On Monday, Donald Trump arrives in India. As part of the United States President’s itinerary, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath will ...
On Monday, Donald Trump arrives in India. As part of the United States President’s itinerary, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath will take him to see the Taj Mahal.
This shouldn’t be too surprising. There is no other single Indian monument more famous than the Taj Mahal. In a poll conducted in 2007, the Taj Mahal in Agra was voted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. So treasured is it as a monument of humanity, a picture of it was included among the 115 images on the Voyager spacecraft when it was launched in 1977. In case the vehicle was discovered by intelligent extraterrestrial life, the scientists who launched Voyager wanted them to know that earthlings had built the Taj Mahal.
Trump has himself attempted to profit from the fame of the monument, building a casino called the Trump Taj Mahal in the United States. (He made money from it but the establishment did not._
Yet, there’s one group of people who really isn’t as sold on the Taj as Trump and the rest of the world: Hindu nationalists.
Anti-Taj Mahal
Given that it was built as a mausoleum by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, Hindutva supporters have launched a series of attacks on the monument. In 2017, the Taj Mahal was left...
