Delhi HC refuses urgent hearing of plea against Paresh Rawal’s film ‘The Taj Story’, which releases on October 31

A Bench comprising Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela refused to grant the petitioner’s prayer for a hearing on Wednesday itself. The petition would be “auto-listed”, the Bench said.

The film, which is scheduled for release on Friday (October 31), has been written and directed by Tushar Amrish Goel, and produced by C A Suresh Jha under the banner of Swarnim Global Services Pvt Ltd. The film was announced by Rawal in May last year, and its official trailer was released on October 16.

According to the petitioner, the film “purports to challenge the conventional narrative regarding the origins of the Taj Mahal, asserting that it may have been built on or is associated with a pre-existing Hindu temple or deity shrine”.

According to the petition, the film’s teaser and promotional posters depict the dome of the Taj Mahal being lifted to reveal a figure of Lord Shiva emerging therefrom, and that these depictions have “generated considerable public debate, protest, and concern about communal harmony and the veracity of historical claims”.

Such films “may cause a communal debate and may also lead to communal tensions”, says the plea. The film, it says, is “highly provocative in nature”, and is capable of “creating a wedge between the communities”. The unverified claims made in the film could lead to “tourist misbehaviour or demands for unnecessary interventions in the monument”, it says.

The film’s trailer shows Rawal in the role of a tourist guide who seeks to uncover supposed mysteries related to what is perhaps India’s most famous monument. The actor posted on X that the film will challenge the “narrative of centuries”, and would show that “What you believe may be the greatest historical deception”. He invited audiences to “Witness the unveiling of secret chamber of The Taj Mahal.”

In fact, claims about the Taj Mahal and its purported secrets are not new. In May 2022, the Allahabad High Court had dismissed a petition seeking a “facts finding committee to study and publish the real History of Taj Mahal” and a “direction…to open the sealed doors (approx. 22 rooms) inside the Taj Mahal to rest to the controversy”.

An HC Bench comprising Justices Subhash Vidyarthi and Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya had said that “such issues…should be left to be debated amongst the academicians, scholars and historians”, and ruled that the prayers were “non-justiciable”.

Back in 1989, a historian named P N Oak had claimed in his book ‘Taj Mahal: The True Story’ that the 17th century Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s magnificent marble monument was in fact a Hindu temple to Lord Shiva that was “perhaps built in the 4th century to serve as a palace” by one Raja Paramardi Dev.

“Our research has firmly established that the term Taj Mahal is a popular mispronunciation of the ancient Hindu name Tejomahalaya,” Oak wrote. He theorised that “Tejo Mahalaya” was raided during Muhammad of Ghor’s invasion of India in the late 12th century, and that in the mid-16th century, it passed into the hands of the Jaipur royal family and was managed by Jai Singh I, the Raja of Amber and a senior Mughal mansabdar.

These claims have been repeatedly amplified since then, including by the former BJP Member of Parliament Vinay Katiyar in 2017.

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