A Last Battle With the Mughals

What is presented in historical museums – and how it is presented – is certainly important for national identity. How museums themselves are named may not be as significant as what they contain, but their names carry a certain symbolism as well. This phenomenon was recently showcased in India, when it was announced that the Mughal Museum in Agra was to be renamed the King Chatrapati Shivaji Museum.

“The Mughals cannot be our heroes. […] Shivaji is our hero,” declared Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. A Hindu monk-turned-politician and a radical even among Hindu nationalists, Adityanath is a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On September 14, he announced that one of the museums under construction in his state – the Mughal Museum – will be renamed. So far, this is only a leading politician’s declaration, but given Adityanath’s views and his track record (also when it comes to renaming), it is expected that the statement will lead to an official decision.

The underlying ideology of the BJP, Hindu nationalism, ties the roots of national identity to Hindu religious rites and beliefs. To put it simply and differently: Hindu nationalists seek to unite the nation – or at least their constituency within it – through an array of select religious symbols. These also include references to the past: Hindu kings, Hindu holy men, the deeds of gods, sacred places, and struggles against the enemies of the religion. The last of these usually include Muslims (and, a bit less commonly, Christians).

There is also no denying that over the centuries Muslim dynasties – usually Turkic peoples from Central Asia – used to invade India, often pillaging its lands and in some cases establishing their own states. The biggest sultanate to ever rise from such a conquest in South Asia was the Mughal empire. It is therefore not perplexing that the Mughals are one of the dynasties the Hindu nationalists love to hate. By default, those Hindu monarchs that fought with such Muslim principalities are presented as heroes in this narrative. Thus, Adityanath’s choice for a new patron of the museum is no other than Shivaji – a king known for both his wars with the Mughals and his outspoken adherence to the Hindu religion.

Many of the Mughal rulers were undeniably cruel, and some did persecute Hindus. But, cruel or not, such kings often manage to leave a lasting heritage behind them. And once they do, it makes little sense to pretend that history does not exist by such maneuvers as renaming it. The Mughal Museum is located in Agra, a city that was the capital of the Mughal empire for a long time, and under which it flourished more than under any other lineage. The museum itself is being built next to the Taj Mahal, easily the most famous construction by the Mughals. Lastly, and most importantly, the institution is mostly meant to house objects connected to the Mughal dynasty. Thus, it seems the museum is posed to be related to Mughals in everything but its name, if Adityanath gets his way.

Shivaji is, indeed, a significant historical person. The story of his rise, his military exploits, and his daring escapes from the Mughals would make an action movie director blush and they are an inspiration to Hindu nationalists. But the kingdom he managed to carve out was far from Agra, a city with which he had little connection. As described by Maulshree Seth for the Indian Express, efforts to justify the renaming and find such connections seem to be already starting. A tourism department official was said to declare that “[t]here is certainly a link between Shivaji and Agra. He was kept in captivity at Agra Fort [in 1666] during the era of [Mughal emperor] Aurangzeb and bravely escaped.” This period of captivity, let us add, lasted barely a few months.

Many other recent name changes have had more of a historical basis. In 2018, the same Adityanath government also renamed the city of Allahabad to Prayagraj, choosing a Sanskrit-origin name over a Persian one. But while that move was also seen as controversial, there is at least historical evidence that the name Prayag or Prayagraj had been used for the place in the more distant past, before it was called Allahabad under Mughal rule. However, such renaming attempts prove more tricky with sites like museums – which, while being important for history and identity, are usually new institutions, not continuations of ancient establishments.

The case of the Mughal Museum shows how Hindu nationalists try to cope with the legacy of Muslim dynasties in India. Most of the time, they place the accents elsewhere – they speak more of the Hindu dynasties than the Muslim ones, paint the former in the brightest colors possible and the latter in the darkest there can be, and focus on developing historical sites and symbols that are more connected to the Hindu religion and Hindu political elites. But with certain places and contexts, such as the Mughal Museum and most of Agra’s prime historical attractions, this is simply impossible. At such sites, the Hindu nationalists often tackle this heritage of Muslim dynasties by pretending to ignore it.

“Gauravshali Bharat,” a history textbook used in hundreds of Hindu nationalist-run private schools mentions the Mughals only as a foreign hostile power, not even as the dynasty that established a state in India. The textbook does not mention a single building constructed by the Mughals, including the Taj Mahal. Adityanath also once said that the Taj Mahal does not “reflect Indian culture.” In 2017, the mausoleum was not mentioned in his state’s budget or its tourism booklet.

It is notable that Adityanath did not even seek a particular historical basis for his desired renaming of the Mughal Museum. For him, the change was exactly about the broader issue of nationalism and identity, not accurate labeling of a collections of artifacts. As quoted by Shreyans Tripathi for Navbharat Times, the chief minister has not only stressed that “the Mughals cannot be our heroes” but also that the change was being done to “nourish nationalist views,” and that “the symbols of slave mentality” must be abandoned.

In political narratives on history, a strict adherence to facts often matters little (or may even get in the way) when faced with the powerful images these narratives seek to create. To emerge victorious in the present, nationalists (of any kind) must conquer the past. Thus, Hindu nationalists continuously seek to fight the Mughals and defeat them in the last final battle, and one which that dynasty, having perished a long time ago, cannot win – on the battlefield of human memory and identity.