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Friday, June 1, 2012

Kashmir: Ah, good old tolerance!,

Islam and Pluralism
Kashmir: Ah, good old tolerance!
By Shyam Kaul

Sultan Zainul Abidin Bud Shah (1420-70) is indisputably acknowledged as the real model of religious tolerance and harmony. Jonaraja and his contemporary, Srivara, record, that among the host of measures the Sultan took to alleviate the plight and sufferings of the Hindus, ruthlessly persecuted during the preceding regime, was the building of two temples near Ishbar and grant of rent free lands for their maintenance. Bud Shah made strict rules against cow slaughter and abstained from eating meat on holy Hindu festivals. He ordered the rebuilding of a number of temples, destroyed during the earlier regime. He forbade killing of fish in several springs, sacred for Hindus, a practice which, more or less, continues till this day. Jonaraja records that Bud Shah paid a visit to the "sacred site" of Amarnath while he was the Sultan.

In deference to the religious faith of his Hindu subjects, Bud Shah's noble deeds of rebuilding destroyed temples and building new ones, and granting rent free land to them, inevitably and instantly brings one closer to the turbulent scenario today here at home.

http://newageislam.com/kashmir--ah,-good-old-tolerance!/islam-and-pluralism/d/618


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