Eyeless In Agra

Edward Lear, who wrote a lot of sense and some nonsense, declared after visiting the Taj: “Henceforth let the inhabitants of the world be divided in two classes—them as has seen the Taj Mahal and them as hasn’t.” In these times of strife over mandirs, masjids, maqbaras and mausoleums, we may amend it as ‘those who love the Taj and those who don’t’.

- R. Prasannan

In the latter group fall Aurangzeb, Aldous Huxley, Azam Khan and a few Sanghis like Sangeet Som and Vinay Katiyar. They all dislike the Taj.

Som, a BJP member of the UP Assembly, hates the Taj because he thinks it was built by a man who jailed his father. Som got his history wrong. The whole world knows that Shah Jahan was the victim—and not the perpetrator—of a familial atrocity committed by his son Aurangzeb.

Aurangzeb was a fiend of faith, but let’s be fair—he didn’t particularly despise the Taj. (Once it was built, he grudgingly spent on its upkeep.) The prince of parsimony didn’t like his father spending money on building tombs and towers of opulence. When his own beloved wife died, Aurangzeb spent from his own pocket to build a maqbara in Aurangabad. If you ask me, it looks like the Taj on a poverty diet.