This book and its author have been in the news for a few years.
Ms. Truschke's primary aim in this book appears to be to absolve Aurangzeb the Mughal Emperor, of the stain of religious bigotry by providing an array of historical facts and by contextualizing him in his time. She terms as biased earlier historians' narrations about Aurangzeb as a religious fanatic. She writes that contemporary Hindutva propaganda about him is bigoted in its turn as well as inauthentic and ahistorical.
I would like nothing better than for Hindutva propaganda against past centuries' Indian Muslims to be decisively refuted. Such propaganda has become an unbearable burden to carry for the Indian state, the Indian political realm, and for today's Indian Muslims going about their daily lives.
Unfortunately, to me as a cursory layman reader of history, she does not succeed in her efforts on behalf of Aurangzeb. She is not the objective secular historian of Aurangzeb that a pluralist secular India is awaiting.
Her problems are three-fold.
Firstly, her biography appears to be a political biography, clearly written for a political purpose, and so fails to be historically authoritative.
Secondly, her historical facts are selective, which leaves the ages (and the reader) hanging with regard to some consequential actions and policies of religious discrimination practiced by Aurangzeb. ( Part 2 )
Thirdly, her contextualization while reasonable and well-argued in many instances breaks down when discussing some of Aurangzeb's egregious actions. It does not serve to absolve Aurangzeb of religious intolerance unless one is fundamentally biased against Hindus and Hinduism, to the extent that some sections of her book appear to be ghost written by Pakistani nationalists(whose arguments on such matters closely resemble hers, in my personal observation). ( Part 3 )
To expand on the above
1. Her book is written as a political exercise, a history written explicitly in service of showing that Aurangzeb was not a religious bigot towards his Hindu subjects over whom he ruled, and under whose laws, governance structures and edicts they lived.
One indication is that her arguments appear to offer a false binary of only two choices- either you think the facts show Aurangzeb to be a religious bigot on many occasions and hence label yourself a Hindutva bigot (unless you are non-Hindu in which case you are just misinformed). The other choice is Aurangzeb was only a striver for justice. His actions and policies towards Hindus could never ever be considered religious bigotry at work because these acts were justified by his sincerely held political/Islamic/justice-driven motives, and were well-deserved by the Hindu targets of such acts. In contrast, for example, Ms. Truschke implies that his acts of persecution of Shia Bohras were in fact acts of religious bigotry. She clearly believes that unlike Hindus, Shia Bohras were innocent victims as she offers little justification for his acts against them.
This is an artificial binary choice. As she herself states, the history of Aurangzeb is not a binary, it is a series of historical facts, acts, events, and people. Aurangzeb could be religiously bigoted towards Hindus during various episodes of his reign and have had an array of other motivations, at other times. This cannot be authoritatively presented as an either/or unless Ms. Truschke lived during that time and Aurangzeb was personally known to her. But she still claims the authority to pronounce that all of Aurangzeb's actions towards Hindus were not the product of religious bigotry. This is ahistorical and political.
Whatever Aurangzeb did is plain history, and a plain historian would state it and present point and counterpoint on such a question.However, she goes a step further and projects her own value judgements about Aurangzeb as the absolute historical truth with respect to Hindus of his time. That makes it political propaganda.
Another false binary she presents is about British characterizations of the despotism of Muslim rule vs British colonial rule over India(p 9). She implies that in trying to justify colonial rule over India as the better alternative, the British were selfishly motivated in criticizing Muslim rule, hence everything they described of Muslim rulers should be discounted, including several colonial era translations of medieval and premodern Muslim historians.
For Indians reading this history this is not a binary choice between the two. Forefathers of today's Indians were subjects under both Indian rulers and British colonial rulers. They suffered famine, disease, poverty, religious discrimination under all. Colonial British rule being bad does not absolve medieval and premodern Muslim rule (and Hindu rule of those periods) from being despotic. Only a propagandist or politician would present narrations about the despotism of medieval and colonial rulers as either/or.
In fact, there are kernels of truth about facts and events to be found in all historical narrations, even court historians' hagiographies. If criticism of medieval and premodern Muslim rulers was solely ahistorical British colonial propaganda, by the same principle, Ms. Truschke and her fellow like-minded historians' wholesale dismissal of colonial British criticism and historiography(including colonial era translations of Muslim histories) is also ahistorical modern propaganda on behalf of Muslim rulers. Who knows why they indulge in it.
For example, Siyar al-Mutaʾaḫirīn(1781) (which would likely be dismissed by Ms. Truschke as a 'colonial or company translation' ) compares both Mughal rule and East India Company rule in detail and points out the faults of both, also in great detail. For instance, from the historian's description and point of view, the later Mughals had become bad rulers, and the East India Company men which followed were terrible as well, though in different ways, and he describes both in detail. Hindu rajas of the time were no great shakes, either. For a plain historian, as opposed to a politician/propagandist, there is no need for false binaries.
Another indication that the history is political is her commentary on Aurangzeb's treatment of Hindu religious practices, and policies towards Hindu subjects. She writes (p 111)
'..Mughal royal obligations demanded strong intervention to prevent their subjects from being hoodwinked. For most temples in Benares and elsewhere, Aurangzeb ordered Mughal officials to investigate alleged dubious practices. But in the case of certain institutions, including the Vishvanatha and Keshava Deva Temples, he deemed demolition appropriate.'
Now imagine Aurangzeb's Hindu subjects were all Christians and Jews and Hindu temples were churches and synagogues. It will never be argued that a Muslim emperor destroyed churches and synagogues as part of his noble obligation to end dubious practices in Christianity and Judaism and to prevent Christians and Jews from being hoodwinked. Politics is the art of the possible and modern Christians and Jews would not accept any such dubious ahistorical justifications from Ms. Truschke.
Under the early Ottoman Empire, despite the state's relative religious tolerance towards Christian sects and perhaps state acceptance of Orthodox church hierarchy, many churches were eventually destroyed or co-opted as mosques. How many argue in the modern day that churches in the Ottoman Empire were demolished as a royal obligation to reform Christianity. It is a more common explanation that the drive to establish the primacy of Islam under the Ottoman Empire was the cause of such demolitions.
Yet, Ms. Truschke implies the Vishvanatha and Keshava Deva Temples were demolished for alleged dubious practices. This very much resembles Pakistani nationalist argumentation that Muslim iconoclasm was carried out not out of Muslim religious zealotry against idol worshipers or to undermine Hindu political rivals (as she argues in the previous page with respect to the same temples) but for purposes of Hindu religious reform. Only if you are fundamentally anti-Hindu would you in the modern era tout the demolition of temples as Hindu religious reform. Certainly no medieval or premodern iconoclast has ever claimed the desire to reform Hinduism. This is a purely political argument.
Any claim that keeping Hinduism and Hindus free of dubious practices was a motivation for Aurangzeb to demolish temples is without any historical basis and belongs to the same school of history in which Ayesha Jalal claimed to know Jinnah's inner thoughts about not wanting the partition of India despite many years of his statements and actions to the contrary.
Another aspect of Ms. Truschke's arguments is how she assigns motivations to various episodes in Aurangzeb's reign. Ms. Truschke never ever assigns to Aurangzeb, a self-avowedly devout Sunni Muslim, the simplest of motivations namely to establish the primacy/supremacy of Sunni Islam over his subjects in his realm.
When Aurangzeb acted out of apparent religious intolerance, she assigns political motivations(temple demolitions,p 109-110), or the wish to please the ulema (recalling all endowed lands given to Hindus, p 105). At other times, when Aurangzeb acted out of apparent religious tolerance, she does not speculate whether he had political motivations(shield temples from interference, grant land to Hindu communities, provide stipends to Hindu spiritual figures, p 102-105) or administrative compulsions(Hindus in Mughal bureaucracy,p 71-73). Instead, she implies that these were driven by his religious tolerance. About some extremely intolerant acts of Aurangzeb where no political motivations are plausible, she omits reporting the full extent of his policy and touts the justice motivation(response to reports of Brahmins' religious teachings, p 111)(discussed in detail later in this review). Again, these assignments look inconsistent even to a layman.
There is nothing wrong in writing a political biography of Aurangzeb in service of a political view point. However, it cannot be an authoritative historical one at the same time.
(continued in Part 2)
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