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But now the Taj is being rejected even by India’s own government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which now rules Uttar Pradesh, has apparently decided that it wants as little to do with it as possible. The reason comes down to religious chauvinism.
Uttar Pradesh’s new chief minister, a saffron-robed Hindu monk named Yogi Adityanath, initiated the assault on the Taj by condemning the state government’s former practice of offering models of the Taj as gifts to visiting foreign dignitaries. Declaring that the monument does not “reflect Indian culture,” Adityanath announced that the government would hand out copies of the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, instead.
Furthering this erasure, the Uttar Pradesh tourism department issued a brochure of the state’s main attractions, but left out the Taj Mahal, the state’s (and the country’s) main tourism destination. The government, preferring to promote Hindu religious tourism, such as the attractions of the holy city of Varanasi, has denied any cultural heritage funding to the Taj Mahal in the current fiscal year.
To outsiders, the BJP’s campaign against the Taj Mahal might seem bizarre. Why would anyone, let alone a country’s ruling party, want to undermine a universally admired – and revenue-generating – architectural marvel? And yet anyone familiar with the BJP knows that its attacks on the Taj are just one manifestation of the party’s politics of hatred toward anything connected to the history of Muslim rule in India. Full story...
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But now the Taj is being rejected even by India’s own government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which now rules Uttar Pradesh, has apparently decided that it wants as little to do with it as possible. The reason comes down to religious chauvinism.
Uttar Pradesh’s new chief minister, a saffron-robed Hindu monk named Yogi Adityanath, initiated the assault on the Taj by condemning the state government’s former practice of offering models of the Taj as gifts to visiting foreign dignitaries. Declaring that the monument does not “reflect Indian culture,” Adityanath announced that the government would hand out copies of the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, instead.
Furthering this erasure, the Uttar Pradesh tourism department issued a brochure of the state’s main attractions, but left out the Taj Mahal, the state’s (and the country’s) main tourism destination. The government, preferring to promote Hindu religious tourism, such as the attractions of the holy city of Varanasi, has denied any cultural heritage funding to the Taj Mahal in the current fiscal year.
To outsiders, the BJP’s campaign against the Taj Mahal might seem bizarre. Why would anyone, let alone a country’s ruling party, want to undermine a universally admired – and revenue-generating – architectural marvel? And yet anyone familiar with the BJP knows that its attacks on the Taj are just one manifestation of the party’s politics of hatred toward anything connected to the history of Muslim rule in India. Full story...
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