In this second edition of the standard political history of the Khalji period... - K. S. Lal

Aurangzeb’s religious policy had created a division in the Indian society. Communal antagonisms resulted in communal riots at Banaras, Narnaul (1672) and Gujarat (1681) where Hindus, in retaliation, destroyed mosques. Temples were destroyed in Marwar after 1678 and in 1680-81, 235 temples were destroyed in Udaipur. Prince Bhim of Udaipur retaliated by attacking Ahmadnagar and demolishing many mosques, big and small, there. Similarly, there was opposition to destruction of temples in the Amber territory, which was friendly to the Mughals. Here religious fairs continued to be held and idols publicly worshipped even after the temples had been demolished.64 In the Deccan the same policy was pursued with the same reaction. In April 1694, the imperial censor had tried to prevent public idol worship in Jaisinghpura near Aurangabad. The Vairagi priests of the temple were arrested but were soon rescued by the Rajputs.65 Aurangzeb destroyed temples throughout the country. He destroyed the temples at Mayapur (Hardwar) and Ayodhya, but “all of them are thronged with worshippers, even those that are destroyed are still venerated by the Hindus and visited by the offering of alms.” Sometimes he was content with only closing down those temples that were built in the midst of entirely Hindu population, and his officers allowed the Hindus to take back their temples on payment of large sums of money. “In the South, where he spent the last twenty-seven years of his reign, Aurangzeb was usually content with leaving many Hindu temples standing… in the Deccan where the suppression of rebellion was not an easy matter… But the discontent occasioned by his orders could not be thus brought to an end.” Hindu resistance to such vandalism year after year and decade after decade throughout the length and breadth of the country can rather be imagined than described.

If the seventeenth century in India was a century of demo¬ graphic growth, the eighteenth was of decline. All evidence in¬ variably leads to this conclusion. During the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was strenuously fighting against the Marathas and the independent Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan. In the early years of the war, the loss of life does not appear to have been great. 58 But a quarter of a century’s warfare in the Deccan did show is effects, and by the beginn¬ ing of the eighteenth century pestilence and death began to stalk the Deecan countryside. From 1702 to 1704 there was no rain, “but instead plague prevailed. In these two years there expired over two, million souls.” 57 In 1706 Aurangzeb moved northwards, “leaving behind (in the words of the eye-witness Manucci)...fields... devoid of trees and bare of crops, their place being taken by the bones of beasts. Instead of verdure all is blank and barren. The country is so entirely desolated and depopulated that neither fire nor light can be found in the course of a three or four days’ journey...” 58 This picture may be a little overdrawn. But Khafi Khan, ‘one of the best and most impartial historians’ of Mughal India, says almost the same about the Deccan... (84-85)

In my computation, however, sufficient historical evidence has been set forth for any demographic behaviour and on that basis I have arrived at the conclusion that the population of India in A.D. 1000 was about 200 million and in the year 1500 it was 170 million.... The loss of Indian population during Mahmud of Ghaznavi's invasions was about 2 million as studied in some detail in Appendix A of the Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India.