Chapter 6
The Damage Quantified
Putting numbers to destruction — what can be measured, what can be estimated, and what is simply beyond quantification.
Putting numbers to destruction — what can be measured, what can be estimated, and what is simply beyond quantification.
What can be documented from primary sources represents the minimum. The actual destruction was almost certainly far greater.
| Site | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Krishna Janmasthan | Mathura, UP | Destroyed |
| Kashi Vishwanath | Varanasi, UP | Attempted |
| Mandrail Fort Temples | Mandrail, MP | Destroyed |
| Utgir Temples | Udgir, MH/MP | Destroyed |
| Narwar Temples | Narwar, MP | Destroyed |
| Nagarkot Temples | Kangra, HP | Destroyed |
These 6+ major sites are only those specifically documented in surviving primary sources. The actual number was almost certainly far higher:
Historian Sita Ram Goel estimates that during the entire Delhi Sultanate / Mughal period, tens of thousands of temples were destroyed across India, with Sikandar Lodi being one of the most zealous contributors.
A discriminatory poll-tax on every non-Muslim individual, renewed annually. For a population that was overwhelmingly Hindu, this represented a massive wealth transfer — from the general Hindu population to the Islamic state treasury.
Historical Jizya rates varied from 12 to 48 dirhams per person per year depending on wealth category.
A separate tax imposed on Hindus visiting sacred sites. This meant Hindus were paying twice — once for existing (Jizya) and again for practicing their faith (pilgrim tax) — while their sacred sites were simultaneously being destroyed.
Hindu temples were major economic institutions — they employed priests, artisans, musicians, cooks, cleaners, and administrators. They owned land, ran charitable operations, and were hubs of local commerce. Their destruction collapsed entire local economies.
Some losses defy measurement but must still be named:
Temple libraries destroyed along with the temples. Unique Sanskrit texts — philosophical treatises, scientific works, literary compositions — lost forever. We will never know what we lost because the records of their existence were destroyed with them.
Centuries of sculptural evolution — from Gupta-era classicism through medieval regional styles — destroyed. Stone images given to butchers as meat-weights. The artistic heritage of a civilization, reduced to tools of a trade deliberately chosen to humiliate.
Guru-shishya (teacher-student) chains of knowledge transmission, maintained for centuries, severed in a single generation. Musical ragas, dance forms, sculptural techniques, medical practices, philosophical schools — all transmitted through oral tradition, all vulnerable to a single disruption.
The psychological impact on communities who watched their most sacred sites destroyed, their deities handed to butchers, their rituals banned, their scholars executed. Generational trauma that echoes through centuries and manifests in the identity struggles of the present.
The geography of Sikandar Lodi's destruction stretches across an enormous area of the Indian subcontinent:
This is not the destruction of a single city or region — it is a subcontinent-spanning campaign targeting the most significant nodes of Hindu sacred geography.