History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c51.s8.17

v3.c51.s8.17

The loss caused to Aurangzib by his Rajput policy cannot be measured solely by the men and money he poured on that desert soil. He had concentrated all the resources of the empire against two small States† and had failed to achieve decisive success. Damaging as this result was to imperial prestige, its material consequences were worse still. In the height of political unwisdom, he wantonly provoked rebellion in Rajputana, while the Afghans on the frontier were still far from being pacified. With the two leading Rajput clans openly hostile to him, his army lost its finest and most loyal recruits. Nor was the trouble confined to Marwar and Mewar. It spread by sympathy among the Hada and Gaur clans. The elements of lawlessness thus set moving overflowed fitfully into Malwa and endangered the vitally important Mughal road through Malwa to the Deccan. In the incessant wars which fill the remainder of his reign, the Bundela clan and a few Hada and Kachhwa families supplied the only Rajput soldiers he could secure for fighting his battles. This was the harvest that Jalal-ud-din Akbar's great-grandson reaped from sowing the whirlwind of religious persecution and suppression of nationalities.