Tajmahal:A Vedic Temple Vandalized

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Tajmahal - The True Story (The Tale of a Temple Vandalized)

 

ISBN NUMBER: 0-9611614-4-2

NUMBER OF PAGES: 314

PRICE: $10.95 (paper back)

AUTHOR: Purushottam Nagesh Oak

PUBLISHER: A. Ghosh (Publisher), Houston, Texas, USA

YEAR PUBLISHED: 1969

REVIEWER(S): Howard Spickler of New South Wales, Australia. This

review was first published by the Rationalist Association of New

South Wales, Australia and printed by the Sydney Freethought Press

and then in the Weekly Organiser of New Delhi, India.

 

 

M ark Twain once observed "That a lie can travel half-way around the

world before truth can put its trousers on". On the subject of which

this book deals, the lie has traveled much further and wider.

Supplied with a harvest of informative details, the reader is invited

to judge for himself just where the truth lies.

 

The offering is an intriguing expose of how deliberate falsehood can

become embedded in popular belief as a proven reality. It is all in

keeping with tall tales and frauds that ignorance embraces, such as

the memoirs of Moses, Prophet's chats with the ghost and the Jesus

swindle. All shining examples of how shrewd deception can proliferate

to an extent that truth becomes buried in the sand of time.

 

My interest in this revelation is not generated by any love for

temples or palaces as such, being aware of what they represent, but

because this book lays bare the convenient smothering of truth in the

interest of religious imposition and romantic fiction.

 

The author is to be commended for the years of persistent research

effort to uncover facts, biographies and documents, together with a

demonstration by logical reasoning which sets the seal of fraud on

the spurious claim that the Tajmahal of India was built as a marble

mausoleum monument by a distressed, lovesick Moslem Emperor for one

of his wives.

 

Mr. Oak is well qualified to speak with authority and confidence on

Indian history, culture and the Vedic heritage. A journalist and

author of several books concerning Moslem desecrations and

conversions of Hindu temples and constructions, he was born into an

Indian family and has earned degrees from Agra and Bombay

Universities. He has spoken English, Sanskrit, Marathi and Hindi with

fluency since childhood.

 

His constant appeals to have the historical truth recognised have met

with opposition and apathy from almost every direction. Hoodwinked

historians, encyclopaedias and negligent so called experts, more keen

on saving face than capitulating, and an obstinate Indian government

unwilling to be offside with the Moslem minority.

 

I have checked all my own references to the Tahmahal and the notation

is always the same - that the Mogul (Moslem-Mongol) Emperor,

Shahjahan, commissioned the building of the Taj. The author fully

demonstrates otherwise by exposing the wealth of incongruities in

this fictional abomination that has fooled an unsuspecting public for

centuries and thus denied the skilled creators their rightful place

in the honest history of architecture.

 

The outstanding white marble building complex, considered the most

exquisite architectural edifice in the world, is, without doubt, a

former Hindu Rajput Palace Temple. Designed by a gifted architect and

consummated by talented craftsmen, this masterpiece was stolen and

crudely vandalized by a conceited Mogul burglar. We are informed that

similar desecration and usurpation has occurred all over India and in

other countries where the butchering tide of Islamic interlopers

spread their tentacles.

 

Shahjahan, the fifth Mogul Emperor and descendant of the Mongol

murderer, Tamerlane (Timur-Leng), has been loosely depicted as a

just, benevolent and caring ruler of artistic taste and a devoted

husband. The real unforged accounts expose the man as a mean, cruel,

conceited and lecherous tyrant, indulging in incest with at least one

of his daughters.

 

His behavior so disgusted his father, Emperor Jahangir, that he

finally disowned him. To make sure of securing the throne he stooped

to the murder of his brothers and some relatives. This degenerate

vandal was no builder or Romeo but a congenital misfit and destroyer,

and yet tourists and students are subjected to a dose of maudlin

mush.

 

He assumed the throne at Delhi in 1628 and in 1630 this supposed love

of his life died in childbirth after eighteen years of marriage.

During those years he demonstrated his devotion and affection by

keeping her in a bloated condition in order to produce fourteen

children. It should be noted that she was only one of several wives

and hundreds of concubines. He undoubtedly used her death as a lever

to dispossess the Rajah Jaisingh of his ancestral palace for the

purpose of a tomb monument for himself and his wife. It is little

known but there are two more of his ladies buried there. What is so

striking about the whole Taj complex is that it is of such a

stupendous scale that it positively lacks any sense as a mausoleum,

but is entirely suggestive of a Rajah's palace. The very name of

Tajmahal or Tejo Mahalaya - meaning a crown residence - is not

remotely Moslem.

 

The deception revealed by Mr. Oak is truly astonishing. The

structures contain over 350 rooms and great suites, most of which

have been walled up. Fourteen basement rooms, adjuncts of a palace,

filled in with bricks and sand, while many balconies, corridors and

staircases are closed off. For the convenience of the dead there are

pleasure pavilions, stables, guards' quarters, a sacred cow pen and a

four storeyed well. A subterranean escape tunnel to the fort ensures

a quick exit for the corpses in the event of invaders! The octagon

style is representative of many Indian constructions and is

distinctly Hindu, having special religious significance by

acknowledging the gods who rule the eight compass directions.

Similarly, the four round marble towers are not minarets but

meaningful as four Shiva religious symbols. A minaret rises from the

shoulder of a mosque and is frankly an ugly appendage. These four

served as watch towers and when lit up at night created an elegant

spectacle.

 

Two cenotaphs in the central chamber under the dome have replaced the

looting of gem-studded peacock throne, gold canopy and solid gold

railing, while the silver doors and other adornments were also added

to the Mogul's plunder. Further vulgar defacing indulged in by

inscribing of religious graffiti in tasteless abandon throughout the

complex.

 

The death and burial of Arjumand Begum (alias Mumtaz Mahal) took

place at Burhanpur, and six months later the corpse was exhumed and

brought to Agra for reburial. If, as claimed, the Taj took from ten

to twenty years to construct - take a pick - why uproot the body so

soon and where was it kept for this long period? The answer, of

course, is in the already existing Tajmahal.

 

In the Badshanama, the official court chronicles in Persian of

Shahjahan's reign, it states in part: "Amidst a majestic lush

garden...the building known as the palace (manzil)...at present owned

by Rajah Jaisingh, was selected for burial of the queen...this palace

so majestic and capped with a dome...next year that illustrious body

was laid to rest."

 

It is rather curious that there is nothing in these chronicles which

give a clue to a designer, supervisors or material purchases for such

a unique and expensive project. In contrast, I am aware that a

complete record and costing by Phillip II of Spain for the

construction of the huge Escorial in 1584 is still extant, right down

to the smallest item.

 

Carbon dating of architrave timber by a sceptical American professor,

along with other scarce, recorded clues, show conclusively that the

Tajmahal originated as a Shiva Temple Palace and as having been

constructed about 1155 C.E.

 

The wealth of fascinating observations and details with which the

author floods this book cannot be covered in a review. However, it is

enough to show that a definite travesty of truth and an impertinent

cover-up is being maintained.

 

It is long passed the time for the descendants of the original

developers of the art and crafts of India to speak out and act, as a

duty to themselves and to do honor and justice to the skills of their

ancestors.