Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) has enough in his life, personality, policies and actions to interest not only historians but also literary artists. His name has been used as a metaphor for ruthlessness; ‘kingship knows no kinship’, as Rishi Kapoor’s character puts it, in the Hindi crime thriller Aurangzeb (2013). In his own lifetime John Dryden (1631-1700) wrote the heroic play Aurang–zebe (1675) in which he took quite a bit of poetic licence.
Continue reading this review