I’ve always believed that there’s something very primal to be found in Marathi literature that is mostly marked by a temperament that drives the narrative, without let. In this way, therefore, Nagnath Inamdar’s writing is quite fitting in dealing with the contentious and severely elemental Aurangzeb in his Shahenshah . Inamdar had written a dozen critically feted and commercially successful historical novels before he wrote Shahenshah and ended up writing three more.

All along, he seems to have been impelled by the contradictions inherent in the lives of his pivotal characters — from the efforts of a lowly messenger Trimbakji Dengle in Bajirao II’s court who tried to save the Maratha empire from the mighty British in the maelstrom of 1857 ( Jhep ), past the wrenching efforts of Bajirao Peshwa I to make a Muslim dancer his Queen ( Rau ), to the iconic Shivaji’s final days ( Rajashree ), and now the equally divisive story of an introspective, self-questioning and angst-ridden monarch ( Shahenshah ).

Inamdar’s writing isn’t as blasé as that employed in Alex Rutherford’s novels about the Mughals or in the operatic mode of DL Roy’s celebrated plays Alamgir and Shahjahan . Then, to reach a potentially large, non-Marathi readership, the right pitch in English had to be found.

The secret, according to Vikrant Pande, feted translator of Ranjit Desai’s Raja Ravi Varma, lay not in its mere transliteration but because it read like ‘a lovely English novel’, and made Inamdar’s decision for him. Additionally, Pande’s stated liking for historical fiction, where history is retold as a story, as opposed to fictional history where the author creates stories around historical facts, suited Inamdar’s approach to Aurangzeb. Without putting too fine a point on this, the combination has worked well.

The Aurangzeb story is laced with contradiction and dichotomies. Conventional wisdom finds him breaking the mould of his predecessors, one of extravagance and corporal excess, and emerging as minimalistic, bigoted and entirely unforgiving of all but his own beliefs. Yet — and here’s the dichotomy — he senses other soulful values; he writes a poetry of his own kind, he finds love in the form of a Hindu slave girl who first enraptures him and then devastates him with her passing, he realises the binding force of religion, he sees the need for compassion. He has been unforgiving but never crass or uncouth or wanting in respect. His actions, he says, are all for the survival of the monarchy, which was clearly his prime objective, confident that history would judge him on expanding his kingdom. He achieved this to a large extent.

Inamdar’s subtexts don’t profess to analyse to any great extent; he is most concerned with getting his story across. Consequently, some theories which have gained prominence in recent historical writing don’t figure in his narrative. For instance, one view is that Aurangzeb created a lucid and inviolate relationship between the monarchy and the kingdom, and so, whilst he distanced himself from festivals alien to his religious beliefs, artistic and musical pursuits and certain hedonistic pleasures, he never specifically disallowed any. Several imperial activities under Aurangzeb didn’t reflect his personal preference.

To explain his actions regarding Hindu temples, the current view states that since Dara Shikoh was a rival to the throne, his removal required an erasure of all the liberal things that Dara had stood for. This aspect remains largely unexamined in the book. It would be interesting to speculate now whether Inamdar had ever wanted to deviate from the linear path of his narrative to probe his characters’ complexity. It’s unfair to comment on the basis of the only book of his that I’ve read. His seminal body of work needs someone with more than a working knowledge to study.

Partha Basu is the author of the novel The Curious Case of 221B

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