History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c40.s5.15

v3.c40.s5.15

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!