Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's War of Words: The Imperial Censorship Machine
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Aurangzeb's military campaigns and his religious policies, but there's another side to his rule that often gets overlooked — his obsession with controlling what people read, wrote, and heard. He built one of the most extensive censorship machines in early modern history. Luna: Wait, like book burning and spying on poets? That feels very unlike the image of the Mughal court as a center of culture. Lucas: Exactly. And it was a sharp break from his predecessors. Under Akbar, the court was buzzing with translations of Hindu epics and debates between faiths. Jahangir and Shah Jahan patronized painters and musicians. But Aurangzeb saw all that as a threat to Islamic orthodoxy. He appointed these officials called muhtasibs — inspectors of public morals — in major cities like Delhi, Lahore, and Ahmedabad. Their job was to enforce Sharia in daily life: making sure people prayed, banning alcohol, and, crucially, policing what was written. Luna: So the muhtasibs were like the thought police of the Mughal Empire. Lucas: Pretty much. The maasir i alamgiri, the official court chronicle, records that in 1669, Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of Hindu schools and temples across the empire. But what's less known is that he also targeted texts. He had copies of the Mahabharata and other Sanskrit works burned in public bonfires. And it wasn't just Hindu texts — Sikh scriptures, particularly the Granth Sahib, were also destroyed. He even banned the writing of new histories of his reign. The maasir i alamgiri itself was only completed after his death, because he didn't want any record that might be seen as flattering. Luna: He didn't want flattery? That seems unusual for an emperor. Lucas: It's complicated. He feared that histories would contain innovations — what he called bid'ah — that deviated from the straight path. He wanted his reign to be remembered only through the lens of Sharia, not through courtly praise. But the irony is that the maasir i alamgiri, written by his courtier Muhammad Saqi Mustaid Khan, actually does praise him — it just had to wait until after he died. Luna: What about poets? I know the Mughal court was famous for its poets. Lucas: That's where it gets really personal. Aurangzeb banned music and poetry at court early in his reign, around 1668. He expelled musicians and poets from the imperial service. Many of them went to the courts of his rebellious sons or to the Deccan sultanates. One famous case is the Sufi mystic Sarmad Kashani. He was a Jewish merchant who converted to Islam and became a naked ascetic, known for his ecstatic poetry. Aurangzeb had him executed for heresy in 1661 — beheaded in Delhi. The charge? He recited the kalima in a way that suggested he saw God in everything, which was deemed blasphemous. Luna: Sarmad Kashani — I've heard his name. Wasn't he the one who said "There is no god but God, but I see God everywhere"? Lucas: Exactly. And that was enough to get him killed. But Aurangzeb's censorship went even further. He personally ordered the burning of his own brother Dara Shikoh's works. Dara had translated the Upanishads into Persian and written a book called majma ul bahrain, or "The Confluence of the Two Seas," arguing that Hinduism and Islam were essentially the same. Aurangzeb had those books publicly burned in the courtyard of the Jama Masjid in Delhi. Luna: That's incredible. So he literally destroyed his brother's intellectual legacy. Lucas: Yes. And it wasn't just books. He also suppressed visual art. Portraiture was banned — he believed it was against Islam to paint living beings. Many Mughal miniature painters lost their patronage. Some moved to the Rajput courts or to the Deccan. The famous painter Bichitr, who had worked for Jahangir and Shah Jahan, disappears from the record during Aurangzeb's reign. The courtly culture that had produced masterpieces like the Padshahnama essentially died. Luna: So the idea of the Mughal golden age ending with Aurangzeb — it's not just about territory, it's cultural too. Lucas: Absolutely. And it wasn't just high culture. The muhtasibs also monitored public behavior. They would patrol markets looking for gambling, drinking, or even men and women mixing in public. In 1671, Aurangzeb issued a fatwa that forbade the construction of new temples and the repair of old ones, but he also banned Holi and Diwali celebrations in the empire. The European traveler Niccolao Manucci, who was in India at the time, wrote about how the muhtasibs would break up any gathering that looked like it might be a festival. Luna: Did this censorship actually work? I mean, did it stamp out dissent? Lucas: In the short term, it created a climate of fear. Poets wrote in code, or stopped writing altogether. But in the long run, it probably backfired. The suppression of the Bhakti and Sufi traditions, which had been popular among both Hindus and Muslims, alienated many people. It fueled the Maratha resistance — the Marathas saw Aurangzeb as a tyrant who was attacking their religion. And even within the Muslim community, there was resentment. Many Sunni scholars were unhappy with the strict Hanafi interpretation that Aurangzeb enforced. The fatwa i alamgiri, a legal code he commissioned, was meant to unify the empire under one law, but it ended up being too rigid for the diverse society of India. Luna: So he was trying to create a single, orthodox Mughal identity, but instead he fractured it. Lucas: Exactly. And it's one of the reasons why, after his death, the empire fell apart so quickly. The cultural and intellectual vibrancy that had held the Mughal elite together was gone. The poets and painters had scattered. The historians had been silenced. All that was left was a military machine that was exhausted after decades of war. But that's a story for another episode.