Excerpted with permission from Munis D. Faruqui’s Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir and the Mughal Empire: A History Retold, Juggernaut, 2026.Ever-simplified and polarized views of ‘Alamgir have emerged on either side of the India–Pakistan border, continuing to this day. With the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, however, he has been foregrounded as an archetypal evil Muslim. With support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalists and their allies – in India and elsewhere, in print and online – have targeted ‘Alamgir and the Mughal Empire. Both are treated as so dangerous and vile that they must be obliterated from the historical record. In 2015 the government removed Aurangzeb’s name from a central arterial road in Delhi. In the years that have followed, official efforts to erase Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir’s presence from the public consciousness have escalated. This includes calls for the destruction of buildings commissioned by him or built in his name, for the renaming of cities he founded (the city of Aurangabad is now Sambhajinagar), and the removal of all references to him in state-sponsored school textbooks. Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir and the Mughal Empire: A History Retold,’ Munis D. Faruqui, Juggernaut, 2026.In public addresses, Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly accused ‘Alamgir of committing atrocities against Hindus and Sikhs, engaging in Islamic fanaticism, and seeking to destroy India’s Hindu civilization. Some of the prime minister’s supporters and members of other Hindu nationalist parties and organizations have taken up his call, suggesting that his body should be disinterred or his tomb destroyed. Such fighting words have led to sectarian violence and deaths – most recently in March 2025 in the city of Nagpur (Maharashtra). Fueling an already unhealthy polemic around ‘Alamgir in India, youth activists of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a Muslim nationalist organization, have taken to extoling Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir in public processions as well as online. They have coined the slogan “Sab ke Papa” (everyone’s daddy) as a way of lauding ‘Alamgir and trolling Hindu nationalists. The latter have, in turn, responded by demanding the arrest and imprisonment of anyone caught praising ‘Alamgir. More ominously, a decades-old Hindu nationalist slogan describing all Indian Muslims as progeny of Emperor Babur (the founder of the Mughal dynasty, r. 1526–1530) has been recently repurposed as “Aurangzeb’s descendants” (Aurangzeb ki aulad) against whom violent retribution is justifiable. The attacks go beyond India: US-based scholar Audrey Truschke, the author of a 2017 popular biography on Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir, has suffered vicious and misogynist attacks, and even death threats.This book is animated by a growing alarm and despair at such weaponizing of a historical figure. The questions I have sought to raise and examine require a revisit of the historical archive. They are also motivated by my own appreciation that the history of South Asia offers a wealth of evidence for precisely that “fusion between Hindu and Muslim” that Jadunath Sarkar thought Aurangzeb had made impossible. I hope my book contributes to further appreciation of and research into the countless ways in which, through conflict and negotiation and mutual borrowings, the diverse populations of South Asia have been enriched over the centuries. And specifically, I hope this book opens up new discussions about the particularly polarizing figure of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir.This book has sought to examine the following questions: are present-day perceptions of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir, as either a bigoted and intolerant Muslim or a great Muslim hero, supported by historical evidence? To what extent can we consider him a typical or atypical Mughal prince and ruler? How transformational was his reign? How did he sustain his power despite the onset of age-related infirmities and military defeat in his final decades of rule? Can a study focused on Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir’s life and reign offer us a more nuanced understanding of the Mughal Empire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? What is the role of memory and historical writing in mythologizing or vilifying Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir? And do we get any sense of the man behind the princely and then imperial mask?Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.No aspect of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir’s life and reign has been more important to examine than his relationship to Islam. This book argues that while his personal religiosity was unique among Mughal emperors, its role in his rulership has been largely misunderstood. The evidence strongly suggests that, rather than being a tool of bigoted rule, Islam offered ‘Alamgir a moral framework both for his political and administrative reforms and for his response to the challenges of his reign – including combating the deterioration of law and order, managing the emergence of new social groups, and responding to combative new political groups that demanded imperial recognition and a place in the Mughal system. But ‘Alamgir was never so religiously single-minded that he could not change course when Islam-based solutions failed to work, or the political context demanded a different direction. As well as demonstrating a powerful and lifelong strain of pragmatism, such behavior points to an evolving religious–political persona that culminated in a widely held view that he was a saintly renunciate–emperor, and respected as such by Hindus and Muslims alike. He was the only Mughal emperor to ever be accorded this status. At the same time, the book argues that a fixation with his religiosity causes us to lose sight of a far more significant insight about Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir: for the most part, he was a typical post-1580s Mughal prince and emperor.That Aurangzeb was a typical Mughal prince is apparent in the way that he ascended to the throne: by cultivating powerful networks of support across the empire, growing a robust household, raising large sums of money, and undermining his opponents, over the course of many decades as a prince. It is also apparent in his adherence as a ruler to longstanding ideological and symbolic expressions of Mughal sovereignty, imperial administrative norms, the policy goals of his predecessors (conquering the Deccan, for example), limits on his power (such as holding back from violent attacks on the imperial nobility and generally working to protect social hierarchies and customs), and even admiration for Emperor Akbar (a trait he shared with both his father and grandfather). This is not to say that his reign did not have a transformative impact on the Mughal Empire. It did, but not in the ways that have usually been assumed. Thus, while his efforts to inculcate a more straitlaced courtly culture, offer himself as a model of emulation for future emperors, and bring Islamic ethics and morality into imperial governance are usually foregrounded, these did not last beyond his death and were largely rejected by his successors. On the contrary, it was in other, lesser-known ways that ‘Alamgir did in fact impact the Mughal Empire and contribute to its collapse: by undermining his princely heirs, empowering loyalist nobles, and committing the empire to unceasing campaigns in the Deccan that ended up corroding its political, administrative, and military strength. ‘Alamgir’s reign also witnessed the rise of the Mughal harem and eunuchate to extraordinary power, more so than in previous reigns, and in ways that carried over well into the eighteenth century.A focus on the harem and eunuchate under ‘Alamgir offers us important insights. None may be more significant than the question of how he managed not only to hold on to power for almost fifty years but also to escape the sorts of princely and noble rebellions that plagued the final years of all aging Mughal emperors from Akbar onward. Arguably, the harem and eunuchate were critical partners in buttressing him (as they would be in the case of some, but not all, of his successors). They did so at almost every turn, and to the end of his life. However, ‘Alamgir could not have survived with their support alone. What this book has tried to show are some of the other sources of his power. Beyond his gradually emerging legitimacy as a saintly warrior-king, he exhibited an extraordinary capacity to meet the grueling demands on an attentive ruler. Nowhere is this more evident than his focus on administrative detail, something unparalleled across the Mughal dynasty (even Akbar). ‘Alamgir engaged an imperial persona that, contrary to modern views of him, was mindful of the political, social, and structural restraints on his power, and strove relentlessly to cultivate deep, almost fanatical, loyalty among those who served him. He attended closely to information gathering; he found expressions of sectarianism that might disrupt the public peace unacceptable and reined them in; he had no interest in forcing Islam on the largely non-Muslim population; and, to the end, he remained ready to strike political and/or economic bargains when expedient. At the same time, he fiercely upheld his imperial prerogatives and took great pains to secure and maintain the spaces in which he himself lived and worked as sacred spaces, which reflected his views of proper discipline and devotion.All of this adds up to the image of an emperor who, in his own time, was widely admired – even if sometimes grudgingly so, as in the case of his Maratha, Sikh, Rajput, Afghan, Jat, and Berad rivals. However, they were all willing to strike a bargain with ‘Alamgir if the terms were right. After 1707, as the empire collapsed, the many and various political power nodes across the subcontinent often rewrote their stories in relation to ‘Alamgir and Mughal rule. Thus, Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, and Rajputs crafted their own histories of unrelenting political and, increasingly, religious opposition to ‘Alamgir and to the Mughals. On the other hand, ‘Alamgir-era servitors and loyalists such as ‘Inayat Allah Khan, Hamid al-Din Khan, and Amir Khan Sindhi offered their own myths of an imperial golden age under ‘Alamgir. These very polarized views of ‘Alamgir as either a great or evil Muslim ruler provided material which later British colonial historians used to vilify him, allowing them to portray themselves as enlightened rulers. These polarized views, as we know, continue to live on in the competing national historical narratives of both India and Pakistan, stoking resentment and division.The massive caches of surviving letters and other archival documentation in the historical record allow us to revisit and rewrite the history of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir. He emerges as a man of many contradictions: he loved his children, but he also feared and mistrusted them (especially his male heirs); he was generous and loyal to those who served him, but he was also a demanding and harsh taskmaster; as he aged he grew increasingly humble and self-effacing, but he remained given to prideful and angry outbursts; in his private life he was devoted to Hanafi Sunni Islam, but he did not impose his beliefs on his subjects; he began his reign believing that God intended him to achieve regnal greatness, but by the end of his life he felt himself an abject failure, abandoned by God.This book reconsiders the much-studied details of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir’s life and reign, in the hope of reviving scholarly attention to his complicated legacy, and the historical period in general. There are rich available archives that will yield great rewards to the intrepid seeker. Ultimately, this is a small step in a much larger and necessary project to combat the misuse and weaponization of the past, the ultimate result of which has been to lock religious communities (but especially Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs) and South Asian nation-states in violent, hate-filled conflicts. We must resist these nihilistic impulses; it is incumbent on us. We deserve nothing less.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.