Indias self-destructive war on the roots of the Mughal Empire

It began when around 100 activists who supported bulldozing Alamgir’s grave burned an effigy of the emperor. On March 16, another party member went further, demanding that the emperor’s tomb be bulldozed. Within weeks of its release, the film whipped up public fury against Alamgir and the Mughals On the other hand, contemporary sources record Sambhaji’s administrative mismanagement and his abandonment of such management duties was due to his leading Maratha officers inherited from his father’s reign. Among films in only their sixth week since release, already by late March, it had already grossed the second-largest earnings in Indian cinema history. With each successive volume of his study, the emperor was portrayed in darker colours, as were Muslims generally.

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Perhaps more than any other factor, Sarkar’s negative assessment of ‘Alamgir has shaped how millions have thought about that emperor’s place in Indian history. In the end, Sarkar blamed Alamgir for destroying Hindu schools and temples, thereby depriving Hindus of the “light of knowledge” and the “consolations of religion”, and for exposing Hindus to “constant public humiliation and political disabilities”. The writing of history soon became a political endeavour, ultimately degenerating into a black-and-white morality play that clearly distinguished heroes from villains. More perniciously, the colonial view of the Mughals as alien “Mahomedans” who had oppressed a mainly non-Muslim population reinforced the notion of a native Hindu “self” and a non-native Muslim ‘other’ — constructions that would bear bitter fruit.

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At this moment, the Marathas, who for decades had fiercely resisted the imposition of Mughal hegemony over the Indian peninsula, realised that the Mughals represented the ultimate symbol of Indian sovereignty and must be preserved at all costs. Similarly, from the late 16th century on, Persian-Sanskrit dictionaries allowed Sanskrit scholars to absorb Arabo-Persian ideas that had derived from ancient Greek understandings of the uniformity of nature and laws of motion. Like all authentically Indian emperors, moreover, the Mughals engaged with Sanskrit literary traditions and welcomed Brahmin and Jain scholars to their courts. This allowed Indian sensibilities and values to seep deeply into Mughal imperial culture, reflected in imperial art, architecture, language, and cuisine.

Inevitably, Rajput mothers in the imperial harem imparted their culture to their offspring, who were raised in the harem world. Jahangir, in turn, married seven daughters of Rajput rulers, one of whom was the mother of his imperial successor Shah Jahan, making the latter biologically three-quarters Rajput.

The Marathas’ chief minister Baji Rao ( ) even proposed that all of north India’s political stakeholders form a confederation to support and defend the weakened Mughal dynasty from foreign invaders. By the mid-17th century, the Mughals’ Greco-Arab (Yunani) medical tradition had become thoroughly Indianised, as Indo-Persian scholars engaged with Indian (Ayurvedic) works on pharmacology and the use of native Indian plants. At the same time, the absorption of Rajput cavalry in the imperial system allowed native military practices to diffuse throughout the empire’s military culture. Eight years later, the city of Aurangabad, which Prince Aurangzeb named for himself while governor of the Deccan in 1653, was renamed Sambhaji Nagar, honouring the man the emperor had executed in 1689. Indicating the Indian government’s support for Chhaava’s version of history, in late March, India’s governing party scheduled a special screening of the film in New Delhi’s Parliament building for the prime minister, Cabinet ministers, and members of parliament. In the end, the furore over Alamgir’s gravesite illustrates the temptation to adjust the historical past to conform to present-day political priorities.

Since the publication of History of Aurangzib, professional historians have generally shied away from writing about the emperor, as though he were politically radioactive. Sarkar’s study was so detailed, so thoroughly researched, and so authoritative that, in the century following its publication no other historian even attempted a thorough survey of Alamgir’s reign. Originating from within the colonial regime, such ideas gradually percolated into the public domain as the 19th century progressed and Indians became increasingly absorbed in the Raj’s educational and administrative institutions. Nagar’s account followed a spate of histories that praised the emperor as a dedicated, even heroic administrator, and his half-century reign as a “golden age” of governmental efficiency. But if history is not carefully reconstructed using contemporary evidence and logical reasoning, and if it is not responsibly presented to the public, we risk forever living with a “mystical view of an imagined past” with all its attendant dangers, as Remnick warns.

• But if history is not carefully reconstructed using contemporary evidence and logical reasoning, and if it is not responsibly presented to the public, we risk forever living with a “mystical view of an imagined past” with all its attendant dangers, as Remnick warns.
• Among films in only their sixth week since release, already by late March, it had already grossed the second-largest earnings in Indian cinema history.
• No other Mughal emperor was so venerated, and for such a long period, as Alamgir.
• With each successive volume of his study, the emperor was portrayed in darker colours, as were Muslims generally.
• It began when around 100 activists who supported bulldozing Alamgir’s grave burned an effigy of the emperor.

Further contributing to Alamgir’s cult was the appearance of hundreds of images depicting the emperor engaged in administration, military activity, or religious devotion. In 1730, another retired noble, Ishwar Das Nagar, credited Alamgir for the exceptional peace, security, and justice that had characterized his long reign. Already in 1709 Bhimsen Saksena, a former imperial official, praised ‘Alamgir for his pious character and his ability to mobilize supernatural power in the empire’s cause. For, during his lifetime, the emperor was popularly known as “Alamgir zinda-pir”, or “Alamgir, the living saint”, one whose invisible powers could work magic. There, the emperor’s body was placed, at his own request, in a humble gravesite open to the sky, quite unlike the imposing monuments built to glorify the memory of his dynastic predecessors (excepting Babur). Notwithstanding his own and his empire’s decrepit condition, to the rebels, this feeble remnant of the house of Babur still represented India’s legitimate sovereign.

It was not until the 1880s, with the first stirrings of Indian nationalist sentiment, however, that such colonial tropes became widely politicised. The colonial understanding of Muslims and Hindus as homogeneous and mutually antagonistic communities also facilitated aligning colonial policies with the old Roman strategy of divide et impera. Over time, however, Indians gradually came to see the Mughal period — and especially Alamgir’s reign — in an increasingly negative light. No other Mughal emperor was so venerated, and for such a long period, as Alamgir. Reflecting the extent of the ‘Alamgir cult, many of these post-1707 paintings were produced not at the imperial court but in north India’s Hindu courts, including those of the Mughals’ former enemies.

It was in this highly charged political atmosphere that Sarkar worked on his biography of Alamgir. The very next year, there appeared the All-India Muslim League, a political party committed to protecting the bj baji live interests of India’s Muslims. In 1905, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, had partitioned Sarkar’s native province of Bengal in half, a cynical divide-and-rule measure that “awarded” Bengali Muslims with their own Muslim-majority province of eastern Bengal. In short, India’s precolonial past became a screen onto which many — though not all — Hindu nationalists projected the tropes of the Hindu self and the Muslim other.