History of Aurangzib Quotes

“Wikipedia: History of Aurangzib”

“The officially avowed policy in reimposing the jaziya was to increase the number of Muslims by putting pressure on the Hindus.”

“In March 1695 all Hindus, with the exception of the Rajputs, were forbidden to ride palkis, elephants or thorough-bred horses, or to carry arms. (K. K. ii. 395; M. A. 370.)”

“Therefore, the toleration of any sect outside the fold of orthodox Islam is no better than compounding with sin. And the worst form of sin is polytheism, the belief that the one true God has partners in the form of other deities. Such a belief is the rankest ingratitude (kufr)* to Him who gives us our life and daily bread.”

“Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects. In addition to the poll-tax and public degradation in dress and demeanour imposed on them, the non-Muslims were subjected to various hopes and fears. Rewards in the form of money and public employment were offered to apostates from Hinduism.”

“An army of Muslim collectors and amins,— usually men of reputed scholarship and orthodoxy, —spread over the country to assess and realize the tax. So large was their number, that in 1687 an Inspector-General of jaziya was appointed to tour through the four provinces of the Deccan and see that these men did their work properly. (M.A. 297.)”

“How strictly the imperial orders were enforced we can see from the fact that even in remote East Bengal and Orissa, on the extreme frontier of the empire, the local officers sent their men round to pull down all the temples and smash all the images within their jurisdictions. In June 1680, the temples of Amber, the capital of the loyal State of Jaipur, were broken down.”

“To the Hindu world in that age of renewed persecution, Shivaji appeared as the star of a new hope, the protector of the ritualistic paint-mark (tilak) on the forehead of Hindus, and the saviour of Brahmans. (Bhushan’s poems.) His Court and his son’s became the rallying-point of the opposition to Aurangzib. The two rivals were both super- men, but contrasts in character.”

“From time immemorial, service in the revenue department had brought daily bread to middle class Hindus able to read and write. Under Aurangzib, ‘“‘qanungo-ship on condition of turning Muslim"’ became a proverbial expression; and several families in the Panjab still preserve his letters patent in which this condition of office is unblushingly laid down. Several other instances of it are also recorded in the extant news-letters of his Court.”

“Shivaji’s escape from captivity caused lifelong regret to Aurangzib. As the Emperor wrote in his last will and testament: “The greatest pillar of Government consists in keeping of information about everything that happens in the kingdom, — while even a minute’s negligence results in shame for long years. See, the flight of the wretch Shiva was due to carelessness, but it has involved me in all these distracting campaigns to the end of my days.””

“As the scholars and divines of the tiiae informed Aurangzib, the books on Muslim Canon Law lay down that the proper method of collecting the jaziya is for the zimmi to pay the tax personally; if he sends the money by the hand of an agent it is to be refused; the taxed person must come on foot and make the payment standing, while the receiver should be seated and after placing his hand above that of the zimmi should take the money and cry out, “‘O, zimmi! pay the commutation money.”’”

“He must pay a tax for his land (kharaj), from which the early Muslims were exempt; he must pay other exactions for the maintenance of the army, in which he cannot enlist even if he offers to render personal service instead of paying the poll-tax; and he must show by humility of dress and behaviour that he belongs to a subject class. No non-Muslim (zimmi) can wear fine dresses, ride on horseback or carry arms; he must behave respectfully and submissively to every member of the dominant sect.*”

“Neither age nor experience of life softened Aurangzib’s bigotry. When an old man of over eighty, we find him inquiring whether the Hindu worship, which he had put down at Somnath early in his reign, had been revived through the slackness of the local governor, and, again, telling one of his generals to take his own time in destroying a certain famous temple in the Deccan, as ‘‘it had no legs to walk away on.’’ In 1674 he confiscated all the lands held by Hindus as religious grants (wazifa) in Gujrat. [Mirat, 305.]”

“No fusion between the two classes was possible even with the passage of centuries, as they differed like poles in ideal and life. The Hindu is solitary, passive, other-worldly; his highest aim is self-realisation, the attainment of personal salvation by individual effort, private devotions and lonely austerities. To him birth is a misfortune and his fellow- beings so many sources of distraction from his one goal. Not by enjoyment of God’s gifts but by renunciation, not by joyous expansion but by repression of emotion, is he to attain to bliss.”

“A non-Muslim, therefore, cannot be a citizen of the State; he is a member of a depressed class; his status is a modified form of slavery. He lives under a contract (zimma) with the State: for the life and property that are grudgingly spared to him by the Commander of the Faithful he must undergo political and social disabilities, and pay a commutation-money (jaziya). In short, his continued existence in the State after the conquest of his country by the Muslims is conditional upon his person and property being made subservient to the cause of Islam.”

“Therefore, the growth and progress of non- Muslims, even their continued existence, is incompatible with the basic principles of a Muslim State. The political community is in a condition of unstable equilibrium, till either the dissenters are wiped out or the sceptre passes out of Muslim hands. The literal interpretation of the Quranic Law sets up a chronic antagonism between the rulers and the ruled, which has, in the end, broken up every Islamic State with a composite population. And the reign of Aurangzib was to illustrate this truth in a form clear to the meanest intellect.”

“The zimmi is under certain legal disabilities with regard to testimony in lawcourts, protection under criminal law, and marriage. The State, as the other party in the contract (zimma), guarantees to him security of life and property and a modified protection in the exercise of his religion :—he cannot erect new temples, and has to avoid any offensive publicity in the exercise of his faith. But everything short of open physical persecution,—everything that would not be a flagrant breach of the contract of protection, can be legitimately practised by the Muslim ruler to reduce the number of the undesirable alien sect.”

“On the poor, therefore, the incidence of the tax (Jizya) was at least 6 % of the gross income; on the middle it ranged from 6 to 1/4 %, and on the rich it was even lighter than 2 1/2 per thousand. In violation of modern canons of Taxation, the Jizya hit the poorest portion of the population hardest. It would never be less than Rs. 3 1/2 on a man, which was the money value of nine maunds of wheat flour at the average market price, at the end of the 16th century. The State, therefore, at the lowest incidence of the tax, annually took away from the poor man the full value of one year’s food as the price of religious indulgence‛, he writes.”

“Jizya was first imposed by Prophet Muhammad, who bade his followers, ‚Tight those who do not profess the True Faith (i.e. Islam) till they pay Jizya with the hand in humility‛. As Sarkar writes, ‚the last two words of this command have been taken by the Muslim commentators to mean that the tax should be levied in a manner humiliating to the tax payer. Hence it was laid down that the zimmÍ must pay the Jizya personally and not through an agent, that he must come on foot, make the payment standing while the Jizya receiver should be seated and with his hand above that of the payer take the money crying out ‘O ZimmÍ, pay the Jizya’.”

“The holy city of Mathura has always been the special victim of Muslim bigotry. It was the birth- place of Krishna, the most popular of the ‘‘false gods’’ of India,—a deity for whom _ millions of “‘infidels’’ felt a personal love. The city stood on the king's highway between Agra and Delhi, and its lofty spires, almost visible from the Agra palace, —-seemed to taunt the Mughal emperors with lukewarmness in “‘exalting [slam and casting in- fidelity down.’" Aurangzib’s baleful eye had been directed to the Hindu Bethlehem very early. He had appointed a “‘religious man,’’ Abdun Nabi, as faujdar of Mathura to repress the Hindus.”