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The Many Uses of Aurangzeb

Aurangzeb, the last powerful Mughal King of India, is destined to evoke strong reactions in Indians of all political inclinations and for all kinds of reasons, it seems

Wednesday April 9, 2025 2:55 PM, Umang Kumar

[The Tomb of Aurangzeb: Aurangzeb rests in Khuldabad in Maharshtra]

1.

In the small town in Bengal I grew up in, the traveling theater, jatra, was a much awaited form of entertainment. The topics of the plays enacted were often varied and ranged over a wide selection of material – from history, literature to poetics.

One such jatra that I watched was centered on the succession battle which followed Shah Jahan. In September of 1657, as Shah Jahan fell ill, there was an acute crisis in the race to be his successor among his four sons. Among the four, the two we know the best were Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb.

The story-line focused on the machinations among the contenders to the throne of Shah Jahan. If one among the four brothers stood out for his seemingly uninterested outer demeanor, it was Aurangzeb.

He was clad in a white kurta (or more technically, the typical Mughal Angrakha/Jama) with a pagri on his head and sported a neat beard. His features matched those in popular imagination, with an aquiline nose and a generally sharp profile to the face.

What really set him apart was the fact that he counted beads all the time on his rosary. In keeping with the display of severe outward piety, he also kept repeating to his brothers, “Aami to Makkah-e jaabo (I am headed to Mecca).” Which implied that he was not interested in worldly matters like the throne. He was endeavoring to assure them that he had already relinquished all such earthly pursuits – he was headed to the holy city of Makkah soon, after all.

But we know what happened, how in the end Aurangzeb bested all his brothers to take over the throne after Shah Jahan.

Looking back, one still wonders at the choice of the plot line, which dwelled upon the theme of Mughal succession and steered clear of the evil reputation that Aurangzeb acquired in modern India.

How did the jatra team resist the temptation of showing Aurangzeb as the persecutor of Hindus, as is the popular image? Would that not have garnered a larger audience?

2.

On another occasion, I was curious about the knowledge resources that the BJP might have put out in any repository online. I discovered something called the BJP’s e-library. It had a very careless sort of interface then, with no real organization to this e-library. But prominent among the few books displayed were the volumes on Aurangzeb by historian Jadunath Sarkar.

The e-library has a better online interface these days. It displays a wide variety of books under separate categories (called “Communities in D-space”), such as Adhunik Bharat, Bharatiya Epics, History – and Jadunath Sarkar. The historian of Aurangzeb and Shivaji still deserves a separate category of his own, one not subsumed under the more general category of ‘History’.

Sarkar’s work, which announces that it is written from “original sources,” is a detailed account of Aurangzeb’s career, first as a tireless general of his father Shah Jahan’s army, and then as regent of India. These sources, Sarkar notes in his Preface to the first volume, include official firmans and annals of the court. Besides, he states that he was able to “secure the very raw materials of history, – a source of information even more valuable than the contemporary official annals described above. These are the LETTERS of the actors in the political drama of the 17th century…”

In the Preface, Sarkar does not dwell openly on Aurangzeb’s religious views or his supposed hostility towards Hindus. On the contrary, he wonders frankly how such a hardworking and scrupulous ruler could have brought the great Mughal empire to near financial ruin by the end of his reign. To quote him at some length:

“The Treasury was empty. The Imperial army knew itself defeated and recoiled from its foes…Why was it so? The ruler was free from vice, stupidity, or sloth. His intellectual keenness was proverbial, and at the same time he took to the business of governing with all the ardour which men usually display in the pursuit of pleasure…And yet the result of fifty years’ rule by such a. sovereign was failure and chaos!”

The reason for the decline, Sarkar asserts, was “to be found in Aurangzib’s policy and conduct.” Sarkar does not immediately elaborate on what he means by “policy and conduct.”

Yet, despite maintaining a measured, balanced and an almost admiring stance towards Aurangzeb in the Preface, he does let slip his thoughts on the “foreign” origins of the Mughals:

“To the Marathas, alone among the Indian peoples, belongs the glory of giving the first successful check to the onward advance of the Mughal power and saving their father-land from foreign encroachment.”

Yet, just a little later he asserts that the only factor setting the Mughal rulers apart from the subjects they governed was not their foreign origins but their religious faith:

“Centuries of intermarriage had left no Muhammadan in India — not even of the blood royal — who could claim absolute purity of foreign descent; they were all Hindustan-born, Hindu blood flowed in their veins, they had the same language, manners and dress as their Hindu subjects. The minority, therefore, could not justify its monopoly of power and office, its political privileges and social hauteur, by any pretended superiority of racial qualities, physical or mental. Religion was the only line dividing the two classes.”

Sarkar’s listing of Aurangzeb’s injustices towards the Hindus is detailed in volume 3 of his work, beginning with chapter 34 titled, The Islamic State Church in India. This chapter also contains an appendix section, Temple Destruction by Aurangzeb, which enumerates the various instances of bringing down of temples. Sarkar marshalls his sources including Aurangzeb’s farmans and letters, the general history of Gujarat titled Mirat-al-Ahmadi and several other miscellaneous documents for the purpose.

He begins the momentous Ch. 34 by an in-depth lesson in Islamic state structure and its guiding principles. He mentions right at the beginning that, “By the theory of its origin, the Muslim State is a theocracy.” After establishing that fact, he goes on to familiarize the reader with the implications of a Muslim theocratic state, especially as a conquering state, in a section titled “Necessary effects of Muslim conquest.” He describes the obligations on its Muslim citizens and the disadvantages for the non-Muslims of the conquered state, who are called the dhimmi/zimmi.

All this he does, probably to lay the ground to explain the imperatives behind imposition of the tax on dhimmis, the jaziya and other oppressive behaviors of the Islamic rulers of India (To expand and bolster his argument, Sarkar furnishes instance of intolerance of rulers from what is referred to as the Delhi Sultanate also, before the Mughals).

For, it seems, truth in historical writing was very important for Jadunath Sarkar. As the modern historian Dipesh Chakravarty quotes in his book-length study of Sarkar, the latter was a great proponent of the pursuit of historical truth, whether it be palatable or not. Sarkar, in his presidential address to the Eighth Bengal Literary Convention, is quoted as saying:

“We will not worry about whether or not the truth [we seek] is pleasant or unpleasant, or if it accords with or differs from received public opinion. Whether it pleases or hurts our sense of patriotism will not be our concern. If telling the truth invites taunts and complaints from our friends or societies, we will put up with that, for it is the vow of the historian to seek, understand, and accept the truth.”

Be that as it may, it does seem to be a very conscious choice of the historian to concentrate all of Aurangzeb’s violence and strictures towards the Hindus into one or two chapters – and even include an appendix to a chapter in the middle of a volume to catalogue Aurangzeb’s actions with respect to Hindu temples.

Also Read: Aurangzeb Alamgir - Demonising the ruler who could be a role model

For anyone looking to seize upon that one handy source to advance as evidence, this would serve as ready-made fodder. Sarkar provided the ready-reckoner, the kachcha-chittha on Aurangzeb’s deeds, as it might be referred to in Hindi. And he seems to have had the desired effect on a certain section of the population for generations to come. This despite various ways of reading his evidence and presentations, as demonstrated by later scholars.

This bears mentioning because even if cursorily goes through most of the volumes on Aurangzeb and the Mughals painstakingly put together by Sarkar, one comes away with a different view, on the whole. The volumes present an almost non-stop account and chronicle of administrative affairs and skirmishes or battles for conquest of various parts of India, at various stages of Aurangzeb’s career. And like islands amidst the crowded narrative of affairs of the state and realpolitik, there are the handful of chapters which set forth Aurangzeb’s so-called bigotry.

3.

In graduate school outside India, I came across a student from Pakistan, and we bonded since we were the only two from South Asia. We could converse freely in colloquial Hindi/Urdu, away from the strictures and formalities of English. His name was Aurangzeb. He was interested in peace studies and had recently also been studying Mohandas Gandhi.

After being introduced, for a moment, I wondered if in Pakistan children were named Aurangzeb just to spite Indians. I had some idea that Aurangzeb, the name itself, was of Persian origin and surely pointed to something auspicious or grand (It means the “ornament of the throne”). So, it was probably just another popular name, like Osama/Usama, which means something like majesty, without any attachment to any one person’s character or reputation. But more pertinently, for me, my friend Aurangzeb was one of the most gracious and mild-mannered persons I had met.

One day, when I introduced Aurangzeb by name to another Indian friend of mine, of a very progressive bent of mind, the latter burst out in uncontrollable laughter. He could not readily swallow the fact that someone could be named Aurangzeb, he said between bouts of his laughter.

The last powerful Mughal King of India is destined to evoke strong reactions in Indians of all political inclinations and for all kinds of reasons, it seems.

[The writer, Umang Kumar, is a social activist based in Delhi NCR]

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