Hindutva outfits pasted the images of prominent Mughal emperors – Aurangzeb and Babur in toilets and urinal pots in Uttar Pradesh’s Pilkhuwa town of Hapur district. The incident reportedly occurred on Wednesday, February 26.
The radical outfit members filmed the instance and uploaded it on social media in which the group clad in saffron scarves are seen pasting images of Mughal empire founder Babur and the longest-reigning Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on public toilet walls and urinals.
After pasting emperor Aurangzeb and Babur’s images, the radicals proceeded to beat it with shoes, claiming to have renamed the facilities.
On February 23, a group of Hindutva goons spat and urinated on the Akbar Road signboard in Delhi. The group then put a poster of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on the same board.
In the past few years, several Hindutva groups and far-right politicians have launched an aggressive campaign across India, demanding to rename Mughal-era landmarks, including cities, roads and institutions, as well as school book chapters related to the Mughal kings and their administration.
Bharatiya Janata Party-led state governments have frequently renamed cities with Muslim-associated names to ones with Hindu ones. For example, the historical city of Allahabad was renamed to Prayagraj by the Yogi Adityanath government. Similarly, in Maharashtra, Aurangabad was changed to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar. This was done to honour the second king of the Maratha empire, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, who was kidnapped and tortured to death by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
Right-wing outfits and politicians have often justified such conduct by asserting their goal to recover India’s true heritage and label Mughal rulers as foreign enemies who persecuted the Hindu community throughout their rule.
The campaign gained significant traction, particularly following the release of Chhaava, a Bollywood action movie that depicted Mughal emperor Aurangzeb as a villainous figure. Alarmingly, this rhetoric has fueled communal tensions and hatred-based attacks in India as Hindutva groups demand that contemporary Indian Muslims should take responsibility for Aurangzeb’s alleged past actions.
