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Chapter IV – The Emperor

In matters of religion the Emperor was obstinate to the point of fanaticism. In other matters he displayed the wisdom and judgment of a clear and thoughtful mind. As he had his ideal of faith, which he fought for à outrance, so had he his standard of kingly duty and his theory of the education of princes for the responsibilities of government.

‘No man,’ says Bernier, can be more alive than Aurangzib to the necessity of storing the minds of princes, destined to rule nations, with useful knowledge. As they surpass others in power and elevation, so ought they, he says, to be preeminent in wisdom and virtue. He is very sensible that the cause of the misery which afflicts the empires of Asia, of their misrule, and consequent decay, should be sought, and will be found, in the deficient and pernicious mode of instructing the children of their kings. Entrusted from their infancy to the care of women and eunuchs, slaves from Russia, Circassia, Mingrelia, Georgia, or Ethiopia, whose minds are debased by the very nature of their occupation; servile and mean to superiors, proud and oppressive to dependents; – these princes, when called to the throne, leave the walls of the seraglio quite ignorant of the duties imposed upon them by their new situation. They appear on the stage of life as

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if they came from another world, or emerged for the first time from a subterraneous cavern, astonished, like simpletons, at all around them23.’

Aurangzib’s notions of what the education of a prince should be are set forth in the reproof he administered to his old tutor when the latter hastened to Delhi in the hope of a handsome reward from his newly-crowned pupil. After taxing the venerable preceptor of his boyhood – who appears to have been an ordinary Muslim schoolmaster, such as may still be met with all over the East – with his ignorance of the geography and relative importance of European States, the Emperor went on thus:–

Was it not incumbent upon my preceptor to make me acquainted with the distinguishing features of every nation of the earth; its resources and strength; its mode of warfare, its manners, religion, form of government, and wherein its interests principally consist; and, by a regular course of historical reading, to render me familiar with the origin of States; their progress and decline; the events, accidents, or errors, owing to which such great changes and mighty revolutions have been effected? ... A familiarity with the language of surrounding nations may be indispensable in a king; but you would teach me to read and write Arabic; doubtless conceiving that you placed me under an everlasting obligation for sacrificing so large a portion of time to the study of a language wherein no one can hope to become proficient without ten or twelve years of close application. Forgetting how many important subjects ought to be embraced in the education of a prince, you acted as if it were chiefly necessary that he should possess great skill

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in grammar, and such knowledge as belongs to a Doctor of Law; and thus did you waste the precious hours of my youth in the dry, unprofitable, and never-ending task of learning words! . Ought you not to have instructed me on one point at least, so essential to be known by a king, namely, on the reciprocal duties between the sovereign and his subjects? Ought you not also to have foreseen that I might at some future period be compelled to contend with my brothers, sword in hand, for the crown, and for my very existence? Such, as you must well know, has been the fate of the children of almost every king of Hindustan. Did you ever instruct me in the art of war, how to besiege a town, or draw up an army in battle array? Happy for me that I consulted wiser heads than thine on these subjects! Go! withdraw to thy village. Henceforth let no person know either who thou art or what is become of thee24.’

The theory of royal education, thus expressed with some French periphrasis, would have done credit to Roger Ascham when he was training the vigorous intellect of the future Queen Elizabeth in her seclusion at Cheshunt. Aurangzib’s ideal of enlightened kingship is further expressed in a speech addressed to one of the most distinguished of the nobles, on the occasion of a remonstrance with the Emperor on his incessant application to affairs of State, which it was feared might endanger his health – and which very probably interfered with the licence and perquisites of the landed nobility.

‘There can surely be but one opinion,’ said the Emperor, among. you wise men as to the obligation imposed upon

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a sovereign, in seasons of difficulty and danger, to hazard his life, and, if necessary, to die sword in hand in defence of the people committed to his care. And yet this good and considerate man would fain persuade me that the public weal ought to cause me no solicitude; that in devising. means to promote it I should never pass a sleepless night, nor spare a single day from the pursuit of some low and sensual gratification. According to him, I am to be swayed by considerations of my own bodily health, and chiefly to study what may best minister to my personal ease and enjoyment. No doubt he would have me abandon the government of this vast kingdom to some vizier; he seems not to consider that, being born the son of a king and placed on the throne, I was sent into the world by Providence to live and labour, not for myself, but for others; that it is my duty not to think of my own happiness, except so far as it is inseparably connected with the happiness of my people. It is the repose and prosperity of my subjects that it behoves me to consult; nor are these to be sacrificed to anything besides the demands of justice, the maintenance of the royal authority, and the security of the State. This man cannot penetrate into the consequences of the inertness he recommends, and he is ignorant of the evils that attend upon delegated power. It was not without reason that our great Sa’di emphatically exclaimed, “Cease to be Kings! Oh, cease to be Kings! Or determine that your dominions shall be governed only by yourselves25.” ’

This ideal of kingship accords with the tenour of the numerous letters which have been preserved from Aurangzib’s correspondence. In one of these, addressed to his captive father, he says:–

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‘Almighty God bestows his trusts upon him who discharges the duty of cherishing his subjects and protecting the people. It is manifest and clear to the wise that a wolf is no fit shepherd, neither can a faint-hearted man carry out the great duty of government. Sovereignty is the guardianship of the people, not self-indulgence and profligacy. The Almighty will deliver your humble servant from all feeling of remorse as regards your Majesty26.’

He made it absolutely clear to Shah-Jahan that his usurping son would suffer no sentiment of filial piety to stand between him and his duty to the people:–

‘I wish to avoid your censure,’ he wrote in another letter to his father, ‘and cannot endure that you should form a wrong estimate of my character. My elevation to the throne has not, as you imagine, filled me with insolence and pride. You know, by more than forty years’ experience, how burthensome an ornament a crown is, and with how sad and aching an heart a monarch retires from the public gaze. ... You seem to think that I ought to devote less time and attention to the consolidation and security of the kingdom, and that it would better become me to devise and execute plans of aggrandizement. I am indeed far from denying that conquests ought to distinguish the reign of a great monarch, and that I should disgrace the blood of the great Timur, our honoured progenitor, if I did not seek to extend the bounds of my present territories. At the same time, I cannot be reproached with inglorious inaction. ... I wish you to re-collect the greatest conquerors are not always the greatest kings. The nations of the earth have often been subjugated by mere uncivilised barbarians, and the most extensive conquests

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have in a few short years crumbled to pieces. He is the truly great king who makes it the chief business of his life to govern his subjects with equity27.’

One is naturally curious to trace how far Aurangzib carried these admirable theories into practice – to discover whether he really tried to rule after the exalted standard he set up in his letters and conversation, or whether these were merely fine phrases and diplomatic assurances, such as the Emperor was only too fond of using. He was undoubtedly ‘reserved, subtle, and a complete master of the art of dissimulation,’ as Bernier says; and the utterances of a man so little frank, and so prone to the art of managing men by diplomatic craft rather than by an outspoken candour, require to be watched and weighed before they can be accepted as his honest convictions. All we know of his methods of government, however, goes to prove that his fine sentiments were really the ruling principles of his life. No act of injustice, according to the law of Islam, has been proved against him. Ovington, whose personal authority is worth little, but who derived his opinions and information from Aurangzib’s least partial critics, the English merchants at Bombay and Surat, says that the Great Mogul is ‘the main ocean of justice. ... He generally determines with exact justice and equity; for there is no pleading of peerage or privilege before the Emperor, but the meanest man is as soon heard by Aurangzib as the chief Omrah which makes the

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Omrahs very circumspect of their actions and punctual in their payments28.’ The native chronicler, already quoted, has told us that the Emperor was a mild and painstaking judge, easy of approach, and gentle of manner; and the same character is given him by Dr. Careri, who saw him in the Deccan in 169529.

Generosity was not a salient virtue in the character of Aurangzib, who was reputed to be avaricious and niggardly in matters of money and presents – though not in almsgiving: he could be generous to his poorer subjects. Soon after his accession to the throne he found that the late devastating movements of the contending armies, combined with a drought, had produced a famine in the land. He at once established houses for the distribution of free dinners, and ordered the remission of about eighty taxes, including the vexatious highway and ferry tolls, the ground cess on houses and shops, &c. Other taxes, such as those on Hindu and Muhammadan fairs, licences for spirits, gambling-hells, and houses of ill-fame, were probably abolished from religious motives: the Puritan King would not take toll for iniquity. But the rest could only have been remitted for the sake of helping a necessitous population. Aurangzib had too strong an army at his back to be obliged to cultivate popularity at the cost of a serious loss to his exchequer. It is true the remission of many of these taxes was evaded by the local officials and landowners, who continued

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to collect them with the connivance of the imperial inspectors; but this was the fault of a defective or corrupt executive, not of the Emperor’s good intention. When such infractions of his orders came to his knowledge the offenders were fined; but the royal anger was short-lived, and the culprits were too soon forgiven, and returned to their old ways of oppression. So mild, indeed, was the Emperor’s rule that throughout the imperial dominions no fear and dread of punishment remained in the hearts’ of the provincial and district officials, and the result was a state of administrative corruption and oppression worse than had ever been known under the paternal but watchful rule of Shah-Jahan30. Cynical critics have explained Aurangzib’s ineffectual generosity as an ingenious contrivance to curry favour with the people without impoverishing the treasury. Dr. Careri seems to incline to the opinion that the Emperor connived at his Amirs’ misdeeds in order to gain their support. A certain amount of conciliation of powerful chiefs, and even winking at their irregularities, is inseparable from a quasi-feudal administration, and Aurangzib may have felt himself compelled sometimes to shut his eyes lest worse things should happen. The plain interpretation, however, of the remission of taxes as an act of bounty, dictated by the Koranic injunction of benevolence to ‘the needy and the son of the road,’ is simpler and more consistent with all we know of the Emperor’s disposition. He was not the man

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to connive at illegal extortion or the oppression of the poor; and his native Indian talents for craft and dissimulation, which aided him in his intrigues for the throne, and form a tradition in all Indian native government, were probably discounted by his fellow countrymen. Europeans are always apt to exaggerate the success of oriental guile, which may indeed deceive the plain man of the west, but is comparatively innocuous among brothers of the craft.

Indeed, Aurangzib’s habit of mind did not lend itself to trusting his officials and ministers overmuch, whether they were efficient or corrupt. As has been seen, he was no believer in delegated authority; and the lessons in treachery which the history of his dynasty afforded, and in which he had himself borne a part during the war of succession, sank deep into a mind naturally prone to suspicion. His father, Shah-Jahan, said of him that, able as he was in war and in counsel, in action and administration, Aurangzib ‘was too full of subtle suspicion, and never likely to find anyone whom he could trust.’ The prophecy came only too true. Aurangzib never trusted a soul. That he lived in dread of poison is only what many Mughal princes endured: he had of course a taster – some say his daughter – to test the wholesomeness of his food, and if he took medicine his physician had to ‘lead the way, take pill for pill, dose for dose,’ that he might see their operation upon the body of the doctor before he ventured upon it himself31. His father had done

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the like before him. Aurangzib was served by a large staff of official reporters, called Waki’ navis, such as his forefathers – and for that matter the Khalifs of Baghdad, to quote high precedent – had also employed. These men, who were locally too well known to merit the opprobrious title of spies, sent regular letters from all the chief places in the provinces to keep the Great Mogul informed of all that went on in the most distant as well as the nearest districts. Their news-letters often brought information of the most important nature to the court; but they also communicated the most trifling events and conversations that came under the writers’ notice. These correspondents were of course liable to be bribed by dishonest governors, and doubtless often suppressed what they should have reported; but they acted as a salutary check upon the local officials. They were, in fact, Crown inspectors, and were held in some dread by corrupt administrators and land-owners. By their aid Aurangzib was able to exercise his passion for business, to examine the minute details of administration, and to exercise his patronage down. to the appointment of the merest clerk.

There was nothing new in this system of precaution: it was the usual oriental method. But he carried his check upon ‘delegated authority’ further than his predecessors. He adopted much the same plan as that which prevails in our own police system: he kept moving his officials about, and placed them

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as far as possible from their estates. In the words of Dr. Fryer, Aurangzib

‘governs by this maxim: To create as many Omrahs or nobles out of the Mughals or Persian followers as may be fairly entrusted, but always with this policy – To remove them to remote charges from that where their jagir or annuity arises; as not thinking it fit to trust them with forces or money in their allotted principalities, lest they should be tempted to unyoke themselves, and slip their neck from the servitude imposed upon them; for which purpose their wives and children are left as pledges at Court, while they follow the wars or are administering in cities and provinces; from whence, when they return, they have nothing they can call their own, only what they have cheated by false musters and a hard hand over both soldiers and people; which many times too, when manifest, they are forced to refund to the king, though not restore to the oppressed; for all money, as well as goods and lands, are properly his, if he call for them32.’

This is a wider generalisation than is justified by the facts, and it appears from his letters that Aurangzib repudiated the established Mughal custom of confiscating to the Crown the estates of deceased owners to the detriment of their natural heirs. But that he took every precaution that his ever alert suspicion could devise to paralyze the possible turbulence of his chief officers is true, and the growing family prestige of some of the great houses rendered it necessary. He carried his distrust to the point of nervous apprehension. He treated his sons as he treated his nobles, imprisoned his eldest for life, and kept his second

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son in captivity for six years upon a mere suspicion of disloyalty. It is true he had good reason to know the danger of a son’s rebellion. His fourth son, Prince Akbar, joined the insurgent Rajputs against his father; and another, Prince A’zam, was always intriguing against the heir apparent, in a way that must have reminded Aurangzib of his own treatment of Murad-Bakhsh. But, however well-founded in some cases, this general habit of distrust was fatal to the Emperor’s popularity. Good Muslims of his own and later days have sung his praises and extolled his virtues; but the mass of his courtiers and officers lived in dread of arousing his suspicion, and, while they feared, resented his distrustful scrutiny. Aurangzib was universally respected, but be was never loved. His father, Shah-Jahan, in his graceful, indolent, selfish old age, even more than in his vigorous prime, was pater patriae, adored of his subjects. Aurangzib was incomparably his father’s superior – a wiser man, a juster king, a more clement and benevolent ruler; his greatest calumniator, Manned, admits that his heart was really kind; yet all his self-restraint, his sense of duty, his equity, and laborious care of his people, counted for nothing in their hearts against his cold reserve and distrust. His very asceticism and economy and simplicity of life were repugnant to a nation accustomed to the splendour of Shah-Jahan’s magnificent court. The mass of his subjects felt that if they must have an alien in race and religion for their king, at least let

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him show himself a king right royally, and shed his sovereign radiance on his subjects, even while he emptied their purses upon his stately pleasures. This was just what Aurangzib could not do. The very loftiness of his nature kept his people at a distance, while his inflexible uprightness and frigid virtue chilled their hearts.

This cold austerity of Aurangzib destroyed his influence. Few kings have had better intentions, but the best will in the world will not bring popularity, or make men do what you think right merely because they know you think it so. The people saw through the suave manner and placid amiability of the judge who listened so indulgently to their petitions, and perceived a bigot’s atrophied heart behind the gracious smile. It has been usual to call the character of Aurangzib a puzzling compound of contradictions. Yet there is no inconsistency in his acts or words. His character is that of the Puritan, with all its fiery zeal, its ascetic restraint, its self-denial, its uncompromising tenacity of righteous purpose, its high ideals of conduct and of duty; and also with its cold severity, its curbed impulses, its fanaticism, its morbid distrust of ‘poor human nature,’ its essential unlovableness. Aurangzib possessed many great qualities, he practised all the virtues; but he was lacking in the one thing needful in a leader of men: he could not win love. Such a one may administer an empire, but he cannot rule the hearts of men.

Footnotes

23. Bernier, pp. 144, 145.

24. Bernier, pp. 155-161.

25. Bernier, pp. 129. 130.

26. Khafi Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, vol. vii. p. 253.

27. Bernier, pp. 167, 168, who says he saw the letter.

28. Ovington, p. 198.

29. See below, p. 198.

30. Khafi Khan, l. c., vol. vii, pp. 246–8.

31. Ovington, p. 209.

32. Dr. John Fryer’s New Account of India (Lond. 1698), p. 195.

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