Roshni

good stuff...ajeb is indeed much misunderstood. his "cruelty" towards siblings was the norm amongs central-asian. he should only be accused of being incompetent at most for his rule..the sarkar went bankrupt and noone feared padshahi in the provinces..indeed dilli door ast became reality from his rule.

This read remembers me present situation. At high level within siblings there kill or get killed tendenbcies.
Recently in saga of sindh and Bhutto family same thing was repeated amoung children who were born to same mother.
Aurangzeb slaughtered his brothers Dara, Shujja and murad ( one ran to aasam and disappeared and alamgir was worried about him and his own son Akber who ran to arabia after he rebelled against him. Wonder he would have slaughterd him ?. He was greatly joyous and had relief when he got news he was dead after some years.) but they were not of same mother. It was standard process at that time take care of siblings. HGumayun was too tame so he was not cruel so blinded his brother but did not kill him.) Shahjahan crushed his sibling rival by crushing head by elephant foot and great artist of court painted special picture. After death Suliman magnifiacient many days was not declared as "salim" his son taking care sibling as packman does. When all was over and he took over death was disclosed.

I think attaching too much sentimentality is poets jobs generally devoid of facts.
It is well known open secret that BB killed Murtaza her blood brother and removed the bhutto competition. I use to know many things and many good people told me. Even Zeemax of Chowk greatest contributor saw what was happening.( may be he can repeat what he saw by giving his comments published earlier. Many had told me same, but no body openly said) It is commondo operation to kill Murtaza. There is clarity in minds of BB about "modus Operandi' of execution of her own brother. She carried as Alamgir carried of his brother and demoslishing his father. Aftermath BB's reaction and asif talking child of murdered M.Bhutto. Instead inquary of BB death may be it will good look at her brother's murder.
People will kill anybody for power , BB's hand in demise of M.Bhutto is great example.

Welcome to ChowQ, Mukherjee.

Be careful, many out here will attempt to make you feel ashamed of your 'Indian-ness'.

hehe koi problem nahi hain...main bhi bharat se hi hoon...utna thin skin hota to class 5 me hi worn out ho gya hota :p

Very well written. One of the best pieces I have read on chowk.

Ajeya: that was uncalled for, its a good thing he is sensible enough not to take you seriously.

moks bro,

Here, when I post Indian Bhangra, the hindus say I should be posting Naa'ts instead. So a thick skin is recommended!

Congrats again for passages like these:

"If you were to have a husband, I think I should have to kill him at some point.”

She nodded. “That would be unpleasant.”

“Yes," said he. "I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” said she quietly.

Re: # 9

Hey ajeha

Thanks so much for your concern. I'm glad to find well-wishers so early on. Fear not, I have already kept my options open. I've tread the path. I'm doing software and econs and mba and so on, so I don't have relly on getting "published" on chowk. Besides this piece already won a prize at the Deccan Herald short-story writing competition, and I've written a couple of cover articles for their sunday supplement already.

So here then is the real conundrum. I don't mean to be rude of course, but you will NEVER be a literary critic of much stature. That it because you confuse the idea of an exploration with that of an judgement. Stories will never have much meaning to you then (and neither will much else).

re: #7 by moks

Hey Aditya,

I don't want to be impolite, but sometimes it is good to know the bitter truth early on, so you can reassess your options.

Here it is: you will NEVER be a writer of any note. Believe me when I say this. I wouldn't lie about something like this - if you tred really hard and really worked hard at it, after a lot of practice you might scrape through as very mediocre at best. Maybe good enough to write in second-grade newspapers. But don't ever think of becoming a writer of any repute.

Also, cosying up to nutjob islamists might get you "published" on a substandard literary website like Chowk, but you will only be fooling yourself. Dim-witted Islamists like this Naqshbandi character here are not good literary critics. When such lowlives are praising your writing "style", you might ask yourself - is it worth betraying the memory of hundreds of thousands of helpless and innocent Hindu civilians butchered by Aurangezeb for you to earn some praise from cretins like Naqshbandi and Zeemax?

I would suggest not. Think about it.

Let it be known to all, that Asad Sattar (alias Sattar-2) has miraculous powers! MGAQ has smile on him directly from the toilet!

1) He is able to remove the red-flags from his own posts!

2) He is able to predict what the ChowQ Stuffed are planning to do with those who challenge their sense of shame.

3) With the use of a wand, he can block an entire discussion and prevent receiving interacts from all or any chosen interacter! (see # 403 of Medical Students' article and notice the DATE; a most obscene figure!)

4) He can do more but he won't say WHAT right now.

Hi all

Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome! Actually I just discovered the site today and I was completely amazed at the high quality of the writings here. There is so much good stuff, so much creativity and skill (also so much angst lol)

To Naqshbandi:
I think it had been after the wiki-surfing that reading The Last Mughal by William Darymple inspired. That book is about bahadur shah but there are stories about Jehanara and Aurangzeb and Shah Jehan mentioned as well.

Actually the footnote is lost to me as well, but the basic idea was that firstly that transition era was incredibly dramatic, no less than the roman transition from Caeser to Octavian...secondly, for me Aurangzeb is a bit of a pivot in subcontinental history...and I think thats partly why he evokes such strong reactions...

From what I've read I believe that he was a very intelligent, strong-willed man, in a way a very moral man...but I think he took himself a bit too seriously...that may not seem like much of an accusation, but there is a reason politicians weave and snake and flip-flop. In the the end a successful politician/ruler must reflect his people's opinions, not stand true to his principles. I don't think he was anti-hindu. But I do think he wanted a stronger (maybe more centralized) state than maybe was possible at that time in India.

Also he was so powerful, and didn't die for so long, that when he finally did, there was a complete power vacuum. I think more than anything else, this might have caused the future collapse. I think the two fronts in which the mughals really failed and that caused the current history of the sub-continent, was naval strength and coming up with a structure for the transfer of power.

I must warn though, that I'm no historical expert.

As for history, at least in India, a good 60-70% of the history taught is...presented to further a motive. Mostly the motive is to unify the vastly different people of India (who spent most of their history warring against each other), but in this regard it can throw up some odd angles to view events and people and causes.

I spent two days in shock when I first discovered how wrong the taught history is. And how blandified. They really tried to take away the parts showing Indian people fighting each other, and had to go to large lengths to do so.

a very well written piece...gripping and you captured the moment very well. Esp, the character of Alamgir....

Please do not wave stories. We can call your Mamus great because girls like NoorJahan danced in their Darbar. It was a good party and the booz was great. But the day after in the morning we are having constipation and bad headache.

Thank you Sir! What delightful writing. One can almost feel standing there in the garden with the great Mughals, listening in to that characteristically royal conversation.

Welcome.

Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb: Bad Ruler or Bad History?

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
Posted: 9 Jamad-ul-awwal 1427, 5 June 2006

Of all the Muslim rulers who ruled vast territories of India from 712 to 1857 CE, probably no one has received as much condemnation from Western and Hindu writers as Aurangzeb. He has been castigated as a religious Muslim who was anti-Hindu, who taxed them, who tried to convert them, who discriminated against them in awarding high administrative positions, and who interfered in their religious matters. This view has been heavily promoted in the government approved textbooks in schools and colleges across post-partition India (i.e., after 1947). These are fabrications against one of the best rulers of India who was pious, scholarly, saintly, un-biased, liberal, magnanimous, tolerant, competent, and far-sighted.

Fortunately, in recent years quite a few Hindu historians have come out in the open disputing those allegations. For example, historian Babu Nagendranath Banerjee rejected the accusation of forced conversion of Hindus by Muslim rulers by stating that if that was their intention then in India today there would not be nearly four times as many Hindus compared to Muslims, despite the fact that Muslims had ruled for nearly a thousand years. Banerjee challenged the Hindu hypothesis that Aurangzeb was anti-Hindu by reasoning that if the latter were truly guilty of such bigotry, how could he appoint a Hindu as his military commander-in-chief? Surely, he could have afforded to appoint a competent Muslim general in that position. Banerjee further stated: "No one should accuse Aurangzeb of being communal minded. In his administration, the state policy was formulated by Hindus. Two Hindus held the highest position in the State Treasury. Some prejudiced Muslims even questioned the merit of his decision to appoint non-Muslims to such high offices. The Emperor refuted that by stating that he had been following the dictates of the Shariah (Islamic Law) which demands appointing right persons in right positions." During Aurangzeb's long reign of fifty years, many Hindus, notably Jaswant Singh, Raja Rajrup, Kabir Singh, Arghanath Singh, Prem Dev Singh, Dilip Roy, and Rasik Lal Crory, held very high administrative positions. Two of the highest ranked generals in Aurangzeb's administration, Jaswant Singh and Jaya Singh, were Hindus. Other notable Hindu generals who commanded a garrison of two to five thousand soldiers were Raja Vim Singh of Udaypur, Indra Singh, Achalaji and Arjuji. One wonders if Aurangzeb was hostile to Hindus, why would he position all these Hindus to high positions of authority, especially in the military, who could have mutinied against him and removed him from his throne?

Most Hindus like Akbar over Aurangzeb for his multi-ethnic court where Hindus were favored. Historian Shri Sharma states that while Emperor Akbar had fourteen Hindu Mansabdars (high officials) in his court, Aurangzeb actually had 148 Hindu high officials in his court. (Ref: Mughal Government) But this fact is somewhat less known.

Some of the Hindu historians have accused Aurangzeb of demolishing Hindu Temples. How factual is this accusation against a man, who has been known to be a saintly man, a strict adherent of Islam? The Qur'an prohibits any Muslim to impose his will on a non-Muslim by stating that "There is no compulsion in religion." (surah al-Baqarah 2:256). The surah al-Kafirun clearly states: "To you is your religion and to me is mine." It would be totally unbecoming of a learned scholar of Islam of his caliber, as Aurangzeb was known to be, to do things that are contrary to the dictates of the Qur'an.

Interestingly, the 1946 edition of the history textbook Etihash Parichaya (Introduction to History) used in Bengal for the 5th and 6th graders states: "If Aurangzeb had the intention of demolishing temples to make way for mosques, there would not have been a single temple standing erect in India. On the contrary, Aurangzeb donated huge estates for use as Temple sites and support thereof in Benares, Kashmir and elsewhere. The official documentations for these land grants are still extant."

A stone inscription in the historic Balaji or Vishnu Temple, located north of Chitrakut Balaghat, still shows that it was commissioned by the Emperor himself. The proof of Aurangzeb's land grant for famous Hindu religious sites in Kasi, Varanasi can easily be verified from the deed records extant at those sites. The same textbook reads: "During the fifty year reign of Aurangzeb, not a single Hindu was forced to embrace Islam. He did not interfere with any Hindu religious activities." (p. 138) Alexander Hamilton, a British historian, toured India towards the end of Aurangzeb's fifty year reign and observed that every one was free to serve and worship God in his own way.

Now let us deal with Aurangzeb's imposition ofthe jizya tax which had drawn severe criticism from many Hindu historians. It is true that jizya was lifted during the reign of Akbar and Jahangir and that Aurangzeb later reinstated this. Before I delve into the subject of Aurangzeb's jizya tax, or taxing the non-Muslims, it is worthwhile to point out that jizya is nothing more than a war tax which was collected only from able-bodied young non-Muslim male citizens living in a Muslim country who did not want to volunteer for the defense of the country. That is, no such tax was collected from non-Muslims who volunteered to defend the country. This tax was not collected from women, and neither from immature males nor from disabled or old male citizens. For payment of such taxes, it became incumbent upon the Muslim government to protect the life, property and wealth of its non-Muslim citizens. If for any reason the government failed to protect its citizens, especially during a war, the taxable amount was returned.

It should be pointed out here that zakat (2.5% of savings) and ‘ushr (10% of agricultural products) were collected from all Muslims, who owned some wealth (beyond a certain minimum, called nisab). They also paid sadaqah, fitrah, and khums. None of these were collected from any non-Muslim. As a matter of fact, the per capita collection from Muslims was several fold that of non-Muslims. Further to Auranzeb's credit is his abolition of a lot of taxes, although this fact is not usually mentioned. In his book Mughal Administration, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, foremost historian on the Mughal dynasty, mentions that during Aurangzeb's reign in power, nearly sixty-five types of taxes were abolished, which resulted in a yearly revenue loss of fifty million rupees from the state treasury.

While some Hindu historians are retracting the lies, the textbooks and historic accounts in Western countries have yet to admit their error and set the record straight.

Aurangzeb & Sarmad

www.esnips.com/doc/6dae2c46-f939-4f22-918c-7bad4b73587f/sarmad32

Aditya,
Thanks for this. It was superb. Really kept me reading till the very end. I too am fascinated by Aurangzeb in particular and the Mughals in general. He is one of my heroes. A Saint-Emperor.

Begum Jahanara is also a fascinating historical personage. Can I ask you what inspired you to write this beautiful and moving piece? I felt transported to the Mughal court whilst reading it.

Chowk cropped your postscript at the bottom. Can you repost it here?

Welcome to Chowk btw! :-)

Peace,
Asif