Police said in a statement cited by the Reuters news agency that protesters from the Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) set fire to an image of Aurangzeb in Nagpur. A police officer told Reuters that several members of Muslim groups then threw stones at police.
The situation escalated with violent groups torching vehicles and vandalizing homes, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
The curfew has since been relaxed, however authorities have maintained tight security around Aurangzeb's tomb, around 450 kilometers (280 miles) from Nagpur.
The VHP denied accusations of engaging in any violence but said it wants the tomb to be replaced with a memorial for rulers from the local Maratha community.
Historical grievances
Some Hindu activist groups, which are often linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have claimed that several mosques were built over Hindu temples centuries ago during the Muslim Mughal empire.
Shivam Thakre, a VHP youth leader, said that Aurangzeb was an "anti-Hindu" ruler.
"We will not rest until we see his grave completely demolished. If the government does not demolish it, angry people may raze it some day the way Babri Masjid was pulled down," Thakre told DW. His comment refers to the 1992 incident in Ayodhya in which the 16th-century mosque built in the memory of Mughal emperor Babur was torn down by Hindu extremists.
The mosque's destruction triggered communal violence that killed over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.
How has the Bollywood film fueled tensions?
Tensions over the Mughal ruler intensified after the release of Bollywood movie "Chhaava," an action film that portrays the 17th-century Indian king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj as a hero who fights against Aurangzeb.
Devendra Fadnavis, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra — where the city of Nagpur is located — blamed the film's graphic portrayal of Sambhaji's torture and execution at Aurangzeb's orders for angering Hindu groups.
"Chhaava ignited people's anger against Aurangzeb," Fadnavis said, noting that the violence began after "rumors were spread that things containing religious content were burnt" by the protesters — referring to the Quran.
The film has been slammed by some movie critics for feeding into a divisive narrative that risks exacerbating religious rifts across India.
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014, Hindu nationalists have successfully renamed several Indian cities, roads and other historical public places, from Muslim-sounding ones to Hindu-centric ones.
In recent years, the BJP-led federal government has revised history textbooks, reducing content on Mughal rulers in state-run schools.
Hindutva groups call Aurangzeb a "cruel" ruler, accusing him of demolishing Hindu temples.
At a 2022 event in New Delhi's Mughal-era Red Fort, Modi said: "Even though Aurangzeb severed many heads, he could not shake our faith."
Who was Aurangzeb?
Richard Eaton, who specializes in the history of pre-modern India, told DW that Aurangzeb both protected and attacked Hindu temples, motivated purely by politics, and not religion.
"Similarly, temples patronized by authorities who had once sworn loyalty to the state but subsequently rebelled were similarly liable to desecration."
"Conversely, he regularly ordered the protection of temples whose patrons were loyal to the Mughals. In this context, desecrating Aurangzeb's own grave is meaningless," added the author of the book "Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States."
The "blood-thirsty, Hindu-hating" version of Aurangzeb is inaccurate, said historian Audrey Truschke.
"In reality, Aurangzeb was an Indian king who, like many Indian kings before him, including Hindu rulers, protected and targeted temples depending on his perceived political interests," Truschke, author of the book "Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth," told DW.
"Targeting temples for political reasons strikes many modern Indians as inappropriate, but Aurangzeb was part of the pre-modern world, and there is no purchase in judging the past by the standards of the present, especially unequally," she added.
"The current furor over Aurangzeb's modest grave … is fundamentally not about a king who died more than 300 years ago," the Rutgers University professor said. "Rather, it is about oppressing Indian Muslims and targeting their religious spaces in 2025."
Echoing Truschke, Delhi University professor and activist Apoorvanand — who goes by a first name — said that the rekindled hatred against Aurangzeb is "manufactured" by a systematic anti-Muslim campaign over the last few decades.
"This hatred is only supported and amplified by the media and the film industry," he told DW, adding that, "The destruction of the monuments by the Hindu mobs gives Hindus a false sense of victory against Muslims, taking revenge for their ancestors who were supposedly vanquished by Aurangzeb."
"It is also part of a longer drive to erase all Muslim imprints from the Indian identity: destruction of mazaars [Muslim shrines], mosques, monuments, changing names of places. It is part of the de-Islamification of India," said Apoorvanand.
