Wi -The death of Aurangzeb

[Kaushlendra pratap singh]

In 1690, Santaji Ghorpade the Pancha Hajari officer(commander of 5,000 soldier) with the help of his brothers, Bahirji Ghorpade and Maloji Ghorpade, nephew Vithoji Chavan and 2000 soldiers from Dhanaji's troops, in a daring feat of courage attacked in night on Aurangzeb army camp at Tulapur and kill all personal and royal servant present in Aurangzeb personal tent and took away imperial golden pinnacles.
Initially it was assumed Aurangzeb died too, however, he was found alive later as he was spending time in Zenat-Un-Nissa's, Aurangzeb's daughter, tent.
So what happen if Aurangzeb died in that night attacks.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

It would be pretty disastrous, but what happened in real life was already pretty disastrous so... the same things might happen, just 20 years ahead of schedule?

• By 1690, Golconda has only been conquered for a year, and the officials holding the fort down on Aurangzeb's behalf are actually Golconda defectors. I don't know if we'd have a Qutb Shahi restoration but the opportunist government would probably keep the area out of Mughal hands if no one challenges it...
• OTL, Aurangzeb never named an heir and his three sons fought a succession war after his death and Muazzam won and became Bahadur Shah II. In 1690 Muazzam is still in prison for treason, so he won't actually have any powerbase to wage war from (OTL he was governor of Kabul at the time of Aurangzeb's 1707 death). So he is out of the race but Aurangzeb's two other sons, Kam Bakhsh and Muhammad Azam Shah, will probably still fight. Expect a battle on the scale of Jajau or worse.
• The memory of Sambhaji's capture and death is still fresh, and at this early juncture the relations between Chhatrapati Rajaram and Santaji are still good. Instead of a fighting retreat all the way back to Tamil Nadu they could plausibly recapture Raigad and western Maharashtra by the early 1690s and be safe there for some time, recovering their strength after Aurangzeb's hammerblows. It may be overambitious to attack the Mughals during their succession war-- I suspect the thing would be resolved quickly, one way or another, and once the North is united behind a single Badshah the Marathas will be facing the bulk of Aurangzeb's old army yet again. Moreover, OTL Bahadur Shah and his successor Jahandar were fairly conciliatory to the Marathas (mostly because they had bigger kirpan-wielding fish to fry). An interesting side effect of the Marathas getting some breathing room, though, is Rajaram I potentially living a healthier lifestyle and not dying of lung disease while his son Shivaji II was still in infancy. If the boy was older it would be more difficult for Shahu to challenge his right to the throne (and his mother Tarabai's right to govern in his name). This could possibly butterfly the rise of Balaji Vishwanath and the Peshwas in general, keeping a greater amount of power in the Bhonsle dynasty.
• Guru Gobind Singh is likely able to build up the Khalsa's strength. He'll probably still be persecuted by whoever succeeds Aurangzeb, the Punjab is too vital an area to leave in the hands of an embittered community. The Zafarnama likely won't get written as its OTL recipient is dead but I hope something like it still ends up written...

It seems to me that broadly speaking, things will stay the same at first, but the different leadership and associated institutional changes will end up having a bigger effect around the mid-1700s or so.

 

[Kaushlendra pratap singh]

I think the vacuum created by Aurangzeb when he destroys the Bijapur, bidar, Golconda Sultanate, will be filled by Maratha.
Due to the death of Aurangzeb, Hussain Ali would kill prince Shahu and Chhatrapati Sambhaji queen Yashobai in revenge.
The Maratha would rule southern Otl Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Andhra, Hyderabad state much more then OTL due to infighting of Mughal for the throne in North.
The less destroyed economy then OTL of the south will help Maratha to fund their war so they will less plunder which then help in gaining more friend and alliance then OTL.
The European influence for the army will inter fast in Martha warfare, the fortification of South will be 20 times more then OTL. (In OTL Maratha Peshwa and Chhatrapati always face the problem for the fund to continue war )

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

I think the Mughals would be in a better position tbh because they’d have saved a lot of money, and Aurangzebs successor would probably allow Maratha/ southern independence and return to consolidation of the Deccan itself. Further, you’ve definitely butterflied away the chain of incredibly incompetent emperors that followed him, and literally anyone and I mean anyone would have been better than Jahandar Shah and Farrukhsiyar. Also, seeing as whichever of his sons takes the throne, they’re going to have the energy that comes with youth (Azam shah is 37, and Kam Baksh is 23) it makes me think they’ll be much more able to deal with the empires problems than Bahadur Shah was when he came to the throne, already aged and elderly.

Actually I doubt whether there will be a succession war of any sort- Kam Baksh is only twenty three and all the other brothers are dead or in prison apart from Azam Shah. Then again the relationship between the brothers was apparently tense and Kam Baksh may resent his brothers imperiousness and decide to launch a bid for a throne despite his lack of experience and if his inexperience convinces him of the need to listen to enough astute politicians, there’s a good chance he could bring together the many groups with a bone to pick against the empire and solidify it.

Even if nothing changes concerning the worsening state political culture, I’d imagine Golconda stays Mughal out of sheer inertia- Delhi has the deepest pockets and those diamond mines are too good to let slip.

There’s a decent chance the Khalsa doesn’t even form ittl, it really completely depends on the ten years between aurangzebs death and 1699- you can’t really be fighting to depose the tyrant who killed your father if he’s already dead, and the new guy is likely to be nowhere near as religiously motivated as Aurangzeb was.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Interesting-- so the likely result could be all of India covered by fairly compact imperial states where the imperial dynasty retains more power-- the Mughal dynasty doesn't lose it to people like the Sayyid brothers, and the Bhonsle don't lose it to the Peshwas. The Marathas likely keep north-coastal Tamil Nadu (with Aurangzeb dying you'll see Zulfiqar Khan and Kam Bakhsh hightailing it back to Delhi instead of sieging Jinji Fort). The Mughals get their shit together after one of the brothers wins (and as Madhav has noted, with Aurangzeb dying earlier the brothers are not both doddering old men with middle-aged kids). As a third state in this pattern you could have Wodeyar Mysore in the far south, exerting a loose hegemony over the Kerala coastal states.

While this Mughal-Maratha-Mysore political order (3 Ms? M&M&M?) political order is an interesting possibility, there's some flashpoints for longer-term conflict/instability:

• Golconda. The Mughals possess it with the intent of keeping its diamond mines; while they have more funds to start with, Aurangzeb has already demonstrated how easy it is to blow that advantage on a pet project. Meanwhile, the Marathas have no compunctions about raiding to bankroll more wars, also want the diamond mines, and need solid control over the Telugu lands to establish a land connection with the Tamil holdings (which will themselves be vulnerable so long as Andhra is a zone of Mughal hegemony). Meanwhile the local aristocracy, led by the Golconda defectors, will probably back whoever gives them the best deal.
• Punjab. While the Khalsa as we know it may be forestalled by Aurangzeb dying, 2 Sikh gurus have died at the hands of Mughal emperors and low-level persecution led to maintenance of community militarization even in peacetime during the tenures of Hargobind Singh and Har Rai. I think by this point the Sikh suspicion of the Mughal state as an institution won't be so easy to overcome. The state could accept this and lets the Sikhs have keep their autonomy/military strength, and the Sikhs might even help defend India during the Afsharid invasion. Or Delhi could keep trying to integrate the Sikhs and end up with a grindy mess of a war right on its borderlands. Nader rolls over everyone, and Iran's tax burdens are much lighter for several years.
• Mysore. If Golconda remains Mughal, the other way to establish a land bridge to Jinji fort is through the Wodeyar realm. While a Maratha-Mysore war wouldn't be hard to set off (Marathas start establishing ties with Travancore, Mysore invades Travancore to keep the Marathas from controlling all its export ports, rest is history) but Mysore wouldn't be a pushover. The war will likely be to the detriment of both parties.

If the three states can sort out these border issues without causing each other's wholesale collapse, they just might keep the East India Company away from any major conquests-- though it will always be around in the corner, haunting battlefields and offering quick conclusions to messy wars in exchange for enlargements of its coastal holdings...

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

The more I read into it, I think the best case for the Mughals would be a governing alliance of Azam Shah as emperor and Zulfiqar Khan as chief minister. The one saving grace of Jahandar's reign was having Zulfiqar around as a competent as a military/political leader (in Aurangzeb's wars, he broke the power of the Marathas in Tamil Nadu and became first Nawab of the Carnatic; returning to Delhi to aid Jahandar, he recognized the faults of Aurangzeb's uncompromising attitude and opted for reconciliation with the Rajputs and other parties) but his efforts were cut short by... Farrukhsiyar and the Sayyid brothers, who failed to reach Zulfiqar's highs and easily surpassed Jahandar's lows.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

Golconda defectors will probably go for the most Pro Persian side, considering the strength of Iranian nobles and merchants in the sultanate before conquest. If power projection is relatively similar then Golconda will go for the side that has the most employment opportunities for Persian nobles. While the Marathas were all fluent in Persian, whether they’d seize the chance for legitimacy by associating themselves with an elite culture or whether they’d focus on securing the Hindavi base depends on individuals

 

[Kaushlendra pratap singh]

The golconda defector army After the death of Aurangzeb will be destroyed in an intial face-off/skirmish between returning Mughal army and Maratha because they were first to run. The power of Sikh in Punjab will give a headache to any new emperor than Maratha controlling Golconda .