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 10, 2007 05:32 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
