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Journalism of Courage
“Aaj ki bhasha mein Aurangzeb terrorist hai,” said BJP MP from east Delhi Maheish Girri, minutes after he received the Shivaji Award of Courage for “changing the name of Aurangzeb Road to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road”. He was presented the award at the inauguration of a symposium titled ‘Relevance of Sufism Today’ and an exhibition called ‘Dara Shukoh, the forgotten Prince of Islam’ on Friday evening at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu was to inaugurate the event and give the award, but skipped it due to the Budget Session. Organised by the Foundation for Advancement of Cultural Ties, run by French author and journalist Francois Gautier, and the Incredible Bharat Foundation, the event was attended by Dr Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, former president, Iranian Parliament.
“Every time I would see that road, it would hurt me… Aurangzeb ruined our culture, killed innocent people when he was in power. How can the capital have a road named after him? I thought it was wrong, so I took steps to get it corrected… I got threats but eventually the name was changed,” Girri said.
The road was renamed on August 28, 2015 by the NDMC, a month after Girri wrote to the PM and Delhi CM on “correcting the mistakes made in our history.”
Speaking about Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh, the two brothers, Gautier said, “Aurangzeb believed in one religion, converted people and razed temples while the other was a Sufi scholar and practised enlightened Islam. Governments across the world, French, American, are looking for a moderate voice of Islam.”
Girri said, “… such a dark phase of our history should not be brought to light. They belonged to the same religion, yet the two brothers were so different… Islam ki acchi baaton ko aagey lana chahiye.”
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