The Great Mughals and Their India

Title: The Great Mughals and Their India

Author: Dirk Collier

Publisher: Hay House India, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9789381431887

Pages: 400

An enchanting piece of work combining the entertainment of fiction with the levelheadedness of history.

The Mughals ruled India only for two centuries in the real sense of the term. But the legacy they’d left behind, in the country’s culture, languages, art, architecture and society is indelible. The magnificent buildings erected by them, with the Taj Mahal occupying the pinnacle, continues to generate a sense of pride in the people. The most colourful dynasty’s rule in Indian history is not, however, without its due share of horrible atrocities and religious strife. But on the whole, it united the country when the power of sultanates was waning and made it ready for the transition to modernity with the advent of the British. Dirk Collier tells the story of the origin and demise of the powerful Mughal dynasty in India, right from Babur from the central Asian principality of Ferghana, and ending with the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar in Burma, unattended and unmourned in exile. The author is a lawyer and businessman and serves on the board of several organizations. His passion for Asian culture and history was aroused as a result of travels through the continent, predominantly in India and China and he has authored another book of fiction on Akbar the Great. This book is eminently readable for all categories of readers.

The demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in 1992, which was believed by some to be a mosque built by Babur and by many as the birthplace of Lord Ram, was the single most significant event in the sociopolitical history of independent India. Claiming that the mosque was built on the site of a demolished Hindu temple, militant nationalists destroyed the structure which was more than four centuries old, sparking a spate of communal riots in which hundreds of people belonging to both communities perished. This incident brought into sharp focus the antecedents of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire. Widely believed to be a brave warrior, able administrator and insightful founder of India’s most glamorous dynasty, Babur gets a neat dressing down in the book. Readers would be shocked to find that this man was thought to be a coward and traitor in Persian history. Babur held Samarkand thrice, but each time, he had to flee for his life. During the second attempt, he faced a mighty Uzbek army under the able leadership of Shaybani Khan. Sure of defeat, Babur felt like a trapped rat. His cunning stratagems were to no avail against the Uzbek might. In the end, an agreement was reached when Babur agreed to send his beloved elder sister as a concubine to Shaybani Khan’s harem. Babur escaped with his life and eventually established a kingdom in Kabul. His hopes were raised when the Uzbeks were defeated in their battle against Shah Ismail of Persia. The Persians killed Shaybani Khan and handed Samarkand over to Babur on a platter, on the condition that Babur should convert to Shiism along with the citizens of Samarkand. Ever ready to jump at the chance offered to him, Babur readily agreed. But the people of Samarkand, who took pride in their Sunni tradition and having much more self-respect than their new king, were in no mood to listen. When Babur’s atrocities against the city’s revered Sunni clerics became unbearable, they rose up in revolt and kicked the pretender out. Joined by Uzbeks, the people of Samarkand opened many fronts of war. At Bukhara, when Babur was on the verge of defeat as he usually was against the Uzbeks, Babur begged for Persian help. The Shah graciously sent Najm Beg, a war veteran to relieve him. But the Uzbeks made a surprise attack, in which Beg was killed. The amazing fact was that Babur fled from the scene of battle, with his tail between his legs, abandoning the brave general to his fate who had come all the way from Persia to rescue him. Babur’s personal life was peculiar, even by medieval standards. It appears that he ran a strong trait of homosexuality towards a shapely boy from the camp market and is recorded in his own memoir, Baburnama. His memoir in this regard is shocking to puritanical sentiments as it runs “I developed a strange inclination for him. Before this experience, I had never felt a desire for anyone, nor did I listen to talk of love and affection or speak of such things. I was so bashful that I could not look him in the face, much less converse freely with him. In my excitement and agitation, I could not thank him for coming, much less complain of his leaving…One day….all at once I found myself face-to-face with the boy, and I was so ashamed I almost went to pieces. There was no possibility of looking straight at him or of speaking coherently. With a hundred embarrassments and difficulties I got past him” (p.47). Looks very much like the diary of a young girl, but unbelievably candid from a celebrated scion of pious rectitude! Collier also compares Babur to Hitler for his unapologetic disdain for human life. His self-righteous egotism made him believe that whatever he does to other people is right and good, provided it happens to suit his own selfish purposes. The author asserts that the world would have been a much better place without him, or the likes of him (p.71), which is a bit too harsh of an assessment.

What Babur, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb were not, was more than made up by the syncretistic policies of Akbar the Great. Akbar is the true forerunner of today’s secular Indian leaders. He exhibited a form of enlightenment rarely seen in medieval rulers. Akbar issued regulations forbidding circumcision of young boys before the age of fifteen, an age when a boy was old enough to decide for himself. He banned the enslavement of conquered Hindus and insisted that farmlands in subdued territories shall not be laid waste. In order to wipe off discrimination against Hindus, he abolished the hated religious poll tax of Jizya in 1564, which was re-established in 1679 by that sanctimonious bigot, Aurangzeb. The Ulema strongly opposed this move, claiming divine sanction in the Koran to impose such a tax on people of other religions who were not called for military service. Akbar’s terse rejoinder was that Hindus were not exempt from military duty. Indeed, Rajput warriors formed a major chunk of his fighting machine. He abandoned the lunar Hijri calendar and used instead the solar Persian calendar, starting from his year of accession. Aurangzeb reversed this policy too, and started using the ridiculously impractical lunar system for assessing land revenue based on agricultural yield! Akbar’s greatest gift was his eclectic spirit and quest for truth in all religions. He founded the Ibadat Khana in Agra, where religious discourses took place. At first, only Islamic scholars – from both Sunni and Shia sects – were invited. But the emperor was perplexed at the constant bickering between them. If the religion was truly ordained by god, how could such mortal divergence of opinion can prevail among its followers? Akbar got tired of legalized trivia displayed in discussions on Sharia law, and lost much of his faith. His religious thinking got separated from the mainstream and started flowing through uncharted territory. On ecclesiastic matters where there was discord, Akbar acquired sole right to judge by an Infallibility Decree promulgated in 1579. He introduced Din-e-Ilahi three years later, which was a sect of his own, but didn’t survive his reign. The book portrays Akbar as tolerant, free-thinking and eclectic, bordering on the heretical. But of course, he practiced Islam till his death. He respected all religions, but practically belonged to none. His legacy of tolerance was inherited by Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son, whose work ‘Majma ul-Bahrain’ (the confluence of two oceans) describes India as the fusion of the two religions of Hinduism and Islam.

Collier displays great care to basics such as how the term ‘Mughal’ came into being. Babur was descended from Timur on the paternal and Genghis Khan on the maternal sides. They called themselves ‘Silsila i-Gurkaniyya’ or Gurkanid dynasty, Amir Timur being a Gurkan (son-in-law along the line) of Genghis Khan. The author’s insistence of establishing that the large scale religious conversions, wanton destruction of temples and other persecutions perpetrated on the non-Muslim populations of India by some prominent Mughals was not due to bigotry per se, but to be accounted as a show of imperialism and power. Their limitless ambition and the desire to show off made them do it, he concur. Collier goes out of his way to condone such cruelty in almost a dozen places in the book, with his pesky apology on behalf of the medieval tyrants, as if it is some consolation to the hapless victims. He includes two passages from Sikander Lodi and Alauddin Khilji, who ruled before the Mughals which shows the contempt and hostility with which the sons of the soil were treated by these foreign aggressors. The book proposes that though Islamic power was concentrated in the centre of the country, Islamization was strongest on the fringes of Sindh, Baluchistan and eastern Bengal. This is attributed to the undeveloped or lack of penetration of Hindu social institutions there. This argument needs to be studied in detail by scholars.

The book includes colourful quotes from Abul Fazl and other contemporaries to embellish the narrative. Fazl’s flowery and ornate pedantry helps to evaluate the level of sycophancy demanded by a medieval monarch. He includes a gruesome description of the blinding of Kamran, Humayun’s brother who lost out in the war of succession, that was the bane of the Mughals. He was overpowered and a sharp lancet pierced into both of his eyes – fifty times in a row to make the deed foolproof! The prince bravely withstood the torture, but at the end of it, when a mixture of lemon juice and salt was sprinkled on the wound, he broke down and cried out. Later emperors after Aurangzeb were mocked and humiliated by all. Shah Alam II’s eyes were gouged out with bare hands by Ghulam Qadir, an Afghan chief who captured the palace briefly. To add insult to the injury, the emperor’s son – later crowned as Akbar II – was forced to dance before his father’s tormentor like a slave girl.

This is a fine work of historical overview, without delving too much into the finer details. Historical maps are not included, the only one that of the times of Akbar the Great is given as the frontispiece. Collier has avoided anything that might distract the reader from thoroughly enjoying the book. There is not a single page in it where the reader feels bored. The author has included a section on Taj Mahal, and for dispelling the common misconceptions associated with it like the Black Taj and the urban legend that Shah Jahan had killed the architect after the monument was constructed. A good bibliography and an excellent index add more value to the book.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star