Re-Assessing Sir Jadunath Sarkar's Aurangzeb and Shivaji

Oxford University Press

Readers will find the following text free of footnotes and diacritics. I detail my sources in the Bibliographical Essay and the Notes. I give non-English words and names in their most common Romanized form and generally omit special characters.

Cafe Dissensus, 2020

Altralang Journal, 2019

ABSTRACT: Aurangzeb has been held responsible by many historians for hastening the decline of the Mughal Empire. The paper titled 'Aurangzeb and the Decline of the Mughals' is aimed at examining the role of Aurangzeb in the downfall of the Empire. The passage of Aurangzeb from being a prince to becoming Emperor Alamgir has been discussed. The character of Aurangzeb has been discussed with a mention of his letters. The alternate explanation about Aurangzeb being a just, impartial ruler has also been provided. It concludes with a little bit of discussion about the other causes and the aftermath of the decline

Aurangzeb has been a controversial and certainly the most divisive figure in Indian History. In this article we try to negotiate a new framework of analysing Aurangzeb. To take on the problem of causation in Indian medieval history ie. Isolating historical events and taking defining the policy as individuals framework. For how long can this process of understanding history work?

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2018

This document represents the text that was published as "Thinking Beyond Aurangzeb and the Mughal State in a Late Eighteenth-Century Punjabi Braj Source" This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth-century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts. Aurangzeb/Alamgir figures most prominently in Sikh historiographical sources in association with two events: the arrest and execution of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, and the assault and seizure of the Sikh centre of Anandpur during the tenure of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh. The greatest periods of open conflict between Sikhs and the state occurred after the death of Aurangzeb, including a period of widespread revolt under a follower of Guru Gobind Singh, Banda Bahadur, in the second decade of the eighteenth century and just after the death of the Guru, and two particularly deadly periods of persecution in following decades. 1 Sikh relations with Mughal authority had not however always been so fraught. Under Akbar's long rule, from 1556 to 1605, the Sikh community had flourished under the third, fourth, and fifth Gurus, growing into a sizable and prominent community in Punjab centred from the time of the fourth Guru at Ramdaspur, the modern city of Amritsar. It was with the ascension of the emperor Jahangir to the throne in 1605 (which he occupied until 1627) that Sikh relations with the state took an agonistic turn, culminating in the execution of the fifth Guru. 2 The long reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) corresponds, in Sikh communitarian terms, with the period of Guruship of the four final Gurus:

historyofislam.com, 2020

The Hindu Wodeyar dynasty formed the Mysore kingdom in 1399 (1). It ruled the region until India’s independence, with a couple of breaks in between, from 1760 to 1799 and 1831 to 1881. Established as a subsidiary of the Karnata Empire (popular as Vijayanagar Empire), the Wodeyars began to spread their wings after Vijayanagar was sacked at the battle of Talikoti in 1565 (2). During its long existence it saw the rise and fall of many empires, including the Mughals and Marathas. Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar who ruled from 1673 until his death in 1704, is seen as its most successful king. This essay highlights how this far sighted ruler developed and sustained friendship with Aurangzeb to not only check their common enemy the Marathas, but also to reform his kingdom.

Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021

The paper focuses on the reigns and policies of the two Mughal Emperors, Akbar and Aurangzeb, and analyses how they have been remembered in the wider social memory. While Akbar is glorified as a 'secular' and 'liberal' leader, Aurangzeb is often dismissed and ridiculed as a 'religious bigot', who tried to impose the Shari'ah law in diversified India. The paper traces and evaluates the construction of these two grand narratives which were initially formed by the British historians in colonial India and then continued by specific nationalist historians of India and Pakistan, after the independence of the two nation-states. By citing some of the most popular misconceptions surrounding the two Mughal Emperors, this study attempts to understand the policies of these two emperors in a wider socio-political narrative and attempts to deconstruct these ‘convenient’ misinterpretations. Concluding the analysis of how these two emperors are viewed differently in both...

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2018

This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth-century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts. Aurangzeb/Alamgir figures most prominently in Sikh historiographical sources in association with two events: the arrest and execution of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, and the assault and seizure of the Sikh centre of Anandpur during the tenure of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh. The greatest periods of open conflict between Sikhs and the state occurred after the death of Aurangzeb, including a period of widespread revolt under a follower of Guru Gobind Singh, Banda Bahadur, in the second decade of the eighteenth century and just after the death of the Guru, and two particularly deadly periods of persecution in following decades. 1 Sikh relations with Mughal authority had not however always been so fraught. Under Akbar's long rule, from 1556 to 1605, the Sikh community had flourished under the third, fourth, and fifth Gurus, growing into a sizable and prominent community in Punjab centred from the time of the fourth Guru at Ramdaspur, the modern city of Amritsar. It was with the ascension of the emperor Jahangir to the throne in 1605 (which he occupied until 1627) that Sikh relations with the state took an agonistic turn, culminating in the execution of the fifth Guru. 2 The long reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) corresponds, in Sikh communitarian terms, with the period of Guruship of the four final Gurus: