentary Sources” by W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai completely rejects the “love story” narrative.

Ironically, these very authors are often invoked to support it. Begley and Desai not only question the myth that Shah Jahan’s hair turned white from grief after Mumtaz’s death (as also claimed in one of the recent podcast), but they also argue that the Taj’s conception had nothing to do with personal loss or love.

According to them, the Taj Mahal was designed as a symbolic representation of paradise; a grand stage for Judgement Day, not a tomb of mourning. Shah Jahan, they assert, envisioned himself as a Khalifa, and therefore modeled the structure after a Timurid throne, with the inverted lotus atop the dome represented the ruler’s crown.

In fact, Wayne E. Begley, in his seminal paper “The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of Its Symbolic Meaning” (The Art Bulletin, Vol. 61, No. 1, March 1979), begins by urging scholars to re-examine the entire history of the Taj Mahal (check image 2). Right at the outset, Begley makes it clear—the structure was never intended as Mumtaz’s burial monument.
Now, let’s walk through some fascinating historical records that most people conveniently overlook.

I have noticed that nearly every self-proclaimed “historian” of the Taj Mahal confidently repeats the same claims, how many years it took to build, how many artisans worked on it, and so on. But the crucial question is—where do these numbers actually come from?

They trace back to Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a French merchant and traveler, who asserted that the Taj Mahal took 22 years to build and employed 20,000 workers. Tavernier even boasted that he had witnessed the construction “from commencement to completion.” Take a look at the snippet (image 3) from Volume I of his works.

He further wrote that Shah Jahan “purposely buried Mumtaz at the Taj-i-Macan (Taj Mahal)” so that the world might marvel at her burial site, adding that even in his time, foreigners flocked to see the structure, just as they do today.

Now, this statement is extremely revealing. If, by 1640–41, Tavernier was already describing the Taj Mahal as a site attracting visitors from across the world, it implies one simple fact, the monument existed long before Mumtaz was buried there. Shah Jahan merely chose it as her resting place because it was already an established and admired structure.

Let’s also examine Tavernier’s own timeline. He was in Agra around 1640–41, and again in 1651–52. Curiously, in his later visit, he says nothing about the Taj Mahal, no mention of construction, progress, or completion. For someone who claimed to have observed the entire process “from beginning to end,” this silence is deafening.

Moreover, if we take Tavernier’s claim literally, that he saw both the start and finish of construction, then the Taj’s work should have begun in 1640 and ended around 1662. But Tavernier was nowhere near Agra in 1662; by then, he was traveling in the Deccan and Persia, and his writings from that period make no reference to Agra at all. He was again in Agra in 1665 which means that by that logic construction should have begun in 1642.

Therefore, if Tavernier was right about his personal observation, then the official claim that construction began in 1631 collapses entirely. The timelines don’t add up.
E. B. Havell, the Principal of the Government School of Art, Calcutta, in 1904, echoed the same figures; 22 years of construction and 20,000 workers, directly citing Jean-Baptiste Tavernier as his source.

A few years later, Vincent A. Smith, in his “History of Fine Arts in India and Ceylon” (1911), repeated the exact same claim, again tracing it back to Tavernier’s account.

In other words, the widely circulated narrative about the Taj Mahal’s construction period and workforce isn’t based on any contemporary Timurid (Mughal) record, imperial Farman, or architectural document, it rests entirely on a single secondary account by a 17th-century European traveler, whose own timeline and claims, as we have seen, are riddled with inconsistencies.

Thus, what has been parroted for over a century in mainstream history books is not verified evidence, but rather a chain of repetition, where one author simply inherits and amplifies the claims of another starting with Tavernier’s unreliable narrative.

I'll bring in light words of other travelers who visited Agra around same period.

One such traveler was Fray Sebastian Manrique. He was a Portuguese missionary who spent four weeks in Agra between December 1640 and January 1641. His account (refer to Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique 1629-1643: A Translation of the Itinerario de las Missiones Orientales. Volume II: China, India etc), the only eyewitness records that actually mentions the Taj Mahal’s construction describes “a vast, lofty, circular structure” set within “a huge square-shaped enclosure.”

But here is where it gets interesting. How many men did Manrique actually see working on the site? He writes--

“On this building, as well as other works, a thousand men were usually engaged.”

Yes, you read that right, “a thousand men.”

That figure isn’t just a minor discrepancy, but it is a dramatic contradiction to Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s famous claim that 20,000 workers labored on the monument. And Manrique’s detailed description of what these men were doing only deepens the puzzle:

“Many were occupied in laying out ingenious gardens, others planting shady groves and ornamental avenues; while the rest were making roads and those receptacles for crystal water, without which their labour could not be carried out.”

Notice what’s missing? No mention of masons, stonecutters, or bricklayers. None of the trades you would expect if the Taj Mahal were truly under massive construction. And yet, Manrique observes that the structure was “still incomplete, the greater part of it remaining to be done.”

If his account is accurate, it is deeply inconvenient because both Tavernier and Manrique were in Agra around the same time, even travelling by the same route from Dacca. How could two witnesses of the same period describe such vastly different scenes?

Now let me tell you how historians have tried to explain it.

Vincent A. Smith, in his attempt to defend Tavernier, wrote:

“The number (20,000) rests on Tavernier’s excellent authority. According to Manrique, the staff of workmen numbered only 1,000 in 1640. No doubt the numbers varied much from time to time.”

The translators of Manrique’s travels go even further to undermine him, claiming:

“Manrique’s figure is certainly a rough one. …Tavernier says 20,000 men worked incessantly. Manrique, however, is writing long after and without notes, and again his visit seems to have been but cursory.”

But this explanation is plainly false. Manrique wrote his account within a year of returning from his travels in 1641; hardly “long after.” And as for his visit being “cursory,” that assertion is baseless. It seems more likely that his testimony was simply too inconvenient to fit the established myth.

And if Manrique’s reliability is questioned, what about other travelers?

Consider Albert de Mandelslo, a German who visited Agra in October–November 1638. If the Taj Mahal’s construction truly began in 1631, by 1638 the site should have been alive with thousands of workers and visible progress.

Yet Mandelslo, an otherwise detailed chronicler—mentions nothing about the Taj Mahal.

Interestingly, Mandelslo does not ignore Agra or Shah Jahan’s court far from it. He gives a meticulous account of the Red Fort, describing it in vivid detail. He also lists the immense Mughal treasures stored there"

“…diamonds, rubies, emeralds, statues of gold, brass, copper, brocades, books, artillery, horses, elephants, and other valuables.”

Mandelslo goes on to describe the king’s ministers and their duties, the organization of the cavalry, artillery, and palace guards, and even the grand celebrations of Nauroz and the emperor’s birthday festivities. He paints a rich, bustling picture of the Timurid capital under Shah Jahan’s rule, filled with splendor, ceremony, and spectacle.

He even recounts the extravagant animal combats staged for the emperor’s amusement:

“…fights of lions, bulls, elephants, tigers, and leopards arranged by Shahjahan.”

And yet, amidst all these detailed observations of Agra’s grandeur, there is not a single word, not even a passing reference, to the Taj Mahal or to any construction activity related to it.

Do historians ever refer to Mandelslo? Some do, but most quietly sidestep the most telling fact: he says nothing at all about the Taj Mahal.

A few, however, try to explain away his silence. For instance, Fergus Nicoll writes in his book "Shah-Jahan: The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor":

“Despite providing detailed observations on life in Agra, Mandelslo apparently did not visit the Taj Mahal (then in its sixth year of construction). The omission may be explained by his premature departure from the city, prompted by a chance meeting with the relative of a man he had killed in Persia. Fearing reprisals (and notwithstanding the efforts of servants and colleagues to lie on his behalf), he retreated to Lahore before continuing his journey to the Far East.”

In other words, we are asked to believe that a man who offered painstaking details about life, people, and events in Agra, who chronicled the Red Fort, royal ceremonies, ministers, and menageries, somehow missed the most magnificent construction site of his age because he had to flee from a vengeful Persian’s relative, despite his servants being ready to “lie on his behalf.”

It’s an absurd stretch of logic.

So, we are left with three major accounts:

A) One (Tavernier) that is internally inconsistent and unverifiable,
B) Another (Manrique) that directly contradicts the first, and
C) A third (Mandelslo) that makes no mention whatsoever of this supposed architectural marvel rising in the heart of Agra.

Three contemporaries. Three different stories. And together, they expose how fragile and fabricated the accepted timeline of the Taj Mahal’s construction truly is.

Oddly enough, Peter Mundy, the English traveler who was in India at the time of Mumtaz Mahal’s death (and makes strong remarks also about the famine engineered by Shahjahan that made 7.4 million perish) makes no mention whatsoever of it. Not even a passing remark.

For a queen who is said to have been the emperor’s “beloved consort,” whose death supposedly plunged Shah Jahan into inconsolable grief and white-haired despair, such silence is astonishing. One would expect a traveler as observant as Mundy to note the shock, the mourning, or the imperial lamentations that must have followed. Yet, there is nothing, no reference to the tragedy, no hint of public mourning, no word of the grand project that was allegedly born of love and loss.

And surely, if the official narrative were true, that construction of the Taj Mahal began soon after Mumtaz’s death in 1631 then Mundy, who was in Agra around 1632–33, should have witnessed the early stages of the construction.

So, what does he say about the Taj Mahal?

Peter Mundy writes in his journal (refer image 4):

“(In Agra) places of noate… are the Castle, King Ecbars [Akbar’s] Tombe, Tage Moholls Tombe, Gardens and Bazare.”

Isn’t it strange that a tomb whose construction had supposedly begun only a few months earlier was already listed among Agra’s “places of note”?

But wait, Mundy adds more.

“This Kinge is now buildinge a Sepulchre for his late deceased Queene Tage Moholl.”

So, yes, we do have an apparent reference to the Taj Mahal being under construction. It seems, at first glance, to confirm the traditional story until one begins to look closer.

Mundy continues:

“The buildinge is begun and goes on with excessive labour and cost, prosecuted with extraordinary diligence, Gold and silver esteemed comon Mettall, and Marble but as ordinarie stones.”

This observation was likely made in early 1633, shortly after Shah Jahan’s return to Agra in June 1632. It’s improbable that any real construction began before October 1632, given the monsoon season. Yet, for a project of this magnitude, one would expect major foundational work—massive excavations, laying of structural bases, digging of wells to anchor the load.

Curiously, neither Mundy nor Mandelslo, both meticulous observers make any mention whatsoever of foundation work. And yet, we know from later studies that the Taj Mahal does have foundations, built on masonry wells to support its weight.

So, the question arises: why didn’t Mundy, who described everything else in detail, note such a crucial phase of the construction? Did he simply overlook it—or was it already there before work began?

Then comes the next anomaly. Mundy refers to marble being used so abundantly that it was treated as “ordinarie stones.”

But here is the catch, the Taj Mahal isn’t built of marble?

Contrary to popular belief, the structure is primarily brick and red sandstone; the marble merely forms a veneer, a decorative skin laid over the structural frame.

So how could Mundy have seen marble being used “as ordinary stone” barely a few months into construction especially when the building was already considered a “place of note,” (of course a normal burial will not attract people) mentioned in the same breath as the Red Fort and Akbar’s Tomb?

That leaves us with one final oddity, one that turns the accepted story on its head.

As some of you may know, the English East India Company maintained a trading factory in Agra from 1618 to 1655, precisely the years during which the Taj Mahal was supposedly being constructed.

And yet, in all the official company records from that period, there is not a single reference to the Taj Mahal, Mumtaz Mahal, or even to “the tomb of Shah Jahan’s queen.” Not a line, not a note, not an allusion.

This silence is nothing short of astonishing. The English kept meticulous records of trade, prices, politics, architecture, and even local gossip. For them to make no mention whatsoever of what would later be hailed as one of the most magnificent monuments on earth is, at the very least, baffling.

Equally striking is the silence of the Dutch East India Company (though their record talks of grand famine created by Shahjahan that killed 7.4 million people, the same has been cited in my book-- "Babur: The Chessboard King"). To date, no historian has cited anything from their detailed archives about the Taj Mahal either suggesting that their records, too, are completely blank on the subject.

Isn’t that odd? Very odd.

And so, one is forced to ask a disquieting question, one that conventional historians prefer to avoid:

Could it be that when Shah Jahan claimed to have “built” the Taj Mahal, he was not constructing a new monument at all, but rather repurposing an existing structure?

Perhaps the brickwork of the central edifice, the foundations, and even the layout of the complex were already in place, long before Shah Jahan began his so-called “construction.”

If so, then what he actually did was not the building of the Taj Mahal, but its transformation, an imperial act of reappropriation, not creation.

@KumariDiya , ji indeed knew what she said when she spoke about the property issue were the Taj sits today.Image
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2/4 Let’s now dig deeper into one of the strangest details in the Taj Mahal’s history, the story of a leaking Taj Mahal.

Yes, leaking. You might shrug and say, “Well, that’s hardly surprising for a 353-year-old monument.”

True, except that these leaks weren’t discovered in modern times. They were reported more than 353 years ago, in 1652, just twenty-one years after the supposed commencement of construction.

The evidence comes from a remarkable letter written by Prince Aurangzeb to Emperor Shah Jahan. In it, Aurangzeb reports:

“The dome of the holy tomb leaked in two places towards the north during the rainy season, and so also the fair semi-domed arches, many of the galleries on the second storey, the four smaller domes, the four northern compartments, and the seven arched underground chambers which have developed cracks.”

He continues:

“During the rains last year, the terrace over the main dome also leaked in two or three places. The domes of the mosque and the Jama’at Khana leaked during the rains and were made watertight. The master builders are of the opinion that if the roof of the second storey is reopened and dismantled and treated afresh, the galleries and the smaller domes will probably become watertight, but they say they are unable to suggest any measures of repairs to the main dome.”

Pause for a moment and read that again.

“The master builders… are unable to suggest any measures of repairs to the main dome.”

It’s a stunning admission.

So, the obvious question: is this letter genuine?

Can it be trusted? After all, it is hard to imagine that such a masterpiece of symmetry and engineering could begin to leak and crack within just a few years of completion.

Let’s examine the evidence.

The letter was first published in Muraqqa-i-Akbarabadi, edited by Said Ahmad of Agra in 1931 (p. 43, footnote 2).

Later, it was translated by M. S. Vats, then Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and printed in the ASI’s journal Ancient India (Vol. I, 1946, pp. 4–7) (refer to image 1 of this post).

And yet, despite its significance, this letter finds no mention in several major works on the Taj Mahal, not in Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Bamber Gascoigne, or John Keay. Only a fleeting reference appears in Waldemar Hansen’s The Peacock Throne (p. 181), with no attempt to explore its implications.

Nevertheless, the letter has been cited sporadically in news reports, in obscure studies, and in a few Indian publications, enough to establish that it does exist, and that its authenticity has never been formally disputed (though I'm going to dig original Farsi letter soon).

But it remains deeply unsettling for several reasons:

First, the fact that such a structure could start leaking so soon after its “completion” or while it is about to get over (1648, if the official 17-year timeline is correct, 1653, if the official 22-year timeline is correct) strains belief. Great Timurid (Mughal) architecture, especially at this imperial scale did not decay within decades.

Second, Aurangzeb’s letter makes clear that these leaks were not new & they had been observed “last year” as well.

Third, the damage wasn’t limited, rather it was extensive: multiple domes, galleries, and chambers were all affected.

And then comes the most telling line:

“The master builders… are unable to suggest any measures of repairs.”

Why would “master builders”, the very men supposedly responsible for this grand creation; be clueless about how to repair it?

Unless, of course, they were not the original builders at all. Perhaps they were only the imperial supervisors of a structure whose origins and techniques were already unknown to them.

Could these leaks have been caused by poor design? Or perhaps poor maintenance? Maybe. But even then, it is astonishing that a monument supposedly engineered with such precision would show structural failure within two decades.

And yet, while tempting, this single letter alone isn’t enough to rewrite the Taj Mahal’s history.

It is a clue, not a conclusion.

But the story doesn’t end here.

Because as we dig further, we uncover another piece of evidence, one just as strange, just as disquieting, that raises even graver questions about what we have been told.

What is this next oddity that casts such deep shadows over the accepted story of the Taj Mahal?

This brings us to the Badshahnama (also spelled Padshahnama), one of the most authoritative chronicles of Shahjahan’s reign, written by Abdul Hamid Lahori.

I have accessed and read full Persian text of the Badshahnama (image 2) and hence I can vouch for the words of other people who have quoted it often. And yes, they do appear in very authentic sources too.

We find it in a 1982 booklet published by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) itself. The slim publication, titled Taj Museum (authored by Ziyaud-Din A. Desai) states on page 4:

“The site selected for the burial was an extremely pleasant and lofty land situated to the south of the city, on which, till then, stood the mansion (Manzil) of Raja Man Singh and which was, at that time, in possession of his grandson, Raja Jai Singh.”

If accurate (which it most likely is as the Badshahnama states exactly such, check attached image 2), this statement turns the conventional story upside down. The translation has also appeared in the "Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb : an Anthology of Seventeenth-century Mughal and European Documentary Sources" too.

It raises immediate questions:

What happened to the original palace?

Was it demolished?

Or was it simply redesigned, re-faced in marble, and repurposed as the so-called “Taj Mahal”?

The question thus lingers, if the Badshahnama indeed recorded that the “palace of Raja Man Singh” was chosen as the burial site, does it not imply that the structure already existed?

Critics counter that the Badshahnama also mentions that a foundation was laid, suggesting new construction.

Yet, no record of extensive works, labor, or costs exists to support that claim; only that a foundation ritual occurred, perhaps as a ceremonial act marking the conversion of an existing building into a tomb.

Now let us look at a Dutch Witness: Pelsaert’s Record

Further evidence comes from Francisco Pelsaert, a Dutch trading officer of the East India Company, whose observations were later compiled in Jahangir’s India (translated by W. H. Moreland, 1925). Pelsaert arrived in 1620 and lived in Agra until 1627, before Mumtaz Mahal’s death.

He described Agra’s riverside palaces in detail (check image 3):

“Everyone has tried to be close to the river bank, and consequently the water front is occupied by the costly palaces of all the famous lords… After passing the Fort, there is the Nakhas, a great market… Beyond it lie the houses of some great lords… the late Raja Man Singh (5000 horse); Raja Madho Singh (2000 horse).”

Thus, Raja Man Singh’s palace was already a well-known landmark before 1631, the very palace that later chroniclers describe as the “site selected” for Mumtaz’s burial.

When seen together, these fragments form a deeply unsettling pattern:

The official chronicles (Badshahnama) barely go in detail to talk about the most remarkable architecture of the reign.

The ASI’s own publication admits that Raja Man Singh’s mansion existed on the same site and so does the original Badshahnama.

European travelers of the time, Mundy, Mandelslo, Tavernier contradict each other or remain silent.

A royal letter from Aurangzeb describes severe leaks and cracks within two decades of “construction.”

And the East India Company records, spanning 1618–1655, contain no reference to the monument at all.

Each point alone might be dismissed as anomaly or oversight. But together, they paint a consistent and troubling picture, one that suggests the Taj Mahal may not have been built by Shah Jahan at all, but rather acquired, altered, and consecrated for his queen’s burial.

So where lies the Uncomfortable Question?

With every new piece of evidence, the official story seems to fray further. The references to an existing “palace,” the silence of the emperor’s own chroniclers, and the implausible construction timeline all converge toward one uncomfortable possibility:

The Taj Mahal may not be a monument born of love, but one reborn through appropriation.

The list of inconsistencies keeps growing, and the inconvenient facts continue to pile up. Perhaps it is finally time, after centuries of repetition, to ask the question that academia has long avoided:

Is the history of the Taj Mahal we’ve been told… truly the history that happened?

But hold on! While we are still grappling with the question of "what became of Raja Man Singh’s mansion", another layer of the puzzle emerges; one that reveals far more than it conceals.

It is often claimed that Raja Jai Singh, grandson of Raja Man Singh, voluntarily handed over his grandfather’s property, the grand riverside mansion that stood where the Taj Mahal now rises to Emperor Shahjahan. This narrative of “graceful submission” is echoed by several historians, including in “Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb – An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and European Documentary Sources”, where this so-called act of generosity is treated as a noble gesture of loyalty.

The book even cites a Farman (royal decree) (original attached below image 4) dated "December 28, 1633", which states that in exchange for this “voluntary donation,” "four Havelis" were granted to Raja Jai Singh.

But here’s the critical detail, those very four Havelis were not imperial gifts at all. They were, in fact, "ancestral properties of the Rajput family", long held by Jai Singh’s forefathers. The decree simply restored to him what already belonged to his lineage.

So, was this truly a gesture of loyalty or a transaction under duress?

Read closely, and the truth surfaces: the so-called "reward" was nothing more than the return of confiscated property, likely seized during Mughal expansion into Rajputana.

This makes the emperor’s “benevolence” ring hollow. It was not magnanimity, but restoration after appropriation.

And thus, the farman itself inadvertently exposes a far deeper truth: the Timurids were not granting favors, they were reclaiming and repurposing what they had taken by force.

If Raja Jai Singh’s palace truly stood where the Taj Mahal stands today, then the narrative of Shah Jahan’s grand “construction” begins to look less like an act of creation and more like an imperial conversion.

The question that now looms is not how the Taj Mahal was built, but what it was before it was claimed.

Now let us examine the so-called “voluntary submission” more closely because when one looks beyond the ornamental language of loyalty and imperial grace, the cracks in the official narrative begin to show.

If Raja Jai Singh had truly surrendered his ancestral mansion voluntarily in 1631, then why did the Timurids wait two full years; until 1633 to issue a Farman restoring the four Havelis to him as “compensation”? If the transfer were indeed born of goodwill, the exchange should have been immediate, ceremonial, and well-documented.

The Havelis restored to Jai Singh were originally Havelis of Raja Bhagwan Das, Madhav Singh, Rupsi Bairagi, and Chand Singh (son of Suraj Singh).

This delay tells a different story. It suggests that relations between the Rajputs and the Timurids were far from cordial when it came to the possession of Raja Man Singh’s property, which by every available indication was later repurposed as the Taj Mahal. The two-year gap reeks of negotiation, reluctance, and coercion, not of eager submission.

The tension becomes even more apparent when we examine another document; a Farman dated 21 June 1637 in which Raja Jai Singh is explicitly ordered to dispatch certain artisans and sculptors whom he had detained or withheld.

Now, why would a loyal vassal supposedly honored by the emperor defy royal authority by holding back craftsmen? The answer almost writes itself.

This wasn’t a gesture of collaboration; it was an act of quiet resistance. It points toward Jai Singh’s displeasure perhaps even resentment over how his family’s property had been taken and converted into a mausoleum.

So, what does this tell us?

It tells us that the transfer of Raja Man Singh’s mansion to Shah Jahan was not a willing donation as later chroniclers romanticized it to be. Rather, it appears to have been a forced acquisition, cloaked in the polite fiction of “imperial favor.”

The 1633 Farman was not a reward it was appeasement after appropriation.

And the 1637 order was not administration it was discipline after defiance.

Together, these records reveal a power dynamic stripped of its pretenses: the Mughals took what they wanted, and the Rajputs complied only when they had no choice left.

If the so-called voluntary gift of the property was followed by delayed restitution, resistance, and royal reprimand, then the term “donation” loses all meaning. What we see, instead, is a story of imperial seizure dressed in the robes of submission and at its heart stands a structure that history would later rename the Taj Mahal.Image
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3/4 Now I being an architect, would like to point a few issues pertaining to Architecture, rather construction.

Don't worry, I'm not picking on the Hindu Symbols present in Taj, rather I'm going to speak a little about construction timeline-based issues.

As an architect, my principal disagreement with the scholars who study Taj Mahal lies in their unquestioning acceptance of an implausibly compact construction timeline, from the moment of “conception” to the first ʿurs (anniversary of Mumtaz Mahal’s death) and the alleged “completion” of the main structure. Processes that, by their very nature, demand long, sequential durations are compressed by them into mere months.

The scholars often rely heavily on whatever fragmented evidence survives but ignore the physical and procedural logic of building.

They often lament the supposed loss of “millions” of Timurid (Mughal) records that might once have documented the Taj’s construction yet never consider the possibility that such records were never produced at all.

Nor do they account for Shahjahan’s quest for manipulation, his ability to control how history remembered him. Ironically, Wayne Edison Begley and Ziyaud-Din A. Desai (authors of "Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb : an Anthology of Seventeenth-century Mughal and European Documentary Sources") themselves admit (Refer p. xxvi, check image 1 of this post):

“Shajahan himself was probably responsible for this twisting of historical truth. The truth would have shown him to be inconsistent and this could not be tolerated. For this reason also, the histories contain no statements of any kind that are critical of the Emperor or his policies, and even military defeats are rationalized so that no blame could be attached to him. ... effusive praise of the Emperor is carried to such extremes that he seems more a divinity than a mortal man.”

So how much of the official record can truly be trusted?

With the chronicles carefully edited and other documentation scarce, only four royal Farmans, directives from Shahjahan to Raja Jai Singh of Amber offer tangible evidence. Based on these, along with court chroniclers and the English traveler Peter Mundy, the conventional sequence is as follows:

June 17, 1631: Mumtaz Mahal dies and is temporarily buried at Burhanpur.

December 11, 1631: Her remains are exhumed and sent to Agra.

January 8, 1632: She is reburied somewhere within the Taj precincts.

June 11, 1632: Shah Jahan returns to Agra with his entourage.

The first Farman, dated September 20, 1632 (check image 2), urges Raja Jai Singh to facilitate shipment of marble which logically implies that a building already existed to receive that marble cladding.

That alone should make us pause: How much time would it take to erect the core structure of the Taj Mahal before even beginning such finish work?

Every major construction project follows what modern engineers call a critical path, a sequence of tasks that cannot be compressed beyond a certain limit.

Mumtaz Mahal’s death was sudden. Shah Jahan, in his grief, would first have had to conceive the idea of a monumental tomb, choose an architect (whose identity remains disputed, although people claim they know it), develop the design brief, approve structural and mechanical systems, mobilize contractors, and organize thousands of workers, all before a single brick was laid.

If we assume extraordinary imperial efficiency, this preparatory phase alone will require at least a year taking us from June 1631 to June 1632.

Yet, we are told construction began in January 1632, only six months after her death.

How can you plan such a daunting structural design, space planning, Drainage-Sewerage, and Project Construction planning in merely six months?

Even today to prepare all drawings from concept to schematic to design detailing to working drawing needs a minimum of 8-9 months for small scale projects.

Then comes excavation, a massive task given the Taj’s scale and proximity to the Yamuna. The alleged demolition of Raja Man Singh’s mansion, the retaining works to prevent flooding (today we have to do diaphragm walls to avoid flooding in excavated land where site is close to waterbody), and the laying of deep masonry well foundations would easily consume a year and a half. By that reckoning, substantial construction could not have begun before January 1634.

And yet, the first ʿurs was celebrated on June 22, 1632, barely six months after work supposedly began. By then, the entire sandstone plinth, 350 meters long, 128 meters wide, and 13 meters high, was reportedly complete and ceremonially adorned.

To put it in perspective, the Taj Mahal’s plinth alone the vast red sandstone platform on which the mausoleum stands covers an area 8.75 times larger than the entire floor area of the White House. It rises 13 meters high, which, at roughly 4.3 meters per storey, is equivalent to a three-storey building.

Now, pause and think about that.

How could such a massive platform, requiring enormous quantities of brick, red sandstone, mortar, and precise engineering to withstand centuries beside a river, have been designed, engineered, and completed within six months of Mumtaz Mahal’s death?

Before the first brick of that platform could even be laid, the builders would have needed a fully resolved architectural and structural scheme, a comprehensive design that dictated column loads, wall thicknesses, and foundation systems. The architects would have had to map the load distribution, engineer the substructure, and design water-retaining systems to prevent seepage from the nearby Yamuna.

And this, remember, in a period with no mechanical equipment, no modern surveying tools, no mass-production of materials, and no pre-existing design drawings (none have ever been found).

So the question practically answers itself:

How, in human terms, could the Timurid (Mughal) administration—between June 1631 (Mumtaz’s death) and January 1632 (the alleged start of construction)—have conceived, designed, engineered, procured materials, mobilized labor, and then constructed a three-storey-high plinth, covering a footprint nearly nine times that of the White House?

It simply defies the logic of construction, then or now.

No modern architect or engineer would accept such a timeline as credible, and yet historians have repeated it unquestioningly for centuries.

If the plinth already existed, as part of Raja Man Singh’s original palace complex, the mystery resolves itself elegantly. But if we are to believe that Shah Jahan built it from scratch within months, then we are not dealing with history anymore, but with architecture as miracle.

Where, then, was the dust and debris, the marble stockpiles, the wooden scaffolding, the workers’ barracks, and the caravans of elephants and oxen that any such construction would have required? None are mentioned. None are depicted.

Even Begley and Desai, who champion the official version, express quiet astonishment at this compressed schedule (check page 24-27).

The authors dismiss most European travelers as unreliable, yet they treat Peter Mundy, an agent of the East India Company, as an exception because he was in Agra for both the first and second ʿurs.

Mundy records witnessing the installation of an enameled gold railing around Mumtaz’s cenotaph by May 26, 1633. But such a railing couldn’t possibly have been installed in open air, it presupposes a finished interior dome and chamber (refer Mundy's work presented in earlier post).

This railing alone was valued at six lakhs of rupees, an immense sum when compared to the reported fifty-lakh cost of the entire Taj complex. Shah Jahan later removed it on February 6, 1643, replacing it with the now-familiar marble screen inlaid with semi-precious stones beautiful, but far less valuable.

Can it be a plausible alternative?

The gold railing already existed, a remnant of Raja Jai Singh’s palace, which Shah Jahan later appropriated.

But this is merely hypothesis. I do not know what exactly happened about it.

What then did Shahjahan actually build?

If the main edifice predated him, Shah Jahan’s contributions were largely cosmetic and symbolic, adding Quranic inscriptions, and reframing the architecture through Islamic iconography.

The inscriptions themselves, framed in discrete rectangular panels, appear almost modular, easy to insert without disturbing surrounding stonework. The black script against creamy marble also feels aesthetically jarring, as if applied later (but aesthetics is merely opinion).

Begley and Desai, citing the latest inscription dates (1638–39), infer a six-year construction period. But even that is architecturally untenable (check snippet from book, image 3).

Six years is scarcely enough time for foundations, superstructure, finishing, and landscaping of a project of such magnitude, especially using seventeenth-century technology. Tavernier’s “twenty-two years”, though often quoted, may in fact refer not to original construction, but to repairs or modifications Shah Jahan undertook after 1640, or to folk memory of an older structure’s past.

By 1652, just two decades after Mumtaz’s death, Aurangzeb’s letter (discussed earlier) already reports severe leaks and structural cracks hardly what one would expect of a newly built marvel, but entirely consistent with an older, repurposed edifice.

Twin buildings: If one was a mosque and the other a guesthouse, why are they identical in design? Distinct functions demand distinct forms.

Perimeter walls: Why such fortified, pre-artillery defenses in an age when cannons already existed—and for a mausoleum that required no defense?

Subterranean chambers: Why the twenty rooms below the riverfront terrace? A palace would need them. A tomb would not. The story of foundational need that is often sold to people is out of place. You need not create habitable spaces for the foundational cause.

Sealed corridors: What lies behind the walled-up chambers on the southern side? Who sealed them? And why is access forbidden to researchers?

They say-- it is for security, but you will be surprised to know that Bernier reports, non Muslims were not permitted in his era too. He talks of Mumtaj being buried in camber below the dome and non-Muslims aren't permitted to go there. Refer this snippet from his journal (image 4) (Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656-1668).

Qibla error: The so-called mosque faces due west, not toward Mecca, an elementary misalignment unthinkable by the 17th century.

If Shah Jahan did not build the Taj Mahal for love, what did he seek?

Perhaps the legend of love was a convenient disguise for imperial seizure. He coveted Raja Jai Singh’s magnificent riverside complex, compelled its “transfer,” and rebranded it as a Timurid mausoleum, thereby ensuring that no Hindu ruler could ever reclaim it.

By installing Islamic inscriptions, converting residential quarters into a mosque (by simply adding a mihrab), and overlaying his narrative, Shah Jahan appropriated both property and prestige.

Even within their orthodoxy, Begley and Desai deserve credit for compiling invaluable Persian and European sources. Their data remain precious. But their interpretations are constrained by the myth they set out to defend.

The evidence, architectural, logistical, textual, and chronological points elsewhere: that the Taj Mahal may not have been built in Shah Jahan’s time, but rather rebuilt, veneered, and re-scripted; that the emperor did not create it from love but claimed it for power.

The Taj Mahal was not born of love, it was an act of appropriation, reframed as devotion.

And until we have the courage to test its stones, open its sealed doors, and allow science to speak, the monument will continue to shimmer in myth, a palace turned into a tomb, and a conquest turned into a love story.

And of course, let me make this absolutely clear before concluding.

I do not subscribe to the claim that the structure we know today as the Taj Mahal was ever called Tejo Mahalaya, nor do I believe it was a Shiva temple. There is no credible evidence to support such assertions.

What seems far more plausible, architecturally, historically, and contextually, is that the site was once part of a grand Hindu palace complex, such as that of Raja Man Singh, complete with its typical features: private shrines, mandirs, and courtyards dedicated to family deities. That is a common characteristic of Hindu royal residences, not an anomaly.

So yes, there would likely have been temples within the residential complex, as was customary in any Rajput palace of that era, but to extrapolate that the entire complex was a temple is not only unsubstantiated, but also architecturally unsound.

The evidence, when examined objectively, points toward a repurposed palace, not a desecrated temple; an act of imperial appropriation, not of religious transformation.

In that sense, the Taj Mahal’s story isn’t about the clash of gods, but about the politics of possession, about how monuments are reborn through conquest and narrative.Image
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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
Sep 22
1/23 Long thread!

Naz!sm continues to be victorious.

As Britain moves to recognise Palestine x.com/keir_starmer/s… , followed by other Western states, it is clear: Islamofascism is not just knocking at the gates of the West, it is defeating it from within.

I decided to talk about my book (cover image) published by @BluOneInk, summarising each chapter — hoping it knocks some sense into the foolish West.

Few links to get book:
Amazon amzn.in/d/6iirVUF
@PadhegaIndia_ bit.ly/45426Xu

This book was written with a single purpose, to awaken minds, to tear away the veil of ignorance, and to expose the alliance of World War II that was forged with one goal: the annihilation of the Jews.

The Palestinian “common minimum program” has always carried the same blood-soaked clause — death to Jews.

And yet, the West today chooses to reward terrorism. It is not just shameful, it is a disgrace to history and to humanity itself.

@EylonALevy @ReuvenAzar @RupertLowe10 @IsraelBangalore @IsraelinIndia @IsraelMFA @GoldingBFImage
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2/23 Prologue

The prologue delves into Adolf Hitler’s admiration for Islam as a militant faith that aligned with his vision of conquest, contrasting it with what he saw as the weakness of Christianity.

It details Nazi Germany’s strategic alliances with Muslim leaders and populations during WWII, including recruitment of Muslim troops and propaganda tailored to Islamic themes.
The narrative highlights the Grand Mufti’s close collaboration with the Nazis, including his role in influencing the Holocaust and blocking Jewish rescues.

It connects these historical ties to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, portraying them as inheritors of Nazi anti-Semitism blended with Islamist ideology.

Contemporary events like the October 7, 2023, attacks are linked to this legacy, with discussions on how the Mufti’s influence persisted in post-war Arab politics.

The prologue ends with a call to recognize the enduring threat of Islamofascism, drawing parallels to the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh and urging historical honesty.Image
3/23 Chapter 1: Brief History of Israel (2000 BCE to 1900 CE)

The chapter traces Israel’s ancient origins, highlighting early human presence from 1.5 million years ago in sites like Ubeidiya and Yiron, with artifacts revealing technological and cultural evolution.

It discusses the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids as early modern humans migrating from Africa, followed by the Natufian culture’s unique lifestyles around 10,000 BCE.

The narrative shifts to the Canaanites, a Semitic-speaking civilization in the late Bronze Age, intertwined with empires like Egypt and Assyria, and linked to Israelite culture through shared heritage.

The etymology of “Canaan” is explored, possibly meaning “lowlands” or “land of purple,” with the term evolving as Greeks called coastal people Phoenicians.

Canaanite city-states like Hazor rose as trade hubs, while the Amorites founded Babylon, reflecting a tapestry of migrations and cultural exchanges.

The chapter goes on to talk about antiquity of Judaism, kingdoms of Judea & Israel. It also focuses on Roman Era, and arrival of Islam which finally began the most atrocious phase of Jewish life.

A line from the chapter—

“The cornerstone of the dhimmi status is traditionally traced back to what is known as the Pact of Umar, a set of conditions attributed to the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab.”Image
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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
Jun 25
Longest post I ever wrote!

“The Jews are behind all evil in the world.”

(Discussed in book of attached media; Preorder link— amzn.in/d/fEBSQA4 )

You’ve likely heard this venomous chorus echoed by many— Muslims, some Christians, and, shamefully, even certain Hindus who should know better. It’s the oldest ghost story still haunting civilization: the myth of the Jewish puppet-master pulling the strings of history.

But where did this fake tale of a global Jewish conspiracy actually come from?

Let’s rewind to 1903 Tsarist Russia—a land crackling with unrest and looking for a scapegoat.

Enter: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a document so fraudulent, it deserves its own Oscar for Best Original (Plagiarised) Screenplay. Like a virus in typeset, it slithered into pamphlets, newspapers, and sermons—translated, printed, and peddled from Moscow to Madrid.

The Protocols claimed to be the minutes of a secret meeting—24 chapters of alleged “plans” by shadowy Jewish elders to corrupt society, control global banking, own the press, & dismantle all faiths & nations to usher in eternal Jewish rule. It was less of a document and more of a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from recycled antisemitic tropes, conspiracy clichés, and lifted lines from a French political satire—Maurice Joly’s Dialogue in Hell.

Yes, you read that right. The world’s most infamous antisemitic screed was plagiarized from a fictional political dialogue between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

A forgery born of fiction, weaponized as fact—handed to mobs, monarchs, and later, madmen in Germany.

It became blueprint for bloodshed. Because lies, when dipped in ink and repeated in pulp, can outlive truth by centuries.

Protocol Title & Themes:

1. The Basic Doctrine: “Right Lies in Might”: Freedom and Liberty, Authority and Power, Gold Equals Money.

2.Economic War and Disorganization Lead to International Government: International Political-Economic Conspiracy, Press/Media as Tools

3.Methods of Conquest: Arrogant and Corrupt Jewish People, Chosenness/Election, Public Service

4.The Destruction of Religion by Materialism: Business as Cold and Heartless, Gentiles as Slaves

5.Despotism and Modern Progress: Jewish Ethics, Jewish People’s Relationship to Society

6. The Acquisition of Land, The Encouragement of Speculation: Ownership of Land

7.A Prophecy of Worldwide War: Internal Unrest and Discord, Undermining the Court System, Conflict vs. Peace (Shalom)

8.The Transitional Government: Criminal Element

9. The All-Embracing Propaganda: Law and Education, Freemasonry

10.Abolition of the Constitution; Rise of the Autocracy: Politics and Majority Rule, Liberalism, Family Structure

11.The Constitution of Autocracy and Universal Rule: Gentiles, Jewish Political Involvement, Freemasonry

12.The Kingdom of the Press and Control: Liberty, Press Censorship, Publishing

13.Turning Public Thought from Essentials to Non-Essentials: Gentiles, Business, Chosenness/Election, Press and Censorship, Liberalism

14. The Destruction of Religion as a Prelude to the Rise of the Jewish God: Judaism and God, Gentiles, Liberty, Pornography

15.Utilization of Masonry: Heartless Suppression of Enemies: Gentiles, Freemasonry, Sages of Israel, Political Power and Authority, King of Israel

16.The Nullification of Education: Education

17. The Fate of Lawyers and the Clergy: Lawyers, Clergy, Christianity and Non-Jewish Authorship

18.The Organization of Disorder: Evil, Speech Control

19.Mutual Understanding Between Ruler and People: Gossip, Martyrdom

20.The Financial Program and Construction: Taxes and Taxation, Loans and Bonds, Usury, Moneylending

21.Domestic Loans and Government Credit: Stock Markets, Stock Exchanges

22.The Beneficence of Jewish Rule: Gold Equals Money, Chosenness/Election

23.The Inculcation of Obedience: Obedience to Authority, Slavery, Chosenness/Election

24.The Jewish Ruler: Kingship, Document as FictionImage
What makes “The Protocols” such an undying cockroach in the sewer of conspiracy theories?

Its brilliance—if one dares use that word for evil—lies not in clarity, but in calculated vagueness. No names, dates or place. Just shadows in the fog. It’s a literary Rorschach test for the paranoid: anyone, anywhere, can read their own fears into its inkblot of accusations.

As it wears the mask of Jewish authorship, it pretends to be a secret confession. A forged “leak,” it weaponizes falsehood with the credibility of a whistleblower. Like a snake that sheds its skin yet stays venomous, the Protocols morph to fit every ideological weather. Jews, it claims, orchestrate both capitalism and communism, liberalism and fascism, philo-Semitism and antisemitism.

“The logic is gymnastic: when Jews win, it’s a conspiracy; when they lose, it’s also a conspiracy.”

This shape-shifting slander thrives in any climate: from the bazaars of Tehran to the backrooms of European salons, from Right to Left, pauper to president, devout Christian to militant Islamist. It has something for everyone—except the truth.

At its heart, the Protocols amplify old antisemitic words: the Jews are always plotting; the Jews are everywhere; they control the banks, the press, the schools, the revolutions, and probably your coffee machine too. And behind it all? A mythical cabal—the “Elders”—who, like Bond villains in yarmulkes, scheme to conquer the planet.

Italian intellectual Umberto Eco dissected this myth-machine with surgical irony in “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988). He noted how the Protocols infected global discourse not because they were convincing—but because they were contagious. “Self-generating,” he called them—an ideological virus leaping from host to host, mutating from antisemitic screed to conspiracy blueprint.

In “Six Walks in the Fictional Woods” (1994), he returns to the text as a grotesque model of how fiction dresses up as fact. And in “The Cemetery of Prague” (2010), Eco paints its creators as cynical forgers who knew they were lying—but also knew that the lie would outlive them.

Now, let’s lift the mask of authorship.

The Protocols were no revelation—they were a remix. One of the most notorious plagiarisms in modern history.

Their DNA traces back to two 19th-century works: Maurice Joly’s Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1864), a biting satire of Napoleon III’s authoritarianism, and Biarritz (1868), a novel by the German reactionary and part-time forger Hermann Goedsche, better known by his pen name “Sir John Retcliffe.”

Goedsche, a fired Prussian postal clerk turned fantasist, inserted a scene in Biarritz where a clandestine Jewish council plots global takeover—a work of fiction, yet later presented as “evidence.” Russian translators, always on the lookout for demons to justify pogroms, repurposed it into political gospel.

Joly’s Dialogue was the main vein tapped. His Machiavelli, standing in for Napoleon III, outlines a dictatorial plan—later copy-pasted and relabeled with a Star of David by the Protocols’ unknown editor.

In fact, around 160 passages were lifted directly. The irony? Joly, a liberal critic of tyranny, was imprisoned for this very book—and later fought for justice in the Paris Commune. He condemned despotism; the Protocols twisted his words to justify it.

Even Joly, it turns out, had borrowed—bits of his satire were inspired by Eugène Sue’s serialized social novels, Les Mystères du Peuple (1849–56).

Alas! Forgery upon forgery. A Russian nesting doll of deception.

A British journalist—Philip Graves finally smashed the illusion. In 1921, in a landmark expose in The Times (London), Graves meticulously compared the Protocols to Joly’s Dialogue—revealing the fraud in broad daylight. Side-by-side, the texts matched almost beat for beat. Protocols 1–19 mirrored Dialogues 1–17 (image for reference).

The house of lies collapsed—but its ashes, sadly, still blow across political landscapes even today.Image
Let’s peel another layer off this onion of absurdity.

Meet Hermann Goedsche—a man who shifted careers from forger of justice to forger of fiction. Once a low-ranking spy in the Prussian Secret Police, Goedsche was booted out in 1849 for the small crime of planting false evidence against democratic leader Benedict Waldeck. In any just world, that would’ve marked the end of his story. But no—Goedsche rebranded himself as a novelist and conservative columnist, adopting the theatrical pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe, as if villainy demanded a monocle and a mustache.

His 1868 novel Biarritz (also peddled as To Sedan) contains a fever-dream of a chapter titled “The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” Forget realism—this was antisemitism on acid. In this imaginary midnight meeting, a shadowy rabbinical cabal gathers in a Prague graveyard to plot world domination. At the stroke of twelve, the Devil himself shows up to offer geopolitical advice. Yes, Satan is apparently a consultant now.

Goedsche’s scene was ludicrous not just in tone but in trivia—he summoned all “Twelve Tribes” of Israel, blissfully unaware that historically, only two remained traceable. This nocturnal nonsense bears an eerie resemblance to a plot in Alexandre Dumas’ Giuseppe Balsamo (1848), where Cagliostro and other cloak-and-dagger elites engineer the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Plagiarism? Homage? Either way, the line between inspiration and imitation was cheerfully ignored.

In 1872, this chapter of Biarritz was torn from its fictional context, translated into Russian, and printed in Saint Petersburg as non-fiction. The absurd became gospel. It was passed off as evidence—like mistaking a horror novel for a court transcript.

But the madness didn’t stop there.

In 1896, French writer François Bournand recycled the chapter’s closing monologue in Les Juifs et nos Contemporains, presenting it as the prophetic utterance of one “Chief Rabbi John Readcliff”—a character as real as a unicorn with a typewriter. In this speech, a figure named Levit dreams aloud of Jews becoming “kings of the world in 100 years.” Not satire. Not fiction. This was presented to the public as a leaked master plan.

And the crowd went wild.

By 1898, the French Catholic daily La Croix solemnly proclaimed:

“This speech was published in our time, eighteen years ago, and all the events occurring before our eyes were anticipated in it with truly frightening accuracy.”

Reality had packed its bags and left the building.

What Goedsche started as a ghost story in a graveyard became scripture for bigots. His concoction passed through the hands of propagandists, translators, and fanatics, eventually helping to fertilize the poisonous soil from which The Protocols of the Elders of Zion would later grow. His chapter, like the Protocols, likely cribbed freely from Joly’s Dialogue in Hell—and even from Dumas père. In short, it was a forgery built atop a forgery, with all the structural integrity of a conspiracy house of cards.

But the genius of these fabrications wasn’t their craft—it was their timing. They arrived when societies needed scapegoats, when antisemitism could be gift-wrapped as “truth,” and when fiction, cloaked in clerical robes, passed as prophecy.

———————————————
Now let me take you to the history of publication.

———————————————

Trust me—it crept in like a rumor in a dark alley.

The earliest known whisper came in 1902, when Russian journalist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov, writing for Novoye Vremya—a conservative St. Petersburg newspaper—mentioned a strange booklet recommended by a noblewoman. The title? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which she claimed revealed “a conspiracy against the world.” Menshikov, to his credit, didn’t bite. He dismissed the document and its peddlers as suffering from “brain fever”—a polite Tsarist-era way of saying “delusional crackpots.”
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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
Apr 23
1/7
 “Beneath the Veil of Ashes: Pahalgam and the Price of Submission”

Yesterday, the valleys of Pahalgam bled again.
The chinar trees stood silent, watching the soil drink Hindu blood like it’s an annual ritual—like monsoon rain. No storm wailed. No news anchor cried. No politician offered poetry.

They died quietly.
As always.

And this morning, as if nothing happened, Bengaluru moved.
The traffic signals blinked in rhythm.
Zomato delivered.
Spotify played cheerful betrayal songs.
Excel sheets hummed the lullaby of deadlines.

In my office, a designer debated façade materials.
A client wanted a Vastu correction.
And someone in the pantry whispered, “Terrorism has no religion.”
Ah yes.
The world’s most repeated lie.

But tell me—

If terror has no religion, why does its battle cry always sound the same?
Why do we keep hearing Allahu Akbar as the prelude to carnage?
Not Om Namah Shivaya. Not Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa.
Always the same, like a cursed drumbeat.

As I sat there—pen in hand, sketching urban dreams— my inbox buzzed with two publishers asking for edits.
Both books untouched.
Because how does one write about art and aesthetics, when blood is still wet in the valley?

The images from Pahalgam screamed inside me.
Not just the blood.
But the silence of the ‘seculars’.
Their throats open only when a stone pelter is slapped back.
But not when Hindus are butchered on pilgrimage.
Not when a baby is orphaned by bullets.
Not when the land of Rishi Kashyap is soaked again.

Tell me—how many more do we need to sacrifice before it becomes “religious enough”?

Faith or Fever?

We’re told to believe this is a religion like any other.
Like Buddhism, that kneels before silence.
Like Jainism, that apologizes for stepping on ants.
Like Sikhism, born from martyrdom, forged in resistance.

But Islam?
It came not with petals, but with swords.
Its Prophet wasn’t a renunciate. He was a warrior.
Its history isn’t stained by conquest.
It is conquest.

From Qasim to Ghazni, from Ghori to Aurangzeb—
Islam’s trail through India is a bloody ledger.

80 million perished in Bharat. (1000-1500 CE) .
Not by accident.
By design.

Temples desecrated, not by vandals but by virtue.
Hindu women paraded in chains—not in lust, but in ideology.
Children slaughtered—not for war, but for heaven.

When Shah Waliullah invited Abdali, it wasn’t treason.
It was theology.

When the Timurids imposed Jizya, it wasn’t extortion.
It was divine instruction.

When Khilafat fanatics butchered Hindus in Moplah, it wasn’t chaos.
It was a “religious duty.”

And yet—we call it a religion.
A protected class.
Immune to criticism.
Above reform.
Beyond reason.

Pakistan: The Bastard Caliphate

In 1947, we gave Islam its own fortress.
A fortress born not of freedom, but of fear.
Pakistan was not created for “Muslims.”
It was created for Islam—in its purest, most political, most supremacist form.

We were told: “Separate, and there will be peace.”
But what did we get?

Dead trains. Burned temples. Broken Bharat.

And even then, the disease wasn’t satisfied.
They stayed back.
They multiplied.
And today, they scream: Ghazwa-e-Hind!
Right here—in Kerala. In Hyderabad. In Shaheen Bagh.
They don’t want harmony.
They want Hind.

Because the idea of Dar-ul-Harb becoming Dar-ul-Islam is not fringe.
It is faith.

They did it in Persia. In Egypt. In Afghanistan.
From Hindu to Zoroastrian to Christian—every culture that bowed is gone.
India is the last domino.

And the sick irony?
We fund them.
We protect them.
We give them scholarships.
And they give us beheading threats.

The Great Cowardice: Why We Let Them Win

We let them spit on our Shivlings in the name of wazoo.
We let them rewrite textbooks, call invaders “reformers.”
We let them call Ganesh “an alien” but cannot quote the Quran aloud.

Why?
Because we fear the label: Islamophobe.

But let’s be honest.
It’s not phobia.
It’s fatigue.
It’s rage.
It’s the scream of a civilization that has tolerated too much.Image
2/7 “History Written in Blood, Silence Etched in Stone”

They told us partition was a “tragedy of two brothers.”
But no one told us only one brother lost his limbs, his temples, his daughters.

The other?
He got a new house—Pakistan.
A mansion built not with bricks, but with body counts.
A dream, they said, for Muslims.
A homeland for Islam.

And yet, they stayed back—millions of them.
In Bharat.
In the land they had just cut into two with a knife of theology.

We, the Hindus—naïve, noble fools—offered them not just shelter, but rights, votes, scholarships, seats, subsidies, and silence.
We became the only civilization in history to reward our butcher with pensions.

Meanwhile, in the land of the pure,
the last Hindu vanished like incense smoke in a storm.
Temples became toilets, ruins, or rubble.
And the few who remained?
Second-class dhimmis, breathing under a boot called Sharia.

Still, our leaders told us:
“Islam is a religion of peace.”

They must mean the peace of the grave.

They told us:
“All religions are equal.”

Is that why only one demands blasphemy laws?

Is that why only one has entire countries named after its faith?
Pakistan. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia.
But a Hindu who dreams of a Ram Rajya in Ayodhya?
He’s branded a fascist.

They told us:
“Sufis are the softer side of Islam.”

Then why did so many Sufis bless the swords of the Sultans?
Why did they walk behind invaders, not ahead of reformers?

We ask for truth.
They give us taqiyya.

We ask for reform.
They say Islam is perfect.

We ask for peace.
They reply:
“There is no peace until Islam reigns supreme.”

And in this theater of absurdity, enter the seculars— wearing khadi, sipping wine, quoting Ghalib.

They write columns about “Hindu terror” after a single blast, but go blind when 271 Hindus are slaughtered in a single night in Kashmir.
They burn candles for Gaza.
They hold protests for Paris.
But when Amarnath pilgrims are butchered,
they say, “Let’s not communalize.”

COMMUNALIZE?
What else is this if not a holy war?

When Ayodhya bled, they blamed the kar sevaks.
When Godhra burned, they blamed the train.

But when temples fall—centuries old, desecrated, erased—
they say, “Let’s move on.”

Move on from what?
From our own extinction?

From being the only people on earth who forgive before the apology?

Even today, the Quran remains untouched.
The Hadith unchallenged.
The death verses unmarred.

But the Hindu is asked to water down the Gita.
The Sikh is told to be “less aggressive.”
The Christian must apologize for Crusades.
The Jew must justify Israel.

Only one faith has the privilege of never saying sorry.

Why?

Because it doesn’t consider anything it did as wrong.

Genocide? Rape? Slavery?
All recorded in Hadith and hailed as holy precedent.

While we—the oldest civilization on Earth— apologise for being alive.

And when we do dare to speak—
they shout:
“Islamophobia!”

No.

This isn’t fear of Islam.
It’s a recognition of what it has done.

It’s not prejudice.
It’s memory.

Etched in temple stones broken by Babur’s artillery.
Cried in the voices of Rajput women burning in Jauhar flames.
Carved into the backs of Sikh Gurus with red-hot nails.

You want proof?

Ask the bones of Nalanda,
the ashes of Somnath,
the silence of Martand Sun Temple.

Ask the daughters of Kashmir,
sold like cattle, wrapped in Islamic jurisprudence.

Ask the 80 million who perished (1000-1500 CE),
not because they invaded,
but because they refused to say, “La ilaha illallah.”

So the final question still stands—louder now, heavier:

Is this a religion?
Or is this a battlefield dressed as a belief system?

Is it faith?
Or is it a blueprint for conquest?

And if so, how long will Bharat kneel before it?

How long will we sing songs of unity,
while one side chants Sar tan se juda?

How long will we build bridges
while the other builds bombs?

This isn’t a plea.
This is a reckoning.
3/7 For the silence is no longer safe.
The silence has turned toxic.
And if we don’t roar now—
we’ll be praying in ruins,
with no gods left, and no children to teach their names.

The Empire of Silence Must Fall

There comes a time in every civilization’s life
when memory must return with a vengeance.
When centuries of humiliation must stop being verses in textbooks
and start being fire in the belly.

This is that moment.

Because the question is no longer why they do it.
That question was answered in 622 CE— when the Prophet of Islam picked up a sword and said:

“I have been commanded to fight until they say there is no god but Allah.”

The question is:
Why do we still bow?

Why do we light diyas in a home
where the walls are already soaked in the blood of our ancestors?

Why do we quote Kabir,
while they quote Qital?

Why do we say “all religions are the same,”
when only one treats unbelief as a capital crime?

This isn’t ignorance.
This is suicidal kindness.

You can’t dialogue with a doctrine that sees dissent as deviance.
You can’t debate with an ideology that silences debate by the blade.
And you can’t live peacefully with those who see peace only as a temporary truce (Hudna) until they regroup for war.

This is not Islamophobia.
This is civilizationo-philia.
Love for our dharma, our culture, our children, our land.

Do we not see the pattern?

The doctrine is not merely scripture.
It’s a military manual in parts that people wish to live even today.
It has rules of war, not just for self-defense—but for expansion.
It divides the world into two: Dar al-Islam (Land of Submission) and Dar al-Harb (Land of War).

Guess what Bharat is?

And if you’re not part of Dar al-Islam,
you’re either a kafir to be subjugated,
a dhimmi to be taxed, or a corpse to be thrown in a pit.

There is no fourth option.

So when you hear “Islam means peace”—ask:

Which page?
Which verse?
Which era?

Because in 1400 years, the peace never came.
Only conquest, only sword, only submission.

From Arabia to Andalusia.
From Persia to Punjab.
From Mesopotamia to Multan.

They erased gods, burned scrolls, broke idols, defiled women—
and then wrote history books calling it enlightenment.

And still we send our children to madrassas funded by Waqf boards,
and expect them to come out as patriots.

Still we celebrate Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, when all that flowed into the Ganga was the blood of Kashmiri Pandits, Bengali Hindus, and Sikh pilgrims.

Still we romanticize Urdu,
the tongue of our tormentors,
while Sanskrit withers in its birthplace.

Still we fear being labeled “intolerant”
while their books declare: kill the Mushrikun (polytheists) wherever you find them.

No other faith needs a blasphemy law.
No other belief system makes the absence of belief a death sentence.

No other “religion” has apostasy as a capital crime.

And no other scripture mandates global conquest.

So again, we ask—
Is this a religion?
Or a theocratic militia disguised in divine ink?

The Prophet himself said:
“War is deceit.”

So what if the religion itself is that deceit?

Wrapped in piety.
Sold as peace.
But sharp as razors beneath the robe.

And the real tragedy?

We—the heirs of Vedanta, the children of Krishna, the disciples of Buddha—
have become allergic to courage.

The Hindu forgot how to hate.
And in that forgetfulness, he also forgot how to protect.

We wear “Ahimsa” like a badge,
but forget that Krishna never spoke of Ahimsa to Arjuna.
He said: Pick up your bow.

It is time we do the same.

We need a civilizational reboot.
Not just nationalism.
Not just development.
But Kshatriyata—the return of the defender spirit.

We must:
•Teach our children not just history, but the truth of our trauma.
•Replace the poison of fake secularism with the clarity of civilizational dharma.
•Disempower the mosques that become breeding grounds for Sar Tan Se Juda.
•Reform the system that rewards vote-bank Jihad over merit.
•Reclaim our temples, our texts, our truths.
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Jan 7, 2024
Mentions of hospitals in ancient, early medieval and medieval Bharat:

Let’s begin with Sushruta & Charaka Samhita which can be dated ages before supposed birth of Christ.

A) Surgical Hospitals:

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 19.3-4

“One suffering from wounds should be first taken to the surgical ward, and that ward should be built according to the rules of the architectural science. In a ward built thuswise, which is auspicious, clean and protected from the sun and the wind one is free from diseases—psychic or somatic or diseases caused by external factors”.
(…)
“The physician desiring to perform any of the surgical measures should keep in readiness beforehand the following appurtenances viz., appliances, instruments, caustic alkalies, fire, probes, horns, leeches, sucking gourd, Jambavaushtha, swabs, suturing thread, leaves, bandages, honey, ghee, fat, milk, oil, soothing lotions, ointment, paste, fan, cold and hot water, basin etc., and attendants who are affectionate, steadfast and strong”.

Carakasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 15.6:

“Here, therefore, we shall instruct in brief concerning several accessories. It is thus. The expert architect should first design a good house which is strong and is warding off the wind except on one side, affording comfortable moving space, not surrounded by high places, not penetrable to smoke, heat, moisture, dust and to undesirable noise, contact, taste, sights and odour and is furnished with a water-storage room, pharmacy room, latrine, bath room and kitchen”.

Carakasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 15.7:

“Those who are well-versed in singing, playing of musical instruments, panegyrics, verses, stories, legends, modern history, mythology, who are quick in understanding, who are of approved character who are versed in the knowledge of clime and season and who are good members of society”.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 3.261:

“The fever-patient afflicted with a sensation of burning should lie down at ease in a specially constructed water-cooled chamber or an apartment cooled by frequent spraying of ice-cold water or cold sandal-water”.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 4.103:

“Apartments with arrangement for shower bath, cold underground chambers, resort to pleasant woods cooled by moist breezes, the application of vessels inlaid with azure, pearls and precious stones made cool by putting cold water in them”.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 24.135:

“By the warmth of the bed and the cover and the warmth of happiness and cheer of the interior apartments, alcoholism of the Vata-type gets subdued effectively”.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna
24.158-159:

“The rumblings of thunder alleviate the effects of intoxication Various devices of showering water and blowing breezes, and rooms equipped with cascades, should be devised by the physician for the cure of burning due to alcoholism (The body should be painted) with perfumed cherry, cuscus grass, lodh, fragrant sticky mallow, fragrant poon, cinnamon leaves and nut-grass”.

B) Military Hospitals

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 34.12-14:

“In a big encampment just after the tent of the king, the physician should be kept present, fully equipped.
The persons afflicted with poison, darts and disease approach him there without making a mistake—him who stays there being singled out by his flag, fame and name.
The physician who is an adept in his own art and is conversant with other sciences, being honored by the king and experts, looks prominent like a flag.”
C) Mental Hospitals

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 9.83:

“Thus he may also be terrorised by means of snakes whose fangs have been removed, or by trained lions and elephants or by men dressed as bandits or foe-men with weapons in their hands”.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 9.81:

“Or having scourged him with light whips, he may be left well secured with ropes in solitary confinement. From such drastic measures, the disorientated mind of the man is restored to normality”

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 9.30:

“If the patient continues to behave in an irresponsible manner then he should be made soft by soft but strong bandages and put in a dark room free from metallic and wooden articles (lest he should harm himself with these).

D) Obstetric Hospitals

Carakasaṃhitā Śārīrasthāna 8.33:

“Before the commencement of the ninth month, the physician should get erected a lying-in room on a site free from bones, sands and broken bits of earthen vessels, in a soil which is excellent with regard to color, taste and savour, facing east or north, with the wood of bael, false mangosteen, putramjiva, marking nut, three leaved caper and catechu or with any other wood which the brahmans who are knowers of the Atharvaveda recommend. This should be well-built, well-plastered and well-furnished with doors and windows and in accordance with the principles of architecture, there should be arrangements for a fire-place, water-storage, pounding, lavatory, bath-room and kitchen, and it should be comfortable in that particular season”.

Carakasaṃhitā Śārīrasthāna 8.34:

“The following articles should be kept there ready to hand—ghee, honey, rock-salt, sanchal black and bid salts, embelia, costus, deodar, ginger, long pepper, the roots of long pepper, the elephant pepper, Indian penny wort, cardamoms, glory lily, sweet flag, piper chaba, white-flowered lead-wort, asafetida [asafoetida], rape seed, garlic, clearing nut, kana, kanika, cadamba, linseed, balvaja, birch, black gram and maireya and sura wines. Similarly, two grinding stones, two heavy pestles, two wooden mortars, an untamed bull two gold or silver cases for keeping sharp needles, sharp metallic instruments, two bed-steads made of bael wood and faggots of false mangosteens and zachum oil plants, for kindling fire. The female attendants should be numerous, being mothers of many children, sympathetic, constantly affectionate, of agreeable behaviour, resourceful, naturally kind-hearted, cheerful and tolerant of hardships. There should also be present Brahmanas who are knowers of the Atharvaveda. Whatever else is thought to be necessary should be kept, also whatever else the Brahmanas and old dames advise, should be carried out”.

Bhāvaprakāśa 2:

“The labour ward must be eight cubits long and four cubits broad and attractively built, with the entrance facing the east or the north. The patient should be attended by four women who are trustworthy, expert in obstetrics, well disposed, aged and who have clipped their finger-nails close”.

Carakasaṃhitā Śārīrasthāna 8.51:

“We shall now describe the procedure with regard to the construction of the nursery. A skilful architect should build and furnish the nursery. It should be excellent, beautiful, well-lighted, sheltered from draught, admitting of air from only one direction, strong, free from such pests as marauding beasts, animals, fanged creatures, mice and moths, well-planned as regards the places of water-storage, grinding, lavatory, bath and cooking, comfortable during all seasons, and provided with beds, seats and spreads suited to each season. Moreover the rites connected with protecting the house from the influence of evil spirits as also those with propitiatory, auspicious, sacrificial and penitential offerings should be performed and the house should be filled with clean and experienced physicians and with those attached to the family. Thus has been described the procedure with regard to the construction of the nursery”.
E) We also have references for (svedanagṛha) or sudatoriums and health-homes. Let’s look at them.

Carakasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 1, 1/17-20:

“We shall set down the procedure regarding the immure meat therapy. In an area resided in by princes, physicians, the twice-born communities, saintly men and men of virtuous deeds, free from alarm, salubrious, close to a city, where the necessary appurtenances may be had, one should, having selected a good site, cause a retreat to be built with its face towards either the east or the north. It should be of the following description—high roofed and commodius; built in three concentric courts, furnished with narrow ventilator; thick walled; congenial in all weathers; well lighted; pleasing to the mind; proof against noises and other disturbing agents, untenanted by women, equipped with all the requisite appurtenaces [appurtenances?], and having physicians, medicines and Brahmanas ready at call”.

These descriptions clearly tell us that there was meticulous process to chose site for hospital. It was supposed to be one which would give protection from excessive wind, irritating noise, and dust, and uncomfortable light. Something that we too practice as modern architects while choosing site for hospitals.

The hospitals were constructed under the supervision of expert architects and structural engineers (vāstuvidyā-viśārada—vāstuvidyāviśāradāḥ) who were perfect at the arranging and creating zoning (sthānavibhāga-vida).

The hospitals were built keeping context in considerations specially, climate. They were climate responsive enough to counter both summer and winters. The passive technology was very much in use.

There were special provisions and space planning for toilets and bathrooms which ducting facilities.

F) The emphasis was laid on high standard of cleanliness and hygiene which becomes clear from below:

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 19.4, 23:

“In a ward built thuswise, which is auspicious, clean and protected from the sun and the wind, one is free from diseases—psychic or somatic or diseases caused by external factors.
The patient should be always clean, with close clipped finger nails, wearing white raiment and devoted to the auspicious rites of Shanti and Mangala and to honoring the gods, the Brahmanas and elders”.

G) The hospitals were well equipped with various devices and instruments (mentioned in snippets).

Some departments had certain branches, like purgatoriums which were frequented by healthy persons also thrice a year to undergo the course of purgative, revirilification and rejuvenation as mentioned below:

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.24:

“Therein (in the retreat constructed) being cleansed with the purificatory measures and on having regained his happiness and normal strength, he should undergo the vitalization procedure. We shall first describe the cleansing procedure”

H) The below mentions talk of interior design and facilities within room(ward):

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 19.5-7:

“The ward must be equipped with beds that are free from discomfort and well spread with a cloth and with its head towards the east, and with instruments kept ready. The surgical patient feels comfortable in his movements if the bed is well made and spread with a cloth. The gods have their dwelling in the east and hence his head should lie towards the east as a sign of obeisance. There he should lie freely attended by friends who are amiable and pleasant-spoken”.

Clothes in hospitals:

Suśrutasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 19.23:

“The patient should be always clean, with close-clipped finger nails, wearing white raiment and devoted to the auspicious rites of Santi and Mangala, and to honoring the gods, the Brahmanas and the elders”.Image
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Aabhas Maldahiyar 🇮🇳 Profile picture
Oct 14, 2023
Let’s be more precise. Durga Puja(o) is all about Hinduism.

She was created by Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh for slaying an Adharmik Mahishasur.

Each weapon she holds was given by Devatas.

“Puja (o)” itself is Hindu way only. It happens in case for Durga by doing Pran-Pratishtha & envoking Devi.

And it’s not just about Bengalis.

Durga Puja is done with complete dedication across Bharat. Our Shaktipeethas which form the Map of Bharat are one of the biggest signifier of our civilisation. That too it has connection with last hymn of Rigveda.

But again it’s too much too expect from you to understand these deep notions @rons1212

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One of the earliest archaeological evidence of Durga Pujo comes as inscription in Dadhimati Mata Mandir which is located between the villages of Goth and Manglod in the Jayal tehsil of Nagaur district in Rajasthan, India.

The inscription read figments of Devi Mahamatya dated to 608 CE.

Someone please tell @rons1212 that “Devi Mahamatya”. This is the central text which is recited even in Bengal during Durga Puja (o).
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One of the oldest art work depicting scenes from “Devi Mahatmyam” is found in the Mandir of Aihole @rons1212 , not Bengal.

Where is it located? Down in the south. Bagalkot.

So text of Durga Puja has presence in West and South.

Devi & her worship ties Bharat.
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