Like many tourists, Britain's Prince William and his wife, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, visited the Taj Mahal during their 2016 trip to India. But overall, tourism to the site has been dropping. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)
NEW DELHI — The Taj Mahal, India’s iconic monument to eternal love, has taken a beating in recent years. Its attendance figures are down, and air pollution is slowly turning its ethereal white marble yellow.
Now, to make matters worse, some in India say that a staunch Hindu nationalist government recently elected in the Taj’s home state of Uttar Pradesh is starving the world-famous site of funds and support because, as it sees it, the mausoleum was built by Muslim invaders.
The state’s new chief minister, the saffron-robed Hindu priest Yogi Adityanath, set the tone early on when he lamented at a rally that tiny models of the Taj Mahal are often given to visiting foreign dignitaries, saying the monument “does not reflect Indian culture.”
[Modi’s party picks strident Hindu nationalist priest to lead India’s biggest state]
The Taj, the country’s biggest tourism draw, was not allotted any cultural heritage funds in the state budget for the coming year. And the monument was omitted from the state’s official tourism brochure last week, prompting yelps of protest from the main national opposition party.
Indian Muslims offer Eid al-Fitr prayers by the Taj Mahal in Agra on June 26. (AFP/Getty Images)
Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a spokesman for the opposition Congress party, likened a tourism brochure without the Taj Mahal to a Hamlet-less “Hamlet.”
“If it is a booklet on tourism and it excludes Taj Mahal, at one level it is a joke and at another level it is tragic. It is like saying we will have ‘Hamlet’ without the prince of Denmark,” Singhvi told reporters Monday. He called the omission “a clear religious bias which is completely misplaced.”
Adityanath’s government countered by saying that the state, supported by funds from the World Bank, had slated $22 million to the monument for new gates, beautification and a multilevel parking structure.
“The Taj Mahal is the seventh wonder of the world. It has always been a priority not only for Uttar Pradesh but for the entire country of India,” said Awanish Awasthi, Adityanath’s principal secretary. “It will always be central to all our tourism policy, but there were some other new projects we wanted to feature.”
The soaring mausoleum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was built in the 17th century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and is considered one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture. Famed Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore called it “one teardrop . . . on the cheek of time.”
The Taj Mahal has long been a prime draw for foreign visitors, but its tourist numbers have dropped steadily since 2012, despite the opening of a highway that can bring tour buses from the nation’s capital, New Delhi, in under three hours.
According to the Tourism Ministry, 480,000 foreign tourists visited the site in 2015, a 35 percent drop from the 743,000 who visited there in 2012. Domestic tourists decreased by almost 113,400 from 2012 to 2015, officials say.
[In India, a jaundiced pearl]
Tourism officials have given varying reasons for the decline, including the economy, lack of infrastructure and security concerns after a notorious 2012 gang rape in New Delhi.
Golden State Warriors player Kevin Durant sparked controversy when he described the poor conditions around the Taj Mahal in blunt terms after a visit there this summer while on an official National Basketball Association tour.
“As I was driving up to the Taj Mahal, like I said, I thought that this would be holy ground, super protected, very very clean. And as I’m driving up, it’s like, s---, this used to remind me of some neighborhoods I would ride through as a kid,” he told the Athletic website. “Mud in the middle of the street, houses were not finished, but there were people living in them. No doors. No windows. The cows in the street, stray dogs and then, boom, Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world. It’s like holy s---, this was built 500 years ago and everyone comes here. It’s just an eye-opener.”
Durant later apologized for his remarks on Twitter.
Officials in the tourism business in the city of Agra, where the Taj is located, said the monument’s neglect by the administration in favor of Hindu religious sites is unfortunate, given its needs.
“The current state government is not supporting Agra as a tourist destination because of its Mughal monuments,” said Rajiv Saxena, secretary of the Tourism Guild of Agra, a trade association. “Money for tourism development has not been announced. Their focus is on religious tourism.”