The Great Mughals and Their India

by Dirk Collier

The only one to have been able to reunite a sizeable part of Genghis Khan’s empire – and add a few new territories, including Delhi – was Timur (1336–1405).

Success, however horribly attained, tends to breed respect.

Others – including the vast majority of present-day Afghan leaders and many people in West Pakistan – would argue that Pakistan’s (and British India’s) 2640 km western border with Afghanistan (the so-called Durand Line of 1893, named after Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat) is entirely arbitrary. Cutting through the homeland of Baluchis and Pashtuns, it was imposed upon the local Afghans by the British colonialists for their own geopolitical reasons, without any consideration for local realities and sensitivities. From this point of view, the western border of ‘India’ – historically, linguistically, culturally and ethnically – is the Indus Valley, roughly coinciding with the current Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab. Indeed, it should be remembered that Sindhi, Urdu and Punjabi are Indo-Aryan languages,10 while Baluchi and Pashto belong to the – closely related, but distinct – Iranian language group.11

The empires of the great Hindu dynasties of old (Mauryas, Guptas and so on) – with the important, if short-lived, and single exception of Ashoka the Great’s empire, of which we know relatively little13 – never covered more than approximately 60 per cent of the subcontinent.14 Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, ruler of the Delhi sultanate from 1325 until his death in 1351, briefly managed to expand his dominions all the way down south to the Kaveri river (in present-day Karnataka and Tamil Nadu). It can, however, hardly be stated that he truly managed to unite this vast empire under his victorious banner: the hold he had on it was precarious at best, never undisputed, and barely lasted longer than a few years. He lived to see it all fall apart, one principality after the other breaking away and declaring independence. Around 250 years later, Akbar the Great (1542–1605) became the unbeaten and unbeatable ruler of a vast and tightly organized Indian empire – roughly one hundred million inhabitants, close to one fifth of the total world population at that time.

c. 1180 Khwaja Muin-ud Din Muhammad Chishti,16 the saintly founder of India’s most influential Sufi order, settles in Ajmer (now in Rajasthan). 1192–1526: Delhi

Reminding ourselves of Oscar Wilde’s famous bon mot that the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple,

Babur loved and enjoyed Kabul, but it was much too small a kingdom for a man of his grandiose ambitions. Pillaging forays beyond the Khyber Pass may have satisfied the greed of his men, but Babur wanted more, much more: he wanted all of Hindustan. After

As per Gascoigne’s21 summary: Babur – reputed for his largesse – casually handed it back to Humayun; two decades later, Humayun, in dire straits at that time, gave it to Shah Tahmasp of Persia; Shah Tahmasp sent it as a present to Nizam Shah in the Deccan (in India); from there, it somehow found its way back to the Mughal treasure under Shah Jahan; barely two generations later, after the sack of Delhi in 1739 by Nadir Shah, it was again carted off to Persia along with the rest of the Mughal treasure; it was over there that it got its current nickname; it then passed from Nadir Shah’s grandson to the reigning family in Kabul, and from them to Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab from 1801 to 1839; when the Punjab was annexed by the British in 1849, the diamond was gifted away by Maharaja Dulip Singh of Lahore to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, via the British chief commissioner, Sir John Lawrence, who promptly forgot about it, leaving it in his waistcoat pocket for six weeks;

when the absent-minded commissioner finally remembered about the jewel, it was sent posthaste to Queen Victoria in London, arriving in time to become the prize exhibit in the Great Exhibition of 1851, ‘and so,’ writes Gascoigne, ‘[it went] into the Tower of London, from which nothing escapes’. The version about the precious object lying in the

However, there was a lot of work to be done, a mission to be accomplished. By Central Asian standards, Babur was ruling over an immense country, but in an Indian context, he merely occupied – for the time being, until further notice – just a few squares on a much larger chessboard. He might have won an important victory, but that was by no means final: there were still many actual and potential rivals to be reckoned with. The ousted Lodis and their allies were waiting for an opportunity to strike back; to the east, in Bihar and Bengal, there were other Afghan clans (which, a few generations earlier, had gained de facto independence from Delhi) feeling tempted to expand their dominions and challenge Babur’s throne, now that the sultanate had collapsed; and last but not least, there was Rajputana (Rajasthan) to the southwest. Never conquered by any Muslim invader, the formidable Rajput clans – usually divided by internal rivalry and bloody feuds – were forming a confederation under Rana Sangram Simha – aka Rana Sanga – of Mewar (in southern Rajasthan, including the powerful fortress of Chittorgarh).

Babur’s newly arrived astrologer appeared to side with the sceptics: Mars was in an unfavourable position and the stars presaged nothing but defeat and disaster, was his prediction. But Babur wouldn’t budge. Stubbornly, he continued his advance, taking maximum precautions at every halt, using the same tactics that had proved so valuable at Panipat and protecting his camp with movable bulwarks of interlinked carts. Then, in a flash of intuition, he found the way to rally the troops: jihad, holy war, sanctioned by Allah Himself. Indeed, this was the first time in his entire military career that he would be fighting kafirs, infidels. Conveniently glossing over the presence of thousands of fellow Muslim Afghans in the enemy army, he persuaded his men of the vital importance of the upcoming battle: the entire future of Islam on the subcontinent depended on them! If they won, undying glory and untold wealth would be theirs; and if, by Allah’s decree, they would fall on the battlefield, the eternal rewards of paradise awaited them.

Babur had no alternative but to resign himself to the inevitable: the accursed Uzbeks would never leave his beloved Samarqand. Hindustan was a consolation prize, but it would have to do.

Babur was laid to rest in his own Garden of Eight Paradises on the banks of the Yamuna in Agra, one of the last gardens he had planned and landscaped himself, about 4 km north of the spot where, four generations later, the Taj Mahal would arise.

At some time between 1540 and 1544, his remains were transferred to Kabul and reburied in his favourite garden on the east bank of the Kabul river, appropriately called Bagh-e-Babur Shah (Babur Shah’s Garden). The king of Kabul was back home, at last.

The first act, from 1530 to 1540, is the story of how, through a series of grave strategic blunders, he lost his inheritance to Sher Khan Suri (later known as Sher Shah Suri), his erstwhile vassal. Then followed the absolute lowest ebb of his life: five years spent in bitter exile as a hapless wanderer, at times little more than a common marauder with a dwindling group of ragged followers. Next, things got better from 1545 onwards, when, with Persian help, he managed to regain control and prepare for his return to Hindustan. The fourth and final act consists of the last eleven months of his life – from 22 February 1555 to 27 January 1556 – during which he could finally call himself Padshah of Hindustan again, before losing his life in a silly accident in his library.

diagnosed with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. For instance, Humayun would never place his left foot first when entering a building, and anyone who did was immediately sent out to correct the faux pas; he would waste entire afternoons shooting arrows in the air, marked with his own name or that of the Persian Shah, to derive, from the respective positions and angles in which they had fallen, the future of both monarchs and their empires; strategically important decisions – such as the invasion of a country – would be based on the numerical value of the names of peasants who happened to cross his path. Never would he even consider doing anything important without the help of astrology, numerology and other methods of divination. That none of these abstruse ‘methods’ ever produced even the slightest reliable result did not seem to bother him in the least.

Whenever he found the time – provided he was not wasting it in the harem or in opium’s false paradise – he would be working on some kind of contraption, feverishly drawing and calculating; or he would sit in his library, reading voraciously, adding yet another insight to his vast knowledge about the movements of celestial bodies, the properties of metals and precious stones, flowers, herbs and plants, the four elements and their relationship to the letters of the Arabic alphabet, and many other such arcane matters.

Similarly, the nobles, officers, artisans and the like were divided into the same categories of ‘empire’, ‘auspiciousness’ and ‘joy’. The administrators were called Ahl-i-Daulat, men of empire; the Ahl-i-Sa’adat, men of auspiciousness, were the religious scholars, literati, scientists, poets, law officers and other ‘great and respectable men’; and the Ahl-i-Murad, or people of joy, were those who ‘possessed beauty and elegance’, and included virtuoso singers and musicians. Within each of the three classes were twelve orders or ‘arrows’, each divided into three ranks.

For nearly three months, the enemy armies faced each other, improving their respective defences, alternating occasional skirmishes with diplomatic overtures. It has been described how Humayun’s emissary, a cleric name Mullah Muhammad Barghiz, found Sher Shah, spade in hand, helping his soldiers engaged in digging fortifications in the heat of the day. On seeing the envoy, the Afghan king washed his hands, ordered an awning installed to provide a bit of shade, and sat himself down to parley. His tone was quietly defiant: ‘Go and tell your emperor this from me,’ he said. ‘He wants war, his troops do not; and I don’t want war, but my troops do.’

Once again, those who survived the ensuing massacre threw themselves into the Ganga in a desperate attempt to escape the Afghan onslaught, only to perish by the thousands in the swirling waters – or, in Abu’l Fazl’s flowery language, they ‘sank in the whirlpool of disappointment, giving the vessels of their lives to the boisterous waters of annihilation’.10 Humayun made it across the river, slightly more comfortably than at Chausa, on the back of an old elephant this time. On the other side, he was so upset and exhausted that he did not have the strength to clamber up the steep and slippery river bank; a few of his men tied their turbans together to drag him up and save him.

In Abu’l Fazl’s flowery language: ‘the base and dishonest began to desert and even the feet of great men, whose notions of rectitude had departed, came to slide from their places.’14 Jauhar recounts a particularly embarrassing incident, when two senior generals, Munim Khan and Tardi Beg, mounted their horses to leave, and Humayun ran after them, and only with great difficulty managed to persuade them to stay.15

Sher Shah was one of the very first monarchs in Indian medieval history who consciously and methodically occupied himself with the essence of government, i.e., the establishment of justice, law and order, and the furtherance of prosperity for the entire population. It is by no means a coincidence that he chose Sultan-ul Adil (the just king), as his royal title: that was a promise, a commitment, and one he would, to the best of his abilities, live up to. In 1540, at the time he kicked the Mughals out of India, Sher Shah was about fifty-four years of age, a lifetime of experience and a remarkable career behind him.

In short: nearly two hundred years before Montesquieu,* Sher Shah instinctively understood that separation of powers was the best guarantee against any abuse of it.

Meanwhile, as will be recounted later, Sikandar Shah had been soundly defeated by the returning Mughals. Just twelve years after Sher Shah’s passing, by 1557, the proud Suris had wiped themselves off from the tables of history.

Thus ended, quite unexpectedly, but not entirely surprisingly, Humayun’s eventful but tragic life. In the wry, often-quoted words of the British orientalist and historian Stanley Edward Lane-Poole (1854–1931),39 his end ‘was of a piece with his character. If there was a possibility of falling, Humayun was not the man to miss it. He tumbled through life, and he tumbled out of it.’

1533: Foundation of Din Panah. 1535: Humayun’s campaign in Gujarat. 1537: Humayun’s campaign in Bengal. 26 June 1539: Humayun’s defeat at Chausa. 17 May 1540: Humayun’s defeat at Kannauj; Sher Shah Suri’s reign commences. 1541–42: Humayun in Sindh; marriage to Hamida Banu Begam. 15 October 1542: Birth of Akbar. 1544: Humayun in Persia. 22 May 1545: Death of Sher Shah; accession of Islam Shah.

With Shams-ud Din’s competent assistance, Akbar now devoted himself in earnest to his duties as emperor. Following the example set by Bairam Khan, he made sure nothing escaped his attention, controlling, at random, even the smallest things. Even more importantly, it was around this time that he started reflecting, quite open-mindedly, about his duties towards his subjects. Following the example of the great caliph, Harun-ar Rashid (763–809), he even started wandering in disguise around the streets and alleys of Agra after dark, informing himself first-hand about the actual living conditions, hopes and aspirations of his subjects.

depth conversations with Mir Abdul Latif, his wise and broad-minded teacher, who impressed upon him the concept of sulh-i-kul, peace for all: the task of a monarch is to guarantee peace and prosperity for all his subjects, regardless of their religion. The significance of this concept – which would be further developed under Abu’l Fazl’s influence – cannot be overestimated: it is thanks to this concept that Akbar would go down in history as one of the modern world’s first and strongest proponents of universal tolerance and freedom of worship.

As long as Akbar had kept them in sight, he had them under control; but in sending them off to remote regions, far away from the imperial court, he made the mistake so many other Indian kings before and after him made and would be making, i.e., to underestimate the inherent dangers of physical distance: in an environment where communications were slow, distance inevitably bred estrangement, estrangement bred ambition and ambition bred rebellion.

Akbar had always been a daredevil: his courage bordered on the verge of recklessness at times. In the days of Adham Khan, for instance, on the return journey from Malwa, he had killed an attacking tigress, on foot and singlehandedly, reportedly with just one blow of his sword. On another occasion, on a hunting trip, he had personally led the charge against a gang of armed robbers, driving his elephant right through the wall of the house where they had taken cover – taking no less than seven arrows in his shield. Many times, and with remarkable prowess, he had tackled enraged elephants and calmed them down.

The Battle of Sarnal (21 December 1572) has been hailed as one of Akbar’s most glorious victories; and it indeed witnessed remarkable feats of bravery. Objectively speaking, though, it was maybe the worst military blunder of Akbar’s reign, a wholly unnecessary act of recklessness, which could easily have cost him his life. His whole empire could have ended then and there, in that insignificant skirmish, because of his stubbornness and daredevilry; and several good men, including Raja Bhagwan Das’ own brother Bhupat, paid for this vainglory with their lives.

The taking of Surat would not be worthy of further mention were it not for Akbar’s first encounter with the Portuguese.

Akbar, for his part, had no problem with a few trading posts on the coast, and was, in fact, quite taken with and intrigued by the Firanghis (‘Franks’, i.e., Europeans). The peace treaty was quickly agreed to and signed: the Mughals would not attack the Portuguese coastal settlements and the Firanghis would neither interfere in the ongoing hostilities nor try to expand any of their settlements inland; their warships would continue to protect the Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca. It is, incidentally, quite remarkable that, for over a century, Portuguese warships dominated the entire Arabian Sea between the Strait of Hormuz and the Indian west coast; Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca could not travel overseas unless they procured themselves a Portuguese passport – duly stamped with crucifixes and images of Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin.

Places in India with names ending in ‘bad’ (say, Ahmedabad or Moradabad) have been founded or conquered by Muslim rulers, and names ending in ‘pur’ refer to Hindu origins. Akbar’s capital, however, would be special: it would be a truly Hindustani city, uniting Hindu and Muslim building styles and combining, in its name, a Muslim concept with a Hindu ending.

Akbar had always been a deeply religious man. It is well documented that, throughout his life, he spent several hours every day in prayer and meditation, usually around or before dawn, sitting on a large flat stone in a lonely spot. But he was also a rationalist, deeply interested in – not to say obsessed by – religious truth. ‘Discourses on philosophy have such a charm for me, that they distract me from all else,’ he once confessed in public. ‘I sometimes have to forcibly restrain myself from listening to them, lest I should neglect the necessary duties of the hour!’ In January 1575, he ordered the construction of the Ibadatkhana (house of worship), which was to be a sacred meeting place dedicated solely to the study of God, where the most learned scholars of Hindustan and beyond would be invited to join him in studious reflection on the divine mysteries.

The inability of the various Muslim sects and jurists to reach an agreement on any issue had made Akbar even more interested in the insights, beliefs and practices of other religions. By the end of 1578, the Ibadatkhana had become a true religious parliament, where not only Muslims, but also Hindus, Jains and Parsis (Zoroastrians) were invited. In this respect, he appears to have taken a distinctly rationalist stance.

What neither the Jesuits nor their Muslim adversaries seemed to realize was that the harder they tried to win the emperor’s favour, i.e., the more radical and fanatic their arguments, the less convinced he was. He was looking for the truth; they wanted to teach him their doctrine. He wanted to unite, conciliate and bring people together; they only wanted to accuse, condemn and exclude others. He wanted to free people’s minds; they only wanted to subjugate them. ***

Akbar’s strategy had worked perfectly. And thus, on 10 August 1581, the great imperial army of Hindustan proudly marched through the wide-open iron gates of Kabul: Akbar the Great made his triumphant entry into his grandfather’s ancient capital. Awestruck at the sight of his magnificence and power, the inhabitants received him with humble reverence and every possible honour, but with visible dread: what kind of punishment would be meted out to the city? How terrible would be the inevitable mass executions, rapes and plunder? Fear, fortunately, quickly turned to relief and then enthusiasm, when, for the first time, the people saw for themselves the kindness and clemency Akbar was capable of. Leaving everything and everybody in peace, he had alms distributed to the destitute and needy, and with conspicuous piousness, rendered himself immediately to the great Ali Masjid, where he humbly removed his armour, turban and boots. Barefoot and in plain white clothes like the humblest of worshippers, he prostrated himself in silent prayer, thanking God for his victory. ***

As Abu’l Fazl expressed it with his usual discernment and wit: ‘… the emperor is Parsi in his rites, Hindu in his food and Sufi in his heart.’

Din-e-Ilahi was an utter failure, destined to die with its founder. But, in one way, it was the also high point of Akbar’s life, the symbol of everything his reign stood for. It was the living proof that he truly answered to no one but the one God; and it was – and remains – a powerful message to all people of goodwill: God, if He exists, is less interested in the formal creed we belong to, than in our deeds. A God who truly is all-good, compassionate and merciful, really does not care too much whether we believe in the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, the Holy Quran or any other religion or dogma. If God exists, He wants us to live our lives in the service of truth and goodness; He wants us to leave the world a better place than we found it; and He wants us to be a source of happiness to other people, and through that, also to ourselves.

With Abdullah Khan Uzbek out of the way, his forces decimated by Shah Abbas and his successor an impotent weakling, Akbar was tempted to march north, to Samarqand: Samarqand, where the bones of his great ancestor Timur were resting; Samarqand, the priceless jewel that was stolen from his grandfather by the Uzbek usurpers. But unlike his father and grandfather, Akbar was not a Central Asian anymore; his future did not lie in faraway northern regions where he never had set foot, but in his own Hindustan. Akbar realized he was growing old – fifty-six already – and much remained to be done. He decided to move back to Agra, from where it would be easier to direct the operations against the recalcitrant sultanates of the Deccan. Little did he imagine that his last adversary was not to be some Deccan ruler, but his own firstborn son.

In terms of ‘blood’, Khusrau and Khurram both were three-fourth Rajput, one-eighth Persian and one-eighth Central Asian Turkish. The ‘Mughal’ dynasty had become truly Indian.

everything would have gone the way Akbar planned, his borders would have extended considerably further south than they actually did at the time of his death in 1605. It was not to be, because of his sons’ misbehaviour and disobedience.

The rapprochement was, however, disappointingly short-lived. Akbar was much vexed with increasingly unsettling reports about drunken depravity, vicious cruelty and excesses of all kinds on Salim’s part. The most fearful penalties were inflicted for trivial offences, writes Smith;34 pardon was never thought of, and even his adherents were dumbstruck with terror. A courtier convicted of a plot against the prince’s life was flayed alive while Salim calmly watched. Akbar must have attended the celebrations for the beginning of the forty-ninth year of his reign in the most sombre of moods: was this the kind of man to succeed him? Danyal

Akbar’s conversation would, in general, be reassuringly pleasant, polite and kindly; yet, he radiated awesome power and majesty, and his innermost thoughts would usually remain hidden behind a faint, inscrutable smile. The way he moved, his demeanour, everything about him was ‘in such perfect accord with royal dignity, that anybody would instantly recognize him as a great king’, the Jesuits noted.

IN INDIA’S COLLECTIVE MEMORY, JAHANGIR IS LITTLE MORE THAN an insignificant transitory figure between his father Akbar the Great, the military and political colossus, and his son Shah Jahan, the apogee of Mughal magnificence and builder of the incomparable Taj Mahal.

Probably the worst and most deliberate religious outrage Jahangir committed for ‘political’ reasons was in 1620, when, after taking the fort of Kangra (in present-day Himachal Pradesh) in the foothills of the Himalayas, he had a cow slaughtered while Muslim prayers were being said. Apart from the foregoing cases, there have been other instances where, in a fit of – usually drunken – rage, Jahangir suddenly ordered the wanton destruction of religious sanctuaries and artifacts.

These incidents may have been isolated and the result of anger and drunken fickleness rather than policy, but they foreboded the resurgence, under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, of an ill-advised ‘orthodoxy’ wherein non-Muslims were again considered – and treated – as second-rate citizens; predictably, this would lead to the downfall of the empire and the ultimate disintegration of India.

Despite all his weaknesses and shortcomings, Jahangir revealed himself as one of the most gifted and, at times, the most endearing of the Great Mughals. He was an intelligent, well-educated man, fluent in Persian, Turkish, Khariboli (from which Hindi evolved) and Arabic, apart from being a refined connoisseur of the arts, a deserving amateur scientist, a shrewd politician, a pragmatic and wise ruler, a respectful son, a passionate lover, a devoted husband, father and grandfather, and a talented writer. His remarkably candid autobiography, written in an exceptionally lively, straightforward and, at the same time, elegant and refined Persian, is, in fact, more deserving of accolades than the much better-known Baburnama.

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.