History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c40.s5: §5. Bitter correspondence between Aurangzib and his deposed father.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c40.s5
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§5. Bitter correspondence between Aurangzib and his deposed father.
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During the first year of his captivity a very acrimonious correspondence passed between father and son. Throughout the controversy Aurangzib poses as the champion of Islam and good government, as the humble instrument of God in the work of reform and popular beneficence; he condemns his father's incompetent and unjust rule, and defends his own conduct with all the mingled self-righteousness and affected humility of a Pharisee.* To the charge of being an unnatural son and a rebel, he replies thus :
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“So long as you held the reins of government, I never did anything without your permission, nor did I ever step beyond my jurisdiction. The Searcher of Hearts be my witness for this. During your illness Dara usurped all power, girt up his loins to promote Hinduism and destroy Islam, and acted as king, totally setting you aside. The government fell into disorder. None of your servants durst inform you of the true state of the realm......If, God forbid it, the aim of that infidel had succeeded, and the world had been obscured with the gloom of infidelity, and Islam had lost its lustre, it would have been hard [for us] to answer for it on the Last Day.” And, again, “My march on Agra was not due to a rebellious spirit, but to a desire to put an end to Dara’s usurpation, his lapse from Islam and his exaltation of idolatry throughout the empire......I was compelled, out of regard for the next world, to undertake the heavy load of this task and engage in looking after the interests of the populace and peasantry."
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∗ Of this correspondence we possess only the letters of Aurangzib to his father,—eight in number,—given in Adab, 260a—264a. Three of them are reproduced inaccurately in K.K. ii. 101-106, and brief summaries of a few are given by Bernier, 167-168, and Manucci, ii. 19-20. The contents of the letters that Shah Jahan wrote to Aurangzib we can infer from the quotations made from them by the latter before answering them.
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As for the fratricidal war, he ascribes its origin not to his own ambition but to Shah Jahan's partiality to his eldest son and the mortal enmity of his brothers to himself. "Although I heard that the raising of disturbances and the throwing of [my] affairs into confusion were due to your instigation, and that my brothers were acting under your orders, I was not moved by the news, but remained loyal to you.........till I knew for certain that you did not love me but were trying to place some other son in power.........
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If you had not helped in various ways and raised to a position of trust, your eldest son,—whose ability and God-fearing character are probably manifest to you now,—and if, out of regard for him, you had not failed to make any provision for the safety of your other sons, then all the brothers would have lived together peacefully and the fire of civil war would not have blazed forth."
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Aurangzib was convinced that there could be no peace in the realm until Dara and Shuja were driven out of India or sent to share Murad's captivity. He, therefore, had to exercise some of the prerogatives of the crown, such as enlisting officers and granting titles and posts, for, without such means "the work of God and the people" that he had undertaken could not have been carried to a successful end. He had at last "to take up the perilous load of the crown, out of sheer necessity and not from free choice,—for restoring peace and the rules of Islam in the realm so as to be able to answer on the Day of Reckoning, and for saving the people from destruction and the affairs of my ancestral kingdom from confusion."
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His own idea of the king's position and duty is high, even stoical: "Kingship means the protection of the realm and the guardianship (of the people) and not the enjoyment of bodily repose or the lusts of the flesh."
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§6. Aurangzib's self-righteous exultation.
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He points exultantly to his own success against heavy odds, as a proof of God's favour to him and of the righteousness of his cause: "As my aim was good, I gained the victory in spite of my small force, in both the battles (viz., Dharmat and Samugarh.) ......If God had not approved of my enterprise, how could I have gained victories which are only His gifts?"
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Shah Jahan, therefore, as a wise man must submit to the divine dispensation and accept Aurangzib's triumph as the best thing that could have happened to him! "Nothing can happen without God's will. Therefore, this great event is not due to any mortal’s power or will. Why do you, though a wise man, consider another as the author of what is (really) God’s doing? Submit to the will of God, and your sorrows and tribulations will turn into peace and contentment!” Nay more, the deposed Emperor must thank the son that had deposed him: “If you look (at the matter) with eyes of justice, you have no cause of complaint in that I have relieved you of such a heavy load and taken it on my own shoulders and made my (hitherto) free mind the slave of a thousand afflictions and fatigue.”
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In utter scorn for such hypocrisy, Shah Jahan taunted Aurangzib with being a robber of other people’s property, while professing to be a true Musalman. The prince defended his conduct in a lofty strain of idealism: “You have written that it is contrary to the Muslim faith to seize another’s property. Know that the royal property and treasures exist for the good of the people……A kingdom is not a hereditary private property. The king is merely God’s elected custodian and trustee of His money for the good of the subjects.”
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Aurangzib’s harsh and contemptuous references to Dara and Shuja had greatly offended his father, and now his defence of such language touched the fallen old monarch as with a red-hot iron: “How do you still regard the memory of [your brothers] Khusrau and Parviz, whom you did to death before your accession and who had threatened no injury to you?''
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§7. The Nemesis of Aurangzib.
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Next, Shah Jahan warned his cruel son to remember that his sons might treat him as he had treated his own father! Aurangzib's reply breathes the confident self-righteousness of the Pharisee: ''Well, nothing happens without God's will. The fate that you have mentioned overtook (my) elders also. How can I escape from the dispensations of Providence? Every one gets from God a return according to his own intentions, and as my intentions are good, I believe that I shall not get anything but good [from my sons].''
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But Shah Jahan was a truer prophet than his boastful son. The Nemesis of Aurangzib came in the person of his fourth son Muhammad Akbar. When that prince rebelled in 1681, he addressed a bitter and taunting letter to his father,* which bears a striking similarity to Aurangzib's present letters to Shah Jahan. In it Aurangzib is taxed with administrative failure and advised to pass his old age in religious meditation as an atonement for the sin of having deposed his father and murdered two of his brothers. His favour to his eldest son Shah Alam is flung in his teeth, and young Akbar's revolt is justified by the same Pharisaical plea that he had taken on his own shoulders the heavy burden of kingship in order to save the people from ruin and his patrimony from waste in consequence of Aurang-zib's misgovernment! And finally, Aurangzib is asked, with what propriety he could tax Akbar with being an unnatural son when he himself had rebelled against his own father!
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∗ Prince Akbar's taunting letter to Aurangzib in January 1681,—R.A.S. MS. 71, A.S.B. MS. f. 56, and Zahir-ul-insha. Translated in my Studies in Maghal India, 98-106.
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The correspondence between Shah Jahan and his son at last became intolerably bitter, and the latter gave up writing to the ex-Emperor at first in his own hand and then even through his secretaries,—in order, as he says, "to close the path of saying and hearing [such taunts]."
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Thus, in the conflict with the pen Shah Jahan proved no more successful than in the conflict with the sword. At last he bowed to the inevitable and, like a child that cries itself to sleep, he ceased to complain.*