Portrait of Aurangzeb Complex than Hindutva’s Political Project Will Admit

[Spring Onion]

A Portrait of Aurangzeb More Complex than Hindutva’s Political Project Will Admit
BY HARBANS MUKHIA ON 04/03/2017 • LEAVE A COMMENT


In Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, Audrey Truschke tries to sift popular imagination on the ruler’s personal and political life from historical realities.

A painting of Emperor Aurangzeb being carried on a palanquin. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“The Aurangzeb of popular memory bears only a faint resemblance to the historical emperor,” observes Audrey Truschke near the concluding section of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth. This indeed is her book’s central theme. In the slim volume, Truschke seeks to sift the man from the myth that has grown around him, especially in popular imagination, over the past couple of centuries.

Truschke burst onto the horizon of medieval Indian history studies just a year ago with her major work, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, in which she argues that the Mughal court generally, but especially between 1560 and 1660 (comprising the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan), greatly patronised not only the Sanskrit language but Sanskrit culture as part of their vision of governance. She bases her argument on an immense amount of in-depth research. The book is clearly meant for the professional medievalist.

The book under review here, on the other hand, is not only half the size of the first but is equally clearly meant for the lay reader, lighter to read with no footnotes and no complex arguments. As a historian, she is disturbed by the distance between professional knowledge and popular image of the man and the emperor, and intervenes to minimise that distance without being an apologist for either the man or the emperor. “The multifaceted king had a complex relationship with Islam, but even so he is not reducible to his religion. In fact, little is simple about Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was an emperor devoted to power, his vision of justice, and expansion. He was an administrator with streaks of brilliance and scores of faults. He grew the Mughal Empire to its greatest extent and may also have positioned it to break apart. No single characteristic or action can encapsulate Aurangzeb Alamgir…”

Audrey Truschke. Credit: Twitter/Audrey Truschke

This indeed is the problem with seeking to minimise the distance between a professional estimate and the popular image of a ruler, any ruler. The historian looks at a ruler’s reign as constantly evolving in interaction with a whole complex array of opposing pulls and pressures – political, administrative, economic, cultural, religious, factional and so forth. In popular image, the ruler’s single characteristic is given and fixed and that characteristic is the unwavering driving force during his reign.

The argument that Aurangzeb’s war with his brother and rival Dara Shukoh was not a battle between orthodoxy and liberalism and that the two did not have their support base divided between the orthodox and liberals or the Muslims and the Hindus among the nobles who took sides has long been established in historiography. M. Athar Ali had demonstrated this in his book Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb, published in 1966. Aurangzeb had the support of 21 Hindu nobles of high ranks, including the legendary Rajputs Jai Singh and Jaswant Singh, and Dara had 24 on his side, none as grand as the two.

That Aurangzeb did not throw out all the Hindus and Shias from his court and administration on his accession or later is also commonplace among historians. That the number of Hindus in his nobility rose to the highest in Mughal history; that even as he ordered the demolition of a dozen or so temples, including those at Kashi and Mathura and built mosques on their ruins, he was also handing out lands and cash to other temples and maths and to Brahmins is also routinely recounted in history books. Aurangzeb composed a poem in Hindi in which he invokes the blessings of Vishnu, Brahma and Mahesh on his accession (see Manager Pandey, Mughal Badshahon ki Hindi Kavita).

Clearly, the emperor Aurangzeb was too multifaceted to be reduced to a single personal/religious identity. Indeed, no ruler ever is. Each ruler is faced with multiple, contradictory choices and is obliged to find an equilibrium among them. Sometimes the equilibrium succeeds; at times it doesn’t.

We hardly need to go all the way to the 17th century to appreciate this; much nearer our times, most of us would remember that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, face to face with contradictory pressures from the Muslim clergy on the Shah Bano case and Hindu extremists on the Ram janmabhumi issue opted to placate both simultaneously. He didn’t succeed; nor did Aurangzeb. But the attempt on the part of both was to win over two competing sides simultaneously.

Audrey Truschke
Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth
Penguin Random House, 2017

Is this too complex an argument for the lay person? Partly yes, for it does not fit into the picture of a single, unchanging characteristic of ruler. But more so, because far from the past shaping the present, it is the present which shapes the past. The political conflicts of the present demand the casting of images of the past. Aurangzeb wasn’t perceived as a hardcore religious zealot in his own time by historians, including several Hindu historians such as Bhim Sen and Ishwar Das; this image began to grow in the late 18th century and after, finding a firm footing in the colonial and nationalist historiography of the 20th century.

Today, when the entire political mobilisation of the ruling party is driven by the colonial “divide and rule” strategy and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh keeps propagating its social vision of the Muslim as the “other”, the demonic Aurangzeb comes in handy as the embodiment of all that is evil. History, of course, is everyone’s slave; everyone is her master, whether one is trained as an electrician or a dentist or has a PhD in chemical engineering, never mind a lifetime spent by professionals trying to unravel its complexities.

It is here that a learned intervention by a fine scholar such as Truschke to rectify the popular perception of Aurangzeb is likely to meet with resistance. For political exigencies dictate partial memorisation of history. Amnesia about the Marathas’ “secular” plunder of everyone they could, a lot of them Hindu rajas in Rajasthan, is almost unmentionable now, although it was part of history books down to the 1950s. But whatever image of Aurangzeb that caters to the political project of a Hindu rashtra will remain in circulation, never mind all the complexities the professional historians unearth. Who says history deals with the past? It is ever present. However, the case for history’s truth remains important for those not committed to its RSS version. The book is a valuable aid for arriving at that complex truth.

Harbans Mukhia was professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
https://thewire.in/113650/aurangzeb-audrey-truschke-review/

 

[asq]

Now this is based on facts and not spaculation of the worst kind, some Hindu historians were and today are bent on twisting the truth and insulting the noble one. Shame on them.

 

[Spring Onion]

Now this is based on facts and not spaculation of the worst kind, some Hindu historians were and today are bent on twisting the truth and insulting the noble one. Shame on them.

i al looking for the poem wrote by Aurangzeb where he sought blessing of hindu and other gods for his success

 

[Arsalan]

Excellent share @Spring Onion . One of the best written articles i have read in long time. LOVED IT. Here are a few things i will like to point again from the above shared article:

Clearly, the emperor Aurangzeb was too multifaceted to be reduced to a single personal/religious identity. Indeed, no ruler ever is. Each ruler is faced with multiple, contradictory choices and is obliged to find an equilibrium among them. Sometimes the equilibrium succeeds; at times it doesn’t.

True! To keep the trust of his population, to ensure there loyalty, the ruler indeed to strike a balance between different races and religions. Asking for the favor of Bhagwan ensures that his Hindu population keep there faith in him. A hindu soldier will fight better under him once he knows that this commander have sought for favor from his deities!

We hardly need to go all the way to the 17th century to appreciate this; much nearer our times, most of us would remember that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, face to face with contradictory pressures from the Muslim clergy on the Shah Bano case and Hindu extremists on the Ram janmabhumi issue opted to placate both simultaneously. He didn’t succeed; nor did Aurangzeb. But the attempt on the part of both was to win over two competing sides simultaneously.

and the line I loved the most (may even make it my signature) :

Is this too complex an argument for the lay person? Partly yes, for it does not fit into the picture of a single, unchanging characteristic of ruler. But more so, because far from the past shaping the present, it is the present which shapes the past.

WOW,, Simply wow.
Never looked at it from this perspective but now that i do it makes perfet sense and i found it to be totally true!

And the article follows this statement with the following passage:

The political conflicts of the present demand the casting of images of the past. Aurangzeb wasn’t perceived as a hardcore religious zealot in his own time by historians, including several Hindu historians such as Bhim Sen and Ishwar Das; this image began to grow in the late 18th century and after, finding a firm footing in the colonial and nationalist historiography of the 20th century.

Today, when the entire political mobilisation of the ruling party is driven by the colonial “divide and rule” strategy and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh keeps propagating its social vision of the Muslim as the “other”, the demonic Aurangzeb comes in handy as the embodiment of all that is evil. History, of course, is everyone’s slave; everyone is her master, whether one is trained as an electrician or a dentist or has a PhD in chemical engineering, never mind a lifetime spent by professionals trying to unravel its complexities.

Amazing.

It is here that a learned intervention by a fine scholar such as Truschke to rectify the popular perception of Aurangzeb is likely to meet with resistance. For political exigencies dictate partial memorisation of history. Amnesia about the Marathas’ “secular” plunder of everyone they could, a lot of them Hindu rajas in Rajasthan, is almost unmentionable now, although it was part of history books down to the 1950s. But whatever image of Aurangzeb that caters to the political project of a Hindu rashtra will remain in circulation, never mind all the complexities the professional historians unearth. Who says history deals with the past? It is ever present. However, the case for history’s truth remains important for those not committed to its RSS version. The book is a valuable aid for arriving at that complex truth.

Man, if the book is a fraction of good as this review was, it will be one memorable read.

Will be looking for this one for sure.

Thank you again @Spring Onion for sharing this here.

 

[niaz]

Aurangzeb was no doubt a competent king, last of the great Mughals. The book correctly describes that there were Hindu Rajas as well as Shia Nawabs who supported him. Presence of Rajput warriors in his army fighting the Marathas is a historical fact. I don’t admire him because he was supposedly an orthodox Muslim nor do I hate him because his imposed Jizia (poll tax) on non-Muslims. I do not like Aurangzeb because of two reasons.

First and foremost being that he took over a well governed and prosperous realm from Shahjehan. One can judge opulence of Shahjehan’s reign by just reminding oneself that his rule extended from the borders of Golconda in the South to Kabul in the North. Shahjehan’s army even occupied Qandahar, Balkh & Badkhshan from 1638 to 1646. There was also a flurry of building activity during his 30 years of reign which included construction of Red Fort & the Taj Mahal.

On the other hand the generation long Deccan & Martha wars of Aurangzeb exhausted the resources of Mughal Empire. Consequently, within a generation of his death in 1707, Mughals had lost huge chunks of their territory to the Marathas. When Nadir Shah Afshaar invaded India, he met no serious opposition until Karnal, barely 120 Km from Delhi, where the Mughal army was comprehensively defeated.

One can quote hundreds of reasons for the decline of Mughal power but the historical fact remains that Aurangzeb must have done something wrong which caused a 200 years old empire to become so weak so quickly that by 1735 Marathas had captured Gujarat & Malwa. And in March 1737 Peshwa Baji Rao defeated the imperial army near Delhi. A couple of years later Nadir Shah managed to carry away most of the treasures of Indian Mughals such as the ‘Peacock throne’ to Iran.

My second reason is ‘Human’. Islam teaches us to respect our parents. Aurangzeb dethroned and imprisoned his own father. Let us not forget that unlike Akbar; Shahjehan was not secular but an orthodox Muslim. Fighting among the brothers for the crown after the king's death has been quite common throughout history but dethroning the father is a rare event.

I would have rather died than imprison my father. I regret my inability to like any king or emperor who treats his father this way.

 

[Nilgiri]

My second reason is ‘Human’. Islam teaches us to respect our parents. Aurangzeb dethroned and imprisoned his own father. Let us not forget that unlike Akbar; Shahjehan was not secular but an orthodox Muslim. Fighting among the brothers for the crown after the king's death has been quite common throughout history but dethroning the father is a rare event.

I would have rather died than imprison my father. I regret my inability to like any king or emperor who treats his father this way.

Well he imprisoned his father, as an eternal punishment and retribution for making his eldest Dara Shikoh as official heir.

A very foul, unspeakable thing to do, but he knew his own father would only speak out against him if allowed the chance.

It quite hardened Aurganzeb I would imagine as a person too....doing that to his older brother and his own father that he once sat in the lap of.....to be able to live with your conscience after doing that. Making such brick walls in your psyche to convince yourself that you were absolutely right....for the reservoir of doubt trying to seep in all the time must be kept out at all costs....for you fear it would weaken you greatly....and you just may have the same thing done to you that you did to others as a result.

Problem is when a sword is made too hard in a blazing hot forge, it becomes brittle and eventually shatters. Thus it is with empires too. Mughal empire sure did achieve its zenith of raw strength under Aurangzeb like a hard sword....but at a very terrible long term cost for itself and more importantly the people of the subcontinent.....for the sword ultimately shattered....it simply was not a tough weapon.

 

[VCheng]

Well he imprisoned his father, as an eternal punishment and retribution for making his eldest Dara Shikoh as official heir.

A very foul, unspeakable thing to do, but he knew his own father would only speak out against him if allowed the chance.

Why single him out only? Back then, in the days of old empires, most tussles for succession were full of blood and intrigue.

 

[ranjeet]

The Never-Ending Sanitisation Of Aurangzeb!

Each attempt to whitewash the sins of Aurangzeb appears farther removed from facts than the last one. And yet, the campaign continues.


Mughal emperor Aurangzeb is more sinned against than sinning. This premise, so laboriously put forward by many leftist historians for decades now, is not new.


But it is difficult to find a more ridiculous and contrived apology than the one published in The Hindu on this ‘pious’ Mughal. Both the interviewer and interviewee seem to be happily on the same page in forcing a new twist to present as well as the past.



The very first question asked by the interviewer Anuradha Raman is preposterous, presumptuous and loaded. “The present Bharatiya Janata Party government believes,” she says with little or no hesitation, “Mughals are not part of India’s history.”





On what basis does Anuradha Raman frame such a question? Is it because Aurangzeb’s name was replaced by APJ Abdul Kalam for a street in Delhi? Is that enough to pose such a highly provocative, prejudicial question?
The way Anuradha Raman constructs the question it is very likely an ordinary reader would conclude that Mughal History has been erased from the educational syllabus in India!





What is more dumbfounding is that Audrey Truschke, Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, does not even pause for a moment against such an uncritical, presumptuous and leading question.





She happily latches on to the misdirection and further fortifies the reckless allegation by the rhetorical question, “what are the political reasons for the BJP wanting to erase the Mughals (or at least most of the Mughals) from India’s past?”





Now, there is no elaboration as to how the BJP wants to erase the Mughals from India’s past. With the eager help of the interviewer, the scholar pits this ‘fact’ against why we, Indians, should venerate Aurangzeb.





“We should not,” she advises the multitudes of ignorant Indians, “make the error of attributing Aurangzeb’s lack of interest in Sanskrit to his alleged bigotry”.





So, all of Aurangzeb’s dogmatism and intolerance is reduced to his ‘lack of interest’ in Sanskrit. And his bigotry is ‘alleged’! Can there be a more mischievous formulation than this?





And she goes on: “Aurangzeb is a severely misunderstood historical figure who has suffered perhaps more than any of the other Mughal rulers from present-day biases”





What is the present day bias against Aurangzeb? How is he ‘severely misunderstood’?





Aurangzeb was loathed by the people of this country because he was a fanatic, who treated the majority religious group with contempt, subjected them to untold misery and destroyed the Hindu culture with vengeance.





When the scholar says Aurangzeb was ‘severely misunderstood’, does she mean that he did not do any of these things? That he was no different from Akbar or his own father Shah Jahan in the treatment of the Hindus and their temples and their culture? (Interestingly, the scholar actually makes effort to show Akbar in poor light to throw some silver line around Aurangzeb!)





Well-known Historian Will Durant, in his much acclaimed ‘Story of Civilization’, narrates the religious fervour of Aurangzeb that led him to ‘smash every idol’ that his eyes fell upon:





“Aurangzeb cared for nothing for art, destroyed its ‘heathen’ monuments with coarse bigotry, and fought, through a reign of half a century, to eradicate from India almost all religions but his own. He issued orders to the principal governors, and to his other subordinates, to raze to the ground all the temples of either Hindus or Christians, to smash every idol, and to close every Hindu school.

In one year (1679 – 80) sixty-six temples were broken to pieces in Amber alone, sixty-three at Chitor, one hundred and twenty-three at Udaipur; and over the site of a Benares temple especially sacred to the Hindus he built, in deliberate insult, a Mohammedan mosque. He forbade all public worship of the Hindu faith, and laid upon every unconverted Hindu a heavy capitation tax. As a result of his fanaticism, thousands of temples which had represented the art of India through a millennium were laid in ruins. We can never know, from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty she once possessed.”





Now, to praise Aurangzeb as ‘puritanical’ in his faith is one thing; but to justify the wholesale destruction of non-Islamic religious symbols of the majority of his subjects as a result of his puritanical beliefs is another.





And to say, he was ‘much misunderstood’ in his Hindu-bashing because he was only strictly following his religious beliefs is farcical.





In her overdone explanation, the scholar says that since Aurangzeb had to beat out Dara Shikoh – his brother, known for his broad views on religion and culture – to the throne, the poor usurper Aurangzeb was forced to break from the past – which, unfortunately for his population, translated into intolerance of the worst kind.





“Thus, from Aurangzeb’s perspective, breaking Mughal ties with the Sanskrit cultural world was a way to distinguish his idioms of rule from those of the previous heir apparent.”

So, the entire pounding of indigenous Hindu culture is conveniently reduced to Aurangzeb’s ‘idioms of rule’ which were different ‘from those of the previous heir apparent’.





Another subterfuge used by the scholar – actually an old one – is to assert that any genocide, bigotry, fanaticism, religious persecution by the Mughals, more so by Aurangzeb, was only political. This kind of justification, used repeatedly to defend the violence and persecution against the non-Muslims during the Mughal period – is revolting, to say the least.





In what way is religious persecution acceptable, if it were to be motivated by political opportunism?
Can we apply to their favourite whipping boy – the BJP – the same yardstick – that the party was using religion only for its political gains? And does that absolve it of any wrongdoing?





Besides, the avalanche of evidence alludes to Aurangzeb’s religious impulse that led to the mindless temple destruction. Historians like Satish Chandra (Medieval India, NCERT) tried to show that Aurangzeb’s imposition of Jaziya against Hindus was ideological (meaning it was, somehow, not religious) and was meant to pay for the ulama. That is all the more reason to infer that it was in obedience to the Quranic injunction that Aurangzeb reimposed Jaziya.





Audrey Truschke’s new book Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court studies ‘cultural alliance between Muslim and Hindu elites in early Sanskrit texts’. Her findings, apparently, reveal how Mughals supported and engaged with Indian thinkers and ideas. From this, she makes this sweeping conclusion that there was no religious conflict in Indian history. The Mughals were lording over an empire whose subjects were from an alien faith, and naturally would have to engage with them at some level. But some cultural interactions or the interest of a few of the Mughal courtiers in Sanskrit could not be projected as if it were enough evidence that the Mughals were happy to let the Indian culture, art and religion flourish.





Curiously, while Truschke claims that Mughals were engaged with Sanskrit scholars to understand the Indian traditional knowledge and practices, she does not seem to have one example to show how Aurangzeb interacted with Indian culture or religion in any positive manner.





Many ‘secular’ scholars like Audrey Truschke accuse the others of distorting Indian history, especially the medieval period, while strangely resorting to whitewash it. Arun Shourie (Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud) has documented in detail how these eminent historians always strive to push the extreme religious bigotry of Mughal emperors under the carpet; and where it is not possible, cleverly try to ‘balance’ the atrocities against Hindus by listing out one lame excuse after another – from attributing to the pressure of orthodox elements, to legacy of old rulers, conflicts with local principalities or political exigencies!





While a mountain of evidence is available on Aurangzeb’s oppression and intolerance against his Hindu subjects, Audrey Truschke is audacious enough to say that ‘there were limited instances when the Mughals persecuted specific individuals over religious differences’! And as a case in point, she gives the example of Akbar ordering assassination of some Muslim ulama. A clever but fraudulent ploy to sanitise Aurangzeb’s role.





What is interesting is that Truschke, who feels Marxist history is limiting, says exactly the same things about the Mughal period or Aurangzeb’s monstrosities with which the Indian Marxist historians have filled the text books with!





She, like many of her predecessors in India and abroad, talks about ‘the dangers of rewriting history and subscribing to narrow interpretations of specific texts,’ in the backdrop of ‘rising intolerance going forward’.





But isn’t that what these scholars are actually doing? They are rewriting history and presenting misinterpretations in the perceived cause of fighting against religious conflicts. How come when Manusmrti is exposed for what it is, no conflict between the priestly Brahmin class and the shudras is expected in modern India, but fear of communalism is cited as a justifiable cause for not bringing out the Islamist ravages against Hindu religion and Indian culture during the medieval period?





The attempt should not be to cover up unpalatable parts of our history. The message should be that the past events do not and should not have a bearing on the current political and social realities of India in the post-independent era. Just because Aurangzeb was a fanatic who inflicted the most crushing onslaughts on Hindu religious symbols and temples does not mean the Muslims of present day India have anything to do with it. Like today’s Brahmins are not held accountable for making life of the majority of the people of this ancient nation miserable for centuries!

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/the-never-ending-sanitisation-of-aurangzeb

 

[Nilgiri]

Why single him out only? Back then, in the days of old empires, most tussles for succession were full of blood and intrigue.

Not saying he was any real different.....but there was a bunch of other coincidences going on at the same time that made this case a special one over the rest.

 

[SrNair]

A Portrait of Aurangzeb More Complex than Hindutva’s Political Project Will Admit
BY HARBANS MUKHIA ON 04/03/2017 • LEAVE A COMMENT


In Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, Audrey Truschke tries to sift popular imagination on the ruler’s personal and political life from historical realities.

A painting of Emperor Aurangzeb being carried on a palanquin. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“The Aurangzeb of popular memory bears only a faint resemblance to the historical emperor,” observes Audrey Truschke near the concluding section of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth. This indeed is her book’s central theme. In the slim volume, Truschke seeks to sift the man from the myth that has grown around him, especially in popular imagination, over the past couple of centuries.

Truschke burst onto the horizon of medieval Indian history studies just a year ago with her major work, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, in which she argues that the Mughal court generally, but especially between 1560 and 1660 (comprising the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan), greatly patronised not only the Sanskrit language but Sanskrit culture as part of their vision of governance. She bases her argument on an immense amount of in-depth research. The book is clearly meant for the professional medievalist.

The book under review here, on the other hand, is not only half the size of the first but is equally clearly meant for the lay reader, lighter to read with no footnotes and no complex arguments. As a historian, she is disturbed by the distance between professional knowledge and popular image of the man and the emperor, and intervenes to minimise that distance without being an apologist for either the man or the emperor. “The multifaceted king had a complex relationship with Islam, but even so he is not reducible to his religion. In fact, little is simple about Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was an emperor devoted to power, his vision of justice, and expansion. He was an administrator with streaks of brilliance and scores of faults. He grew the Mughal Empire to its greatest extent and may also have positioned it to break apart. No single characteristic or action can encapsulate Aurangzeb Alamgir…”

Audrey Truschke. Credit: Twitter/Audrey Truschke

This indeed is the problem with seeking to minimise the distance between a professional estimate and the popular image of a ruler, any ruler. The historian looks at a ruler’s reign as constantly evolving in interaction with a whole complex array of opposing pulls and pressures – political, administrative, economic, cultural, religious, factional and so forth. In popular image, the ruler’s single characteristic is given and fixed and that characteristic is the unwavering driving force during his reign.

The argument that Aurangzeb’s war with his brother and rival Dara Shukoh was not a battle between orthodoxy and liberalism and that the two did not have their support base divided between the orthodox and liberals or the Muslims and the Hindus among the nobles who took sides has long been established in historiography. M. Athar Ali had demonstrated this in his book Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb, published in 1966. Aurangzeb had the support of 21 Hindu nobles of high ranks, including the legendary Rajputs Jai Singh and Jaswant Singh, and Dara had 24 on his side, none as grand as the two.

That Aurangzeb did not throw out all the Hindus and Shias from his court and administration on his accession or later is also commonplace among historians. That the number of Hindus in his nobility rose to the highest in Mughal history; that even as he ordered the demolition of a dozen or so temples, including those at Kashi and Mathura and built mosques on their ruins, he was also handing out lands and cash to other temples and maths and to Brahmins is also routinely recounted in history books. Aurangzeb composed a poem in Hindi in which he invokes the blessings of Vishnu, Brahma and Mahesh on his accession (see Manager Pandey, Mughal Badshahon ki Hindi Kavita).

Clearly, the emperor Aurangzeb was too multifaceted to be reduced to a single personal/religious identity. Indeed, no ruler ever is. Each ruler is faced with multiple, contradictory choices and is obliged to find an equilibrium among them. Sometimes the equilibrium succeeds; at times it doesn’t.

We hardly need to go all the way to the 17th century to appreciate this; much nearer our times, most of us would remember that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, face to face with contradictory pressures from the Muslim clergy on the Shah Bano case and Hindu extremists on the Ram janmabhumi issue opted to placate both simultaneously. He didn’t succeed; nor did Aurangzeb. But the attempt on the part of both was to win over two competing sides simultaneously.

Audrey Truschke
Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth
Penguin Random House, 2017

Is this too complex an argument for the lay person? Partly yes, for it does not fit into the picture of a single, unchanging characteristic of ruler. But more so, because far from the past shaping the present, it is the present which shapes the past. The political conflicts of the present demand the casting of images of the past. Aurangzeb wasn’t perceived as a hardcore religious zealot in his own time by historians, including several Hindu historians such as Bhim Sen and Ishwar Das; this image began to grow in the late 18th century and after, finding a firm footing in the colonial and nationalist historiography of the 20th century.

Today, when the entire political mobilisation of the ruling party is driven by the colonial “divide and rule” strategy and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh keeps propagating its social vision of the Muslim as the “other”, the demonic Aurangzeb comes in handy as the embodiment of all that is evil. History, of course, is everyone’s slave; everyone is her master, whether one is trained as an electrician or a dentist or has a PhD in chemical engineering, never mind a lifetime spent by professionals trying to unravel its complexities.

It is here that a learned intervention by a fine scholar such as Truschke to rectify the popular perception of Aurangzeb is likely to meet with resistance. For political exigencies dictate partial memorisation of history. Amnesia about the Marathas’ “secular” plunder of everyone they could, a lot of them Hindu rajas in Rajasthan, is almost unmentionable now, although it was part of history books down to the 1950s. But whatever image of Aurangzeb that caters to the political project of a Hindu rashtra will remain in circulation, never mind all the complexities the professional historians unearth. Who says history deals with the past? It is ever present. However, the case for history’s truth remains important for those not committed to its RSS version. The book is a valuable aid for arriving at that complex truth.

Harbans Mukhia was professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
https://thewire.in/113650/aurangzeb-audrey-truschke-review/

Yup.Aurangzeb was a very brilliant administrator .So he foolishly engaged with gureillas of Southern ,Deccan Indian region for 25 + years and drained all the resources of the Mughal Empire .Mughal Empire destroyed because of the stupidity of Aurangzeb .His predecessors were truly charismatic and secular .They strengthen because of the support of Hindus .But Aurangzeb destroyed all that with his stubborn conservatism.

 

[SQ8]

The Never-Ending Sanitisation Of Aurangzeb!

Each attempt to whitewash the sins of Aurangzeb appears farther removed from facts than the last one. And yet, the campaign continues.


Mughal emperor Aurangzeb is more sinned against than sinning. This premise, so laboriously put forward by many leftist historians for decades now, is not new.


But it is difficult to find a more ridiculous and contrived apology than the one published in The Hindu on this ‘pious’ Mughal. Both the interviewer and interviewee seem to be happily on the same page in forcing a new twist to present as well as the past.



The very first question asked by the interviewer Anuradha Raman is preposterous, presumptuous and loaded. “The present Bharatiya Janata Party government believes,” she says with little or no hesitation, “Mughals are not part of India’s history.”





On what basis does Anuradha Raman frame such a question? Is it because Aurangzeb’s name was replaced by APJ Abdul Kalam for a street in Delhi? Is that enough to pose such a highly provocative, prejudicial question?
The way Anuradha Raman constructs the question it is very likely an ordinary reader would conclude that Mughal History has been erased from the educational syllabus in India!





What is more dumbfounding is that Audrey Truschke, Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, does not even pause for a moment against such an uncritical, presumptuous and leading question.





She happily latches on to the misdirection and further fortifies the reckless allegation by the rhetorical question, “what are the political reasons for the BJP wanting to erase the Mughals (or at least most of the Mughals) from India’s past?”





Now, there is no elaboration as to how the BJP wants to erase the Mughals from India’s past. With the eager help of the interviewer, the scholar pits this ‘fact’ against why we, Indians, should venerate Aurangzeb.





“We should not,” she advises the multitudes of ignorant Indians, “make the error of attributing Aurangzeb’s lack of interest in Sanskrit to his alleged bigotry”.





So, all of Aurangzeb’s dogmatism and intolerance is reduced to his ‘lack of interest’ in Sanskrit. And his bigotry is ‘alleged’! Can there be a more mischievous formulation than this?





And she goes on: “Aurangzeb is a severely misunderstood historical figure who has suffered perhaps more than any of the other Mughal rulers from present-day biases”





What is the present day bias against Aurangzeb? How is he ‘severely misunderstood’?





Aurangzeb was loathed by the people of this country because he was a fanatic, who treated the majority religious group with contempt, subjected them to untold misery and destroyed the Hindu culture with vengeance.





When the scholar says Aurangzeb was ‘severely misunderstood’, does she mean that he did not do any of these things? That he was no different from Akbar or his own father Shah Jahan in the treatment of the Hindus and their temples and their culture? (Interestingly, the scholar actually makes effort to show Akbar in poor light to throw some silver line around Aurangzeb!)





Well-known Historian Will Durant, in his much acclaimed ‘Story of Civilization’, narrates the religious fervour of Aurangzeb that led him to ‘smash every idol’ that his eyes fell upon:





“Aurangzeb cared for nothing for art, destroyed its ‘heathen’ monuments with coarse bigotry, and fought, through a reign of half a century, to eradicate from India almost all religions but his own. He issued orders to the principal governors, and to his other subordinates, to raze to the ground all the temples of either Hindus or Christians, to smash every idol, and to close every Hindu school.

In one year (1679 – 80) sixty-six temples were broken to pieces in Amber alone, sixty-three at Chitor, one hundred and twenty-three at Udaipur; and over the site of a Benares temple especially sacred to the Hindus he built, in deliberate insult, a Mohammedan mosque. He forbade all public worship of the Hindu faith, and laid upon every unconverted Hindu a heavy capitation tax. As a result of his fanaticism, thousands of temples which had represented the art of India through a millennium were laid in ruins. We can never know, from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty she once possessed.”





Now, to praise Aurangzeb as ‘puritanical’ in his faith is one thing; but to justify the wholesale destruction of non-Islamic religious symbols of the majority of his subjects as a result of his puritanical beliefs is another.





And to say, he was ‘much misunderstood’ in his Hindu-bashing because he was only strictly following his religious beliefs is farcical.





In her overdone explanation, the scholar says that since Aurangzeb had to beat out Dara Shikoh – his brother, known for his broad views on religion and culture – to the throne, the poor usurper Aurangzeb was forced to break from the past – which, unfortunately for his population, translated into intolerance of the worst kind.





“Thus, from Aurangzeb’s perspective, breaking Mughal ties with the Sanskrit cultural world was a way to distinguish his idioms of rule from those of the previous heir apparent.”

So, the entire pounding of indigenous Hindu culture is conveniently reduced to Aurangzeb’s ‘idioms of rule’ which were different ‘from those of the previous heir apparent’.





Another subterfuge used by the scholar – actually an old one – is to assert that any genocide, bigotry, fanaticism, religious persecution by the Mughals, more so by Aurangzeb, was only political. This kind of justification, used repeatedly to defend the violence and persecution against the non-Muslims during the Mughal period – is revolting, to say the least.





In what way is religious persecution acceptable, if it were to be motivated by political opportunism?
Can we apply to their favourite whipping boy – the BJP – the same yardstick – that the party was using religion only for its political gains? And does that absolve it of any wrongdoing?





Besides, the avalanche of evidence alludes to Aurangzeb’s religious impulse that led to the mindless temple destruction. Historians like Satish Chandra (Medieval India, NCERT) tried to show that Aurangzeb’s imposition of Jaziya against Hindus was ideological (meaning it was, somehow, not religious) and was meant to pay for the ulama. That is all the more reason to infer that it was in obedience to the Quranic injunction that Aurangzeb reimposed Jaziya.





Audrey Truschke’s new book Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court studies ‘cultural alliance between Muslim and Hindu elites in early Sanskrit texts’. Her findings, apparently, reveal how Mughals supported and engaged with Indian thinkers and ideas. From this, she makes this sweeping conclusion that there was no religious conflict in Indian history. The Mughals were lording over an empire whose subjects were from an alien faith, and naturally would have to engage with them at some level. But some cultural interactions or the interest of a few of the Mughal courtiers in Sanskrit could not be projected as if it were enough evidence that the Mughals were happy to let the Indian culture, art and religion flourish.





Curiously, while Truschke claims that Mughals were engaged with Sanskrit scholars to understand the Indian traditional knowledge and practices, she does not seem to have one example to show how Aurangzeb interacted with Indian culture or religion in any positive manner.





Many ‘secular’ scholars like Audrey Truschke accuse the others of distorting Indian history, especially the medieval period, while strangely resorting to whitewash it. Arun Shourie (Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud) has documented in detail how these eminent historians always strive to push the extreme religious bigotry of Mughal emperors under the carpet; and where it is not possible, cleverly try to ‘balance’ the atrocities against Hindus by listing out one lame excuse after another – from attributing to the pressure of orthodox elements, to legacy of old rulers, conflicts with local principalities or political exigencies!





While a mountain of evidence is available on Aurangzeb’s oppression and intolerance against his Hindu subjects, Audrey Truschke is audacious enough to say that ‘there were limited instances when the Mughals persecuted specific individuals over religious differences’! And as a case in point, she gives the example of Akbar ordering assassination of some Muslim ulama. A clever but fraudulent ploy to sanitise Aurangzeb’s role.





What is interesting is that Truschke, who feels Marxist history is limiting, says exactly the same things about the Mughal period or Aurangzeb’s monstrosities with which the Indian Marxist historians have filled the text books with!





She, like many of her predecessors in India and abroad, talks about ‘the dangers of rewriting history and subscribing to narrow interpretations of specific texts,’ in the backdrop of ‘rising intolerance going forward’.





But isn’t that what these scholars are actually doing? They are rewriting history and presenting misinterpretations in the perceived cause of fighting against religious conflicts. How come when Manusmrti is exposed for what it is, no conflict between the priestly Brahmin class and the shudras is expected in modern India, but fear of communalism is cited as a justifiable cause for not bringing out the Islamist ravages against Hindu religion and Indian culture during the medieval period?





The attempt should not be to cover up unpalatable parts of our history. The message should be that the past events do not and should not have a bearing on the current political and social realities of India in the post-independent era. Just because Aurangzeb was a fanatic who inflicted the most crushing onslaughts on Hindu religious symbols and temples does not mean the Muslims of present day India have anything to do with it. Like today’s Brahmins are not held accountable for making life of the majority of the people of this ancient nation miserable for centuries!

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/the-never-ending-sanitisation-of-aurangzeb

The source and the author end up making this rebuttal a fictional bigoted piece.. more so by their usage of right wing language.

 

[jbond197]

The author of the original piece, Audrey Truschke, is a Hindu hater, and comes from the family of Soul Harvesters (daughter in law of Pastor Nathan (Nate) Rehn). Pastor Nate Rehn & family is involved in evangelical mission across India to win India for Christ. The BS in Audrey's book is yet another attack by the evangelical family which is aimed at widespread & greater Hindu awakening. Audrey has been shamefully justifying acts of and praising the tallest Islamic bigot and biggest killer of native Hindus/Sikhs/Buddhist/Jain population in the region. These efforts have recently increased because the soul harvesting business of Pastor Nathan Rehn's conversion clinic, Bless India Mission, is facing challenges under current govt. Their money flow has been chocked, their coffers are running dry so here comes the vicious attack on the history of land via western media by the family members.

No wonder all the modern day Islamist (supporters of same Aurangzeb/Islamic bigotry and hatred) in the thread, are cheering Audrey's efforts to whitewash acts of one of the biggest and hateful Islamic killer of peaceful masses in sub continent. Such line of thought, as of Audrey's, actually help them justify their hatred for non Muslims, and at the same time provide them ammunition to project themselves as victims of propaganda, when everyone is exposing their real face and turning against them!!

 

[Joe Shearer]

History, of course, is everyone’s slave; everyone is her master, whether one is trained as an electrician or a dentist or has a PhD in chemical engineering, never mind a lifetime spent by professionals trying to unravel its complexities.

Under that sarcasm is a lot of pain. It will only get worse.

 

[asad71]

destruction of smnath temple - the truth

Aurangjeb Alamgir, the great emperor, spectacular military leader was a great human being. Initially it was the crooked British who first made up a damning history around this great Mussalman who genuinely loved all his subjects irrespective of race or religion. Thereafter, paid Hindu writers picked up the story to spin more falsities. The objective of the British was, and remains, division of SA communities. The objective of Hindu extremist patronized writers is wiping out the Muslims from SA to create Akhand Bharat Varsa.

 

[Chak Bamu]

I wish I had time to post a lengthy post, but I shall put down a few lines:

1. Aurangzeb was a very capable king, just look at the length of his reign.
2. The empire had grown too big for one person to manage. South Asia is indeed too big to be manageable and that is why it has never existed as a single country, ever.
3. The extent of Mughal empire under Aurangzeb was the maximum and it could only be downhill from there.
4. Every considerable king in Mughal dynasty came to power via fratricide and bloodshed. When this stopped, the quality of rule declined. Those decrying Aurangzeb's conduct should look at the conduct of Shahjahan & Jahangir also.
5. Aurangzeb's son who came to power after a bloody struggle, was already in old age and died in about 4 years, unleashing another civil war. This was too much for the unwieldy Mughal Empire and the decline accelerated dramatically.
6. Aurangzeb came to power because he was the most capable, following the precedent which was followed by princes of Turkish descent else-where (Ottoman empire, Central Asia,...)

There is a delightful little book by the name of Ahkamat-e-Alamgiri, penned by one of his viziers after after Aurangzeb's death. It was meant to instruct princes in ways of state-craft as practiced by Aurangzeb. I read an Urdu translation about 20 years or so ago. I have lost it now, but I would recommend anyone interested in Aurangzeb to read it. One can clearly see his mind-set in this book. The conclusions drawn by Audrey Truschke are indeed correct. Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar did a short piece recently as a review of her book and it is insightful. I shall post it if I find time later today.