Description

In twenty first-century India, Aurangzeb Alamgir—the sixth ruler of the Mughal empire who reigned from 1658 until 1707—is relentlessly vilified in the media, politics, and popular culture. Common opinion, bolstered by a divisive Hindu nationalist agenda, pillories Aurangzeb as a callous Islamist oppressor who despised everything about India, especially Hindus. This unrelenting myth of Aurangzeb as a cruel Islamist tyrant is bad history, but it is a difficult—even dangerous—mythology to challenge, as I have learned first-hand from the aftermath of publishing a short biography of Aurangzeb Alamgir.
In this talk, I present a core contention of my Aurangzeb book, namely that, far from being motivated by Islamic orthodoxy or hatred of Hindus, Aurangzeb’s actions are better explained by his vision of justice. I then explore the backlash to my Aurangzeb book and its key arguments, ending by commenting more broadly on how historians ought to respond and, in some cases, must respond to non-academic objections to their work.
Audrey Truschke is Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016) and, most recently, Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King (Stanford University Press, 2017).