The relationship between the Mughal state and Hindu temples remains trapped within binary narratives of either unqualified tolerance or systematic destruction. This essay argues for a fundamental reconsideration based on verified documentary and epigraphical evidence. Drawing upon the theological framework of the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, the documentary archive of the Vrindavan region, preserved and made accessible through the efforts of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, and epigraphical evidence from temple inscriptions, this essay demonstrates that the Mughal state maintained a secular and multi-religious character that found concrete expression in the sustained patronage of temples across successive reigns. Far from being an aberration, the patronage of temples by Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and even Aurangzeb reflects the institutionalisation of sulḥ-i kul (universal peace) as a coherent ideology of statecraft.
Beyond Binary Narratives
The history of Hindu–Muslim relations in pre-modern India has long been held hostage by a false dichotomy: either the Mughal empire was a paradise of secular tolerance, or it was a destructive iconoclastic machine. Both narratives fail to capture the lived reality of the early modern period. The secular character of Mughal rule, understood not as the absence of religion but as the principled impartiality of the state toward diverse religious communities, is among the best-documented features of the empire, yet it remains systematically obscured by contemporary polemics.
The sacred geography of Vrindavan offers an especially revealing case study. The revival of this landscape as a centre of Krishna devotion occurred not in an ancient pre-Islamic past but specifically within the early modern Mughal ecumene. The Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, as articulated by scholars such as Shri Shrivatsa Goswami of Vrindavan, developed a theology of divine love (prema) that refused to separate the sacred from the material. As Goswami has elaborated, the soil, trees, and rivers of Vrindavan are not metaphors for the divine but manifestations of bhakti itself, a living theology that paradoxically required the patronage of Muslim emperors to build its most magnificent temples.
This essay proceeds in five parts. First, it discusses what the Vrindavan documents are and how we got them, and then goes on to examine the ideological foundations of Mughal secularism in the doctrine of Sulḥ-i Kul. Third, it presents the documentary evidence for temple patronage across the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Fourth, it reconsiders the complex legacy of Aurangzeb, drawing on epigraphical evidence often overlooked. Fifth, it situates temple patronage within the broader social history of Braj as recovered by Habib and Mukherjee, demonstrating that the secular framework operated from the imperial court down to the village level.
The Preservation of the Vrindavan Documents: The Role of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami
Before examining the content of the Vrindavan Documents, it is essential to understand the remarkable circumstances of their preservation and the crucial role played by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami in making this archive available to historians.
The Vrindavan Documents, a treasure trove of Mughal-era Persian and Braj records, were preserved for centuries by the Chaitanya Goswamis of Vrindavan. These documents include Mughal imperial decrees (farmans), land grant records, and sales deeds that provide an unparalleled window into the social, economic, and political life of the Braj region during the Mughal period.¹
The modern scholarly engagement with these documents began in the 1970s, when Tarapada Mukherjee (1928-1990), a faculty member at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, began collecting Mughal-era documents that were in the possession of the Chaitanya Goswamis and their temples in the Vrindavan–Mathura region.² It was Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, a renowned mystic and scholar of Vrindavan, who played an indispensable role in facilitating this effort. As Irfan Habib has repeatedly acknowledged, it was owing to the “valuable support from Shri Shrivats Goswami” that the collection grew and became accessible to academic research.³
In a letter to Habib dated 20 October 1986, Mukherjee proposed that they work in collaboration on the Persian portion of the documents he was collecting. With the support of Shrivatsa Goswami, the collection expanded significantly. In 1987 and 1989-90, Habib and Mukherjee published several ground-breaking papers based on these documents, evaluating Mughal relations with the Goswamis during the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, as well as the nature of land rights in the latter half of the sixteenth century.⁴
Tragically, Mukherjee passed away on 7 July 1990. However, Habib continued working on the project, honouring a promise made to his late colleague. He sought the approval of Dr. Emma Mukherjee, his friend’s widow, and carried the work forward. Over the decades that followed, Habib worked intermittently on what became known as the “Vrindavan Documents,” deciphering, transcribing, arranging, numbering, analysing, and publishing articles and book chapters based on them.⁵
The documents analysed by Habib and Mukherjee fall into two principal categories: (1) Mughal orders concerning grants to temples and their custodians; and (2) sales deeds of rights to land bought or sold by temple servants or their devotees. The Persian documents are written in shikaste, a difficult-to-read cursive script, which required considerable expertise to decipher. Habib’s deep historical and geographical knowledge of the period, combined with his ability to work with Persian sources, enabled him to discern forgeries from authentic documents, correct faulty dates, and identify defective seals.⁶
Thanks to the preservation efforts initiated by the Goswamis and facilitated by Shrivatsa Goswami, and the subsequent scholarly labour of Habib and Mukherjee, the Vrindavan Documents are now available for research. The original documents are housed in the institute run by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami at Vrindavan, the Sri Caitanya Prema Samsthana, as well as in the library of the Centre of Advanced Study at Aligarh Muslim University.⁷
Shri Shrivatsa Goswami (born 27 October 1950) is himself an eminent Indologist and Gaudiya Vaishnava religious leader. A graduate in philosophy from Banaras Hindu University, he has taught philosophy and religion at his alma mater and was a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions in the mid-1970s. He has been associated with the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (serving on the board of editors of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophers) and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (which sponsors his Vraja Research Project).⁸ His scholarly publications focus on Vaishnava philosophy and theology, as well as the religious culture of the Braj region. In recognition of his contributions to interfaith cooperation, he serves as the honorary president of Religions for Peace.⁹
The preservation of the Vrindavan Documents stands as a testament to the trust between the Goswami tradition and modern scholarship, a trust embodied in the person of Shrivatsa Goswami, who made possible the historical reconstruction that follows.
The Ideological Foundations of Mughal Secularism: Sulḥ-i Kul
The Mughal commitment to religious pluralism was not merely pragmatic but explicitly ideological. Under Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), the state formally adopted the policy of sulḥ-i kul, variously translated as “universal peace,” “peace with all,” or “absolute peace”, as the cornerstone of enlightened rule.¹⁰
As Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s court historian and principal ideologue, articulated in the Akbarnama, the Mughal emperor stood above all religious and ethnic groups, mediating among them and ensuring that justice and peace prevailed for all subjects regardless of their faith. The concept of sulḥ-i kul guaranteed that all religions and schools of thought had freedom of expression, with the sole condition that they did not undermine the authority of the state or fight among themselves.¹¹
This was not merely theoretical. The policy was implemented through concrete state measures:
“The nobility under the Mughals comprised a composite body and the Muslims, the Hindus, the Iranis, the Turanis, the Afghans, the Rajputs, the Deccanis all were given positions and awards purely on the basis of their service and loyalty to the king, and not on the basis of their religion.”¹²
Most significantly, Akbar abolished the tax on pilgrimage in 1563 and the jizya (poll tax on non-Muslim subjects) in 1564, explicitly recognising that these levies were based on religious discrimination. Instructions were sent to officers throughout the empire to follow the precept of sulḥ-i kul in administration. As Professor Shireen Moosvi has noted, drawing on contemporary chronicles: “Akbar travelled incognito from Mathura to Agra to realise that it is not justified to tax a person on pilgrimage. On his return, Akbar abolished the Pilgrim tax.”¹³
The translation projects of Akbar’s court further demonstrate the intellectual commitment to pluralism. Moosvi has documented that “Akbar supervised translations of Singhasan Battisi, Atharva Veda, Mahabharata, Harivamsa and other scriptures into Persian.”¹⁴ These were not merely political gestures but reflected a genuine intellectual engagement with India’s diverse religious traditions, an engagement that Abu’l Fazl himself theorised as proto-nationalism, identifying Akbar with India and with a vision of religious conciliation.¹⁵
Documentary Evidence: Temple Grants under Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan
The Vrindavan Documents provide concrete evidence of systematic Mughal temple patronage. Contrary to claims that only Akbar patronised temples, the documents demonstrate continuity across multiple reigns. According to Habib and Mukherjee’s analysis of Mughal farmans:
“Akbar enlarged and consolidated all grants to temples and temple-servants in the Mathura region by his farmans [imperial edicts].”¹⁶
These grants supported thirty-five temples in Vrindavan, Mathura, and their environs, providing systematic state support for Vaishnava and Brahminical institutions.
The evidence for continuity under Jahangir is particularly striking:
“Jehangir not only continued these grants, but substantially added to them. He added at least two temples to the list of the 35 already supported by Akbar’s grant of 1598. In addition, he provided land for families of temple sevaks [servants]. Jehangir also visited Vrindavan temple in 1620.”¹⁷
This pattern is further corroborated by a royal farman issued by Jahangir in his 16th regnal year (1621 CE), which is preserved in the National Museum collection, New Delhi.¹⁸ This document orders the continuation of 50 bighas of land to the pujaris (priests) of a temple situated at Ankpad, explicitly mentioning that the jagir (land grant) had been originally granted by his late father, Emperor Akbar. The farman further directs local officers, including Chaudhris, Qanungos, and Muqaddams, not to disturb the priests and to let them live peacefully forever.¹⁹
The secular principle underlying such grants is unmistakable: the state recognised and protected religious institutions of all communities as a matter of routine administration, not as an exceptional act of royal generosity.
Shah Jahan’s reign, despite his reputation for greater orthodoxy, also continued this tradition. In one of his farmans issued by him, it is specifically mentioned that worship in the temple was “parastish i Ilāhi (prayer to God), as was namaz. Historical records indicate that “grants were issued for the repair of a number of temples in the reigns of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, after they had been destroyed during war.”²⁰
Aurangzeb: Complexity, Not Contradiction
The reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) has often been seen as a decisive break from the secular policies of his predecessors. The reimposition of jizya in 1679 and documented instances of temple destruction have led many to characterise his rule as one of religious intolerance. However, a careful examination of the full evidentiary record, including epigraphical sources, reveals a more complex picture consistent with the secular framework of the state, albeit with a different emphasis.
The policy of providing grants for the repair of temples destroyed during war continued under Aurangzeb as it had under Shah Jahan.²¹ More significantly, epigraphical evidence from temple inscriptions themselves documents Aurangzeb’s patronage of Hindu religious institutions.
An Allahabad-based historian, Pradeep Kesherwani, has documented the case of the ancient Someshwar Mahadev temple on the banks of the Sangam in Arail. According to Kesherwani’s research:
“The pillar has 15 sentences in Sanskrit inscribed on it mentioning, ‘The ruler of the country visited the temple in 1674 and gave heavy grants to the temple, both in form of land and money.'”²²
While the inscription has become partially illegible due to the regular application of vermilion, its existence and content have been documented by multiple sources.²³
The historical record of Aurangzeb’s temple grants was also attested to in a formal proceeding before the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. On July 27, 1977, former Allahabad mayor Vishamber Nath Pandey (who later became Governor of Odisha) informed the House that during his tenure as chairman of the Allahabad Nagar Palika, a dispute over a temple came before him. One of the parties presented documents regarding grants by Aurangzeb. The matter was referred to a committee headed by Justice T. B. Sapru, which sought documents from all temples that had received jagir (land) or money as donation from Aurangzeb. Pandey stated:
“Several temples, including the Mahakaleshwar temple of Ujjain, the Balaji temple of Chitrakoot, the Umanand temple of Guwahati, Jain temples of Saranjay, and some temples of South India, produced such testimonials before the committee.”²⁴
This duality, temple destruction in some contexts, temple patronage in others, is not evidence of incoherence. Rather, it reflects the pragmatic logic of pre-modern statecraft operating within a secular framework. Temple destruction typically occurred in politically sensitive regions, often following rebellions or as part of military campaigns against recalcitrant elites. Temple patronage, by contrast, occurred in stable regions where imperial authority was secure and where supporting local religious institutions served to legitimise Mughal sovereignty. Both policies were instruments of the same imperial project: the maintenance of Mughal political control over a diverse subcontinent.²⁵
The Social World of Temple Patronage: Evidence from the Vrindavan Documents
The significance of these grants extends beyond the merely political. The integration of temples into the Mughal administrative order reflects a deeper social reality in which the secular character of the state was actively maintained at every level of society.
Significantly, as the documents reveal, Hindu–Muslim religious tensions were not a significant feature of Mughal-era Braj Bhum. Even in the reign of Aurangzeb (Alamgir), who is often accused of religious intolerance, the dynasty’s longstanding patronage of the Goswamis continued apace. In 1704, for example, Mukhtar Khan, then governor of Agra, ordered an annual payment of one rupee from every village across 18 parganas totalling roughly Rs. 2,000 (a tidy sum for those days) to Brajanand, the presumed head of the Govind Dev temple in Vrindavan.²⁶
The evidence for amiable everyday relations is extensive:
“The presence of Muslim mendicants in the Vrindavan–Mathura region, the willingness of the Goswamis to feed Hindu and Muslim beggars alike, the reality of conversion to as well as from Islam (the latter with no official comment by Muslim religious authorities), the dependence by non-Muslims on the qazi courts to register and authenticate documents, the use of Islamic expressions such as ‘Allahu Akbar‘ (‘God is great’) and ‘Jazak Allah‘ (‘May God reward you’) by non-Muslim correspondents, the existence of Muslims among panch notables, and evidence that Muslims acted as sellers to non-Muslims and witnesses for non-Muslims all point to relatively amiable everyday religious relations.”²⁷
Tensions, when they do appear in the documents, generally pitted different Goswami lineages against each other or Goswamis against other Vaishnavite sects such as the Radha-vallabhis, Haridasis, and Ramanandis, not Hindus against Muslims. And each side sought to deploy alliances with local Mughal officials to strengthen their hand vis-à-vis their co-religionist competitors.²⁸
The Mughal state emerges from these documents as a remarkably effective protector of property rights. The Goswamis were anxious to record even their pettiest transactions in Persian, recognising that the Mughal state had become an effective guarantor of their rights in both town and country.²⁹ This trust in the state’s legal framework is itself powerful evidence of the secular character of Mughal governance.
The Mughal State as a Secular Formation
The evidence presented above, preserved through the efforts of Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, analysed by Habib and Mukherjee, and corroborated by epigraphical sources, necessitates a fundamental reconsideration of how we understand the Mughal state’s relationship with religion. The Mughal state was secular not in the sense of being irreligious or anti-religious, but in the sense of maintaining an impartial stance toward the diverse religious communities under its rule.
The continuity of these policies across multiple reigns, from Akbar through Aurangzeb, demonstrates that sulḥ-i kul was not merely the idiosyncratic policy of a single enlightened ruler but a coherent state ideology that transcended individual emperors. The fact that even Aurangzeb, despite his personal orthodoxy, continued to issue land grants to temples in various parts of the empire, and that temple priests themselves preserved these grants as the basis for their continued claims for generations, speaks to the institutionalisation of this secular framework.
As this essay has shown, the temples of Vrindavan were built with Mughal support and preserved through Mughal grants. The original documents that attest to this history remain housed in the institute run by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami at Vrindavan, a living testament to the trust between a Hindu religious tradition and the Mughal state, and to the possibility of religious pluralism as a coherent and durable basis for state power.
This history offers a profound lesson for our own polarised times. The Mughal model of secular governance, rooted not in atheism or religious indifference but in the principled impartiality of a sovereign who serves as the guarantor of peace among diverse communities, represents an important alternative to both European-style secularism and contemporary religious nationalism.
Footnotes
¹ Irfan Habib and Tarapada Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times: The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020), 1-5.
² Munis D. Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, published online 21 February 2024.
³ Farhat Nasreen, “Layers of History Documented,” The Book Review 45, no. 1 (January 2021). As Nasreen notes: “With valuable support from Shri Shrivats Goswami, a renowned mystic of Vrindavan, the collection grew. In fact Habib repeatedly thanks the past and present gosā’ins who facilitated the preservation and the eventual use of these documents.”
⁴ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.
⁵ Nasreen, “Layers of History Documented.” Habib writes: “It was largely owing to the vision and effort of co-author Tarapada Mukherjee (1928-90), that an exceptionally large amount of very valuable documentary material became available to the historians of Mughal India.” See also Shafey Kidwai, “Two intellectuals across disciplines collaborate to bring out a book on the region of Braj under the Mughals,” Siasat.com, 6 December 2021.
⁶ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.
⁷ Ibid. For the Vrindaban Research Institute’s manuscript collection, see V.B. Gosvami, comp., A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Vrindaban Research Institute, ed. R.D. Gupta and R. Shastri (Vrindaban: Vrindaban Research Institute, 1991). For Shrivatsa Goswami’s institute, see “Shrivatsa Goswami,” Wikipedia.
⁸ “Shrivatsa Goswami,” Wikipedia.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ On sulḥ-i kul, see Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1907–1910), vol. III, 366–367; and a number of papers contributed by M Athar Ali, Irfan Habib and Shireen Moosvi.
¹¹ Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. II, 203–204.
¹² NCERT, Themes in Indian History, Part II, Chapter 5, section on “Composite Nobility.”
¹³ Professor Shireen Moosvi, remarks at the symposium on Akbar’s 477th birth anniversary, Aligarh Muslim University, October 2019, reported in “Of Akbar’s Religious Tolerance, Administration and Relevance,” NDTV, 15 October 2019. See also Shireen Moosvi, Episodes in the Life of Akbar (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005), 67–69.
¹⁴ Moosvi, remarks at AMU symposium, NDTV report, 2019.
¹⁵ See Abu’l Fazl’s introduction to the Ain-i Akbari, translated in H. Blochmann, The Ain i Akbari (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873), vol. I, 17–20.
¹⁶ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 42.
¹⁷ Ibid., 45.
¹⁸ Jahangir, Farman regarding continuation of 50 bighas land to the pujaris of the temple at Ankpad, 16th regnal year (1621 CE), National Museum, New Delhi, Accession No. 92.16/9049. Available at: https://museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/nat_del-92-16-9049
¹⁹ Ibid. The farman explicitly states: “The aforesaid 50 bighas of land granted by His late Majesty [Akbar] are continued to the said pujaris.”
²⁰ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 48. For the specific case of temple repairs under Shah Jahan, see also the discussion in Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals, Part II (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2005), 312–313.
²¹ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 48.
²² Pradeep Kesherwani, research on Someshwar Mahadev temple inscriptions, cited in “Aurangzeb donated grants to temples, claims Allahabad historian,” The Economic Times, 13 September 2015.
²³ Ibid. The report notes that “the inscription has turned partially illegible after devotees applied vermilion regularly.”
²⁴ Vishamber Nath Pandey, statement before the Rajya Sabha, Rajya Sabha Debates, Vol. 92, No. 7, 27 July 1977, cited in “Aurangzeb donated grants to temples,” The Economic Times, 13 September 2015.
²⁵ For a balanced assessment of Aurangzeb’s policies, see Satish Chandra, Medieval India, 340–345; and John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 170–176.
²⁶ Faruqui, Review of Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.
²⁷ Ibid.
²⁸ Ibid. See also Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 73, for a document recording a dispute between Damodardas Radhaballabh and Kishan Chaitan resolved through Mughal intervention.
²⁹ Habib and Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm, 67–70. See also Kidwai, “Two intellectuals across disciplines.”
Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi
Note: Attempt has been consciously made to cite only basic works which are available in public domain.
ASHA: Blast From The Past 