Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Deccan Famine: When the Mughal War Machine Starved Millions
Transcript
- Lucas: You know, when we think about Aurangzeb's long Deccan war, we usually focus on the battles, the sieges, the guerrilla tactics. But there's this other story — a quieter catastrophe — that unfolded alongside the fighting, and it might have done more to break the empire than any Maratha raid. Luna: The famine? Lucas: Exactly. The Deccan famine of 1702 to 1704. It's not as famous as the great famines of British India, but it was devastating. And it was very much man-made — a direct consequence of Aurangzeb's war policy. The emperor had been camped in the Deccan for over a decade by then, with a massive army, hundreds of thousands of men, plus camp followers, horses, elephants. All of them needed to be fed. Lucas: The Mughal supply system was impressive on paper — grain stores, transport bullocks, contracts with merchants. But the war had dragged on so long that the countryside was stripped bare. Aurangzeb's commanders also used scorched-earth tactics against Maratha strongholds, burning fields and granaries to starve out the enemy. That backfired spectacularly. Luna: So they were essentially eating the country's seed corn. Lucas: Exactly. And then the monsoon failed — in 1702 and again in 1703. The Deccan is always a tricky region for rainfall, but two consecutive years of drought turned a bad situation into a catastrophe. The price of grain skyrocketed. We have an eyewitness account from a British diplomat, William Norris, who was attached to the Mughal camp trying to negotiate trade rights for the East India Company. His journals are full of grim details. Lucas: Norris writes that in early 1703, a maund of grain — that's about 37 kilograms — cost four rupees, which was maybe ten times the normal price. By the summer, it had doubled again. People were eating leaves, bark, even the hides of dead animals. Norris describes seeing mothers selling their children — for a few pounds of grain — because they couldn't feed them. Luna: That's gut-wrenching. And Aurangzeb's court — did they do anything about it? Lucas: That's the really telling part. The official Mughal chronicle, the maasir i alamgiri, barely mentions the famine — a line or two about high prices and a vague mention of charitable distributions. But from Norris and other sources, we know the imperial camp was still functioning. The emperor's kitchens operated, the nobility still held feasts. The problem was that the Mughal state was geared entirely toward military logistics, not civilian relief. Grain that might have gone to markets was commandeered for the army. Lucas: There was also a breakdown of law and order. Bands of starving peasants turned into bandits, preying on supply caravans. The Marathas, who knew the terrain intimately, would intercept grain convoys. So even when grain was available somewhere, it couldn't always get through. Luna: It sounds like the empire was eating itself alive. Lucas: It really was. And this famine had lasting consequences. The Deccan peasantry, who had already been squeezed by war taxes and Maratha raids, were decimated. Many villages were abandoned, fields left fallow for years. The economic base of the region — which the Mughals needed to sustain their occupation — was shattered. In some areas, it took decades to recover. Lucas: This is the kind of thing that doesn't show up in the court chronicles, but it's what really brought the empire low. Not one big battle, but the slow grinding collapse of the human and environmental systems that supported it. And Aurangzeb, from all accounts, never acknowledged his role in it. He was still ordering campaigns, still moving his camp, still expecting victory — while the country around him starved. Luna: If you've been following along with these conversations about Aurangzeb and the Deccan, you might have a sense of just how much detail goes into every episode — the reading, the cross-referencing, the digging through sources like Norris's journals and the maasir i alamgiri. Lucas: Yeah, it's a labor of love but it takes time and resources. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. It really does make a difference. Luna: Absolutely. Every bit helps keep the show ad-free and focused on the history. Lucas: So back to the famine — one of the most striking details Norris records is that in the summer of 1704, the Mughal army finally moved north, away from the worst-hit areas. But the damage was done. The Deccan would never again be the rich province it had been under the earlier sultanates. The Mughals had won a military occupation, but they'd lost the peace. Luna: And that's really the irony, isn't it? Aurangzeb spent the last 25 years of his life in the Deccan trying to secure it, and he left it weaker than when he started. Lucas: Exactly. The famine was a turning point — not a dramatic one, but a quiet shift. After 1704, the Mughal position in the Deccan became purely defensive. They held forts and cities, but the countryside was lost to the Marathas. And the emperor, aging and isolated, increasingly retreated into religious observance, leaving the day-to-day war to his generals — who were often feuding with each other. Lucas: Norris, by the way, didn't stay long. He left the Mughal camp in 1704, sick and disillusioned. His mission had failed — the East India Company didn't get the trading privileges they wanted. But his journal is one of the most vivid accounts we have of the Mughal court in its final years of glory. And it's a reminder that history isn't just about emperors and battles — it's about the people who starved so that an empire could keep fighting. Luna: You mentioned the Marathas taking advantage of the chaos — did they also suffer from the famine, or were they better adapted? Lucas: They suffered too, but not as badly. The Maratha light cavalry could move quickly to where food was available, and they didn't have the enormous fixed population of a Mughal camp. Also, their guerrilla tactics meant they didn't need to hold territory — they could raid and melt away. So the famine actually strengthened them relative to the Mughals. It depleted the imperial army's manpower and morale, while the Marathas could still operate. Lucas: By the time Aurangzeb died in 1707, the Deccan was a wasteland in many parts. His son Azam Shah, who succeeded him briefly, inherited a bankrupt treasury and a broken administration. The empire's decline, which historians often date from the early 18th century, really began right there, in the famine fields of the Deccan. Luna: It makes you wonder how different things might have been if he'd ended the war earlier, or if he'd invested in relief instead of more campaigns. Lucas: That's the 'what if' that haunts Mughal history. But Aurangzeb was convinced he was doing God's work — expanding the realm of Islam, suppressing rebellion. He saw the famine as a test of faith, not a policy failure. There's a letter attributed to him from around this time where he writes that 'the world is a bridge; pass over it, but do not build your house upon it.' He was already detaching himself from worldly outcomes. Luna: But the people building houses — or trying to — were the ones who paid the price. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the story we don't always hear. The Deccan famine of 1702–1704 is a small footnote in most histories, but it tells us more about Aurangzeb's empire than any battle narrative. It shows the limits of Mughal power, the fragility of its economy, and the human cost of imperial ambition. Next time, we might look at how the Marathas rebuilt after the famine, and how they turned that crisis into their greatest opportunity.