by John Keay
At the head of an impressive army somewhat larger than that of his brothers, Dara still looked to hold the advantage. But the best Mughal units had been sent east to oppose Shuja; Dara’s dazzling array, in which rajput contingents were again prominent, also included slippered courtiers and bazaar recruits who quickly wilted in the furnace temperatures of late May. They were no more a match for the dust-smothered veterans from the Deccan than was the dilettante Dara for the resolute Aurangzeb. In battle, despite more rajput heroics, Aurangzeb’s Deccan army stood its ground while the gunners did their work. Victory turned to rout when Dara chose premature flight. Like Khusrau fleeing from Jahangir in 1605, he paused in Agra only to gather funds and family, then took the loser’s well-worn road north through Delhi to Lahore. Aurangzeb occupied Agra. The contest, if not the empire, was won. Dropping all pretence of rescuing Shah Jahan from the infidel influence of Dara, he besieged and then confined the ailing emperor amongst the marble terraces of his Agra fort. There he would remain, a semi-senile spectre of his former glory, until he died eight years later.
Aurangzeb’s victory would be complete only with the elimination of his rivals. Each was now hunted down in turn. The feckless Murad, his ally thus far, was easily dealt with. At Mathura, while heading north in pursuit of Dara, Aurangzeb inveigled Murad into his camp and took him prisoner; he would later be beheaded. Shuja, re-emerging from Bengal, was a second time defeated and sent fleeing back to the east. But Dara continued to elude capture as he flitted from the Panjab to Sind and from Sind to Gujarat. At the head of a new army marching north from Gujarat, he was eventually engaged near Ajmer. Again he escaped, but only to be betrayed and turned over to Aurangzeb. Still a popular figure especially with Delhi’s non-Muslims, Dara’s public humiliation was mercifully brief. After being carried through the streets in chains, he was condemned and cut to pieces. Some say that his body was then again paraded through the streets. ‘So once alive and once dead he was exposed to the eyes of all men, and many wept over his fate.’21
Shuja, meanwhile, was fleeing east through Bengal with the redoubtable Mir Jumla, Aurangzeb’s ally from Golconda, hot in pursuit. In 1660 Shuja took ship from Dacca (Dhaka) for the Arakan coast (now in northern Burma). He was never heard of again, although rumours that the king of Arakan had done Aurangzeb’s killing for him sound plausible.
As the new governor of Bengal (which province included Bihar and Orissa), Mir Jumla moved the capital east to Dacca and is said to have revived the economic life of the region. He also continued in arms. His target was now Assam, whose Ahom rulers had taken advantage of the recent confusion to push down the Brahmaputra into Mughal territory. Mir Jumla pushed them back and in 1662, working upriver with a fleet of three hundred vessels, pressed on into the green unknown of the upper Brahmaputra until he reached the Ahom capital. This was situated at Garhgaon, between the modern Jorhat and Dibrugarh and just beneath the cloud-swept hills of Nagaland. Mir Jumla had added more than five hundred kilometres of the Brahmaputra valley to the Mughal possessions. But here Assam’s torrential monsoon overtook him. Disease and starvation claimed even more victims than the Ahoms as the plight of the Mughal army came to resemble that of Mohammed Bakhtiyar’s Khalji forces when Muslim arms first reached Assam in 1205. The remains of the army, plus boatloads of treasure, were eventually extracted, but Mir Jumla himself shared the Khaljis’ fate. On the way back to Dacca he died of consumption. Four years later the Ahoms recovered most of their watery kingdom; they would retain it till an age when Mughal rule in Bengal was long since history.
Meanwhile Aurangzeb had had himself crowned emperor twice – once in a perfunctory ceremony in 1658 while chasing Dara, and then at a grand assembly in the Delhi Diwan-i-Am in 1659. On both occasions he adopted the title Alamgir, a name by which Muslim historians generally refer to him. It means ‘Universe-Conqueror’, and was obviously an improvement on mere jehangir (‘world-conqueror’), although rather more onerous in terms of anticipated conquests. In addition to the Assam affair and several galling but eventually satisfactory campaigns against the tribes of the northwest frontier, in 1666 it was announced that the ‘Universe-Conqueror’ had secured the submission of ‘Tibet’. To the Mughal agents who were sent there from Kashmir it may indeed have seemed like another planet, although it was probably only Ladakh, the western extremity of the Tibetan plateau. A contemporary chronicler well describes it as ‘mostly a waste land’ which, though bigger than any other subah (province) in the empire except Bijapur, produced a revenue yield no better than the average pargana (sub-district). ‘No other useless place can be compared with it.’ It was gratifying to know that its chief had been bullied into minting coins bearing the name of Alamgir and into building a mosque where the khutba would be read in the emperor’s name, but it was no major triumph. ‘Other kings, unwilling to incur expenditure, had not cared about the introduction of currency and khutba in such a place.’22 Aurangzeb would have to do better in the way of meaningful conquests; and where else but in the rich and troubled peninsula? The Deccan beckoned.
Before personally intervening there, he had important reforms to put in hand. The war of succession had interrupted the work of government. Imperial authority needed to be reimposed in many areas, the vital flow of revenue restored, loyal servants rewarded, and reliable supporters enlisted. Many of the latter would be drawn from the ranks of the ulema, the religious and juridical establishment. Restoring the Muslim credentials of Mughal rule and so reinstating India in the world community of Islam remained Aurangzeb’s priority. This was the God-given cause which had brought him success as a contender for the throne, and this alone could guarantee his further success as its incumbent.
An innovation at his second enthronement had been the appointment of a muhtasib, a ‘censor’ or guardian of public morality, whose duties included the supervision of bazaars and the suppression of such un-Islamic behaviour as gambling, blasphemy and the consumption of alcohol. Opium as well as liquor was totally forbidden, a prohibition which hit the convivial habits of the court as hard as it did the bazaars. In the same spirit, dancers, musicians and artists were dismissed from imperial employ. Their places were taken by bearded jurists and Quranic divines who laboured to produce a standard compilation of Hanafi jurisprudence. The emperor also discontinued his predecessors’ practice of appearing on a palace balcony at sunrise, thus affording the public an apotheosised glimpse of their ruler. In the tenth year of his reign even the official chroniclers were ordered to lay down their simpering pens. Vanity, too, was un-Islamic. From such earnest endeavours to remodel his court in conformity with the precepts of his faith Aurangzeb emerges as a sincere believer untainted by hypocrisy.
Accusations of bigotry, on the other hand, are hard to counter. Although they invariably come from non-Muslim writers, they focus on a whole range of measures, introduced over a period of twenty years, which were indeed blatantly discriminatory. The tax on Hindu pilgrims, lifted by Akbar, was reimposed; revenue endowments enjoyed by temples and brahmans were rescinded; Hindu merchants were penalised by heavier duties; the provincial administrations were instructed to replace Hindu employees with Muslims; and most notoriously of all, newly built, or rebuilt, temples were to be destroyed. Amongst those temples razed and replaced with mosques were such high-profile and heavily patronised shrines as the great Vishvanatha temple in Varanasi – where now still stands (Hindu zealots permitting) the Great Mosque of Aurangzeb – and the new Keshava Deo temple at Mathura – where now still stands (ditto) another great Aurangzeb mosque. Finally, in 1679, came the heaviest blow of all with the reimposition of the detested jizya on non-Muslims.
One man’s bigot may, however, be another man’s saint. Aurangzeb’s apologists argue that Shah Jahan had also discriminated against non-Muslims and targeted temples, that Aurangzeb in fact destroyed comparatively few temples, and that to others he even granted jagirs.23 Moreover the sites which were indeed desecrated were chosen because they posed a direct political or ideologic
al challenge. Hence Varanasi, ‘the Athens of India’ according to Bernier, was a prime target because it was ‘the general school for Hindus’24 as well as a major centre for what Muslims regarded as that most abominable form of idolatry, lingam worship. Even the jizya was not an unreasonable imposition. Although usually described as a poll tax, it was more like a commutation tax in that it applied only to male adults who, had they been Muslims, would have been liable to military service in a jihad; as non-Muslims they were excused this duty but must instead contribute to the protection they supposedly enjoyed by paying the jizya. The rate varied with the taxpayer’s ability to pay. But the poorest were exempt and it seems unlikely that the tax was collected at all in the remoter regions of the empire.
Those hardest hit were those from whom it was easiest to collect, notably the commercial and artisanal classes in the cities. They were also the most vocal. When the order was first published, Shajahanabad – Delhi erupted in protest. Hordes of Hindus – ‘money-changers and drapers, all kinds of shopkeepers from the Urdu bazaar, mechanics and workmen of all kinds’ – jammed the roadway and barred the emperor’s short progress from the Red Fort to the Jama Masjid.
Every moment the crowd increased, and the emperor’s equipage was brought to a standstill. At length an order was given to bring out the elephants and direct them against the mob. Many fell trodden to death … For some days the Hindus continued to assemble in great numbers and complain, but at length they submitted to the jizya.25
Other protests are recorded and subsequent opponents of Mughal rule would cite the jizya as a major grievance. But the idea that Aurangzeb intentionally set about the persecution and forced conversion of his non-Muslim subjects is absurd. He was too shrewd; they too numerous. More reasonably he wanted to create a moral climate in which Muslims could live in accordance with the tenets of Islam and in which non-Muslims would be aware both of their subordinate status and of how they might improve it by conversion.
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THE SIH GURUS: The Chosen Successors of Guru Nanak
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This general trend towards Islamic exclusivity was nevertheless a radical departure from the tolerant policies of Akbar and held potentially disastrous consequences for the Hindu – Muslim collaboration on which the empire depended. As a triumph for the ulema it alienated the brahmans and other literate castes who were the mainstay of the administration. It lent a religious dimension to the agrarian dissent of Hindu communities like the Jats of the Agra region who in the 1680s would virtually sever the vital supply-line between Delhi and the Deccan. And to non-Muslim groupings of a more martial disposition, like the Sikhs, rajputs and Marathas, it furnished both pretext and support for outright defiance.
In the Panjab the Sikh followers of Guru Nanak’s successors now constituted a significant but still pacific and often divided minority. Arjan Singh, the fifth Guru, added his own compositions to the collected hymns and teachings of his predecessors, which also included compositions by non-Sikh sufis and sants like Kabir, and the whole became known as the Adi Granth (‘Original Granth’). Revised and expanded by the tenth and last Guru, this would become the sacred Granth Sahib, itself enjoying the authority and respect of a Guru and so precluding any further human Gurus. But at about the same time as the Adi Granth was being compiled, the Sikh community fell foul of Jahangir when they supported Prince Khusrau in the 1605 succession crisis. Guru Arjan Singh is believed to have been martyred by Jahangir as a result. In the 1658 succession crisis Sikh hospitality to Prince Dara similarly angered Aurangzeb. The eighth Guru was summoned to court and his son and presumed heir was inducted into the Mughal hierarchy. This was not acceptable to most Sikhs who instead chose as their ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur, the brother of the seventh. He travelled throughout northern India, preaching to large crowds of followers and proselytising amongst Muslims as well as Hindus. Sikh gurdwaras became as much a target of imperial iconoclasm as Hindu temples. But it seems to have been the news of Muslim converts to Sikhism which most outraged Aurangzeb. Tegh Bahadur was brought to Delhi to defend himself and, failing either to convince the emperor or to apostasise, was condemned for blasphemy and executed (1675). ‘At one stroke Aurangzeb earned the bitter hatred of thousands of Jat and Khatri Sikhs living in the north Indian plain.’26 Under Guru Govind, the tenth and last Guru, Sikhism would retire to the fringes of Mughal rule in the Panjab hill states. There, not without ample provocation, it would transform itself from what had hitherto been a movement for religious and social reform into an embryonic political and military formation.
‘Akbar [had] disrupted the Muslim community by recognising that India was not an Islamic country: Aurangzeb disrupted India by behaving as if it were.’27 But it was one thing to antagonise a new sectarian group, like the Sikhs, of which even Hindu princes and jagirdars were suspicious, quite another to stir up the great rajput houses of Rajasthan. The trouble started when in 1678 the Rathor Maharaja of Marwar (Jodhpur) died without heir. Pending the selection of a successor, Aurangzeb’s resumption of the Marwar jagirs was normal practice. The sequel, however, was highly provocative. The troops sent to oversee the takeover indulged in the gratuitous iconoclasm of Marwar’s temples; and in the meantime, two of the deceased maharaja’s widows gave birth to male heirs. One of these infants died but the other, Ajit Singh, immediately became a focus of anti-Mughal sentiment. When, therefore, Aurangzeb eventually conferred Marwar on an unpopular nephew of the deceased maharaja, revolt flared. In an episode beloved of the rajput bards, the infant was smuggled out of Delhi from under the emperor’s nose and whisked away into the desert fastnesses of Rajasthan. There his mother, who happened to be a Sesodia princess of mighty Mewar, ‘threw herself upon the Rana [of Mewar] as the natural guardian of [Ajit’s] rights’.28
To her appeal Mewar’s rana responded favourably. Welcoming the opportunity to voice Hindu opposition to the reimposed jizya and fearful of the iconoclasm in Marwar, he duly mobilised with strikes into Malwa and elsewhere. To resistance in Marwar (Jodhpur), Aurangzeb had thus added revolt in Mewar (Udaipur), a much more serious challenge. In 1680 a large Mughal army invaded Mewar, duly sacked the city of Udaipur and vandalised its temples. The rana, however, remained free; his forces scored some notable victories; and though peace without dishonour was eventually concluded, he maintained Mewar’s proud record of never making personal submission to the emperor.
Mughal discomfiture can be judged from the reaction of Prince Akbar, one of Aurangzeb’s sons. Akbar had commanded the Mewar campaign in its later phase but was now demoted to the Marwar command. It was not a good idea to humble an imperial contender. Inclined to the liberal views of his illustrious namesake, Prince Akbar had long been contemplating a challenge to his father. History sanctioned, indeed demanded, such conduct and rajput overtures and promises of support now emboldened him still further. In 1681 he therefore proclaimed himself emperor and marched against Aurangzeb. The latter was at Ajmer with very few troops. It was a contest which the prince should have won handsomely. But the emperor’s adept intriguing roused the suspicions of Akbar’s rajput allies and his own dilatoriness allowed for imperial reinforcement. Without his rajput allies, and then minus most of his own troops, Akbar fled south without giving battle. Narrowly escaping capture, he reached the Deccan, there to be warmly welcomed by an even more implacable Mughal foe. Prince Akbar became a protégé of the Marathas.
Aurangzeb soon followed him. Affairs in the Deccan had been crying out for his personal intervention for the past twenty years; now into his sixties, he may reasonably have supposed that time was running out. Moreover it was from the Deccan that he himself had challenged for the throne; Prince Akbar might do the same, possibly in alliance with both Marathas and rajputs. On the other hand a final solution in the Deccan could be the crowning glory of Aurangzeb’s reign. New lands affording new sources of revenue in the form of jagirs were badly needed to meet the expectations of the ever-growing legion of mansabdars. Success in the Deccan would bring co
nquests to rival those of the great Akbar plus the resources to restore and sustain the imperial system which he had established.
Where the emperor went, the entire imperial court also went, plus, in this case, much of the army. The move to the south in 1681–2 meant that Shahjahanabad – Delhi was partially vacated. Like Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, Aurangzeb was shifting the whole apparatus of government to the Deccan. But this was not a move to a new capital, rather the launch of a campaign. For the purposes of travel, all moved into a tented city which was reconstituted with the same topography of bazaars, cantonments, administrative offices and imperial apartments at every halt. Once in the Deccan, they remained in camp. There they stayed, thus they lived, and thence the empire was ruled for the duration of the campaign. Akbar and Shah Jahan had campaigned in much the same style; no doubt it accorded with the semi-nomadic traditions of their Timurid-Mongol predecessors.
But what none realised was that this was a campaign without end. Many of those who went south in 1682 would never see Delhi again, including the emperor; and this was despite his having another twenty-six years to live. An active commander into his late eighties and for the most part a successful one, Aurangzeb would push Mughal rule to its greatest limits. Indeed the empire which he finally claimed exceeded that of any previous Indian ruler. But the price would far outweigh the prize. The emperor’s dogged longevity, no doubt the reward of frugal habits and pious living, would prove to be a substantial contributor to his empire’s undoing.
