Umbrage

Taj Mahal Cloned

Bangladesh’s copycat Taj creates a dustup with India.

Bangladeshi film director Ahsanullah Moni has duplicated the Taj Mahal 20 miles northeast of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, The Times of London reports, and the Indians are not at all happy about it. Moni dispatched architects to Agra in India to measure the original, then imported marble from Italy and diamonds from Belgium to ensure his replica of the mausoleum built in 1653 would be perfect. But Indian officials are upset. “You can’t just go out and copy historical monuments,” an official at the Indian High Commission in London said. The Bangladeshis, in turn, reject the notion that an historic building can be protected by copyright. “Show me where it says that emulating a building like this can be illegal,” said an official. Moni claims he only wanted to attract tourists to Bangladesh and give locals too poor to travel to India a chance to see one of the most beautiful monuments in the world.