Sunday, December 22, 2019

Aurangzeb’s usurpation of Shantidas‘s Temple

Shantidas Jhaveri was a leading Jain jeweller and banker in the Ahmedabad city during the 17th century. He had a beautiful Jain temple built in Ahmedabad. The temple was desecrated and converted into a mosque in 1645 by the then governor of Gujarat, Aurangzeb (later Mughal emperor) who built a mihrab (niche) for prayer in it.

This was complained to Shah Jahan who, on the assertion of scholar and philosopher Mulla Abdul Hakim that Aurangzeb had flagrantly violated the sharia in usurping Shantidas’s property, ordered the temple be restored to the latter.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Journey of Fa-hsien to India

A native of sanxi (Shansi), Fa-hsien , also known as Faxian , was a Chinese monk who came to India on a pilgrimage tour during the reign of...