avantivarman

I want to know the reasons that should taj mahal be described as indian heritage in broader sense or they are part of persian heritage .

taj mahal

1. was built by a foreign dynasty

2. is architecturally similar to persian style

3. was built and designed by a persian man.


so should we start calling it as indian simply because it is in india ?

Belgarion

Forgive my limited knowlege here, I understand the Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jehan as a tomb for his favourite wife Mumtaz, but although his dynasty may have been originally foreign and he was a Muslim, were the workers and builders not Indian, thus making this an Indian construction?

avantivarman

no, the workers were of many countries like designer was a persian, turkish were there for floor decoration and some low level manual labourers were from India.

my reasoning is that in case chinese occupy sri lanka and build a chinese style pagoda by using services of designers from mainland china, japan with some labourers from sri lanka the building is not part of sri lanka heritage in " broader sense ".

Lazyman

Lets move it to Persia .

avantivarman

yes, it is part of persian heritage but i do not know if it can be moved.

if it is technologically feasible, I would like that to happen.

the problem with indians is that they do not have much to show and so they in order to overcome their sense of inferiority try to claim other heritages as their own.

so it is the turks who should be proud of mughals and iranians of nadir but what happens is that we ( both indians and pakistanis ) steal their great men and pass them as our own.

Belgarion

I suppose so in that sense, but the taj has been in existence for several hundred years (I know that is not long in the Indian sense of history) and is seen by the world as an icon of India. To try and define it as anything but Indian would seem futile.

avantivarman

the time for which it is seen as icon of india is just 70-80 years and that is what hurts us.

i know indian native architecture is not as great as taj but they are fully indian and i know most of people would not accept taj as non indian but that is because of their definition of indian means everything that came to this land.

Panthera tigris altaica

Move it? That sounds rather contradictory and impracticable. Every society that has expanded into other territories have left their cultural stamp on another, for better or for worse.

Are they really? I haven't gotten a sense of that from the Indian posters i have read from the multiple sites on the internet.

avantivarman

you will have to limit this to some time period otherwise we all are africans by using such simplistic logic.

the chinese language came to south china only 2200 years ago but this does not mean that english in guangdong is as native as chinese there.


as for second thing, you might have read indians boasting of one thing or other but just ask those indians, why do they boast about Angkor wat and prambanam and deny Iranians luxury of doing same.

Efendi

It is a reason to visit India.