After spending a lifetime reciting the Taj Mahal’s story of eternal love, veteran tour guide Vishu Das says his faith was shattered.
“What if the story we’ve been telling for years is a lie?” he asked distraught, looking at the monument from a nearby rooftop. His desperation leads to a radical suggestion: “Can we run a DNA test on the Taj Mahal?”
The moment ends with the dark conclusion: “We are spreading lies.”
This is a scene from Indian director Tushar Goel’s controversial film The Taj Story, which was released in October and challenges the canon of one of the world’s most famous and beloved monuments.
In this scene, Das advances a theory that has been widely debunked by historians. The theory is that the 17th century Taj Mahal was not a Muslim mausoleum, but a Hindu palace that was captured by Muslim rulers and “repurposed” for their own use.
“The Taj Story” is the latest in a long line of pseudo-historical films produced by India’s multibillion-dollar film industry that critics say seek to demonize or erase the country’s roughly 200 million Muslims and create a history dominated by the Hindu majority.
These critics say the project reflects the ideology of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been accused of Islamophobia and stoking tensions between the different faiths that coexist in the world’s largest democracy.
Actor Paresh Rawal, who plays Das in “The Taj Story,” is a former Bharatiya Janata Party member, but director Goel told CNN that the film received no funding or support from any political party.
The film’s narrative contradicts years of research by the government’s archeology department and has failed to convince many in the Indian media and academia.
In its review, The Indian Express wrote that The Taj Story is a “collage of conspiracy theories”, adding that it “merely stirs the pot, mixing fact and fiction to serve an agenda that is far removed from historical inquiry”.
Indian magazine The Week said the film failed “both as an engaging film and as a piece of propaganda”.
The film begins with a two-minute disclaimer stating that it is a “work of fiction” and that the producers “make no claims to historical accuracy.”
Goel said the film received a lukewarm response at the box office, earning about $2 million against a budget of $1.3 million. But for some, this story resonates.
“We cannot keep the truth hidden any longer,” Bharatiya Janata Party MP Ashwini Upadhyay told local news agency ANI. “If someone tries to stop the movie, more people will see it.”
“It’s about knowing the truth,” Unnati, a film fan who declined to give her full name, told CNN at the end of a screening in Mumbai. “We have been misguided all along. We never knew our history.”
CNN asked the BJP for a response.
The white marble Taj Mahal stands on the banks of the Yamuna River, sacred to India’s Hindus, and is a 17th-century symbol of the emperor’s love for his wife.
Built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is India’s most visited monument, with more than 7 million people visiting each year.
Within its gardens, couples seek inspiration from stories of undying love. Beyond its walls, the image became a universal symbol of India itself, adorning everything from travel posters to wedding invitations. For generations, it has represented dedication, unparalleled artistry, and the stories of this country’s pluralistic past.
“The Taj Story” seeks to deconstruct that narrative.
The 165-minute courtroom drama revolves around tour guide Das, played by veteran Bollywood actor Rawal. For 25 years, Das has been entertaining tourists with his legendary love story, but this performance hides a deep-seated crisis. He is a man who no longer believes in the stories he sells.
As his doubts grew, he filed a public interest lawsuit challenging the monument’s canon, thrusting the film into central debate. Was the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan, or was it a “repurposed” Hindu palace, as is the revisionist theory advocated in some Hindu nationalist circles?
In the ensuing legal battles, the evidence-based arguments of historians and archaeologists have always been drowned out by Das’ fiery speeches denouncing the supposed “leftist agenda” and the “over-romanticization” of Mughal history.
“This film depicts the historical facts of the Taj Mahal,” Goel told CNN. “Why didn’t you teach it in the textbook?”
He added that although the film is “not about Hindus or Muslims,” Muslim characters are cast as antagonists, from rival tour guides who oppose Das’s campaign to mobs who attack his children and destroy his home.
This is an opinion that actor Rawal agrees with. He told CNN that the film “doesn’t say anything about faith,” it “speaks about facts.”
He added, “We’re talking about the school board, why the historians did the dirty things, and all the things we’re talking about…It’s all facts right in front of me…and I checked with one or two historians, good, honest historians.”
The controversy surrounding the ‘Taj story’ is occurring in tandem with broader attempts to redefine India’s past.
Critics say efforts to rewrite history have been steady since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, particularly targeting India’s Mughal era. During this period, Muslim sultans ruled India, which became one of the richest empires in the world, until the arrival of European colonialism ultimately led to its decline and collapse.
Textbooks have been rewritten to downplay the history of India’s Muslim rulers, the renaming of cities and streets during the Mughal era, and the demolition of Muslim property by authorities as punishment for trespassing on state land and suspected rioting.
The story of “The Taj Story” also has echoes of the controversy over Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid. The mosque was destroyed by Hindu hardliners in a 1992 attack over the belief that it was built on the site of a Hindu temple. The destruction of the building sparked the worst act of violence India has experienced since independence, and became the center of a bitterly polarizing debate over identity and history in the decades that followed.
Supporters defend the changes as a restoration of India’s pre-Islamic traditions, while critics decry them as a deliberate erasure of the country’s pluralist history.
This is not the first time the Taj Mahal has become a flashpoint for political and historical conflict.
In 2017, the document was conspicuously missing from a tourism brochure published by the Hindu nationalist government of Uttar Pradesh, where the state is located. The omission of India’s most famous landmarks sparked a backlash, which authorities dismissed by insisting the booklet was not intended for general distribution.
Five years later, politicians from the ruling BJP filed a court petition demanding that 22 sealed rooms within the monument be opened to search for evidence of a Hindu temple. The legal challenge was based on the long-debunked Tejo Mahalaya theory. This theory is a fringe claim, popularized by right-wing writer P.N. Oak in the 1980s, that the mausoleum was originally a Hindu temple. The Archaeological Survey of India has consistently denied this theory, saying there is no evidence to support it.
Although The Tale of the Taj does not explicitly support the Tejo Mahalaya theory, its controversial promotional poster depicts the Hindu god Shiva emerging from a tomb.
Historian Swapna Riddle said the period in which the Taj Mahal was built is “very well documented”.
“The Mughals were a very bureaucratic state. They left behind a lot of documents, and we have all of this. This kind of project was a huge project.”
For nearly a century, Bollywood has been a mirror of Indian society, and the stories of the world’s most prolific film industry reflect the changing tides of the vast developing world.
Hindi films once reflected the secular and democratic values championed by India’s founding fathers. But many critics say the industry has shifted to the right over the past decade, coinciding with the populist rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
2022’s “The Kashmir Files” and 2023’s “Kerala Stories” are past high-profile film releases that have been criticized for denigrating Muslims, perpetuating negative stereotypes, exacerbating religious tensions and distorting historical facts.
Meanwhile, films deemed to be disrespectful of Hindu traditions face serious consequences. The film Annapoorani (2023) was removed from Netflix after right-wing groups protested its depiction of a Brahmin woman, a member of the Hindu priestly caste, cooking and eating meat. The historical epic Padmaavat (2018), which suggested a romantic relationship between a revered Hindu queen and an invading Muslim sultan, sparked violent nationwide protests by Hindu groups who say it distorts history.
Historians argue that these films are part of a broader campaign to redefine India’s national identity by elevating Hindu traditions and denigrating its Muslim past.
Mr Riddle, the historian, said that for many people, “general ideas about history” came directly from popular culture.
She said that even though these are “fictional accounts” they have extraordinary “impact and impact” because viewers truly believe they are “real history”.
The Taj Mahal itself has not been changed by the controversy.
As it has for centuries, the marble shines across the Yamuna River, a quiet testament to symmetry and elegance. But the story India tells is crumbling.
“There’s a spate of movies that seem to very consciously project historical Muslim figures as villains,” Riddle said.
“This is a type of prank that is clearly aligned with political objectives and is extremely dangerous.”
