I think you have a rose tinted view on Aurangzeb, I don't. Aurangzeb, by any standards was a religious bigot & there are innumerable acts of temple destruction to cite. Nor was his administration as good as you might wish to believe. He had a pretty poor control of administration, mughal control was very lax in distant areas. As far as your option that he was responsible for the country developing a conscience of itself as a country, I would have to disagree. He was probably the worst example because very soon after his reign, the whole empire simple collapsed. Hardly a mark of someone who created some sort of nationalistic conscience. There is a reason he remains despised the most of all of the Mughals. He was simply not a patch on Akbar.
I leave it here because I can see that you have a particular vision of him, there is no point labouring on the opposite. We will have to agree to disagree. Will just leave this with a bit of history.
The first recorded temple destruction by Aurangzeb was when he was a prince of 17. He demolished (On Shah Jahan's orders) the great temple built by Bir Singh at Orchha and erected a mosque at that very site. Ten years later, when he was governor of Gujarat he himself said that he had temples destroyed "by my order". In the deccan, during his second governorship, he boasted of destroying a hill top temple near Aurangabad. During this time, he also had a brahmin revenue officer Chhabila Ram beheaded for supposedly uttering improper words with reference to the prophet & justified it by saying "It's proper for all Muslims to do their utmost to assert the rules of the prophet's religion".
During the first decade of his reign while he was still consolidating, he made no major moves against Hindus except for demolitions of temple now & then and issued orders that while new temples should not be allowed & should be destroyed, older temples must be left alone. That situation changed in 1668, when he decided to take a far more hardline approach because he deemed the continued proliferation & prosperity of Hindus even after 500 years of Muslim rule as an intolerable affront to the true faith and he decided it was his imperative obligation to harass Hindus. In 1669, he issued orders to all Governors to "destroy with a willing hand the schools & temples of the infidels and they were strictly enjoined to put an entire stop to the teachings & practicing of idolatrous forms of worship" (Mustaid Khan). It was then that the temple of Somnath, the Vishwanath temple at Varanasi, the great Keshave Rai temple at Mathura were all demolished among many others. In 1670, all temples around Ujjain were demolished, a decade later, temples were destroyed across Rajasthan beginning with Jodhpur from where "several cartloads of idols were taken to delhi to be cast in the quadrangle of the court & under the steps of the Jama Masjid for being trodden upon" (Mustaid Khan) Around this time over 300 temples were destroyed in and around Chitor, Udaipur & Jaipur. In 1687 aurangzeb ordered temples in Golconda to be destroyed, in 1698 the temples in Bijapur.
Even in his last decade, he wrote to the royal officers in Gujarat " The temples of Somnath was destroyed early in my reign....It is not known what the state of things there is at present. If the idolators have again taken to worship of images at the place, then destroy the temple in such a way that no trace of the building may be left & also expel them from the place"
The akbarat of 11th January 1705 (two years before aurangzeb's death) recorded that " The Emperor... ordered..to demolish the temple of Pandharpur, and to take the butchers of the camp there & slaughter cows in the temple....It was done"
Aurangzeb was the worst of the Mughals in his bigotry even if was nowhere as intolerant as Muslim states in the Middles East & Central Asia. With reference to your point made earlier, he ordered in 1671 that revenue officers in crown lands must only be Muslims, hoping to induce conversions. Some converted, most did not, administration suffered & Aurangzeb had to modify the law by permitting half to be Hindus. Practicality thge problem for aurangzeb's measures, he imposed a discriminatory customs duty on Hindus (they had to pay twice as much as Muslims) but greed being what it is, Muslim traders simply connived with Hindus to cheat the royal treasury. He put innumerable restrictions on Hindus & tried his best to induce conversions by many acts (favouring succession to disputed properties if converted, remission of prison sentences etc, Hindus not allowed to ride in a palanquin or an arab Horse without permission & not ride elephants).
These restrictions did not apply to Rajputs & other Hindu martial communities whose services were required by Aurangzeb. He was pragmatic enough to let expediency govern the scope of his theocratic regulations.(To an amir who complained about Shia persians he replied " what connections have worldly affairs with religion? and what right have matters of religion to enter into bigotry/ For you is your religion & for me is mine...(if your suggestion is accepted) it would be my duty to extirpate all the (Hindu) rajas & their followers. wise men disapprove of the removal from office of able officers")
Aurangzeb even issued directions "that the higher officers of the court who were Hindus should no longer hold their charges but into their places, Muhammadans should be put" (Manucci). Practicality however made such orders unimplementable.
Then there was of course, the matter of jizya. When faced with protests following its implementation (including from the court & by Jahanara), Auragzeb said "Think not I am like my grandfather, Jahangir........all my thoughts are turned towards welfare and development of my kingdom and towards the propagation of the religion of the great Muhammad" (Manucci)
Opposition to Aurangzeb's theocratic policies were more intense in south India than in the North. While temple demolitions had cause no major turmoil in the north, there was strong resentment against it in the south. F.Martin, the French diplomat in Pondicherry notes in november 1689 that the "Muslims, having set about to destroy a temple in the Karnatak, as ordered by the mughal, the Hindus rose to oppose it". The following month he noted that Lachmi Nayak, a local chieftain who had at one time joined the mughals, turned rebel on seeing the anti-Hindu policy of Aurangzeb and "wrote to all the hindu princes to unite against the enemy of our race & religion"
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