The reign of Aurangzeb Alamgir lasted from 1658 to 1707 – 49 years of unbroken rule over the largest territorial empire the Indian subcontinent had ever seen. In that half-century, the Mughal state expanded deeper into the Deccan than any predecessor, sustained a complex revenue system, and held together an entity stretching from Kabul to the Carnatic.
Public discourse circles questions of theology and religious policy. But it has crowded out an equally important one: who actually built the gains? The answer, preserved in mansab registers and documented by scholarship, runs through Hindu noble houses of Rajputana, Bundelkhand, and Bikaner. The territorial, administrative, and financial gains were co-produced – built through partnership between the Mughal centre and Hindu elites whose capacity was indispensable.
This article draws on five documented careers to show how Hindu nobles contributed to specific gains that define this period. When those contributions are erased, a historical injustice is done not only to Aurangzeb, but to the nobles themselves.
The Architecture of Shared Power
The Mughal Empire functioned through the mansabdari system – a graded hierarchy in which each noble received a zat (personal rank) and sawar (cavalry obligation). A rank of 3000/3000 meant a commander deploying three thousand mounted troops in operations. Without this system there was no army, no revenue collection, no expansion southward.
- Athar Ali’s systematic study of the nobility lists, compiled from Persian court chronicles, establishes the statistical foundation in The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb (revised Oxford University Press, 2001), the most rigorous quantitative account of who held power under Aurangzeb, and the essential scholarly reference.
Athar Ali’s data shows: under Akbar, Hindu nobles constituted 22.5% of mansabdars holding ranks of 1,000 and above; under Shah Jahan, 24%. Under Aurangzeb the proportion fluctuated but never collapsed – over 148 Hindu nobles held senior rank across the full reign. In later decades, as Truschke notes, the proportion increased as Aurangzeb recruited Maratha and Deccan Hindu chiefs.
The consistency across five decades is the critical point. Hindu noble participation was structural, not episodic.The empire needed these men.
During the war of succession between Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh, Hindu nobles divided between both camps, as Chandra documents. Political alignment followed factional interest and patronage, not communal identity. This single fact is among the most telling in the record.
Five Nobles: The Co-Builders of an Empire
The Mughal nobility numbered in the hundreds at senior level. This article presents five whose contributions are traceable to specific imperial gains. For the full record, see Athar Ali’s The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb. These five are representative. They were not exceptions; they were part of the structure.
Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber (1611-1667): Upper Nobility, Commander, Deccan Operations
Jai Singh was among the most consequential military strategists of the 17th-century Mughal state. In 1665, Aurangzeb dispatched him to the Deccan as plenipotentiary to resolve the protracted conflict with Shivaji Bhonsle. His campaign forced Shivaji to negotiate. The Treaty of Purandar (June 1665) brought 23 Maratha forts under Mughal sovereignty and secured Shivaji’s nominal allegiance – a territorial and political gain of the first order, achieved through a Hindu commander’s military pressure and diplomatic skill.
His prominence was earned through demonstrated capacity to deliver results in contested territory. The Deccan gain of 1665 belongs to his account.
Raja Jaswant Singh of Marwar (1626-1678): High Mansab, Governor of Gujarat and Kabul
Jaswant Singh held one of the highest mansab ranks and served as governor of Gujarat and later Kabul, two strategically sensitive frontiers. The stability of those frontiers during his tenure was a gain the empire counted on. Kabul required a commander of recognised authority whom regional powers respected. Jaswant Singh provided that authority through the weight of his own standing.
His death in 1678 triggered the Marwar succession crisis, a political rupture in which imperial authority was used coercively. The gains and tensions both belong in an honest account.
Raja Raghunatha (Active mid-to-late 17th century): Mansab 3000/700, Senior Diwan
Few roles carried more consequential authority than the diwan– the chief revenue officer responsible for the empire’s financial administration. Without the diwan’s machinery, nothing functioned: armies could not march, mansabdars could not be paid, the Deccan campaigns could not be sustained across decades. Raja Raghunatha held this office at senior level, with a mansab of 3000/700 as recorded by Athar Ali. The fiscal stability that funded 50 years of expansion was produced through a system that Hindu administrators helped run.
Dalpat Rao Bundela (Active late 17th century): Mansab 3000/3000, Deccan Field Commander
A mansab of 3000/3000, zat and sawar equal, was the rank of a field commander expected to deploy three thousand cavalry in active operations. Dalpat Rao Bundela held this rank in the Deccan campaigns. His presence is significant because the Bundela house had experienced friction with the Mughal centre in the previous reign. That he held a 3000/3000 rank demonstrates how the system integrated regional houses even after tension.
Raja Anup Singh of Bikaner (1652-1698): Senior Commander, Scholar-Patron
Anup Singh served in senior military capacity while simultaneously maintaining one of the era’s most significant centres of Sanskrit scholarship. The Anup Sanskrit Library he founded at Bikaner preserved hundreds of manuscripts scholars consult today. A senior Mughal commander was simultaneously a great patron of Hindu learning. The library is one of the lasting cultural gains of the period.
The Logic of Long Rule
An empire governing a subcontinent cannot exclude its dominant military houses and expand. The records show cooperation across 50 years: 148+ Hindu nobles at senior rank; nobles divided factionally in the succession war, not communally; Maratha and Deccan chiefs integrated as campaigns demanded capacity. The gains – Deccan expansion, fiscal stability, frontier security, cultural production – were co-produced by partners whose cooperation the empire required and whose contributions shaped its achievements.
The Cost of Erasure
A version of this history reduces Aurangzeb’s reign to a single dimension and uses that reduction to fuel inherited enmity between communities. This version has political uses, not historical ones.
When the narrative of shared power is erased, the record of Hindu nobles themselves is lost. Men who commanded armies, administered revenues, governed frontiers, and preserved culture are written out of their own story. Their agency disappears. This is not justice to them; it is a second erasure, performed in the present by narratives that claim to speak in their name while erasing what they built.
The Treaty of Purandar was negotiated by Jai Singh. Revenues funding the Deccan were administered by Raghunatha. Frontier security of Kabul and Gujarat rested on Jaswant Singh. Sanskrit manuscripts at Bikaner came from Anup Singh. These are specific contributions to specific gainsand they belong to Hindu nobility as a central chapter, not a footnote.
Criticism of historical power is entirely legitimate. Inherited enmity between communities, sustained by selective readings of medieval records, is another matterand one that the evidence, read carefully, does not support.
A Measured Understanding
History gains clarity when records speak in full. The administrative evidence reveals an empire governed through layered partnership. Hindu nobles commanded armies winning territories, administered revenues funding campaigns, governed frontiers holding the empire together, and sustained cultural production outlasting the political order. They were not symbolic inclusions; they were load-bearing members of the structure itself.
The Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb was not one community’s achievement. It was built through 50 years of cooperation between the imperial centre and Hindu noble houses whose capacity was indispensable. Its gains belong to that partnership. To erase it is to misread the history and wrong the people who made it.
History invites nuance. Nuance requires the willingness to hold complexity without collapsing it into comfort.