Aurangzeb: India's Most Controversial King (2017) PDF

AURA N GZEB This page intentionally left blank AURANGZEB The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King au dre y t r us c h k e Stanford University Press stanford, california Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Truschke, Audrey, author. Title: Aurangzeb : the life and legacy of India’s most controversial king / Audrey Truschke. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016049916 (print) | LCCN 2016050556 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503602038 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602571 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503602595 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Aurangzeb, Emperor of Hindustan, 1618-1707. | Aurangzeb, Emperor of Hindustan, 1618-1707—Relations with Hindus. | Mogul Empire—Kings and rulers—Biography. Classification: LCC DS461.7.T78 2016 (print) | LCC DS461.7 (ebook) | DDC 954.02/58092 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049916 Designed by Bruce Lundquist Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/15 Adobe Caslon For mom This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations viii Preface and Acknowledgments ix Note on Scholarly Conventions xi Time Line xii 1. Introducing Aurangzeb 1 2. Early Years 17 3. The Grand Arc of Aurangzeb’s Reign 37 4. Administrator of Hindustan 49 5. Moral Man and Leader 66 6. Overseer of Hindu Religious Communities 78 7. Later Years 89 8. Aurangzeb’s Legacy 101 Postscript: A Note on Reading Medieval Persian Texts 109 Bibliographical Essay 111 Notes 117 Index 131 Illustrations Map. The Mughal Empire in 1707 4 1. The Battle of Samugarh 26 2. Emperor Aurangzeb in a Shaft of Light 30 3. Badshahi Masjid in Lahore 46 4. Portrait of the Emperor Aurangzeb 50 5. Emperor Aurangzeb at the Shrine of Muinuddin Chishti 67 6. Emperor Aurangzeb at the Siege of Golconda 91 7. Emperor Aurangzeb Carried on a Palanquin 96 Preface and Acknowledgments This book began with a Twitter message asking if I wanted to write an accessible biography of one of the Mughal kings. The discussion quickly migrated to email, and I settled on Aurangzeb Alamgir as the subject. That this book was first formulated via social media is appropriate because the Aurangzeb fever that has gripped modern India often surfaces most virulently on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. In this short biography I address Aurangzeb’s vibrant, ongoing presence in popular culture. From a historian’s point of view, however, Aurangzeb is first and foremost a Mughal king about whom most people know lamentably little. This book is an attempt to introduce the historical Aurangzeb— in all of his complexity—to a wide readership. For the sake of narrative flow and ease of reading, the text is presented without footnotes. It is already difficult to get at Aurangzeb’s life and ruling strategies, and footnotes would have posed yet another obstacle. Readers who want to know my sources will find the information in the Bibliographical Essay and the Notes. The Postscript will interest those who desire to learn more about how historians think about the past and ana- lyze premodern sources.... I owe many debts of gratitude in writing this short book. For sharing unpublished work on Aurangzeb, I thank Allison Busch, Munis Faruqui, Supriya Gandhi, Anne Murphy, Heidi x pr efac e a n d ac k now l e d g m e n t s Pauwels, Yael Rice, Samira Sheikh, and Cynthia Talbot. I also thank Yael Rice for her help with images in the book, especially for discovering the Mead Art Museum painting of Aurangzeb, and I look forward to her future work on this image. I thank the following for feedback, comments, and assistance at vari- ous stages of this project: Qamar Adamjee, Purnima Dhavan, Wendy Doniger, Richard Eaton, Munis Faruqui, Thomas Blom Hansen, Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, Azfar Moin, Sheldon Pollock, Simran Jeet Singh, Anand Taneja, Taymiya Zaman, and the Stanford Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. All opinions, argu- ments, and errors in this book are mine alone. Writing about Aurangzeb, one of the most hated men in Indian history, is no light decision, and I owe a special acknowl- edgment in this regard. My heartfelt gratitude to those who advised me to write the book when I wavered about whether to do so—you know who you are, and I am much obliged. Note on Scholarly Conventions Readers will find the following text free of footnotes and dia- critics. I detail my sources in the Bibliographical Essay and the Notes. I give non-English words and names in their most com- mon Romanized form and generally omit special characters. Time Line of Select Events from Aurangzeb’s Life and Reign 1618 Aurangzeb is born 1633 Aurangzeb faces a mad elephant 1634 Aurangzeb celebrates his coming of age ceremony 1637 Aurangzeb’s first wedding 1653–54 Aurangzeb’s romance with the musician Hirabai 1657 Dilras Banu Begum, Aurangzeb’s wife, dies 1657 Shah Jahan falls ill, and the war of succession begins 1658 Aurangzeb’s first coronation ceremony 1659 Aurangzeb’s second coronation ceremony 1659 Dara Shukoh executed 1661 Murad Bakhsh executed 1663 Raja Raghunatha dies 1666 Shah Jahan dies 1666 Shivaji flees from the Mughal court 1667 Fatawa-i Alamgiri begun 1669 Public darshans of the emperor discontinued 1669 Benares’s Vishvanatha Temple destroyed 1673–74 Construction completed on Badshahi Masjid in Lahore 1675 Tegh Bahadur executed 1679–80 Rathor-Sisodia Rebellion 1679 Reinstatement of the jizya tax 1679 Hindu representation in Mughal nobility begins to rise t i m e l i n e of s e l e c t e v e n t s xiii 1680 Shivaji dies 1681 Prince Akbar rebels 1681 Aurangzeb moves to the Deccan 1685–86 Siege of Bijapur 1687 Fall of Golconda 1689 Sambhaji executed 1698 Fall of Jinji (Gingee) 1704 Prince Akbar dies in exile 1704 Jizya tax remitted for Deccan 1705 Amar Singh dedicates Persian Ramayana to Aurangzeb 1707 Aurangzeb dies This page intentionally left blank AURA N GZEB This page intentionally left blank chap t er 1 Introducing Aurangzeb Unforgettable Aurangzeb I came as a stranger, and I leave as a stranger. —Aurangzeb, letter written on the verge of death When the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb looked back at his life in 1707 at the ripe age of eighty-eight, he saw failure. From his deathbed Aurangzeb penned several poignant let- ters to his sons voicing his gravest fears, including that God would punish his impiety. But, most of all, he lamented his flaws as a king. To his youngest son, Kam Bakhsh, he expressed anxiety that his officers and army would be ill-treated after his death. To his third son, Azam Shah, he admitted deeper doubts: “I entirely lacked in rulership and protecting the people. My precious life has passed in vain. God is here, but my dimmed eyes do not see his splendor.” Aurangzeb ruled for forty-nine years over a population of 150 million people. He expanded the Mughal Empire to its greatest extent, subsuming most of the Indian subcontinent under a single imperial power for the first time in human his- tory. He made lasting contributions to the interpretation and exercise of legal codes and was renowned—by people of all backgrounds and religious stripes—for his justice. He was quite possibly the richest man of his day and boasted a trea- sury overflowing with gems, pearls, and gold, including the spectacular Kohinoor diamond. But these accomplishments 2 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb failed to assuage his angst about his political deficiencies in his final days. To both Azam Shah and Kam Bakhsh, Aurangzeb also confessed his religious shortcomings and the bitter divine judg- ment he believed he would soon face. A devout Muslim, he thought that he had “chosen isolation from God” both in this life and the next. And while he came into the world unbur- dened, he flinched at the idea of entering the afterlife saddled with the weight of his sins. He ended his final letter to Azam with an evocative, lingering flourish, pronouncing his farewell thrice, “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”... Aurangzeb exited this world more than three hundred years ago, in the winter of 1707. He was buried in a simple, open-air grave in Khuldabad, Maharashtra. In contrast to Humayun’s imposing tomb of red sandstone in Delhi or Shah Jahan’s lavish resting place at the magnificent Taj Mahal in Agra, Aurangzeb’s grave made no demand that he be remembered. In accordance with Aurangzeb’s wishes, the tomb was plain and unmarked, located within a Sufi shrine. Over the centuries, marble floors were added, as well as a marble railing and an identifying plaque. Even with these embellishments, however, the modesty of Aurangzeb’s tomb issues a strong contrast to the massive blocks of stone that boldly proclaim the burial sites and earthly legacies of his predecessors. Aurangzeb may have been content to be forgotten, but the world is not ready to let him go. Aurangzeb lives on as a vibrant figure in public memory in twenty-first-century India and Pakistan. In India people hotly debate his reign and often con- demn him as a vile oppressor of Hindus. Whereas Aurangzeb questioned his legacy, many Indians today have no doubt that i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 3 he was a zealous bigot who ruled by the sword and left be- hind a trail of Hindu tears. Recent political attempts to erase Aurangzeb from the face of modern India—such as by renam- ing Aurangzeb Road in Delhi—have injected new life into debates about this emperor and India’s Islamic past. In nearby Pakistan Aurangzeb fares only slightly better. Some follow the Indian line that Aurangzeb was a straight-up bigot, whereas others view him as one of the few truly righteous Muslim rulers of old. Precious little history surfaces in these modern visions. Rather, as misinformation and condemnations of Aurangzeb swirl about twenty-first-century South Asia, the man himself remains an enigma.... Aurangzeb was the sixth ruler of the Mughal Empire, a polity of vast proportions. Although the world outside of the subcon- tinent rarely recalls the Mughals today, in their time they were a subject of intense fascination and awe. By 1600, the population of the Mughal kingdom outstripped the entirety of Europe, and Mughal wealth was unmatched in the world. Aurangzeb rose to power in 1658 in the midst of a bloody war of succession that left two of his brothers dead, a third exiled to Burma, and his father imprisoned. Aurangzeb named himself the “Seizer of the World” (Alamgir) and lived up to the title by seizing kingdom after kingdom during his forty-nine-year reign. Even during his lifetime, Aurangzeb captured imaginations across the world. In 1675 John Dryden, then poet laureate of England, penned Aureng-zebe, a heroic tragedy about the reign- ing Mughal sovereign. Meanwhile, European travelers traversed India in increasing numbers, and many sought an audience with the famed Aurangzeb Alamgir. British, Dutch, Portuguese, and French traders established operations in pockets of the subcon- 4 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb tinent and pursued trade agreements with the Mughals. From a Mughal perspective, however, Europeans were small fish. Aurangzeb, like his predecessors, was preoccupied with ruling one of the largest empires in world history, a kingdom encom- passing 3.2 million square kilometers (roughly the size of mod- The Mughal Empire in 1707. Reproduced with permission from Juggernaut Books. i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 5 ern India) and esteemed for its riches, prosperity, and religious and cultural diversity. Unlike other Mughal rulers, who have attracted significant attention from historians, Aurangzeb has been neglected over the past several decades. The task of capturing the life of this king, about whom we know surprisingly little, is far from straightfor- ward. Aurangzeb was a complex emperor whose life was shaped by an assortment of sometimes conflicting desires and motiva- tions, including power, justice, piety, and the burden of Mughal kingship. Such a man would be a challenging historical subject under any circumstances but especially so given the gulf of cul- tural knowledge that stands between his time and our own. Aurangzeb is also a live wire of history that sparks fires in the present day. Current popular visions of Aurangzeb are more fiction than reality, however. If we can pierce the haze of myth that shrouds Aurangzeb today, we can begin to recover per- haps the single most important political figure of seventeenth- century India. Since no path to the past can begin anywhere but in the present, I turn first to the imagined Aurangzeb of our times. I then analyze the man himself as both a product of his age and an emperor who shaped the times in which he lived. The Myth of Aurangzeb the Villain The last of the so-called “Grand Mughals,” Aurungzeb, tried to put back the clock, and in this attempt stopped it and broke it up. —Jawaharlal Nehru The year 2015 was a bad one for Aurangzeb. A debate raged for much of the year over whether to strip the Mughal emperor’s name from a major thoroughfare in Delhi. The reason, as given by a local Sikh group that raised the idea, was that Aurang- zeb was “one of the most tyrannical tormentor perpetrator 6 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb of Intolerant Inhuman Barbaric crimes in India” [sic]. A few Members of Parliament affiliated with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) jumped on this bandwagon and is- sued their own calls to tear what they viewed as a painful page out of Delhi’s history, or at least erase the offending ruler’s name from the city’s road signs. In late August of 2015 New Delhi of- ficials capitulated and rechristened the street A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road, after India’s eleventh president. A week later, city employ- ees crept out in the dead of night and chiseled Aurangzeb’s name off the street signs. Rather than induce a society-wide amnesia about Aurangzeb, however, such events only propelled him into the forefront of people’s minds. A mere month later, in October 2015, a Shiv Sena MP was caught on tape hurling invectives at a civic offi- cial, including “Aurangzeb ki aulad” (Aurangzeb’s progeny). Such language mirrors “Babur ki aulad” (Babur’s progeny), a term of abuse lobbed against Indian Muslims, especially during the late 1980s and early 1990s in the lead up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by a right-wing, Hindutva mob. But why replace Babur with Aurangzeb?... From a divisive Hindu nationalist perspective, Babur and Aurangzeb are to some degree interchangeable as oppressive Muslim conquerors. In this sense Aurangzeb stands in for an entire category of “orthodox Muslims” who are supposedly im- plicated in unsavory aspects of India’s past and, consequently, unwelcome in India’s present. It is not incidental that Aurang- zeb is widely believed to have been the most pious of the Mu- ghal kings. Aurangzeb thus typifies zealous Muslims overall— both past and present—who allegedly threaten Indian society by virtue of their religiosity. In this formulation Indian and i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 7 Hindu cultures are collapsed into a single, flattened entity that offers little breathing room for other religious groups. But Aurangzeb also holds a special, uncoveted place among India’s reviled kings. Common opinion, even among those who do not share the sentiments of the BJP and like-minded Hindu nationalist groups, pillories Aurangzeb as a callous Islamist op- pressor who despised everything about India, especially Hindus. Across the border in Pakistan, too, many endorse the vision of an evil Aurangzeb, even responsible for South Asia’s modern woes. As Shahid Nadeem, a Pakistani playwright, recently put it: “Seeds of Partition were sown when Aurangzeb triumphed over [his brother] Dara Shikoh.” Such far-fetched suggestions would be farcical, if so many did not endorse them. The Pakistani playwright’s view has a precedent in the writ- ing of Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding father of modern India who was no fan of Aurangzeb. In his Discovery of India, first published in 1946, Nehru listed Aurangzeb’s purported faults at length, rebuking him as “a bigot and an austere puritan.” He excoriated the sixth Mughal king as a dangerous throw- back who “put back the clock” and ended up destroying the Mughal Empire. Perhaps Nehru’s most damning blow was to pronounce Aurangzeb too Muslim to be a successful Indian king: “When Aurungzeb began to oppose [the syncretism of earlier Mughal rulers] and suppress it and to function more as a Moslem than an Indian ruler, the Mughal Empire began to break up.” For Nehru, Aurangzeb’s adherence to Islam crippled his ability to rule India. Nehru was hardly original in his censure of Aurangzeb as dangerously pious and therefore a bad emperor. Such views were espoused by many of Nehru’s contemporaries, including Jadunath Sarkar, the foremost twentieth-century historian of Aurangzeb. 8 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb British colonial thinkers had long impugned the Mughals on a range of charges, including that they were effeminate, oppressive, and Muslims. As early as 1772, Alexander Dow remarked in a discussion of Mughal governance that “the faith of Mahommed is peculiarly calculated for despotism; and it is one of the great- est causes which must fix for ever the duration of that species of government in the East.” For the British the solution to such an entrenched problem was clear: British rule over India. While Indian independence leaders rejected this final step of colonial logic, many swallowed the earlier parts wholesale. Such ideas fil- tered to society at large via textbooks and mass media, and several generations have continued to eat up and regurgitate the colonial take that Aurangzeb was a tyrant driven by religious fanaticism.... Over the centuries, many commentators have spread the myth of the bigoted, evil Aurangzeb on the basis of shockingly thin evidence. Many false ideas still mar popular memory of Aurang- zeb, including that he massacred millions of Hindus and de- stroyed thousands of temples. Neither of these commonly be- lieved “facts” is supported by historical evidence, although some scholars have attempted, usually in bad faith, to provide an al- leged basis for such tall tales. More common than bald-faced lies, however, have been biased interpretations of cherry-picked episodes selected with the unabashed goal of supporting a fore- gone rebuke of Aurangzeb. For instance, detractors trumpet that Aurangzeb destroyed certain temples without acknowledg- ing that he issued many orders protecting Hindu temples and granted stipends and land to Brahmins. They denounce that he restricted the celebration of Holi without mentioning that he also clamped down on Muharram and Eid festivities. They omit altogether that Aurangzeb consulted with Hindu ascetics on i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 9 health matters and employed more Hindus in his administration than any prior Mughal ruler by a substantial margin. We cannot reconcile these less-frequently reported but historically impor- tant aspects of Aurangzeb’s rule with the fictitious image of this ruler as propelled by religious-based hate. Of course, no one would contend that Aurangzeb was with- out faults. It is not difficult to identify specific actions taken by Aurangzeb that fail to meet modern democratic, egalitarian, and human rights standards. Aurangzeb ruled in a premodern world of kingdoms and empires, and his ideas about violence, state au- thority, and everything else were conditioned by the time and place in which he lived. Aurangzeb’s contemporaries included such kings as Charles II of England, Louis XIV of France, and the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman II. No one asserts that these his- torical figures were “good rulers” under present-day norms be- cause it makes little sense to assess the past by contemporary criteria. The aim of historical study is something else entirely. Historians seek to comprehend people on their own terms, as products of particular times and places, and explain their ac- tions and impacts. We need not absolve our subjects of study of guilt, and we certainly do not need to like them. But we strive to hold back judgment long enough so that the myth of Au- rangzeb can fade into the background and allow room for a more nuanced and compelling story to be told. Recovering Aurangzeb the Man The stability of the foundation of sovereignty depends upon justice (‘adalat). —Maxim for rulers, quoted approvingly by Aurangzeb Aurangzeb organized his life as ruler of Hindustan around a few key ideals and preoccupations. He wanted to be a just king, a good Muslim, and a sustainer of Mughal culture and customs. 10 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb Aurangzeb also headed an expansionist state and so labored to extend imperial control over the subcontinent and its inhabit- ants, often using violence. My narrative of Aurangzeb revolves around his attempts to pursue these core values, above all jus- tice, and includes instances in which he forfeited his ideals in the hunt for raw power. Aurangzeb’s vision of justice was deeply colored by the wider Islamic tradition, much of which had little to do with theology. Premodern “Islamic” ideas about justice drew extensively from Persian and Greek philosophies that predated Islam. In this vi- sion divisive concepts such as jihad and jizya (holy war and poll tax) were less important than the ideals of akhlaq and adab (po- litical and ethical conduct). Aurangzeb was also influenced by his imperial predecessors and modeled himself on prior Mughal kings. Of course, Aurangzeb’s ideas about justice do not tally with those commonly accepted today. But that is hardly the point. In lieu of judging Aurangzeb by contemporary standards, I seek to construct a historical account of his life and reign and thereby recover the man and the king from underneath the mounds of misinformation that we have blindly accepted for centuries. Aurangzeb’s devotion to justice, piety, and the Mughal state are recurrent subjects in Persian histories, the king’s letters, and other primary sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Critical readings of these Persian works form the backbone of my narrative of Aurangzeb, along with research in Hindi, Sanskrit, and other languages (for more, see the Biblio- graphical Essay and Postscript). Aurangzeb’s ideas—especially his notions of justice, ethics, and correct Islamic behavior—are often a world apart from how most define these things today. But the question before us is not whether Aurangzeb was a just king. Rather, I want to know what Aurangzeb thought it meant i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 11 to be a just Mughal king and how that shaped his worldview and actions as emperor of Hindustan. Understanding Aurangzeb on his own terms is a promising project but one little tried to date. This approach can help us better grasp Aurangzeb’s impact on medieval India and his cru- cial position within Indo-Muslim history. Moreover, grounded historical claims can temper the passions of the present that so often present Aurangzeb as something he never was. That my suggested intervention in current distortions of Aurangzeb is based on serious history is especially germane. In contrast, earlier thinkers have tried to defuse the volatile popular image of Aurangzeb by using two distinct tactics that have both failed because they are defensive.... The first futile approach has been to concede that Aurangzeb was a religious tyrant but to contrast him with “heterodox Muslim” Mughal figures, chiefly Akbar and Dara Shukoh. In compari- son to the orthodox Aurangzeb, the argument goes, Akbar and Dara absorbed many Hindu ideas and thus became sufficiently “Indian” to be acceptable rulers of the subcontinent. This line of thought does not reconsider or reevaluate Aurangzeb. Instead, he is maligned for supposedly demolishing the culture of tolerance built by Akbar, the third Mughal ruler and Aurangzeb’s great- grandfather, and for snatching the Mughal throne out from under Dara Shukoh, Aurangzeb’s elder brother. In the grand arc of his- tory, however, Aurangzeb’s sectarianism was purportedly counter- balanced by the syncretic legacy of exemplary Indian Muslims. This thinking is shared even by the likes of V. D. Savarkar, an early ideologue for Hindu nationalism. Following this logic, dur- ing the debate over renaming Aurangzeb Road in Delhi, the idea was floated to perhaps retitle the street Dara Shukoh Road. 12 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb In reality both Akbar and Dara Shukoh, like Aurangzeb, were more complicated than their popular reputations suggest. By holding up Akbar and Dara to balance Aurangzeb, we fail to learn anything new about any of these men and shackle ourselves to ranking Mughal kings according to their purported Muslim- ness. In such comparisons we also commit the classic error of assuming that everything in Indian history, especially the Indo- Muslim past, was about religion. Aurangzeb was a Muslim, although not the type of Muslim either his modern detractors or supporters suppose him to have been. Moreover, Aurangzeb cannot be reduced to his faith. To be honest to the past, we need to reclaim a fuller picture of him as a prince and an emperor.... Taking a different angle of attack, some have argued that we have judged Aurangzeb too harshly. Perhaps India’s most loathed Muslim evildoer was not so heinous after all? This argument rests on correcting misinterpretations and presenting overlooked aspects of Aurangzeb’s reign, which are largely accurate. Contrary to popular belief, for instance, Aurangzeb never oversaw a large-scale conversion program that offered non-Muslims a choice between Islam or the sword. Aurangzeb did not destroy thousands of Hindu temples (a few dozen is a more likely number). He did not perpetrate anything resembling a genocide of Hindus. In fact, Aurangzeb appointed Hindus to top positions in his government. He protected the interests of Hindu religious groups, even ordering fellow Mus- lims to cease harassing Brahmins. He tried to provide safe roads and basic law and order for all of his subjects. Setting the record straight falls within a historian’s pur- view, and this much is true: Aurangzeb was less malevolent than his contemporary reputation would have us believe. But i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 13 by merely trumpeting that Aurangzeb lacked total depravity, we do not move beyond the terms set by popular condemna- tions of Aurangzeb. More troubling is that we fail to do jus- tice to India’s intricate past. Surely there is more to say about a man who ruled for half a century and reshaped the politi- cal landscape of precolonial India than whether he is palatable according to twenty-first-century sensibilities? We must resist the strong, modern instinct to summarily judge Aurangzeb and, instead, first recover what we can about the actions and ideas of this influential king. We need a fresh narrative about Aurangzeb. Here I offer one such story.... My narrative incorporates many aspects of Aurangzeb’s life and reign little known today and thereby adds much-needed histor- ical depth to a misunderstood king. It also addresses the alleged “worst” of Aurangzeb—his temple desecrations, Machiavellian political instincts, violent tactics, persecutions of select religious communities, and so forth—but it is not defined by such top- ics. Merely countering the misinformation and dubious claims promulgated by Aurangzeb’s detractors would be an empty ex- ercise because it would fail to fulfill a core guideline of history: understanding historical figures on their own terms. A good example of this distinction—thinking defensively versus historically—is Aurangzeb’s treatment of Hindus. In pop- ular thought Aurangzeb is imagined to have detested all Hindus and sought to stomp them down at every turn. A responsible historian could retort that Aurangzeb handled Hindus differ- ently depending on the circumstances. Frequent conflicts arose between the Mughal state and specific Hindu communities, sometimes involving sensitive religious issues. But toleration and 14 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb state protection were equally common experiences for Hindus in Aurangzeb’s India. This historical correction, although accu- rate, shares a false assumption with the charges that it answers: namely, that generalizing about Hindus is a fruitful way to think about Aurangzeb’s rule. In reality Aurangzeb pursued no overarching agenda vis-à- vis Hindus within his state. “Hindus” of the day often did not even label themselves as such and rather prioritized a medley of regional, sectarian, and caste identities (e.g., Rajput, Maratha, Brahmin, Vaishnava). As many scholars have pointed out, the word Hindu is Persian, not Sanskrit, and only became commonly used self-referentially during British colonialism. The Mughals, too, emphasized differences between groups of “Hindus.” For example, Mahabat Khan, who led Mughal efforts in the Deccan for a short period in the early 1670s, preferred “Rajputs and Hindus” among the Mughal nobility, even while fighting the Marathas (who apparently did not count as “Hindu” in this instance). Instead of assessing Mughal-Hindu relations under Aurangzeb as a block, we are better off—in terms of historical grounding—considering specific groups and actions separately. Accordingly, readers will find here no section on Aurangzeb’s treatment of Hindus writ large but rather more precise dis- cussions of Hindu nobles who worked for the Mughal state, Brahmin religious leaders, and armed Maratha opposition. If we think beyond the restricting, communal terms of our day and instead strive to recover the seventeenth-century Mu- ghal world, a striking picture of Aurangzeb emerges. Aurang- zeb was an Indian emperor who strove throughout his life to preserve and expand the Mughal Empire, gain political power, and rule with justice.... i nt r od uc i ng au ra n gz eb 15 Historians agree on certain basic data about Aurangzeb’s life. He was born in the autumn of 1618. He held his first coronation ceremony at the age of thirty-nine in 1658. He moved the entire imperial court to the Deccan in 1681, when he was in his mid- sixties, and subsequently conquered Bijapur, Golconda, and even parts of Tamil Nadu. He died in 1707 at the age of eighty- eight. But everything interesting about Aurangzeb comes out in how we string the facts together. In other words, it is the narrative that matters. My narrative of Aurangzeb investigates both the breadth and depth of the emperor’s life and is arranged partly chrono- logically and partly topically. In tracing Aurangzeb’s life from childhood to death, we can grasp the major forces that shaped his ideas about Mughal kingship, ethical conduct, and politics and see how these evolved over time. By delving into select episodes and facets of his years on the throne, we gain a deeper appreciation of the motivations that drove Aurangzeb and the outcomes of his hallmark policies. I begin with the first four decades of Aurangzeb’s life, espe- cially his young adult years as a prince who positioned himself to outmaneuver his brothers in the impending war of succes- sion. Aurangzeb secured the throne after a bloody two-year struggle and immediately began adjusting his inherited ruling culture to suit his own needs, a project that unfolded across his nearly fifty-year reign. Three aspects of Aurangzeb’s reign help us better grasp his ruling strategies and vision of justice: the imperial bureaucracy, Aurangzeb’s view of himself as a moral leader, and his policies regarding Hindu and Jain temples. These topics encompass some of the most controversial facets of Aurangzeb’s reign and bring out little-known features. Above all, these sections add historical depth to a king often crudely 16 in tr od u c in g au rang z eb caricatured through a single lens. I next narrate the later years of Aurangzeb’s life, including his final decades spent toiling in the Deccan and his death. I close with a brief discussion of Aurangzeb’s legacy, including the charge that he bears respon- sibility for the splintering of the Mughal Empire in the eigh- teenth century. Based on detailed research, I propose that we can fruitfully view Aurangzeb as a prince who was enmeshed in a web of royal family dynamics that shaped his early years and then as an Indian king who hungered after territory, political power, and a particular ideal of justice. chap t er 2 Early Years The Indian Prince’s Childhood It is hoped that his advent will prove fortunate and auspicious to this eternal dynasty. —Jahangir’s wish upon the birth of his grandson, Aurangzeb Aurangzeb was born on November 3, 1618, in Dohad, Gujarat, during the reign of his grandfather, Jahangir. A few weeks later Aurangzeb’s father, Prince Khurram (later known as Shah Jahan), hosted a birth celebration during which he showed off his newborn son and gifted heaping trays of gems and dozens of elephants to the imperial treasury. Despite such a propitious beginning, however, Aurangzeb would not find his father’s favor easy to secure. Aurangzeb was Shah Jahan’s third son, preceded by his brothers Dara Shukoh and Shah Shuja and would be followed a year later by a fourth son, Murad. The four boys were full broth- ers, all sons of Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan’s favorite wife. Like his brothers, Aurangzeb received a princely education that cov- ered several intellectual and literary traditions. As part of his curriculum, Aurangzeb studied Islamic reli- gious texts, including the Quran, hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), and religious biographies. He also read Turkish literature and learned the art of calligraphy. Mughal princely education emphasized the Persian classics, especially the great poets and scholars that are still beloved today, such as Sa‘di, 18 e a r ly y e a r s Nasiruddin Tusi, and Hafiz. Aurangzeb is rumored to have been especially fond of Rumi’s Masnavi. These Persian works shaped the ethics and values of Mughal princes, especially their ideas about justice, adab and akhlaq, and kingship. Aurangzeb may well have been exposed to Persian transla- tions of Sanskrit texts, such as the Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. These translations were sponsored by Aurang- zeb’s great-grandfather, Akbar, and we know that Akbar rec- ommended the Mahabharata to one of his sons as helpful for a princely education. Aurangzeb also spoke fluent Hindi from childhood and came from the fourth generation of the Mughal family to do so. Aurangzeb was versed in literary registers of Hindi, likely as part of his formal training, and there are even original compositions in Braj Bhasha, a literary register of pre- modern Hindi, attributed to him. Mughal princely curriculum also involved practical instruction in swords, daggers, muskets, military strategy, and administrative skills.... Beyond education, a Mughal prince’s childhood was character- ized by brotherly rivalry, and Aurangzeb’s upbringing proved no exception. From a young age the four sons of Shah Jahan were locked in competition for the Mughal throne. The Mughals inherited a Central Asian custom that all male family members had equal claims to political power. Emperor Akbar had managed to narrow the list of legitimate contenders to sons (thus cutting out nephews and male cousins), but birth order was largely irrelevant. In the absence of primogeniture, Shah Jahan’s lustrous Peacock Throne could one day belong to Aurangzeb, if he could outmaneuver his sibling contenders. As a child, however, Aurangzeb had few op- portunities to distinguish himself in comparison to his brothers. e a r ly y e a r s 19 Shah Jahan openly favored his eldest son. Dara Shukoh’s first wedding, for example, outshone all others in Mughal his- tory. At the cost of 3.2 million rupees, more than the Mughals had ever spent on a wedding, the royal family put on a show in 1633 whose dimensions are still impressive today. According to a European observer, Peter Mundy, the awe-inspiring firework display stretched for half a mile across the Agra sky. Illustrations of the wedding festivities survive in a copy of the Padshahnama, an official chronicle of Shah Jahan’s rule, now tucked away in Windsor Castle in England. The vibrant scenes teem with crowds of imperial musicians, gift bearers, well-wishers, and of- ficials who make up a sea of colorful, bejeweled humanity pres- ent in honor of Shah Jahan’s preferred son. Aurangzeb, fourteen at the time, reportedly attended these events, although he does not merit even an appearance in the hundreds of figures who fill the Padshahnama illustrations of the wedding procession.... A few months after Dara Shukoh’s wedding, Aurangzeb found a rare moment to bask in his father’s spotlight. Shah Jahan had called for an elephant fight, a favorite royal pastime. Sudhakar and Surat Sundar (Mughal elephants often had Hindi names) faced off, while the king and his three eldest sons followed on horseback in order to keep within close sight of the action. Suddenly, Sudhakar charged at Aurangzeb in a maddened rage. Aurangzeb speared the elephant’s head, which enraged the animal further. Sudhakar then gouged the prince’s horse and flung Aurangzeb to the ground. Onlookers tried to intervene, Shuja and Raja Jai Singh (Aurangzeb’s brother and a prominent Rajput, respectively) with weapons and guards with distracting fireworks. But ultimately only Surat Sundar was able to draw Sudhakar away from Aurangzeb and back into the fight. 20 e a r ly y e a r s Notably, Dara Shukoh was nowhere to be seen during this life-threatening encounter. Written records of the event do not mention his role at all, and in the surviving illustration Dara lurks in the background, safe from both harm and glory. Abu Talib Kalim, Shah Jahan’s poet laureate, penned verses of Persian poetry to memorialize Aurangzeb’s bravery. He mar- veled at how Aurangzeb’s spear flashed like lightning and lit up Sudhakar’s head. Then, “Out of the gouge inflicted by the prince’s spear / gushed the elephant’s mind-poisoning mad- ness.” Shah Jahan commended Aurangzeb’s courage and, for a moment, perhaps even saw his son in his own image. Shah Jahan’s court chronicler agreed and paralleled Aurangzeb’s fear- less feat with Shah Jahan’s famous repelling of a raging lion in 1610 while his father, Jahangir, watched.... A few years later Shah Jahan sent Aurangzeb, then only six- teen years old, away from court to help run the empire. For twenty-two long years, between 1635 and 1657, Aurangzeb shuttled across the reaches of the Mughal kingdom, fighting wars in Balkh, Bundelkhand, and Qandahar and administering Gujarat, Multan, and the Deccan. The prince also carved out time to enjoy himself dur- ing these years, such as his whirlwind romance with Hirabai Zainabadi. In 1653 Aurangzeb visited his maternal aunt’s house in Burhanpur and fell head over heels in love when he saw Hirabai, a singer and a dancer, playfully pluck a mango from a tree. The two became lovers. Aurangzeb was rumored to have been so taken with the young woman that he even agreed to break his lifelong commitment to temperance and drink wine at her request (she stopped him before the first drop passed his lips). Alas, Hirabai died less than a year later and was buried e a r ly y e a r s 21 in Aurangabad. Despite such moments of respite, Aurangzeb spent most of his adult princely years engaged in state business. Aurangzeb’s absence from the royal household did not make his father’s heart grow fonder. The prince returned to court rarely during this twenty-two-year period, making only short appearances for compulsory events such as his first mar- riage in 1637. Aurangzeb proved adept at both administration and military expansion but was often frustrated by decisions from Delhi that seemed designed to undermine his success. In the 1650s, for example, Aurangzeb was forced to withdraw from a few near victories in the Deccan in response to orders from Shah Jahan, acting on the urging of Dara Shukoh. While Aurangzeb spent his twenties and thirties proving himself on the battlefield, developing administrative abilities, and gaining a formidable reputation, Dara Shukoh leisured at court. Shah Jahan’s eldest son was known for his philosophi- cal interests and passed his days in erudite conversations with Hindu and Muslim ascetics. On paper Dara was always ahead of Aurangzeb. The elder brother held the higher rank in the Mughal mansab system, which encompassed all state officers, and he was widely understood as Shah Jahan’s choice to as- cend the throne. But Dara lacked real-world experience beyond the rigidly controlled environment of the central court, which would prove a fatal liability. Popular memory of Dara Shukoh often extols him as the big “What If ” of Indian history. What if “liberal” Dara had become the sixth Mughal king instead of “zealous” Aurangzeb? Would history have turned out differently? Some, inspired by Shahid Nadeem’s play Dara, have even recently asked: Could King Dara have preemptively averted India’s brutal partition in 1947? Misplaced nostalgia aside, the reality is that Dara Shukoh was 22 e a r ly y e a r s ill-prepared to either win or rule the Mughal kingdom. In the inevitable showdown between the four brothers for the crown of Hindustan, Dara’s favor with an ailing king could not counter Aurangzeb’s alliances, tactical skills, and the political acumen he had gained during his decades of traversing the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb Seized the World Ya takht ya tabut (Either the throne or the grave) —A mantra of Mughal kingship One morning in September of 1657, Shah Jahan awoke gravely ill and failed to make his daily morning appearance before his subjects at his palatial balcony. He also cancelled court that day. Shah Jahan did not appear in public again for more than a week, and by then the damage had been done. News of the king’s debil- itation spread like wildfire throughout the kingdom. Shopkeep- ers panicked, and looting spiked. Shah Jahan’s four sons believed their father was on the brink of death, so they seized the oppor- tunity created by this power vacuum to determine—according to time-honored Mughal practices of force and trickery—who would be crowned the next emperor of Hindustan. Nearly two years passed before the dust of conflict settled and Aurangzeb emerged as the undisputed victor. To ascend the Mughal throne, Aurangzeb outmaneuvered his three brothers— Dara Shukoh, Shah Shuja, and Murad—and his father, Shah Jahan. By the time he finished dealing with his immediate fam- ily in the early 1660s, Aurangzeb had executed two of his broth- ers, driven the third out of India, and locked away his recovered father in Agra’s Red Fort. Aurangzeb alone escaped the violence unscathed to rule over an undivided Mughal kingdom. European travelers were horrified by the brutal, bloody suc- cession battle that engulfed the Mughal royal family. Gemelli e a r ly y e a r s 23 Careri, an Italian who visited Mughal India decades later, lam- basted the familial strife as “the unnatural war.” John Ovington, an East India Company chaplain in Surat later in Aurangzeb’s reign, condemned “such barbarous sacrifices” and summed up the affair as “inhumane.” Other European travel writers, such as Francois Bernier and Niccoli Manucci, wrote with gruesome fascination about the stratagems and intrigues of these events, as well as the “lust of domination” that fueled the four brothers, especially Aurangzeb. Indian observers were equally riveted by the details of the struggle, but they were less surprised by its oc- currence and, at least at first, by its ruthlessness. Mughal kingship had long been guided by the blunt Per- sian expression ya takht ya tabut (either the throne or the grave). Shah Jahan ordered the murder of two of his brothers, Khusrau in 1622 and Shahriyar in 1628, and, for good measure, also executed two nephews and two male cousins upon seiz- ing the throne in 1628. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Shah Jahan’s father, Jahangir, bore responsibility for the death of Danyal, Jahangir’s youngest brother (the ostensible cause was alcohol poisoning). Even the early days of Mughal rule under Babur and Humayun were characterized by violent clashes that pitted brother against brother and son against father. While Aurangzeb and his brothers expected to fight one another for the throne, neither the timing nor the outcome of the conflict were preordained.... In 1657 Shah Jahan was sixty-five years old and had already lived longer than any of the four Mughal kings who preceded him. Nonetheless, his illness was sudden and unexpected. Observers at the time lacked consensus on what brought Shah Jahan to death’s door. In his characteristically colorful fashion, the Italian 24 e a r ly y e a r s traveler Niccoli Manucci claimed that the libertine ruler over- dosed on aphrodisiacs. Manucci’s compatriot, Careri, likewise surmised that Shah Jahan was overcome by “unruly passion” and had too much sex for an old man. In reality a bladder or bowel problem was the likely culprit. Regardless of the exact illness that set off the war of succession, the foundation for con- flict between the four princes had been laid years ago. In the early 1650s, Aurangzeb had forged a secret alliance with Shah Shuja and Murad to oppose Dara Shukoh. The three younger brothers knew their father favored his eldest son, and Dara may have hatched his own plans to murder his brothers around the same time. As one contemporary Persian account put it, already in 1652 Dara was “a wolf, thirsty for the blood of his brothers.” Later, when the succession fight was under way, Aurangzeb allegedly sent a letter to Shah Jahan in which he re- iterated Dara’s murderous intentions, especially his craving for Aurangzeb’s innocent blood. Soon enough, however, Aurangzeb was the one to commit fratricide. When Shah Jahan fell ill, Dara Shukoh was the only son present at court in Delhi. His brothers were each running a major wing of the empire: Shah Shuja controlled Bengal in the East, Murad administered Gujarat in the West, and Aurangzeb was stationed in the Deccan in the South. Dara tried to control the flow of news to his brothers by detaining informants and closing roads but to no avail. In addition to hearing about Shah Jahan’s sickness, the three younger brothers also had their ears filled with rumors about Dara seizing power, ramping up mur- derous plans for them, and imprisoning their father. As the fourfold contest crystallized, the nobles of the empire took sides. Shah Shuja and Murad were formidable opponents, and both commanded substantial support. But the major com- e a r ly y e a r s 25 petition was between Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb, and most Mughal nobles backed one of these two. Royal women were also involved in Mughal succession struggles, and Shah Jahan’s three daughters chose their favorites to ascend the throne. Jahanara, the eldest sister, supported Dara Shukoh. Roshanara, the middle sister, backed Aurangzeb. Gauharara, the youngest, wagered on Murad. For Aurangzeb, the first step in opposing Dara was to secure a loose alliance with Murad.... Mistakenly believing his father dead, in December 1657 Murad declared himself king and held a coronation ceremony in Gujarat. For Aurangzeb, this preemptive self-crowning was less threatening than Murad’s strong position in one of the wealthiest provinces of the Mughal Empire and his command over tens of thousands of troops. In order to coax his young- est brother out of Gujarat, Aurangzeb made a promise that he likely never intended to keep: Aurangzeb vowed that, upon de- feating Dara Shukoh and Shah Shuja, he would cede control of the north and northwest portions of the Mughal kingdom to Murad. The historian Ishvardas reported that Aurangzeb even cited to his brother the Persian proverb: “Two hearts united will cleave a mountain.” The ruse worked. Murad marched out of Gujarat, and his forces, combined with those of Aurangzeb, overpowered the imperial army in April 1658 at Dharmat, near Ujjain. The brothers next moved north toward Delhi, seeking victory in the heart of the Mughal Empire. The united troops of Aurangzeb and Murad met Dara Shu- koh’s fifty-thousand-strong army just east of Agra on a fiercely hot day in May of 1658. The ensuing clash, known today as the Battle of Samugarh (fig. 1), proved the decisive moment in de- termining the Mughal succession crisis. The day prior to the 26 e a r ly y e a r s Figure 1. The Battle of Samugarh. Attributed to Payag, c. 1658. Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum. Gift of Stuart Cary Welch Jr., 1999.298. confrontation, Aurangzeb rested his and Murad’s troops, while Dara’s soldiers waited in vain for their foes in the punishing sun, dressed in heavy battle armor. Their strength sapped, many in Dara’s army fell as a result of heat alone, with no need of enemy blows to finish them off. The next day the battle commenced at dawn with both sides well-armed with artillery, cavalry, archers, armored el- ephants, and infantry. Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh each sat on an elephant, towering over their respective armies. Their men put up a strong fight, and, in the words of an eighteenth- century historian, “the din of battle rose high in that terror- stricken field.” Toward the end of the day Aurangzeb’s troops pressed close enough to fire cannons and rockets at the war elephant bearing Dara Shukoh. Fearing for his life, Dara dis- e a r ly y e a r s 27 mounted and fled the battlefield on horseback. He left behind disarrayed and demoralized troops that were soon routed. Dara Shukoh escaped to Agra, where Shah Jahan was en- sconced at the Red Fort, and then absconded to Lahore by way of Delhi. With their eldest brother on the run, Aurangzeb and Murad approached the Red Fort at Agra to deal with their recov- ered father, who remained the nominal head of the Mughal state.... Shah Jahan tried to meet with Aurangzeb. Citing the Quranic example of Joseph reuniting with his father, Jacob, after years apart, the king attempted to cajole his son to agree to an audi- ence. Sensing deceit, Aurangzeb refused. Instead, in early June of 1658 he and Murad besieged the Agra fort with Shah Jahan in- side and cut off the water supply. Within days Shah Jahan threw open the fort’s gates and surrendered his treasury, arsenal, and himself to his two youngest sons. Using his eldest daughter, Jahanara, as an intermediary, Shah Jahan made a last-ditch effort to convince Aurangzeb to divide the kingdom five ways with pieces going to his three brothers plus Aurangzeb’s eldest son, Muhammad Sultan (d. 1676). Many of Shah Jahan’s remaining supporters among the nobility were quicker to accept Aurang- zeb’s victory and pledged the prince their loyalty before the siege was even complete. In the following few weeks tensions surfaced in the alliance between Aurangzeb and Murad. Murad increased the salaries of his soldiers and promised quick advancement, enticing some of Aurangzeb’s troops to switch allegiances. Despite his elder brother’s urgings, Murad dragged his feet about pursuing Dara Shukoh. He even dodged meeting with Aurangzeb. For his part, Aurangzeb decided that Murad had outlived his usefulness. Aurangzeb used the pretense of illness to lure his younger 28 e a r ly y e a r s brother to a private meeting in the summer of 1658. After being fed, Murad agreed to rest and so disarmed. Later versions of this tale add that Murad drank wine (while Aurangzeb re- mained sober) or relaxed under the skilled hands of a masseuse, indulgences that impaired the younger prince’s judgment and lulled him into a deep slumber. Once defenseless, Murad was arrested by Aurangzeb’s soldiers and thrown in chains. Aurang- zeb wasted no time in absorbing his younger brother’s army of twenty thousand men. King of Hindustan When a celebration is adorned like paradise itself, even the skies rise up from their place to dance. —Quoted by Khafi Khan, an eighteenth-century historian, to celebrate Aurangzeb’s first coronation With Murad jailed, Shah Jahan confined, and Dara Shukoh a fugitive, Aurangzeb paused long enough to hold the first of two coronation ceremonies. On July 31, 1658, a date deemed propi- tious by astrologers, Aurangzeb crowned himself king in Delhi’s Shalimar Gardens and adopted the regnal title Alamgir, World Seizer. Aurangzeb ordered music played and gifts distributed, in accordance with Mughal customs, but he forewent the conven- tions of striking coins and having the Friday sermon (khutba) read in his regnal name. Despite its truncated nature, this mo- ment marked the beginning of Aurangzeb’s long reign. An image of this first coronation, painted a few years later, captures both its simplicity and its momentousness. A young Aurangzeb, his beard still black, kneels in the foreground. The emperor’s prominent nose and olive-colored skin, features noted by a later visitor to his court, are apparent. He sits erect with no trace ear ly years 29 of the bowed shoulders of his later years. Only two other fig- ures witness the moment, a sign of the ceremony’s abbreviated quality. With high hopes for a prosperous, virtuous rule over a unified Mughal state, the painting depicts a wide shaft of light breaking through dark storm clouds above and bathing the newly crowned king in heaven’s approval (fig. 2).... After his initial coronation Aurangzeb set off to neutralize his two footloose brothers: Dara Shukoh and Shah Shuja. Aurangzeb pursued Dara for months, tracking his older brother to Lahore, then driving him to Multan and further south along the Indus River. To avoid being captured, Dara Shukoh led his dwindling troops over harsh ground, cutting through jungles and traversing long stretches devoid of fresh water. He hemorrhaged supporters and eventually ended up in Gujarat. By the end of September 1658, Aurangzeb left the hunt for Dara to his loyal officers and turned back toward Delhi to deal with the approach of Shah Shuja. Shah Shuja had kept busy throughout the past year. On re- ceiving news of Shah Jahan’s ailment in 1657, he had crowned himself king, complete with the ostentatious title Abul Fauz (Father of Victory) Nasruddin (Defender of the Faith) Mu- hammad Timur III Alexander II Shah Shuja Bahadur Ghazi. But Shah Shuja’s dreams of ruling the Mughal kingdom were short-lived. In February of 1658, before the Battle of Samugarh (in May of that year) in which Aurangzeb and Murad’s com- bined forces caused Dara Shukoh to flee to Lahore, Shuja clashed with Dara Shukoh’s troops, under the command of Dara’s elder son, Sulayman Shukoh, near Benares and was badly beaten. According to one report, so much blood was spilled that the battlegrounds glistened like a field of red tulips. In May of Figure 2. Emperor Aurangzeb in a Shaft of Light. Attributed to Hunhar, c. 1660. From The St. Petersburg Album, Freer Gallery of Art. Purchase—Charles Lang Freer En- dowment, F1996.1. e a r ly y e a r s 31 1658 Aurangzeb sent Shuja a letter promising him an expanded role in administering the eastern portion of Aurangzeb’s em- pire, but only if Shuja would stand down. Shuja rebuffed the offer and prepared for war. Aurangzeb and Shah Shuja met on the battlefield at Khajwa, northwest of Allahabad, in January of 1659. Despite the last-minute desertion of Jaswant Singh, a Rajput previously loyal to Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb’s army outnumbered Shuja’s by more than two to one. The fight was fierce nonetheless. At one point Aurangzeb reportedly ordered the legs of his elephant tied together in order to prevent the beast from fleeing. Aurangzeb’s resilience fortified his men, and they defeated Shuja’s troops, prompting Shuja himself to run. For the next year and a half, Aurangzeb’s army drove Shuja farther and farther east until the prince abandoned India altogether. In May of 1660 Shah Shuja set sail from Dacca with his family and disappeared into Burma, where he soon met his death at the hands of the ruler of Arakan, who possibly feared that the Mughal prince would lead a coup (the evidence for the source of the conflict and how Shuja died are murky). Back in India the last major battle in the succession strug- gle took place over three days in March of 1659. Dara Shukoh entrenched a twenty-thousand-man army (largely recruited in Gujarat) in the hills outside of Ajmer, hoping that the ter- rain, along with defense walls and trenches, would favor his outnumbered forces. Aurangzeb initiated the conflict with an artillery barrage that lasted nearly two days and blanketed the entire area in dense smoke. In the words of Aurangzeb’s court historian, “Gunpowder smoke hung over the battlefield like a storm cloud heavy with lightning. Struck with such sparks, the ground lit up, as if under the power of the philosopher’s stone.” 32 ear ly years On the third day, Aurangzeb concentrated his assault on one wing of Dara’s army. Most of the imperial forces attacked from the front while a contingent snuck up behind, turning the tide in Aurangzeb’s favor. Stationed behind his army, Dara watched the vicious slaughter and then once again fled for his life. Dara Shukoh ran for three months before he made the mis- take of seeking refuge with Malik Jiwan, an Afghan chieftain whose life Dara had saved years earlier by begging for mercy from Shah Jahan. Not one for sentiment, Malik Jiwan briskly arrested Dara and sent him to Delhi as Aurangzeb’s prisoner. Life and Death An emperor ought to stand midway between gentleness and severity. —Aurangzeb Aurangzeb celebrated his second coronation ceremony on June 15, 1659, nearly one year after he had first proclaimed him- self head of the Mughal Empire. This time, the festivities were an extravagant display of Mughal wealth. Legions of singers proclaimed Aurangzeb’s greatness, musicians received trays of gems, and so much cloth was used that “merchants belonging to the seven climes reaped enormous profits.” Coins were struck and the Friday sermon read in the name of Aurangzeb Alamgir, the throne-adorning seizer of the world. Aurangzeb, now forty years old, settled into his new role as emperor by dealing with the messy aftermath of his contested rise to power. The first loose end to tie up was Dara Shukoh, the previous heir apparent and Aurangzeb’s most formidable foe throughout the succession struggle. When Dara Shukoh arrived in Delhi a prisoner late in the summer of 1659, Aurangzeb ordered him and Dara’s younger son, the fourteen-year-old Sipihr Shukoh, dressed in rags and e a r ly y e a r s 33 paraded through the streets. The two defeated men wound through Delhi on an uncovered, mangy elephant, roasting under the scorching September sun, a sorry sight for all to behold. Behind them loomed a soldier, his sword drawn in case either attempted a desperate escape. Mughal subjects had witnessed demeaning displays before. A year and a half earlier Dara Shukoh had some of Shah Shuja’s men marched through Agra in disgrace. But subjecting Mughal princes to such dispar- aging treatment was something else entirely. Francois Bernier reported that the gathered crowds recoiled at the public humili- ation of Dara Shukoh and his teenage son. The following day, Dara Shukoh was beheaded on Aurang- zeb’s direct command. Some contemporary sources mentioned that Aurangzeb cited Dara’s alleged apostasy from Islam to jus- tify the death sentence, whereas others simply noted the ex- ecution. A few years later Aurangzeb put Murad to death on the pretense of retribution for a prior murder. It seems that Aurangzeb preferred to rationalize killing his brothers, no mat- ter how flimsy the charges. Perhaps such explanations were im- portant for a king who grounded his rule on dispensing justice. For Sulayman Shukoh, the elder of Dara’s two sons, however, Aurangzeb did not bother with such guises and ordered him overdosed on opium water in 1661. While Aurangzeb’s murderous actions no doubt strike modern readers as harsh, his brothers would not have acted any differently. Manucci captured this dynamic when he re- ported that, on the day of his death, Dara Shukoh was asked by Aurangzeb what he would do if their roles were reversed. See- ing the writing on the wall, Dara sneered that he would have Aurangzeb’s body quartered and displayed on Delhi’s four main gates. While he shared his brother’s visceral hatred, Aurang- 34 e a r ly y e a r s zeb exercised restraint by comparison. Aurangzeb ordered Dara Shukoh’s corpse buried at Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, where it rests today.... Following strong Mughal precedents, Aurangzeb showed le- niency, even consideration, to most former supporters of Dara Shukoh and his other brothers. He welcomed his brothers’ troops and their chief advisers within his own army and admin- istration without reprisals. He repaid the loans that Murad had taken from the prosperous Gujarati Jain merchant Shantidas. In the 1670s Aurangzeb even married his daughter Zubdatunnisa to Sipihr Shukoh, the younger of Dara Shukoh’s sons, and wed- ded his son Prince Akbar to Sulayman Shukoh’s daughter. Only a few of Dara Shukoh’s circle were not shown mercy, such as Sarmad, an Armenian Jewish mystic known for being irreverent who had prophesied that Dara Shukoh would take the throne. Aurangzeb executed Sarmad in 1661. Aurangzeb took a more cutting approach to Dara Shukoh’s cultural legacy. During his decades at Shah Jahan’s court in the 1640s and 1650s, Dara Shukoh enjoyed ample time to devote to religious, literary, and spiritual pursuits. He ordered a team of Brahmins to render fifty Upanishads into Persian, a translation that later found its way to France and introduced Europe to this body of Sanskrit works. He held philosophical conversa- tions with Baba Lal, a Punjabi spiritual leader. Dara composed the Confluence of Two Oceans, a Persian treatise contending that Hinduism and Islam lead to the same goal (the treatise was translated into Sanskrit under the title Samudrasangama). Faced with this strong interest in Hindu philosophy, espe- cially Sanskrit texts, on the part of the previous heir apparent, Aurangzeb introduced a clear rupture. He discontinued Dara e a r ly y e a r s 35 Shukoh’s cross-cultural activities and severed the one linger- ing tie between Shah Jahan and the Sanskrit cultural world by cutting off the imperial stipend to Kavindracarya Sarasvati, a Brahmin from Benares. Kavindracarya lobbied Aurangzeb to reinstate the stipend but was unsuccessful. In such acts Aurang- zeb sought to separate himself from the cultural interests of his eldest brother.... Dealing with Dara Shukoh and his legacy was child’s play compared to the looming question of Shah Jahan, who had re- covered his health by the time Aurangzeb took the throne. In essence, Aurangzeb locked away his father in Agra’s Red Fort— some whimsically say with a tantalizing view of his beloved Taj Mahal—and threw away the key. The fifth Mughal king spent his final seven and half years of life under house arrest, often in the company of Jahanara, his eldest daughter. Many decried Shah Jahan’s dethronement and imprisonment, however, and the tragedy of his jailed father vexed Aurangzeb during his early years of rule. While it was an accepted Mughal practice for brothers to fight for the throne, overthrowing one’s reigning father was considered abhorrent. The chief qazi (Muslim judge) of the Mughal Empire felt so strongly on the matter that he risked imperial wrath and refused to endorse Aurangzeb’s ascension while Shah Jahan lived. Aurangzeb dismissed him and hired a more pliable man for the job, Abdul Wahhab. Far beyond India, too, many censured Aurangzeb for his brutality against Shah Jahan. The sharif of Mecca declined to recognize Aurangzeb as the proper ruler of Hindustan and even refused his financial gifts for several years over Shah Jahan’s mistreatment. Playing on Aurangzeb’s regnal title of Alamgir 36 e a r ly y e a r s (World Seizer), the Safavid king Shah Sulayman (r. 1666–94) wrote a caustic letter accusing Aurangzeb of mistakenly an- nouncing his seizure of the world (alam-giri) when he had merely seized his father (pidar-giri). Aurangzeb retorted by touting his merciful termination of numerous taxes (some sources say eighty in all) upon his ascension as a mark of his just posture. But Aurangzeb’s only response to the accusation that he overthrew his father was sheer denial; he claimed to Shah Sulayman (falsely) that Shah Jahan had voluntarily retired and conferred the crown on Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb never fully came to terms with his unjust han- dling of his father. This rocky start haunted him throughout his rule and even shaped his piety, as we will see. This early moment also marked a key characteristic of Aurangzeb’s commitment to justice, namely that it was limited by ambition. During his long reign Aurangzeb faced numerous conflicts between his prin- ciples and his politics, and the former rarely won out.... In spite of his detractors and bumpy beginning, Aurangzeb ruled the Mughal Empire for forty-nine years, until his death in 1707. He faced periodic rebellions, like all Mughal sovereigns, but he was a resilient king. chap t er 3 The Grand Arc of Aurangzeb’s Reign Expansion and Justice I wish you to recollect that the greatest conquerors are not always the greatest kings. The nations of the earth have often been subjugated by mere uncivilised barbarians, and the most extensive conquests have in a few short years crumbled to pieces. He is the truly great king who makes it the chief business of his life to govern his subjects with equity. —Aurangzeb, writing to the recently dethroned Shah Jahan Aurangzeb inherited a wealthy, thriving, expansionist empire. Mughal state revenues had increased under his father, Shah Jahan. Shah Jahan was also known for his building projects, having financed the Taj Mahal in Agra and Shahjahanabad in Delhi. Aurangzeb’s forte, however, lay with the extension of imperial borders. Throughout his reign Aurangzeb crushed rebellions, waged cold-blooded wars of expansion, and oversaw merciless sieges. He was often happy to use diplomacy to extend and solidify Mughal power, especially in the first half of his reign (1658–81). But Aurangzeb did not hesitate to resort to force to enlarge Mughal domains. For example, in the 1660s Aurangzeb tried to lure the Maratha leader Shivaji into imperial service in order to neutralize the Maratha threat to the Mughal state. When that effort failed, Aurangzeb turned to violence and fought the Marathas, with limited success, for the rest of his life. Aurangzeb also punished those he believed had helped 38 t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n Shivaji escape from Mughal clutches, destroying temples in Benares and Mathura. Aurangzeb faced numerous other armed threats to the integ- rity of the Mughal Empire in the first half of his rule and showed little clemency. For instance, he had the Sikh guru Tegh Bahadur executed in 1675 for taking up arms against the Mughal state. The Rathor and Sisodia Rajputs rebelled in the late 1670s, and Aurangzeb used military force to compel both groups to return to the imperial fold. Aurangzeb struck hard against family mem- bers who compromised state interests. For instance, Aurangzeb’s son, Prince Akbar, rebelled in 1681 and was chased to the Deccan and soon forced to flee to Iran—where he died in 1704—in order to escape his father’s wrath.... In 1681 Aurangzeb took the unprecedented step of relocating south, along with his entire royal court, in order to lead the imperial absorption of the Deccan. The Mughals had pursued control over the Deccan since the days of Akbar, Aurangzeb’s great-grandfather. Some emperors had made inroads down south, but Aurangzeb was the first to extend Mughal power across most of the Deccan. Aurangzeb spent the second half of his reign (1681–1707) in south India, growing the Mughal kingdom to its greatest ex- tent. He besieged Bijapur and Golconda in the 1680s, prompt- ing both sultanates to fold. During the 1690s and 1700s he seized numerous hill forts as far south as Tamil Nadu from the clutches of Marathas. By the time of Aurangzeb’s death, in 1707, the population of the Mughal kingdom was double that of contemporary Europe, and Mughal landholdings reached an all-time high. In his bent for war and power Aurangzeb differed little t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n 39 from his forebears, although he exhibited notable ambition and success. The weight of upholding a unified Mughal Empire and, where possible, expanding its borders rested heavily on Aurangzeb’s shoulders and molded his aggressive military ven- tures. But inhabiting the Mughal throne involved far more than shedding blood and drawing ever widening lines on a map. For Aurangzeb, a preoccupation with dispensing justice (‘adl ) ex- isted alongside his thirst for earthly power.... At times Aurangzeb claimed that being a fair, ethical ruler ranked above controlling territory, a surprising hierarchy to find embraced by the head of an expansionist state. Once, the de- posed Shah Jahan criticized his newly crowned son for ineffec- tively deploying troops in the Deccan and Bengal. Aurangzeb retorted that skilled conquerors are not always skilled rulers, whose primary purpose is just governance. Aurangzeb’s professed devotion to justice finds substan- tial support among many contemporary sources. For instance, the Italian traveler Niccoli Manucci, no Aurangzeb enthusiast, spoke of the king: “He was of a melancholy temperament, al- ways busy at something or another, wishing to execute justice and arrive at appropriate decisions.” Ishvaradasa, a Hindu as- trologer, wrote about Aurangzeb in Sanskrit in 1663 and called the king righteous (dharmya) and even noted that his tax poli- cies were lawful (vidhivat). Aurangzeb’s entire ethos of sovereignty was infused with his fixation on justice, albeit sprinkled with healthy doses of a knack for devious politicking and an unquenchable thirst for power. Accordingly, if we are to understand anything about Aurangzeb’s life and reign—from his trampling on his brothers for the throne of Hindustan to his treatment of Hindu temples 40 t h e g ra n d a r c of aura n g z e b’s re i g n to his burial at a Sufi shrine—we must reconstruct what he thought it meant to be an effective, equitable leader. Especially instructive are cases where Aurangzeb went against his ideals regarding ethics and justice, such as overthrowing his father and waging brutal wars against Muslim kingdoms in the Deccan. Aurangzeb was often deeply troubled by his actions that were motivated by realpolitik, and his discomfort points up both the depth and limits of his commitment to just rule. Heir of the Grand Mughal Tradition In the region of Hindustan, this scrap of bread [i.e., the Mughal Empire] is a generous gift from Their Majesties, Timur and Akbar. —Aurangzeb, letter to his grandson Bidar Bakht Alongside an empire, Aurangzeb inherited an illustrious Mu- ghal past that furnished rich role models and formidable re- sponsibilities. In his writings he named key imperial ancestors as exemplars for how to be a great king. In a letter from late in his life, for example, Aurangzeb advised one of his grandsons that the Mughal Empire was a gift from Timur and Akbar that subsequent generations were charged with upholding in all its glory. Through his ancestors, Aurangzeb was heir to a vast, var- ied set of Mughal cultural and social practices. For decades, Mughal kings had built magnificent buildings, patronized poets and scholars, maintained great libraries of manuscripts, fashioned elaborate court rituals, and supported painters and artisans. Aurangzeb perpetuated many of these artistic, intel- lectual, and architectural interests while discarding and modify- ing others. He never broke from his Mughal heritage, but he refined it into his own, distinctive creation.... t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n 41 Initially, Aurangzeb’s cultural and courtly activities followed closely on the heels of Shah Jahan and earlier Mughal kings. For example, during his first few years as king, Aurangzeb erected a monumental tomb in Aurangabad for his first wife, Dilras Banu Begum, who died in 1657 from complications fol- lowing the birth of her fifth child. The shining white mauso- leum, known as Bibi ka Maqbara (Queen’s Tomb), mimics the appearance of Shah Jahan’s Taj Mahal, although it is half the size and displays exteriors of burnished stucco rather than mar- ble. Its derisive modern nickname, “poor man’s Taj,” hardly does justice to Aurangzeb’s vision of honoring his wife with a classic Mughal tomb. Throughout his first ten years on the throne, Aurangzeb upheld many Mughal imperial practices borrowed or derived from Hindu customs. The king appeared daily to his subjects in the jharoka palace window in order to give them a darshan, or auspicious glimpse, of his royal visage. On his solar and lunar birthdays he was publicly weighed against gold and silver that was distributed to the poor, a Hindu ritual that the Mughals had adopted in Akbar’s days. Aurangzeb maintained personal contacts with Hindu reli- gious figures. For instance, he penned a letter to Mahant Anand Nath in 1661 requesting a medicinal preparation from the yogi. In the 1660s he increased Anand Nath’s landholdings in a village in the Punjab. Such connections echoed Jahangir’s meetings with the Hindu ascetic Jadrup and Akbar’s land grants to Vaishnava communities in Mathura. For years Aurangzeb’s pleasure activities also copied those of his ancestors. He summered in Kashmir, a favorite playground of the Mughal kings, and enjoyed music. The king had expert knowledge of the art of music according to Bakhtawar Khan, 42 t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n a little cited but important historian of the period. A musical treatise dated to 1666, Faqirullah’s Rag Darpan, listed the names of Aurangzeb’s favorite singers and instrumentalists.... In the second decade of his reign Aurangzeb began to alter his royal behavior. He rolled back some of his court rituals with Hindu roots and withdrew imperial patronage from certain practices, such as music. He also eliminated the position of for- mal court historian. These changes resulted in a more austere environment at Aurangzeb’s court, although little changed else- where in the Mughal Empire. Until 1668 Aurangzeb supported an official chronicler, Mu- hammad Kazim, who enjoyed access to the Mughal library and official documents. Mughal kings did not always employ formal historians; Babur and Jahangir penned their own mem- oirs, and the major histories of Humayun’s reign were written after his death. But Akbar and Shah Jahan, arguably the two main paradigms among prior Mughal kings for Aurangzeb, generally kept historians on their payrolls. Aurangzeb broke with this precedent when, upon receiving Muhammad Kazim’s Alamgirnama (History of Aurangzeb Alamgir) that covered the first ten regnal years, he reassigned the author to other tasks. Aurangzeb’s reasons for hardening his heart against his court chronicler remain unclear. Numerous scholars have tried to solve the riddle of Aurangzeb’s sudden distaste for official history, hypothesizing that he elected to focus on esoteric rather than external things, the king became too pious to fund non- theological texts, or the royal treasury was strapped. All of these theories are unlikely given subsequent events at the royal court. In any case Aurangzeb never appointed another court histo- rian, although he also did not ban history writing, as some t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n 43 twentieth-century scholars have suggested based on faulty readings of later chronicles. Numerous Mughal officials wrote Persian-language histories during or shortly after Aurangzeb’s reign that have come down to us today. Aurangzeb instituted several alterations to court protocol in the late 1660s. He ceased appearing to his subjects in a daily royal darshan in 1669. Around the same time, he reportedly cancelled his birthday weighings against gold and silver. He pulled musicians from many public court rituals and assigned them to other tasks (at enhanced salaries, curiously). Some of these shifts likely stemmed from savvy statesman- ship. For instance, cancelling daily attendance at the jharoka win- dow may well have staved off imperial unrest. When Shah Jahan fell ill in 1657, news of his affliction was impossible to contain be- cause of his sudden absence from the jharoka. Even though Shah Jahan was only bedridden for ten days, that was long enough to set in motion the wheels of Mughal princely conflict. But not all of Aurangzeb’s changes around the ten-year mark of his reign can be explained as prudent policies. His turn against music, for instance, seemed to lack a practical benefit and was instead likely a matter of evolving personal tastes. He perhaps felt similarly about being weighed against precious metals, although he arguably changed his mind in subsequent decades. Later in life, Aurangzeb recommended the weighing rites to his grandson Bidar Bakht and may even have resumed them himself, according to the 1690 report of the European traveler John Ovington. Au- rangzeb did not rekindle his earlier zeal for music, but, in a late letter, he advised his son that it was a proper royal activity. None- theless, one net effect of these combined shifts around 1669 is undeniable: Aurangzeb stripped his court of numerous hallmarks of Mughal culture, including several rituals with Hindu roots. 44 t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n A second, perhaps unforeseen, consequence of Aurangzeb’s new policies was that they disseminated talent to the courts of his sons and Mughal nobles. For example, Aurangzeb abstained from music, but some of his sons enthusiastically sponsored mu- sicians and musical treatises. As Katherine Schofield has pointed out, authors produced more Indo-Persian treatises on music during Aurangzeb’s rule than in the prior five hundred years of Indian history. Painting may well have taken a similar route. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Aurangzeb ceased regular funding to painters after the 1660s, but numerous images survive today of the emperor in his old age. Most likely, images of a sea- soned Aurangzeb emerged from princely courts where Mughal painting traditions thrived. Persian poetry, too, flourished during this period, and Aurangzeb’s own daughter, Zebunnisa, was a no- table poet who wrote under the penname Makhfi (hidden one). Aurangzeb’s earlier turn against Sanskrit pandits also dis- persed talent to subimperial patrons. For example, after losing his imperial stipend on Aurangzeb’s orders in the late 1650s Kavind- racarya found employment in the court of Danishmand Khan, a Mughal noble, and later assisted the French traveler Francois Ber- nier. Shaysta Khan, Aurangzeb’s maternal uncle, was a noted pa- tron of Sanskrit intellectuals and Sanskrit-related projects. While governor of Bengal, he directed Basant Rae to compose a table of contents for the Persian Mahabharata translated under Akbar. Shaysta Khan even personally composed verses of Sanskrit poetry that are preserved today in the Rasakalpadruma (Wishing tree of aesthetic emotion). For their part, Sanskrit poets never ceased to recognize Aurangzeb. For instance, Devadatta, author of the Gujarishatakam on the dalliances of Gujarati women, mentioned Aurangzeb and his son Azam Shah in the work’s opening lines.... t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n 45 Aurangzeb’s court had a different feel after 1669, appearing less exuberant in some respects. But many things nonetheless sig- naled continuity with Mughal culture under Shah Jahan, in- cluding formal court rituals and royal patronage. European travelers described the elaborate proceedings of Aurangzeb’s court, which was governed by strict rules and regulations. The emperor sat on an elevated platform and, when in Delhi, on the Peacock Throne, which had more jewels than those in courtly attendance could count. The king adorned him- self with silk, a turban woven in gold, and pearls and jewels aplenty. Nobles stood, arrayed by their rank in the Mughal hi- erarchy, and gazed up at this glittering display. Sumptuous car- pets covered the floors, and woven fabrics draped the walls. The imperial band (naubat), which was not subject to Aurangzeb’s restrictions on music, stood at the ready. In this luxurious envi- ronment Aurangzeb gave and received gifts, welcomed visitors and nobles, and carried out government business. The 1670s witnessed a few large-scale imperial projects that were in line with earlier Mughal culture but also bore the im- print of Aurangzeb’s own interests. At court, for instance, Mus- lim scholars completed the massive intellectual project Fatawa-i Alamgiri, a synthesis of Hanafi legal judgments, in 1675 after eight years of labor. During its compilation Aurangzeb heard parts of the work read aloud and even offered corrections. There- after judges across the empire drew from the book, originally mainly in Arabic but immediately translated into Persian. The religious edge to this text perhaps reflected Aurangzeb’s piety, and the king’s preoccupation with justice may have inspired him to provide a clear legal code. But the broader Mughal commit- ment to sweeping scholarly projects runs smoothly from Akbar through Aurangzeb. Also like his forefathers, Aurangzeb sup- 46 t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n ported a vast imperial library and even spent one million rupees to preserve his manuscript collection. In the mid-1670s Aurangzeb sponsored the construction of the monumental Badshahi Masjid in Lahore (fig. 3). Un- like with Dilras’s “poor man’s Taj,” here Aurangzeb approached Shah Jahan’s genius. Aurangzeb’s flagship mosque features floral motifs, inlaid marble, cusped arches, and other elegant touches. At the time it was built, the Badshahi Masjid was the largest mosque in the world, and its expansive size—it can hold sixty thousand people—still impresses modern visitors. The building took some damage over the years and was repurposed for artillery storage in the early nineteenth century by Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire. Today it again functions as a mosque and awes onlookers with its profound beauty, evoca- tive of Mughal aesthetic tastes.... Figure 3. Badshahi Masjid in Lahore. Photo by the author. t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n 47 Aurangzeb left Delhi in 1679 and never returned to north India. From 1681 onward he moved around the Deccan, tirelessly campaigning and living out of a vast assemblage of red tents. Aurangzeb’s ancestors had often camped in tents—colored red as a mark of Mughal royalty—so here, too, Aurangzeb fol- lowed an inherited tradition. As Mughal life returned to its nomadic roots, Aurangzeb emphasized his own priorities and tastes, which included many trademark features of high Mu- ghal culture. Throughout his half century of rule, for example, Aurang- zeb held formal court daily and, at times, twice daily. He prided himself on dispensing justice and often personally wrote out answers to petitions. The emperor maintained ties to astrolo- gers, a critical aspect of Mughal kingship, even into the eigh- teenth century. Gemelli Careri, an Italian visitor to India in the 1690s, wrote that “King [Aurangzeb] undertakes nothing without the advice of his astrologers.” In 1707, shortly before Aurangzeb’s death, a court astrologer recommended that the emperor cure a fever by giving away an elephant and diamond. Aurangzeb rejected this advice as inappropriately following the shared Hindu and Parsi custom of gifting an elephant in char- ity, although he did order the distribution of four thousand ru- pees to the poor. It is notable that forty-nine years into his reign such an astrologer had access to the emperor. More generally, Aurangzeb’s later years were far from de- void of the Hindu ideas, texts, and culture that had become an integrated part of Mughal imperial life long before his rule. For example, in the early 1690s a poet by the name of Chandraman dedicated his Nargisistan (Narcissus garden), a Persian poetic retelling of the Ramayana, to Aurangzeb. In 1705 Amar Singh followed suit, dedicating his prose Persian Ramayana (titled 48 t h e g ra n d a r c of au ra n g z e b’s re i g n Amar Prakash) to Aurangzeb. Akbar had sponsored the first Persian Ramayana, one of the two great Sanskrit epics and a key theological text for many Hindus by this period, in the late sixteenth century. During the next hundred years poets com- posed numerous distinct Persian Ramayanas, and many ded- icated their works to the reigning Mughal king. Even at the end of his reign, Aurangzeb had not moved so far afield from Mughal cultural practices as to break the perceived association between Mughal royalty and the epic Hindu tale of Ram. chap t er 4 Administrator of Hindustan Watching Over His Vast Empire Shah Jahan used to hold court one day a week and owing to the cherishing of truth and devotion to God, nobody had need to lodge a complaint. Now Emperor Aurangzeb holds court twice daily and the crowd of complaints grows greater. —Bhimsen Saxena, a Hindu member of Aurangzeb’s administration, writing in Persian Aurangzeb oversaw a vast kingdom that required a vast bureau- cratic apparatus. He was not a regular presence in most parts of the empire but rather spent the first half of his reign mainly at court in Delhi and the second half campaigning in the Deccan. Accordingly, state officials shouldered the daily work of run- ning the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb’s physical distance did not prevent him from becoming personally involved with many administrative details, however, in his persistent but elusive pur- suit of justice. Aurangzeb kept apprised of happenings from the four cor- ners of his kingdom by prolific news bulletins (akhbarat) that arrived daily and reported on princely courts, the activities of state officials, and noteworthy events. All leaders of the time relied on such news bulletins, which also relayed happenings at Aurangzeb’s court to friends and foes across India. For example, Herbert de Jager, a Dutch envoy, reported that Shivaji was so Figure 4. Portrait of the Emperor Aurangzeb, c. seventeenth century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of George D. Pratt, 1935, 45.174.28. administrat or of hind usta n 51 inundated with news reports and letters that he could barely spare the time for a meeting in 1677. Aurangzeb was especially keen to hear reports on public law and order and the behavior of Mughal state representatives. These areas often exposed fault lines in Aurangzeb’s attempts to rule an unwieldy empire.... Aurangzeb exhibited deep concern with basic security through- out Mughal territory. He repeatedly wrote to his sons and im- portant nobles about ensuring the safety of the roads and chided them for failing to prevent theft and other crimes against ordi- nary subjects. Despite Aurangzeb’s efforts, however, law-and- order problems afflicted Mughal India and possibly even wors- ened in the final years of his reign. By this point Mughal forces were stretched thin and wearied by decades of conflict. Many new recruits lacked loyalty to the Mughal cause. Writing in the mid-1690s, the Italian Gemelli Careri complained that Mu- ghal India did not offer travelers “safety from thieves,” unlike the comparatively secure roads in Safavid Iran and the Otto- man Empire. Aurangzeb himself lamented that bandits robbed travelers near major cities, such as Burhanpur and Ahmedabad, which meant that rural areas suffered even bolder attacks. Aurangzeb also struggled to maintain control over his state officers, who were of mixed quality. Mughal administra- tors regularly accepted bribes, despite Aurangzeb’s strict orders forbidding such corruption. Even Abdul Wahhab, the chief qazi and thus a moral guide of the empire, as an eighteenth- century Indo-Persian work put it, “had a long arm for hauling and snatching, and collected large sums of money.” Delinquent administrators frustrated Aurangzeb, and the king condemned their unjust ways. For example, in a late letter to his grandson 52 administrator of hind ustan Bidar Bakht, Aurangzeb mentioned a few corrupt nobles and then advised: “sovereignty does not stand absent punishment.” But the emperor also showed his men leniency. He chastised his sons for imposing harsh reprimands on imperial officials and even commuted such sentences.... Aurangzeb’s clemency often did not extend to family mem- bers. He penalized relations who opposed state interests and even those who simply made mistakes. This proclivity reared its head during the war of succession and continued throughout his reign. For example, Aurangzeb sent his uncle Shaysta Khan south in 1659 to counter the military opposition mounted by Shivaji, a Maratha warrior who threatened Mughal interests in the Deccan. Shaysta Khan built lovely buildings and gardens in Pune and brought prosperity to the entire region. Grain prices remained low, and the people benefited from Shaysta Khan’s generosity. Shaysta Khan, too, enjoyed a good life in Pune, busying himself with such matters as arranging his daughter’s engagement. In all of this, however, Shaysta Khan lost sight of his major objective: reining in Shivaji. But Shivaji did not forget Shaysta Khan and ambushed his palace in the spring of 1663. Shivaji took with him only a few dozen men who sneaked into the compound under the cover of night. When the Marathas burst into his bedroom, Shaysta Khan defended himself and lost a finger in the process. But he was unable to protect his family, and several of his wives per- ished. Shivaji and his troops retreated when, according to some reports, they slew Shaysta Khan’s son in his bed, mistaking him for his father. Upon hearing of this shameful defeat, Aurang- zeb packed his uncle off to Bengal, known as a backwater of administrat or of hind usta n 53 the Mughal kingdom, without even allowing Shaysta Khan the courtesy of visiting his nephew the emperor on his way east. In a less dramatic but illustrative incident decades later, Aurangzeb rebuked his son Azam Shah for not preventing rob- bery on the Surat highway. Azam protested that this was not his responsibility but rather fell within the jurisdiction of another official. In response, Aurangzeb reduced his son’s mansab rank and noted, “If it had been an officer other than a Prince, this order would have been issued after an inquiry. For a Prince the punishment is the absence of investigation.” Aurangzeb acted even more severely when he faced a re- bellion by his fourth son, Prince Akbar. Akbar declared him- self emperor in 1681, after being dispatched by his father to put down a rebellion by the Rathors and Sisodias of Rajasthan. Akbar soon lost the support of his Rajput allies and fled to the court of Sambhaji, Shivaji’s son and a sworn enemy of Aurang- zeb by this point. After several years, in 1687, Aurangzeb drove his son out of India, and Prince Akbar absconded to Persia, where he died in 1704.... Aurangzeb did not tolerate threats to state security, and indi- viduals who challenged the emperor often found themselves on the receiving end of his capacity for violence and even cruelty at times. For example, Sambhaji received no mercy when he was cap- tured by Mughal forces in 1689. Aurangzeb ordered Sambhaji, who had spent years fighting the Mughal state, along with his Brahmin adviser, Kavi Kalash, publicly humiliated by being forced to wear funny hats and being led into court on cam- els. He then had Sambhaji’s eyes stabbed out with nails, and, in one historian’s poetic words, “his shoulders were lightened 54 administrator of hind ustan of the load of his head.” Some histories add that the bodies of Sambhaji and Kavi Kalash were thrown to the dogs while their heads were stuffed with straw and displayed in cities through- out the Deccan before being hung on one of Delhi’s gates. Aurangzeb was not unusual for his time in turning to vio- lence, including of a gruesome variety, as a standard political tactic. For Aurangzeb state violence was not only permissible but necessary and even just insofar as it encouraged stability and cooperation within the Mughal kingdom. That Aurangzeb acted as a man of his times regarding state force, however, has not saved him from scathing condemnation by subsequent genera- tions. One poignant example of Aurangzeb’s violence that sits ill with many today concerns Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru. The Mughal state executed Tegh Bahadur in 1675 for caus- ing unrest in the Punjab. This incident is central to how many modern Sikhs understand the early history of their religion, but it was likely a more routine matter from a Mughal per- spective. The execution is not mentioned in any Persian texts from Aurangzeb’s period, which suggests that it was not an exceptional event for the Mughals. Later Persian works offer conflicting reports on even basic details, such as the location of Tegh Bahadur’s execution (some name the Deccan or Lahore, whereas others concur with the Sikh tradition that the killing took place in Delhi). Sikh accounts of the execution also date from a later period and vary considerably. The popular story, often repeated in modern textbooks, that Tegh Bahadur was protesting against the forced conversion of Kashmiri Brahmins is not elaborated in the earliest sources on the execution. This much is clear from both Persian and Sikh sources: In Aurangzeb’s eyes, Tegh Bahadur militarily opposed Mughal state interests and so was a legitimate target for a death sen- administrat or of hind usta n 55 tence. His religious stature did nothing to mitigate the over- arching commitment of Aurangzeb’s administration to meting out punishment, including capital punishment, to enemies of the state. It probably did not help matters that Tegh Bahadur’s nephew and the seventh Sikh guru, Har Rai, was rumored to have supported Dara Shukoh during the war of succession. Around the same time, the Mughals targeted other religious groups that took up arms against the state, such as the Satnamis. Prized Hindu Nobles O King, may the world bow to your command; May lips drip with expressions of thanks and salutations; Since it is your spirit that watches over the people, Wherever you are, may God watch over you!

Aurangzeb: India's Most Controversial King (2017) PDF

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