by S L Bhyrappa
‘God doesn’t hate anybody? Not even Shaitaan?’
‘The Shaitaan that exists in your faith doesn’t exist in ours. Our God forgives and takes into his fold even a man who out of ignorance treads the evil path. Like a mother forgives her child’s transgressions.’
This fellow’s ideas about God didn’t match mine…something I had deeply believed in for the last eight years. And what kind of god was he that didn’t have guts? And when their god himself didn’t have guts, it was no surprise that these people were like this—a cowardly lot. I didn’t want to continue this discussion and asked him to take me to the next temple.
When I met him in the guest mansion after four days of incessant temple-visiting, Hamdullah Sahib asked me what all I’d seen.
‘So many temples that it’s easier to forget than remember.’
‘If you’ve seen that many temples that it’s easy to forget, does it mean you have learnt history?’
I didn’t know how to respond to this and looked at him blankly. I felt stupid and I think it showed on my face. I knew that no matter how upset he was with me, he would never allow his discomfiture to transform itself into anger.
‘You were visiting temples while I went on horseback everyday and saw almost all the mosques. The kotwal has assigned me two maulana sahibs who are learned in history. And this is important. We must listen to and learn history from the locals. What they tell us shows how little we know—we who sit in some chamber and write history in far-off Delhi. Anyway, so Qutubudin Aibak and Shahabuddin Ghori brought Benares under their control in Al Hijra 604 and appointed a very able man named Sayyad Jalaluddin as the subedaar. Sayyad Jalaluddin built a township named Jalaluddinpura near this city. It’s still there. Now, Jalaluddin made a strong attempt to ban idol worship. But very soon, power was wrested away from us in Benares. We had to wait till Al Hijra 607 when Qutubudin recaptured it. From then on, oh! How our faith flourished! They demolished all the idol temples that existed then and used the pillars and other material from the rubble of these temples and built mosques in their place. Have you seen the exquisite, two-towered Gumbaz mosque in the Hanuman-Gate street? No, you haven’t. See it sometime. Its lower portion is built using the remains of many different Hindu temples. Its second floor has a stone inscription written in Sanskrit. No. We didn’t write that inscription. It was written for some other temple. They have just used that stone to build the wall. And go see the mosque in Chaukhamba Mohalla. With twenty-four pillars, it looks magnificent! You must see these places. Oh wait! Many others come to mind. The cemetery built in the honour of Makdoom Sahibat Gulzar Mohalla. The large rooms to its west and north are all built using pillars of destroyed Hindu temples….’
His grasp over actual facts and dates was stunning. He went on with his recitation of dates and names of dynasties and sultans who had destroyed Hindu temples and replaced them with mosques. He even narrated the names of the destroyed temples from a time as far back as Balban, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sikandar Lodi…but then, he was the formidable Hamdullah Sahib. There was no chance that I could remember even a fraction of this overwhelming amount of information. His memory was phenomenal and it perfectly served his esteemed position as the keeper of historical records. It didn’t take a lot of intelligence for me to understand that Hamdullah Sahib knew more and had more insight than that Bhatt who had shown me the temples. I phrased my question delicately, ‘What I don’t understand is despite repeated and large-scale destruction, why are there so many temples in Kashi even now?’
‘So that’s the thing! Our people have the best facilities. They pay paltry tax and they get maximum encouragement but no matter what, they can’t match these banias, these…these…Hindu businessmen. Our men are trained to fight and they fight expertly. At other times, they pillage and loot and enjoy with women…you’ve seen how it is…anyway, these banias pay enormous amounts of tax but they somehow don’t waste a single coin and over time they multiply their money. This happens even when business is completely forbidden for non-Muslims. Our businessmen take the business under their own names but cut a deal with the banias. The banias pay them some part of the profit but run the actual business. And, as usual, our men drown themselves in wine and lose themselves in the arms of women. This is the fate of people who are trained exclusively for the military. But see, if you don’t have a military consisting largely of our own men, you can’t maintain the empire. But the empire also needs money to function smoothly. This is where we are still weak. And these dastardly banias refuse to give up their gods. They bribe the local Muslim officers and in this way, the Shahenshah’s orders are not completely enforced. A land ruled by our faith must not have non-Islamic places of worship. If they exist, they must be demolished or at the least, they must not be renovated and building new ones must definitely be forbidden. None of this happens in this Benares. From the beginning, even the badshahs in Delhi didn’t really pay much attention to this. They cared mostly for the tax money that they expected from the subas. And the subedaars blindly believed the reports they got from the kotwal of Benares. But now, with Alamgir Aurangzeb Badshah—powerful, competent, shrewd and unswerving in his faith in Islam—in command of the Mughal Empire, just see how his merciful rule will seal the smallest hole that leads to bribes and filthy and corrupt practices!’
‘Who built the present Vishwanath temple?’
‘There was a king named Todarmal in Benares. His son, Govardhan, built it. A Brahmin named Narayana Bhatt told him that Todarmal would attain Eternal Bliss if he would rebuild the temple in his father’s name. So there. Again, the inspiration for all such sinful deeds is always the Brahmins. You know Brahmins…they’re the mullahs of the Hindus…’ suddenly he realized the import of his words and tried to correct himself ‘…no no…they are the originators of sinful beliefs. Remember this: killing one Brahmin earns you merit equal to killing ten Hindus…what was I saying? Oh? Akbar. Yes. It was built in Akbar’s time. He had a law that prohibited using government money to build temples but he allowed people to use their own money to build whatever they wanted. Scoundrel. Sinner. I know his life is still roasting in terrible hellfire! Remember, he died in Al Hijra 1015. Now it is 1079. You calculate. He’s burning for the last sixty-four years. And he will continue to burn forever!’
His face showed a glimpse of that fire, a first for me who had seen him always wearing a pleasant, smiling countenance.
Neither of us spoke at dinner. Before we got ready for bed, I asked him, ‘Why did the Merciful Alamgir Badshah select Kashi to begin his destruction of Hindu temples?’
‘Isn’t the answer evident? Isn’t Kashi the hub of the kafirs?’ He paused, looked up sideways and then, ‘there’s another reason, I think. It seems there’s something called Bhakti Panth, which began three hundred years ago and it’s only growing stronger in this city. Somebody named Ramananda. And Kabir. And Vallabha after him. And Tulsidas after him, a poet. They are telling people that mantras are not necessary. All that matters is Bhakti, pure devotion. We could have let them go if it was just this. But no, kafirs are kafirs! These fellows also say that their god and our god are the same. What does this mean! They’re saying their god is equal to Allah! Isn’t that infernal? Doesn’t the crime of merely suggesting that there actually is a god equal to Allah deserve death by chopping the throat off? Oh, and this Kabir! He is one of our own. A Muslim. It seems he is a staunch devotee of Ram. And he boldly preaches that Ram and Rahim are just two different names of the same god. Being born a Muslim and taking the name of another god is enough to cut his head but this fellow compounds his sin by equating Allah with their gods—how many times should we cut his head? And if this is happening in a land under Muslim control, think what it means. Think, how much bribe the vile Muslim officers have eaten from the banias! Alamgir Badshah knows this very well, which is why he has decided to first cleanse Benares of this filth, bless his unwavering faith! I know how the mind of such people works. Take it from me today and now! A massive palace made complet
ely of gold is already being built for the Alamgir in heaven.’
I began to calculate the hundreds of thousands of kilograms of gold necessary to build such a palace but I didn’t know the dimensions of the palace, the number of rooms. I thought of asking Hamdullah Sahib but he had already fallen asleep.
Two days later, every gully and street was full of sword-wielding soldiers on horseback. The steps of the ghats were likewise lined with soldiers—nobody was allowed to bathe in the Ganga. Non-Muslims were not allowed to ride horses or possess weapons of any sort, a prohibition whose writ spawned the entire Mughal Empire. Anything that had the remotest possibility of becoming a weapon was proscribed. Hence, they set the drum-beater to announce that instruments like the axe to chop wood, sabre to cut shrubs, knives to cut vegetables had to remain inside the house until the official drum-beater announced again that they could be publicly carried. From this, I reckoned that Hindus somehow understood that this was the sign that a temple was about to be destroyed. They were weaponless. Even if they were armed, they lacked numbers to use those weapons. Political and military power was on the side of the temple-destroyers. Cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev! Bam Bam Bolenath! Shivoham! Shivoham!’ emanated from inside many houses. People let out cries and chants within the fear-filled walls of their homes. Others meditated. The soldiers on horseback broke open the doors of such houses and warned them against reciting kafir prayers or face the prospect of having their houses burnt. Very soon, the sound of prayer was, as it were, drowned in water. However, here and there, a rare Hindu dared to defy this and walked openly on the streets, his forehead covered with sacred ash, a wooden sickle in his hand, his lips fearlessly chanting ‘Har Har Mahadev’ as he made his way towards the Vishwanath temple. Barely ten steps, and a swift swoosh of the sword separated his head from his body in one precise stroke and splattered the street with blood. The soldier who did this deed rode onward like he had finished yet another routine task. The anguished cries of ‘Haai!’ that issued forth from within the frightened walls of the citizens’ houses didn’t dare cross their limits this time around. Hamdullah Sahib and I were given special horses. We had a mask each bearing the Royal Seal to witness the security arrangements. We took a slow tour of the entire city observing the guards and everything that occurred around us.
‘Sahib, when the law strictly forbids non-Muslims to carry weapons, to ride horses, is it still necessary to have such elaborate security?’
‘Can we predict when a dog will bite? Remember, kafirs are treacherous people… Listen, I’ll narrate an incident. It must’ve been about thirty-six or thirty-seven years ago. Our Merciful Alamgir Badshah’s father, Shahjahan Badshah—although not equal to our alamgir—was a devout Muslim. His father, Jahangir Badshah, was devout but he had the vile blood of his father, that arch-infidel Akbar. He continued to allow Akbar’s policies of allowing kafirs to build temples at their own cost. That’s how new temples sprouted and flourished all over the empire. But when Shahjahan Badshah ascended the throne after Jahangir Badshah’s death, he stopped this profane law and ordered the immediate destruction of all the newly-built temples and those temples that were partially completed. His Badshahnama records that this farmaan was passed in Al Hijra 1042. In Benares alone, seventy-six semi-completed temples were razed to the ground. But it was not easy. Haidar Baig was the subedaar of Allahabad. He despatched his younger brother’s son to Benares to perform this holy deed. But a Hindu messenger lay in hiding somewhere on the way. He ambushed him and his four assistants and stabbed them all to death. But this wretch was no match for the army contingent that was following them. He was killed in no time. But do you see, child? The wretch killed our commander and four other men in certain knowledge that his death was assured. Doesn’t this show the extent to which these kafirs believe in their dark faith? Anyway, so our soldiers hung his corpse on a roadside tree as a lesson for others. Now you see why the kotwal has made such extensive security arrangements?’
I had seen the Vishwanath mandir after the first day of arriving in Kashi. I visited it one more time to study it in depth knowing that it would stand there for another six or seven days. Its architecture was square, made of four shoulders. Each shoulder was about 125 feet large. Four inner houses each measuring 10 feet wide and 19 feet long flanked the sanctum sanctorum. After this, one could pass through another inner house, 8 feet wide and 12 feet long, to reach four pillared-halls. The eastern and western pillared-halls had a temple, each dedicated to Dandapani and the Dwarapalaka dieties. A sub-temple stood in all the four corners of the Vishwanath temple. A pillared-hall enclosed a large stone idol of Nandi, which stood outside directly facing the temple. The temple was 128 feet tall with its tower measuring 64 feet in height. The towers on top of the four pillared-halls were each 48 feet high. It was really, a temple made of five pillared-halls. A pavilion measuring 125 feet long and 35 feet wide lay on the temple’s eastern side. It was where the Hindus held their philosophical debates and discussions, and invited scholars to deliver discourses. I couldn’t thank Bhatt enough. I would’ve been unable to find out this kind of detail on my own. The temple had a quadrangular pathway that made it convenient for devotees to circumambulate it and the pathway was dotted with mini-temples dedicated to countless gods and goddesses.
I had estimated that they would destroy the temple by blasting it with cannons from all four directions. When I arrived at the temple with Hamdullah Sahib, I noticed a group of people engaged in what appeared to be a mighty serious discussion. And it was. They were a group of Muslim architects speaking in pure Farsi. They were trying to reach an agreement on which walls should take the blow of the cannon and which walls and pillars to preserve. This discussion went on for a really long time until some kind of agreement was ultimately reached. The cannoneers were ordered to take aim. Nobody had spoken about the idol inside the temple. I suppose they had forgotten about it. The architects had given their verdict: the foundation, the major walls and the pillars were to be preserved. Why wreck them and then build a masjid afresh on this same spot when they could be reused? The entire site was surrounded by some five hundred soldiers on horseback, their swords drawn and ready. Minutes after the first two cannon blasts shattered the front wall, the sardar, the leader who was in charge of the operation yelled, ‘The idol! The idol inside! There’s an idol inside! Wait! Stop!’ The artillerymen halted. Within seconds, the sardar and ten to twelve men rushed inside while the rest of us waited outside. He came out after sometime and declared that there was no idol, and that he could detect traces that the idol had been removed. The kotwal went inside and returned, nodding his head. This launched another flurry of discussion. They couldn’t quite fathom what had happened. They consulted Hamdullah Sahib. Did that lingam idol really exist at all or had it already been demolished earlier? Were the priests worshipping just that empty spot? They could round up the cursed priests, tie them up and pry open their mouths with tongs and knives. But they had vanished as if they had never been in Benares. In the end, they didn’t find an answer that convinced them and so they debated on whether it really mattered if they found the idol or not. Finally, they decided it didn’t. At most, they could use it as a stair of the mosque that would stand on this spot, so that the faithful would be reminded of the might of Islam. This anyway was the fate of all the idols in the smaller temples around the Vishwanath temple. One more idol wasn’t that important. Not delaying the holy task on hand was more important. The sardar signalled to the artillerymen.
I suddenly felt sick in my stomach. Again. Second time today. I had discharged my bowels in the morning as usual and felt no discomfort before or after that. I had eaten the royal feast that the kotwal sent us every day—today it was that divine biryani and bowlfuls of fruit, cream, honey and milk—before mounting my horse. And then I’d been on another tour of the streets and gullies of Kashi before coming here to witness what was about to follow. Now the same sick feeling. I had to clear my bowels now and I told Hamdullah Sahib that I had to ur
gently go to the guest house to relieve myself.
‘Go, but don’t go alone. Take some guards with you. Who knows, these infidels cannot be trusted. They might throw some knife or something out of their windows and kill you. Actually, if all you want to do is go to the toilet, you can do that on the banks of the river. Sons of whores! They think that river is somehow holy. It’ll teach them a lesson; also, you’ll earn some merit.’
The flood had dwindled. I squatted on a step that wasn’t slippery and didn’t have wet and sticky soil. I was filled with the feeling ignited by Hamdullah Sahib’s words—I was about to desecrate the place kafirs regarded as sacred. The agitated thrashing inside my stomach returned with even greater vigour but nothing came out. A few minutes later, I realized there was nothing inside that could come out. My head began to hurt. This had nothing to do with my stomach. I was disturbed. The agitation, I sensed, was in the mind. It blocked my thought and left me feeling something I didn’t know how to comprehend. My knees began to hurt. I got up, fastened my drawstrings, turned around to face the river, walked a little and sat on a step. It was still raining up in the plains. The water was reddish and the force of its current remained much the same but its surface showed no trace of this force. An uninterrupted, unhurried, and quiet flow, a never-ending eddy that carried dried branches, wood and dead bodies of cows, goats, kids and humans. Ganga, who had for ages borne countless deaths in her breast, who took everybody in her lap, who had had given food to countless subas, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of food and whose incredible force was submerged under her serene surface…suddenly it resurfaced…it took me back to that spot in front of the Vishnu temple, which I had failed to protect in Devagarh and had, instead, stood quivering before that giant of a general. It took me to that split second where I’d lost the courage to kill myself and was forced out of my faith. It took me to that stable where my masculinity was smashed. From Vishnu to Vishwanath. Vishwanath, meaning ‘Lord of the World’. The Lord of the World, powerless to protect his own temple, how could he protect the whole world? Something was wrong somewhere. The sound of the explosions that I heard behind me intensified the sickness I felt in my stomach. This sickness coursed upwards to my chest and spread to my throat, nose and head and pervaded my entire body with every boom that issued from those monster cannons. I couldn’t get myself to return to the temple. I stood up and continued to watch the formless river that flowed without undulations. Suddenly, Ganga appeared to me to be the iconoclastic force.
