In Search of Reliable Indian History

Finding reliability through sources

History
Indian
Historiography
Political Philosophy
Aurangazeb as a case for finding reliable Indian History
Author

Rick Rejeleene

Published

January 30, 2026

Abstract

This essay investigates the widening gap between Aurangazeb’s seventeenth-century documentary record and his modern political reputation. Firstly, It asks how do we know, what we know about Aurangazeb? Secondly, Why contemporaries living during his life did not demonize him? Thirdly, How did later historiography recasted him into a religious villain? To answer the questions, it introduces an Evidence-Based Square for historical reliability. Claims are then classified as high-confidence, moderate, contested, or unsupported based on convergence across these dimensions. Using Aurangazeb as a case study, this essay shows that historical reliability increases when moral narratives yield to comparative source analysis, and when divergence is treated as evidentiary contestation rather than inherited certainty

Introduction: Problem of Reliability

When Aurangazeb died in 1707, contemporary Persian chroniclers and court historians portrayed him in laudatory terms. Even dissenting voices1 of the time did not paint him in the extremely negative, almost in demonic, tones found in popular discourse. This discrepancy suggests a critical need to prioritize and disseminate reliable, primary source based historiography of early modern India over later political constructions.2–4

In this Essay, We raise fundamental questions:

  1. Absence of Vilification during Aurangazeb’s time: Why was there no such demonization of Aurangazeb during or immediately after his reign?2–4

  2. Divergence of Record and Reputation: How did a monarch who ruled India when it was a global economic powerhouse, contributing nearly 24%5 of world GDP, come to be portrayed as a terrorist in textbooks6 causing fear, political speeches, and his name removed from Indian street-names?

  3. We explore, How do we know, what we know about him?

To address these questions, this essay examines historical accounts, writings of contemporary chroniclers, and interpretations advanced by modern historians. In pursuing this inquiry, this essay draws on MS Thesis, PhD dissertation examining the identical issue, that bolsters evidence.

Reliability here means triangulation, where court chronicles, administrative records, traveler accounts, and memoirs converge, confidence rises, where they diverge, we treat claims as contested rather than as moral certainties.

Aurangazeb in 17th century
Aurangazeb, the sixth Mughal emperor (r. 1658–1707), depicted in a 17th-century portrait

1. Method: How this essay establishes reliability?

In this essay, we establish historical reliability through the Evidence-Based Square

Side 1: Source Criticism (Kritik): A longitudinal examination of primary and secondary materials, tracking the evolution of the record from 17th-century Persian manuscripts to 21st century archival scholarship.

Side 2: Cross-Source Triangulation (Triangulation): Testing historical claims across independent categories court chronicles, private memoirs, and epigraphic records. Reliability is found in congruence; divergence marks a claim as a contested narrative.

Side 3: Deconstruction of Historiographical change among writers (Drift): A genealogical tracing of how interventions, selective translation and biased paratext, by English, Late English and Nationalist writers transformed documentation into ideological narration.

Side 4: Political Contextualism (Context): Evaluating imperial actions through 17thcentury norms like the Akhlaq-i Nasiri tradition to avoid anachronism, judging the sovereign by the standards of his own era’s statecraft.

Method
How we establish reliability?

How sources are considered in this work?

A source is a produced object. {7} A source is not “the past itself,” but a human artifact produced under specific political, social, institutional, and psychological conditions.{8} Leopold von Ranke’s empiricism pioneered modern historiography which was emphasizing primary sources, archival research and ideal of history as it is (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Ranke’s method was further deepened by Historian Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre of Annales school by developing total history, where long-term structures like economy, geography, demography, climate, daily life and integrating insights from social sciences. They also formalized by 20th-century source criticism. In examining the sources, Who produced this? For whom? Under what constraints? With what incentives? Using what conventions? Two layers of Source critism we apply: External and Internal.

In external, Is this document what it claims to be? to check authenticity and in Internal, Even if authentic, how truthful or distorted is it? No source is absolute truth, Only probability via convergence. A source becomes unreliable not because it is “wrong,” but because its production conditions, incentives, genre, transmission history, and lack of independent corroboration make its claims statistically and structurally fragile.

Applicability of Evidence-Based Square

  1. Source criticism (Kritik), examination of genre, production incentives, and authorial constraints
  2. Cross source triangulation (Triangulation), assessment of convergence with independent source types
  3. Historiographical mediation (Drift), identification of later editorial or interpretive distortions
  4. Political institutional contextualization (Context), evaluation of compatibility with contemporaneous political norms

The purpose is not to rank the sources into dichotomomy of true or false. It is to give the Indian history reader an analytical tool to specificy domains of reliability within which the particular claim might be sustained.

Formal Model

Formally, for any source S and claim C, reliability is: R(C \mid S) = f(K, T, D, Cx).

Deriving from the square, formally it looks like this, R(C \mid S) = f(K, T, D, Cx)

where, K = genre constraints and production incentives (Kritik)
T = convergence with independent source types (Triangulation)
D = degree of later editorial or interpretive distortion (Drift)
Cx = compatibility with contemporaneous political norms (Context)

The results of the claims through the evidence based square coverge as

  1. High-confidence, which means the claim is consistent across all four dimensions
  2. Moderate, which means, consistent across three dimensions with minor discrepancies
  3. Contested, this means significant divergence in at least two dimensions
  4. Unsupported, this means, fails to satisfy minimal criteria in multiple dimensions

2. Aurangazeb in Indian Historical Context: Why he is important?

Aurangazeb9 10 holds a pivoted place in Indian History (1658–1707). During his time, India was the economic superpower of the Globe. Due to wealth stemming from booming textiles, agriculture, and trade surpluses, India’s economy contributed 24-25% of the Global GDP5. His empire surpassed Qing China in 1700, as largest economy and manufacturing super power. This wealth attracted European Merchants to India.

Aurangazeb was born on November 3, 1618, in Dahod, Gujarat. Aurangazeb died on March 3, 1707 in Ahmednagar at age 88.3

aurangazeb territory
Aurangazeb’s territory, Mughal Empire at its maximum extent under Aurangazeb, 1707.

Aurangazeb’s military was one of the strongest armies in the world. He extended Mughal Empire to greatest territorial extent. He had tremendous stamina spending 25 years fighting in Deccan. Aurangazeb spent most of his reign on military campaigns, personally directing operations in the Deccan for over two decades. He refused to give up and choose to fight, the hardest region of India for military conquest, Deccan.

Once territories were acquired, he implemented social and political institutional governance as patronized the book, Fatawa-e-Alamgiri (1672).11. Immediately after Aurangazeb’s death in 1707, he did not have highly negative image. There was nothing as grievous to the point of changing names of historically important roads and cities in India.

3. Political Theory of Mughals

In the pre-modern political era (c. 1600–1750), rulers were not constitutional monarchs. They were not constrained by democratic institutions, judicial reviews, or universal rights. Mughal political theory defined the king as Padshah (master of kings), whose authority transcended nobles and other elites. He was ẓillullāh fī’l-ʿālam, meaning Shadow of God on Earth.

Abu’l-Fazl, Indian historian who worked in Akbar’s court states this explicitly, “The king is the Shadow of God upon earth and the asylum of mankind.”12This formulation made the royal authority, the earthly instrument of order. he administered ʿadl, that is to make things upright and justice ʿadālah, within a divinely ordained world. It did not make the monarch divine. It made rebellion as a threat to cosmic and social order, rather than valid political disagreement or dissent.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi(1201–1274) was a Persian architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. He contributed Akhlaq-i Nāṣirī, which is Nasirean Ethics divided into ethics, domestic economy and politics. He articulated the ethical foundation of sovereignty. He defined kingship as a moral necessity.13 “The king is to the body politic what the soul is to the body. When he is just, the world prospers; when he is unjust, the order of the world is destroyed.” (Akhlaq-i Nāṣirī). Al-Tusi further argued: “Human society is composed of different classes… justice consists in keeping each within its proper rank.” In his work, rebellion is described as: “the dissolution of order (ikhtilāl-i nizām).”13

Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī (1426-1502) was a Persian theologian, whose Persian ethical work Akhlaq-i Jalālī influenced Mughal Empire. Akhlaq-i Jalālī says, “Kingship is instituted to prevent chaos (harj-o-marj), not to create equality.” and that sovereignty rests upon. The king’s duty is “the protection of roads, collection of revenue, suppression of rebels, and maintenance of the classes.” These principles were institutionalized in Mughal administration. Abu’l-Fazl summarized imperial governance as, “Government is founded upon justice, and justice upon the regulation of the classes.” “The object of government is the security of life and property and the regular realization of revenue.”12. Therefore, Mughal rulers from Babur to Aurangazeb thus operated within a shared ethical framework in which the sovereign’s primary duties were to secure welfare, trade, revenue, and public order across a religiously diverse population.

As Muzaffar Alam, Historian of Mughal Empire observes, “The Mughal conception of sovereignty was deeply rooted in the akhlaq tradition of Tusi and Davani, which supplied the ethical vocabulary of justice, hierarchy, and political order.”14 Within this tradition, political disorder was conceptualized as fitna, and law aimed at preserving public welfare (maṣlaḥah) by restoring stability.

When interpreting Aurangazeb’s reign (1658–1707), it is therefore essential to situate his policies within these pre-modern norms of sovereignty rather than modern frameworks of universal rights or constitutionalism. As John F. Richards, Historian of South Asia notes, The Mughal Empire was a fiscal military state whose legitimacy depended on revenue extraction and order and not popular consent.9

Jadunath Sarkar’s portrayal of the Mughal state as inherently theocratic thus imposes an anachronistic standard. Mughal legitimacy rested on sovereign authority, territorial integrity, and social stability, not individual political rights. Aurangazeb ruled through patronage networks and negotiated authority over a vast plural society, conducting prolonged military campaigns and frontier governance, particularly in the Deccan, characteristic of early modern imperial statecraft rather than ideological religious rule.15,16

5. Primary sources from Aurangazeb’s lifetime

Aurganzeb’s own writing

Rukaʿāt-i-Ālamgīrī, curated collection of Aurangazeb’s personal and official correspondence. The letters are from 1660s - 1707, mainly from last 25 years of his life. This was first edited & published in the year 1767. Originally in Persian, written for his sons, top generals, governors, finance ministers, and court officials. In this rare letters, we can notice how Aurangazeb thought, commanded, worried, negotiated, punished, instructed, and justified decisions in real time.

From his own writings, We can notice Rukaʿāt-i-Ālamgīrī reveals an emperor preoccupied above all with troop discipline, revenue shortfalls, noble defection, and provincial rebellion, rather than with religious conversion as a primary objective. Religious conversion does not appear as a central or organizing objective in these letters; instead, the dominant concerns are political order, military control, and the survival of imperial authority.

Applied to Rukaʿāt-i-Ālamgīrī, the Evidence-Based Square yields high reliability, the letters score strongly on Kritik as near-contemporary internal administrative documents, show clear Triangulation with court chronicles and memoirs in emphasizing revenue, military discipline, and rebellion control, exhibit low Drift despite later compilation, and fit closely with early-modern Mughal norms of fiscal-military sovereignty (Context). Accordingly, the inference that Aurangazeb’s central governing priorities were political order and imperial survival rather than systematic religious conversion qualifies as high-confidence.

Official Court Sources

The first major account of his life, Aurangazeb comes to us from Muhammad Kazim’s ʿĀlamgīrnāmah (1668–1669).2 This work began compiling, when Aurangazeb was alive. Written as an official court chronicle, it covers the early years of his rule and presents him within the conventional idiom of Mughal imperial historiography, emphasizing political legitimacy, military success, and administrative order.

After Aurangazeb died, We have an account of his life in Persian, Maasir-i ’Alamgiri written by Saqi Musta‘id Khan was completed in 1710. This account is nearly 50 year reigns of Aurangazeb, including his rise to power, the war of succession, and his later campaigns in the Deccan. Because, this is the official documents, it gives high accounts of praising him.3.

On Applying to Muhammad Kazim’s ʿĀlamgīrnāmah (1668–69) and Saqi Mustaʿid Khan’s Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī (1710), the Evidence-Based Square indicates high structural reliability for political and administrative facts, both score strongly on Kritik as near-contemporary court chronicles written within the imperial bureaucracy, show moderate-strong Triangulation with each other and with later memoir evidence for major events (accession, succession war, Deccan campaigns), exhibit low Drift at the manuscript level despite panegyric tone, and align closely with Mughal norms of sovereignty centered on legitimacy, order, and military success (Context). Consequently, claims derived from these works about chronology, campaigns, and governance practices qualify as high-confidence, while evaluative judgments about character or piety require corroboration.

Ground Level Source

Bhimsen Saxena, a Hindu soldier. He provides us, a firsthand account of Mughal campaigns in the Deccan. He was a news-writer attached to Aurangazeb’s Deccan campaigns. In year 1707, he wrote a memoir Tārīkh-i Dilkashā (History that Warms the Heart). His account is politically ambivalent towards Aurangazeb, he expresses both loyalty and anger, when contrasting with Shah Jahan. Bhimsen complaints in his account about land-lords being corrupt, exploiting peasants. He critiques the state in terms of administering. He does not frame the conflict as a religious war between Hindus and Muslims.18,26

What historiographical shift recast Aurangzeb as a villain? Did newly discovered primary sources drive this change? No such archival novelties emerged. Jadunath Sarkar 1870–1958, a pioneering Indian historian, instead proved pivotal through his exhaustive compilation of Persian farmans, akhbarat, and chronicles like the Maasir-i-Alamgiri in History of Aurangazeb 1912–1924.

Applied to Bhimsen Saxena’s Tārīkh-i Dilkashā (1707), the Evidence-Based Square indicates high reliability for ground-level political and social conditions: the memoir scores strongly on Kritik as a near-contemporary eyewitness account by a participant in the Deccan campaigns, shows good Triangulation with court chronicles and later agrarian studies in describing corruption, revenue pressure, and administrative breakdown, exhibits low Drift due to minimal later ideological reframing, and aligns with early-modern Mughal conceptions of conflict as struggles over order and control rather than communal war (Context). Accordingly, Bhimsen’s absence of Hindu–Muslim civilizational framing and his focus on governance failure qualify as high-confidence evidence against interpretations that cast Aurangazeb’s Deccan wars primarily as religious conflict.

European accounts

Italian Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717)

Niccolao Manucci was a Venetian Writer, (1638 – 1717). He arrived as a 17 year old in 1656 to Surat. He wrote accounts of Mughal Empire. He worked for Dara Shikoh, both as artilleryman and Physician. After Dara’s execution, He worked for Raja Jai Singh. He then left to work for Portuguese Goa, and then went back to work for Shah Alam in 1678. Manucci worked for East India Company and Mughal administration in Arcot. Manucci dissuaded Europeans to come to India for a career.27 He published His four-volume Storia do Mogor (1653–1708), written in Italian-Portuguese mix, detailing court scandals, harem customs, succession wars, folk beliefs (e.g cobra omens), and daily life, claiming firsthand accuracy. He died in Chennai.27

His writings are stylized as moral framing and court scandal style. In Manucci’s account is where you find a mix of observations colored by his Venetian adventurer’s biases, personal experiences, and occasional exaggerations rather than pure inversion or wholesale negation.27

Applied to Niccolao Manucci’s Storia do Mogor, the Evidence-Based Square yields mixed reliability, the account scores moderately on Kritik as a near-contemporary eyewitness memoir but one shaped by literary conventions of scandal narrative and personal self-presentation; it achieves partial Triangulation where descriptions of court life, succession conflict, and imperial personalities converge with Bernier and Fryer, but weak convergence for motives and policy interpretation as it exhibits moderate Drift due to later editorial transmission and Manucci’s own moralizing style; and it fits early-modern political context only loosely (Context) because personal anecdotes are often framed through European cultural assumptions. Accordingly, Storia do Mogor is best treated as supplementary evidence for social texture and court culture, not as a high-confidence source for state policy or religious motivation.

French François Bernier (1620–1688)

François Bernier (1620–1688), a French physician and philosopher, resided in India from 1659 to 1668 and served as personal doctor to Danishmand Khan, a senior noble at Aurangazeb’s court. His Travels in the Mogul Empire was translated into English multiple times from the 1670s onward and became one of the most influential European sources on Mughal India. Although not English, Bernier’s work profoundly shaped subsequent English historiography from writers including, Alexander Dow, Robert Orme, James Mill, and later Vincent Smith all relied directly or indirectly on his descriptions.

Bernier’s central thesis was that, Mughal India suffered from structural economic weakness due to the absence of private land ownership and the concentration of property in the sovereign. He says, “The King is the sole proprietor of the land in his dominions. Hence it follows that there are no hereditary estates, no nobles attached to the soil, no middle order of men.” in his accounts of Travels in the Mogul Empire.

He says on confiscation and insecurity, “A Timar, or Jagir, is never held by the same person for many years; it is transferred at the pleasure of the prince, who thus keeps all his officers dependent and trembling.” He observes, the condition of the peasantry, “The country is ruined by the necessity of maintaining so many armies, and by the avarice of the governors… The peasant is deprived of the means of subsistence, and whole provinces are gradually rendered desert.”

On Aurangazeb personally, he says, Aureng-Zebe is a man of great capacity, indefatigable in business, exact in justice, austere in manners, and profoundly skilled in the law of Mahomet.”

Applied to François Bernier’s Travels in the Mogul Empire, the Evidence-Based Square indicates moderate high reliability for institutional and political analysis: the account scores well on Kritik as a near-contemporary court insider observing land tenure, jagir transfers, taxation, and elite politics firsthand; shows strong Triangulation with Persian chronicles and later administrative histories on fiscal insecurity and permanent militarization; exhibits moderate Drift due to translation history and Bernier’s theoretical framing of oriental despotism; and remains broadly compatible with early modern Mughal fiscal-military state norms. Accordingly, Bernier’s depiction of Aurangazeb as austere, administratively exacting, and politically rational, rather than primarily a religious fanatic, qualifies as moderate to high-confidence evidence for the structural character of his rule.

Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689)

Jean Baptiste Tavernier was a French Gem merchant and traveler. He made six voyages to Persia and India between the years 1630 and 1668. He published, Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Six Voyages, 1676). He was a remarkable cultural anthropologist. His Six Voyages became a best seller and was translated into German, Dutch, Italian, and English during his lifetime.

Tavernier provides commercial and administrative observations from repeated travels in Mughal territory. His depiction of Aurangazeb is pragmatic and limited: the emperor appears mainly as a regulator of trade, taxation, and security. Tavernier notes strict governance and personal austerity but does not emphasize religious persecution as a defining trait.

Applied to Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Les Six Voyages (1676), the Evidence-Based Square indicates moderate reliability for economic and administrative characterization: the account scores well on Kritik as a near-contemporary commercial travel narrative focused on observable institutions (trade regulation, taxation, security), achieves partial Triangulation where its depiction of imperial austerity and fiscal control converges with Bernier and court chronicles, exhibits low–moderate Drift due to later editorial transmission but limited ideological paratext, and fits closely with early-modern Mughal norms of sovereign responsibility for revenue and order (Context). Accordingly, Tavernier’s portrayal of Aurangazeb as a strict but pragmatic ruler rather than a religious persecutor qualifies as moderate- onfidence evidence within the domain of economic governance.

John Ovington (1653–1731)

John Olvington was English East India Company chaplain, who was in Bombay and Surat in 1680s and 1690s. His travel narrative A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689 (first published 1696/1698) is a European eyewitness account of life in the important Mughal port city of Surat under the Mughal Empire. Although, he doesn’t provide direct observation on Aurangazeb. His narrative offers contextual European commentary on the socio-economic and religious environment of northern India during Aurangazeb reign, including reference to practices such as sati and how they were viewed at the time. He finds a sense of ordered authority under the empire that regulated European commercial activity and local society.

Applied to John Ovington’s A Voyage to Surat (1696/98), the Evidence-Based Square indicates contextual rather than direct evidentiary value: the account scores moderately on Kritik as a near-contemporary eyewitness description of Mughal urban and commercial life, but weakly for imperial decision-making since Aurangazeb himself is not directly observed; it achieves limited Triangulation where descriptions of fiscal regulation, port administration, and social order converge with other European travelers and Company records; it exhibits moderate Drift due to Christian moral framing and genre conventions of travel literature; and it remains broadly compatible with Mughal norms of sovereignty centered on trade regulation and public order (Context). Accordingly, Ovington’s narrative provides moderate-confidence background evidence on the institutional and socio-economic environment of Aurangazeb’s reign, but not on his personal motives or religious policy.

6. Accounts after Aurangazeb death: Earliest Persian critiques

Khafi Khan

After Aurangazeb died in 1707, Mughals still were in charge, his son Bahadur Shah became the Emperor.
It was not until 1757 - 1765, the British came to power in Bengal through English East India Company. Khafi Khan’s Muntakhab al-Lubab’s is a Persian language book about the history of India. It was completed around 1732. Khafi in this work, asks – What went wrong during Mughal Rule?

As he is explaining to Mughal elites, who are living as consequence of Aurangazeb’s policies. In this the context is set towards Mughal decline. This account is was a critique of policy, not a condemnation of Islam or even Hindu vs Muslim.4

Applied to Khafi Khan’s Muntakhab al-Lubāb (c. 1732), the Evidence-Based Square indicates high reliability for policy evaluation in the early post-Aurangazeb period: the work scores strongly on Kritik as a near-contemporary Persian chronicle written for Mughal elites reflecting on recent imperial decline, achieves moderate Triangulation with later administrative histories and fiscal analyses regarding overextension and governance failures, exhibits low Drift since it predates english mediation and communal paratextual framing, and remains fully compatible with early-modern Mughal political theory that interpreted disorder in terms of statecraft and administrative breakdown rather than religious conflict (Context). Accordingly, Khafi Khan’s diagnosis of decline as a consequence of policy and imperial overstretch qualifies as high-confidence evidence against later communalized interpretations of Aurangazeb’s reign.

7. The English Administrators and Historians

John Fryer: Early English East India Company Eyewitness (1670s)

John Fryer (1650–1733) was an English physician employed by the East India Company who travelled extensively in Mughal India between 1672 and 1681. This was during the mature period of Aurangazeb’s reign. His account, A New Account of East India and Persia (1698) is one of the earliest English eyewitness descriptions of Mughal administration, taxation, urban life, and imperial authority under Aurangazeb.

Fryer observed the empire not as a court insider like Bernier, but as a Company surgeon moving between Surat, Bombay, and inland trading centers. His perspective reflects early English commercial anxieties about Mughal fiscal power and political absolutism, while remaining largely descriptive rather than ideological.

He says, “The present King Aureng-Zebe is a Prince of indefatigable industry, severe to himself, parsimonious in his Diet, sparing in his Sleep, and exact in the execution of Justice, which he often administers in person.” On Revenues and Taxes, he says, “The King’s Revenues are vast, yet the People groan under heavy Taxes; for what is gathered with one hand is consumed by the other, in maintaining Armies perpetually on foot.” “No Man in this Country can call anything his own longer than the King pleaseth, for upon the least suspicion, his Estate is seized, and himself either imprisoned or undone.”

Applied to John Fryer’s A New Account of East-India and Persia (1698), the Evidence-Based Square yields moderate–high reliability: the account scores strongly on Kritik as a near-contemporary eyewitness description of Mughal taxation and administration, shows partial Triangulation with Bernier and Persian chronicles on fiscal pressure and permanent militarization, exhibits low–moderate Drift, and aligns with early-modern fiscal-military models of sovereignty (Context). Accordingly, Fryer’s depiction of Aurangazeb as austere and administratively exacting rather than religiously fanatical qualifies as moderate to high-confidence institutional evidence.

Robert Orme

Robert Orme (1728 – 1801) was a British East India Company official and historian. He authored multi-volume accounts of Mughal-Maratha dynamics. He relied on relied on secondary European sources (Bernier, Manucci) for his accounts.

He was the Son of a British East India Company physician and surgeon. He entered the service of the Company in Bengal in 1743. He was regarded as an authority on India. He was Member of the Council at Fort St. George, Madras, between 1754 and 1758. In that capacity he was instrumental in the sending of a young Robert Clive as the head of a punitive expedition in 1757 to Calcutta. After the Black Hole incident of 1756. He returned to England in 1760, and was appointed as historiographer to the British East India Company in 1769. He published, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from the Year 1745, and Historical Fragments of the Mughal Empire.

The text provides a detailed narrative of the struggle for supremacy in India between the British and French East India Companies from 1745, including the Seven Years’ War era. Originally published in London by John Nourse between 1763 and 1778.

Applying the Evidence-Based Square, Robert Orme’s work comes as moderate-confidence for late-Mughal military and structural description. However, low-confidence for interpretation of Aurangzeb’s motives or religious policy. His accounts score weakly on Kritik, as they are written at significant temporal distance and rely heavily on secondary European sources using Bernier and Manucci, rather than Persian archival material. Triangulation is partial, converging on broad patterns of imperial overstretch and military strain but not on causal explanations. Drift is high, shaped by East India Company institutional perspective and post-Plassey political framing that recasts Mughal decline in ways favorable to British legitimacy. While Orme’s descriptions broadly fit early-modern fiscal-military state models as Context. His interpretations lack proximity to court decision-making. Accordingly, Orme is reliable for structural decline and military chronology, but unreliable as an authority on Aurangzeb’s ideology, religious intent, or state policy formation

Jonathan Scott

Jonathan Scott (1754–1829) was English East India Company officer. He was an English orientalist, linguist, translator, and scholar specializing in Arabic and Persian languages and literature. He worked as Persian secretary to Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal. He helped found the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 before returning to England around 1785. In 1802 Scott was appointed professor of oriental languages at the Royal Military College, but resigned that post in 1805. He collected materials on the history of the Deccan and the successors of Aurangazeb to better understand the decline of the Mughal Empire.

In his work, A Translation of the Memoirs of Eradut Khan, a Nobleman of Hindostan, contains interesting anecdotes of the Emperor Alumgeer Aurungzebe, and of his Successors Shaw Aulum and Jehaundar Shaw; in which are displayed the causes of the very precipitate decline of the Mogul Empire in India. It was Published in London in 1786.

Aurangazeb appears through Khan’s eyewitness anecdotes as a devout, austere ruler deeply engaged in Deccan campaigns, religious policies, and administrative duties, with emphasis on his personal piety and interactions with nobles like Khan. The tone is generally respectful yet candid, highlighting both imperial authority and signs of overextension leading to instability, without overt condemnation reflecting a courtier’s balanced view amid later British orientalist lenses.

Applied to Jonathan Scott’s translation of The Memoirs of Eradut Khan (1786), the Evidence-Based Square indicates moderate–high reliability for court-level political characterization, the account scores well on Kritik as a translated firsthand memoir of a Mughal noble close to Aurangazeb’s administration, achieves partial Triangulation where descriptions of piety, Deccan campaigns, and imperial discipline converge with Persian chronicles and Bernier, exhibits moderate Drift due to translation and late-eighteenth-century editorial mediation, and remains compatible with early-modern Mughal norms of sovereignty and court culture (Context). Accordingly, its portrayal of Aurangazeb as austere, administratively engaged, and politically overextended—rather than ideologically fanatical—qualifies as moderate-confidence evidence for elite court perspectives.

Henry Elliot and John Dowson

Henry Miers Elliot (1808 – 1853) was a British Civil Servant. He died earlier, without publishing. John Dowson edited, published these as “The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, published in eight volumes between 1867 and 1877”. This work translated Arabic & Persian Muslim chroniclers.

Note

In the Preface, Elliot & Dowson’s works says few of the following,

When the full light of European truth and discernment begins to shed its beams upon the obscurity of the past, and to relieve us from the necessity of appealing to the Native Chroniclers of the time, who are, for the most part, dull, prejudiced, ignorant, and superficial.28

If, however, we turn our eyes to the present Muhammadan kingdoms of India, and examine the character of the princes, and the condition of the people subject to their sway, we may fairly draw a parallel between ancient and modern times, under circumstances and relations nearly similar. We behold kings, even of our own creation, sunk in sloth and debauchery, and emulating the vices of a Caligula or a Commodus.28

Under such rulers, we cannot wonder that the fountains of justice are corrupted; that the state revenues are never collected without violence and outrage; that villages are burnt, and their inhabitants mutilated or sold into slavery; that the officials, so far from affording protection, are themselves the chief robbers and usurpers; that parasites and eunuchs revel in the spoil of plundered provinces; and that the poor find no redress against the oppressor’s wrong and proud man’s contumely. When we witness these scenes under our own eyes, where the supremacy of the British Government, the benefit of its example, and the dread of its interference, might be expected to operate as a check upon the progress of misrule, can we be surprised that former princes, when free from such restraints, should have studied even less to preserve the people committed to their charge, in wealth, peace, and prosperity?28

To contextualize the Preface, Elliot was employed by English East India company for 26 years. John Dowson was an academic professor at University College London. Elliot and Dowson’s Preface is indicating how earlier Mughal rule was with violence, outrage and the poor find no redress against the oppressor’s wrong.

This preface indicate support for their own British government by stating, how British administration provided more roads, and their administration was far better than early Mughal rule. It is important to note, In the index, and way topics are organized in Indian History told its own Historians compiled by Elliot and Dowson. The index does not indicate any moral framing.28

The preface states, the crimes, vices, and occasional virtues of Musulman despotism.28

Note

Sir Henry Elliot’s Original Preface

From them, nevertheless, we can gather, that the common people must have been plunged into the lowest depths of wretchedness and despondency. The few glimpses we have, even among the short Extracts in this single volume, of Hindús slain for disputing with Muhammadans, of general prohibitions against processions, worship, and ablutions, and of other intolerant measures, of idols mutilated, of temples razed, of forcible conversions and marriages, of proscriptions and confiscations, of murders and massacres, and of the sensuality and drunkenness of the tyrants who enjoined them, show us that this picture is not overcharged, and it is much to be regretted that we are left to draw it for ourselves from out the mass of ordinary occurrences, recorded by writers who seem to sympathize with no virtues, and to abhor no vices. Other nations exhibit the same atrocities, but they are at least spoken of, by some, with indignation and disgust. Whenever, therefore, in the course of this Index, a work is characterized as excellent, admirable, or valuable, it must be remembered that these terms are used relatively to the narrative only; and it is but reasonable to expect that the force of these epithets will be qualified by constant advertence to the deficiencies just commented on.28

But, though the intrinsic value of these works may be small, they will still yield much that is worth observation to any one who will attentively examine them. They will serve to dispel the mists of ignorance by which the knowledge of India is too much obscured, and show that the history of the Muhammadan period remains yet to be written. They will make our native subjects more sensible of the immense advantages accruing to them under the mildness and and equity of our rule. If instruction were sought for from them, we should be spared the rash declarations respecting Muhammadan India, which are frequently made by persons not otherwise ignorant. Characters now renowned only for the splendour of their achievements, and a succession of victories, would, when we withdraw the veil of flattery, and divest them of rhetorical flourishes, be set forth in a truer light, and probably be held up to the execration of mankind. We should no longer hear bombastic Bábús, enjoying under our Government the highest degree of personal liberty, and many more political privileges than were ever conceded to a conquered nation, rant about patriotism, and the degradation of their present position.28

Applied to Elliot and Dowson’s History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians (1867–77), the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for interpretation but high value for raw source access, the compilation scores weakly on Kritik as a english translation project shaped by Company officials with explicit civilizational and political incentives, achieves limited Triangulation because moral conclusions are not independently derived from the Persian texts themselves, exhibits high Drift due to heavy paratextual framing in the Preface that recasts selective episodes into a narrative of Muhammadan despotism and British moral superiority, and violates early-modern political Context by judging seventeenth-century sovereignty through nineteenth-century liberal norms. Accordingly, the volumes are best treated as high-confidence repositories of translated excerpts, but low-confidence authorities for motive, religious policy, or moral characterization of Aurangazeb.

Alexander Dow

Alexander Dow (1736-1779) was a Scottish infantry officer in the employ of the East India Company. At the publication of this work, The English East India Company had gained Bengal by 1761. They gained formal legal authority Diwani rights in 1765. Alexander Dow published History of Hindostan 1772, Dissertation on the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan and an Enquiry into the State of Bengal, with a Plan for Restoring that Kingdom to its former Prosperity.

In this work, Aurangazeb is painted negatively. Dow’s depiction was influential in shaping the British english-era understanding of the Mughal Empire and its decline. He portrays Aurangazeb as a religious bigot whose rigid adherence to Islamic law (Sharia), reversal of tolerant policies, and reimposition of the jizya tax on non-Muslims created unrest and conflict within the empire.29

The Introduction of Muslim-Hindu dichotomy in Indian History

Note

History of Hindostan (1772) and his Dissertation on Despotism, Dow argues that, Aurangazeb transformed the Mughal state into a despotic absolutism driven by oriental political traditions, enabled by Sharia. He persecuted Hindus and reimposed jizya out of religious fanaticism, destroyed temples and thereby destabilized the empire and caused its decline.

It is in Indian History told its own Historians, where, the The Muhammadan period turns violent, and that Indians are grateful for the British Rule. The British Rule is on the Civilizing mission to rescue India from Tyrannical, Muhammadan period.29

Applied to Alexander Dow’s History of Hindostan (1772), the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for causal and motivational interpretation: the work scores weakly on Kritik as a post-conquest Company officer’s synthesis written far from the events and shaped by administrative–political incentives; shows poor Triangulation, since its claims about “Islamic theocracy,” systematic persecution, and civilizational conflict do not converge with Mughal chronicles, imperial correspondence, or near-contemporary memoirs; exhibits high Drift through ideological framing that introduces a Hindu–Muslim binary and recasts fiscal and political policies as religious fanaticism; and fails the Context test by judging seventeenth-century Mughal governance through eighteenth-century European notions of despotism and civilizational hierarchy. Accordingly, Dow is best treated as a english historiographical constructor of the religious villain narrative, not as a reliable authority on Aurangazeb’s policies or motives.

English Historian James Mill

James Mill (1773-1836) was a Scottish-born writer and political philosopher, also known as the father of the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Mill had never traveled to India and knew none of the Indian languages. His objective was to gather, read, and evaluate the vast amount of written documentation about India that existed in European languages to produce a comprehensive “critical history”–one that would render judgements about both the events covered and the evidence on which knowledge of these events was based.

James Mill, published, The History of British India in a three-volume work charting the history of Company rule in India. Mill categorized Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods on the basis of dominant political powers and their religious affiliations.

Mill states in the preface, A duly qualified man can obtain more knowledge of India in one year in his closet in England than he could obtain during the course of the longest life, by the use of his eyes and ears in India. Mill goes on in this preface to say that his work is a “critical, or judging history”, encompassing singularly harsh judgements of Hindu customs and denouncements of a “backward” culture notable for superstition, ignorance, and the mistreatment of women.

He says on Hindus, a people of great gentleness and modesty, of submission to authority, and of contentment with their condition; but of extreme pusillanimity, and abjectness of spirit… in the highest degree unenterprising… shrinking from all exertion… careless of improvement… satisfied with being merely where they are.

James Mill’s History of British India does not portray Aurangazeb as a uniquely intolerant or fanatical ruler, He is depicted as part of the broader “Muslim period” (1206–1707), characterized by despotism, stagnation, and arbitrary rule common to all pre-British Indian rulers—Hindu or Muslim. He marks Aurangazeb’s death in 1707 as the start of Mughal decline but focuses on systemic flaws like unchanging tyranny rather than personal religious fanaticism.

However, It can be condluded from Mill’s work the perception of being negative about Muslim rule in general. The Aurangazeb as religious villain narrative is a later historiographical construction, not an original english consensus.

Applied to James Mill’s History of British India, the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for historical interpretation and motive analysis: the work scores weakly on Kritik as a desk-based synthesis written without linguistic access to Persian sources or firsthand observation, shows poor Triangulation since its periodization and judgments rely on selective European intermediaries rather than independent primary convergence, exhibits high Drift through overt philosophical and civilizational pre-framing (“Hindu–Muslim–British” stages and moral ranking of cultures), and fails the Context test by evaluating pre-modern Mughal sovereignty using utilitarian and liberal standards foreign to seventeenth-century political thought. Accordingly, Mill is best treated as a system-level english theorist of “oriental despotism,” not a reliable source on Aurangazeb’s policies or intentions, and his work supports the conclusion that the specific “religious villain” image of Aurangazeb emerged later rather than forming part of an early english consensus

Francis Gladwin:

Francis Gladwin (1745-1813) was a noted Persian scholar who translated the Ain-i-Akbari. His birth years and death are approximation as it is not clear. He served in the Bengal Army of the East India Company. Gladwin’s study was recommended and encouraged by British administration such as Warren Hastings.

Francis Gladwin published, The History of Hindostan, During the Reigns of Jehangir, Shahjehan, and Aurungzebe. It provided the British narrative histories like Muntakhabu-t-Tawarikh, focusing on reigns, events, policies, and interpretive contrasts.

He published his works basing from Persian manuscripts, building on his prior translation of Abu’l-Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari. It details political, constitutional, and social shifts in Hindostan, including Jahangir’s “golden chain of justice” edict and Aurangazeb’s orthodox Islamic policies on land rights and governance.

The preface outlines post-Akbar changes, Jahangir’s humane regulations, Shah Jahan’s architectural zenith, and Aurangazeb’s empire peak amid Deccan expansions and religious impositions. It draws from authentic sources to describe events like Jahangir’s 1605 coronation, provincial jagirs as Bahar to Kotebeddeen and urban foundations like Fatehabad. Gladwin critiques contrasting imperial styles—Akbar’s tolerant philanthropy versus Aurangazeb’s coercive proselytism—while analyzing revenue progression to Aurangazeb’s era.

On Applying to Francis Gladwin’s History of Hindostan, the Evidence-Based Square indicates moderate reliability for political and administrative facts but limited reliability for motive attribution, the work scores moderately on Kritik as a Persian-based scholarly compilation grounded in authentic manuscripts, achieves partial Triangulation with court chronicles for chronology and institutions, exhibits moderate Drift due to orientalist framing in the preface that contrasts Akbar’s tolerance with Aurangazeb’s coercion and only partially satisfies Context by interpreting Mughal policy through late-eighteenth-century moral categories. Accordingly, Gladwin is best used as moderate-confidence evidence for events and governance structures, not as a decisive authority on Aurangazeb’s religious intentions.

James Talboys Wheeler

James Talboys Wheeler was a bureaucrat-historian of the British Raj. He believed that the Europeans in India were largely ignorant of the Hindu perspective on family life. He was a Professor of Moral and Mental Philosophy at Madras Presidency College, now Presidency College.

James Talboys Wheeler published, The History of India: Mussulman Rule in 1876.
Subsequently, He also published The History of India: Moghul Empire — Aurangazeb(1876).

He chronicles the decline of the Mughal Empire due to bigotry,, rebellions, and the aftermath of Aurangazeb’s policies. The volume specifically highlights Aurangazeb’s reign, detailing his rise to power, religious policies, and the resulting instability.

Applied to James Talboys Wheeler’s History of India: Mussulman Rule and Moghul Empire — Aurangazeb (1876), the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for causal interpretation: the work scores weakly on Kritik as a late-english bureaucratic synthesis written far from the events and shaped by Raj-era administrative ideology; shows poor Triangulation, since its claims that religious bigotry was the primary cause of Mughal decline do not converge with Mughal court chronicles, imperial correspondence, or near-contemporary memoirs; exhibits high Drift through moralized narrative framing that foregrounds “religious policy” as the dominant explanatory variable; and fails the Context test by interpreting seventeenth-century imperial governance using Victorian ethical categories. Accordingly, Wheeler is best treated as a english narrative consolidator of the Aurangazeb-as-bigot thesis, not as a reliable authority on Mughal political causation or policy motives.

Vincent A. Smith:

Vincent Arthur Smith (1843 –1920) was an Irish Historian, member of the Indian Civil Service, and curator. He was one of the prominent figures in Indian historiography during the British Raj.

He published, The Oxford History of India around 1919/1920 by Clarendon Press. It was a comprehensive historical survey of India from ancient times to 1911, covering political, social, religious, and artistic aspects, and is considered a significant resource for understanding India’s past through its various eras such as ancient, Hindu, Muhammadan, and British.

In the work, it describes, from the time that Aurungzeb ascended the throne, a great persecution of the Hindoos commenced, their temples were pulled down, their places of religious resort destroyed; their images mutilated; and a tax was levied on every house. The Rajpoots of the adjacent country were conquered, made obedient to the Emperor.

Applied to Vincent A. Smith’s Oxford History of India (1919/20), the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for motive and causal interpretation: the account scores weakly on Kritik as a late english synthesis written over two centuries after Aurangazeb, shows poor Triangulation since its claims of systematic religious persecution do not converge with imperial correspondence, court chronicles, or near-contemporary memoirs, exhibits high Drift by reproducing and intensifying the moralized narrative inherited from Dow, Elliot, and Wheeler, and fails the Context test by interpreting selective acts of repression through twentieth-century communal and liberal categories. Accordingly, Smith’s portrayal represents a consolidation of the english “religious villain” tradition, not high-confidence historical evidence for Aurangazeb’s governing motives or state policy.

Stanley Lane Poole:

Stanley Lane Poole (1854 – 1931) was a British archaeologist and orientalist. He published Aurangzib and the Decay of the Mughal Empire around 1896 and 1908. The book argues that Aurangazeb’s policies, particularly his reversal of Akbar’s tolerant approach, were a primary cause of the Mughal Empire’s decline, despite his long and powerful rule.

Every plan that he formed came to little good, every enterprise failed, such is the comment of the Muhammadan historian on the career of the sovereign whom he justly extols for his ’devotion, austerity, and justice and his incomparable courage, long-suffering, and judgment. Aurangazeb’s life had been a vast failure.

Applied to Stanley Lane-Poole’s Aurangzib and the Decay of the Mughal Empire (1896/1908), the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for causal interpretation, the work scores weakly on Kritik as a late-English biographical synthesis written far from the events and shaped by Victorian moral historiography; shows poor Triangulation, since its claim that religious policy was the primary cause of imperial decline does not converge with Mughal court chronicles, imperial correspondence, or near-contemporary memoirs; exhibits high Drift by recasting selective administrative failures into a moral narrative of “personal failure”; and fails the Context test by judging early-modern imperial governance through nineteenth-century ethical expectations. Accordingly, Lane-Poole is best treated as a english moral interpreter of decline and not a high-confidence authority on Aurangazeb’s policies or motivations.

William Irvine — Late English Archival Historian of Aurangazeb’s Administration:

William Irvine (1840–1911) was a British civil servant and historian specializing in Mughal administration. Unlike Dow or Lane-Poole, Irvine worked extensively with Persian archival material and Mughal court chronicles. He edited and translated Niccolao Manucci’s Storia do Mogor and authored The Later Mughals (1904).

Irvine approached Aurangazeb less as a moral symbol and more as an administrator governing an overextended imperial system.

He says, on Aurangazeb’s character: Aurangazeb was laborious, methodical, frugal, and possessed of great powers of endurance. His private life was simple to austerity. On religious policy: That he was a strict Sunni Muslim is unquestionable; but it is incorrect to represent his whole policy as dictated solely by religious bigotry. On imperial overstretch: The Deccan wars drained the treasury, exhausted the army, and destroyed the financial equilibrium of the empire.

On Mughal decline, The decay of the Mughal Empire was due less to the personal character of Aurangazeb than to the administrative impossibility of governing so vast a dominion with the machinery then available. Irvine thus marks a transition from moralized english narratives toward structural explanation, anticipating later twentieth-century scholarship that would emphasize logistics, military finance, and institutional limits rather than religious fanaticism.

Applied to William Irvine’s The Later Mughals (1904), the Evidence-Based Square indicates high reliability for administrative and structural analysis: the work scores strongly on Kritik due to direct use of Persian archival material and court chronicles, shows good Triangulation with imperial correspondence and contemporary memoirs on taxation, military strain, and governance limits, exhibits low Drift because interpretation is restrained and minimally moralized, and aligns closely with early-modern fiscal-military models of sovereignty (Context). Accordingly, Irvine’s portrayal of Aurangazeb as an austere, methodical ruler constrained by institutional limits rather than driven by religious bigotry qualifies as high-confidence historical interpretation

Early Indian Nationalist Historians: The Reversal of Villains

A similar narrative pattern appears in Indian nationalist economic history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Writers such as Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt recast British rule as the principal cause of India’s decline, most notably through the drain of wealth thesis and analyses of english deindustrialization. In this reversal, the moral roles shift, where english historians had emphasized Muhammadan despotism, nationalist historians identified British exploitation as the central historical crime. Yet the underlying structure of explanation remains the same. Complex historical processes are reduced to a single dominant villain.

8. Paratext and the Making of a Villain by Jadunath Sarkar

Sir Jadunath Sarkar was a prolific Indian Historian. He lived from 1870–1958. Jadunath Sarkar worked tirelessly on gathering evidence and collecting primary sources. Few Indian Historians of the early twentieth century matched his archival energy, linguistic competence, or sheer productivity.

He travelled extensively to obscure locations, often by foot or third-class train, to locate historical sites and documents. Over his lifetime he produced more than twenty major volumes on Mughal and Maratha history. Many of which remain indispensable repositories of translated documents and narrative detail. His prose is vivid, confident, and accessible. His command of Persian chronicles was exceptional for his generation.

Jadunath

History of Aurangazeb by Jadunath Sarkar

Jadunath Sarkar’s Method

The issue with Jadunath Sarkar’s method is not primarily with his industry or his access to sources. The primary issue is with how meaning is imposed on those sources through paratext of chapter titles, thematic framing, headings, summaries, and moral judgments that guide the reader before the evidence is examined. In Sarkar’s hands, paratext does not merely organize material, it frequently pre‑interprets it. Chapter titles like “MATHURA HINDUS OPPRESSED”, “Hindu Reaction”, “Islamic State Church” with pre-determined para-text chapter heading, The Muslim State is a theocracy, hence toleration is impossible. All these are preloaded moral verdicts.

Jadunath

Jadunath Sarkar with Chapter Titles and Subtitles

Jadunath Sarkar inserted themes that did not match correctly with Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī translation. For example, Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī was complied in 1710 by Musta’id Khan, a Court official. It only has high praise, yet Jadunath Sarkar uses the same source and creates the image of religious bigotry. This claim is not derived from any single Mughal document but appears as an interpretive axiom placed before the presentation of administrative evidence.

Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī, does not present Aurangazeb as uniquely cruel, fanatical, or driven by systematic hatred toward Hindus, Nor does it portray the Mughal state as an ideologically rigid theocracy. On the contrary, it documents Hindu nobles holding mansabs, temple endowments being renewed in some regions, and pragmatic political alliances. So, Sarkar’s claim that the Mughal state was structurally a theocracy is untenable in light of revenue records showing sustained Hindu participation at senior administrative levels.

Historian Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, note, Sarkar often converted political conflicts especially those involving Rajput or temple linked elites are presented as communal narratives by his choice of chapter structure and vocabulary.30. So this distortion is from mistranslation from Persian text, but from macro framing, how evidence is group, morally summarized.

Jadunath Sarkar

Jadunath Sarkar, Madhura Hindu

In other words, Sarkar’s paratext (titles, headings, thematic packaging) can become an interpretive machine that manufactures a more uniformly negative Aurangazeb. Due to this reason, Sarkar’s His moral framing is methodologically unreliable and historiographically contested.3,31

Jadunath Sarkar

Jadunath Sarkar, Hindu reaction
Methodological Critique of Sarkar’s History of Aurangazeb

During Jadunath Sarkar’s era (1910-1930), contemporary Indian Historians noticed this discomfort with moral framing and presenting seventeenth century politics into communal categories. R. C. Majumdar, admiring archival labour, warned that his interpretive conclusions often moved faster than his evidence32. S. R. Sharma criticized Sarkar for reducing complex fiscal and military conflicts to religious causation and for treating Mughal chronicles as transparent fact rather than rhetorical court documents33.

Summary of Issues:

Sarkar’s paratext, chapter titles, headings, and thematic framing—systematically pre-interprets evidence, violating his own professed objectivity31.

  1. Misleading Chapter Titles: “Hindu Reaction” mischaracterizes what was a political conflict between Aurangazeb and Rajput rulers over territory. The chapter also includes Sikhs, who do not identify as Hindus—an elementary factual error21,22.

  2. Unsupported Absolute Claims: The assertion that “the Muslim State is a theocracy, hence toleration is impossible” contradicts administrative evidence: Jesuit missionaries visited the Mughal court, Hindu nobles held mansabs, and temple endowments were renewed in multiple regions3.

  3. Loaded Language: Terms like “robbers,” “blackmail,” and “servile” transform legitimate state practices into criminality, substituting political analysis with moral condemnation.

  4. Source Bias: Sarkar relies heavily on english gazetteers and romanticized accounts like James Tod while treating Mughal chronicles uncritically and ignoring revenue records documenting sustained Hindu participation at senior administrative levels30.

  5. Unsubstantiated Core Claims, The assertion that Aurangazeb pursued “forcible conversion of the Hindus” lacks documentary evidence and converts a complex succession crisis into a teleological narrative of communal conquest.

Applied to Jadunath Sarkar’s History of Aurangazeb, the Evidence-Based Square indicates low reliability for interpretive claims despite high archival value: his work scores moderately on Kritik for extensive use of Persian sources, but weakly for inference because paratext (chapter titles, headings, summaries) pre-structures conclusions before evidence is examined; shows poor Triangulation, since claims of “theocracy,” communal causation, and systematic persecution do not converge with Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī, imperial correspondence, or revenue records; exhibits high Drift by converting administrative and territorial conflicts into moralized religious narratives through macro-framing rather than mistranslation; and fails the Context test by reading seventeenth-century Mughal statecraft through twentieth-century communal categories. Accordingly, Sarkar is best treated as a major documentary collector but a methodologically unreliable interpreter, whose paratextual framing materially contributed to the modern image of Aurangazeb as a religious villain

Counter-Refutation of objections

To ensure historical reliability, this essay engages with major historiographical objections, especially from Nationalist and Hindutva-aligned critics, and answers them using contextual and material evidence grounded in the Evidence-Based Square.

  1. Temple Destruction and the “Apologist” Charge Critics’ View: Aurangazeb’s 1669 order to demolish temples, cited in the Maasir-i-Alamgiri, proves a religious motive and reflects deep Hindu trauma.

Refutation: The April 1669 decree targeted specific centers such as Thatta, Multan, Benares teaching “false books,” not a universal proscription. Richard Eaton’s data mapping and architectural evidence show selectivity: thousands of temples remained active, including in Aurangazeb’s own Deccan campaigns24. Correlation with local rebellions located in Mathura, Rajasthan, Kashi—indicates political reprisals, not theological purges.

  1. Jadunath Sarkar’s Method and Theocracy Thesis Critics’ View: Downplaying Sarkar’s reading of an Islamic theocracy, ignores his linguistic expertise and archival labor. Refutation: Empirical data contradict Sarkar’s conclusion. As M. Athar Ali documents, Hindu mansabdars increased from 22.5% under Shah Jahan to 31.6% under Aurangazeb. Sarkar’s framework, rooted in english religion as nation assumptions, anachronistically recasts feudal conflicts as communal. Aurangazeb’s wars against Bijapur and Golconda, both Muslim reveals a political, not confessional, logic16.

  2. Sikh Martyrdom and Guru Tegh Bahadur Critics’ View: Using Persian chronicles invalidates Sikh tradition, which views the Guru’s execution as defense of faith and conscience. Refutation: Mughal and Sikh narratives embody different truths. Persian sources describe sedition such as raising revenue, mobilizing forces, whereas Sikh Gurbilas texts preserve spiritual testimony. Triangulated analysis suggests that Aurangazeb’s motive reflected siyasat, state discipline, more than shari‘a (religious coercion). His selective enforcement and no comparable executions of other Hindu or Jain leaders supports this distinction.

  3. The Jizya and Religious Bigotry Critics’ View: Reimposing Jizya in 1679 marks Aurangazeb’s intent to Islamize the state. Refutation: The 21-year delay undermines the claim of innate bigotry, Context shows fiscal and political motives and during the Rathor Rebellion and Deccan Wars, the treasury was strained, and the measure rallied clerical support for imperial campaigns against Muslim sultanates. Pragmatic exemptions for loyal Hindu allies further prove political allegiance often outweighed religious identity.

Mini-demo: How the Evidence-Based Square classifies a claim

Claim (popular): Aurangazeb pursued systematic forcible conversion.”

  • Kritik: Court chronicles and letters are rhetorical genres; treat them as interested texts, not raw facts.
  • Triangulation: Compare (i) imperial correspondence, (ii) court chronicle narrative, (iii) regional memoirs/travel accounts.
  • Drift: Watch for later headings/paratext that convert political conflict into communal narrative.
  • Context: Evaluate policies within 17th-century statecraft (revenue, rebellion control, legitimacy bargaining).

Classification: Contested. Evidence shows strong state coercion in multiple domains, but systematic conversion is not consistently supported across independent source types.

9. Modern Scholarly Works

This is an important work on Historiographical analysis of variance in views on Aurangazeb, published by Saleem Khan at SOAS, London in 1998. Writing within the field of South Asian Studies, Khan examines the wide variance in modern scholarly portrayals of Aurangazeb, with particular attention to British writers and nationalist history writing.

Rather than advancing a new interpretation of Aurangazeb’s reign, Khan’s contribution lies in executing historiographical diagnosis. Through comparative reading of contemporary Mughal sources alongside British historians and later nationalist scholars, he shows that the most extreme claims about Aurangazeb’s alleged religious fanaticism do not arise directly from seventeenth century evidence. Instead, they are emerging through interpretive frameworks, selective emphasis, and narrative aggregation introduced in later historical writing.

It is crucial to notice, Khan does not deny specific events, such as temple destruction or re-imposition of jizya.

In this work, Khan demonstrates extreme claims about Aurangazeb, emerge not from contemporary evidence, but interpretation frameworks, which are shown through comparative analysis of sources, historians, and explanatory models rather than direct factual refutation.

This M.A South Asian Studies

Therefore, in this essay treats Khan’s observations as a test case by re-evaluating them using an explicit reliability framework—based on genre constraints (Kritik), independent convergence (Triangulation), interpretive mediation (Drift), and contemporaneous norm compatibility (Context). In doing so, it translates qualitative historiographical critique into a systematic and repeatable method for evaluating claims about Aurangazeb.

Claims emphasizing Aurangazeb’s fiscal-military priorities, political repression of rebellion, and pragmatic engagement with a plural elite structure display high triangulation and contextual compatibility, yielding relatively high reliability. In contrast, narratives that treat religious fanaticism as the primary explanatory driver show weak convergence across sources, substantial interpretive drift introduced by later historiography, and anachronistic assumptions about early-modern kingship. The result is not a moral rehabilitation, but a calibrated reassessment of claim reliability

10. Conclusion

Indian history becomes reliable when claims about the past are grounded in triangulation across independent contemporary sources, interpreted within their political and institutional context, and analytically separated from later ideological framing. Aurangazeb’s case demonstrates that reliability collapses when source comparison is displaced by moral narrative, selective quotation, and paratextual pre-interpretation. Where Persian court chronicles, administrative records, memoirs, and near-contemporary travel accounts converge, historical confidence increases; where they diverge, interpretations must remain probabilistic and contested rather than elevated into civilizational certainties.

Across imperial correspondence, official chronicles, participant memoirs, and early European observers, the strongest convergence concerns the structural logic of Mughal rule: fiscal extraction, military logistics, patronage management, frontier warfare, and rebellion control. By contrast, the modern thesis of Aurangazeb as a uniquely religious villain” exhibits the inverse reliability profile. It depends disproportionately on late English syntheses and nationalist paratext, amplifies selective episodes into monocausal explanations, and repeatedly violates contextual constraints by projecting modern communal categories onto early-modern sovereignty. The widening gap between seventeenth century documentation and contemporary political memory is therefore best explained as historiographical drift, the cumulative effect of selection, translation, editorial framing, periodization, and moral abstraction, rather than as the result of new primary evidence.

The broader implication is methodological. Historical reliability increases when propositions are classified by cross-source convergence and when evidentiary divergence is preserved as analytical uncertainty rather than resolved through inherited narrative templates. Aurangazeb functions in this study not merely as a controversial ruler, but as a diagnostic case through which the mechanisms of reliability and distortion in Indian historiography become empirically visible.

In modern political discourse, he remains among the most contested figures of India’s early modern past, vilified within Hindu nationalist memory, defended as an imperial consolidator in secular historiography, and celebrated in Pakistan as an Islamic sovereign9,10,34. The divergence of these reputations is itself a final demonstration of the central thesis of this essay, that historical meaning is not discovered solely in archives, but constructed through the epistemic practices by which sources are selected, framed, and interpreted.

11. List of all Sources

1.
Bernier, F. Travels in the Mughal Empire. (1670).
2.
Kazim, M. ʿĀlamgīrnāmah. (1668).
3.
Khan, S. M. Maʾās̱ir-i ʿĀlamgīrī. (1710).
4.
Khan, K. Muntakhab Al-Lubāb. (1732).
5.
Maddison, A. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. (2001).
6.
Guha, R. India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. (Picador, London, 2007).
7.
Bloch, M. The Historian’s Craft. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1949).
8.
Febvre, L. A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien Febvre. (Harper & Row, New York, 1973).
9.
Richards, J. F. The Mughal Empire. (1993).
10.
Truschke, A. Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth. (2017).
11.
Fatāwā-Yi ʿĀlamgīrī. (1672).
12.
Mubarak, A. F. ibn. Ain-i-Akbari. (Royal Mughal Court, reprinted by Asiatic Society of Bengal (1867), 1590).
13.
Tusi, N. al-D. M. ibn M. al-. Akhlaq-i Nasiri [Nasirean Ethics]. (Persia or Central Asia, 1770).
14.
Alam, M. The Languages of Political Islam. (2004).
15.
Alam, M. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India. (1998).
16.
Ali, M. A. The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb. (1966).
17.
Babur, Z. al-D. M. & Thackston, W. M. The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. (Modern Library, 2002).
18.
Habib, I. The Agrarian System of Mughal India. (1963).
19.
Nagar, I. Futuhat-i-Alamgiri. (Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delhi, Islamanan St., Delhi, India, 2009).
20.
Padshahi buranji. (1682).
21.
Grewal, J. S. The Sikhs of the Punjab. (1998).
22.
McLeod, W. H. Sikhism. (2004).
23.
Khan, G. H. Siyar-Ul-Mutakhkherin. (Translated by Raymond Kidambi, 1782).
24.
Eaton, R. M. Temple desecration and Indo-Muslim states. Journal of Islamic Studies 11, 283–319 (2000).
25.
Eaton, R. M. India in the Persianate Age. (2019).
26.
Saxena, B. Tārīkh-i Dilkashā. (1707).
27.
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