Paper short abstract:

Was Alamgir responsible for the displacement of Krishna images from Braj, in particular that of Shri Nathji? We investigate this claim, looking at contemporary political developments using that rhetoric, as well as at vernacular sources claiming to be eye-witness reports from the seventeenth century

Paper long abstract:

It is often uncritically repeated that the iconoclasm of the Mughal emperor Alamgir (r 1758-1707) caused the displacement and dispersing of Krishna images from the Braj heartland around the late 1660s and early 1670s. Such a view casts the emperor as the villain persecuting beloved Hindu images, and the images as victims, forced to be moved from their original homeland in a grand-scale exodus.

Emilia Bachrach will discuss this discourse and the ways in which it is both affirmed and challenged in contemporary theatrical performances and debates related to the Vallabhan image of Shri Nathji and to the deity's temple, or haveli in Nathdwara, Rajasthan.

But does such discourse indeed reflect how Shri Nathji's peregrinations were perceived in the seventeenth century? Bachrach and Pauwels will present the perspective of the caretakers of such Krishna images, as represented in the Shri Nathji ki Prakatya Varta, a text attributed to Harirayji, and as such contemporary to the events in question.

We do not mean to deny that temples were destroyed by Alamgir (and others) and that images were desecrated. What we are presenting here is a case where the perceived victims' response to the challenge was more nuanced than the current Hindu-Muslim confrontational narratives might lead us to think.