What happens when an average Indian WhatsApp uncle’s endless diatribe against Muslims, colossal disdain for “leftist” scholars, obsessive hate towards the Mughals, mixed with conspiracy theories masquerading as “history”, airs on the big screen?
You get yourself 165 minutes of an infuriatingly boring watch, titled The Taj Story.
The protagonist, Vishnu Das (Paresh Rawal), is a guide working at the Taj Mahal who is fighting for guide association election. His adversary in this election is, of course, a heavily bearded, kohl-eyed, salwar-kurta-clad Muslim, who threatens Das to back off or face dire consequences.
This caricature of the “evil” Indian Muslim follows us throughout the movie.
The Muslim adversary then circulates a video featuring Das’ drunken rant against the Taj Mahal not being patronised by Shah Jahan, and how he needs to find the “truth” of it being a Hindu monument. Das’ quest for Taj Mahal’s “truth” brings him to the court, where also his opponent is a Muslim, Anwar Rashid (Zakir Hussain), representing the State.
Rashid is portrayed as a corrupt lawyer in cahoots with the guide association's Muslim candidate and they both hatch cunning plans while frying some kebabs. If you think the movie has ticked all the communal stereotypes used in Bollywood to represent Indian Muslims, there is more. Skull cap-toting Muslims threaten Das’ daughter and daughter-in-law multiple times, and then beat his son. They also emphatically proclaim that “Taj pe humari jamaat ka haqq hai, kafiron ka nahin” (The Taj Mahal belongs to our (Muslim) community and not to the infidels).
Fiction Masquerading as History
Having fulfilled its foremost agenda of demonising Indian Muslims and dangerously fanning rampant communalism in India, the film moves on to its next agenda: to pass off fiction as history.
Das, fighting his own case because “evil” Muslims scared his lawyer away, presents not a single piece of historical evidence to back his claim of Taj Mahal being a Hindu palace that was eventually converted to a mausoleum. He claims that there are some historians who argue that the Taj Mahal was not built by Shah Jahan, however, throughout the movie, Das cites no such historian.
The theory was first given by lawyer PN Oak in his 1965 book 'Taj Mahal is a Rajput Palace.' Oak’s theory claimed that a 4th century palace was reused as Taj Mahal. This theory was heavily criticised by historians such as Giles Tilotson who argued that the skills and technology required to build the Taj Mahal did not exist in pre-Mughal India.
After this debacle, Oak revised his theory in 1989, claiming that Taj Mahal was actually a reused 12th century Shaiva temple, which he also took to the Supreme Court of India in 2000. His petition was swiftly dismissed for lack of historical evidence.
Oak is denied his glory moment even in the movie, where his theories are regurgitated, but his name is not even mentioned once in the movie. Perhaps even the filmmakers were embarrassed to reveal that the theory was not given by a historian but by a lawyer who also claimed that the religion of Christianity was originally “Krishna Neeti” (policy of Puranic god Krishna).
When Cheeseburgers Replace Architecture Lessons
In the long courtroom scenes, it is only the State’s lawyer, Anwar Rashid, that provides all the historical evidence in favour of Taj Mahal being a Mughal monument. Das counters this barrage of evidence with mere polemics and comic relief.
When an archaeologist from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is brought as the State’s witness and explains the double dome of the Taj to testify how its architecture is unmistakably Mughal, Das scoffs at it by remarking that a cheeseburger stays a cheeseburger even if you put extra cheese in it.
He then proceeds to show the domes of pre-Sultanate temples as some clinching evidence of how the technology to build domes existed before the Turks made political inroads in India.
Since anti-intellectualism is at the heart of the movie, it presumes all domes, everywhere are the same. The domical ceilings in pre-Sultanate temples, known as karotaka, or the corbelled domes have little in common with the bulbous pendentive double dome made for the Taj Mahal.
Since anti-intellectualism is at the heart of the movie, it presumes all domes, everywhere are the same. The domical ceilings in pre-Sultanate temples, known as karotaka, or the corbelled domes have little in common with the bulbous pendentive double dome made for the Taj Mahal.
No example of a pendentive dome exists in any pre-Turk monument in India. This is why all domes as well as cheeseburgers are not the same, it is how they are made that makes a difference!
Taking cues from media reporting of recent contested sites, the movie flashes on screen stray marks on stones employed in the Taj Mahal, dubs them “vedic chinh (vedic symbols)” and tries to pass it off as evidence of Taj being a Hindu temple. Marks on stones such as that of a swastika, lotus, trident, fish are mason marks made by stone masons working on the construction site of any monument. These exist in many monuments across India, most notably in the Sanchi stupa, which is certainly not a Hindu temple.
The film wants the viewer to believe it’s a quest for “truth” and “history”, but it feels more like an assault on Indian history, and on historians themselves.
Drunk on WhatsApp forwards, Das drones on and on against “vampanthi itihaskar” (left historians) for not mentioning Hindu rulers such as the Cholas or Hindu monuments such as Ajanta caves in textbooks.
He “grills” a historian teaching at NU, possibly a pun at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, on why the syllabus is so biased towards the Mughals and doesn’t mention their atrocities. “Mughalon ne hazaron mandir tode, lakhon Hindu qatal kiye” (Mughals destroyed thousands of temples and killed lakhs of Hindus) croons Das, but as a true anti-intellectual who takes his refuge in vagueness, he does not informs us which historical sources give such a data.
Inventing a ‘Hindu Genocide’
Trying hard to portray the Mughal rulers as bigoted despots, Das claims that the Taj’s history is not “pyaar ki atoot kahani” (an endless saga of love), it is instead a symbol of atrocity and Hindu genocide. The evidence given for the “Hindu genocide” is the severe famine of 1631 that raged in Gujarat as well as Deccan described in the 17th Persian source Padshahnama by the historian-traveller Abdul Hamid Lahori.
Das uses this to label Shah Jahan as the proverbial Nero who was busy commencing the construction of Taj Mahal and acquiring money for it even as his subjects were dying of hunger.
What the movie deliberately omits is that the Padshahnama details how Shah Jahan ordered several relief measures to counter the famine, including the establishment of several soup kitchens (langar), where food was served free to all, as well as Rs 5,000 rupees every week were distributed among the people in Burhanpur. As Ahmedabad was hit the hardest, Rs 50,000 were distributed from the Mughal emperor’s treasury to the famine-stricken people. But what’s even more disingenuous is to label a famine as a “Hindu genocide”, as if only Hindus were struck by famine and died of hunger or that such a calamity was planned by Shah Jahan himself.
What the movie promotes is anti-intellectualism, where experts in their fields are not to be taken seriously. A scene in the movie exemplifies this attitude quite well: a female journalist quizzes Das’s fellow guides on the myth of the Black Taj Mahal. The guides reply with full confidence that Shah Jahan wanted to construct a Black Taj Mahal opposite the existing one.
When the journalist asserts that the ASI refutes this theory for want of evidence, the guides say “Hum yahan roz kaam kartey hain, ASI ko kya pata, humein pata hai” (We work here at the Taj Mahal daily, the ASI knows nothing, we know).
To hone this point further, Das questions another scholar in court, Rehan Habib (possibly a pun at the stalwart of Indian history, Irfan Habib?) on the Padshahnama, which details how the land for the Taj Mahal was obtained by Shah Jahan.
Habib is presented a passage from the book in Persian and is asked to read it. He stammers and replies, “Meri Farsi pe command acchi nahin hai!” (My command on the Persian language is not good). Das uses this to brand vampanthi itihaskar as jahil (uncouth) and desh ke dushman (enemies of the state) who have ruined Indian history scholarship with their “intellectual terrorism”.
If this is truly a reference to Professor Irfan Habib, I would like to inform the reader that he has read more Persian documents and translated them than any other scholar of medieval Indian history.
Fake Archaeology and Fictional Evidence
This is where the movie’s narrative lies, in fictional scenarios.
Historians don’t know Persian, domes are cheeseburgers, and Muslims walk around with a diabolical grimace. When all else fails, the movie creates three fictional archaeologists: two Indians, VN Vats and Yogesh Bhatt; and one American, Peter Williams.
Of course one had to be a white man, who just like in the colonial times, must be the arbiter of Hindu-Muslim disputes. Williams is shown in the movie as having obtained a sample of wood from one of the Taj’s door to take with him to America and carbon date the Taj.
Not only is the archaeologist fake in the movie, but so is the archaeology! Williams frustratingly touches the sample with bare hands, thereby contaminating it for C-14 dating. Das shares the C-14 results with the audience, which date the Taj to 1359 CE. The other two fictional archaeologists are shown to have visited the tehkhane (underground chambers) under the Taj and obviously find images of Hindu deities. This was my favourite part of the movie, for it is here, that it finally admits that the “evidence” for Taj Mahal being a pre-Mughal temple is firmly rooted in fiction.
(Dr Ruchika Sharma is a Delhi based historian and professor. She also runs Dr Ruchika Sharma Official, a YouTube channel on Indian history. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)