द लास्ट मुग़ल के लेखक का उगलों से प्यार होना कोई आश्चर्य नहीं है . हल ही मैं उन्होंने हिंदुस्तान टाइम्स की लीडरशिप मीटिंग मैं पाकिस्तान के इन्फ्रा स्ट्रक्चर को भारत के समकक्ष सिद्ध लिया था जो इतना गलत नहीं था . परन्तु अब यदि उन्हें मथुरा व् कशी के मंदिर को तोड़ने वाले औरंगजेब मैं सारे गुण देखें तो कुछ ख़तरा लगता है की वह किसी के पैसे के लिए तो नहीं लिख रहे . भारत मैं रह रहे फ्रांसीसी लेखक फ्रांसिस गौतिर के इस लेख व् विल्लं के जबाब को हम पाठकों के लिए प्रस्तुत कर रहे हैं .
WHY DOES WILLIAM DALRYMPLE ADORE AURANGZEB
SO MUCH???
William Dalrymple has always been a great fan of Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir, India’s sixth Mughal emperor (1658-1707). In his two previous books, The Last Mughal and White Mughals, Dalrymple reenacted the British’s fondness for the Mughal period, by directly and indirectly praising the longest reigning emperor after Akbar.
In his forthcoming opus magnum, which will be solely dedicated to Aurangzeb, Dalrymple says he will go further: “Aurangzeb was absolutely fascinating, very self aware, very Shakespearean. By the end of his life, Aurangzeb does becomes a monster of myths, but his final letters are full of regret and awareness about how much he destroyed of what he had inherited”. And he concludes: “What is little spoken is that he was an extremely generous donor of various ashrams and maths. Just the sheer data that can be gathered about his donations to Hindu monasteries is extraordinary”….
Was the emperor such a pious man? Well, just look to what he did to his own family: Aurangzeb, who was neither the eldest, nor the favorite son of his father Shah Jahan, killed his two brothers to ascend the throne, dispatched his father to jail and subsequently murdered him by sending him poisoned massage oil. He later had his own son imprisoned (in his will, he admonished: “never trust your sons”). He was also very cruel to the majority of his subjects, the Hindus, ordering all temples destroyed, such as the Kashi Vishwanath, the rebuilt Somnath temple, the Vishnu temple (replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares), or the Treta-ke-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. He also made sure that deities of Hindu Gods and Goddesses were buried under the steps of the mosques (like the Jama Masjid in Delhi) so that future generations of Muslims would trample upon them.
Sikhism, the youngest religion in the world, owes its initial phenomenal growth to the persecutions of one man: Aurangzeb Alamgir. The Mughal emperor not only had the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur beheaded, because he objected to his forced conversions, but he also viciously persecuted the followers of Guru Gobind Singh, whom he had never forgiven for having supported his brother Dara.
The sad thing is that today the Sikh world seems to be growing closer to Aurangzeb and drifting away from its Hindu brothers and sisters, forgetting that their order was originally created to defend them. Indeed, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), Amritsar, has not uttered a word against Dalrymple’s forthcoming book.
More serious even, the Central Government always eager to please ‘minorities’ has set up a dangerous precedent by removing from its ‘blacklist’ the names of 142 wanted Sikh terrorists and their associates, some of them now in Pakistan.
Among those: Lakhbir Singh Rode, nephew of dreaded slain terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and chief of International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), Ranjit Singh, alias Neeta, a native of Jammu and Kashmir who heads Khalistan Zindabad Force, Wadhawa Singh, chief of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and Paramjit Singh Panjwar, chief of Khalistan Commando Force (KCF). Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) It is said that President Paramjit Singh Sarna lobbied hard with Sonia Gandhi for this decision.
Aurangzeb’s deadly legacy of murderous fanaticism is still alive in parts of the world; such as Kashmir or Pakistan. The Sikh community should protest Dalrymple books and remember how much they suffered at the hands of Aurangzeb.
2 responses to “WHY DOES WILLIAM DALRYMPLE ADORE AURANGZEB SO MUCH???”
Francois with all due respect this article is inaccurate in almost every detail. My next book is not about Aurangzeb (its about the evils of the East India Company and is called The Anarchy). Aurangzeb is not mentioned in Last Mughal or White Mughal, let all alone praised in either book, and I attack him very strongly in City of Djinns where on p198 and p239-40 I compared Aurangzeb and Roshanara to ruthless villains from the Shakespeare play King Lear– him to Edmund the disliked son who takes revenge and Roshanara to the evil sisters Regan and Goneril. Here is what I’ve actually written: “rigidly fundamentalist… Aurangzeb’s rule was harsh and repressive, and made a clean break with the liberal attitude toward the Hindu majority of his subjects pioneered by Akbar. The ulema were given a free hand to impose Sharia law. Prostitution was banned, as was wine, hashish, and the playing of music. Many Hindu temples across the country were destroyed or converted into mosques, and the Emperor reimposed the jizya tax on Hindus that had been abolished by Akbar; he also executed Teg Bahadur, the ninth of the gurus of the Sikhs.
The religious wounds Aurangzeb opened in India have never entirely healed; at the time they literally tore the country in two. Unable to trust anyone, Aurangzeb marched to and fro across the empire, viciously putting down the successive rebellions of his Hindu subjects. On his death in 1707, the empire fragmented. Built on tolerance, mutual respect, and an alliance with the Hindus, especially with the warrior Rajputs, who formed the core of the Mughal war machine, the breakdown of that alliance and the Mughal retreat into bigotry shattered their state and lost them the backbone of their army. ” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/nov/22/the-most-magnificent-muslims/?pagination=false
You have based this article on a single inaccurately transcribed interview where the interviewer mangled what I said. What I actually believe about Aurangzeb is however on record in print and I challenge you to find a single word praising Aurangzeb anywhere in my writings on him. I dislike puritans and iconoclasts in all cultures, and Aurangzeb is no exception, although it is true I find him an interesting villain, and one that someone should indeed research and write about. Please check out the facts. You and I may not agree on much about Mughal history and will have to agree to differ on many counts, but about Aurangzeb you will be pleasantly surprised to find there is absolutely no disagreement.