The Idea of India - 3

 Akbar's court

Contd from :Idea of India -1  
and Idea of India -2

Great Mughals

Perhaps if India was defined as `Golden India' in the consciousness of the West, it was was during the Mughal Era.

True, the Greeks and  Romans had traded with  India before Christ was born, complaining of how Rome's gold was going to the Indies to feed Italian taste for fashion and spices. In the medieval era, European crusaders fought as much to `retake' the Holy Land of Palestine as to win control of the overland route to India and thus control over the lucrative spice trade, till then firmly in Arab and Jewish hands.

However, it was tales of the grandeur of Mughal India which European merchant-adventurers carried home from their perilous voyages round the Cape of Good Hope which firmly set the ancient land as a coveted place in the eyes of the westerner.

A Central Asian adventurer, Babur, who claimed lineage from twin lines of global scourges – Taimur and Genghis Khan – managed to audaciously win the throne of Delhi from an inept Ibrahim Lodi, in the early decades of the 16^th century. His grandson, Akbar built the Empire which wowed the world and unified India once again, saving it from the darkness of  medievalism when political disunity and constant war between ruling princes ravaged the country.  

Before, Akbar took over as Emperor, for a while, India revolted against the imposed foreign dynasty. Sher Khan, later dubbed Sher Shah Suri, a nobleman from the east, whose ancestors had come from Afghanistan, led a successful revolt to overthrow Akbar’s father, Humayun.

Suri rebuilt `Uttarapath', the Mauryan highway, now known as the Grand Trunk road, linking Sonargaon, near Dhaka to Kabul and gave the country a sound and fair system of land revenue.

Akbar kept the lesson of this successful revolt which turned his father into a refugee at the Persian court in mind. Early in his reign, he started work to build a web of close alliances with the original residents of the land, working on refining what Suri had left behind rather than rejecting it and in trying to weld the nation into one.

He married Maharaja Bharmal of Amer (Jaipur)’s daughter, a Hindu Rajput princess, gave high ranks to local Hindu and Muslim noblemen, abolished Jizia, a discriminatory tax on non –Muslims, made grants to religious bodies, irrespective of the religion they represented, thus reinforcing the foundation of a secular polity which Ashoka had established, a millennium and a half back. The infamous divide between Shias and Sunnis was played down, with tolerance and the concept of Sulh-e-kul (Peace to All) adopted as official policy.

Hindusim, during his reign went through one of the periodic upheavals or spate of reforms which has ensured that it is the longest surviving religion in the world. This time round instead of asceticism, a new credo - the Bhakti (devotion) cult ' became popular.  Recognising the mass popularity of this movement, Bhakti saints Meera and Kabir were encouraged by Akbar as was Guru Nanak, the first of the Sikh Gurus. The Emperor also encouraged  Sufi Pirs, folksy Islamic mystics, who brought together poorer Muslims and Hindus at the ground level.

Naturally, Akbar was not very popular with hard-line Muslim clerics and noblemen who had come down with his grandfather from Central Asia,  but the unlettered Emperor, knew that to rule he needed to help reinforce `Indianness’ and project himself as an Indian emperor and not as a foreign invader, against whom the locals would always murmur and plot.

This realpolitiks of the Emperor who started his reign in 1556, became an act of faith for two of his successor – Jehangir and Shah Jehan – the last of whom died in 1666. These 110 years helped re-establish an Indian identity and project it outwards to the rest of the world, bringing to its shores -  hordes of refugees, traders, missionaries, adventurers and mavericks , attracted as much by the riches of India as tales of its tolerance which gave jobs and riches to people from all faiths and races.


Continued: The Idea of India-4 ; The Idea of India-5
Previous: Idea of India , Idea of India 2