Shah Jahan's Ruse

Transcript:- “Shame is like everything else. Live with it long enough and it becomes part of the furniture”. The quote by Salman Rushdie sums up this narrative about a piece of ideological fiction, a ruse if you will, playing right under our noses the past four centuries. Shah Jahan did not construct the Taj Mahal. The Mogul appropriated the Hindu Temple-Palace from a Rajput resident, renovated it to conceal its Vedic-inspired origins, and laid claim to constructing it. Period.

The syndicated discourse says the reign of the Moguls in India were free, fair and even romantic. For instance, it says the Taj Mahal was born out of a sad story of love and that Shah Jahan, a distraught widower and the 17th century emperor of India at the time, took 22 years to construct the mausoleumin memory of one of his dead wives. 

Two points are accurate. Shah Jahan indeed commanded India and that he was a Mogul.
Some describe him as a romantic sort, perhaps because the polygamist he was, maintained a harem of women and had an incestuous relationship with his own daughter, which he infamously justified by saying, “a gardener has every right to taste the fruit he planted. “Every other point is a fallacy given that the complex can hardly be described as a mausoleum when you have 22 residential apartments within and a seven-storey deep, multi-tiered water well still drawing water from the Yamuna river, next door. 

I mean, who in his right mind would build a mausoleum for his dead wife and equip it with apartments, not to mention, a life-sustaining water well? Then, you have forced conversions and the sad practice of suttee that emerged during their reign, which underscored the brutality of the Moguls, rather than their inclination to romance; and more pertinent is that the instinct of the Moguls to usurp saw destruction of a plethora of Hindu temples.
Some of the larger temples were converted into Islamic structures. The Ram Jamboomi of Ayodaya and The Krishna Temple of Mardura are notable examples.

Shah Jahan did not construct the Taj Mahal, simply because the Vedic architectured Hindu Temple-Palace was already in existence, several centuries before his time. The Mogul shamelessly appropriated the Temple-Palace from the Maharaja of Jaipur via an executive order, renovated it, to conceal its Vedic inspired origins, and then laid claim to constructing it. This position is proven, not only by the very executive order that survived, but by his own court chronicle, the Badshahnarma, that explicitly explains the reason for the appropriation, not to mention volumes of research and references by historians over a century, culminating with, a milestone scientific examination by carbon-dating.


This new science humbled two religion-inspired claims. The authenticity of the Shroud of Turin and the actual age of the Taj Mahal. Christians are told that the shroud, that supposedly bore the original image of Jesus, is not a 2000-year-old fabric but a 500-year-old fake. Carbon-dating confirmed its age. Reports from 3 organizations humbled the Archbishop of Turin, the keeper of the shroud, but to his credit, the Archbishop did not challenge the official findings. It appears the ruse originated from a talented French artist of the 15th century. Christians generally are tickled by the revelation leaving the die-haard, some of whom adorn blessed prints of the fabric in their homes, embarrassed.

On the other hand, to the chagrin of the fundamentalist, Shah Jahan’s Ruse is deadly serious, if not outright comical. It is serious, because an official revelation of the 17th century scandal is likely to result in a violent religious upheaval.
It is hilarious, because the Mogul usurper and his conspirators would never have envisioned that the advancement of science would eventually unravel the ruse and render his legacy in India, a laughing stock.

Science in itself, does not discern reactions to its revelations, but it appears the perceived sophistry of official academia is the culprit perpetuating the myth, even though a cursory reading of the evidence, coupled with some basic common sense, is able to trump, the official story. 
At the outset, the official academia asserts that the architecture of the edifice is entirely Islamic, but when pointed out that the Lotus-capped dome, the four corner pillars, with those baby staging elephants that support them, and the life-sustaining water well, are typically Vedic in design and construction, it responds by saying that Hindu artisans influenced the design. Thus, failing the argument, by suggesting that the artisans who were Hindu, who Shah Jahan in an apparent attempt to hide the truth had their limbs and tongues separated from their anatomy after their work was done, were indeed more influential in the design of the mausoleum, than the architects who were Muslim.


As it stands, even in politically-correct India, Shah Jahan's only claim to fame is that he is benchmarked as a stupendous sex machine, given that he was a serial polygamist with a sizable harem of young women to boot; and little consolation to the usurped theatre of Vedic culture is that 1. the unmistakable and distinct Vedic architecture of the Taj Mahal emanates with pride to this day despite Jahan's attempts to erase it. 2. Jahan himself was later imprisoned until his death by his son, who’s propagation of his father's myth, in turning this ideological piece of fiction into reality, is another story.

Thank you for listening.

This commentary was published by Tommy Peters in November 2010. The slide-show depicts images from Stephen Knapp and V.S. Godbole (and are used without express permission)

Words, Videography – Tommy Peters

(The animation was created in Xtranormal)