Shah Alamgir, that high and mighty king,
Pride and renown of Gurgan Timur’s Line
In whom Islam attained a loftier fame
And wider owner graced the Prophet’s law
God chose from India,
That humble minded warrior, Alamgir,
Religion to revive, faith to renew.
An Abraham in India’s idol-house
In all the lines of kings he stands alone
His tomb is witness to his saintliness.
When reading these lines one might have started having the perception that how great a ruler Alamgir was? Since Allama has called him saint, he must be admired across the India with the people across religious divide praising him for his good deeds. He must be the ruler of people. Noone in his reign must have slept hungry, everyone was free to worship whichever God he liked. But alas, none of this was true. In fact the truth is exactly opposite of what Allama is trying to portray here. The glorification of all the religious hatred and bigotry committed by Aurangzeb against Non-Muslims (especially against Hindus and Sikhs) is terribly awful, although not surprising since it is coming from Iqbal who was known throughout 20th century for spewing venom against Non-Muslims. The list of crimes by Aurangzeb on Hindus and Sikhs is long and it will take more than a blog to elaborate but let me start with some of the more famous ones.
- Execution of Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur: Forced conversion was most rampant during Aurangzeb’s reign, unlike his predecessor which were more benign on their Non muslim subjects, it was not the case with Aurangzeb. For Hindus and Sikhs alike, it was more like either get converted to Islam or die. One of the key voice against such forced conversion was revered Guru Tegh Bahadur. This kind of protests was not very pleasing to Aurangzeb with weak ego. Tolerance wasn’t a thing he was taught, the only thing this psychopath learnt was to kill, kill and kill kaafirs. Guruji was beheaded in Delhi where Sisganj gurdwara is situated at present.
- Destruction of the following temples, list is non exhaustive and listing down only most famous ones
- Somnath
- Kaashi Vishwanath
- Krishna Janmabhoomi temple, Mathura
- Jagdish Mandir, Udaipur
- 63 temples within the premise of Chittor fort. The story of destruction is very well documented in history. The reasons were also pretty clear, an attack against infidel and idol worshippers. Reading all these reasons, you must have gotten a better picture of how “saintly” and “humble” Aurangzeb was?
Now coming to one of the worst Sher by Iqbal from “Zauq O Shauq”, for his second love of life Ghazanvi
क्या नहीं और ग़ज़नवी कारगह-ए-हयात में
बैठे हैं कब से मुंतज़िर अहल-ए-हरम के सोमनात!
Are there not any more Ghazanvi in this world,
The idol of somanath is waiting for a long time (to get broken).
Now this is the lowest of all any human being can fall. Disgusting would be an understatement for this sher. This shows the kind of wicked mindset Allama had, how he is aspiring to have a sadistic pleasure in destruction of gods and killing of “infidel” worshippers. In 1026 Ghazni robbed and murdered thousands of people in Somnath during his raid to India. As clear from this sher, that instead of Somnath waiting it was Iqbal deep desire to see Somnath again being destroyed, but “sadly” he died without seeing his dream fulfilled.
So this is Iqbal in a nutshell, another religious bigot and extremist wishing for infidels to get wiped off from the face of this earth. This is not surprising why Pakistan is still struggling with extremism, when your founding father has such a divisive and extremist view this will get reflected in the nation-state as well.