A curfew was imposed in certain parts of an Indian city from western Maharashtra after the Hindu groups demanded the withdrawal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a Mughal emperor from the 17th century, causing violence on Monday evening.
The vehicles were burnt down and stones were bombed in the Mahal region of the city of Nagpur.
Police have said that the situation is now under control and that people call on people to keep peace.
The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died over 300 years ago, has become in recent years a political flash point in the midst of increasing calls to its withdrawal by the Hindu groups.
It is located about 500 km (311 miles) of Nagpur in the district of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar of the State, which was previously called Aurangabad after the Emperor.
Monday’s violence broke out after two Hindu organizations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, burned the emperor’s effigy and sung slogans demanding the withdrawal of his grave, said the chief minister of Maharashtra, Fadnavis, in the State Assembly.
This sparked rumors that a religious symbol was desecrated. Fadnavis said it led to violence that looked like “a well -planned attack”.
He said that after evening prayers, a crowd of 250 Muslim men gathered and began to scream slogans. “When people started to say that they set fire to vehicles, the police used strength,” he added.
More than 50 people were detained and 33 police officers were injured at the incident, Nagpur police, Ravinder Singal, told the press commissioner.
The stores and companies in the central zones of NAGPUR remain closed and security has been tightened throughout the city.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties criticized the government led by the Bharatiya Jamata of the State (BJP) saying that “public order in the state has collapsed”.
The trigger for this week’s violence was a recent Bollywood film on Sambhaji – a sovereign of Maratha who clashed with Aurangzeb but lost – and his graphic representation of him tortured.
The film “ignited people’s anger against Aurangzeb,” said Fadnavis in the State Assembly on Tuesday.
The question has made the headlines in the state for days with politicians from the Hindu nationalist parties criticizing Aurangzeb and calling for his grave.
The demonstrators were also angry earlier this month when Abu Azmi, a regional politician, said that Aurangzeb was not a “cruel administrator” and had “built many temples”.
Azmi also said that the reign of the emperor had seen the borders of India reaching Afghanistan and Burma (Myanmar), and that the country was called a golden bird, its gross domestic product representing a quarter of the world’s GDP.
Later, he told a court that his remarks had been misinterpreted, but he was suspended from the Maharashtra State Assembly and an investigation was ordered against him.
In 2022, the name of Aurangzeb tended on social networks when the dispute on a mosque – built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a large Hindu sanctuary of the 17th century destroyed on the orders of Aurangzeb – broke out as a court ordered an investigation to determine if the mosque was built on what was at the origin of a Hindu temple.
His tomb was closed for visitors after a regional politician questioned “the need for his existence” and called for his destruction.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke of “the atrocities of Aurangzeb and” his terror “during an event in Varanasi that year”. He tried to change civilization by the sword. He tried to crush culture with fanaticism, “said Modi.
Aurangzeb was the sixth emperor of the Moghol kingdom who ruled India for almost five decades from 1658 to 1707.
He is often described as a devout Muslim who has lived the life of an ascetic, but was ruthless in his quest to expand the Empire, imposing strict laws of Sharia and discriminatory taxes.
He was accused of shaving the Hindu temples, although some criticisms underline that he also built some.
Click here to find out more about Aurangzeb and why it is so controversial in India
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