Of all the Mus­lim rulers who ruled vast ter­ri­to­ries of India from 712 to 1857 CE, prob­a­bly no one has received as much con­dem­na­tion from West­ern and Hin­du writ­ers as Aurangzeb. He has been cas­ti­gat­ed as a reli­gious Mus­lim who was anti-Hin­du, who taxed them, who tried to con­vert them, who dis­crim­i­nat­ed against them in award­ing high admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions, and who inter­fered in their reli­gious mat­ters. This view has been heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed in the gov­ern­ment approved text­books in schools and col­leges across post-par­ti­tion India (i.e., after 1947). These are fab­ri­ca­tions against one of the best rulers of India who was pious, schol­ar­ly, saint­ly, unbi­ased, lib­er­al, mag­nan­i­mous, tol­er­ant, com­pe­tent, and far-sighted.

For­tu­nate­ly, in recent years quite a few Hin­du his­to­ri­ans have come out in the open dis­put­ing those alle­ga­tions. For exam­ple, his­to­ri­an Babu Nagen­dranath Baner­jee reject­ed the accu­sa­tion of forced con­ver­sion of Hin­dus by Mus­lim rulers by stat­ing that if that was their inten­tion then in India today there would not be near­ly four times as many Hin­dus com­pared to Mus­lims, despite the fact that Mus­lims had ruled for near­ly a thou­sand years. Baner­jee chal­lenged the Hin­du hypoth­e­sis that Aurangzeb was anti-Hin­du by rea­son­ing that if the lat­ter were tru­ly guilty of such big­otry, how could he appoint a Hin­du as his mil­i­tary com­man­der-in-chief ? Sure­ly, he could have afford­ed to appoint a com­pe­tent Mus­lim gen­er­al in that position.

Baner­jee fur­ther stated :

No one should accuse Aurangzeb of being com­mu­nal mind­ed. In his admin­is­tra­tion, the state pol­i­cy was for­mu­lat­ed by Hin­dus. Two Hin­dus held the high­est posi­tion in the State Trea­sury. Some prej­u­diced Mus­lims even ques­tioned the mer­it of his deci­sion to appoint non-Mus­lims to such high offices. The Emper­or refut­ed that by stat­ing that he had been fol­low­ing the dic­tates of the Shari­ah (Islam­ic Law) which demands appoint­ing right per­sons in right positions.” 

Dur­ing Aurangze­b’s long reign of fifty years, many Hin­dus, notably Jaswant Singh, Raja Rajrup, Kabir Singh, Arghanath Singh, Prem Dev Singh, Dilip Roy, and Rasik Lal Cro­ry, held very high admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions. Two of the high­est ranked gen­er­als in Aurangze­b’s admin­is­tra­tion, Jaswant Singh and Jaya Singh, were Hin­dus. Oth­er notable Hin­du gen­er­als who com­mand­ed a gar­ri­son of two to five thou­sand sol­diers were Raja Vim Singh of Uday­pur, Indra Singh, Acha­la­ji and Arju­ji. One won­ders if Aurangzeb was hos­tile to Hin­dus, why would he posi­tion all these Hin­dus to high posi­tions of author­i­ty, espe­cial­ly in the mil­i­tary, who could have mutinied against him and removed him from his throne ?

Most Hin­dus like Akbar over Aurangzeb for his mul­ti-eth­nic court where Hin­dus were favored. His­to­ri­an Shri Shar­ma states that while Emper­or Akbar had four­teen Hin­du Mans­ab­dars (high offi­cials) in his court, Aurangzeb actu­al­ly had 148 Hin­du high offi­cials in his court.Mughal Gov­ern­ment But this fact is some­what less known.

Some of the Hin­du his­to­ri­ans have accused Aurangzeb of demol­ish­ing Hin­du tem­ples. How fac­tu­al is this accu­sa­tion against a man, who has been known to be a saint­ly man, a strict adher­ent of Islam ? The Qur’an pro­hibits any Mus­lim to impose his will on a non-Mus­lim by stat­ing that

There is no com­pul­sion in reli­gion.“Surah al-Baqarah (2):256

Surah al-Kafirun clear­ly states : To you is your reli­gion and to me is mine.” It would be total­ly unbe­com­ing of a learned schol­ar of Islam of his cal­iber, as Aurangzeb was known to be, to do things that are con­trary to the dic­tates of the Qur’an.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the 1946 edi­tion of the his­to­ry text­book Eti­hash Parichaya (Intro­duc­tion to His­to­ry) used in Ben­gal for the 5th and 6th graders states :

If Aurangzeb had the inten­tion of demol­ish­ing tem­ples to make way for mosques, there would not have been a sin­gle tem­ple stand­ing erect in India. On the con­trary, Aurangzeb donat­ed huge estates for use as tem­ple sites and sup­port there­of in Benares, Kash­mir and else­where. The offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tions for these land grants are still extant.”

A stone inscrip­tion in the his­toric Bal­a­ji or Vish­nu Tem­ple, locat­ed north of Chi­trakut Bal­aghat, still shows that it was com­mis­sioned by the Emper­or him­self. The proof of Aurangze­b’s land grant for famous Hin­du reli­gious sites in Kasi, Varanasi can eas­i­ly be ver­i­fied from the deed records extant at those sites. The same text­book reads :

Dur­ing the fifty year reign of Aurangzeb, not a sin­gle Hin­du was forced to embrace Islam. He did not inter­fere with any Hin­du reli­gious activ­i­ties.“op. cit., p. 138

Alexan­der Hamil­ton, a British his­to­ri­an, toured India towards the end of Aurangze­b’s fifty year reign and observed that every one was free to serve and wor­ship God in his own way.

Now let us deal with Aurangze­b’s impo­si­tion of the jizya tax which had drawn severe crit­i­cism from many Hin­du his­to­ri­ans. It is true that jizya was lift­ed dur­ing the reign of Akbar and Jahangir and that Aurangzeb lat­er rein­stat­ed this. Before I delve into the sub­ject of Aurangze­b’s jizya tax, or tax­ing the non-Mus­lims, it is worth­while to point out that jizya is noth­ing more than a war tax which was col­lect­ed only from able-bod­ied young non-Mus­lim male cit­i­zens liv­ing in a Mus­lim coun­try who did not want to vol­un­teer for the defense of the coun­try. That is, no such tax was col­lect­ed from non-Mus­lims who vol­un­teered to defend the coun­try. This tax was not col­lect­ed from women, and nei­ther from imma­ture males nor from dis­abled or old male cit­i­zens. For pay­ment of such tax­es, it became incum­bent upon the Mus­lim gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the life, prop­er­ty and wealth of its non-Mus­lim cit­i­zens. If for any rea­son the gov­ern­ment failed to pro­tect its cit­i­zens, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a war, the tax­able amount was returned.

It should be point­ed out here that the zakaat (2.5% of sav­ings) and ushr (10% of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts) were col­lect­ed from all Mus­lims, who owned some wealth (beyond a cer­tain min­i­mum, called nisab). They also paid sadaqah, fitrah and khums. None of these were col­lect­ed from any non-Mus­lim. As a mat­ter of fact, the per capi­ta col­lec­tion from Mus­lims was sev­er­al fold that of non-Mus­lims. Fur­ther to Auranze­b’s cred­it is his abo­li­tion of a lot of tax­es, although this fact is not usu­al­ly men­tioned. In his book Mughal Admin­is­tra­tion, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, fore­most his­to­ri­an on the Mughal dynasty, men­tions that dur­ing Aurangze­b’s reign in pow­er, near­ly six­ty-five types of tax­es were abol­ished, which result­ed in a year­ly rev­enue loss of fifty mil­lion rupees from the state trea­sury. Oth­er his­to­ri­ans stat­ed that when Aurangzeb abol­ished eighty types of tax­es, no one thanked him for his gen­eros­i­ty. But when he imposed only one, and not heavy at all, peo­ple began to show their dis­plea­sure.Vin­di­ca­tion of Aurangzeb

While some Hin­du his­to­ri­ans are retract­ing the lies, the text­books and his­toric accounts in West­ern coun­tries have yet to admit their error and set the record straight. Such intel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty by his­to­ri­ans is dan­ger­ous — more explo­sive and more dam­ag­ing than nuclear bombs. We have already seen its hideous effect with the destruc­tion of Mus­lim his­toric sites (includ­ing the Babri Mosque) and recent riots in India that killed thou­sands of Muslims.

Let us not fall into the trap set by those who want to neat­ly divide our world.” Let truth van­quish falsehood. Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb: Bad Ruler Or Bad History? 2

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Comments

12 responses to “Mughal Emper­or Aurangzeb : Bad Ruler Or Bad History ?”

  1. ibnu mohamed Avatar
    ibnu mohamed

    assala­mu alaikum. A nice article

  2. MALIMEE Avatar
    MALIMEE

    To
    RBO

    It is very con­ve­nient to claim a high moral posi­tion for Hin­dus to assert them­selves as the indege­nous’ peo­ple of India. How­ev­er, his­to­ry tells an alto­geth­er a dif­fer­ent story.

    His­to­ry nar­rates that Aryans migrat­ed from Cen­tral Asia to Indus val­ley. Indus val­ley civ­i­liza­tion was not an Aryan civ­i­liza­tion. Aryan con­quered the land and imposed their cul­tur­al and reli­gious prac­tices over the dra­vid­i­ans dwelling in the indus val­ley and inturn adopt­ed some from the cul­tur­al reli­gious prac­tices of dra­vid­i­ans as well. The major­i­ty of drave­di­ans were pushed to the south­ern side and aryan estab­lished their rule in the north.

    What is known today as Hin­du’ actu­al­ly should be read as Sind­hu’ not Hin­du and present Hin­duism is an imposed ism on the dwellers of this land from the aryan conquerers.

    Just because the Aryans hap­pened to con­qure this land mil­len­ni­ums ahead of oth­ers, like Mughal rulers and British, they can­not pass for as indegeneous.

    Now it looks like that the pan claim­ing to pot as if it has more rights to the home which both of them have been acci­dent­ly brought on dif­fer­nt dates.

    Is it tenable ?

  3. rameshnaidoo Avatar
    rameshnaidoo

    Have a look at Aurangzeb, as he was accord­ing to Mughal Records’, it con­tains paint­ings and sketch­es about his rule as well as farhans, orig­i­nal edicts by Aurangzeb, pre­served at the Bikan­er Muse­um, Rajasthan, India.

    Click to view the com­plete exhi­bi­tion online :
    http://​accord​ing​-to​-mughal​-records​.blogspot​.com/

    Best

    Ramesh

  4. Sayed Mohammad Durrez Avatar
    Sayed Mohammad Durrez

    King Auren­zeb was the most intel­li­gent, Admin­stra­tive, Law­ful king of all Mugal Dien­esty. He was very reli­gious and far sight­ed king. He strik­ly obey rules and want every body in his wast empire to obey them. He respect all exist­ing reli­gin in india and serve them with his best. He nevr forced or pres­sureised eney com­mu­ni­ty to con­vrt. King Auren­zeb was The Best King” of all mus­lim rulers in india who rules in india more then One Thou­sand years.…