Aurangzeb’s Deccan folly ignites India — 300 years later
Aurangzeb's grave in Maharashtra faces demands for removal amid rising tensions linked to historical grievances, ignited by recent films and protests.
Pune/Khuldabad There is an illuminating story about Aurangzeb in Harbans Mukhia’s The Mughals of India: Soon after he had his brother Dara Shikoh murdered, the newly crowned emperor sent a proposal of marriage to Dara Shikoh’s favourite concubine Rana-i-Dil (heart’s glory). “What part of me appeals the most to you?” she sent back a message, writes Mukhia. “Your hair is the eye’s delight,” replied the smitten Mughal. Rana-i-Dil chopped off her hair and sent it back on a platter. This sovereign act of insolence, however, only served to inflame Aurangzeb’s passions. He sent word that her face still glowed seductively. Rana gashed her face with a dagger and sent back a blood-soaked kerchief.
Alamgir (conqueror of the world) Muhi-al-din-Muhammad Aurangzeb was no stranger to rebuffs. Still, there was no greater setback to him than the one he eventually suffered in the Deccan. Aurangzeb, who ruled over India for 49 years — the country’s longest-serving emperor -- had to spend the last 27 years of his life campaigning in the arid plateau where he presided over a pyrrhic victory against the Marathas. For 27 years, he chased this victory across a triangular tableland stretching from the Satpura and Vindhya ranges to the northern edges of Tamil Nadu. His target was the Maratha territories, alongside the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda.
And now, more than 300 years after his death in 1707, the emperor is being dealt a final rebuff: the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and assorted Right-wing groups have put Devendra Fadnavis’s government on notice saying that Aurangzeb’s grave on the outskirts of Aurangabad, renamed Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in 2022, must be removed, his bones interred and shifted out of the state, or else, in the name of kar seva, they will vandalise the monument protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. In the last 36 hours, Nagpur has been put under curfew after violence broke out on Monday; there have been agitations in Mumbai, while in Pune -- unable to quite differentiate between the two -- protestors set fire to Bahadur Shah Zafar’s image instead of Aurangzeb’s (their agitation, though, was unmistakable).
This revanchism or the need to avenge medieval slights may be sudden and set in motion with new imperatives, but it is also a long-nursed wound in Maharashtra.
Aurangzeb’s fixation on the Deccan wasn’t a whim, it was a Mughal ambition that was generations in the making, says Audrey Truschke, historian and author of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth in an email interview. “From 1681, he personally led his armies south, determined to subdue a region that had long defied imperial control. Mughal kings had hungered after the Deccan before Aurangzeb, [but it was he] who fulfilled their dreams of expansion.”
The Marathas, under Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, were the first thorn in his side. In 1660, Aurangzeb’s governor Shaista Khan seized Pune, only to flee after Shivaji’s audacious night raid in 1663. But by 1665, Aurangzeb’s general, Raja Jai Singh, forced Shivaji Maharaj to sign the Treaty of Purandar wherein he surrendered 23 forts to the Mughals. A year later, Shivaji was invited to Aurangzeb’s court in Agra with all the vassal kings. In the imperial court where proximity to the Padshah indicated the pecking order, Shivaji was seated at a considerable distance from the emperor. When he protested, he was arrested — only to escape using a legendary ruse. “It is hard to suggest that the course of history might have substantially altered if only Aurangzeb had been slightly more thoughtful of Shivaji’s very medieval sensitivities,” writes Harbans Mukhia. “But the difference in Shivaji’s self-perception and Aurangzeb’s perception of him, expressed in the space allotted to him in the court, was one of those transient moments that cast a long shadow on the subcontinent’s history.”
Shivaji’s demise in 1674 didn’t end the Maratha resistance. His son, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, took up the mantle, striking at Mughal outposts with guerrilla precision. But in 1689, Sambhaji was betrayed at Sangameshwar, allegedly by his own kith and kin, captured, and subjected to gruesome torture before his execution on March 11 that year.
Sambhaji’s killing backfired on the emperor. “Aurangzeb thought Sambhaji’s death would crush the Marathas,” says Pune historian Pandurang Balkawade who has excavated Deccan relics dating back to 2,000 years. “Instead, Rajaram, his brother, kept up the fight from Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu until his death, and later, his widow Maharani Tarabai-- as regent for her son Shivaji II-- led the Marathas with tenacity.”
“She defied Aurangzeb’s expectations, using guerrilla tactics to bleed his forces dry,” says Jaysingrao Pawar, Pune-based historian whose 800-page ‘Moghalmardini Maharani Tarabai’ chronicles her reign from Panhala Fort at Kolhapur.
In recent decades, two emotive strands have emerged around Shivaji and his family. The first is unquestioned admiration for his valour and audacity. The second strand, far more recent, is the anger and outrage over the torture and murder of Sambhaji. In 1980, Marathi writer Shivaji Sawant, noted for his novels based on mythological and historical characters, wrote Chhava (lion’s cub) about Sambhaji Maharaj. But it was only last month that a film based on the book, Chhaava, helmed by actor Vicky Kaushal, became a monster hit, breaking the Mumbai film industry’s long drought of flops, that the outrage boiled over. In an already polarised environment, the film’s powerful scenes of Sambhaji’s torture tapped into a deep emotional vein among viewers, especially in Maharashtra.
On Tuesday, while speaking on the Nagpur violence in the House, chief minister Fadnavis also mentioned the role of the film and the tremendous emotional outpouring from those who have seen it. “I am not blaming the movie. In fact, Chhaava, the movie, has depicted the factual history related to Chhatrapati Sambhaji. However, after that people’s sentiments have been ignited leading to a lot of anger towards Aurangzeb,” he said. Fadnavis himself recently took an afternoon off to go see the film. Schools in the state have organised shows for students at the end of their board exams.
“Films and novels exaggerate things even if they are broadly based on history,” warns historian Jaysingrao Pawar. “People must separate fact from fiction.” But in these inflamed times, his is a lost cry. On Monday night, during the protests at the Mahal area in Nagpur, VHP and Bajrang Dal activists chanted while burning Aurangzeb’s effigies: “His tomb is a scar on our pride.” In their memorandum to Fadnavis to remove the grave, they also cited temple destructions in Kashi and Mathura — grievances that transcend the Deccan.
The Deccan campaign was, in the end, a tragedy for Aurangzeb too. “He spent the last 27 years of his life chasing an elusive victory. His absence from Delhi weakened central authority, and the empire crumbled soon after,” writes Jadunath Sarkar in his magisterial work on Aurangzeb.
Culturally, the Deccan’s diversity posed unique challenges. Unlike in the north, where Mughal rule was entrenched, the south was a frontier, says Audrey Truschke. “He avoided temple desecrations here, declining that political tool, he consulted Hindu astrologers and drew on diverse talent, showing consistency across regions.” Yet, his rigid pursuit of dominance alienated local rulers, fuelling the Maratha insurgency that outlasted him, she adds.
When he died in Ahmednagar at the age of 88, bleak but unbent, he was buried near the shrine of his spiritual mentor, Sheikh Zainuddin Shirazi. It’s not too far from the Daulatabad fort, relic of another king’s folly. Aurangzeb’s grave, a monument so simple so as to be stark, remains a provocation but at the same time a vindication too in Maharashtra. “Gujarat-born Aurangzeb invaded Maharashtra but he could not win here. He was finished off by the Marathas. His tomb is a symbol of the bravery of Marathas but if the BJP wants to remove it, Fadnavis should go to the Centre and get permission to do so,” Uddhav Thackeray told the media on Tuesday.
While most politicians are careful to not move away from the controversy lest they be accused of siding with the Muslims, many will concede in private that the state has far more pressing concerns to deal with. Its highest-ever debt for one. “The ruling parties remembered Aurangzeb’s tomb because they need it to hide their (governance) failures,” says Maharashtra Congress chief Harshwardhan Sapkal. “This is being raised to divert attentions from things like the pruning of the Ladki Bahin beneficiaries list, unemployment and farmers’ suicides.”
The controversy has also knocked off from the news cycle the Maratha-Other Backward Classes (OBC) fracture in Beed where the death of a Maratha village head and the subsequent outcry led to the resignation of minister Dhananjay Munde, an OBC.
But can a 300-year-old story of an emperor’s hubristic ambition really turn into a modern-day political firestorm? At Khuldabad, 25km outside Sambhajinagar, the simplicity of the open grave is in stark contrast to the grand paraphernalia that now guards it. A multilayered security checkpoint has been set up at the main entrance, where every visitor is required to pass through a metal detector and undergo have their bags checked. Police personnel ask visitors to produce valid identification and often question them about their reason for visiting. Mobiles are not allowed inside the tomb. Multiple CCTV cameras have been installed at key locations, and plainclothes officers mingle with the crowd to monitor any suspicious activity.
“Aurangzeb’s grave has been here for centuries, so why is this issue being raised suddenly? Our family has been here for 100 years, and we don’t remember any communal violence in Khuldabad. If certain people think they can create communal disturbance here, they are living in an illusion,” says Sanjay Gaikwad who sells nimbu paani to tourists outside the grave. “Nobody from Khuldabad has ever objected to the tomb of Aurangzeb,” he says.
Santosh Jadhav, who runs an earthmovers business in town, recalls how Chhatrapati Shivaji Jayanti and Ganesh festival processions have always passed by Aurangzeb’s tomb without incident. “In fact, Muslims have offered water and sharbat to our Hindu brothers and even garlanded devotees. There has never been any tension here.”
As dusk settles and the time for Iftar approaches, a few worshippers gather near the dargah complex to break their fast. Usually, many people come together to pray here before eating their first meal of the day, but today, the turnout is lower than usual, say local residents.
“Ramzan is a time for prayer and peace, but this year, it feels like we are praying in the shadow of fear,” says an elderly man, keeping an eye on the police officers standing nearby.
