Buddhist Persecution By Aurangzeb

During Aurangzeb’s reign, he persecuted almost every other religion. Among these religions, Buddhist were also persecuted by him. Buddhist have experienced religious persecution by Aurangzeb because of their adherence to the Buddhist practice, including unwarranted arrests, imprisonment, beating, torture, and/or execution.

Buddhist temples, monasteries, learning centres, meditation centres, etc, were destroyed by the Mughal. Aurangzeb used heavy artillery to destroy the Buddha statues but failed. Again a failed attempt to destroy the Bamiyan statues in the 18th century by the Persian king Nader Afshar, who directed cannon fire at them.

The Mughal emperor who ruled gave enormous sufferings to people who were from other religions. The Bamiyan Buddhas were eventually destroyed by the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban regime in 2001 after not being able to get monetary funding, in defiance of worldwide condemnation. The statues were blown up and fired upon by rockets and gunfire.