Mughal Empire Ran on Daily News Reports in the 1600s! Here is What They Say About Aurangzeb

Long before print journalism arrived in India there was a highly advanced information network that kept the Mughal court running. It came to light through the historical reassessments of notable scholars William Dalrymple and Professor Irfan Habib. Their research proves that the 17th-century Mughal state was practically built and run on a daily news report network. 

At the center of this news-sharing network we have the Akhbarat-i-Darbar-i-Mualla in discussion. 

Akhbarat was the official handwritten daily news reports sent directly to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.

More importantly this revelation changes how we have viewed the king through rigid textbook chapters which paint Emperor Aurangzeb as either a distant tyrant or a religious extremist for generations. 

Let’s read more about India’s WhatsApp of the 1600s and how daily news report scrolls ran Aurangzeb’s Mughal Empire hereonwards. 

How the Akhbarat Kept Tabs on Mughal India

The Mughal administration relied on hundreds of state-appointed newswriters (waqai-navis) and secret agents appointed in every major province. 

Just like the modern world newswriters back then were also documenting the daily happenings and sending them back to the capital.

These report scrolls records news about market price fluctuations local law enforcement issues regional crop yields and even the daily gossip of noble households.

According to official archival reports the postal runners (known as harkaras) of the era ran day and night across a vast relay system to deliver these updates to Aurangzeb.

Interestingly these news reports were not entirely top-secret and exclusive to the king. These were also accessible to foreign merchants, regional Rajputs, and local elites who routinely bought copies to keep track of changing imperial policies.

What the Court News Reports Reveal About Aurangzeb 

When we look at the raw intelligence reports that Aurangzeb woke up to every morning the textbook image of a purely brutal king started to fall apart for us. 

What we see instead is an incredibly stressed ruler just any modern day governing body reacting to neutralise real-time crises. 

Take food security in the Mughal era for instance. The documents show Aurangzeb was absolutely obsessed with the price of grain. 

Historians note that Aurangzeb wasn't just praying he was actively tracking supply chains and pulling up corrupt local governors. He knew that high food prices meant bloody urban riots.

Aurangzeb is infamous as one of the greatest Mughal emperors and his most controversial decisions was tearing down temples. But the revelation of such actions also looks very different in these files. 

The Akhbarat logs show these temple destructions weren't random acts of religious extremities. 

Instead they were ordered as brutal and well calculated political punishments for local landlords and elites who had openly revolted against the crown.

But the most desperate entries in the news scrolls show up in the late 1600s. Right when the empire started fracturing from within. 

The daily updates during this era are filled with utmost panic over the Deccan campaigns of the Maratha rulers. You can literally track how the Maatha guerrilla fighters were emptying royal treasury of the Mughal empire through these preserved news updates. 

Ultimately these 400-year-old papers prove that Aurangzeb’s harshest decrees weren't driven by holy wars but by a desperate scramble for tax money and imperial survival.