History and Fiction

Book Review

Title: Conversations with Aurangzeb

Author: Charu Nivedita

Translated from Tamil by Nandini Krishnan

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023

Pages: 335

History claims to give us truths and fiction really gives us glimpses into truths. Tamil novelist Charu Nivedita’s Conversations with Aurangzeb is in fact history masquerading as a novel. It is fiction inasmuch as Aurangzeb makes an apparition through a medium to the narrator who is a writer doing some research for his next novel. But it is not a novel because there is nothing that can be called a plot. It’s all conversation between the narrator and the spirit of the Mughal emperor. Occasionally a few other characters make their appearances, but they don’t add anything to the plot.

How much can we trust history? This is the question that the writer explores in this novel. It is a cliché that history is written by the winners. It gets rewritten when new winners emerge. For example, India’s history is being rewritten by the present regime and the old heroes such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi are often projected as villains in the new history.

Ashoka is a hero in this new history too. But was he really heroic? Aurangzeb tells the narrator: “… the greatest villain in the history of Hindustan was Emperor Ashoka.” No other ruler of Hindustan has done as much harm to ‘The Sanatan Marg’ as did Ashoka, according to this novel’s protagonist. Ashoka outdid even the Dravida movement, says Aurangzeb, in hating and sidelining the Brahmins. Ashoka was a great salesman, of himself. His edicts and pillars and other inscriptions were all self-propaganda. He made sure that his reputation lasted for centuries. Ashoka knew how to advertise himself better than India’s present ruler.

Aurangzeb proves to the narrator that he was far less harmful to the Hindus than the other Mughal emperors. Akbar who is often portrayed as a very tolerant emperor was in fact driven by lust. He wanted to marry many Rajput beauties; so an amicable relationship was required with that community. His tolerance was motivated by that, says Aurangzeb. The Mughal emperors were all ruthless people as most rulers are. A “good and just ruler” is “an oxymoron.” Is there even one single Mughal emperor who did not kill his own brothers, and even father in some cases, for the sake of ascending the throne?

Such brutality and ruthlessness notwithstanding, the Mughals were not as vile as some of the characters in the Mahabharata, says Aurangzeb. “When I read of that war,” he says, “my cruellest deeds appear as nothing before it.” Even the gods are so deceptive in that war. So much adharma is perpetrated for the sake of bringing dharma!

The novel brings in contemporary politics too occasionally, often satirically. Just one example. India does not value its writers these days. But Chile does very much. Aurangzeb and the narrator visit Chile to see how writers are respected and treasured in that country. But Aurangzeb is quite displeased with the prostitution practised there. So he performs a miracle of sorts. He can do that since he is a spirit. But the credit for that goes to Narendra Modi. When the Chilean president makes certain amendments in the country’s rules and regulations because of what Aurangzeb did, Narendra Modi appreciates it and thanks the president. Many Indians soon claim that the changes in Chile are brought about “by Modi’s efforts and celebrate their dear leader for yet another political feat.”

This book is quite different from all the books that we are familiar with. You can’t classify it as fiction. It is not history either. It is both. Yet it is not historical fiction in the traditional sense. There is lot of humour in it. Irony too. Paradoxes too. It makes us question a lot of our notions about history and truth. That, I believe, is the writer’s purpose. And he succeeds eminently in that.

PS. A day after I posted the above review, I remember I missed something important. The biggest propaganda against Aurangzeb in today's India is that he was a destroyer of Hindu temples. This novel shows Aurangzeb as far more moral and tolerant than many other Mughals. Destruction of certain places of worships was a common strategy in those days. Many rulers resorted to that just to show people that they were more powerful than certain gods. It was a political ploy and little more. Remember the number of Christian churches attacked and destroyed in North India soon after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014? Mr Modi has even permitted some people to worship him as a god in a Gujarat temple! Aurangzeb didn't go to that extent.