by Amulya Ganguli
Naipaul would probably be dumbfounded to find that Aurangzeb, that
most bigoted of all Mughal emperors, had once written to his
underlings: "... information has reached our noble and most holy
court that certain persons interfere and harass the Hindu residents
of the town of Benaras and its neighbourhood and the Brahman keepers
of the temples... Therefore, our royal command is that, after the
arrival of this lustrous order, you should direct that, in future,
no person shall in unlawful way interfere and disturb the Brahmans
and other Hindu residents at these places, so that they may, as
before, remain in their occupation and continue with peace of mind
to offer prayers for the continuance of our god-gifted empire, so
that it may last forever."
Passages like this may not find place in Murli Manohar Joshi's
distorted textbooks, but they are a part of history. Jadunath
Sarkar's History of Aurangzeb records, for instance, that "the
clerks, both Hindus and Muhammadans, formed a brotherhood bound
together by a community of duties and interests, education and
ideals, social life and even vices. We find in the memoirs of one of
them, Bhimsen of Burhanpur, a pleasing picture of the clerkly world,
with its mutual dancing parties, dinners, aid in trouble,
consolation in sorrow and union t sittings of Sufi devotional
exuberance".
FULL TEXT
