American historian Audrey Truschke was in Pakistan this year at the Lahore Literary Festival in February. During her visit, she sat down with F S Ajazuddin to discuss her book on the last great Mughal emperor, titled “Aurangzeb, The Man and the Myth.”
An illuminating conversation about a man greatly misunderstood, Truschke highlighted the life of a ruler whose actions are misinterpreted by both his ardent supporters and vehement detractors. The discussion was a glimpse into the discourse that Truschke has engaged in regarding the puzzling life of an enigmatic ruler who continues to divide opinion centuries after his death.
Describing him as “one of the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the 17th century,” Truschke in conversation with Ajazudin managed to touch upon a character who has caused great polarisation even in today’s subcontinent. The discussion brought to light the many nuances of the historical Aurangzeb, and the many myths surrounding the man who ruled the Indian subcontinent for nearly half a century.
The talk in Lahore proved to be a surprising crowd puller, managing to fill the hall it was held in even as television star Riz Ahmed took most of the attention next door. Truschke herself admitted that she was just a little taken aback by the interest in her book which she had found in Lahore. But as she went on to almost sheepishly say, it was about time she stopped being surprised at the subcontinental audience being interested in Aurangzeb Alamgir.
In his role as the last great Mughal emperor, who took the empire to its greatest territorial heights, Aurangzeb has come to embody the conflict of Indian identity that exists between the areas Muslims and Hindus. For the Hindu majority both in pre Independence India and the post partition world, Aurangzeb is symbolic of despotic, fundamentalist Muslim rule that tried to strongarm the Hindu majority into submission. His name is synonymous with destroyed Mandirs and harems filled with abducted noble Hindu women. For the Muslims, he is a shining hero of Islam, a just ruler that removed the pagan influences of his great grandfather Akbar and once again brought the country under the shade of the Sharia. His name is synonymous with simplicity in a golden age, and better times for a nation that has yet to see the same fortunes again.
The work that Truschke has done is made all the more important by the sheer gravitas of her subject. This is not a simple biography of a ruler long dead who had some small impact on the larger map of history. Truschke’s subject encompasses larger questions on the Mughal empire, even larger questions on Indian history, and the even greater debate on the assimilation of invaders into the lands they have conquered.
It is interesting then to note then that despite the topic being so loaded already, the book itself is barely a hundred pages long. The narrative technique that has been used by Truschke is one that would most probably have traditional historian’s up in arms. The text is thoroughly devoid of citations for one, and she has instead preferred to use a bibliography and table of reference at the end. And while it is not a narrative nonfiction style biography, it does rely on primary sources such as letters penned by Aurangzeb himself to create an alluring tale full of complexity. While Trsuchke would have been well within her rights to make the biography fictionalised to some extent, however her choice to stick to the primary texts and analyse them in the moment maintains the work’s credence as a serious piece of historical writing. But the style in which it is written also makes it an accessible and engaging read, more focused on the current implications that the looming figure of Aurangzeb has on the history of the subcontinent rather than the only his wanderings in the Deccan.
The fact that the book kicks off with a discussion on the debate in India over the renaming of Aurangzeb road shows that the work has been grounded in the current day. Truschke does not just understand and recognise the essential importance of Aurangzeb in the modern context, she goes far beyond that. She understands just how central the analogy of Aurangzeb and the comparison of him with the benevolent, multi-faithed Akbar his. The book thus treats perceptions of Aurangzeb in today’s world as central to discussing him in the 17th century. So while Aurangzeb may be an important figure to understand the 17th century world and the eventual crumbling of the one of the grandest empire’s the world has ever seen, he is also essential to understand the divisiness in the subcontinent today.
A riveting history, Truschke’s account of Aurangzeb will take the reader along with the subject on a journey of faith, conquering, kingship and inner conflict. Travelling with him in his early years fighting off mad elephants, the reader will go with him to distance provinces and come back to fight with Dara Shik for the throne and put his own father unde lock and key. At the same time, the reader will see the zealous Sufi King who employed more Hindus in his court than any of his predecessors and build the fallen temples destroyed by Hindus themselves. The book will present an Aurangzeb that is fascinating in the style of a great mughal epic, but most importantly, it will present an Aurangzeb perhaps not seen before. And it will go a long way to showing the real AUrangzeb, who has by now turned into a much maligned muslim monster.
