Titans of History

AURANGZEB

1618–1707

I have sinned terribly, and I do not know what punishment awaits me.

Aurangzeb’s alleged death-bed confession

Aurangzeb, known as Alamgir (world-seizer), was the last of the great Mughal emperors of India, expanding his empire and ruling for almost half a century, but his cruelty to his father was shameful even by the standards of dynastic rivalries and his intolerant repression and imposition of Muslim orthodoxy undermined the admirably tolerant tradition of his great predecessors, the emperors Babur and Akbar the Great. He thus alienated his millions of Hindu subjects, weakened his empire and started the rot that led to the British conquest.

The third son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, in the dynasty descended from Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, Aurangzeb was a pious Muslim from an early age. As a young man he proved himself a capable administrator and proficient soldier in his father’s service, but resented the fact that Shah Jahan nominated his eldest and favorite son, Dara Shikoh, his heir, leaving Aurangzeb out of the line of succession. This led to a rift between father and son, and a growing rivalry between Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh.

The rivalry between the two brothers became increasingly bitter after their father fell ill in 1657. Shah Jahan’s second son, Shah Shuja, also claimed the imperial throne, as did a fourth brother, Murad Baksh. Yet the real struggle remained that between Aurangzeb and the original heir apparent. To this end, Aurangzeb allied himself with Murad against Dara Shikoh, whom he defeated in 1658. As Dara Shikoh fled, Aurangzeb had their father placed under house arrest. In a stunning act of betrayal, he then attacked and defeated Murad, and had him executed. Even as he did so, he attempted to buy off Shah Shuja by offering him a governorship. But it was not long before Aurangzeb made a move against the ill-prepared Shah Shuja, who was defeated, forced into exile and later disappeared—presumed murdered at the hands of Aurangzeb’s agents. After once more defeating Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb had his last surviving brother brought back to Delhi in chains. In 1659, against the backdrop of Aurangzeb’s own coronation, Dara Shikoh was publicly executed and the head delivered to his grieving and shocked father in an act of grievous filial cruelty rarely matched in history.

With his brothers mercilessly disposed of, Aurangzeb set about expanding his dominions by means of military might, culminating three decades later with victories over the rulers of Bijapur and Golconda, which brought the Mughal empire to its greatest extent. But the problems that would in the end fatally weaken this great empire began to emerge as soon as Aurangzeb assumed the throne. Immediately life at court became markedly more austere, in line with the more rigid and puritanical interpretation of Islam followed by the new emperor. Music was banned, while works of art—such as portraits and statues—that could be considered idolatrous were proscribed. Of greater consequence, the jizya tax on non-Muslims, which had been allowed to lapse under his predecessors, was now reinstituted, while non-Muslim worship was actively discouraged, and a large number of Hindu temples were destroyed.

Unsurprisingly, such measures provoked violent resistance. A Pashtun revolt erupted in 1672 and was only suppressed with difficulty. In 1675 Aurangzeb provoked a major Sikh rebellion after having the Sikh leader, Guru Tegh Bahadur, executed for refusing to convert to Islam. The guru’s three closest aides had been executed with him: one was sawed in half, another was burned alive and the third plunged into boiling water. As with the Pashtun revolt, this rebellion too was eventually contained.

Now the Marathas, a Hindu warrior caste from the Deccan area of western India, rebelled. Throughout his reign, Aurangzeb was obsessed with conquering the Deccan plateau, regardless of the cost (financial or human) or the practical impediments—such as the unwillingness of the Hindu peoples of the area to be subjugated. For a period in the late 1660s Mughal forces had appeared to bring much of the Deccan under control, and there was an opportunity for a peace deal with the Maratha overlord, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. However, Aurangzeb proceeded to double-cross Shivaji, who then led an insurrection that successfully drove the Mughal armies out of the Deccan in the early 1670s. After Shivaji’s death in 1680, his son and successor, Chatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, continued to lead the resistance to Aurangzeb. At this time the emperor’s own son, Akbar, left the Mughal court to fight alongside the Marathas against his father.

In 1689 Sambhaji was finally captured, publicly tortured and executed. Yet far from pacifying the area, this merely inflamed opposition. When the emperor died in 1707, the Mughal empire was convulsed by internal unrest.

By his death the empire was financially crippled, its people exhausted and restless. Aurangzeb’s imposition of Islamic fundamentalism had obliterated the tolerant genius of his heroic forebears.