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Among Hindus too, we know of numerous pious and ascetic people, but none of
them earned a reputation as an iconoclastic monster. Then what happened in the
case of Aurangzeb? The answer is in the contents of the doctrine he came to
take ever more seriously: Islam. When people at some point in their lives “get
religion”, their freshly upgraded or newfound faith colours the nature of the
behavioural changes that ensue. In the case of Islam, the religious enthusiast
may take inspiration from the Prophet’s life and works, more than the average
Muslims brought up with the same ideals but less inclined to put them into
practice. He was a better Muslim than most. Thus, he enacted laws harmful to
the interests of the ruling class but more in keeping with Islamic jurisprudence.
But the same devotion and religious earnestness that made him an ascetic, also
made him an iconoclast.
At the end of his life, Aurangzeb privately repented his policy of iconoclasm,
eventhough not deeply enough to reverse it. If no one else can refute gullible
apologists like Audrey, let Aurangzeb himself do it. He certainly realized that
his policy was too much for his contemporaries to stomach. And again this
change of heart had nothing to do with his personality but with his deeply-held
faith. He regretted having destroyed temples not because he was suddenly
struck with compassion for the accursed Infidels, but because he had provoked
them into rebellions and thus endangered Islam’s position in India. For almost
two centuries, Islam had thrived and enjoyed power thanks to a compromise
with the Hindu majority: these had a subordinate position, but not emphatically
so. Not enough to make them rise in revolt. Now, after Shivaji’s successful
rebellion, it was becoming clear that Indian Islam had entered a period of
decline. The romantic ideal of emulating the Prophet in every detail had come in
the way of Islam’s larger and deeper goal, viz. consolidating and extending its
power, ultimately expected (as ordered by the Quran itself) to culminate in
world conquest.
Let us note finally that on this issue, Audrey’s book is representative of a wider
concern to whitewash Aurangzeb. In their all-out war on Hinduism and specific
Hindu ideas, the South Asia scholars tend to practise Groupthink; there is rarely
anything original, they only outdo each other in how daring they can make their
own articulation of ever the same position. In 2014, I participated in an all-day
session on Aurangzeb at the bi-annual conference of the European Association
of South-Asian Studies in Zürich. One paper after another highlighted some
quotes from contemporaneous writers in praise of Aurangzeb. These are easy to
find, as he had the last say over their success or marginalization, even over life
and death. On Stalin too, you can easily find many contemporary sources
praising him, and then silly academics concluding therefrom that he can’t have
been so bad.
Thus, one of the sources was Guru Govind Singh’s Zafar Namah or “victory
letter”. If you quote it selectively, you might think he was an admirer and
ideological comrade of Aurangzeb’s. But the Guru was strategically with his
back against the wall and had to curry favour with the man holding all the cards.
So he wrote a diplomatically-worded letter and held his personal opinions to
himself (and here is one case where personal relations must have trumped
ideology). It is entirely certain, and academics cover themselves with shame if
they cleverly try to deny it, that Govind hated Aurangzeb from the bottom of his
heart. Aurangzeb was responsible for the murder of Govind’s father and all four
sons. Any proletarian can understand that in private, Govind must have said the
worst things about Aurangzeb. You have to be as silly or as partisan as a South
Asia scholar to believe that the Guru meant to praise Aurangzeb.