How Hindu Nationalists Politicized the Taj Mahal

Perhaps no single building is more associated with India and Indian history than the Taj Mahal. The story behind the building is almost as famous as its architecture, a paragon of the Indo-Islamic style. In the mid-17th century, the grieving Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, using 20,000 laborers over 20 years, constructed the enormous mausoleum for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after she died during childbirth.

In time, the Taj Mahal, with its milky white, meticulously carved and decorated marble walls, became an eternal symbol of love and Mughal extravagance; Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once described it as “a teardrop on the cheek of time.” Designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, it receives over 7 million visitors each year.

Yet in October 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, not to include the Taj Mahal in the state’s, an ideology that seeks to place Hindu faith, culture, and history, at the core of Indian identity. It views the presence of foreigners throughout history as corrupting Indian civilization—especially Muslims who ruled large swathes of the subcontinent for centuries after descending from the Central Asian steppes. Narendra Modi, India’s BJP prime minister, has this period of history, along with British colonialism, as a period of slavery.