Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Deccan Famine: The War That Starved a Region
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Aurangzeb's wars — the conquests, the sieges, the endless Deccan campaign. But there's a quieter, more devastating story behind all that marching and fighting. I mean the famine. Luna: The Deccan famine? Lucas: Exactly. It's not as famous as the Bengal famine of 1770, but it was just as catastrophic — and it was directly tied to Aurangzeb's military policies. From the 1690s into the early 1700s, large parts of the Deccan experienced a food crisis that killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people. Lucas: The maasir i alamgiri, the official court history, briefly mentions that grain prices soared and that people were eating leaves and bark. But other sources — like letters from Mughal officials and European travelers like Niccolao Manucci — give a much grimmer picture. Luna: What caused it? Was it just drought? Lucas: Drought was a trigger, but the real culprit was war. Aurangzeb's Deccan campaign had been grinding on since the 1680s. He'd moved his entire court to the Deccan, along with a massive army — hundreds of thousands of soldiers, plus camp followers, horses, elephants. All those people and animals needed to be fed. Lucas: The Mughals requisitioned grain from local villages, often at gunpoint. The Marathas, in response, used scorched-earth tactics — they burned fields and granaries to deny supplies to the Mughals. So peasants were caught between two armies, both taking their food. Lucas: And on top of that, the monsoon failed in several consecutive years — around 1696 to 1698, and again in 1702. The result was a perfect storm of human-made and natural disaster. Luna: So the emperor's own war caused the famine he then had to deal with. Lucas: Exactly. And Aurangzeb did try to respond — he ordered the distribution of grain from imperial granaries and temporarily suspended some taxes. But the scale was just too vast. The maasir i alamgiri notes that even in the imperial camp, grain prices hit astronomical levels. Lucas: One measure of grain that used to cost a few dams now cost a hundred or more. Ordinary soldiers couldn't afford it. Many deserted. Some died of starvation right in the camp. Luna: What about the local population? The farmers and townspeople? Lucas: They fared far worse. Contemporary accounts describe people eating grass, seeds, even the leather from their shoes. Manucci writes that some resorted to cannibalism — though that's hard to verify. What's certain is that villages were abandoned, fields lay fallow, and the once-prosperous Deccan countryside became a wasteland. Lucas: The famine also had a gender dimension. Women and children were the most vulnerable. There are reports of families selling their daughters into servitude just to get a little grain. And the Mughal policy of kharaj — land tax — was still being collected even during the famine, pushing many peasants into debt bondage. Luna: It sounds like the empire was eating itself. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. The Deccan campaign was supposed to bring wealth — control over the diamond mines of Golkonda, the ports of the Konkan, the rich agricultural land. But instead, the war consumed all that wealth and more. The famine undid much of the economic base that Aurangzeb had been fighting to control. Lucas: And it didn't end when the war wound down. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707, the empire fell into civil war among his sons. The Deccan, already weakened, never fully recovered. The Marathas, who had been pushed to the margins, were able to rebuild and eventually challenge Mughal authority in the region. Luna: So in a way, the famine helped the Marathas? Lucas: Indirectly, yes. The Mughal army was depleted by hunger and desertion. The treasury was empty from years of war. And the peasantry, who had once seen the Mughals as protectors, now saw them as oppressors. When the Marathas returned, they found a population ready to support them against the imperial tax collectors. Lucas: There's a lesson here about the limits of military power. You can conquer territory, but you can't conquer hunger. Luna: That's a sobering thought. Lucas, I know we're in the middle of this, but I just want to say — if today's episode felt worth a coffee to you, listener, there's a link in the show notes. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just the smallest gesture helps us keep the show ad-free and focused on stories like this. Lucas: Yeah, honestly, we put a lot of work into digging up these details from the maasir i alamgiri and other sources. If you've been following along with us through the Deccan campaign, this is the kind of history you won't find in most textbooks. So thanks for being here. Luna: Alright, back to the famine — you mentioned that even Aurangzeb himself was affected. Did he change his policies at all? Lucas: He did, but only modestly. He ordered the construction of new wells and tanks for irrigation, and he remitted some taxes in the worst-hit areas. But he never considered ending the war. To him, the Maratha rebellion had to be crushed completely, no matter the cost. Lucas: In his letters, collected in the ruqaat i alamgiri, he expresses frustration with his generals and his sons, but he never blames his own strategy. He seems to have believed that the famine was an act of God, not a consequence of his policies. Luna: That's a convenient belief for an emperor. Lucas: It is. But it also shows how ideological he was. He saw the Deccan campaign as a holy war — a jihad against the Marathas and the Shia sultanates. In that framework, suffering was a test of faith, not a reason to change course. Lucas: Still, there were pragmatic voices. Some of his advisers, like the nobleman Asad Khan, warned him that the war was ruining the empire. But Aurangzeb dismissed them. He was determined to die with a clear conscience, having done his duty. Luna: And in the end, he died in the Deccan, far from Delhi, with the war still unfinished. Lucas: Right. He died in Ahmednagar in 1707, aged 88, still in his camp. His last letters are full of worry about his sons and the future of the empire. He knew, I think, that things were falling apart. But he never admitted that the war — and the famine it caused — was a mistake. Luna: It's a tragic end for such a long reign. Lucas: It is. And the famine is the part of that tragedy that's often overlooked. We remember the battles, the executions, the architecture. But the slow, grinding death of millions from hunger — that's the real legacy of the Deccan campaign. Luna: Thanks for bringing that to light, Lucas. I think it's a story that needs to be told. Lucas: Thanks for listening, Luna. And thanks to all of you who support the show. We'll be back next time with another story from the Mughal world.