As I was turning the pages of the book, the news of ‘Aurangabad’ – a city in Maharashtra getting its new identity as ‘Sambhajinagar’ came to the fore. This shift in the Overton window, that a modern-day Indian city should not glorify the 17th-century genocidal tyrant was a long game in narrative, eventually carved out by electoral politics. Debutant author Saurabh Lohogaonkar’s book ‘Aurangzeb: Whitewashing Tyrant, Distorting Narrative’ thus could not have come with better timing.
The book occupies an unusual space in the coterie of historical non-fiction, a genre that is ruling bestseller charts in the larger Indian literary circuits. This had a lot to do with India’s renewed sense of history, identity and assertive politics of the day. Underlined with identity politics and Muslim appeasement, the ‘secular’ class of Indian politicians continues to gloss over the tyrannies carried out by Islamic rulers like Aurangzeb whenever a debate over history is contested.
This has prompted a class of historians in turn to justify the barbarism of Islamic imperialism in India through academia – with authors like Audrey Truschke writing problematic turn-around biographies of Aurangzeb. A narrative was created that the Mughal Emperor was not as cruel as the ‘Hindu Right’ paints him, and was a mere ‘product of his times’.
While books whitewashing Aurangzeb, the tyrant, including those authored by Truschke met divisive criticism, Saurabh Lohogaonkar thought to himself that the answer to a book is another book in itself. His latest book is neither a linear biography of Aurangzeb, as he claims nor is it a rebuttal directed against any specific hagiography of the Mughal emperor.
Interestingly, Lohogaonkar calls his work a ‘fact-finding’ exercise. He picks up contested issues in the historiography of the central character including his succession war with his brother Dara Shikoh, claims around the sound representation of Hindus in his administration to absurdist assertions like ‘Aurangzeb building Hindu Temples himself’ and assesses them through diligent investigation of available sources.
The author elucidates in detail why any primary source has to be dealt with seriously inside the frame of context as opposed to the consideration of the text as a definitive understanding of the times. For example, notings of Hindu chroniclers in the Mughal Court like ‘Futuhat-i-Alamgiri’ and ‘Tarikh-i-Dilkusha’ which glorify Aurangzeb’s rule are often positioned as a mark of his collaborative style of rule by his modern-day sympathizers.
While an argument in the case is made that even the Hindus in Alamgir’s administration have lauded him as a ruler of Hindustan, the author asks us to take the court propaganda with a pinch of salt. “The employment and well-being – of Hindus commissioned to write history in the Mughal Durbar, “was directly dependent on how (they) wrote about Aurangzeb and (his) Empire in general. The narratives of Hindus employed in the Mughal Administration must be taken into consideration with due diligence, as they are neither independent and a certifying authority of ‘Secularism’ and ‘Tolerance’ dispensed by Mughal Kings nor were they speaking on behalf of all Hindus of the era as we are made to believe,” notes Lohogaonkar.
The author classifies the carefully stitched myth about Aurangzeb as a ‘Protector of Temples’ as opposed to his known opposition to idolatry and the destruction of Hindu temples in three ‘phases’. From 1669-1673, the temples present in the land directly administered by the Mughals were demolished. In the second phase of Temple destruction during Aurangzeb’s reign, from 1679 to 1681, the temples present in the Hindu kingdoms which were under Mughal supremacy were demolished whereas, in the third phase, the destruction of temples by Mughal forces during Aurangzeb’s stay in Deccan is categorized. While the ‘Aurangzeb Defender Lobby (ADL)’ – as the author calls it, went ahead to suggest that the Mughal Emperor did not destroy any temples during his tenure in Deccan, the rhetoric doesn’t hold much ground. As Aurangzeb marched ahead to conquer newer territories South of the Narmada, he gave a general order to loot, ransack and demolish many Hindu temples in Maharashtra including the famous Mahalaxmi Mandir in Kolhapur and the temple of Lord Vitthal in Pandharpur.
The author’s mastery over sources, powered with data is not only reflected through his arguments but also in the detailed bibliography in the end. The book has been written with academic spirit but with simple poise, which makes it an easy read. It is a gift for amateur historians, who are fed up with everyday narratives glorifying Aurangzeb, to assess the history dispassionately. And for those, who will stop not with their whitewashing exercise, more such books, expectedly by new authors like Lohogaonkar are yet to come.
The book can be purchased from amazon.in from here.
