It is difficult to untangle this historical mess without scrutinizing the accusations against Aurangzeb rationally. Fortunately, in recent years quite a few Hindu historians have come out in the open disputing those allegations. For example, historian Babu Nagendranath Banerjee2 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%u2019s long reign of 50 years, many Hindus, notably Jaswant Singh, Raja Rajrup, Kabir Singh, Arghanath Singh, Prem Dev Singh, Dilip Roy, and Rasik Lal Cror
RE:THE GREAT MOGHUL EMPEROR AURANGZEB
by JATIN HALDANKAR on Jul 27, 2007 04:13 PM Permalink
7 .aurangzebs reign was marred by large scale rebellions all over the country, Sikhs , Jats , Marathas , Gujratis ,assamese all were rebelling simultaneously. even afghans/pashtuns rebelled against aurangzebs atrocities. ( he sent rajputs to crush pashtuns) his predecessors like akbar did not have to face this large scale rebellion. this being the case aurangzeb was smart enough to understand that his mughal/muslim soldiers were not numerically enough to quell all the rebellions simultaneously all over this vast country. so he had to depend on hindu generals. it was a marriage of convenience and not very different from the shameless political alliances and coalitions we see in india today .
Also every country has its own share of traitors, so many hindu kings who joined him were simply traitors and did not represent the majority of oppressed hindus. so in a nutshell the following were the reasons why hindus worked for him . 1.fear of being invaded by aurangzeb , 2.hope of getting mansabdari , 3.greed , 4.rivalry with other hindu kings , 5.hereditory enemity with other hindu kings. 6.being hereditory servants of previous mughal rulers 7. cowardice and traitorship
these were the reasons why some hindu kings were supporting aurangzeb.this does not give aurangzeb a clean chit.
