by Sudhir Kakar
If I were to be completely honest, however, I would say that Aurangzeb was pious in his personal life but also used piety for his other passion: power. In this, he was not unlike one of our famous French poets (whom I shall not name out of a sense of propriety), who is a poet only when composing his verses, while at other times he uses the same poetry in his favourite enterprise: the seduction of women admirers.
What stood out for me was Aurangzeb’s simplicity, which contrasted greatly with the lavish display favoured by the other princes and the Omrah. On an invitation to dinner in his tent, I was immediately astonished by the bareness of its furnishings. There were no silk carpets, no velvet and silk drapings, no gold or silver bedsteads, just a simple white cotton sheet spread on the floor, and his bed was a mat he had woven out of straw with his own hands. The only valuable piece of furniture was a low carved table made from walnut wood, on which rested a gilded copy of the Quran. The dinner served before us was lavish, with special dishes of deer and pheasant, which abound in the forests of Mandu, but the prince, while urging us on in the manner of a good host to partake of larger portions of each dish, ate a simple fare of rice, lentils, a preparation of bitter gourd and a salad of fresh pink radishes. He reminded me at that moment of M. Gassendi who, too, would host lavish dinners for his guests and serve the most delectable meals—smoked ham with anise, duck in a savoury orange sauce, capons stuffed with oysters, delicious pastries—but eat very little of these delicacies himself. ‘I prefer the simpler fare of older times,’ he would say when the guests had left, ‘everything boiled in the same pot. An obsession with food is a sign of a man who secretly regards his mind as an enemy.’ I enjoyed my meal thoroughly that day at the prince’s tent, more so since, to my relief, I did not have to chew paan (betel leaf, which tastes like soap and colours the mouth red) at the end of the repast, an Indian habit to which I have never become reconciled in spite of spending so many years in the Mogul dominions. The prince himself disliked paan and instead chewed a gum called kharadali which, thankfully, he did not offer to us.
Many people in Europe have asked me my impressions of Aurangzeb’s person. He has been spoken of as a cold and distant man, but I believe he was simply different from his countrymen who are excitable and much given to histrionics. Aurangzeb was naturally reserved and his matter-of-fact, dry manner of expression might have made him appear remote to people with a weakness for hyperbole. I found the prince to be unlike other Indians I became acquainted with, who were either incurable romantics or embittered cynics. He was of a breed rarely found in the Indies: a realist.
‘He is as acidic as his favorite fruit, the corinda,’ I had heard Father Buze say of the prince. But the good father, for all his qualities of head and heart, was a biased observer who had cultivated a taste for the effusive sweetness of Dara’s nature that I personally found cloying.
Few people were aware that there was another side to the younger prince’s nature. During my weeks at his camp, the commander of his cavalry, a grizzled veteran who had been with the prince since his first campaign at the age of seventeen, told me of the prince’s infatuation with a dancing girl named Hirabai when he was thirty-five years old and already the father of six children. During the two years that this liaison lasted, the bouts of melancholy that had earlier often possessed the prince miraculously disappeared. Hirabai was as accomplished a musician and dancer as she was beautiful and Aurangzeb could not have enough either of the singer or her songs.
‘I have not seen him as lighthearted as he was during those two years,’ the officer said. ‘He smiled more often, even laughed at witticisms that began to be made at his court, though hesitantly at first. He was ready to do anything for Hirabai. Once, when she told him that if he really loved her he would flout the Islamic prohibition against drinking wine, he immediately ordered a flagon of Shiraz wine and two golden goblets to be brought to them. Hirabai stopped him as he was about to raise the glass to his lips. ‘You have convinced me, my lord,’ she said. ‘I require no further proof of your love and may Allah forgive me for even trying to test your religious convictions.’
Hirabai, renamed Zainabadi by Aurangzeb, died suddenly, a month after the prince’s thirty-seventh birthday, and with her demise layers of ice again began to form on the surface of his soul. The bouts of melancholy became deeper and lasted longer. After he received the news of her death, he is reported to have ridden out to hunt in a state of high agitation, saying that all the lamentations in his house would not give him the same relief as the solitude of a hunt. A week after her funeral, he gathered his senior officers for a meeting and said that Allah had been merciful to him by putting an end to the dancing girl’s life since his preoccupation with her had diverted him from the real purpose of his life. He never listened to music again.
I found it admirable that Aurangzeb had absorbed a fundamental lesson of kingship even before he became emperor: that the price the Almighty demands for raising a man to the pinnacles of glory and power is a steeling of the heart. Not for him the open-faced delight, taken as a God-given right by even the most abject of his subjects, to give and receive love that will leave him vulnerable. A king may love his horse, his dog, his country, but never other human beings except, sometimes, his spouse or a child. He may be as rich as Croseus but must be the greatest miser in expending trust lest it be betrayed. Compelled to forego intimacy with those who surround him, he is reduced to offering it to the rest of the world. The king belongs to his subjects because he may never belong to anything or anyone else.
The arrival of Murad with his army was one of the few occasions that brought a smile to Aurangzeb’s face, a smile that otherwise never reached his eyes. Aurangzeb, together with his son Sultan Muhammad, his chief nobles and officers of the personal guard, rode out a mile from the camp to greet Murad. He received his brother with great respect, standing before him as a subordinate would, his shoulders bowed and his hands crossed in front of him. In the hearing of their officer corps, he addressed his brother as ‘my king’ or ‘my sovereign’ and then renewed the pledge he had made earlier, swearing allegiance to Murad against the infidel Dara. A roar of approval rose among the nobles and officers from both sides when the brothers embraced.
Two days later, the joint armies marched fourteen miles towards the river near Ujjain, where the imperial forces were waiting to thwart their crossing to the opposite bank. The march had acquired an urgency because of disquieting news from Bengal—the ‘hell, well stocked with rice’ as Aurangzeb called it—which reached the prince that very evening, after his meeting with Murad.
The battle near the village of Dharmat on the twenty-eighth day of April, was short and sharp, lasting no more than five hours. It ended in total defeat for the imperial forces when Qasim Khan, who had been bribed by Aurangzeb beforehand, suddenly quit the battlefield, leaving Raja Jaswant Singh and his nine thousand Rajputs exposed to rebel forces almost three times their number. The battle was enormously instructive for anyone interested in comparing the fighting skills and battle strategies of Indians with those of Europeans. As a physician, albeit one trained in the treatment of battle injuries, I am not an expert in military affairs and strategies but can provide a layman’s impressions, which those with far greater expertise than mine may still find of some value.
The first thing that strikes an observer is the lack of order in an Indian army. The chaos is so pronounced, in fact, that even when the two armies are fiercely engaged in fighting each other, the number of those killed on the battlefield rarely exceeds a few hundred since, before long, one or the other side invariably resorts to panicky flight. As a fighting force the infantry is nearly worthless, an ill-equipped and ill-disciplined rabble that is more a liability than an asset in war. I noticed in this particular battle that the only soldiers who fought were those well forward while most of those who were closer to the rear did nothing but shout ‘Ba-kushl Ba-kush!’ and ‘Mar.’ Mar! (Kill, kill!)’, while waving their unsheathed swords in the air. In g
eneral, if the men in the front advance, those behind follow in their steps, and if the former retire the others flee. Once they begin their flight it is impossible to stop them, with the result that the huge army can melt away in a matter of minutes. The fear of cavalry is so great among Indian soldiers that forty thousand infantry will not stand up against two thousand horsemen. The European practice of a line of men with spears and pikes standing ahead of the infantry to blunt a cavalry charge is almost unthinkable in India. Here, the foot soldiers begin to run nearly as fast as the horses gallop as soon as horsemen come into sight, even if the riders are not carrying any firearms.
The exception to such behaviour on the battlefield are the Pathans, an Afghan tribe from the northwest region of the empire, and the Rajputs, a caste of idolater warriors whom I have mentioned earlier. The Rajputs, who bore the brunt of casualties at Dharmat, are formidable fighters who only require to be directed by a competent leader, and on his part the leader need never entertain the apprehension that the men under his command will flee since Rajputs look upon a retreat from battle as the greatest disgrace that can befall them. Defeated Moguls show their submission by presenting themselves with two swords hanging around their necks and a shroud in their hands; Afghans surrender with grass between their teeth, implying bovine submission to the victor; Turks surrender with their turbans in the hands—but since Rajputs never surrender they have no ritual acknowledgement of defeat. On the day of battle, they ingest a large quantity of opium in order to dull their senses to all danger and provide them with the courage to rush unhesitatingly into fierce combat. To see them before they enter the battlefield with their saffron-coloured bandanas tied around the heads, a symbol of their funeral shroud, fumes of opium making their eyes shine with unnatural light, embracing and bidding adieu to one another as if certain of death, is remarkable indeed. To kill or be killed is the only tenet that guides their conduct in battle and that is, ironically, what sets them back. To retreat tactically in order to regroup is as much a part of a battle as fierce and courageous fighting, and since a retreat is out of question for the Rajputs, they tend to lack general strategic sense as well. Inspecting the battlefield at Dharmat littered with corpses of Rajput warriors, Aurangzeb had expressed disdain for what he called their ‘crass stupidity’. ‘As their fundamental rule is to be either victorious or die, it is little wonder that most of the time they die rather than win. Sometimes, to part with your head rather than retreat from your position is not a sign of courage but simply of foolishness,’ he remarked.
Yet, the courage possessed by Rajputs, however imprudent it may be, makes them extremely valuable as soldiers in a country where soldiering is a part-time activity for most troopers. Every Mogul emperor ensures that his rajas are treated with care and honour and has been known to shower them with favours. He needs the chieftains and their soldiers on his side to keep in check other rajas who are not in his pay and to induce the submission of those who refuse to pay tribute or take up arms against the empire. For instance, the alliance with the Rajputs had proved invaluable for the Moguls against the kings of Bijapur and Golconda in the Deccan, or when they were engaged in hostilities against the Persians. In these engagements, the monarch could not trust most of his Omrah, who are of Persian origin and share the Shia faith of the Deccan kings. A few might even consider it a mortal sin to take up arms against the Persian sovereign, whom, as a descendant of the Prophet’s grandson, Ali, they acknowledge as their Imam.
The Rajput women are just as valorous as their men, seeing their husbands and sons off to battle, or even certain death, with a fervour that will be incomprehensible to Europeans. I have heard of instances from the past, when the besieged defenders of a fort, finding their situation hopeless, sallied out to meet their end at the hands of the Mogul army while back in the fort the women collectively immolated themselves in the name of Rajput honour by throwing themselves into a huge pyre constructed expressly for the purpose. The extremes to which the human mind can traverse under the influence of ancient customs, prejudice, public opinion and the principle of honour is truly astounding.
I was thus hardly surprised to hear about the misfortune that befell Raja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur after the defeat of the imperial forces. The courageous Rajput had had to quit the battlefield at Dharmat, in spite of putting up a valiant fight, after he was deserted by the treacherous Qasim Khan and had lost close to eight thousand of his men. Qasim Khan had, in fact, gone so far as to secretly bury his artillery ammunition for later use by Aurangzeb’s forces. The raja started for his own country, seventy leagues from the scene of his defeat, with the remaining contingent of less than five hundred horsemen. By the time he reached Jodhpur, his companions had shrunk to fifteen. Ashamed to show their faces to their countrymen in defeat, the rest had melted away. His actions had arisen from necessity, not dishonour, yet when the exhausted and dejected king approached the gates of his capital city, his wife, the daughter of one of the Ranas of Udaipur, who are universally regarded as the epitome of Rajput honour and, in contrast to the rajas of Jaipur and Jodhpur, have never sought service with the Moguls, ordered that the gates of Jodhpur be closed to her husband.
‘The man reeks of infamy,’ she is said to have declared. ‘I disown him as my husband. No son-in-law of the Rana can possess a soul so abject that he quits the battlefield rather than dying on it. Now I shall have neither the renown of a hero’s wife nor an honoured widow’s death by burning.’ Her rage and passion were so extreme that she conceived the fancy that Jaswant Singh had actually perished in battle and that the truth was being concealed from her so as to prevent her from burning herself to death as a sati. ‘Prepare the funeral pyre and let the fire consume my body,’ she ordered. ‘My husband is certainly dead; it cannot be otherwise.’ This went on for eight to nine days till the arrival of her mother, who calmed her with assurances that once her husband had recovered from his exhaustion, he would raise another army to fight Aurangzeb and regain his honour. She reluctantly reconciled herself to this course of action but constantly insulted her husband and forbade him to ever share her bed again. It is said that once when a maidservant brought a melon to the raja along with a knife to cut it, the queen pounced on the poor woman, beating her and shouting, ‘How dare you bring a knife! Don’t you know the courage of this runaway? He swoons when he sees iron of any kind.’
Whatever the conduct of the soldiers on the battlefield, the victory at Dharmat, which Aurangzeb immediately renamed Fatehbad, ‘habitation of victory’, emboldened the armies of the two princes and removed any doubts the officers and soldiers had entertained about tackling the imperial army. Walking around Aurangzeb’s camp in the evening, I heard men boast that there was no army in the world that could oppose them and that after they had become masters of the empire they would press ahead to conquer Persia and Turkey. To me this seemed to be misplaced overconfidence. I also heard some talk about differences arising between the brothers on the next course of action. Murad wanted to press ahead immediately, without giving his troops time to rest so as to take advantage of the disarray in the imperial ranks and engage Dara before the latter’s son Sulaiman could join him with his army of battle-hardened veterans. Aurangzeb was more circumspect. He wanted to send his spies to Agra to ascertain the exact state of affairs, with letters to his friends at the court promising great rewards to defectors from Dara’s cause. Aurangzeb’s views finally prevailed and the armies rested on the banks of the river before resuming their advance, which was to be regulated according to the information being received from Agra. Meanwhile, the ammunition left behind by Qasim Khan was dug up and distributed between the two armies, significantly boosting their capabilities.
Here I should add that Qasim Khan never received the riches promised to him for his betrayal of Dara. Aurangzeb was a principled man who was willing to dissemble and deceive in service of his political and military aims but held fast to his moral conviction that a traitor should never be rewarded but should, on the contrary, b
e punished with death after he is no longer useful. It was the prince’s maxim to put traitors to death by slow poisoning so he would not have to suffer the same perfidy. ‘Anyone who has betrayed his master once is fully capable of betraying a new one,’ he said. He held, however, that the traitor’s children and grandchildren were to be treated with great munificence: ‘Nothing douses the flames of revenge as well as a shower of silver.’ In his sense of morality, of what is right and what is wrong, Aurangzeb is indeed an exception among Mogul princes and not the scheming hypocrite naively portrayed by Dara’s sympathizers.
We were still encamped at Dharmat when Imran Khan and I went to Aurangzeb’s tent to take the prince’s permission to leave for Agra and return to our Agha, Danishmand Khan. He had just finished his noon prayers and his reading of the Quran and was about to leave for an inspection of his troops.
Aurangzeb’s concern for his troopers, his attention to detail, is a rarity. I have not seen anything similar even among European princes. To us he was as polite as always, his voice low, his hollow-cheeked face sombre in spite of the recent triumph. ‘Tell your Agha that my victory is foreordained. When the battle with Dara’s forces is finally over within a few days, more than forty thousand Mughals will cross over to my side. Tell him also that mine is not a war for the throne but obedience to the command of Allah who whispered in my ear, as He often does at crucial moments, that I must fight the forces of kufr and unrighteousness unleashed by my brother Dara Shukoh. My ears are ever attuned to hearing His voice. Material rewards and riches are mere shadows, empty husks that leave me cold. Obedience to Allah’s will is the only crown I seek. Islam is the breath of my life. Allah has chosen me to be the custodian of the faithful in Hindustan. I shall not let Islam perish or be diluted by apostasy. This is my pledge, first to my Creator and then to all of you.’ I walked away from the short audience impressed by the sincerity in his voice and the strength of conviction that gripped his heart.