Taj Mahotsav or Tej Mahotsav, both are the same things. There is not much difference between Taj and Tej. Our Tej Mandir has been turned into a cremation ground by Aurangzeb. Taj Mahal will be converted into Tej Mandir soon. Here’s a report, for Different Truths.
Please, please, please don’t call Taj Mahal by any other name. The ‘Taj’ is not ‘Rose’ that by any other name will still be ‘Rose’. And ‘Tej’ for ‘Taj’ is so unimaginative a suggestion that it will become a blot on the face of Earth faster than you can say ‘Tej!’ The Taj Mahal is a monument to ‘love’ from a devoted husband to a beloved wife. And it draws the breath with a ‘Wah Taj!’
Take it from somebody who has never set eyes on the Taj Mahal that if BJP MP Vinay Katiyar gets his wish, no head of state will set foot in Agra with a spouse to take home a picture of them with the Taj Mahal. Not even a Prime Minister of Israel! And, perchance, if US President Donald J Trump makes an entry, he and his better-half, Trump’s queen Melania, might go take a photo with a Trump Tower than with a ‘Tej Mandir’.
BJP MPs and RSS-VHP stone-masons are monumental supporters of monument-breakers. Some of them stood watching when the Babri Masjid was razed. But Babri was an old dilapidated, gone to ruins mosque, where only lizards lived and crows perched.
The Taj Mahal, on the other hand, is in the itinerary of almost every tourist who takes a flight to India. And when that tourist returns home with picture-proof, the Taj Mahal becomes a ‘wonder’ to behold for family and friends. Many a foreigner might know a poverty-stricken India, but they know quite a bit of the Taj Mahal. That is because Taj Mahal lines up alongside other Wonders of the World, old and new, they recognise. Let there be no doubts, people worldwide recognize – in both senses of the word – Taj Mahal.
But who will tell that to a Vinay Katiyar or a Yogi Adityanath, who cut their teeth in life on demolishing symbols of religion even if they are not symbols of religion like the Taj Mahal? To them, the present is to wallow in the past. They shun and shut the Modern to live in the Medieval. They are relics, outdated and outmoded, with their minds in ruins! When in power, they strut, when out of power, they fret.
“Call it Taj Mahotsav or Tej Mahotsav, both are the same things. There is not much difference between Taj and Tej. Our Tej Mandir has been turned into a cremation ground by Aurangzeb. Taj Mahal will be converted into Tej Mandir soon,” Katiyar, who is the third BJP leader to make an anti-Taj comment, said. “It is a good thing that a festival is being organised but this Taj Mahal is not the one that existed during the time of Aurangzeb. It was our temple.”
For those who don’t know, Katiyar is the same guy who spearheaded the Ayodhya Ram Mandir movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. He is currently facing a criminal trial for his role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In October 2017, he claimed the Taj Mahal was actually a Shiv temple! “The Taj Mahal is a Hindu temple. There are all the signs thereof (Hindu) gods and goddesses, There used to be a Shivaling there which had water dripping on it from up top. That ling was removed and a mausoleum built there,” he said.
Taj Mahal, listed as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, was also kept out of the Adityanath government’s booklet promoting tourism in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. BJP MLA Sangeet Som claimed the Taj Mahal was built by “traitors” who wanted to wipe out Hindus; that the UP government was only “trying to bring back the history of Lord Ram, Shivaji.”
Adityanath – who had earlier claimed that gifting miniature replicas of the Taj to foreign dignitaries was not right because they were not representative of Indian heritage – was forced to visit Taj Mahal to clear the air. “There is no need for us to go into the depth of why the Taj Mahal was built, who built it and for what purpose… What’s important is that Taj Mahal was built from the blood and sweat of Indian labourers and that of the sons of Bharat Mata,” the chief minister backtracked.
School textbooks and college history books tell us that the Taj Mahal was built by a royal Farman issued by Emperor Shahjahan, who was mourning the death of his lady-love Mumtaz Mahal. Now, out of the book statements are being made – by historically dense individuals – that the marble monument was not built by Shahjahan but by his son Emperor Aurangzeb, who in fact had put his pop in chains and kept him isolated on a tower from where the father could see the tomb of the mother who spawned a son such as Aurangzeb. The Aurangzeb of today wears saffron and goes by the name of Vinay Katiyar. If only Vinay had a queen to love.
Aditya Aamir
©IPA Service
Photos from the Internet
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