After the capture of Agra, Aurangzeb crowned himself as emperor in Delhi on July 21, 1658, and assumed the title of Alamgir. But his formal coronation, took place on June 5, 1659, after the battles of Khanwa and Deorai.

After his second coronation Aurangzeb, in order to alleviate the economic distress of the people, abolished the inland transit duties (rahdari) and the octroi (pan- dari). Many oppressive and burdensome abwabs (cesses) over and above the regular land revenue were also withdrawn.

Aurangzeb had claimed the throne as the champion of Sunni orthodoxy. Consequently, he took a number of puritanic, conservative and dis­criminatory measures which alienated the sym­pathy and good-will of the vast majority of his non-Muslim subjects. In 1659 he issued a number of ordinances to restore the Muslim law of con­duct according to the teachings of the Quran.

He discontinued the practice of inscribing the kalima on the coins and abolished the celebration of the New Year’s Day (nauroz). Censors of public morals (muhtasibs) were appointed in all big cities to enforce the Quranic law and put down the prac­tices forbidden in it.

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The ceremony of weighing the emperor on his birthdays and the practice of jharokadarshan were also discontinued. By an edict in April 1665, the customs duty on com­modities brought in for sale was fixed at 2 per cent ad valorem for Muslim merchants and 5 per cent for the Hindu merchants.

In 1667, this duty, in case of the Muslim merchants, was totally withdrawn. In 1668 the observance of Hindu festivals was prohibited. In 1679 the jeziah was imposed on the Hindus. These and several other reactionary measures of Aurangzeb weakened the secular and multi- religious fabric created by Akbar, undermining the very foundations of the Mughal Empire.

Aurangzeb’s reign of nearly half a century is divided into two equal parts of about twenty-five years each; the first of which he passed in northern India and the second in the Deccan. His whole reign remained devoted to ceaseless wars in different parts of India.

After the civil war was over, Aurangzeb appointed Mir Jumla as the governor of Bengal in 1660 with orders to punish the lawless zamindars of the provinces, especially those of Assam and, Arakan.

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In 1661 Mir Jumla invaded Cooch Behar and in 1662 he made extensive conquests in Assam including Guwahati. During this difficult expedition Mir Jumla died in 1663. In 1665 Mir Jumla’s successor in Bengal, Shaista Khan, conquered Chittagong.

In the early 1670s, the centre of military activity shifted from the North-east to the North- West frontier. Between 1665 and 1675, there were a number of tribal uprisings in the North-west frontier.

To suppress these rebellions Aurangzeb adopted a forward policy and in 1674, when the situation became quite serious, he himself directed the operations. He was able to control the situation by paying subsidies or by setting up one clan against the other. But he had to pay a heavy price in terms of men and material in suppressing these rebellions.

In 1669-70 the Jat peasantry of the region of Mathura rose under the leadership of Gokala; in 1672, the Satanami peasants in the Punjab; and the Bundelas under the leadership of Champat Rai and Chhatrasal Bundela in Bundelkhand.

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These rebellions were the outcome of the agrarian tension and the reactionary policies of Aurangzeb. These rebellions were suppressed, but led to the rise of the autonomous Jat and Bundela states in the early eighteenth century.

Aurangzeb also caused serious rift in the Mughal-Rajput alliance by his policy of annexa­tion of Marwar in 1679. He wanted to annex Mar­war after the death of Raja Jaswant Singh by derecognizing the claim of his posthumous son Ajit Singh to the Rathor throne.

The war against Marwar continued with fluctuating fortunes for nearly thirty years. From the side of Marwar the campaign was conducted by the Rajput chief Dur- gadas. Aurangzeb’s Marwar venture proved to be the “height of political unwisdom” and affected the whole body-politic of the Mughal Empire.

When Aurangzeb was conducting the cam­paign against Marwar, his son Akbar rebelled in 1681, united with the Rajputs, issued a manifesto deposing his father and crowned himself as the emperor. From Marwar the rebel prince Akbar took shelter with the Maratha king Sambhaji.

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Aurangzeb, suspecting an alliance between the Rajputs, the Marathas and the rebel prince, mar­ched to the South, but never to return to the North.

Aurangzeb’s moves in the Deccan are divided into two phases, namely, the annexation of Bijapur and Golcunda and the prolonged war against four generations of Maratha leaders consisting of Shivaji (1640-80), Sambhaji (1680-89), Rajaram (1689-1700) and his widow Tarabai (1700-7), Since the rise of the Maratha kingdom under Shivaji is being dealt separately in another chap­ter, suffice it to say here that Aurangzeb’s own policies were greatly responsible for the rise of the Maratha kingdom and transformation of the char­acter of the Mughal-Maratha struggle into a civil war, which he ignited but did not know how to extinguish.

From his arrival in the Deccan (1682) till the execution of Sambhaji (1689), his years in the Deccan were most fruitful. Bijapur and Golcunda were annexed to the Mughal Empire, Sambhaji, son and successor of Shivaji was captured and executed (1689) and his son Sahu was made cap­tive. “

All seemed to have been gained by Aurangzeb now; but in reality all was lost. It was the beginning of his end. The Mughal Empire had become too large to be ruled by one man or from one centre. His enemies rose on all sides; he could defeat but not crush them forever.

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The endless wars in the Deccan exhausted his treasury, the government turned bankrupt; the soldiers starving from arrears of pay mutinied”. When Aurangzeb died at Ahmadnagar on February 20, 1707, the situation in the Deccan for the Mughals became more critical than ever.

His handling of the Rajput and the Deccan problems was not a stray example of political unwisdom. In 1675 he ordered the arrest and ex­ecution of the ninth Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur, which led to the creation of Khalsa and the growth of Sikh military under the last Sikh Guru Govind Singh.

As a result of Aurangzeb’s short-sighted policies and endless wars in different parts of the country, in the words of a contemporary historian Bhim Sen, “all administration has disappeared…. The peasants have given up the cultivation; the jagirdars do not get a penny from their jagirs…. The mansabdars on account of the scanty forces under them, cannot gain control over their jagirs.”

This virtually meant the collapse of the jagirdari system which further resulted in disintegration of Mughal military power and administrative authority. The agrarian crisis was already brewing in different parts of the empire.

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Thus the stage was set for the decline and disintegration of the Mughal empire, which was completed within half a century of Aurangzeb’s death. This process of decline we shall discuss in subsequent chapter.