Audrey "Aurangzeb" Truschke: Four Steps to Sanitize History

 As I thought about writing this post, I wondered what might be the objective of this blog post. I wanted to write about history. So should it be about the reverence of cows in Hindu culture? Or, is the fact that partisan idealogue historians like Audrey Truschke are biased and intentionally omit (and sometimes convolute) the facts in their works? Or, how are Indian readers far too subjugated by the translations of Indian scriptures by colonial translators? Or, in our own way, we are too ignorant of our own history? 

All of the above is controversial, to say the least. But it is time we relook at our heritage with a Dharmic viewpoint, especially as the world is shedding the colonial lens. Many such above points are important and require a deep understanding of a scholar and an expert for a more substantial discussion. However, as I'm neither, I can only raise pertinent questions that will provide superficial answers that are sufficient to investigate further. 

Audrey "Aurangzeb" Truschke

Author, Audrey Truschke, in her book on Aurangzeb tries to recover Aurangzeb 'the man'. In her own words, "perhaps India's most loathed Muslim doer was not so heinous after all". Her apparent softening of Aurangzeb is perhaps best captured in her casual words that simply say "an Indian king who hungered after territory, political power, and a particular ideal for justice". (Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King, Pg 20-22, Kindle version)

In my understanding of her work, here are the steps she has taken to impose her narrative, and bias under the garb of objective historical scholarship.

Step 1: Discredit the reputation of any different opinion (in this case Sir Jadunath Sarkar)

History of Aurangzib by Sir Jadunath Sakar

Sir Jadunath Sarkar was probably the foremost expert on the Mughal period in India. He wrote a five-volume book on the life and rule of Aurangzeb. I've begun to scratch the surface of these books but his writing is quite balanced and unbiased. But consistently Truschke discredits Sarkar's work either using lazy logic that he (Sarkar) was biased by his colonial views or simply stating what Sarkar himself has said about a few sources in his footnotes where the source can be unreliable. But she tries hard in her book to discredit Sarkar as a colonial-era thinker so by that logic is prejudiced against Aurangzeb. However, the same argument can be applied to Truschke as she is inspired by Romila Thapar, who the Communist Party of India (Marxist) themselves describe as a Marxist scholar, so her (Truschke) views are biased by post-modernism and marxism! (Theoretical quarterly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Vol. XII, No. 1, Issue: Jan – March 1995, Pg 1)

The Marxist (refer to highlighted portion)

Step 2: The "austere religious scholar Washington Post" Syndrome

In 2019, The Washington Post was heavily criticized for calling Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group who was killed in a US-led raid, as an "austere religious scholar". So much so that their vice president of communications Kristine Coratti Kelly said the headline "should never have read that way and we changed it quickly". This not only exposes the lack of editorial scrutiny but raises serious questions about certain biases this media agency carries. 

Truschke uses similar language to pander to contemporary populism by referring to Aurangzeb as tolerant, who provided state protection to Hindus, protected Hindu religious groups, and was a moral leader. 

She says " Aurangzeb counted thousands of Hindu temples within his domains and yet destroyed, at most, a few dozen". (Chapter 6, Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's most controversial King, Overseer of Hindu Religious Communities). This sounds reasonable but if you go through the list of these "few" temples these include some of the most important religious centers of Sanatana Dharma; for example Somnath Temple, and Keshav Rai temple of Mathura. The name of Mathura (birthplace of Shri Krishna) was changed to Islamabad (imagine changing the name of Mecca to something related to another religion/faith). She goes so far as to say that "convenience may also have dictated this recycling" of Hindu temples to mosques! (Chapter 6, ibid, Overseer of Hindu Religious Communities) I ask if there is a source she can refer to?

Step 3: Half-truths

Truschke further states that Aurangzeb "he issued many orders protecting Hindu temples and granted stipends and land to Brahmins". (Chapter 1, ibid). Just based on my cursory research, there is a farmaan (imperial order) that states "ancient temples in Benares "will not be overthrown, but that new one will not be built". Truschke very conveniently ignores the latter aspect of the order and never mentions it in her book. 

She also conveniently ignores any examples that can be perceived as bigotry such as:

• On 14th October 1666, learning that there was a stone railing in the temple of Keshav Rai, which Dara Shukoh had presented to it, Aurangzib ordered it to be removed, as a scandalous example of a Muslim's coquetry with idolatry.
• When an old man of over eighty, we find him inquiring whether the Hindu worship, which he had put down at Somnath early in his reign, had been revived through the slackness of the local governor, and, again, telling one of his generals to take his own time in destroying a certain famous temple in the Deccan, as ‘‘it had no legs to walk away on.’’ In 1674 he confiscated all the lands held by Hindus as religious grants (wazifa) in Gujrat. [Mirat, 305.]

(History of Aurangzeb, Volume 3, Chapter XXXIV, Pg 267) These are not even footnotes in her work. FACT Museum has very carefully listed and translated all the farmaan by Aurangzeb here.

Step 4: Downplay any persecution as "just another day"

Pivotal moments in history are downplayed as mere "routine matters from the Mughal perspective". The beheading of Guru Teg Bahadur who was the ninth of ten Gurus who founded the Sikh religion and the leader of Sikhs from 1665 until his beheading in 1675 is referred to as a routine matter because Persian histories are silent about him.  

Puritanical and oppressing policies like banning religious festivals like Holi, Diwali, and Muharram are justified because an Islamic festival was included and apparently it was a public safety initiative by the emperor. 

Conclusion

It's not easy to study any historical personality. It's even more difficult to not judge based on limited historical evidence. But the trends observed through the life of a personality can be used to argue for or against the existence of a particular mindset and zeal. And this mindset and zeal more often than not turns into actions. And the actions of people in authority can impact nations and millions of people. Iconoclasm is a trend that's visible in Aurangzeb's early career as well when as a viceroyalty of Gujrat in 1644 when he had desecrated the recently built Hindu temple of Chintaman in Ahmadabad by killing a cow in it and then turned the building into a mosque.

The objective of a historian and a scholar should be to state history 'as-is'. Modern ideology and political correctness shouldn't affect history writing. But Truschke's book is marred with such inaccuracies and her quite vocal leaning towards a particular ideology forces anyone who reads her work to analyze and examine her works for such biases.