THE ROLE OF THE ULEMA — Guidance and Reformation

alim rather than an Emperor. But he did not accept this. In 1658, he had his father dethroned, and then imprisoned him in the Agra Fort. Then, in 1659, he murdered his brother, Dara Shikoh, after which he ruled as the head of the Mughal Empire for about half a century. Aurangzeb was a man with many skills. Had he played the role of an alim instead of an Emperor, it is possible that he would have done such a good job of it that he could have become a model for the ulema to emulate for several centuries. Aurangzeb’s reign was a period when the foundations of modern science were being laid in Europe. The impact of this new knowledge had reached India’s shores by Aurangzeb’s time. But Aurangzeb did not consider this development, and instead, remained engrossed in his political quest. His father, Shah Jahan, had built the enormous Taj Mahal, and Aurangzeb had the opportunity to build an impressive mahal or palace of knowledge in India had he wished. He could have let Dara Shikoh handle the governance of the Empire while he could have focused on establishing an educational empire in India. Had he done so, he would have done much more for the sake of Islam and the ummah than what he unsuccessfully tried to do through politics and war. The political structure and the nature of the leadership of a particular society is indelibly shaped by the mentality of people, their likes and dislikes. Had Aurangzeb travelled to Europe, instead of spending years fighting wars in the Deccan, he would have realized that what he was doing was against the demands of his times. He sought to establish the supremacy of Islam through the ‘politics of the sword’, although the age had already dawned — and which would soon arrive in India, too — when the ‘politics of knowledge’ would become a powerful means of establishing supremacy. It appears that Aurangzeb and the other ulema of his times were probably unaware of not only the intellectual and scientific developments that were taking place in Europe at that time but also of the progress that had been made in this regard in the centuries of Muslim rule in Spain, spanning from the early eighth century to the late fifteenth century.