Why the 17th Century Emperor's grave Aurangzeb is India's last Flashpoint | Policy

New Delhi, India – Shirke's date has not left her home for the past two days and is afraid of her family safety. Vehicles parked in the tape where he lives were burned in the Hindu-Muslim sectarian clashes.

Only a kilometer (about 1.5 km away), Aslama, who demanded to be identified only by his name, is similarly horrified. He avoids returning home where he lives with his wife and mother because he is afraid to be arrested by police, for whom he believes innocent Muslims. “I did nothing.

Both are residents of Nagpur, a city of three million people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, where on Monday the violence broke out for the future of the tomb of the long-dead, 17th-century Aurangzeb ruler.

Police have imposed a police hour and more than 50 people – mostly Muslims – have been arrested in attacks before a planned visit on March 30 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Nagpur. The city also hosts the Rashtria headquarters Swayaamsevak Sang, the party's ideological parent Bharatiy Jana's Modi and his Hindu majority allies.

So why are a city that is otherwise taken into India because its oranges exploded in inter -religious clashes? Who was Aurangzeb? And why does his inheritance still divide India?

Why did Nagpur burst into violence?

Last week, BJP parliamentary from Maharashtra raised a call for excavations on the grave of the Mogola Emperor.

Nearly 100 volunteers associated with the far -right group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) organized a protest in Nagpur on Monday, demanding the demolition of Aurangzeb's grave, which they were said to have been discriminated against the Hindus and attacked their places of worship during his reign from 1658

“This grave is a black place in our country,” said Ait Bypai, a VHP spokesman, who was also one of the organizers of the protest. “We gathered close to a square and burned Aurangzeb's Efigia, wrapped in green fabric in the presence of police.”

“It is our democratic right to demand what we feel right,” he added.

But other viewers, including Muslim stores, have asked the police to stop the demonstration, especially in the Holy Month Ramadan, said Asif Kureshi, a lawyer and former chairman of the Maharashtra Bar Council, who lives in the neighborhood.

The widespread rumors that the green fabric has used to wrap the Efigs, there are Koran poems written on it that anger Muslims. That evening, after breaking their quickly and offering prayers to Magrib, groups of Muslims conducted a counter -protest asking the police to register a case against VHP members.

“Unfortunately, things soon came out of use and the angry people began to encounter,” Kureshi told Al Jazeera.

Since then, police have remained, with police barricades throwing away the part of the city where clashes have erupted. And there was a police repression. Kureshi said police should arrest Muslims who were involved in clashes, but instead “arrested innocents who were just offering prayers.”

After the collisions, Bypay from VHP said it was ignited. “Now we will resist even more difficult.

Meanwhile, Maharash's Chief Minister Devendra Faddravis seems to suggest that a recent Bollywood film, which introduces Aurangzeb as a villain, may have played a role in inflammation of Hindu sentiments. Chhawa, the film invents battles between the ruler of Mogol and the Maraths, who ruled large parts of today's Maharashtra. The movie, Faddavis said, brought to the fore “Public anger against Aurangzeb”. Faddavis also belongs to the BJP of Prime Minister Modi.

Who was Aurangzeb?

One of the most powerful rulers who ruled the Indian subcontinent, Aurangzeb's grave is not in Nagpur. It is located more than 450 km (280 miles) from Nagpur, in a city that until 2023 was named after the ruler – Aurangabad – and has since been renamed by Chitpathi Samhajinagar.

The name has been changed under pressure from Hindu majority groups, who have long viewed Aurangzeb as the most clumpy villain in the modern history of India. But historians claim that he had a more complicated heritage than Aurangzeb's portraits, which today dominate India.

Aurangzeb inherited a strong empire where he ascended after closing his father and killed his brother. But the Emperor's main power was also unmatched on the battlefield in his time and excellent in the construction of alliances, said Audrey Trushke, historian and author of the book Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth.

His policies were heavily influenced by another Emperor of Mogol, his great -grandfather Akbar, Trushke said.

“Aurangzeb brought all kinds of groups to the empire – as a prince he traveled throughout the empire and read;

But Aurangzeb also imposed difficult Islamic laws, and there was a discriminatory tax that residents of Hindus need to pay in exchange for protection. “Aurangzeb was a very complicated king, with many countries to him,” Trushke said.

While the Hindu far right often presents Aurangzeb as a religious jealousy, said Trushke, the Mugola emperor repeatedly showed during his reign that he was led by faith – but of power. “Every time the piety and power are conflict, he has chosen power,” she said. “Every time.”

Why is Aurangzeb so separating in India?

Many historians pointed out that at that time the kings were not democratic. In many ways, Trushke said, “Aurangzeb is not particularly deviant from the Indian kings in the pre -modern period.”

But the British colonialists have defiled him, she said. The Hindu nationalist movement, to which BJP and RSS belong “essentially repeat the propaganda from the colonial era,” she added.

This anti-Awangzeb moods are increasingly playing in aggressive, even violent ways.

In 2024, four people were arrested for raising Aurangzeb posters as a procession. In June 2023, an Instagram publication by the ruler landed a 14-year-old Muslim boy in prison. In 2022, the Modi Government changed textbooks on high school and the history of the high school, cutting pieces of heads for the Mughal Empire, including the removal of a mass, in which the achievements of emperors such as Aurangzeb and his ancestors were described in detail.

For many fans of Modi and his policy, Aurangzeb is not just a story. It is believed that it is believed to have supported the destruction of many temples – but it is also known to have provided grants and land to other Hindu shrines.

Now the Hindu nationalists have filed a lawsuit to the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, the Modi Parliamentary constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. They claim that the mosque was built on the ruins of the Vivanat Temple, the Hindu shrine of the 16th century, destroyed in 1669 by the orders of Aurangzeb.

Turning to an event in Varanasi in 2022, Prime Minister Modi talks about “Aurangzeb's Cruelty, his terror,” adding that “he tried to change civilization from the sword, he tried to crush the culture with fanaticism.” Modi has referred to his name several times.

The day after the clashes in Nagpur, Faddavis, Maharashra's chief minister, said: “It is a pity that the government should take responsibility for the defense of Aurangzeb's grave, despite the history of its persecution.”

Aurangzeb's tomb is protected as a monument of national importance by India's archaeological survey under a 1958 law, which protects it from unauthorized changes or destruction.

As the tension continues to simmer in Nagpur, residents and local activists fear that more violence may be around the corner.

“There is no trust or faith in each other,” Shirke said. “I cannot trust that my neighbor is not waiting to hurt my family next chance to get.” Muslim residents live in fear of attacks, Kureshi said, hoping that state authorities will cope with the situation without bias.

However, for Trushke, Hindu maximum mania for history is about the hatred of this movement for Muslims, whether in the past or the present. Knowledge of history is crucial to understanding how communities and nations are shaped, she said. “But the lawsuit about what may have happened in the 17th century is a crazy idea.”