THE GREAT MOGHUL EMPEROR AURANGZEB In a polarized world that we live in (which is, sadly, getting ever more polarized now by every minute and hour), we have often assumed that what is good for "our" people had to be bad for the "other" people. A glaring example is the personality of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled India for 50 years. Of all the Muslim rulers who ruled vast territories of India from 712 to 1857 C.E., probably no one generates as much controversy as Aurangzeb. He has been hailed as anyone from a "Saintly or Pauper Emperor" to one who "tried hard to convert Hindus into Muslims." Depending on one%u2019s religious rearing, one will favor one view over the other. For example, most Hindus castigate Aurangzeb as a religious Muslim, who was anti-Hindu, who taxed them, who tried to convert them, who discriminated them away from high administrative positions, who interfered in their religious matters. On the other hand, Muslims consider him to be one of the best rulers who was a pious, scholarly, saintly, un-biased, liberal, magnanimous, tolerant, competent and far-sighted ruler. To prove the view of the former group, a close scrutiny of the Government-approved text books in schools and colleges across post-partition India (i.e., after 1947) is sufficient.1 The second group depends mostly on pre-colonial (and some pre-partition) history, land-grant deeds and other available records. It is difficult to untangle this historical mess without scrutinizing the accusat
RE:THE GREAT MOGHUL EMPEROR - AURANGZEB
by JATIN HALDANKAR on Jul 10, 2007 05:15 PM Permalink
Now coming to Aurangzeb Road and The hindu-muslim arguments over history. May be No muslim will beleive that Aurangzeb was a villian and no Hindu will beleive him to be a Hero. But this has been well documented in India that he was a cruel ruler. That's y there were so many rebellions against him namely the Sikhs, Marathas, Satnamis etc. He inherited a great kingdom built so laborously by Akbar. The greatest mughal of the dynasty. Had aurangzeb been a good ruler there would not have been so many rebellions against him. Which ultimately lead to the decline of the mughal empire after his death. Now this should be difficult to refute by any muslim. How good can a person be who imprisons his own father, poisons his brother Murad who helped him win against Dara Shikoh can be well understood. Any ruler is a good ruler if he has been good to all his subjects No matter which religion he belongs to. He might have adhered strongly to the principles of Islam and enforced these principles in his kingdom But then by doing so he never did any good to his majority of subjects. Any govt today is a bad govt that treats badly the people who are in minority, And aurangzeb was very bad to majority of his subjects. This assumes signficance because almost all the revolts during his reign were from hindus. Except marathas all the revolts had sense of revenge for the atrocities commited on their religion and belief. His religious policy of intolerence was the main factor that a son of his revolted a
