Taj Mahal, a monument to Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s love for his queen Mumtaz Mahal, has been placed at the centre of a turf war. What has long been evoking wonder as a masterpiece of world heritage has caused surprise in the wake of sectarian claims over its rightful ownership. Uttar Pradesh Muslim Waqf minister Azam Khan recently demanded the Sunni emperor’s Taj Mahal be declared a property of the State Waqf Board, eliciting similar claims from the Shia community on account of Mumtaz belonging to their sect, reported india.com.
Khan, a senior Samajwadi Party leader, argued that the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum that houses the bodies of a Muslim emperor, who also got the structure built, and his beloved wife, according to dnaindia.com. He said that the monument should be handed over to the Sunni Waqf Board, as the board maintains control over Muslim sites of burial and a large number of graves, reported the Times of India. “Every mausoleum is a waqf, so the Taj is also a waqf property,” he said.
Endorsing Khan’s demand, clerics of the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband also called for Muslims to be granted permission to offer prayers at the mosque inside Taj Mahal five times a day. Placing the sects at loggerheads, the assertions have led the Shia community to demand the Taj Mahal be given to the Shia Waqf Board. “The Taj Mahal should be handed over to the Shia Waqf Board as, Mumtaz Mahal, whose real name was Arjumand Bano, was a Shia,” said Syed Faiyyaz Haidar, president of the Lucknow-based Imam-e-Raza committee, reported the Indian Express.
The Taj Mahal, which is looked after by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), generates a whopping INR20 million per annum through entry fees alone, the highest revenue for any monument in the country. Commenting on the recent skirmish, a former official of the ASI’s Lucknow division, CB Mishra, said, “Is the Taj Mahal a monument or a cake? Should it be distributed between whoever lays claim to it?” He added, “Without dispute, the Taj Mahal belongs to the whole country. It is pointless to declare it as belonging to a particular group.”
Interestingly, Khan, who has now demanded the ownership of Taj Mahal, made an antithetical statement about the monument last year. Referring to the mob attack on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, he said that had the Taj Mahal been targeted in place of it, he would have himself led them to demolish the monument. He cited the waste of public funds by Shah Jahan by making the mausoleum when people were dying of starvation during his reign as the reason behind making the statement.
This polarity could make Khan’s recent comments be viewed as nothing more than incendiary rhetoric, an attempt at demagogy so as to escalate tensions with the Centre ahead of the 2017 UP Assembly election. His remarks have also caused Twitter frenzy, with ‘#WahAzamWah’ trending on the microblogging website. A tweet read, “#WahAzamWah Azam Khan should realise Taj Mahal is not his buffalo, he can’t milk it for his benefit!”
Amid the ongoing scuffle, historians have criticised Khan for what they view as a publicity stunt. “The Taj Mahal is a monument of national importance and it comes under the ASI,” said historian Nayanjot Lahiri, reported the India Today. ASI additional director general BR Mani said, “The Taj Mahal cannot be handed over to the Waqf board. These are heritage sites of great significance and [their handling] needs expertise, which the board doesn’t have. They cannot take care of a heritage site of Taj Mahal’s significance.”
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2014.
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An Architectural Wonder of the World .best left in the hands of people , who have love of history, culture and preserving beauty from realms of old days gone by.
@dr badabullah: @Hilarious: Your comment seems Hilarious considering majority of comments on the purely Pakistani news is made by Indians! So who is obsessed with who? and i dont have statistics related to ET. Where is your source by the way? Does Wikipedia have stats related to ET too?
And considering the news last i read somewhere that Taj Mahal was "also" an ancient Hindu temple. That was more relevant to me rather than this Shia Sunni conflict. Because as depicted by Mr. badabullah, there is a relatively higher chance of the Taj meeting the fate of Baburi masjid soon! Then the Shia and Sunni community may decide who keeps the remains of the cupid couple and who keeps the larger share of the rubble!
Seriously no need to play this kind of politics.
Its kindoff an out of place structure on the serene and natural Indian landscape.
Time to raise this structure down.
@Ch. Allah Daad: Very well said. There is a Discovery channel (if memory serves me right) documentary called "Secrets of the Taj Mahal" which spoke about this. It added that the profligacy involved emptied the treasury and beggared the nation and was one of the reasons why Aurangzeb got rid of his father. And yes, you make the other point too: while Europe and, indeed parts of the Islamic world, were advancing in education and technology, there is no school, no University, no theorems, no scientific discovery that has been passed on to posterity from that period.
This website should be renamed to 'Tribune Times Of India'. Too much obsession for India.
India should never give its greatest icon to any of these organizations because Taj Mahal was built with public money. Every citizen of India paid for it through their noses and many starved to death when kind hearted lover King Shah Jahan stole everything from them. Its another story that during that period European nations were busy building universities and public institutions while our rulers were wasting public money on useless projects. Secondly, I have visited many shrines and mosques run by Muslim organizations of Indian origin therefore I can truthfully state that these places are outrageously dirty and in very bad states. There beggars and managers would rip off visitors and worshipers. No sane government would make such mistake again.
Khan should be banned from Taj and it belongs to people of India not one sect of any single religion. When people like Khan have nothing to fight for they create issues out of nothing. Grow up Khan!