Aurangzeb's Buddhist Tango: The Little-Known War in the Himalayas

Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History · Apr 25, 2026 · 6m · transcript

While Aurangzeb was famously fighting the Marathas and Sikhs in the Deccan and Punjab, he also waged a long, bloody, and almost forgotten war in the Himalayan foothills against the Buddhist kingdoms of Ladakh and Bhutan. This episode follows the Mughal campaigns into the high mountains — the siege of the fort at Basgo, the burning of Buddhist monasteries, the use of Tibetan mercenaries, and the strange alliance between the Mughals and the Dalai Lama's Gelug school. We explore how Aurangzeb's religious zeal clashed with the pragmatic politics of the Buddhist lamas, and how the war…