By Syed Ali Mujtaba

Kolhapur: The anti-Muslim feelings have much seeped into the minds of Hindu youth today that they look at Bahadur Shah Zafar as anti-national and had smashed his portrait

The portrait of the last Mughal Emperor was hung on the wall of a biryani outlet in Kolhapur city and a group of young men belonging to the Hindutva outfit objected to it and smashed it up saying the 1857 revolt hero was the decedent of Muslim bigot Aurangzeb.

The Hindutva hooligans called the last Mughal emperor a “descendant of Aurangzeb” and declared that his portrait has no place in the Hindu society because according to them Aurangzeb was a Muslim fanatic who hated Hindus.

The hooligans do not accept the historical fact that Bahadur Shah Zafar was the leader of India’s first war of independence  and was taken as a prisoner and exiled to Rangoon for his role in the 1857 rebellion by the British.

According to an officer of Rajarampuri police station in Kolhapur, “Some young men, who belong to a Hindu organization, visited the biryani outlet to eat non-veg food and  saw the portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar hanging on the wall. The misguided elements objected to it, saying why the picture of a ‘descendant of Aurangzeb’ is hung on the wall and asked the eatery staff to remove it. “The biryani outlet staff agreed, but the portrait was not removed.”

This group of miscreants again visited the eatery shop the next day and when they found the picture still hanging on the wall, they took it down and smashed it up with their boots,” the officer, said.

“Police have been informed about the incident but they have not filed an FIR against anyone regarding the incident,” local sources informed the media.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was the 20th and the last Mughal emperor of India. He died at age 87 in 1862 in Rangoon lamenting that he could not get even two yards of land in his own homeland for his burial.

The Hindu nationalist in today’s India has declared him antinational and anti-Hindu. They are not willing to tolerate even his portrait being hung in a Muslim biryani shop. This suggests the level of toleration left in some Hindu youth today. They are not even ready of acknowledging that the last Mughal king was a symbol of Hindu unity and Hindu-Muslim were united in selecting to lead the first war of Independence.

This story may be trivial for some but it throws a huge message that how close India has come to becoming a Hindu Rashtriya where some people openly admonish some symbols of Hindu-Muslim unity.

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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com