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The act has to be interpreted in terms of the one who committed it. From what Babur has written about himself in his Babur Nama, it is clear that his intention was also to spread Islam. His actions after his victories also attest to this fact. It is true that he had a political mantle in terms of being a ruler. But in Islam most of the rulers also did take all actions to propagate their religion. This is something that has happened all over the world, and the treatment meted out in India to the Hindus is no exception.
In the English translation of the Persian diary of Babur Nama, Annete Beveridge mentions specifically the destruction of the temple. She says that Babur was impressed with the dignity and sanctity of the ancient Hindu shrine at the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi. She also says that as an obedient follower of Mohammed, Babur regarded the substitution of the temple by a mosque as a dutiful and worthy religious act.
If Babur was purely a political person, there would have been no need, one, to destroy a place of worship of the indigenous people and, two, to construct an alien place of worship and/or victory monument where such destruction took place. The fact that the Babri structure was built after destroying a temple in honour of Shri Rama establishes the religious nature of the act.
Whether it was built as a religious or a political act, the Babri structure, supposed to be a Muslim place of worship, would still be termed as a monument of the slavery and subjugation of the Hindus. |