Taj Mahal

[The Taj Mahal in Agra in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Site in 1983 for being "the jewel of Islamic art in India,” was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan (1592-1666; fifth Mughal Emperor: 1628-58) as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal {1593-1631).  A Muslim, Shah Jahan’s reign initiated the golden age of Mughal architecture, exemplified by the Taj Maha (Persian and Arabic origin, most commonly translated as ‘Crown of Palaces’ or ‘Crown Palace’), whose construction was completed in 1653.

[Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan in 1607 and they were married in 1612.  Shah Jahan was so smitten with his bride that after the wedding, he gave her the title Mumtaz Mahal, Persian for “The Exalted One of the Palace.”  (At the time of his wedding, he already had one wife whom he married in 1610, and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, he took a third wife; both marriages were political alliances and it was said that neither of these wives received much attention from Shah Jahan.)

[Mumtaz was empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 1628 to 1631.  She died at the birth of her fourteenth child, and Shah Jahan was so distraught that he went into a year of seclusion for mourning.  Their eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum (1614-81), attended him and eased him out of his grief, then took her mother’s place at court.

[The Mughal Empire was established in 1526 when Babur (1483-1530; first Moghul Emperor: 1526-30), a descendant of Tamerlane (Timur; 1320s-1405; Emir of the Timurid Empire: 1370-1405; most powerful ruler in the Muslim world) and Genghis Khan (ca. 1162-1227; founder and first Khan of the Mongol Empire: 1206-27) from what is now Uzbekistan, defeated the Islamic Sultanate of Delhi. 

[The empire, which lasted until 1760, when it was dissolved by the British Raj, was an Islamic state with a Hindu majority population.  At its greatest territorial extent in ca. 1700, the empire encompassed all or parts of modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.  At the time of Shah Jahan’s rule, the capital was Agra (1628-48), when the Taj Mahal was built, and then shifted to Delhi (1648-58).

[Rumors and unfounded claims about the Taj Mahal began almost as soon as the tomb was completed, stretching back to 1660.  They often stemmed from folklore, political revisionism, or misinterpreted architectural features.  While widely circulated, these claims have been repeatedly debunked by historians and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the governmental agency in India that oversees the management and preservation of the tomb.

[A current example is the 2025 film The Taj Story, directed and co-written by Tushar Amrish Goel (b. 1990 or 1991), whose début feature film it is.  The film is based on the theories of P. N. Oak (1917-2007) as laid out in Taj Mahal was a Rajput Palace, published in 1965 by the author, president of the Institute for Rewriting Indian History, and, particularly, Taj Mahal: The True Story (Houston: A. Ghosh. 1989).  (A Rajput is a member of a Hindu people claiming descent from the ancient warrior caste.)

[Oak was a Hindu nationalist, identified by Wikipedia as a ”pseudo-historical Hindutva author.”  (Pseudo-history is a practice that mimics historical research but is deceptive, distorting facts to support a preconceived conclusion.  Hindutva is a political movement advocating Hindu nationalism and the establishment of a Hindu state.)  The Guardian labeled him a “fringe historian” and the New York Times designated him a “revisionist historian” (which is a legitimate part of academic study concerned with updating the historical record based on new evidence), but also a “pseudo-historian.”

[Oak’s claim is principally the assertion that the monument was originally a 12th-century Hindu temple and palace dedicated to Lord Shiva.  He shifted the details over time, but he applied folk tales, rumors, false “facts,” and cherry-picked “evidence” to support his claims.  His arguments suffer from “confirmation bias,” a cognitive predisposition where people favor information that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses while ignoring or discounting contradictory evidence.

[Oak’s work was driven by a specific ideological agenda, an obsessive drive to erase Islamic contributions to Indian heritage.  His theories are frequently characterized as anti-Muslim, which he has demonstrated with claims extending beyond the subcontinent.  For instance, he alleges that even the Kaaba in Mecca was originally a Hindu temple.  (He also claimed that the iconic Westminster Abbey was a Hindu temple in its past, and that Notre Dame was of Hindu origin.  The Vatican, he asserted, was originally a Vedic religious center called Vatika—Sanskrit for 'hermitage' or 'park'—and the Papacy was a Vedic priesthood.)

[Of course, I suppose we shouldn’t overlook the possible confirmation bias on the part of the deniers of Oak’s arguments—they all have vested interests to defend or uphold, especially the ASI, which is bound to support the official position.  The academic historians who have labeled Oak a fraud and debunked his evidence that the site has Hindu origins are all members of the intellectual elite of India’s academia, positions that might all be jeopardized if they’re proved wrong.  Their saving grace is that their evidence is seen as having come from serious and vetted research and fact-checking over decades and even centuries, including official documents and records of Shah Jahan’s court.

[Tushar Amrish Goel’s film, The Taj Story, was released on 31 October 2025 to generally negative reviews.  It was characterized as a Hindi-language propaganda film and faced criticism over its historical inaccuracies.  In October 2025, ahead of The Taj Story’s release, a legal challenge was brought against the movie centered on allegations of historical distortion.  On 30 October, the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court declined to stay the film on the argument that the court isn’t a “super Censor Board,” noting that different historical perspectives are common.

[Though Goel frames his politics as “pro-India,” he is a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (b. 1950), who’s been associated with Hindu nationalism and Hindutva.  Including The Taj Story, several of his films and videos have had Hindu nationalist themes or backers from Modi’s rightist and Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.]

“TAJ MAHAL CONSPIRACY THEORY IS EMBRACED BY BOLLYWOOD”
by Steven Lee Myers

[Steven Lee Myers’s report ran in the New York Times of 7 February 2026 in the “Business” section (Section B).  On the paper’s website, the article was posted as “Bollywood Embraces a Taj Mahal Conspiracy Theory” on 6 February, with videos by Saumya Khandelwal.  Myers traveled to New Delhi, Mumbai, and Agra to investigate India’s debate over its past.]

A film breathes new life into discredited claims about a crown jewel.

The Taj Mahal, India’s most famous landmark, is haunted by a conspiracy theory. It has been pushed for years by an ardent cadre of pseudo-historians, lawyers and religious believers who claim that everything you’ve been told about the building is a lie.

The theory is convoluted, to say the least.

The thrust is that the building is not truly a masterpiece of Indo-Islamic architecture, commissioned in the 17th century by the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan, a Muslim, as a tomb for his beloved wife, who died giving birth to their 14th child. Instead, the theory goes, its origins are Hindu, a history that has long been suppressed.

Evidence of that is conjecture — and has repeatedly been debunked. That has not put the matter to rest. Hari Shankhar Jain [b. 1954], a prominent lawyer in the cause, said in an interview that the authorities “did not want the truth to come out.”

Now Bollywood has weighed in. A new film, “The Taj Story,” has turned the revisionist claims into a courtroom drama, featuring a popular actor, Paresh Rawal [b. 1955].

[Bollywood is the popular name for India's Hindi-language film industry, based in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). The term Bollywood is a portmanteau of ‘Bombay’ and ‘Hollywood.’  The name Bollywood is often erroneously applied to Indian cinema as a whole, especially outside India, but it correctly only refers to Hindi-language films.]

The film’s promotional materials promised to “reveal the untold history” of the landmark. It doesn’t. What it has done instead is rehash discredited claims that once were relegated to the fringes of the internet, giving prominence to efforts to inflame sectarian tensions.

They include assertions that the site had previously been a Hindu palace [built in the 4th century CE] — or, perhaps, a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva [1155 CE]; that carbon dating of a piece of wood from a door showed it was built long before the 17th century; that 22 “secret chambers” beneath the main structure had been locked or bricked up by the authorities to shield outsiders from the truth.

The film’s writer and director, Tushar Amrish Goel, said he had settled on the concept after spending two and a half years researching the alternative claims about the monument’s past, which he called “intriguing and engaging.” It follows a veteran tour guide at the Taj Mahal who comes to question the historical narratives behind the monument and goes to court to prove his suspicions are real.

[The guide who takes the matter to court is Vishnu Das, played by Paresh Rawal. The action Das initiates is explicitly framed as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), a legal mechanism, nearly unique to India, that allows individuals to file lawsuits for the protection of public interest, rather than for their own personal grievances.

[This plot element is a direct allusion to the real-life actions of P. N. Oak, who filed a PIL petition with the Supreme Court of India in 2000, asking for a declaration that the Taj Mahal was built by a Hindu king. The court famously dismissed his petition, describing the theory as a “bee in [Oak’s] bonnet” and refusing to entertain the case. The court ultimately dismisses the PIL, mirroring the real-life fate of P. N. Oak’s petitions. The high-stakes courtroom confrontation, however, is the dramatic climax of The Taj Story.]

“We just put our argument in the courtroom,” Mr. Goel, 35, said in an interview in Mumbai, Bollywood’s home.

The film, which was released in late October, shows how easily popular culture can thrust conspiracy theories into the mainstream, reflecting a broader distrust of historical story lines.

It has echoes of Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” another politically charged, factually challenged courtroom drama from 1991. That film revivified the conspiracy theories over President John F. Kennedy’s assassination [Dallas, 22 November 1963] and foreshadowed the distrustful and paranoid politics of today’s America.

Although Mr. Goel denies an overtly political motive, the film reflects a brand of Hindu nationalism championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s leader since 2014. It is one of a series of Bollywood films that has done so. The trend has stoked tensions between Hindus and Muslims in a country with a vibrant religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.

[Modi is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ‘Indian People’s Party’), a conservative political party whose policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. The BJP is right-wing to far-right on the political spectrum, and, as of January 2024, is the country's majority political party in terms of representation in the parliament as well as state legislatures.]

For adherents of Mr. Modi’s nationalism, the monuments of the Mughal dynasty, which conquered and ruled what is today India from the 16th century until the British colonization in the 19th, stand as testaments of foreign oppression. Critics counter that to deny them discounts the country’s pluralistic, multiethnic history.

Ruchika Sharma [b. 1990], a historian, said that in a country with roughly 200 million Muslims, about 14 percent of the population, the film amounted to “communal poison” intended to divide the nation.

[Sharma is alluding to an actual provision in Indian law that criminalizes “communal propaganda.” This is the strategic use of information, rumors, or media to promote communalism—an ideology that places the interests of one’s own religious or ethnic community above society as a whole, often by portraying other groups as enemies. 

[The primary goal is to create a “we vs. them” narrative to polarize the public, and it can be prosecuted under the Indian Penal Code, which prohibits promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, or place of birth.

[In the United States, there’s no direct equivalent to India’s “communal propaganda” laws because the First Amendment provides nearly absolute protection for speech, even if it is biased, offensive, or promotes religious and ethnic hatred—as long as it doesn't call for immediate violence.]

Reviews of “The Taj Story” have been mixed, with film critics and moviegoers attacking it for raising conspiratorial questions, on the one hand, and saying it didn’t go far enough to support or reject them, on the other.

“‘The Taj Story’ trudges on without offering any real answers to the questions it raises,” the critic Alaka Sahani [b. 1974] wrote in The Indian Express [posted below]. “Instead, it merely stirs the pot, blending fact and fiction to serve an agenda far removed from historical inquiry.”

The film, which is expected to appear on streaming sites soon, has so far grossed more than $3 million — more than it cost to make, though not exactly a blockbuster.

It has nonetheless had an impact on the debate over the landmark’s significance as part of the nation’s identity, which has churned on Reddit, Facebook, X and Telegram, according to Archis Chowdhury [b. 1991 or 1992], a senior correspondent at Boom, one of India’s leading independent fact-checking organizations.

“It definitely brought it to mainstream,” he said. “It’s all over the internet.”

The roots of the Taj Mahal conspiracy theories reach back decades.

In 1965, P. N. Oak, a lawyer turned revisionist historian, published a short book [Taj Mahal was a Rajput Palace; see introduction] claiming that the Taj Mahal was originally a palace built in the fourth century. Only later, he argued, was this “gay and magnificent” place turned into the tomb the world knows today.

“The changeover has proved a shroud deluding everybody from laypersons to researchers and history scholars that the Taj was built as a sepulcher,” he wrote.

Oak, who died in 2007 at age 90, was criticized as a pseudo-historian, though he was a prolific one. In later iterations of his book, he claimed the Taj Mahal was not a palace but a temple.

He also published numerous other books claiming that Christianity and Islam were in fact offshoots of Hinduism and that many physical landmarks of those faiths, including St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and the Kaaba in Mecca, were originally Hindu temples.

Oak didn’t disguise his intentions. Born in the British colonial era (and having fought on the Japanese side in World War II), he founded the Institute for Rewriting Indian History [1964], which sought to recast the nation’s history as one of conquest and colonization of its true Hindu identity.

Historians have refuted claims like his about the Taj, saying they lacked any documented evidence or misconstrued historical details in a structure whose construction was well documented by contemporaneous scholars. Some, like the existence of hidden Hindu idols in the building’s basement, are purely fictional.

“Oak’s arguments appear compelling — except to knowledgeable scholars,” Catherine B. Asher [1946-2023], an art historian at the University of Minnesota, wrote in 2009. “The problem is most people lack this knowledge, so his conspiracy theory wrapped in inflammatory rhetoric is compelling to those who wish to believe.”

India’s courts have repeatedly heard legal challenges involving the Taj Mahal and its status as a religious site — from lawyers like Mr. Jain and members of Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.

None have been found to have merit. In 2022, the country’s Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit demanding a fact-finding commission into the monument’s origins and, two years later, an appeal to reconsider its status as a solely Islamic religious site.

Historical revisionism in India has had deadly consequences. In 1992, a mob affiliated with the B.J.P. demolished a mosque in Ayodhya, another city in the same region, believing that it had been built atop the birthplace of the god Ram. Sectarian violence that followed killed more than 2,000 people.

Mr. Modi, who was a rising party leader at the time of the violence, inaugurated a new Hindu temple at the site in 2024 after years of legal disputes.

The Taj Mahal, which is in Agra, roughly 120 miles southeast of New Delhi, has legal protections as a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site that would presumably preclude a similar fate.

[Nonetheless, one of the numerous persistent rumors regarding the Taj Mahal is the rumor that Lord William Bentinck (1774-1839), the first Governor-General of India from 1834 to 1835, once planned to demolish the Taj and sell off the marble. The rumor likely arose from Bentinck’s fund-raising sale of discarded marble from nearby Agra Fort (also known as the Red Fort, about a mile-and-a-half northwest of the more famous Taj). Bentinck had engaged in an extensive range of cost-cutting measures, cutting the wages of the military men, thus earning their lasting enmity.]

The Archaeological Survey of India, the agency that oversees the country’s historical monuments, has tried to snuff out conspiracy theories. In 2022, it published a newsletter with photos of the “secret” underground rooms to dispel the claims they contained clues of an alternate history — only to stoke suspicions of a coverup.

It has since removed the photographs from its website. The agency did not respond to questions about why.

Shamsuddin Khan [b. ca. 1948], who, like the film’s protagonist, is a veteran guide at the Taj [since 1989], said he had watched the film and didn’t think much of it. “It was rubbish,” he said as he toured the complex on a recent morning.

Visitors do ask about the film and the claims behind conspiracy theories: the site before the mausoleum was built, the secret rooms in the basement, the Hindu symbols in the architectural details that P. N. Oak saw as proof of its true origins.

The architects who designed and erected it, he explains patiently, incorporated Islamic artistic traditions, as well as local — Hindu — motifs like lotus flowers and tridents.

“They wanted to represent all the people,” said Mr. Khan, who is Muslim. “Not like today.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

[Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining the Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul.]

*  *  *  *
“THE TAJ STORY MOVIE REVIEW:
PARESH RAWAL-LED COURTROOM DRAMA
ARGUES LOUDLY BUT PROVES LITTLE”
 by Alaka Sahani

[Below is a review of The Taj Story from The Indian Express (Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India) of 2 November 2025.  Most of the notices were similar in tone to Alaka Sahani’s, criticizing the faults and drawing mostly the same conclusions.  (There’s a round-up of some of the movie’s criticism embedded in the introduction to this post.)]

The Taj Story movie review: The Taj Story merely stirs the pot, blending fact and fiction to serve an agenda far removed from historical inquiry.

The Taj Story movie review: Headlined by Paresh Rawal, The Taj Story is yet another film that seeks to reinterpret Indian history as well as rewrite textbooks. Rawal plays Vishnu Das, an Agra-based tourist guide who files a petition questioning the historical proof that Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal. He demands to know on what basis the monument’s story found its way into school textbooks and calls for an excavation to uncover what lies beneath the marble structure.

Though conceived as an intense courtroom drama, writer-director Tushar Amrish Goel’s film turns into a collage of conspiracy theories that have circulated for years about the Taj’s origins. The script repeatedly mentions the 22 sealed rooms under the monument, fanning old suspicions. Rawal’s Das swiftly transforms from a disgraced guide into a persuasive lawyer, arguing before a High Court bench that the Taj Mahal was once a Hindu king’s palace, later taken over by Shah Jahan and converted into a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. He insists that “facts” have been sacrificed to craft a romantic legend.

Laden with dialoguebaazi, the film leans hard into nationalist rhetoric, extolling sanskriti while portraying the Mughals as ruthless plunderers. In one scene, Rawal claims that the absence of “PR” for Indian craftsmen allowed Leftist historians to distort the past and glorify the Mughals. He brands such scholars as “agenda-dharis” (pushers of agendas) and even calls the teaching of this version of history “intellectual terrorism” meant to “corrupt” young minds.

[Dialoguebaazi or dialogue baazi refers to the art of delivering dramatic, witty, or iconic lines, a cornerstone of Bollywood culture. In modern contexts, it manifests as: dramatic speech – literally translating to ‘dialogue play,’ it describes speaking in a theatrical manner, often mimicking the style of larger-than-life movie characters, or cultural influence – it highlights the significance of rhetoric in Indian cinema, where memorable one-liners often carry more weight than the actual screenplay.

[Sanskriti refers to the refinement of human behavior and the cultivation of traditions over generations. In India, it’s often synonymous with a way of life, including social norms, ethics, and artistic expressions and the term is often used to describe the essence of Indian tradition and its enduring, diverse, and evolving nature.]

Zakir Hussain [b. 1965], as the opposing lawyer, presents evidence and calls a historian, educationist and archaeologist to the stand at different points in the film. But Das manages to poke holes in every argument, quoting ancient texts and repeating several already debunked theories. At one point, Hussain wryly tells him, “You be a tourist guide and don’t try to be a comedian.”

Ironically, despite Rawal’s sharp one-liners, the courtroom drama never feels authentic or bound by procedure. Rawal, who does most [of] the heavy-lifting when it comes to creating drama, is ably aided by an ensemble cast, including Hussain, Namit Das [b. 1984] and Brijendra Kala [b. 1969] and Shishir Sharma [b. 1955].

At 165 minutes, The Taj Story trudges on without offering any real answers to the questions it raises. Instead, it merely stirs the pot, blending fact and fiction to serve an agenda far removed from historical inquiry.

[Alaka Sahani is a distinguished Indian film critic and senior editor currently serving as an associate editor at The Indian Express.  Based in Mumbai, she’s recognized as a leading voice in cinematic journalism with a career spanning over two decades.

[In 2014, Sahani received the Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) for Best Film Critic for her work in 2013.  She was specifically lauded for her analytical approach that highlights cinema beyond mere glamour and gossip.  She’s a voting member for the 83rd Annual Golden Globes (2026) and she’s served on the juries for various prestigious platforms, including the National Film Awards for films produced within the Indian film industry and the Red Lorry Film Festival, an annual international film festival in Mumbai in March.

[Sahani's writing often delves into cinematic history, diverse genres, and global trends.  Her work is regularly featured on Rotten Tomatoes, where she’s a Tomatometer-approved critic.]