For several decades, Islamist propagandists portrayed Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb as a virtuous man who paid for his expenses. The impression sought to be created through all this was that Aurangzeb did not take money from the empire’s treasury. The aim was to whitewash all his anti-Hindu activities by telling outrageous lies about him with the objective of glorifying him. These propagandists claimed that Aurangzeb lived on the money he earned by knitting skull caps and copying the Quran. For good effect, it was also written by some leftist authors that he had to work hard to earn enough for himself.
All these virtuous things like the knitting of skull caps and copying of the Quran were attributed to him to hide the stark facts that he looted and destroyed temples by the hundreds. The Mughal treasury was full of the looted gold, silver and ornaments that adorned the murtis in the temples. This was the money through which the Mughals waged the wars on more temples and lived lavish lives. However, the apologists of Aurangzeb glorified the Mughals as father figures, saints, and elevated them to the levels of Gods treading the terra firm in resplendent glory.
Aurangzeb ascended the throne after deposing his father Shah Jahan in 1658 and kept him in captivity for eight years till his death in 1666. In 1687, he arrested his son Muazzam and kept him in custody for eight years. It is unlikely that there was another king anywhere in the world who had imprisoned his father as also his son. Not only this, but Aurangzeb also has the distinction of killing his brother Dara Shikoh and then presenting his head in a box to his ailing father Shah Jahan in prison when he sat down for dinner.
This incident happened in 1659, one year after Aurangzeb had become the emperor after deposing his father and imprisoning him. The guards in the prison (where Shah Jahan was kept) had been instructed to open the box only after the imprisoned Emperor had sat down for dinner. In a macabre way and rather black sense of humour, unparalleled in history, Shah Jahan was told that the box contained Emperor Aurangzeb’s plate (thaali). To remind Shah Jahan that he had not been forgotten.
On seeing his beloved son Dara Shikoh’s head in the box, Shah Jahan uttered a shriek in disbelief and horror and then fell unconscious. When he came to his senses much later, Shah Jahan was conveyed Aurangzeb’s message that he had indeed not forgotten his father. In 1633, at the age of 18, Dara was appointed as the Vali ahad (heir-apparent) to his father Shah Jahan and that shows how much the unfortunate father loved him.
We do not come across another gory tale of this nature where an imprisoned father has been presented head of a son in a box in this manner, or any other, for that matter.
Extremely vindictive and orthodox Aurangzeb ruled for almost five decades (from 1658 to 1707) and was troubled by the Marathas no end. Chhatrapati Sambhaji, son of great Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji, kept Aurangzeb extremely busy for nine years (1680 to 1689) after which he was captured. With extreme cruelty, Aurangzeb tortured the captured Sambhaji for days on end, cut his tongue, blinded him and then killed him. In between torture, Aurangzeb played a virtuous devotee offering to let Sambhaji live if only he embraced Islam.
The extreme anti-Hindu policies Aurangzeb followed led to the martyrdom of 9th Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur in November 1675 as he ordered that the guru be beheaded publicly for refusing to embrace Islam. The 10th Sikh Guru Shri Gobind Singh lost four of his sons in the fight against the Mughals he waged, with two sons dying in battle-field and two being bricked alive in a wall in Sirhind.
Aurangazeb ruled from 1658 to 1707 for almost 50 years, and he was 88 years old when he died. Defined by some leftist authors as a virtuous man, Aurangzeb is one of the biggest losers in Indian history. He had inherited perhaps the wealthiest empire in the world of that time, which according to some estimates, had an annual revenue of Rs 40 crore and a population of 24 crore people.
It is interesting to see the decline of the empire Aurangzeb had snatched forcibly from his father, and by killing his brother, during his lifetime. By way of legacy for his successor/s, what did Aurangzeb leave behind both in terms of material wealth and in terms of ethics and values?
If truth be told, he left behind a shattered, almost bankrupt empire simmering with revolts all around and decay had set in. In terms of values, he left a legacy of distrust and hate and even before his death in 1707, his sons had begun fighting for the throne and he dare not anoint any of them as his designated successor. The empire Aurangzeb presided over was not one of glory, but of greed, oppression, looting of Hindu temples, killings carried out in thousands and all this ultimately led to self-destruction.
From 1681 to 1707, Aurangzeb personally led a war against the Marathas, expecting an easy victory after Chhatrapati Shivaji’s demise in 1680. What he received instead was humiliation after humiliation as he failed to subdue the fierce adversaries who were extraordinarily adept in guerrilla tactics. He captured Bijapur and Golconda in 1686-87, but the Marathas outsmarted him and did not let him enjoy the fruits of his hard labour.
Instead, what he got from the Marathas was countless ambushes on the camps Aurangzeb had set up, disruption of his supply lines and harassment of his forces mercilessly. Even after the death of Chhatrapati Shivaji and his son Sambhaji, the Marathas did not give up and went after Aurangzeb’s forces with almost a death wish harming him immensely.
More than half of his reign, Aurangzeb spent fighting the spirited Marathas who, with a never say die attitude, caused him immense loss, hollowing out the Mughal empire. The so-called “Mighty Mughal Emperor” was reduced to nothing more than a desperate warlord, who dragged an unwilling and defeated army through unfamiliar and hostile terrain, chasing Marathas as if he were chasing ghosts and could capture very few of them.
Aurangzeb had thought that after he had killed Sambhaji, the Marathas would crumble but his adversaries were to prove him wrong. That did not happen as Sambhaji’s younger brother Rajaram managed to dodge and escape Mughal siege of his fort and continued the fight from Jinji. After Rajaram’s death, Queen Tarabai (1700-1707) led the resistance and crushed the Mughals at multiple fronts. By 1705, Tarabai’s forces start raiding the Mughal camps near Delhi itself, proving Aurangzeb’s empire was no longer invincible and vulnerable to the core.
By 1690, much before Aurangzeb’s death (in 1707), his treasury was empty as the money had to be paid to soldiers to keep fighting battles they failed to win. For years, the Mughal soldiers were unpaid, there were desertions in the ranks, and Aurangzeb was forced to melt silver from his own palace to fund his endless war. Yet, despite extreme cruelty and treachery that he employed in his dealings, Aurangzeb would never conquer the Marathas. To add salt to his wounds, Aurangzeb’s sons Muazzam & Azam revolted against him, after they saw that the once magnificent and rich empire was collapsing because of their father’s policies.
As already stated above, in 1687, Aurangzeb even imprisoned his own son, fearing a coup, just as he done to his father. His generals disobeyed his orders, knowing he was leading them into ruin and into endless battles where victory was not possible. His second son Muazzam was the one imprisoned in 1987 and released in May 1695. After releasing Muazzam, Aurangzeb gave him gifts and appointed him as the Subedar of Agra. Muazzam later became the eighth Mughal Emperor, known as Bahadur Shah, I from 1707 to 1712.
Aurangzeb died a broken man in Ahmednagar on March 3, 1707, watching his empire crumble before his very eyes. Within 10 years of his death, the Mughal Empire had collapsed, while the Marathas rose to dominate India. And yet, what does our history teach us?
That Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb was a pious and devout Muslim, magnificent in his behaviour, someone who had won many victories! It is time to rewrite those history books from a different perspective, where Aurangzeb is showed as someone extremely suspicious, ruthless bigot and so inhuman that he imprisoned his father as also son. It may take some years or decades but a reassessment and restatement is in order.
A town in Maharashtra named after him as Aurangabad got its name changed to Sambhaji Nagar in 2023. A road in Delhi named as Aurangzeb Road was renamed to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road in 2015. There is need to erase more places named after him all over India and good thing is that it is happening, though at a slow pace.
