10 Lessons from Hindu History in 10 Episodes: Tales of Grit, Heroism and Valour

by Sandeep Balakrishna

Epilogue The Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque also earned another distinction. Iltutmish, Qutub-ud-din’s slave and successor, completed the construction of the Qutub Minar. Around 1233-4, he marched to Ujjaini, the beloved city of Mahakavi Kalidasa, and home to the magnificent and sublime Mahakala Temple (or Mahakal) dedicated to Shiva, one of the twelve sacred Jyotirlingas. Quite naturally, Iltutmish regarded it as one of the great hubs of infidel idolatry. With a savage stroke, he demolished this exquisite temple, a majestic, living proof and a profoundly dignified symbol of the possibilities of what innate devotion and stainless piety could accomplish when it finds unsullied expression in architecture and refined sculpture. A work of three hundred painstaking years and countless generations of dedicated, joyous, backbreaking work, an awe-inspiring system of transmitting generational knowledge, an economic framework and political stability that sustained all this tragically fell to the sword and the pickaxe and the fire of a determined, zealous vandal inspired by Islamic piety. After the pious ravaging was complete, Iltutmish ordered his troops to carry these broken idols and “many other figures” and “brass statues of Vikramaditya and other notable rulers” to Delhi where they were “broken at the door of the great” Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque so that the Faithful could trample upon it. Qutub Minar. Tower of victory. Indeed.