Aurangzeb’s Controversial Legacy in South Asia

The life and actions of the sixth Mughal emperor, Muhi-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb, usually known as just Aurangzeb, or by his regnal title, Alamgir, who reigned from 1658-1707 continues to stir passions and controversy to this day in South Asia. His continued salience in contemporary political life is best exemplified by the reaction of Indian netizens to a new book entitled Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King, written by Audrey Truschke, an assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University.

The book argues that Aurangzeb was a more nuanced character than is often suggested by populist rhetoric in India and Pakistan, and, more specifically, that he was a complicated and enigmatic figure who, like many contemporaries, “hungered after territory, political power, and a particular idea of justice.” These motives, rather than Islam, were the primary drivers for his actions, which included the conquest of much of the Deccan plateau and the destruction of some Hindu temples, which were destroyed, according to Truschke, because they served as centers of political resistance to the Mughal state.

The popular image of Aurangzeb today in South Asia is of an Islamic puritan; as such, he is a lightning rod for Hindu nationalists looking for a tyrant to cast as the archetypal anti-Hindu king. Aurangzeb is often cited as an example of how a Muslim should not rule, both in India and among liberals in Pakistan. Some of his actions cited by Hindu nationalists, liberals, and Sikh groups in evidence of this include the execution of the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur; Aurangzeb’s fight against the Hindu Maratha warrior-hero Shivaji; the leveling of major Hindu temples in Varanasi, Mathura, and Somnath; and the reimposition of the jizya, a poll-tax levied on non-Muslims in a Muslim state.

Such is the hate against Aurangzeb in India that a major road in New Delhi was renamed so that it would no longer be called Aurangzeb Road. The petition that led to the change of name argued: “Whenever we remember Aurangzeb, we think about cruelty and torture. We do not want to be reminded of that.” History is, inevitably, politicized in India, in particular by armchair historians who easily get worked up about the allegedly negative impact of Islam on India and its Hindu culture, whether or not there is evidence to support this. For example, in a video featured by The Diplomat in May 2017, “Inside the Mind of a Hindu Nationalist,” the interviewee, Aakash Bhatia, alleged, without evidence, that the suppression and harassment of girls and women in India only came about with the arrival of Islam in the subcontinent.

In light of this, any attempt to revisit Aurangzeb’s character and motives was bound to be met with resistance, much of which is hysterical, by what is known as “the Hindutva brigade” on social media. Given the fact that Truschke is active on Twitter, her book and tweets related to the book have led to significant controversy in India. Since both the Hindu right and the Congress Party in India have set up Aurangzeb as the ultimate anti-tolerant ruler, a large portion of Indians are put off by any positive portrayal of him, regardless of whether or not they have read the book. A tweet by a popular Hindutva handle demonstrates this foaming-at-the-mouth mentality: “I'm willing to offer financial & material support to any campaign to get Audrey Truschke book banned. It's an insult to humanity,” Subutai, who has almost 20,000 followers, wrote in February.

Another tweet rehashes a common, and unsubstantiated claim popular among Indian nationalists: that scholars studying India in the West are “propagandists” and have an “agenda” that is generally anti-Hindu. While scholars certainly do have certain biases that come with being socialized into their academic disciplines, there is no evidence of a concerted effort to rework India’s history in service of a Western worldview, especially among modern academics, most of whom are ideologically anti-colonialist, if anything.

Without a doubt, many Indians, both on the left and right, have a problem with their history. Selective readings of historical documents, combined with a lack of knowledge about methodology, have lead to wild conspiracy theories over the years. For example, radiocarbon dating and the archaeological technique of stratigraphy are sciences that can determine with considerable accuracy the age of ancient cities in India. Yet Hindu nationalists frequently take offense to scientific evidence that places the peak of the Indus Valley Civilization at 2,500 BCE, instead claiming that Indian civilization is over 10,000 years old based on evidence from the Hindu texts Ramayana and Mahabharata. Strangely many of the people who peddle these theories are highly educated individuals with science degrees and access to English-language literature, who nonetheless see a Western conspiracy in every fact relating to Indian history. 

The arguments put forward by Truschke are not necessarily new, but this is the first time recent scholarship on this subject has exited the halls of academia and found its way into the popular sphere through the internet and social media. For these reasons, even her fairly nuanced take on Aurangzeb is shocking to many Indian nationalists who are simply not exposed to the measured, source-based methodology she uses.

Certainly, Aurangzeb’s record on approaching India’s diverse religious communities is mixed; there is no doubt among historians, whether on the right or the left, that he was more pious in the Islamic sense than his ancestors, the emperors Shah Jahan, Jahangir, and Akbar. Truschke presents some of the following facts in favor of her argument that Aurangzeb was not the bigot that that he’s made out to be by Hindu nationalists: an almost equal number of Hindus supported Aurangzeb and his more liberal brother Dara Shikoh when they fought for the throne, and many Hindu Rajputs served Aurangzeb in his wars against their co-religionists, the Marathas.

Additionally, some of Aurangzeb’s more controversial political decisions may have been motivated by a mixture of piety and power. His decision to reimplement the jizya in 1679 was in part to gain the support of the ulema (Muslim clergy), many of whom were unfriendly toward him due to his usurpation of the throne from his father Shah Jahan in 1658 (another incident that has blackened his legacy in the eyes of many). In all this, Aurangzeb acted as any other ruler might have – as a man driven by the considerations of power.

Whether the actions of Aurangzeb that modern Hindus find offensive were rooted in a specific political context, or were motivated by religious considerations and bigotry is a valid question for historians to study as they sift through the evidence. A less sympathetic history of Aurangzeb based on primary source evidence would certainly be welcomed: Truschke’s may or may not be the most correct interpretation of events that transpired in the 17th century. The key point, however, is that many arguments about Indian history – especially those enabled by social media – are built on passion rather than careful study of primary sources. As Truschke notes in the postscript of her book, many primary sources are inaccessible or expensive to access; moreover, most are in Persian, the Mughal administrative language and a foreign language to most Indians today. Most Twitter trolls simply do not understand this.

Still, the controversy created by Truschke’s book is ultimately positive, despite the social media backlash, because it exposes more and more individuals to the methodology and findings of modern history and, in this sense, invites those who disagree to present their counterarguments with increasing rigor. All of this, in the end, can help move the popular understanding of Indian history toward becoming more empirically grounded rather than merely dependent on rhetoric and nationalism.