The Monarch Misunderstood

The book - Audrey Trushke’s Aurangzeb: The Man and The Myth has been analyzed in depth by Dr. P. C. Singh. The book exposes many myths and puts up many questions at the same time.

Audrey Truschke's Aurangzeb: The man and the Myth was published in India a couple of years back, in 2017 to be more precise. However, this national bestseller rejected by many, keeps drawing scholarly attentions in many parts of the world but probably more in India because of obvious reasons. Today, when the Alamgir who expanded largest territory in Mughal India (may be the largest in the history of India) is a subject of hatred in both India and Pakistan, Truschke Aurangzeb is a timely publication as it may help in correcting lot many misconceptions; though it is difficult to accept the argument of the author in toto. What, however true is that a couple of issues raised by her are insightful and revealing that are based on intensive readings of various sources.

The chief argument of this American Professor of South Asian History lies in distancing from the perspectives provided by the traditional historians like Jadunath Sarkar and scholar prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She is not willing to accept the traditional characterization of this great Mughal king who ruled over India for 49 years as a ‘bigot and a Hindu-hater’. For, in her opinion other features of his rule and the misunderstood monarch must be given due recognition. The subtitle of the book – the man and the myth, makes it abundantly clear.

Truschke’s interpretation of Aurangzeb ought to be evaluated by the force of her logic and richness of archival and non-archival materials and manuscripts the author uses. She does not go with the popular belief of the great Mughal being a teetotaler and fanatic. Nehru prefers to call him, as Truschke rightly quotes from his Discovery Of India - ‘A bigot and an austere puritan’ who ‘put back the clock’ marking the beginning of the end of Mughal empire build on the secular credentials established by his forefathers and notably Akbar. In author’s view, Nehru’s interpretation is not original as it is not uncommon to his contemporaries including Medieval historian Jadunath Sarkar. Countering this mythical perception, she observes that as rightly pointed out by Alexander Dow that the Mughals used faith for establishing and protecting the despotic rule. And Aurangzeb turned to be the ultimate architect of this art. But before going into the details of the issue related to statecraft, let’s have a look at the other aspect of the Alamgir- as an austere puritan. Many would still not believe that Aurangzeb parted with his habit of drinking wine on the promises made to his first and probably the only lover of his life, Hirabai Zainabadi, a singer and dancer whom he met at Burhanpur .

He appears highly puritan once we come to know that for offering Nawaz he would sew cap himself and take up the tedious job of copying Quran by pen apart from the fact that he had mugged up the entire Holy Quran. But that was more in order probably, as the argument goes in the book under review, to counter the secular, benevolent and Sufi image of his brother Dara Shukoh who was also the most favoured son of his father Shah Jahan. He also had to come out of the additional burden of the damaged image in then existing international Islamic order and at home of the king who not only killed his brothers but also imprisoned his decaying father. He was looking for a fresh agenda and his agenda making effort created the myth of a bigot. Otherwise “Aurangzeb never oversaw a large- scale conversion programme that offered non-Muslims a choice between Islam or the sword. Aurangzeb never destroyed thousands of Hindu temples (a few dozen more likely number). He did not perpetrate anything resembling a genocide of Hindus. In fact, Aurangzeb appointed Hindus to top position in his government. He protected the interests of Hindu religious group, even ordering fellow Muslims to cease harassing Brahmins. He tried to provide safe roads and basic law and order for all his subjects.”(p-15) The myth about the man is exposed further once it is realized that among the Mughal kings he was the one who employed maximum number of Hindu jagirdars.

Aurangzeb is said to have immense courage and has been a brave man right from childhood, is also vividly depicted by the author by revealing the story of elephant fight competition involving the young prince brothers in front of the king. Similar story is told by another equally fascinating book on Alamgir by Sudhir Kakar entitled The Crimson Throne. Despite such immense physical traits, intellectual ability and spiritual outlook the monarch who ruled over India for almost half a century and fought constant violent wars throughout his life including his 20 years fights in Deccan depicted in the book remains misunderstood, why? The answer to this historical fallacy lies in the poisonous colonial legacy. In the words of Truschke “While Independence leaders rejected …. colonial logic, many swallowed… such ideas filtered to society… via textbooks and mass media and many generations continue to eat up… the colonial notion that Aurangzeb was a tyrant driven by religious fanaticism”(p.9)

Despite revealing exposition of the errors in the assessment of Aurangzeb by her, Truschke fails to convince how Aurangzeb was as secular as his elder brother Dara who has received wider sympathy, appreciation for his human qualities, intellect and secular outlook by historians and intellectuals in India and elsewhere. We are informed by the author herself as to how Pakistani playwright Shahid Nadeem insists that seeds of partition were sown with the defeat of Dara Shukoh by Aurangzeb in the war of succession. Many contemporary historians and scholars rightly believe that had Dara won the war of succession against Aurangzeb , the history of south-Asia would have been different. And a more important and methodological question as to why the same historians who failed to distance themselves from the colonial legacy, preferred to call his great -grandfather Akbar ‘the Great’? It is up to the readers to judge whether Nehru was right when he concludes that Aurangzeb emerges as a ruler who ‘put back the clock’ marking the beginning of the end of the Mughal empire. But be sure once you start reading the book you are unlikely to keep it aside.