Aurangzeb- Man of terror or man of error?

The Mughals invaded India in 16^th century and ruled for about 2 centuries. Aurangzeb is considered to be the primary reason of their downfall, maybe that’s why he should be considered “good” but I will try to talk about him in general.

This is a general belief that he was one of the worst and the most brutal “tyrant”, who ever ruled our country. Facts? Let’s unravel them and testify.

 He is believed to be anti-Hindus or anti-Indian because of some of the reasons below,

      1)      He killed his own father and all his brothers- No, You are wrong. He never killed his father and all his brothers, but actually took over his father's throne forcefully. That's it. Aurangzeb worried too much about the economy of the system. His father, Shah Jahan had got probably really high, building structures and structures! Shah Jahan actually diverted the income for army and protective measures to build Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Jama Masjid, etc. He destroyed millions of rupees and actually depleted the “shahi khazana”. Aurangzeb acted.  But Aurangzeb wasn’t the first one to rebel against his own father. Jahangir had done that already, even Hindu Rajkumars did that, so he wasn’t the progenitor of this practice. Now Shah Jahan had many sons. Aurangzeb defeated the important princes like Dara(his son, Sulaiman too), Shuja, Murad, etc, by either deceiving them, imprisoning them or both. He captured Shah Jahan by blocking the water supply to the fort thereby forcing him to relinquish, but held him in respectable way. Shah Jahan was confined in female apartments and was taken care of by his own favourite daughter Jahanara which Shah Jahan himself wished for. And when he died due to illness, Shah Jahan was buried gracefully. After getting the throne, he even released many of his brothers whom he held as his prisoners and to make the relationship better, Aurangzeb married off his daughters to them.

     2)      He hated Hindus- Aurangzeb’s regressive policies actually give us a hint that they were anti to any Non-Muslim beliefs. The most important one being- jijyah. The tax which every non-Muslim had to pay and also it was the type of tax which would only be accepted when paid in person which used to be sometimes humiliating. But again, the purpose of jijyah wasn’t only to load financial burden on the Non-Muslims(read ‘Hindus’) or to even promote conversion to Islam. Jijyah was collected in return to the Muslim security the citizens enjoyed. It wasn’t collected from crippled, old men and women. Only healthy male individuals were supposed to pay jizyah if they didn’t join the army. If they do, without converting to Islam, they would get rebate on it. But there was hardly any instance when anyone joined the army or converted to Islam in order to escape jizyah which suggests that the amount was something which could be easily afforded amongst the middle-class men. Furthermore, the very own security was against Hindu rulers themselves. There are several instances of "Veer" Shivaji attacking the established Mughal towns and acquiring the wealth. In case if Mughal army fails to save the citizens from the attack, the full amount of jizyah paid by the citizens until then, was returned. Furthermore, it is logical to conclude that since Aurangzeb ruled for half a century, if he had wanted the Hindus to convert to Muslims, we wouldn’t be living in a Hindu-dominated country.

      3)      He hated Hindus(again)- Aurangzeb is believed to be highly bias towards the Muslims and he never allowed any Hindu in higher ranked positions. Nope, again. Few historians are of the opinion that the Hindu officials had become disloyal due to the laxity of Aurangzeb’s predecessors such that Aurangzeb actually had to adopt harsh methods to keep them on the track. Interestingly, the number of Hindu nobles employed in the court rose to a much higher value during his reign.

His policies had been very economical in nature which is sometimes why, they are highly questioned. I tried to present some points which may have been till now, misinterpreted about him. Though I cannot deny that he sent out orders to destroy temples including the famous Jagannath temple. Fact is that history is mystery, we can never know what made a god-fearing Muslim, whose religion teaches that all religions are equal, to do that. We can just contemplate the facts and rationally draw conclusions out of them.