Rebel Sultans

Title: Rebel Sultans – The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

Author: Manu S Pillai

Publisher: Juggernaut Books, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9789386228734

Pages: 308

A run-of-the-mill narrative with rebellion only in its title..!

Well, that about sums up the book and also the disappointment in one neat sentence. Deccan has been a major theatre of political drama right from the dawn of history. A colourful chapter in that eventful run of history was played out between the years 1300 and 1700 CE in which the northern sultans took an active interest in subjugating it. Two attempts were made in the Sultanate and Mughal periods each. Both were doomed to eventually fail which in turn set in motion the rise of a powerful Hindu state in the form of Vijayanagar in the fourteenth and the Marathas under Shivaji in the seventeenth centuries. In the latter instance, Aurangzeb’s disastrous Deccan campaigns sapped the lifeblood of the empire and initiated the liquidation process of his bigoted government in particular and the crumbling of Mughal power in general. This book covers the extraordinary events in the Deccan (which is confined here to the modern Indian states of Maharashtra, Telengana and Northern Karnataka) from the invasion of Ala ud-Din Khilji to the years of Shivaji which extends to four centuries of intrigue, annexation, battles, wars of succession and in general, the flow of history. Manu S. Pillai is a talented young historian who had served in the literary team of Shashi Tharoor. He earned wide acclaim for his maiden title on the royal House of Travancore and remains one of the most promising writers in the budding stage.

While in the north the sultans tended to be more hidebound within religion, the Deccani dynasties were somewhat more cosmopolitan in outlook and accommodative of the Hindu natives. Akbar was the only Mughal sovereign who maintained truly cheerful relationships with Hindu rulers. In the case of Deccan, many such potentates are indicated by Pillai. Hasan Gangu, also known as Ala ud-Din Bahman Shah, who founded the Bahmani kingdom in Gulbarga, abolished jizya (the hated poll tax forced on Hindus) in his territories. This happened a full 225 years before Akbar was to repeat the same thing in the north. He visited Ellora caves with a Brahmin guide to marvel at the sculptural wonders. Another ruler of the same dynasty, Taj ud-Din Firuz Shah appointed Brahmins to high administrative positions as well as absorbing local Hindu chiefs as amirs of the aristocracy. The forefathers of Marathas, including the father and grandfather of Shivaji, were in the service of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar sultans. The most famous of them all is Madanna, the prime minister of the Qutb Shahis of Golconda.

Some sultans went a step further and engaged his subjects at a spiritually higher level. Ahmed Shah Bahmani is still venerated by the Lingayat community as a reincarnation of the mystic Allama Prabhu. His death anniversary (urs) is celebrated with pomp and splendor. Ibrahim Qutb Shah so favoured the Telugu language that he is known as Malikbrahma or Abhirama. However, Pillai notes that occasional destruction of temples continued unabated even in the midst of such tolerance. It is a mistake to conclude that the frequent wars and battles between Muslim sultans and Hindu rajas were of a religious nature. Even though he lists out a long line of Muslims respected and revered by Hindus even now, it is striking that not a single case of the other way round, that is, Muslims venerating Hindu chiefs and nobles is reported! Ibrahim Adil Shah II comes very close to enlightenment as he endowed temples, affirmed the rights of Hindu pilgrims and Portuguese Jesuits were allowed to establish missions in various parts of his kingdom. In his copper coins, he assumes the epithet of ablabali (friend of the weak, in Sanskrit). A number of his firmans began with an invocation of Goddess Saraswati. He took it as an honorific to call himself Saraswati’s son. He was closely identified with the goddess of vidya (knowledge) that at one point, he renamed his capital city Bijapur as Vidyapur. Ibrahim II’s eclecticism is amply evident in the Kitab-i-Nauras which he penned.

Manu S. Pillai repeatedly points our attention to the perpetual discord between kingdoms of Deccan. When the region first experienced an Islamic onslaught by the end of the thirteenth century, the pre-existing Hindu dynasties of Yadavas, Kakatiyas and Hoysalas were at each other’s throats. The same story repeated a century and a half later when the Bahmanis disintegrated into five branches – Adil Shahis of Bijapur, Nizam Shahis of Ahmadnagar, Qutb Shahis of Golconda, Imad Shahis of Berar and Barid Shahis of Bidar – who wasted no opportunity to fight among themselves. The author has included dynasty trees of all the five, even though only the first three had had any real significance and impact on events. When once they combined to defeat Vijayanagar in 1565, their glory was at its zenith. But the spirit of union didn’t last long and in a few decades, the Mughals snapped all of them up. By the time of these sultans, Deccan was a place that attracted job seekers from many parts of the known world. Persian nobles had a natural advantage as the court was Persian in style and language. Even Ethiopian slaves such as Malik Ambar rose steadily in the ranks and attained lofty positions. This led to the formation of two factions in court. The local aristocrats were called Dakhnis and the Iranians and Central Asians were called Afaqis, loosely translated as locals and westerners. This division again caused strife.

As noted earlier, this book is dishearteningly short of any original observations. Primary materials have not been gone into when the author researched for this work. For a description of Vijayanagar, Robert Sewell’s ‘A Forgotten Empire’ is abundantly dipped into, but whose authority is built on shaky grounds. The book includes several old photographs of monuments and tombs taken in the nineteenth century. This offers a delightful review on the very good state of preservation they are now bestowed with. Pillai claims that Hindu kings accepted the title of ‘Suratrana’ which is a transliteration of the Muslim sultan. This is contested in learned circles as the Sanskrit term also means ‘protector of gods’. The author affirms that the term marked their place in a wider world and a changed geography where that term carried tremendous potency. The episode of Shivaji and the rise of Marathas is relegated to the epilogue, but Pillai assures us that the sudden growth of Maratha power is quite another story. Perhaps his next book may be on this topic! The book hosts a sizeable section of Notes and a good bibliography. Most of the very old books in the list of references can be downloaded freely from Archive.org.

In spite of all this, the readers can not quite shrug off the feeling that a golden opportunity was wasted by the author.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star