Aurangzeb, History & the Politics of Memory – Saurabh Lohogaonkar on India’s Distorted Past ⚔️📖

Aurangzeb remains one of the most polarizing figures in Indian history — remembered as both an emperor and a tyrant, a ruler and a destroyer. But what happens when centuries later, his legacy is rewritten to fit modern political comfort?

In this thought-provoking conversation, Saurabh Lohogaonkar joins host Roshan Cariappa to unpack how India’s history has been selectively sanitized — how tyrants became “administrators,” persecution was reframed as “policy,” and why the truth about Aurangzeb still makes us uneasy today.

Lohogaonkar argues that whitewashing history doesn’t heal wounds — it deepens them. He explores how religious orthodoxy replaced pluralism, how the Deccan wars drained the empire, and how post-independence academia rebranded a dark chapter of history as a misunderstood reign.

This episode is not about hate — it’s about honesty, memory, and reclaiming clarity from centuries of distortion.

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Chapters

00:00 – Intro
01:00 – The Distorted Narrative: How History Whitewashed Aurangzeb
07:20 – Aurangzeb vs Akbar: Two Visions of Empire
14:15 – Faith, Power & Persecution: Religion as State Policy
23:00 – The Deccan Wars: Shivaji, Resistance & Civilizational Shift
33:45 – The Fall of an Empire: Greed, Exhaustion & Regret
47:10 – Modern Whitewashing: Academia, Textbooks & Denial
58:30 – The Lessons: Truth, Memory & India’s Civilizational Clarity

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