Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India
A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster
Episode 36: Aurangzeb, Part II

With Om Puri as Aurangzeb, Sudhir Dalvi as Shah Jahan, Surekha Sikri as Jahan Ara, Ahmed Khan as Aquil Khan, Ved Thapar as Shahbaz Khan, Sohaila Kapur Limaye as Roshan Ara, Surendra Pal as Dara Shikoh, and Aparajita Krishna as Nadira. The dancers are Anita Ordia, Gauri Sharma, and Yuvak Biradari. Playback by Afroze Bano and Shobha Joshi. The script is by Javed Siddiqi.

The denouement leads inexorably to Aurangzeb imprisoning his father and not sparing any of the brothers.

After Murad joins action with Aurangzeb both move north together to fight Shah Jahan’s army with a strong artillery-detachment and ample cash enrichment from Bijapur and Golconda indemnities. They win hands down. In 1658, a second and more decisive battle finds the dilettante Dara with a dazzling array of 50,000 facing the resolute Aurangzeb with his dust- smothered veterans from the Deccan. The gunners are allowed to wreak devastation and Dara’s forces are decimated.

Aurangzeb occupies Agra. Dropping all pretense of rescuing Shah Jahan from the ‘infidel’ influence of Dara, he besieges the fort and denies even supply of water bargaining for opening the fort-gates. He then confines the ailing emperor amongst the marble- terraces of his Agra fort, where he remains under the lonely care of daughter Jahan-Ara as a semi—senile spectre of his former glory, until death comes eight years later.

The feckless Murad is warned by his well-wishers and still enjoys Kathak dance in his court. During another spree of drunkenness and Kathak Mujra, he is inveigled by Aurangzeb’s men and unceremoniously beheaded. Shuja, re-emerging from Bengal, is defeated once more, and Aurangzeb flees to the distant Arakans and finally unto oblivion. Dara continues to flit from camp to camp through the Punjab, Sind and Gujarat, and is engaged in Ajmer. Having lost his beloved wife en route, he is betrayed and turned over to Aurangzeb. Still a popular figure especially with Delhi’s non-Muslims, he is paraded through the streets in chains to their utter dismay and is hacked to death.

Nehru notes that the last of the ‘Grand Mughals’, Aurangzeb, tried to put the clock back and, in the process, broke it up. The Mughal rulers were strong, so long as they put themselves in line with the genius of the nation and tried to work for a common nationality and a synthesis of the various elements in the country. When Aurangzeb began to oppose this movement and suppress it, and to function more as a Muslim than an Indian ruler, the Mughal Empire began to break up after he died as a broken man at the age of 90, in 1707.


Producer Doordarshan
Language Hindi

Credits

Uploaded by Public.Resource.Org
Based on Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
With Roshan Seth as Jawaharlal Nehru
Om Puri as the Narrator
Produced and Directed by Shyam Benegal
Chief Assistant Director was Mandeep Kakkar
Executive Producer Raj Plus
Script by Shama Zaldi and Sunil Shanbag
A production of Doordarshan