Aurangzeb an excuse for Hindu Right to voice anti-Muslim feelings

Aurangzeb was one of modern India's most successful rulers. He ruled over an empire that included nearly all of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, along with parts of Afghanistan. He was the last Indian emperor to keep the British imperialists at bay.

Yet, Aurangzeb today is widely reviled in India. His detractors, who have grown more vocal of late, blame him for forced mass conversions of non-Muslims to Islam and ordering demolition of Hindu temples (An American scholar popular among Aurangzeb's critics puts the number between 12-20), all during his 49-year-old long reign.

The current political climate has only served to amplify these moral shortcomings of Aurangzeb, which has come at the expense of his impressive track-record as a king. In her 2017 book, Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, American historian Professor Audrey Truschke makes a compelling case for revisiting the legacy of Aurangzeb. In an e-mail interview with Dhairya Maheshwari of National Herald, Truschke sheds more light on one of the most controversial subjects of Indian history.

What was the trigger for writing the book?

A private Twitter message from an Indian publisher first gave me the idea to write a short biography of a Mughal king, and I quickly settled on Aurangzeb as the subject. Aurangzeb is by far the most poorly understood of the major Mughal emperors, especially in popular imagination. I was also inspired, in part, by seeing caricatures of Aurangzeb invoked in contemporary India in order to stir up anti-Muslim sentiments.

Published at a time when India is witnessing popular support for cultural nationalism, how has the response to your book been?

I have become the target of a substantial amount of hate mail due to my views as a scholar on Aurangzeb. I expected this backlash, but I did not write my book for the haters, many of whom have not even bothered to read the book. I wrote Aurangzeb in order to present a more compelling, historically-grounded portrait of a complicated monarch to Indian readers who, I expect, hunger for history rather than nationalist mythology. I have been heartened to see and hear from many readers who found my book enlightening and thought-provoking.

Are there any letters penned by Aurangzeb himself that you studied during the research phase of your book? Are these letters, if any, preserved well?

Around 2,000 letters written by Aurangzeb survive today. Some are published, and a small portion are translated into English. Many more are withering away in manuscript archives. Preservation is a tricky issue in India. There are many manuscript archives in India, not all of which are under government control, and conditions vary greatly among archives and even within archives, sometimes based on the language of the material. I have visited exceptionally well-run archives in India, and I have also had manuscripts literally crumble in my hands.

Is there a difference between the outlook of Western scholars and Indian scholars towards Aurangzeb?

Some of the points that I make in the book are matters of scholarly consensus across the board, such as that we lack evidence for the popular view that Aurangzeb destroyed thousands of Hindu temples. Other arguments that I put forth are more controversial. But history is a scholarly discipline united by a common set of approaches and ethics, rather than a practice divided by nationality.

Who is more responsible for demonising the legacy of Aurangzeb– the British colonialists or the Right?

The Hindu Right has a long history of adopting colonial-era ideas, and their views on Aurangzeb are no exception. That said, British colonialism in India ended seventy years ago, and I do not think that its legacy excuses the hate-mongering we see among the Right in India today. Hindu nationalists despise Aurangzeb--or who they think Aurangzeb was, anyways--for largely disreputable reasons, including as a way of voicing anti-Muslim feelings.

You mention in your book that Aurangzeb is as unpopular in Pakistan as he is in India. How, in your view, is he viewed in contemporary Pakistan?

Aurangzeb has a mixed reputation in modern-day Pakistan. Some Pakistanis malign him as a bigot, similar to the common Indian view. But other Pakistanis cherish Aurangzeb as the one truly Muslim king in the Mughal line. My book argues against the myth of Aurangzeb the Pious, just as it argues against the myth of Aurangzeb the Bigot.

Wasn’t it paradoxical that while ordering demolition of temples, he also handed out huge grants to the Hindu community at the same time? Was it just statecraft?

I think that "just statecraft" is a bit dismissive. Political explanations go a long way toward explaining Aurangzeb's two-pronged policy of destroying and protecting Hindu temples. However, as I contend in the book, religious considerations were also likely involved in imperial decisions vis-a-vis individual temples, although not the types of religious considerations that Aurangzeb's modern detractors have written onto this premodern king.

In a column you wrote this year, you say that many Indians “recoiled” at the thought of Hindu nationalism for much part of the 20th century. But there has been a surge in popular support for this ideology in the last decade or so, more so since 2014. As a scholar on South Asia, how do you explain these changing attitudes of Indians, who, as you say, have been more of less into secular politics?

I think a layered explanation is probably most useful. We are witnessing a surge of religious nationalism worldwide. I think it's also relevant that India has moved far enough away from independence that living memory of the independence struggle is basically gone. Additionally, political corruption and changing economic approaches have played into the rise of Hindu nationalist political parties.

What sparked your curiosity in studying South Asia?

I began reading the Mahabharata as an undergraduate student, and I was fascinated by the epic. That launched my journey into learning Sanskrit and further engagement with Indian religions and cultures.

What are you working on next ?

I am currently working on a book that analyzes Sanskrit literary histories of Indo-Islamic political figures and rulers. This project addresses a group of Sanskrit texts that span over half a millennium, from the late twelfth century until the early eighteenth century.

The book challenges two wrong-headed ideas: namely, Sanskrit intellectuals wrote no histories and had little interest in the migration of Muslims to the subcontinent. On the contrary, Sanskrit thinkers wrote about Islamic political events, kings, and so forth in a variety of genres. I anticipate that this project, which involves working through a number of fairly difficult Sanskrit texts, will take me several years to complete.