What does the Aurangzeb controversy tell us about today’s India?

Do people really care that much about a man who died over 300 years ago that riots broke out in his name in Nagpur on Monday?

Is it a little bit surreal that over 40 people were injured in those riots which were, basically, about nothing of contemporary consequence?

   And how’s this for a final bit of surrealism: asked about the mayhem and violence, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra blamed it all on a Hindi movie.

 

   There is something so phoney, so staged and so totally unnecessary about the controversy over the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who died in 1707 that it tells us something about India’s politicians and how, having failed to effectively tackle the present, they have sought refuge in the past.

 

   Not all of the issues surrounding this manufactured controversy are black and white - some are nuanced - but what is lacking the most is simple common sense. So let’s take a commonsensical approach to the questions that have been raised.

 

Q: Was Aurangzeb a good guy?

 

Ans: Probably not. Even in that era it was not normal to seize the throne by imprisoning your father, Shah Jahan, and having your older brother, Dara Shikoh, the rightful heir, die a painful death even if the legend that Aurangzeb then mutilated his brother’s severed head is unconfirmed.

 

   From most accounts, Aurangzeb was a tyrant and though it may well be (as some historians now claim) that tales of his cruelty were exaggerated and he was a more nuanced figure than his reputation suggests, I don’t think he was a good guy by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Q Does this mean we should not honour his memory?

 

A Yes. It probably does. If we change the names of every road named after a Raj figure then it is hard to explain why we should have had a road named after Aurangzeb in the centre of Delhi.

 

   But what it does not mean is that we should now desecrate his grave or pull down his tomb. For better or worse, Aurangzeb is a part of our history and his tomb is an archaeological monument. If we start digging up his grave we do no harm to Aurangzeb who has been beyond our reach for 300 years anyway. All we achieve by talking about things like this is to remind people how primitive our political discourse has become.

 

   Yes, bad things happened during Aurangzeb’s reign but we can’t undo them by vandalising his tomb any more than we can make the British Raj vanish from our history by demolishing the Victoria Memorial.

 

Q: So why does Aurangzeb suddenly matter so much that he now dominates discourse and is the cause of riots?

 

A: He doesn’t matter at all. He matters as little as say Warren Hastings or Mahmud of Ghazni, deeply unpleasant characters who we are now rid of and who have been consigned to history books.

 

   Till last year, Aurangzeb mattered as little as any historical figure and by next year he will go back to mattering as little as he did a few months ago.

 

Q: Why then are people willing to turn to violence because of him?

 

A: Because of political expediency. The ruling political narrative in India is that Muslim rulers oppressed Hindus and it is now time for Hindus to avenge the misdeeds of 400 years ago by mistreating contemporary Indian Muslims because, while Hindus may not have been able to fight back four centuries ago, they can certainly do so now.

 

"The Hindi film Chhava in which Aurangzeb is the bad guy has come in handy. Anti-Muslim activists have used it to stoke Hindu anger."

   So what if the Muslims who actually oppressed their ancestors died hundreds of years ago? There is a Muslim minority living in India today whom Hindus massively outnumber and so Hindus can easily mistreat and abuse them.

 

   Does this narrative make any logical sense? Why should today’s Muslims have to pay for the sins of some medieval Muslims?

 

   No. Of course it makes no sense. But it sure as hell works when it comes to playing on emotions and stirring up hatred.

 

   The problem is that after eleven years of this government, it is getting harder and harder to claim that Muslims are pampered by ‘secularists’ or that ‘Hindus feel like a minority in our own country.’

 

   So the narrative depends on returning to the past and reminding Hindus of alleged past humiliations, even if these humiliations occurred centuries ago. In this case the Hindi film Chhava in which Aurangzeb is the bad guy has come in handy. Anti-Muslim activists have used it to stoke Hindu anger.

 

   And bizarrely enough, centuries after his death, Aurangzeb is big news again. Not necessarily because of history but because of Bollywood.

 

   This suits politicians just fine. Asked about the Nagpur riots, Maharashtra Chief Minister Dev Fadnavis was able to blame the movie.

 

Q: Given that even the Maharashtra Chief Minister believes the film led to riots, should the Censor Board have allowed it to be released? Should movies that deepen communal conflicts be banned?

 

A: Short answer: no. Bans are not the answer. In a communally charged country like India it is possible to argue that some propaganda films that are made only to provoke hatred should not be widely exhibited. But this is a dangerous argument and only makes some sense in the most extreme situations.

 

   The moment you accept the ‘creates communal tension’ demand you are opening the gate to a stampede of nutcases and bigots. Let’s not forget that the movie of Jesus Christ Superstar was banned in India (yes, really) in the 1970s because Christians objected and that even The DaVinci Code was nearly banned nationally on the same grounds. If Christians could have such bans imposed think of what Hindus and Muslims would achieve once the government started accepting their demands for bans.

 

   Besides, the problem is not the movie. It is how politicians exploited the emotions it provoked. The movie did not ask for Aurangzeb’s tomb to be vandalised. Politicians did.

 

   And some Muslim politicians have also seized this opportunity for political gain by eulogising Aurangzeb and trying to portray him as a Muslim hero. Rather than ban books or movies, a much more effective way of ensuring communal harmony is for politicians to shut up.

 

   But who can do that when the politicians themselves have the power to censor and ban?

 

Q: Should liberals ask for history books to be rewritten to remove references to the cruelty of certain rulers? Is it a good thing that some liberals have claimed that Aurangzeb wasn’t such a bad chap, really?

 

A: No. It’s crazy to turn Aurangzeb into a liberal or secular hero. And history is history: nothing is gained by rewriting it. Down that road lies the collapse of any society that values truth and fact.

 

Q: So what does the Aurangzeb controversy tell us about today’s India?

 

A: That’s hard to say. I have not seen much evidence that the bulk of Hindu society really cares about what Aurangzeb did centuries ago.

 

   In this day and age it is easy to make it seem that people are agitated if you can manipulate social media and the electronic media does as it is told. All you need then is a noisy minority that is willing to resort to violence. And suddenly you have yourself a so-called national controversy.

 

   The fuss about Aurangzeb is just another example of this phenomenon. When governments cease to deliver on the things that matter, they distract us by focusing on the things that don’t.