Temple Revival in the Time of Akbar
The Rise of the Mughal Mandir
If you’ve been reading the Indian news recently, you’ll have seen that many mosques - particularly those from the Mughal era - are now being ‘surveyed’ by the government to check whether there are temples underneath. Indeed the destruction of temples, particularly by the Mughal Dynasty, has become a serious political issue in India today.
Undoubtedly there was much temple destruction during this time. And yet, the scale of temple construction under the Mughals is usually ignored.
More temples were built under the third Mughal Emperor Akbar than at any time since the 12th century, and they are bigger than any temples ever built in North India until that point. Only the Bhojeshwar temple near Bhopal rivals the Akbar era temples of Varanasi, Vrindavan and Puri, or the Jahangir era temples of Orccha and Mathura.1
But like the Ottoman Synagogues of Istanbul or the Safavid Churches of Isfahan, the temples of Mughal India tend to be forgotten. They just don’t fit into our idea of what Mughal a…
