Is The Taj Mahal Pakistani ?

[OrionHunter]

And you take these text books seriously?

Nope! I don't, but this is what is taught in your schools!!

 

[syedali73]

We are talking about history books that are given to all young pakistani children to learn from, not fairy tales.
This is the official narrative of state of Pakistan.
Ironically even you seem to think its a fucking joke

These books are for young Pakistani children. What else remained to be explained?

Nope! I don't, but this is what is taught in your schools!!

So what? In your Schools taught about Bharat, which never existed as a 'country' before 1947.

 

[Spring Onion]

mehhhh thelast time i heard some hindus were claiming taj mahal was shiv temple or

 

[godofwar]

These books are for young Pakistani children. What else remained to be explained?

Ok you have established that you believe that this is bullshit meant for young Pakistani children.
Now two questions come to my mind
1.What is the true history then ?
2.Why are you teaching bullshit to the children of your country ?

I can't think of any other country that teaches false history to children,

 

[xyxmt]

Is the Taj Mahal Pakistani? - DAWN.COM

OF COURSE, this is an absurd question. How on earth could the Taj Mahal ‘be Pakistani’ and claim a nationality which was only imagined 400 years after the mausoleum was constructed, and one hopes that no one in their senses would ask such a preposterous question.

Yet, in a class of undergraduate students at one of Pakistan’s best universities, precisely this question was animatedly debated during a session on Pakistan’s history, with some students stating that the Taj was part of Pakistan’s history, and others implying that it was ‘Pakistani’.

These students had all taken a course in Pakistan Studies prior to starting their undergraduate degree. Clearly, the highly controversial and contested nature of how history is constructed in Pakistan, given the numerous possibilities of framing a history of Pakistan, allows for multiple competing narratives, including a claim to the Taj ‘being’ Pakistani.

Pakistani history has been a contentious topic where different sets of narratives give differing accounts of what Pakistani history is and, hence, how one imagines Pakistan.

Given the eventual partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan, some historians have claimed that Pakistan was ‘created’ in 712 AD when an Arab invader came to what is now part of Pakistan.

This is incorrectly called the beginning of Muslim contact with what is now referred to as South Asia, yet it supports one of the many official narratives of when Muslim ‘consciousness’ and identity were created in this region.

Other competing narratives look to the Delhi Sultanate, or the Mughal Empire, or events in the 19th century and 1857, crystallising into a separate Muslim identity which, inevitably led to Muslim ‘separatism’ and to the creation of Pakistan.

The question, when was Pakistan ‘created’, is one which simply works around a Muslims-are-different-from-Hindus discourse, culminating in a separate homeland.

Hence, if the history of Pakistan is the history of Muslims in India, and just as Mohammad bin Qasim can become part of a certain legacy and heritage and can be caricatured as the ‘first Pakistani’, so too can the Taj as ‘being’ Pakistani. Pakistani history and a history of Pakistan’s people and their land, become two conflicting narratives.

As a consequence, ‘Pakistani’ history, ignores the history of the people who live in what was Pakistan (West and East) and what is left of it. Mohenjodaro, Harappa, and the history of the people of Pakistan is dominated by a north Indian (largely Hindustani) Muslim history, and that too only of kings and their courts.

The Pakistan ‘freedom movement’ of course — and not the movement for independence from British colonialism for all Indian peoples — shapes this discourse more teleologically, once politics dominate undivided India in the 20th century.

The little writing that has taken place about Pakistani history is largely hagiographic and hyperbolic, where the project Pakistan with Muslims as a driving force is required to explain processes which led to the culmination of the events leading to August 1947.

The actors, or at least the heroes are almost always Muslim, and students seldom hear about the role Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Patel and Bose played in bringing about freedom for the 300 million Indians under colonialism.

One only hears of a handful of Muslim men who brought about freedom for Muslims from a Hindu majority. The British imperialists are inconsequential in this narrative, and are only responsible for making a mess of partition by not giving Pakistan many of the districts which are claimed on the basis of them being Muslim-majority areas.

In the most ingenious and creative recent book to be published on Pakistan’s emergence as a political idea, historian Faisal Devji in his Muslim Zion raises some fascinating and sophisticated arguments which complicate any simplistic notion of what passes as Pakistani history.

His book is a highly nuanced and multilayered understanding of the ideas which led to the justification and creation of Pakistan, and while many of Devji’s conceptualisations need to be contested, for our purposes his statement that Pakistan’s history lies outside its borders, gives rise to some of the problems of imagining a history of Pakistan described here, and allows some to claim the Taj Mahal as ‘Pakistani’.

Moreover, if this claim that Pakistan’s history lies ‘outside its borders’ is valid, and indeed in many critical ways this is certainly the case, it also implies, that the country which came into being called Pakistan, in this hegemonic notion of history, really has no history of its own. The so-called ‘freedom movement’ was fought in a foreign land, the land of the Taj Mahal, not the land of the people who inherited a country called Pakistan where their ancestors had lived for millennia.

Ascribing a status of nationality to brick and mortar — even the Taj Mahal — poses numerous challenging epistemological questions, yet the question of what Pakistani history is, remains unaddressed in a land still searching for understanding. Depending on how one answers this question, one is led through many ideological labyrinths and some geographical ones as well.

If Pakistan is imagined ideologically, then all one has to do is determine when Pakistan came in to being, clearly no easy task, and limiting oneself to a history of the Muslims in India, or a history of Islam in South Asia. If Pakistan is imagined geographically, the connotations of how the history of the peoples and lands of Pakistan is taught and understood, varies hugely.

The writer is a political economist.

anything that was built 100 years ago or before is as much ours as yours, only because it is in India doesnt make it yours...now what about urdu/hindi poetry and music ours or is it yours only

 

[janon]

So what? In your Schools taught about Bharat, which never existed as a 'country' before 1947.

Not really, Indian school textbooks teach about all the hisotry of the subcontinent, the various dynasties that ruled each region, including the sounth indian empires. And the british raj, and the subsequent history of the republic of India. School texts don't spout nonsense like the state of India existing before 1947.

 

[syedali73]

I can't think of any other country that teaches false history to children,

Every country does, including yours.

 

[GURU DUTT]

mehhhh thelast time i heard some hindus were claiming taj mahal was shiv temple or

Jama Masjid sales: British battle of 1857 for a very expensive war proved, which the British had gotten very bad economic situation, which he offset in the walls of the Red Fort, but also no more roots gems had not withdrawn ... Eventually, the British decided to sell only l Jama Masjid Jama Masjid of auction ... At that time, the British had too much of a Muslim's belief in not moving its mosque of awakened get saved ... At the end of the auction by a Hindu moneylender bought l the Jama Masjid that has a great many Hindu HOS moneylender khulvane suggest and entreaty but the hindu, he gave back the mosque Muslims by saying this. The only good reason is the reason l!!!
Hindu has always have all of the good, we have to date made any Mosque on Temple but history does confirm the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb has many Hindu temples and the tudvakar mosque was banva!!!!
Thus several Mughal rulers temples is famous, converted into a mosque which tejomhalay that today you know by the name of Taj Mahal!!!

 

[Mabs]

Either everything before partition is shared or nothing is, and that includes the Indus civilization or any other history which originated in the present day Pakistan. You can't have it both ways.

 

[syedali73]

Not really, Indian school textbooks teach about all the hisotry of the subcontinent, the various dynasties that ruled each region, including the sounth indian empires. And the british raj, and the subsequent history of the republic of India. School texts don't spout nonsense like the state of India existing before 1947.

I have not read Indian School books so cant comment. If that is the case, good for you.

 

[godofwar]

Every country does, including yours.

Nope what countries do is exaggerate or concentrate on specifics events.
Not make up bullshit like Pakistan does.

 

[janon]

anything that was built 100 years ago or before is as much ours as yours, only because it is in India doesnt make it yours...now what about urdu/hindi poetry and music ours or is it yours only

Poetry doesn't have a geographical location, unlike monuments and buildings. The poet or the musician does, so if you go by that definition, but anything written before 1947 cannot be classified as Indian only or Pakistani only.

 

[Vinod2070]

Either everything before partition is shared or nothing is, and that includes the Indus civilization or any other history which originated in the present day Pakistan. You can't have it both ways.

The Dharmic history (pre-Islamic history) exclusively belongs to us by the very raison d'etre of Pakistan.

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

Its a shared history of both the people of the sub-continent. Sooner the people realises it, the better. But calling it "Pakistani" alone is a over-statement.

 

[godofwar]

These books are for young Pakistani children. What else remained to be explained?

So what? In your Schools taught about Bharat, which never existed as a 'country' before 1947.

Will you then answer the question which Jungibaaz did not ?
Does the Colosseum have anything to do with Italy ?
After all it was built when Italy did not exist as a country according to your definition.

If no then explain how.
If yes then explain how Italy and India are different.

What you choose not see is that nations are made by people.
They do not suddenly prop up one day like was the case with Pakistan.
India got a govt. in 1947, it existed long before that.