Syed Ali Mujtaba l Clarion India
KOLHAPUR – Anti-Muslim feelings have so much seeped into the minds of Hindu youth today that they are looking at Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, as anti-national and some Hindutva fanatics smashed his portrait hung on the wall of a biryani outlet in Kolhapur city.
A group of young men belonging to a Hindutva outfit objected smashed the portrait claiming that the 1857 revolt hero was the descendant of Muslim ruler Aurangzeb, considered by them to be a bigot.
The Hindutva hooligans called the last Mughal emperor a “descendant of Aurangzeb” and declared that his portrait has no place in Hindu society because, according to them, Aurangzeb was a fanatic who hated Hindus.
The hooligans do not accept the historical fact that Bahadur Shah Zafar was the leader of India’s first war of independence and was taken as a prisoner and exiled to Rangoon for his role in the 1857 mutiny.
According to an officer of Rajarampuri police station in Kolhapur, “Some young men, who belong to a Hindu organization, visited the biryani outlet to eat non-veg food and saw the portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar hanging on the wall. The misguided elements objected to it and asked the eatery staff to remove it. “The biryani outlet staff agreed, but the portrait was not removed.”
This group of miscreants again visited the eatery shop the next day and when they found the picture still hanging on the wall, they took it down and smashed it up with their boots,” the officer said.
“Police have been informed about the incident but they have not filed an FIR against anyone,” local sources informed the media.
Bahadur Shah Zafar was the 20th and the last Mughal emperor of India. He died at the age of 87 in 1862 in Rangoon lamenting that he could not get even two yards of land in his own homeland for his burial.
The Hindu nationalists in today’s India have declared him to be a anti-national and anti-Hindu. They are not willing to tolerate even his portrait being hung in a Muslim biryani shop. This suggests the level of toleration left in some Hindu youth today. They are not even ready for acknowledging that the last Mughal king was a champion of Hindu-Muslim unity who exhorted members of both the communities to unitedly participate in the country’s first war of independence.
