write a note on Aurangzeb's polices.
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Answer:
Aurangzeb withdrawn the practice of jharoka darshan or showing himself to the public from the balcony (initiated by Akbar). He considered it a superstitious practice and against Islam. Aurangzeb banned the ceremony of weighing the emperor against gold and silver and other articles on his birthdays.
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Answer:
The disintegration of the Mughal Empire followed rapidly after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. During his long reign of 49 years, Aurangzeb had done much to extend the frontiers of the empire he had inherited from his father, Shah Jahan, but the extensive military campaigns he conducted, particularly in the Deccan, created a severe financial drain on his resources. The burden of oppressive taxation fell on the peasantry, and political feudatories who owed their positions to Aurangzeb were constantly breaking loose from the emperor’s control. But more often than not, it is the religious policies pursued by Aurangzeb that have been cited as one of the principal reasons for Aurangzeb’s undoing, and among many Hindus the name of Aurangzeb evokes the same passionate hatred as do the names of Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad of Ghori. With the ascent of the Hindu right to political power in India, a great many people have been emboldened to further attack Aurangzeb. A brief consideration of Aurangzeb’s policies, consequently, is in order, but not only to understand the nature of his reign, or the state of Hindu-Muslim relations in India over a period of time, important as are these questions; it is also imperative to ask questions about how our histories are written and how notions of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ get constructed and become part of the political vocabulary.
A year after he assumed power in 1658, Aurangzeb appointed muhtasaibs, or censors of public morals, from the ranks of the ulema or clergy in every large city. He was keen that the sharia or Islamic law be followed everywhere, and that practices abhorrent to Islam, such as the consumption of alcohol and gambling, be disallowed in public. But he was at the outset faced with one problem, namely that the treatment he had meted out to his own father, subjecting him to imprisonment, was scarcely consistent with the image he sought to present of himself as a true believer of the faith. Accordingly, Aurangzeb sought recognition of his ascent to the Mughal Emperor’s throne from the ruler of the holy places in the Hijaz, and he became a great patron of the Holy Places. He is reported as well to have spent seven years memorizing the Koran, and unlike his predecessors, his reign was marked by austerity. The monumental architecture that characterized the reigns of Akbar and Shah Jahan — the Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, the Taj Mahal, Shahjahanabad, among others — held little interest for Aurangzeb, and similarly the musicians who had adorned the courts of his predecessors were dismissed.
From the standpoint of Aurangzeb’s Hindu subjects, the real impact of his policies may have started to have been felt in 1668-69. Hindu religious fairs were outlawed in 1668, and an edict of the following year prohibited construction of Hindu temples as well as the repair of old ones. Also in 1669, Aurangzeb discontinued the practice, which had been originated by Akbar, of appearing before his subjects and conferring darshan on them, or letting them receive his blessings as one might, in Hinduism, take the darshan of a deity and so receive its blessings. Though the duty (internal customs fees) paid on goods was 2.5%, double the amount was levied on Hindu merchants from 1665 onwards. In 1679, Aurangzeb went so far as to reimpose, contrary to the advice of many of his court nobles and theologians, the jiziya or graduated property tax on non-Hindus, and according to one historical source, elephants were deployed to crush the resistance in the area surrounding the Red Fort of Hindus who refused to submit to jiziya collectors. The historian John F. Richards opines, quite candidly, that “Aurangzeb’s ultimate aim was conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. Whenever possible the emperor gave out robes of honor, cash gifts, and promotions to converts. It quickly became known that conversion was a sure way to the emperor’s favor”