Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/112

 CHAPTER VI

The Government

No 'Turk' – to use the term of the old travellers – was ever brought into more difficult and delicate relations with 'infidels and heretics' than the Great Mogul. The Grand Signior at Constantinople had his own troubles in this same seventeenth century with his Christian subjects in Hungary and Greece. But Aurangzíb had to govern a people of whom at least three-fourths were what he termed infidels, and he had to govern them with the aid of officers who were no better than heretics to an orthodox Sunní. The vast majority of his subjects were Hindús; the best of his father's governors and generals had been Persians of the sect of the Shi'a; and Aurangzíb, in spite of his prejudices, found he could not do without those tried officials, if he was to make head against the leaders of the Hindús. The downtrodden peasantry could never give him serious trouble, indeed; but the Hindú Chiefs, the innumerable Rájas of the Rájput blood, dwelling in their mountain fastnesses about the Aravalli range and the Great Desert of India, were