#
Before you listen to this episode of The Scene in the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
#
Do check out Pulya Baazi hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Kottaswane, two really
#
good friends of mine, kick ass podcast in Hindi.
#
While reading Parvati Sharma's excellent biography of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, I came across
#
an anecdote that reminded me of the economic management of modern Indian governments.
#
One day Jahangir, filled with curiosity about the natural world, saw a snake swallowing
#
The mighty emperor wanted deeper insight into the mysterious workings of the animal world,
#
especially the digestive system of a snake.
#
So he commanded his minions to capture the snake so that he could watch it eating the
#
rabbit and then later cut it open to see the inside story of the ingestion.
#
The startled minions, who must have felt a bit like rabbits themselves, caught the snake.
#
The equally startled snake immediately lost his appetite and the rabbit popped back out
#
of its undoubtedly cavernous mouth.
#
Jahangir's natural experiment, it seemed, was at an end.
#
Is a Mughal emperor a Mughal emperor?
#
The mighty Jahangir ordered his men to stuff the rabbit back into the snake's mouth.
#
The snake does a face palm right now, as best as snakes can do face palm, but it can do
#
no more in this undoubtedly WTF moment and it certainly cannot swallow a damn rabbit.
#
So you have Jahangir's minions holding the snake, forcing his mouth open and shoving
#
In the process, the mouth of the hapless snake is torn and it perishes.
#
Not the first or last victim of the whims of an autocrat drunk on power.
#
And this reminded me of modern times, because we see many of our leaders treat our economy
#
just as Jahangir treated that snake.
#
I wish Jahangir had just left that snake alone.
#
The moral of the story, as you would have guessed by now, is this, the snake died.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Barma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
My guest today is Parvati Sharma and we'll be talking about her book, Jahangir, An Intimate
#
Portrait of a Great Mughal.
#
This is not only a serious book of history that contained many insights and TIL moments
#
for me, but it was also a fantastically entertaining book to read with many moments that made me
#
Also, as much as it is a book of history, it is also a story about people with all their
#
flaws and insecurities and idiosyncrasies.
#
It's quite apt to call this, as the subtitle of the book suggests, an intimate portrait,
#
because I did feel like I got some insight into Jahangir the man through this book.
#
I also have another reason for doing this episode.
#
Every episode of The Scene and the Unseen, through its nearly 150 episode history, has
#
I've never had a Sharma on the show.
#
Like me, are you someone who loves fine art, but can't really afford to have paintings
#
by the artists you like hanging on your walls?
#
Head on over to IndianColors.com.
#
Indian Colors is a company that licenses images of the finest modern art from some of the
#
best artists in India, and adapts them into objects of everyday use.
#
These include wearable art, like stoles and shrugs, home decor like cushion covers and
#
table runners, and accessories like tote bags.
#
This allows art lovers to actually get fine art into their homes at an accessible price,
#
and artists get royalties on sale, just like authors do.
#
What's more, Indian Colors now has an exciting range of new products, including fridge magnets
#
with some stunning motifs, and salad bowls and platters made of mango wood.
#
Their artists include luminaries like Babu Xavier, Vazvo X Vazvo, Brinda Miller, Dilip
#
Sharma, Shruti Nelson, and Pradeep Mishra.
#
They accept bulk orders for corporate and festival gifting, but even if you want to
#
buy just for yourself or a friend, head on over to IndianColors.com.
#
That's Colors with an OU.
#
And if you want a 20% discount, apply the code IVM20.
#
That's IVM for IVM Podcasts.
#
IVM20 for a 20% discount at IndianColors.com.
#
Parvati, welcome to the Scene Indian Scene.
#
Thank you very much, Amit.
#
It's lovely to be here.
#
Glad to be the first Sharma on your show.
#
And that story that you told about the snake that was, I'm glad you picked that.
#
That was one of my, I had many favorite stories when I was writing this book and I, you know,
#
people used to get a little worried when they saw me approach, but I just couldn't stop
#
telling them my Jahangir story is the latest mad thing I had read of this man doing.
#
And this was, this was one of my top, top five.
#
This is a fantastic story, but there are, like you said, so many fantastic stories and
#
we'll, you know, come back to some of them during our conversation.
#
Before we get to ancient times and before we get to Jahangir, let's talk a little bit
#
I've heard you mentioned that you didn't really like history in school.
#
I won't say I didn't like history in school.
#
I think for, for much of my schooling, I was sort of indifferent to it.
#
Maybe in the sense that it was, it didn't seem to go anywhere or mean anything.
#
And, and it was just these sort of abstractions and these dates and these names, you know,
#
and the Mauryas and the Guptas and the Cholas and the Pandyas and the Pallavas and the Rashtrakuttas
#
And as Sunny Dule would say, Tariq pe Tariq.
#
I don't know if it added up to anything, but I think I did begin to enjoy it towards the
#
end, like in my 11th and 12th standard.
#
And, but even then I didn't, in college I was always drawn towards literature and that's
#
what I wanted to study.
#
But I think after three years of England, I wanted to do sort of what I thought at the
#
time rather naively, real stories, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to know like true things.
#
So then I went back to studying history and that's when I really began to, you know, began
#
Because I think the sort of the disciplines of literature and history are not very far
#
apart because some of similar sort of faculties and have similar pleasures.
#
And did you always want to be a writer?
#
I always wanted to be a writer, yes.
#
From, I don't even know from when.
#
I mean, I always wanted to be a writer.
#
I also always wanted to be published.
#
And I knew as the older I got and the less published I was, the sadder I became.
#
And I remember, you know, I think turning 30, which was also a stressful moment and
#
generally bewailing my faith and saying, oh, I will never, never be published.
#
And a friend said to me, she said that, you know, if you don't write, what will anyone
#
And then, you know, we were talking earlier about discipline in writing.
#
And that's when I started doing this, at her suggestion only, of writing every day.
#
Like she said, you know, you just sit and write for one hour every day or at least sit
#
in front of your computer for one hour every day, regardless of what comes out.
#
And I started doing that like exercise and it, you know, it worked because it's like
#
a muscle, you know, you strengthen it the more you do it.
#
So yeah, so that I think is when I started writing with some kind of plan, but much before
#
that, I mean, from as long back as I can remember, I was sort of scribbling away in diaries and
#
things and trying to imitate whatever, whoever I liked at the moment, at that time, whichever
#
writer I was reading, I wanted to, you know, be that writer.
#
It sounds very similar to me.
#
I remember when as a kid, I used to read Shakespeare, I had this brief phase when I tried to write
#
like Shakespeare in that language, which is extremely silly and don't try this at home.
#
And I also was unpublished before 30.
#
And it's interesting, you know, our mutual friend Manu Pillay was on the show.
#
He's just about to turn 30 or turn 30.
#
And he mentioned to me while, you know, while we were having coffee before one of his shows,
#
and it made me very angry.
#
He said that, you know, this book has fulfilled an ambition of mine.
#
And I said, what is that?
#
And he said, I wanted to write three books before I was 30.
#
And I was like, this kid has barely started shaving and reaching such heights.
#
But now you also have written many books.
#
And so to start with, did you, you saw yourself as a writer of fiction, right?
#
That was what I always wanted to write.
#
And it's also what I always enjoyed reading, you know, it was, I loved books and fiction.
#
So I wanted to write them.
#
Who was sort of the writers that you really liked or the writers that you thought that
#
you might one day write like, I mean, in the sense, that's sort of my space, that kind
#
You know, so like you said, so everyone at that moment, whoever it was, so, so, so like
#
your Shakespeare, I also, I took on Dostoevsky at the age of I think 16 or 17, I read Crime
#
and Punishment and I didn't like the ending at all.
#
I was like, what is this?
#
You rewrote the ending of Crime and Punishment.
#
So I think the punishment for that was that I was not able to write anything worthwhile
#
This kind of arrogance should not just go ignored by the universe.
#
But you know, there was some like deep influences, you know, from childhood, I think, I think
#
Roald Dahl was one, something about, and even now, I think something about just that, that
#
sort of manic flow, momentum and energy that he has in all his writings, both for adults
#
and children, something that I, you know, aspire to, P. G. Woodhouse, of course, was,
#
I remember I think also sometime in college reading The God of Small Things and really
#
being completely blown away by it, I think I started at night, something after dinner
#
and I read the whole night and, and I, and I think part of the, I mean, it was the way
#
it was written, all that was fantastic, but also somehow at that time, in that place,
#
it was somehow reflecting a world that I knew which was unusual, you know, still at that
#
time in fiction that I was reading, even in fiction written by Indians, it was unusual.
#
So yeah, I mean, and that's very interesting because I can understand why you are a fan
#
of Roald Dahl and because, you know, like him, again, you've written for both adults
#
The Arundhati Roy took me a little by surprise because your voice is very different in a
#
good way in the sense that, I mean, I'm not a, my personal bias is that I'm not a fan
#
of the very highly stylized kind of writers for whom language is very important.
#
And I find people like Rashti and Arundhati a little excessive in that sense that your
#
attention is constantly drawn to the writing style.
#
And I find that your style is, say, much more in a vein of, say, a Vikram, say, very understated
#
And did you, you know, in your process of sort of writing and especially when you were
#
writing your children's books, did you find yourself giving a lot of thought to, say,
#
How do you write sentences?
#
How do you put together narratives?
#
What should you not do?
#
Yeah, I think, you know, with every book has been something that, you know, some, some
#
thing that I've had to learn in order to, in order to do it.
#
And I think, you know, my first book was a collection of short stories.
#
And I think there, a lot of the focus was on the craft of writing as just the sentence
#
level stuff, you know, and that which I enjoyed.
#
And for me was the least taxing.
#
And for me, I find as a writer, the most difficult thing is plotting.
#
And which is the sort of barrier I encountered when I, you know, after that, I wanted to,
#
you know, I wanted to write a novel and, and you can't, I mean, doing sort of meandering
#
plotless short stories is one thing, but plotless novel is a whole other thing.
#
And of course you can do that, but plotless novels are not even novels that I enjoy reading.
#
I mean, I like plots, I like a story, I like, and I realized that it took me, I think, four
#
years and about six revisions to get that very slim novella done.
#
Because I was, and in the end I realized what the problem was not just that the plot was
#
not falling into place, but also there was no momentum building and two things have to
#
You know, you have to have a kind of momentum build up to take the plot from one thing to
#
So that was a difficult sort of experience.
#
And I think the similar thing I learned with that, after that I did this book for children,
#
the story of Babur, and there I learned the same thing, but even more, you know, because
#
with kids there's very little room for anything that is not moving the action forward.
#
You know, something has to be happening.
#
And I found that that was very energizing for me to have to do that.
#
You know, as, as a writer, that was great fun of it, that, you know, that there was
#
no, there was no diversions, there were no digressions, you were just going from one
#
thing to the next, and you don't maintain, you have to maintain interest and action.
#
Do you feel that change too as a writer in general, writing for children?
#
I felt, I felt a kind of livelier spirit.
#
I don't know if that's how that sounds, but yeah, I felt a greater energy.
#
And I went from there, I was working on another novel.
#
And I wrote that novel with something of that, you know, children's book momentum and energy
#
in mind, and it did, it helped, it really did.
#
And, and so your first brush with writing history would therefore have been the book
#
And like, of course you had a readymade plot there, but did the process of writing that
#
book sort of change the way you look at the Mughals or the way you looked at the history
#
I, I don't know if it changed it, because I hadn't even thought, you know, of that much
#
about history in general or the Mughals in particular, except in the way that, you know,
#
everyone sort of, when you come across something or, you know, but I hadn't really taken any
#
particular trouble to find out anything.
#
And, but it did, it took me completely by surprise, what took me completely by surprise
#
was the Babarnama, which, you know, I started reading not, not really knowing what to expect
#
and not, and really actually expecting more some kind of sort of dry recycle of events
#
or, you know, or sort of dates and, and facts and figures and things like that.
#
And instead it turned out to be this really, really sort of lucid, unself-conscious account
#
of this, of this man's life and it, and, you know, right in the beginning, like within
#
the first few pages, there's a, there's a, there's a description, a Babar is talking
#
He was sort of a rotund man.
#
And once he had eaten and feasted, he would, he was also sort of cheerful, he would laugh.
#
And the, he says the laces of his tunic would, would snap open.
#
And you know, immediately, like the image you get is of this young child watching his
#
father, the king, you know, his, his laces of his tunic snapping open.
#
And there was sort of a little mischief and humor and affection, yes, that's also, yeah.
#
So you know, that, that kind of detail that I wasn't expecting at all, but it really
#
made me have to get a sense of, of Babar, the man and.
#
And yet the Baba Nama is very different from, for example, the Jahangir Nama in the sense
#
that you mentioned how the Jahangir Nama is, really Jahangir was keeping a diary.
#
So it's not like a narrative written after a period of time, it's life unfolding as
#
And it has that immediacy and the seeming candor.
#
And the Babar Nama, Babar, you've mentioned that she was sort of writing it with an iron
#
It's also an act of, you know, creating a narrative about himself.
#
He is sort of writing it as his memoirs and, and Jahangir is writing it as his diary.
#
So there is in that sense, just the texture of it is different and Babar Nama is more
#
like a record of significant things that happened in his life.
#
But Jahangir is like exciting things happened yesterday.
#
I saw a snake eating that bit.
#
And let's kind of come to Jahangir.
#
And it's very interesting that you chose Jahangir as a subject, because typically when you think
#
of the Mughals, of course, there were sort of six great Mughals before the decline began,
#
which is Babar Humayun, Akbar Jahangir, Shah Jahan and the infamous Aurangzeb.
#
And Jahangir is sort of like a lost figure who for a long time has not been taken seriously
#
by historians so much, he's, you know, he's been painted as ineffectual, he's not focused
#
on conquering new territory like emperors are, he's sort of a weak man, he drinks a lot and
#
But one of the things that I learned while reading your book was that historians are
#
now beginning to feel that he wasn't necessarily like this, that these are the imperatives
#
that come from one how Shah Jahan wanted to portray him to sort of justify his own acts
#
and to the work of Thomas Roe, the East India Company emissary, who was at the time there
#
and he also had his own incentives, if I may use a term I use often on the show, in painting
#
Jahangir in a particular way.
#
Tell me a little bit about this.
#
Yeah, no, so that was interesting for me also to discover, this particular argument is made
#
by Corinne Lefebvre, who's a French historian who is sort of re-evaluating both Jahangir's
#
life and the Jahangir Nama, and it's true even, so when I was writing this book, in
#
the first draft of it, the idea that I had of this man was of like a sort of well-meaning
#
amiable but dissolute overall, not sort of a lightweight, entertaining, but not for the
#
I mean, on the other hand, he ruled for 22 years, but even that, the generally accepted
#
sense that you gather, if you read around him, is that Akbar had built up such a strong
#
empire that you would need another Akbar to even to undo it, even that would require
#
more sort of energy than Jahangir was inclined to display in his life.
#
But I was discussing this with a friend who's also a historian, who was a great help to
#
me in the writing of this book, Anuhuti Maurya, but he said it's not really necessarily true
#
that just on the momentum of Akbar's centralization of power and creation of empire, that Jahangir
#
would have been able to rule for 22 years, because dynasties can collapse at any time.
#
I mean, even today you can have governments falling or countries changing overnight, that
#
So certainly it's worth thinking that he must have been doing something right.
#
And then it was, in fact, Anuhuti who introduced me to the work of this Corrine Lefebvre.
#
And she's written this fantastic, in which she makes this argument that, you know, this
#
idea that we have of Jahangir being the sort of weak link controlled by his wife and not
#
really up to much, comes from one, the fact that there is four contemporary accounts of
#
his reign are limited only to him, only the Jahangir Nama, because, you know, if the emperor
#
is writing his own diary, then your history, who else will dare to?
#
And then there is this propaganda that travels down almost 400 years unchanged via Shah Jahan,
#
his historians who come after Jahangir, and Shah Jahan rebelled against his father in
#
the last years of his reign, and they never quite make up.
#
So once Shah Jahan sends the throne, he has to justify his rebellion, and the only way
#
he can, and he can't justify it by saying that, he can't say that, you know, there was
#
something that Jahangir was a bad king, because that would then justify rebellion against
#
You cannot rebel against the emperor.
#
So he has to say that he was unable and unfit to be king because he was controlled by his
#
And Nur Jahan survives 20 years after Jahangir goes, and Shah Jahan keeps a very close eye
#
on her, the entire time keeps him virtually imprisoned in Lahore.
#
She plays no public role whatsoever after that.
#
And this idea, I mean, so much so is that there's even a painting from Shah Jahan's reign,
#
which has Akbar sitting in the middle, and there's Shah Jahan to his left and Jahangir
#
And, you know, Akbar is sort of blithely handing the crown over to Shah Jahan, while poor Jahangir
#
is sort of looking on, looking very sullen, looking very sullen and a little sad.
#
And this was part of the sort of, so these painters in Shah Jahan's reign who were making
#
all these paintings are kind of like the IT cell of today, right?
#
His IT cell, which is pushing out these false narratives, I guess.
#
And I guess another major work of that period, which everyone refers to is, of course, Abu
#
Ali's, you know, histories of Akbar, which are fairly heterographic and he's just in
#
And he also doesn't like Jahangir very much.
#
So Jahangir doesn't come across as very well in them, though Jahangir, of course, gives
#
him the ultimate bad book review by getting him beheaded and throwing his head into a
#
latrine in one of the colorful details you've sort of described in your book.
#
You've also spoken in the past about how the way you looked at Jahangir Naamah, the book,
#
changed over time, that at first you just looked at it as an honest diary, that every
#
day the guy is writing a diary, but then you realize it was probably a little more to it
#
Tell me a bit about that.
#
So again, for this, again, I mean, let it to Corrine Lefebvre, who describes it as,
#
as in an essay, she calls it a model of imperial propaganda.
#
And I, you know, because when you, the first time you read it, and I recommend it to everyone
#
now, having read it, it's really very readable.
#
It's entertaining, it's fluent, it's lucid, it's well written, it's got, it's got all
#
kinds of emotions and, you know, action and adventure of all sorts.
#
So, and Jahangir is a good writer and, you know, like good writers, he can make you believe
#
him as the narrator, you know, he makes you sympathetic to him and he makes you be on
#
But it doesn't mean that he was not aware that this was a public document.
#
And in fact, at some point, maybe about somewhere midway through his reign, he has copies of
#
the, of the Jahangir Nama that as it exists then made and distributed to kings around
#
the, you know, in the, in the region.
#
And he says, I sent it out and I meant it, this Jahangir Nama to be a model of how to
#
You know, so he loves you thinking of it in, in, in those terms and...
#
But all the human frailties that kind of come across, like his drinking, for example, and
#
all of that, I mean, is that sort of slipping through the cracks of his, you know, posturing
#
as such or does he feel that, you know, I mean, how, how convinced are you of this view
#
of, you know, having read both translations of the book?
#
How convinced have I, you know, I would say that, let's say the drinking, right?
#
He's talking, he's talking about the drinking and he's very, seemingly very strangely frank
#
You know, he, he says that I started drinking at 18, it tells the story in great details
#
as I started drinking at 18 and I was out on a hunt and, you know, somebody got him
#
just a little sort of pint or half a pint of sweet wine and he enjoyed it.
#
And before you know it, he's drinking 20 goblets of double distilled liquor a day, 14 during
#
the day and the remainder at...
#
And then he goes on to elaborate that that's equivalent to six Hindustani seeds, which
#
is equivalent to one and a half Iranian morns and he's a scientific man of measurement.
#
Scientific man, yeah, he likes, he likes to be clear.
#
And then he says that I was drinking so much that in my hangovers, my hands used to shake
#
so much that I couldn't even hold the goblet.
#
Nobody else would have to pour the liquor down my throat.
#
And he says, I called the doctor and the doctor said to me that if you don't stop, you'll
#
be dead in, in six months.
#
And then he goes through his entire sort of de-addiction program.
#
That was also done very meticulously.
#
Yeah, where he reduces it bit by bit, takes it down to six.
#
And mixes his spirit with wine, like dilutes the spirit with wine in order to...
#
So that's how you give up drinking gentlemen, dilute your spirits with wine.
#
And have a little opium during the day to get you through.
#
So on the one hand, you know, there's, it's, it seems as if like, oh, okay, if you look
#
at it from a sort of a modern 21st century perspective, it would appear like, oh, this
#
is like a, you know, sort of a confessional narrative, you know, how I almost tried from
#
drink, but then rose to be emperor.
#
And again, because I'm not a historian, I don't want to say like too, but I don't want
#
to say things with too much authority, but it's also like, you know, we're talking about
#
Drinking is not perhaps, or at least addiction to drink is not viewed in the same way as
#
You know, there are, there are problems with drinking then.
#
I mean, there are, there are sort of religious problems with it.
#
But the problem with addiction doesn't exist perhaps in the way that, you know, that it
#
That we perceive it now, that there is a stigma on.
#
So perhaps, you know, when he's writing, he's not writing against, you know, against a stigma
#
or, you know, when he writes about ordering the execution of the assassination of Abul
#
Fazal, which he again writes with very frank and forthright way.
#
He said this guy was forever making snide remarks about me to my father.
#
So I knew I had to get rid of him.
#
So I asked this Bir Singh Bundela if he would kindly relay him and he did, and he sent me
#
his head and, and he says it as if, you know, it's a sort of cold blooded murder really
#
that he's ordered of, you know, a man that he must have known for most of most of his
#
And his father's like really one of his closest friends and advisors.
#
So, but again, you know, and I was again discussing this with, with Anuputti and who said that,
#
you know, again, this could be a, you know, way, you know, is he saying here that, you
#
know, this is, let's say in the 17th century, if you are aiming to be king or you are an
#
emperor, the image that you project of yourself is of a man who will not let anyone stand
#
between him and the throne, a certain ruthlessness is necessary, you know, it has to have to
#
And it's almost normalized.
#
So it's not even something that it seems remarkable and you know, and we'll come to other, I want
#
to ask you questions about couple of things you raise like drinking and addiction number
#
one and number two about the sort of casual cruelty that can sometimes happen.
#
But you know, let's kind of go back to the narrative and you know, you start your book
#
essentially with Akbar and a significant part of the story of Jahangir is really the story
#
of Akbar wanting a son and, and just to, you know, set some context, we often think of,
#
you know, when we, we look at history in a sense with the hindsight bias, it's happened,
#
we take it for granted.
#
We take it for granted that the Mughal Empire was this great empire that lasted centuries.
#
But as you've pointed out, and as Ramakoti spoke about in her episode with me, a few
#
weeks earlier, it wasn't such a done deal, you know, so Babur came over, you know, he
#
was, well, when he ascended to his throne, he came over, he conquered a bit of it, but
#
then they lost it and Humayun was in exile for 15 years.
#
He was in fact in exile when he fell in love with Hamidah Banu Begum in Afghanistan, I
#
think, and he asked for a hand and she was like, who are you, you're, you know, you're
#
running right now, you're not a king.
#
And anyway, so that kind of worked out and Humayun comes back and he's just taken over
#
the kingdom and then he dies.
#
And Akbar ascends at 14 and the empire that he leaves, that Jahangir is born into is just
#
an awesome, incredible empire.
#
And Jahangir is a first son, there is no dynasty without at least one son coming along.
#
So you've written in your book about how badly Jahangir desires a son and when he is born,
#
you write, quote, there is only so much self-control a joyful father can have, celebrations burst
#
upon Agra like lightning upon a rain-ripe sky, heaps and heaps of gold were scattered,
#
says one writer, prisoners and dungeons across the empire were set free, for days poets composed
#
Oath to the Prince, stop quote, and then you quote Abu Fazl, Akbar's infamous biographer,
#
quote, the auspicious birth of the world illuminating pearl of the mansion of dominion and fortune,
#
the night gleaming jewel of the casket of greatness and glory, namely of Prince Sultan
#
So Akbar wanted the son so badly and he loves his son so much and yet there is such a sort
#
of tension here because a son inevitably, no matter what he is, will be a disappointment
#
I mean, not any son and any father, but you know, this was Akbar, yeah.
#
So Akbar really, I mean, who could have not disappointed him?
#
It's not, you know, I wouldn't want to be, I wouldn't have wanted to be in Saleem's place.
#
It was, because this guy, like Akbar really is extraordinary.
#
You know, he is, I mean, there is a reason why he shines brighter than other people in
#
And there are some people like that who really accomplished far more in one lifetime than
#
most people could in ten.
#
You know, and there's no, I mean, when he becomes, whatever, I mean, emperor, but emperor
#
You know, basically of Delhi, he's not even in Delhi, he's still in Punjab, he's, there's
#
still he and where I'm kind of still in pursuit of Sikandar, Sikandar Soor, and he slips and
#
falls and breaks his head and Akbar is suddenly king, but there's no reason for him to remain.
#
There's loads of competition, and not least from Himu, who is one of the great generals
#
of that time and has fought sort of several, several battles and never lost one and is
#
far more experienced and has a big, huge army and lots of elephants and he's primed to take
#
over, you know, and they face each other in Panipat.
#
And there, I mean, the battle from, you know, whatever little I've read of it, it sort of,
#
it was fairly equal battle and then he does have a stroke of luck because Himu is struck
#
in the eye with an arrow and he, and he falls.
#
And the logic of battles at the time was if the leader collapses or the commander collapses,
#
the army collapses, you know, which is really very inefficient, but that's how it was.
#
So he, you know, so Himu collapsed and so did the rest of his army.
#
And so then, you know, that, that battle is won, you know, partly by luck.
#
But after that, it's not, I mean, luck doesn't get him through, you know, the next 50 odd
#
years that he lives and goes from strength to strength to strength, swatting down rebellion
#
after rebellion after rebellion and so many people are vying for power.
#
And you know, not only is he doing that, not only is he increasing his physical geography
#
of Israel, just sort of going from one conquest to another, he's also changing its systems.
#
So he's back from, you know, conquering Gujarat and he sits down and he says, now let's rethink
#
our revenue model or our, you know, administration or how we organize the Mansabdars.
#
He's very interested in all of that.
#
Then he's also doing this, you know, he's got these great translation projects, he's
#
got building projects, he's got music and all of that.
#
I mean, you know, so all, so all of this is going on at the same time.
#
It's a man who, I mean, reading about him, you feel a little exhausted, you know, it's
#
just, he just never stops.
#
Because it must be like literally a one in a millennium chance that all of these qualities
#
converge upon one person.
#
He fits the role of the great conqueror.
#
He's also a great public policy man to use modern terminology where he is reforming his
#
tax revenue systems and his systems of governance and all of that.
#
At the same time, he's a great patron of the arts, partly with the help of all these painters
#
who Maniun brought back from Persia famously and which, but tradition, which is Sanja Hangeer
#
of course continues to great, with great success.
#
And also he is a serious intellectual.
#
He's thinking about religion, all of these different ideas, trying to weave these strands
#
And he finally has a son and the son sits around drinking all day and examining animals
#
and shows no interest in conquest, keeps making excuses to kind of, I mean, one of the themes
#
that ran through your book is that your book is full of basically a father sending a son
#
to conquer something or the other, quite often the Deccan.
#
And the son is making excuses and he's going here and he's going there.
#
And Akbar sends all his kids to do this and they all kind of make a mess of it.
#
And Jahangir then sends, eventually Khurram has a semi-success of sorts.
#
And I was kind of interested by the, again, just to talk a little bit about drinking and
#
addiction because as we were chatting while coming here, I was sort of a professional
#
poker player for five years, I've seen people addicted to gambling, I've written columns
#
about addiction and I'm again just thinking aloud and tell me what your response is that
#
I think a lot of people have addictive personalities, but what they're addicted to is not specifically
#
thing A or thing B or activity C, it's dopamine to the brain.
#
And the question is, where do you get that dopamine from?
#
And in modern times it could be say from gambling, you push chips forward, you get dopamine rush
#
It could be from playing online chess, which I think I might have been addicted to online
#
chess or it could come largely from social media as well in today's day and time, where
#
every notification gives you a hit, every like gives you a dopamine hit.
#
But in those times, like when I try to imagine how are people spending their time all day,
#
reading is not so common, there is no television, there are no movies, there is perhaps thankfully
#
no cricket or people would be impaled, umpires would be impaled upon cricket fields.
#
But there is a lot of wine and there's a lot of variety of wine.
#
So if people are going to get addicted, they will get addicted to that.
#
And all of Akbar's children get addicted to it, you know, Murad and Dhani, all the other
#
two kids, they kind of, so, you know, what sort of your response to that and also just
#
thinking aloud, taking off from that, what's a typical day like in the life of, let's say
#
somebody living under Akbar or under Jahangir, you know, what are they doing?
#
How are they spending their time?
#
How do they, I mean, I know it's a very naive question, which historians can scoff at me
#
Well, to the first part, uh, well sure, yeah, I mean, wine was plentifully obviously available
#
and it wasn't just, you know, Akbar's sons who were addicted, but you know, the nobility
#
generally and the sons of the nobility generally, like even, you know, Man Singh's son, I think
#
he has four or five sons and off that, I think at least two or three die of drinking.
#
And the, you know, Akbar Nama, Jahangir Nama, they're littered with the counts of these
#
sort of, in fact, littered with corpses of men who have perished from a strong drink.
#
But I suppose there was also, they have one or two alternatives.
#
Hunting was one, certainly Jahangir, you could almost say addicted to it.
#
He does a census at one point asking, he wants to calculate how many animals he's killed
#
between the age of 12 and about 50 or so that he is when he orders the census.
#
And the, the amount comes to the rather obscene amount of 17,167 animals, out of which you
#
mentioned 10,000 are pigeons.
#
Yes, I was very pleased to learn this because it sort of, it makes me feel a little bit
#
And 86, I think, were, were lions.
#
So there was, and at least one snake, as we know, if you count that, and one rabbit, it
#
could be argued that the rabbit would have died anyway.
#
Or maybe the rabbit escaped or the rabbit fell out, I don't know, maybe the rabbit just,
#
but a rabbit with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, if it's gone inside and outside.
#
And so, you know, definitely that, and I think the other thing, I mean, the Mughals do exhibit
#
a sense of tendency, not just towards addiction, but to kind of, you know, obsessive compulsive
#
sort of OCD type of behavior is when it comes to record keeping amongst other things, you
#
know, they just, everything is noted down, like in, in just ridiculous detail, you know,
#
how not just the contents of the treasury, but, you know, the, the, the ranks of elephants,
#
the ranks of Mughals, the, you know, the different sort of guns in the artillery, the, you know,
#
I mean, every conceivable thing is noted down and fired.
#
So, you know, and like this, one of these Englishmen who travels there says that everything
#
that happens during the day in the emperor's life is written down by writers, including
#
what he eats, you know, and his sort of going to the necessity, all of that is meticulously
#
And it's interesting, you seem to be indicating that this is not just a matter of, you know,
#
a good efficient practice that you record everything, but there's something obsessive
#
So again, would go back to the thing of this also creates hits of dopamine in some way,
#
it seems to be because you're like, why would you go into such minute details of, you know,
#
recording and then it's very, very professionally done, you know, that I think there are 14
#
recorders who work in shifts over the course of, you know, one week, two at a time, so
#
that if one misses something out, the other one catches it.
#
I mean, it's, it's, it's a professional meticulous enterprise.
#
So so that would be another way of sort of getting the dopamine hits.
#
So but while, you know, the daily life of the emperor was recorded in such minute detail,
#
daily life of an ordinary person is more difficult to access.
#
You know, you get glimpses, you know, you get glimpses of anything in the in the court.
#
I mean, you know, descriptions of how the court is arranged and how people come and
#
present their, their grievances or their demands or, you know, what they, what they want to
#
get, you get, you get glimpses of the kind of gossip and talk that might be circulating
#
in the towns or around the courts from some of these European writers.
#
And I think I particularly liked what he said, Thomas Rowe is very shocked, because he says
#
that, you know, whenever Jahangir makes a pronouncement, the minute he said it, it's,
#
he says it's available for every rascal on the street to discuss and criticize.
#
And he says, you know, that that Jahangir is really locked in the schedule that he has
#
of his pre-dawn appearance and his, you know, the public darbar.
#
And he says, just as the people are his slaves, so is he in a kind of reciprocal bondage with
#
So he can't deviate from his routine very much.
#
And the daily situation is there's a pre-dawn sort of, he comes out on the balcony in the
#
sea, much like Amitabh Bachchan today, I guess.
#
And then he takes a nap for two hours and then he'll have his breakfast and all that
#
with whatever, with opium, morning hit of opium.
#
And then he has two darbars a day, you said one, you know, one before lunch, one after
#
And it's, it all sounds, I mean, it would drive me to drink if I had to work so hard.
#
I was also, you know, struck by how, you know, like you point out at one time that one of
#
the most common lines in Jahangir Nama is, I summoned the painters.
#
And it almost strikes me that he's almost like an Instagrammer, except a few centuries
#
So he can't whip out a smartphone and capture something.
#
So whenever he wants to capture something, he'll do it the royal way, send for his painters
#
and you know, a glacial pace Instagram.
#
And you point to how the only life painting of a dodo really came from his court, which
#
you've reproduced in one of your talks and it's a shockingly ugly bird, but what can
#
And you also point out, and there's another painting that, you know, you showed in one
#
of your slideshows, which is on YouTube, which I encourage people to check out, where you
#
showed this painting of this guy called Inayat Khan, a guy who was basically fell very ill
#
and was practically emaciated and, you know, literally born jutting out.
#
And he comes to Jahangir and ask for leave or whatever and Jahangir says fine, but first
#
Instagram and he summons a painter and, and that painting seems very different from all
#
of the Mughal miniatures and all.
#
It's almost like, like a Chitto Prasad painting of the Bengal famine, you know, very stark
#
and this is how, when you were researching this, how did you sort of access the paintings?
#
Like how do you get context of what these paintings are and what's going on here?
#
Like if one of the listeners of the show wants to do that for himself, is there a way to
#
Yeah, yeah, yeah, many of these are available online if you look through, you know, through
#
the museum, many of the museums put up their collections online to view and, and also Jahangir
#
talks about some of these things in the Jahangir Nama.
#
So this Inayat Khan story he tells, you know, so then you know that this, this painting
#
Then he talks about the zebra that comes to his court that he has, that he has painted
#
and he's not sure if the stripes are real or not.
#
So he gets someone to try and wash the stripes off.
#
So, so you, so you know that these paintings are, are there.
#
So yes, I mean, there are, there are hints in the Jahangir Nama itself.
#
Then of course, you know, from reading other writers, modern writers who talk about particularly
#
Eba Kok has written about, you know, art in, in Jahangir's time, then there's a writer
#
called Asfar Moin who's also done a lot of very, very interesting sort of close readings
#
of certain paintings made during his time.
#
But I agree with you that Inayat Khan painting for me also was quite both shocking in its
#
content and in the fact that it, it is so different from anything that I have seen of,
#
you know, there's something very sort of modern about it.
#
You know, it seems very contemporary, it could have been made and, and, and very haunting
#
and very not beautiful.
#
And the guy actually died shortly after the painting.
#
He died the day after or something, within a day or two he died.
#
So it is, it is really, it is a representation of death and it's, and it's absolutely real.
#
There's no, there's, there's, there's no sort of prettification or there's no, there's
#
no soft edges, it's, it's just his.
#
Another very sort of interesting and endearing quality of Jahangir is sort of this endless
#
curiosity about the natural world, which made me feel a little ashamed because, you know,
#
I don't know if it's true of you, but I feel jaded about a lot of things, the, the wonder
#
and awe of, you know, discovering new things and seeing something for the first time and
#
just wondering how does that work?
#
It's just not there in me anymore.
#
And you'd imagine a Mughal emperor would be far more jaded.
#
And yet you have him telling his men to milk a lion because he wants to see how that process
#
You have the snake and the rabbit story.
#
There's another story where he finds two different kinds of goats, you pointed out, and he gets
#
them to mate because he wants to see what will come out of it.
#
At the same time, using that, I'm sure they would be tasty, which is, and you know, there's
#
another story about how a dog gives bites an elephant and the elephant dies of rabies
#
and Jahangir is like, yeah, there's something there, but he doesn't really explore it further.
#
But how can something so small attack something so big?
#
And my another story that actually ranks up there with the snake and the rabbit story
#
is my favorite is a lion and the goat story, where Khusro's son, Dawar Baksh, gives him,
#
you know, a lion and a goat who are coexisting in a cage and he's curious about what kind
#
Will this work with any other goat?
#
He gets a goat taken out, a lookalike goat is put in immediately killed, puts in a sheep
#
immediately killed, and then the same goat is put back in and the lion treats it warmly
#
and starts cuddling up with it.
#
Yeah, it's just amazing, the stories from his time.
#
I think his curiosity is one of the most endearing things about him.
#
Without his curiosity, you know, he would be, he would not, because there are many,
#
I mean, he has terrible, terrible cruelties and terrible sort of, I mean, there are many
#
things about him that are not attractive, but this, this is real appreciation of beauty
#
and his boundless curiosity, like you said, really make him and make his Jahangir Nama
#
both so compelling, you know, as both as a man and as a book.
#
And so I think like in one sense, I suppose you get, you know, reading it, the other thing
#
you realize is that the world was far less known at that time, you know, things were
#
still new, you know, I mean, atlases and maps and globes were still like new things.
#
And you know, there's this story about Thomas Rowe, in fact, and at some point, Thomas Rowe
#
presents Jahangir with an atlas.
#
And at first Jahangir is quite curious about it.
#
And then he sends it back within a couple of days.
#
And Thomas Rowe realizes that the reason he's done this is because, you know, in those atlases,
#
and even now in an atlas as they're made, India appears much smaller than Europe, you
#
know, so he doesn't, doesn't like this, doesn't like the idea of his, his kingdom being smaller
#
than any, he's, he's the emperor of the world, you know, so, so, so the world is not fully
#
There's this, there's this amazing little bit where one of these other British Englishmen
#
in his court is William Hawkins, who spent about four, five years there.
#
And he, he's come, his last voyage was in the West Indies, and Jahangir says to him,
#
you know, I've heard of the West Indies, I wasn't sure if it was a real place, you know,
#
I wasn't sure if it actually existed, what is it?
#
And so, you know, so, so he tells him all about it.
#
And even, forget Jahangir, there's this Italian chap who's coming to India, Pietro Dallaval,
#
and he's coming and on the way, you know, he talks about how he and the captain are
#
discussing unicorns, and they're not discussing whether or not unicorns exist, they're discussing
#
on which latitude and longitude unicorns are found, you know, so the world is far more
#
wonderful in some ways, and full of wonder, than it is today, if there's things still
#
When that said, you know, it can also be very frustrating sometimes when you're reading,
#
when you're reading about Jahangir and his curiosities, because the curiosity stops,
#
and it stops almost as if there's this blind spot, you know, like the thing you mentioned
#
about the dog who gives, infects the elephant, right?
#
And Jahangir's like, oh, how can such a small creature make such a large creature ill?
#
And I just want to sort of shout out to him across the centuries, this is, this is, you
#
know, this is how, this is how infection works, you know, this is, this is malaria, this is...
#
But there's literally no way he can have the intellectual tools to...
#
There's no way, exactly.
#
So you realize how much has changed, you know, how easy it is for us to make that connection,
#
and how almost impossible it is for him.
#
Or even when, you know, there's another, and another point of meteor, meteor falls somewhere
#
nearby in Jalandhar, and everyone is very excited, of course, and Jahangir wants to
#
see this, this metal, but again, there's this sort of curtain that falls, he's not, you
#
know, beyond sort of making some knives and swords out of it, there's no interrogation
#
of what is this, where does it come from, you know, even though astrology and astronomy
#
are both sort of, they highly developed skills and passions at the time, the actual meteor
#
falling, just somehow you can, it's there, it is, you make your sword out of it, and
#
then it's finished, it's just a full stop.
#
In fact, you caught an Englishman named Henry Beveridge saying that Jahangir would have
#
been a better and happier man as a head of a natural history museum, rather than, you
#
know, an imperial emperor.
#
Tell me also about, I mean, I mean, you know, you live in Delhi, and we keep talking about
#
the air quality index of Delhi and all that.
#
How many people know that Jahangir was one of the pioneers of air quality index?
#
Tell me a bit about his efforts in measuring pollution in Gujarat.
#
He had been in Mandu for a while, and he'd really enjoyed it.
#
And then he was going up to Ahmedabad, and he'd heard great, great things about Ahmedabad.
#
He'd heard of, he was looking forward to going there.
#
And he arrived and immediately, almost immediately begins to complain.
#
He said, you know, what is this place?
#
It's a dust heap, he calls it, and he says the air is just poisonous.
#
And he can't leave, because there's a plague that's broken out in Agra, so he can't go
#
back to Agra, and he's just more or less trapped in Ahmedabad.
#
He says, I've not eaten khichdi since I was a child, and I really had hoped I would never
#
have to eat it again, but here I am.
#
And so he, so anyway, to distract himself and to confirm his own theory, he orders this
#
He has two sheep skinned and hung up, one just outside Ahmedabad and one in Mehmoodabad.
#
Mehmoodabad and UP, of course.
#
In UP, of course, yeah.
#
And so, and the time, how long it takes for the sheep to start rotting.
#
And Jahangir is very right, because the one in Ahmedabad starts to rot, I think in eight
#
hours or so, and the one in UP lasts six hours longer, it lasts, it rots after 14 hours.
#
The rotting sheep air quality index is quite...
#
And another big nugget for my listeners, William Hawkins, who Paruti just mentioned, of course,
#
invented the modern pressure cooker.
#
Let's kind of, you know, you mentioned his cruelty earlier, and a lot of it, you know,
#
at one hand, when it comes to animals, for example, of course, he has this curiosity,
#
he killed a snake trying to make it eat a rabbit, but he also, for example, you mentioned
#
how someone gives him an elephant and it's night and the elephant needs to be bathed
#
and he's feeling bad that, oh, the water will be too cold.
#
So the water is heated for the elephant to take a bath in.
#
But on the other hand, he can be incredibly cruel, like one example you point out is,
#
and we'll, of course, you know, talk about Khusro and that whole politics later.
#
Khusro is his eldest son who rebels against him and he chases him.
#
And in fact, you know, while chasing him, he makes sacrifices like he doesn't take his
#
He just runs off after Khusro and then he reaches Lahore where there is biryani spread
#
out for him and he notes in the Jahangir Nama that I would have loved to have the biryani,
#
but work awaits, possibly the only such sacrifice he made in his career.
#
He has one bite per man, then he has to run.
#
And then he has to run after, you know, and so the cruelty, you know, the great example
#
that, you know, really struck with me and I was thinking about that was of Khusro's
#
lieutenants, Hussain Beg and Abdul Rahim.
#
And I'll quote from your book here, quote, Hussain Beg and Abdul Rahim, this is after
#
they've been captured and the rebellion has failed, quote, Hussain Beg and Abdul Rahim
#
were wrapped naked in animal skin.
#
The Badakshi, that's Hussain Beg, was stuffed into a freshly killed ox, Abdul Rahim into
#
a donkey and mounted backwards on asses, they were paraded through the city.
#
Hussain Beg died of suffocation, Abdul Rahim, perhaps because donkey skin is more porous,
#
perhaps because he had supporters in the crowd who gave him water, survived, stop quote.
#
And this is one, just in terms of imagination, this seems crazy, but what also made me sort
#
of laugh out loud was that Abdul Rahim was later reinstated and Jahangir would call
#
So and you know, and the contrast to this is for another place you mentioned about how
#
he once caught fish and he released them back into the water with pearls pinned to their
#
God knows, he was the emperor, he could do what he liked, I really don't know, it just
#
Actually that was one of those moments that struck me, you know, as some of the reading
#
of this Jahangir and getting to sort of know him as much as it's possible to, you know,
#
know his character from history, was getting to know what it is to have almost limitless
#
power, you know, and you start asking yourself in the course of it, like, if I had this kind
#
of power, what would I do and would I not go a little mad, you know, and I think it
#
would be almost impossible not to.
#
So if you have the power to release fish with pearls in their noses, I suppose, why not?
#
No, and there is also the sense, as you point out, that there are parts of the book where
#
even Jahangir is surprised by the extent of his own power, such as when he's in court
#
and a supplicant comes and says that I want to marry this widow, can you please persuade
#
The guy says that I would jump from the highest tower to show my love and Jahangir says, okay,
#
jump from there and he points to a nearby thing and the guy runs and he jumps and dies
#
and Jahangir is like, what happened, what just happened, you know, and that is the power
#
So how can it, and despite that, it, you know, it's very hard one power because, you know,
#
before he becomes emperor, which is not a done deal, and we've already sort of discussed
#
about both how he, Murad and Dhani, all the three brothers were disappointments to their
#
father and you know, when he was pissed off at Jahangir, Akbar looked at Murad and then
#
later Murad died of drink and he looked at Dhanial and Dhanial also died of drink in
#
a fairly crazy incident.
#
And then he turns to his grandchildren and he looks at Jahangir's sons and in particular
#
Khusro is a person, Khusro is about 17 or 18 at the time and he's thinking of propping
#
And what's that rivalry like?
#
Well, I mean, you know, I don't know, but I can only imagine what it must have been
#
like because again, there are only hints, you know, for this, like, you know, Abul Fazal
#
says, for example, cryptically that the emperor always preferred his grandsons to his sons
#
and there's also, you know, just this, it's just a sort of stray fact that Akbar's grandsons
#
called him Shah Baba, you know, king father, and their father Jahangir was Shah Bhai, the
#
So, so this sort of hierarchy was very clearly, you know, the power was very clearly flowing
#
down from Akbar down to everyone below Khusro on a similar plane.
#
And so what it must have been like for Jahangir, I mean, certainly it couldn't have been easy
#
to have to know that, you know, your own son is preferred over you for the throne.
#
And but it's, I mean, it's not so much through him that we get to see the, how much tension
#
there must have been, but through, you know, Khusro's poor mother, who's Maan Bhai, who's
#
also Maan Singh's sister and Jahangir's first wife.
#
And at some point she commits suicide, she overdoses on opium and dies and Jahangir writes
#
about it again in the Jahangir Nama and he says, and he blames Khusro.
#
He says, you know, she was so upset with Khusro because he was behaving badly that she couldn't
#
take it and she killed herself.
#
And meanwhile, in the Akbar Nama, the blame falls squarely on Jahangir because, you know,
#
the Akbar Nama says that Jahangir treated her so badly and upset her so much that she
#
And, of course, there's also the theory and the suggestion that she and in the family
#
there was a kind of manic depression that ran in the family.
#
So, you know, she may also have been suffering from a depression of some sort, but still
#
they would have to be triggered and so it certainly can't have been fun.
#
And in, you know, it's obviously an increasingly dysfunctional family.
#
Your husband is fighting with your son who is backed by your father-in-law.
#
For the throne, for the empire of all Hindustan.
#
And just again, you know, as we know from Thomas Rowe's writings and I think William
#
Hawkins, inventor of the pressure cooker, estimated that while the Mughal Empire was
#
worth 56 million, England was half a million.
#
So that was a difference.
#
This was a mighty empire.
#
There was a lot at stake and also within Mughal dynasties, the way succession worked is it
#
didn't automatically go to the eldest son like it does in some dynasties.
#
You know, there weren't any rules like that.
#
So it was up for grabs.
#
And of course, in Akbar's times, it was relatively gentle.
#
The worst you might do what Jahangir at one point did to Khusro was blind him because
#
blind people according to Islam cannot ascend the throne.
#
But Shah Jahan basically just killed off all contenders.
#
And that sort of became more and more vicious.
#
You know, one sort of counterfactual, if you'll sort of indulge me in this is what I've always
#
wondered is one, it seems clear to me that Khusro was admired and idolized by a lot of
#
people, possibly seems to have been a lot more powerful than Jahangir and certainly
#
had the support of all the women in the court, all the sisters and mothers and aunts who
#
are so powerful and was respected by them and feared by his own brother Khurram, the
#
later Shah Jahan, who had him sort of put to death.
#
And Khusro, you could say had numerous chances to ascend to the throne, one directly after
#
Akbar or two just as Jahangir's son after Jahangir.
#
And you know, he got like many second, there were many second acts in his life and none
#
The counterfactual here is that what if Khusro does become emperor and therefore neither
#
Jahangir nor Shah Jahan ever kind of become emperor.
#
Is there a drastic difference to history or would you expect the rest of Indian history
#
Perhaps indirectly what I'm asking you is what do you feel about say Thomas Carlyle's
#
great man theory of history, which I assume you would say that look Akbar certainly was
#
a great man without him India's history is completely different.
#
Who could have built this empire?
#
But you know, I look at Khusro and I think that no one talks of Khusro, but he was so
#
close and had he gotten it, you know, Jahangir and Shah Jahan and therefore Aurangzeb later
#
might never have been emperors.
#
Is that something you've thought about?
#
I haven't thought much, although you can't help feeling sorry for Khusro if you read
#
Of course, he really does.
#
He's so close and he has such powerful support.
#
I mean, he has the support, probably possibly of his own grandfather Akbar and he certainly
#
has the support of Man Singh, his uncle and his father in law Mirza Aziz Koka, Akbar's
#
one of his closest, closest friends, advisors and his foster brother.
#
And Man Singh, of course, was a governor of Bengal and perhaps one of the best generals
#
So he had this powerful backing and then suddenly to have that snatched away and then to be
#
so clear in your own mind that you deserve the throne more than your father does that
#
you then within six months rebelled and you know, he gets this, he gets enough support
#
and yet he has terrible luck and he clearly doesn't have as much experience in sort of
#
So he's captured and as you said, his general meet this sort of gruesome punishment and
#
the rest of them, I mean, you know, he Khusro himself is made to ride on sort of an emaciated
#
elephant through the gates of Lahore and on either side of him, you know, hundreds of
#
his supporters are impaled.
#
So you know, dying gruesomely on either side of the road as he walks, marches past them
#
and yet the same chap, I mean, obviously had some degree of charisma and appeal because
#
within again a year or so, maybe a few months, he's managed to ferment another, you know,
#
rebellion, which is when sort of Jahangir has him blinded, though even that is possibly
#
was a reversible blinding and sort of the eyelids are sewn together and then they can
#
If he changes his mind.
#
If he changes his mind.
#
So there are some accounts that say that he, you know, at some point he was, his eyes were
#
opening yet, which is why he remained a threat to Khurram, you know, otherwise if he had
#
been really blind, then Khurram need not have.
#
No, and one of one of the anecdotes which was really striking and which made me think
#
a little harder about Khusro, what kind of man he must have been, is that you point out
#
that much later in life and you know, Noor Jahan is a very powerful figure and we'll
#
talk about that a little while later.
#
But what essentially, so she was married earlier to this guy called Sherif Ghan, I think, and
#
she had a daughter through Sherif Ghan and she was thinking of getting that daughter
#
married to Khusro, which would immediately make him a contender for the throne again.
#
And Khusro refused because he wanted to be loyal to his wife.
#
And his wife said that, no, no, this is good for you.
#
This will finally get us out of the wilderness.
#
And he said, no, I'm not going to do it.
#
You know, when it's so commonplace for these guys to have multiple sort of.
#
Although these are, these are, this is a story that is told.
#
So you know, it's possible he did.
#
It seems like very foolish of him if we didn't do that.
#
But it's also possible that he disliked Noordiha very much.
#
Maybe he didn't trust her.
#
Maybe he didn't, you know, because it was, it was a difficult, but, but, or he just made
#
But, but, you know, to come back to what you were saying about what would have happened
#
if he had been, if he, I don't know, I think to me, if you look at how the empire first
#
grows and then sort of collapses upon itself, you know, succession is of course one part
#
But, and this idea that there is no primogeniture amongst the Mughals, so there isn't, you know,
#
but there was, it's not like there wasn't a system and the system would be to sort of
#
divide the empire amongst different areas.
#
And you know, one of the most interesting things that I've been reading, I've been
#
reading about Humayun a little bit in the last few months.
#
And you know, there is this suggestion that towards the end of his reign, Babur was beginning
#
to feel about Humayun very much as Akbar was feeling about Jahangir, that this Jaff was
#
You know, that, so he didn't want to, he was anyway, he had parceled out, I think he'd
#
given Kabul to Kamran and I think perhaps Lahore and Punjab to Askari.
#
And he was, he wanted to send Humayun to Badakhshan, but Humayun was posted that he was not supposed
#
to be in Delhi and Delhi and Agra would go to Babur's brother-in-law, who was married
#
to his sister Khanzada Begum, who is one of the most memorable characters in that family.
#
And he was very close to her.
#
So the suggestion is that in fact, he was going to make his sister in a sense, the de
#
facto Empress, Empress of this part of the empire, you know, and then they would sort
#
of share, and then even under Akbar, when Akbar becomes emperor of whatever little
#
bit Humayun has managed to get back, his younger brother, Muhammad Hakeem, is in Kabul and
#
he is sort of, he and his mother are the rulers of Kabul and Kabul remains a kind of autonomous
#
region, even though, you know, Hakeem rebels once or twice and Akbar sends in an army,
#
but until he dies, Akbar doesn't make Kabul into one of, you know, part of the empire.
#
But then, you know, the empire just expands and expands and expands.
#
And so then does the lure of it, you know, so by the time you come to Shah Jahan and
#
then to Aurangzeb, the stakes are so high that the greed also then multiplies by leaps
#
and bounds and so does the venality and the murderous impulses.
#
So you know, unless Khosrow had lost the empire and he had to begin again from scratch, if
#
he had been as successful as Jahangir was, and there's no, it's not necessary that he
#
might or might not have been, because Jahangir, I don't think would have taken it lying down.
#
And he would have had a, he did have a very strong support, you know, and he would have
#
attracted support also.
#
He was not bad at creating alliances and drawing people to him.
#
In fact, one of the interesting things that, you know, after he won the battle of succession,
#
which I'll ask you about, one of the things he did was he forgave many of the people who
#
were against him, you know, almost like, you know, Lincoln and the team of rival things
#
where, you know, he forgave all these people, even in the example of, you know, Abdul Rahim,
#
who was stuffed in donkey skin and paraded through, but ultimately back in the court.
#
So he was obviously a very interesting kind of statesman.
#
He wasn't completely incompetent.
#
He was making his sort of alliances and stuff.
#
Let's take a quick commercial break now and we'll come back after that and talk more about
#
the fascinating life of Emperor Jahangir.
#
Hey everybody, welcome to another awesome week on the IVM Podcast Network.
#
If you are not following us on social media, why the hell aren't you?
#
It's about time that you did.
#
We're IVM Podcasts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
#
We've also got some really great news about Paisa Vaisa.
#
Anupam Gupta, our host, we couldn't be prouder of him.
#
His show has won the award for the best business podcast at the Asia Podcast Summit.
#
Definitely check it out if you haven't heard it.
#
It is an award winning podcast now, officially.
#
I also would like to thank our sponsors this week, Storytel and Intel.
#
Sponsors make this possible.
#
So please support our sponsors, tweet at them, tell them that you're happy that they're
#
sponsoring the podcasting space.
#
We're excited to announce our new show, Storytellers and Story Sellers, hosted by Vineeth Kannabar.
#
Every episode he talks to two guests, one from the creative side and one from the business
#
side of the entertainment industry.
#
This week, Vineeth is joined by Executive Creative Director of TVF and Storyteller Saurabh
#
Kannam and Chief Strategy Officer of OML and Story Seller Tarun Tripathi.
#
Together they break down what goes into making a branded web series, tune into new episodes
#
On Cyrus's, Cyrus is joined by Utsav Mamoria.
#
Utsav is the host of our new show and one of my favorites on the network, Postcards
#
Utsav and Cyrus have a really interesting conversation about Utsav's fandom of Cyrus.
#
Also they talk a lot about travel and Utsav's recent marriage.
#
Two of our shows reach their 50th episode this week.
#
On Puliyabawzi, Pranay and Saurabh talk to Nidhi Gupta, who researches and teaches behavioral
#
They discuss insights from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman's classic, Thinking Fast
#
And on the 50th episode of Paperbuck, Rachita and Satyajit talk to the bestselling author
#
Ashwin Sanki about his perspectives on mythology, history and writing historical fiction.
#
On the Filter Coffee podcast, Karthik is joined by CEO and Managing Director of Fireworks,
#
Sunil shares his insights about fireworks technology, his time at Alkbalaji and differentiates
#
advertising for an OTT platform versus television.
#
On Advertising is Dead, Varun is joined by Tess Joseph, a renowned casting director.
#
They talk about her journey in the film industry.
#
On Mr. and Mrs. Binge Watch, Janice and Aniruddh discuss the pros and cons of the newly launched
#
Apple TV Plus service and review some flagship shows on the platform.
#
This week on Edges and Sledges, Ashwin, Varun and DJ talk about the first India versus
#
Bangladesh test and IPL transfers.
#
On Gay BCD, Suneetra and Farah talk about how they faced discrimination as kids for
#
choosing to do things against gender norms.
#
On Postcards from Nowhere, Utsav, who is on Cyrus this week if you have forgotten, talks
#
about witnessing Kerala's famous martial art, Kelari Pattu.
#
And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Parvati Sharma, the author of an entertaining biography of Jehangir and
#
entertaining why not just because of the delightful style of writing, but also because history
#
These are incredible stories.
#
You can't make this shit up.
#
You know, while we were at the break, you sort of told me that, you know, you went back
#
to my earlier question about how ordinary people lived in the Mughal Empire because
#
They can't get up in the morning and look at their smartphone and complain about the
#
So, tell me a bit about, you know, what insights you gained on that from reading the literature
#
No, so there was, you know, it wasn't so much insight as just these, sometimes these really
#
glimpses of moments in everyday life, you know, and, you know, amongst them, for example,
#
and many of them come from these sort of European writers, because they are the ones who, you
#
know, recording what it is to live every day or to the sights that they see for their audiences
#
So, you know, somebody, one of them very bitterly, in fact, writes about how, you know, people
#
in some villages, he sees women and children wearing necklaces of clothes, you know, because
#
clothes are so, so, so cheap here.
#
And this poor man is trying to, he's a Dutch trader and he's bringing spices from the Spice
#
Islands to India, but, you know, he's not able to make very much money for what he brings.
#
And he has to spend more than he has on what he needs to buy.
#
Or you have, you know, another, another writer who arrives in Gujarat.
#
So he's writing about Gambay and then about Surat, and he presents this very dynamic view
#
of these, you know, bustling cities with these bullock carts racing through the streets with,
#
you know, the bells on the, on the necks of the, of the bulls ringing loudly to alert
#
He talks about hospital, animal hospitals, you know, and hospital, I mean, obviously
#
for larger animals like gaushalas and all, but also hospitals for, for mice and for birds
#
and you know, and, and he presents also this, you know, picture of, of, you know, tanks
#
built at regular intervals as, you know, water or access to water is something that is provided
#
as a philanthropic act by the richer people in a town or a city.
#
And also, you know, you know, what, what also, you know, so what struck me was how they talk
#
about, how they talk about religious freedom, because, you know, they all, almost all of
#
them say that there's an extraordinary, as one of, as Pietro de la Valle says, an extraordinary
#
liberty of conscience in the realm of the Mughal.
#
That's a lovely phrase, liberty of conscience.
#
It is, and it sounds very, you know, 20th, 21st century, sounds like, but, you know,
#
people are, anyone is free to practice, not only to practice whatever religion they wish
#
to, but also to criticize the other, you know, and, and these are people who are coming from
#
very sectarian Europe where people are killing each other, you know, for, for differences
#
of sect, let alone religion.
#
And so they're all very surprised to see what's going on here, but they also clearly
#
They also notice this idea of purity that runs through the India that they see and,
#
you know, of, of, of castes.
#
And so there's a young, there's an Englishman who comes while Thomas Rowe is here and he
#
has this great idea of building public water supply in Agra.
#
And Thomas Rowe is really scathing and he says, this guy is, I mean, and you know, what,
#
what kind of stupid plan is this because nobody will drink water that is not fetched by his
#
They can't have public water flowing like this because nobody will touch it.
#
And it's Pietro de la Val, in fact, is in his, his sort of expat community are so fascinated
#
by this idea of pure and impure touch that they improvise a little drinking game where,
#
you know, everyone has to drink their wine in the Indian fashion without touching the,
#
And whoever spills it then loses as possible and everyone laughs.
#
So, so you get, and one of the things that you get actually from, from Jahangir, and
#
it was, it was to me really surprisingly vivid image was, you know, he's, he's also traveling
#
in Gujarat and he says the roads are lined with these sort of waste level shelves, you
#
know, and, and he says that they're there.
#
So because porters, because there's so much trade.
#
So porters can rest their load on that shelf without having to take off the load from their
#
It seemed like a very clever and considerate idea, you know, so, so, so, yeah, so there
#
In fact, when I read your book and read this bit about Gujarat and the porters relieving
#
themselves, I was reminded of a tweet a few months back, I forget by whom, I vaguely seem
#
to think it's one of the journalists who works at the Hindu, but I'm not very sure.
#
But the tweet basically had a picture of this big shelf like thing somewhere in Tamil Nadu
#
and saying, do you know what this is for?
#
And no one in the area, no one's really seemed to have an idea of what it was for.
#
And the purpose was for laborer women who are carrying things on their head, they can
#
So it's at a slightly higher height than these shelves would be.
#
And because no one does that anymore, thankfully we have progressed beyond that.
#
No one knows what these things are.
#
They're like artifacts, like, you know, like, like a trivial stonehenge in a sense, what
#
But now we know what that's for and just knowing what it's for also gives you an image of sort,
#
what kind of life must have been like, you know, you were mentioning sort of religious
#
And of course your book has a section on how, for example, the Mughals attitude towards
#
Sati, which is that they disapproved of it, but they didn't want to outlaw it entirely.
#
So the instruction that Jahangir gave to his governors was that you talk to the woman concerned
#
in every case, offer her inducements, tell her we'll give her a pension or look after
#
And only when you're absolutely sure is of her own free will, then what do you do?
#
You have to let it kind of proceed.
#
But religion also brings me to the circumstances of his rebellion and eventually taking over
#
Of course, is very funny in the sense Akbar sends Murad is dead by now, I think.
#
So Danyal is looking after Allahabad and you mentioned how Akbar sends him to the Deccan,
#
which is this constant sort of humorous leitmotif of he sends him to Deccan and Danyal is messing
#
So Akbar goes after him.
#
And at this point, Jahangir is sent on another campaign with Man Singh, but Man Singh has
#
an emergency in Bengal where he is governor.
#
So he leaves and Prince Salim as he then is surrounded by his hangers on decides to make
#
a play for power, takes his army to Agra.
#
Takes his army to Agra and is confronted by Kilich Khan for an unenviable position because
#
he has to hold and Jahangir and Salim's idea is to raid the treasury.
#
So Kilich Khan has to keep Akbar's treasury safe while also not, you know, losing his
#
own head to Jahangir's well-known temper.
#
So which he is doing sort of, he's negotiating and saying like, you know, standing firm,
#
not letting Jahangir in.
#
But who knows how things would have gone, except luckily for Kilich Khan, Jahangir's
#
grandmother, Hamidah Bhanu Begum, hears about this and she happens to be in Agra and she's
#
just very shocked and dismayed and she sends word to say, what are you doing?
#
And I'm coming to see you.
#
And Jahangir is so embarrassed at this idea and doesn't want to, can't face his grandmother.
#
So he quickly gets on a boat and sails off to Allahabad, which is luckily vacant since
#
And he takes that, the sort of the interesting political economy angle behind Jahangir eventually
#
winning the succession battle against Khusro also was that, you know, Man Singh and Aziz
#
Koka of course supported Khusro, as you said earlier.
#
But the mistake they made and we can only say it's a mistake in retrospect is that rather
#
than just announce him emperor and then try to, you know, work around that, they order
#
sort of a council of statesmen and elders to decide on the issue.
#
And they're a powerful faction of a powerful Sunni faction supports Salim and eventually
#
he ascends to the throne.
#
How much like what is the interplay happening here?
#
Are these sort of traditional Sunni figures pissed off at Akbar because of, you know,
#
all of Akbar's syncretic secularizing sort of activities and they're like, no, we must
#
preserve our faith and that, you know, and Khusro is Akbar's chosen one.
#
So we will go for Salim.
#
Is that, is religion an angle in all of this?
#
Religion is certainly an angle in all of this.
#
Akbar has pissed off the conservative, particularly the Sunni Muslims in and around his court because
#
he has, of course, for his many heresies, he's proclaimed a whole new religion, forget,
#
so he's, you know, the rumors about that he has forsaken Islam, that he's not Muslim anymore.
#
And so people are, and he's taken away not just that, but he's also taken away power
#
from the clerics, you know, who had a great deal of power in previous courts.
#
So they're not happy and Jahangir is very much playing to this gallery.
#
So while he's sitting in Allahabad, holding his rebel court, he's also issuing, you know,
#
fatwas once in a while saying that my father, what he's doing is very bad, very bad, and
#
clearly indicating that he will not do this when he becomes emperor.
#
He does have that support.
#
But that said, it's, you know, things get very, so, if you don't mind, I'll give you
#
a slightly tangential answer, or digressing, but you know, it's interesting to me, one
#
of the things I thought while sort of writing and thinking about this book, I mean, we think
#
of the Mughals particularly, you know, everything, all historical characters, as we know them,
#
perhaps because we have so many, or perhaps because of the way that we have understood
#
our own history, are thought of in sort of black and white bullet point terms, you know,
#
and with the Mughals, that black and white bullet point tends to focus on this sort of
#
secularism and communism, you know, and therefore, the greatest amount of writing, thinking,
#
debating goes on about this, you know, supposedly secular hero, that is Akbar, and this communal
#
villain who is Aurangzeb.
#
And regardless of whether, you know, secular or communal are words that even make any sense
#
in the, you know, in the 16th and 17th centuries, this is how we understand them.
#
And even if we are trying to sort of rethink those categories, it's difficult to get out
#
of that trap, you know, either you're saying, oh no, he was secular, no, he wasn't, or secular
#
is not the right word, but somehow those words have to, you know, he was or was not communal,
#
but those words keep coming.
#
And just thinking aloud, doesn't this tendency of thinking and these stark binaries carry
#
on to the present day, where we talk of Nehru or Ambedkar or Gandhi, or even Savarkar, who
#
are all deeply complex figures and, you know, cannot be pinned down into black and white.
#
And that's how people make sense of the world and which is why we need historians.
#
And that possibly ties into the great man theory too, you know, when either, you know,
#
the great men of history are either great, greatly good or greatly bad.
#
And that's how they, you know, that's how we understand them.
#
But the interesting thing and the nice thing about Jahangir is because he has no, I mean,
#
nobody is thinking of him as a great man of any kind, and so he doesn't have this kind
#
of, there's no pressure, you know.
#
So when you read his life, you can read it with a lot more detachment and see how he
#
wasn't just this or that, but he was this and also this and also this and also this
#
and also this, you know, he's all kinds of things.
#
So I guess one of the things, I mean, post Khosro's rebellion, but because of it, early
#
on in his career is one of the, I suppose, if you were thinking of Jahangir in purely
#
religious terms, one big blot on his career would be the execution of Guru Arjun Dev.
#
But once you start looking at it, you know, that story yields many kinds of possible interpretations.
#
And so one, of course, is that Jahangir talks about it again in the Jahangir Nama, it's
#
quite clear and there isn't any hint of there being any religious angle to it.
#
I mean, until then, Guru Arjun Dev and the gurus in the Mughals had fairly decent relationship,
#
gurus Arjun Dev himself specifically and Akbar had met and got along and Akbar had given
#
him a grant and enjoyed talking to him and all that.
#
And perhaps because of this reason, Khosro, when he rebelled, he was on his way to Lahore
#
and on the way he stopped at the gurus' hermitage and the guru blessed him and maybe he gave
#
him some money, it's not entirely clear.
#
And later on, Jahangir finds out about this and he has him, he says, I had him, I had
#
his property confiscated and I had him executed, right.
#
But it doesn't seem at all as if this was anything more than a political act.
#
On the other hand, it's also possible that Jahangir was in some ways goaded to do this
#
by his advisors who would amongst them, you know, number some of these Sunni clerics who
#
would have, you know, because by this time, Sikhism had sort of evolving as a religion
#
and the guru was attracting more and more followers, both Hindus and Muslims.
#
And thereby being a political threat as well as much as...
#
Being a political and a religious threat to his, to Jahangir's, Murla's not, to Jahangir
#
So it's possible, you know, that that was also happening.
#
And there's another story, not of another religious man who dies because of Jahangir.
#
And I really like this story because, you know, so he's a Shia and he's an old man by
#
And at some point, about 1610 or so, Jahangir has him whipped.
#
And then he, soon after he dies, most likely as a consequence.
#
And there's this chap called Sujad Rizvi who has a fantastic essay on all the wheels within
#
wheels within wheels that are going on here, you know, and it, so Rizvi says that it's,
#
you know, possible that Shustri was pretending not to be Shia because of the sort of growing
#
Sunni influence in the court, it was, he thought it was a good idea to do that.
#
And Jahangir has him whipped, not because he is Shia, but because he is pretending not
#
And by that pretence, he is casting an aspersion on Jahangir's liberality.
#
And Jahangir says also that he's making me look like a coarse and bigoted man.
#
And you know, how dare he cast this aspersion of bigotry on me.
#
And yet, you know, this Sujad Rizvi goes on that it's also quite possible that it was
#
that sectarian Sunni court that had it in for this old, poor old Shia man, and again
#
sort of arm twisted the emperor into having him whipped.
#
But Jahangir could not admit this because in his own sense of himself, there is no,
#
there is, forget bigotry or tolerance, there is very little religious sense.
#
And Thomas Rowe puts it very well, you know, Thomas Rowe says that he has been bred up
#
And it was easy for me also to identify, and I think that, you know, there are many people
#
who, so I have, you know, my father is Hindu, my mother is Sikh, and I was particularly
#
So, you know, when you're brought up without any kind of religion, you, I know what that,
#
you know, what that means.
#
And then Thomas Rowe continues that, so therefore he's either the easiest man to convert or
#
the most difficult because he is willing to listen to everything, but he won't believe
#
You know, he doesn't have that, that ability to have religious faith, you know.
#
So he's, he'll watch the stripes of the zebra.
#
The Shusuri story was so mind blowing because, you know, when I heard about it and from you,
#
it was because it is almost Rashamonic in its multiple points of views and its multiple
#
pretenses that at the surface level Jahangir's claim is that, I don't care whether he's Shia
#
or Sunni, but the fact that he pretended was an affront to my liberalism and therefore
#
that pretends deserves a punishment of death.
#
But on the other hand, you point out the possibility that it was under pressure from the Sunnis.
#
So he's pretending to be loyal to the Sunni faction who he needs for political reasons.
#
And on the other hand, there is that he then needs to pretend perhaps to himself, perhaps
#
to the world that this is not the reason that he actually is liberal.
#
So it's layers within layers and it seems like, you know, if there's an Indian Kurosawa,
#
this is such an incredible, I mean, your book is full of incredible subjects of the sort
#
for novels or films or whatever.
#
It's just fairly mind boggling to me, but you know, another interesting aspect of his
#
sort of religious leanings and his sort of experiments is this interesting guy called
#
Jadrub Ghusain, who is Jadrub Ghusain?
#
Jadrub Ghusain is very much not a Muslim, he's a Brahmin saint and ascetic and Akbar
#
first finds him and then Jahangir goes to visit him.
#
First he meets him in a cave near Ujjain and Jahangir is just amazed by his asceticism
#
and his frugality and he eats like three mouthfuls a day and he lives his entire life inside
#
this tiny little cave and Jahangir has it measured, of course, it's barely possible
#
for a man to get inside.
#
And Jahangir goes to meet him and he meets him in private and there's even a painting
#
of that shows Jadrub Ghusain and Jahangir talking outside the cave and all the nobility
#
very much on the fringes of that painting.
#
And he does this more than once in the Jahangir Nama and he meets him and he has very long,
#
very detailed and clearly fulfilling conversations because he says, after one of them he says
#
that I was very happy to meet him and I was very sad to part from him.
#
And clearly this man also had some influence over Jahangir because there's an essay by
#
him, I'm forgetting, I think maybe Shireen Musfi has written this essay about how at
#
some point poor Khosrow is in jail or in captivity, but occasionally he is allowed more freedom
#
So at some point you hear in Jahangir Nama he says that I let Khosrow come to meet me
#
every day and it seems that it may have been that Khosrow's father-in-law Aziz Koka went
#
to Jadru Ghusain and said will you please intercede on his behalf and let him move around
#
So he had that kind of influence on Jahangir and this sort of ascetic, the idea of asceticism
#
itself seems to have been something that attracted him.
#
In fact there's even a painting of him wearing a dhoti and sitting in this sort of ascetic
#
I mean I'm just thinking aloud and I could be completely wrong, but it seems to me just
#
listening to both what you've said about his sort of religious quest as it were and also
#
his curiosity about the natural world such as dog biting the elephant, it seems to me
#
that the curiosity itself is intense and genuine, but the quest is kind of shallow and that's
#
not necessarily his fault because he is also limited by the tools at his disposal.
#
Well you can say that for someone like Akbar for example in the context of religion, it
#
would seem that both the impulse and the quest itself was deep and genuine, he's actually
#
going and meeting Arjun Dev and chatting with him, he's writing up to Dine Elahi and for
#
Jahangir it's like he just falls short in both those areas.
#
That it could, but also here I have to admit to my own inability, one inability of not
#
being a historian and therefore not being, I mean I don't have the languages, I have
#
just English, so I can't read in Persian and I can't read in other languages and there
#
is this text called Majlis-e-Jahangiri which records some years of Jahangir's evening
#
You know it's interesting because I think it is Asfar Moin perhaps who pointed this
#
out that I mean many people say that for example in the Jahangir Nama there is no mention
#
of Thomas Roe and that can be taken as a mark of how insignificant Thomas Roe was, but it's
#
also possible that this is what Moin I think says that in the Jahangir Nama Jahangir is
#
writing about his days but not about his nights, the evenings are when he has these conversations
#
with people both the spiritual religious conversations and the conversation with ambassadors and
#
visitors and all that and some of that is, I mean it's not recorded by him, but there
#
is this record by another visitor to his court who records some of these religious conversations
#
that he has with various clerics and priests who come to his court.
#
So now I don't know, you know I've only been able to, it's not been translated, so I've
#
only seen a little bit here and there quoted in essays, but it's possible that that reveals
#
a deeper quest, I mean you know or at least a deeper interest in these matters.
#
He does, you know he does it seems, you know so Akbar has this idea of Sulekul, the peace
#
for all which becomes a kind of motto for his reign and Jahangir according to little
#
extracts from this book describes himself as Mazarikul which translates as a sort of
#
universal manifestation, he says that even the way that God takes care of all his slaves,
#
so I take care of all God's slaves, you know so his own idea of what religion means of
#
what it means to rule over different religions, I don't know how deep or sophisticated they
#
were, but they perhaps are more than we, we can gather only from the Jahangir now.
#
And his instincts seem to be fairly liberal as we would call it today.
#
Oh so Thomas Rowe has this, there's a little bit in Thomas Rowe where he talks about how
#
he, you know at some point Jahangir is in his cups and he starts talking about liberality
#
towards all religions and Thomas Rowe says he sort of starts crying because he's so moved
#
by his own good intentions.
#
So yes that idea certainly, you know because he is the product himself of so much intermingling,
#
you know he is, he has a Hindu mother, he has lived his entire life in Hindustan, you
#
know this is his country and to me the most telling thing is his taste in fruit, you know
#
so you have Babur who comes here and he, for the very few years that he's here he's really
#
missing his melons, he even literally cries when a shipment of melons arrives in Agra
#
from Kabul, you can't believe it.
#
And modern nationalists would find more reason to dislike Babur because he also says bad
#
He says mangoes are okay, okay, he says they'll do but they're nowhere near, they're not
#
And then Jahangir at the beginning of his reign goes to Kabul and almost like it's like
#
a mirror effect, you know he says almost exactly the opposite, he says that all the fruits
#
are very nice in Kabul, he has some cherries, he has some peaches, he has apricots, melons,
#
you know he says fruits are all very well but he says nothing can match a mango.
#
And this is really interesting and actually you know question I was saving for the end
#
of the episode but I'll ask you now is this gradual journey where what is essentially
#
a Timurid dynasty, a Timurid people, they bring their languages with them, their you
#
know their harems and all the women and whatever and gradually what happens is that one they
#
get more and more Hindu because if you think about it Jahangir is half Hindu and his sons
#
even more than that because some of his wives are you know Rajput princesses or whatever
#
and not only are they in terms of their bloodline and so on getting more and more Hindu and
#
more and more Indian rather but even culturally they're losing those old languages, they're
#
losing those sort of old ways and it would seem that it's you know around this time that
#
you know that with Jahangir that line is drawn that they are now an Indian dynasty that the
#
past is behind them that you know wherever they came from Uzbekistan or whatever it's
#
Yeah this idea that you know one day we will conquer Samarkand remains I think certainly
#
all the way up to Aurangzeb but it remains really as an idea you know that that lip service
#
although they try and I think there's some disastrous campaign that Aurangzeb is sent
#
off on by Shadia but it's not but I mean for Babur that was it that was all he wanted was
#
to be king of Samarkand that was home and that was that was his ultimate ambition you
#
know that was Timur's capital and that was the that was what he wanted to be.
#
In fact I was just reminded by another TIL moment which quizzes would like which I got
#
from your book which is about the origin of the word Vilayat and you point out how you
#
know the term originally means home and it was you know Jahangir Seret of Kabul or Jahangir
#
Seret of Kabul and he meant it as home but over time it has come to mean the opposite.
#
Yeah exactly I was also quite taken aback by that meant sort of homeland or the land
#
of the you know ancestors and it says the meaning is completely turned kind of depends
#
on who you like for example if an Englishman uses it off England he is talking of England
#
as his Vilayat his home but then when an Indian starts calling it Vilayat picking up from
#
him the meaning changes and somehow that new meaning exactly the real meaning and that
#
will just you know so so fascinating to me let's the kind of the really fast one thing
#
I learned recently about the Mughals and has really fascinated me and I did an episode
#
on Ira Mukoti with it on her excellent book Daughters of the Sun is about the women the
#
Mughal women and even in your book there is a very prominent role played by the women
#
starting with Hameeda Banu Beckham of course Akbar's mother Humayun's bride from Afghanistan
#
who is you know who Jahangir is so scared of that when she says I'm you know I'm coming
#
to see what the hell you are doing trying to rob the treasury he runs off to Allahabad
#
and later one of the sort of things that really struck me about the legendary Nujahan is that
#
again you've pointed out that being an emperor Jahangir could have any woman he wanted and
#
what he chose who he fell in love with and stayed so loyal with and build this enduring
#
friendship and partnership with was a widow in her mid-30s and this the whole attitude
#
towards women the way they revere and respect the women you know in their palaces and how
#
much they listen to them tell me a little bit about that I mean so I mean I think you
#
know the more I read about the Mughals and their sort of extended families the more sort
#
of these very strong women come out you know they're just they're all over the place Babar
#
you know in his Babarnama writes about his grandmother as being one of the most important
#
influences on his life and not just you know as grandmother but also as actually advisor
#
on military matters and strategic matters because he's 12 when he stays yes exactly
#
and he goes to her and she advises him on what to do and how to do it so and his sister
#
Khanzada is very much I think in fact Eda talks about it in her book there's a painting
#
she has in her book in which Khanzada is part of a council you know and she's I think she's
#
she's the biggest figure in that council you know she's clearly the most important person
#
in that in that council then there are you know there are some there are others there's
#
the Salima Sultan Begum who's Bairam Khan's wife and later Akbar's wife then Gulbadan
#
Begum who's Akbar's aunt and all of these people play a very strong important role in
#
Jahangir's life there's also Hamidabadu is only one of Humayun's wives and Humayun has
#
at least three who are you know that's fairly right for three wives to sort of remain known
#
in history for fairly big accomplishments one is you know the Haji Begum is his first
#
wife she's she builds the Humayun's tomb then there's you know Hamidabadu who you know
#
first resists his overtures for 40 days 40 days it takes of him wooing her and one of
#
his stepmothers finally persuades Hamidabadu with that eternal argument that has been used
#
to persuade you know women to marry she says that you know you have to marry someone so
#
why not him as well as anyone else.
#
And he's a fugitive right now mind you not an emperor I think Shait Sasturi is basically
#
ruling what we call India.
#
Yeah he's in fairly bad straight and the straights will become much worse very soon but so his
#
third wife Ma Chuchak Begum who is youngest sorry youngest wife who is also the mother
#
of Akbar's young half brother Muhammad Hakeem and is the de facto ruler of Kabul and you
#
know battles when Akbar sends one of his governors there she throws him out and goes to battle
#
with him and defeats him you know so there are many examples of very very strong women
#
in the life of Jahangir and Jahangir himself is indebted to at least three of them this
#
you know Hamidabadu his grandmother Salima Sultan and Gulbadan Begum for interceding
#
with Akbar on his behalf you know keeping the relationship at least somewhat civil on
#
sort of more or less working terms so that you know it doesn't become completely ineligible.
#
And as you pointed out the later intercede with Jahangir on Khusro's behalf.
#
No but they do on behalf of Mirza Aziz Koka so Jahangir wants to he's you know always
#
had a thing in his because Mirza Aziz has supported Khusro and so when he gets his opportunity
#
he wants to certainly put him in prison possibly worse but the women are listening from behind
#
the screen and they and they call out and they stop him so yeah so they have an influence
#
on and thereafter you know Nur Jahan she becomes as powerful as she does and it's exceptional
#
but it doesn't happen in a vacuum you know there's enough precedent for powerful women.
#
And it's interesting that you know even Nur Jahan's origin story is kind of you know interesting
#
how she was again not an Indian per se not like one of the other Rajput princesses and
#
tell me a little bit about that.
#
She comes fleeing from Persia with her no she doesn't come sorry her parents come fleeing
#
from Persia she is born en route in Kandahar and then so there are these there's this what
#
is called the abandonment narrative and the abandonment of Nur Jahan that you know they
#
have her mother delivers her but they are poor they are in there it's a difficult journey
#
they don't have any they don't know how they'll be able to take care of her so they leave
#
her under a tree but they've only walked a little while before you know my parents decide
#
this is not they can't do this and so her father goes back and he finds her with you
#
know sort of black snake wrapped around her you know some variations on that theme and
#
then picks her up and brings her to Agra but this is not I mean this is not a story that
#
this is a this is a little you know sort of sort of myth making of Nur Jahan there's no
#
such story told I mean Jahangir certainly doesn't tell it so but whatever it is they
#
came they were refugees there were many refugees coming in from Persia at the time and they
#
found employment in Akbar's court her father he asked me and then I mean he's doing fairly
#
okay but nothing spectacular and under Jahangir his career is arrested for quite a while he
#
is himself arrested in fact and his and his son is one of his sons is arrested and killed
#
for being part of Khosrow's second rebellion yeah so so things are not looking very good
#
for them and then in 1611 so six years after he becomes emperor Jahangir marries Nur Jahan
#
and then suddenly you know the the fortune of the Aghas Beg family just goes through
#
the through the roof I mean they all become incredibly powerful and Nur Jahan is almost
#
co-ruling with him in a sense in fact a common criticism which you point out may have been
#
motivated by Shah Jahan's sort of trying to rationalize his rebelling against Nur Jahan
#
and the king was sort of that oh he wasn't really governing he was a weak emperor Nur
#
Jahan did all the governing so a real man had to come and get the job done and and
#
the actual probable thing is that Jahangir was egoless in the sense of he was doing
#
what was he was sharing power with her and by all accounts they had a very close friendship
#
as well and he was sharing power with her because it was a practical thing to do that
#
left him to hunt and to drink and do the sort of things that he kind of enjoyed what also
#
intrigued me was the sort of political games like on the one hand Khurram the later Shah
#
Jahan is married to her niece right but on the other hand she then tries to get her daughter
#
from her first marriage married to Khosrow but Khosrow refuses allegedly but Khurram
#
anyway has Khosrow killed later and that daughter ends up marrying the youngest brother Shariar
#
and Shariar becomes a contender to the throne but then eventually when you know and after
#
Jahangir for a very brief while Khosrow's son is sort of told that you are the king
#
and then Shah Jahan just has all of them knocked off.
#
It's a bloodbath it reminded me of you know that that last scene that last montage in
#
the Godfather you know when one after the other all the competition is being is just
#
He just wipes them out but his son is Aurangzeb so Karma is on the way.
#
But tell me also a little bit about like when most people think of Jahangir and but thanks
#
perhaps to Bollywood and Mughalism they think of Salim and Anarkali did Anarkali exist?
#
There's no I mean I just feel very bad every time I have to say this because I found people
#
I didn't realize until after I wrote this book and started talking to people how fond
#
people are of the story of Anarkali and Salim and how much how people don't at all like
#
being told that she didn't exist though I mean you know I like I mean there's no particular
#
evidence for her having existed except that there's this diary entry by a chap called
#
William Finch who's again one of those early East India Company traders and he goes again
#
he goes to Lahore and he's he says there's this tomb and the tomb is of Imakali translated
#
as pomegranate blossom.
#
And she was she was the Hakbar's wife and Danyal's mother and Shah Salim had quote
#
unquote to do with her.
#
So it's not at all the sort of epic romance that we have in Mughalism much more sordid
#
story that he tells but tomb is there I think the I think the Atheological Survey has offices
#
there or some sort of government office in that tomb.
#
From what I've read it is said to be the tomb of one of Jahangir's wives but not Anarkali
#
Sahib Jamal who was the mother of his second son Parvez.
#
Also like it seemed to me that if she had existed and if I mean the story as it's told
#
certainly as the story as it's told in Mughalism does not hold water in the context of you
#
know Mughal family life because class would certainly not have been an issue you know
#
if Jahangir could have as many concubines as he wanted nobody would stop him and marry
#
In fact there is there is an instance of him wanting to marry somebody that Akbar doesn't
#
approve of you know because he wants to marry Zain Khan's a nobleman's daughter or niece
#
and he's already married to her niece and daughter so Akbar doesn't like this idea
#
of you know marrying two women who are so closely related to each other but Jahangir
#
insists and eventually you know Akbar gives in and that's it there's no you know it doesn't
#
become some huge issue.
#
So for all these reasons it seemed to me that it wasn't I don't find it particularly credible
#
but you know who knows somebody may discover something later but also I think what at some
#
point you know you know that the stories that I guess you know when you're writing any book
#
any story or even whether it's history or not there are certain stories you were more
#
attracted to or want to tell more than others so I thought you know this idea of this young
#
love fighting parental opposition is a very nice story but it has been told so many times
#
and for me the more interesting story even if that were that anarchic story is true for
#
me the more interesting story is the Noor Jahan Jahangir story you know this this these these
#
two people who meet very much in their middle age you know by even by today's standards
#
let alone those standards she's in her 30s he's in his 40s they have both been married
#
before me not just kindly watch your words by today's standards 40 is very young 40 is
#
very young I know it's the new 30 40 is the new late 20s the new late 20s yes so I just
#
turned 22 a few weeks ago so yeah so so no so so this idea of you know he's of course
#
been married he's much married but she also is not you know she's not she's her second
#
marriage to she already has a child by her first marriage they don't have any children
#
together he never marries again after that she's his last wife they seem to share a relationship
#
of some degree of equality some degree of mutual respect they clearly have similar interests
#
you know I mean he is addicted to hunting as we've already said she's supposed to be
#
a really good she's supposed to be a really good shot yeah and you know he has a an interest
#
in in in sort of jewelry and clothes and sort of beauty beauty so does she you know she's
#
she's sort of that the the tomb of her father it's a mother dolla's tomb in in in agra
#
is really a really gorgeous little monument so they have both have a very finely developed
#
aesthetic sense they both enjoy you know feasting and partying and traveling you know they travel
#
together up and down the country there's a very nice anecdote in your book about the
#
lights of the city going off because you know they're they're coming back from somewhere
#
together in a bullock cart he's riding a bullock cart and she's by his side and his people
#
feel the emperor should not be seen like this yeah but it's just a couple enjoying a really
#
nice moment yeah no no not the emperor not be seen like this so they've put off the lights
#
because so to keep her in parda because she's she's out no she's sitting with him so she's
#
not she's not she's not yeah the absence of light as a bird so yeah so that's why it
#
has further and this you know he's commanded a bullock cart from somewhere and the two
#
of them are riding i thought it's a lovely image and yeah to me it captures something
#
of their something of the sort of carefree that kind of carefree love or carefree affection
#
which i think comes later in life you know young passion is not is not carefree in that
#
way this is a mature settled love and it doesn't even seem to be so say affected by like you
#
know we know power corrupts power corrodes people especially the massive power that a
#
mughal emperor must have but this seems to be quite removed from all of that it's just
#
genuine affection it comes across you know and so that was the story that i like that
#
story better and so that was the one that i was more interested in uh anyway that's
#
a very powerful story we've already spoken for more than a couple of hours tell me something
#
i i see sort of a kind of divergent trends and one trend is of course that history is
#
used more and more these days as a political tool it's simplified and you know so you'll
#
paint um uh historical figures in either black or white and use it to suit your narrative
#
purposes whatever they might be uh which indicates that simplistic narratives maybe another illustration
#
of this is the romance between the alleged anarkali and jhangir that simplistic narratives
#
have an appeal to us we can all get it our mind is not our mind resists complexities
#
but yet i see in modern times uh in the last uh uh towards the rest of the world and maybe
#
now over here with people like you and manupillaya niram akhati and anasafi coming along that
#
there is also this readership developing this hunger developing for popular history where
#
people just love these stories they can take the complexity you know they are not choosing
#
simple binaries there is a hunger for these and part of these i have um mused in the past
#
is perhaps because we love stories that's how we explain the world to each other and
#
where can you get better stories than in our history especially india's history is just
#
wild and mind-boggling and uh so entertaining and these are two divergent things i mean
#
one is history as a political tool being simplified binaries but the other is that people just
#
love history what are your thoughts on this no i think i think the way you've put it is
#
really that's it's true that you know people love history people also like at a certain
#
level i think in school particularly you will find you know that almost near unanimous agreement
#
that history is just the most boring subject and maths is the most incomprehensible you
#
know and possibly for similar reasons because they are both taught in these abstract terms
#
that seem to have no relevance to to real life you know those mathematical formulas
#
i still don't know what it was that i was memorizing and to what end and similarly with
#
you know this history and that's what we think started off talking uh and at the same time
#
it's also you know in our current uh political life it excites great passions and you know
#
great anger and um so you know i don't know if you've read this book that's come out recently
#
called malevolent republic of course by kapil comrade i just finished reading it i thought
#
it was very polemical very compelling very i enjoyed it very much i don't know whether
#
i agreed with every part of it but it was it was there were parts i didn't agree with
#
but i i it was extremely thought-provoking and so well written and in fact i've asked
#
kapil to be on my show and he's agreed but we've never actually managed to make be in
#
the same place at the same time so one day we will make that work oh i will look forward
#
to hearing uh hearing him but to continue with your thought so i so i felt very similar
#
i mean i enjoyed it very much and he has these asides if you remember on on history and and
#
he and he and he basically his argument is that a certain type of uh nationalist mostly
#
leftist historian has not been entirely accurate about the past has sort of papered over the
#
the sins of uh you know uh muslim invaders uh while only attacking european colonizers
#
and i'm not sure if i entirely agree with this you know there are there are many writings
#
of many sorts on the many many different types of uh muslim rulers that india has has had
#
uh but uh but i do i think that that he's right in the sense that there has been a certain
#
sense of nation building that has informed the writing of history and it's not surprising
#
in a you know in a post-colonial country when the entire country's every all resources are
#
concentrated on keeping the country one so naturally history also comes into that so
#
that i think perhaps accounts for the fact that you know history now the way that we
#
are taught it is all it's you know worthy worthy uh not just great men and women but
#
worthy men and women virtuous men and women who have been virtuously working from you
#
know ancient times from buddha onwards they were all working to make uh india uh sort
#
of the the nation state uh that it is and the problem with that is i mean one of course
#
that it turns history into something that can be a little boring and you know just sort
#
of talking down it's a kind of a morality play more than anything else but also that
#
it can be uh that it can be flipped you know so suddenly you know after the decades of
#
doing this the the the country's sense of itself now depends on uh what happened in
#
the past or how we say what happened in the past so suddenly the country you know the
#
you know the nation wants to know why orang zeb did this or you know how dare he break
#
these temples or what is dipu sultan doing in our textbook and so it becomes there's
#
something there's something sort of disproportionate you know the past takes on a disproportionate
#
relevance to the present and then from there of course it almost very too easily that the
#
present then has to be spent uh writing these supposed wrongs uh from the past and and that
#
doesn't spell very good news for us and i think that's a mistake that comes both from
#
the right and the left uh like my friend the political commentator sadanand dhume was on
#
the show a few months ago and he made the very interesting point that whenever he appears
#
on these tv talk shows with right-wing supporters of the current dispensation he finds that
#
they seem to have almost this warped sense of time where what happened yesterday is as
#
relevant as what happened in the 1500s and you know the fact that babur breaking a mosque
#
can have ripples of repercussion through the centuries is both perverse and almost kind
#
of stunning so it's sort of and you know i whenever i end my show and i'm talking to
#
my guest about a particular subject i'll ask this almost cliched question by now when people
#
on twitter make fun of me for asking it every time which is what gives you hope and what
#
gives you despair about xyz and so on given the sort of divergent trends of history down
#
on the one hand it's a political tool and that you know perhaps a study of history in
#
many cases is affected by the ideological lens that you bring to bear upon it and that's
#
one side of the situation but the other side is that more and more people have access to
#
historical documents and are showing greater interest in books of history you know such
#
as by people like you what gives you hope and what gives you despair about the study
#
of history or over the next few years and decades in india so i think exactly these
#
two things that you said i think you know the the despair certainly comes from the fact
#
that you know like you're saying siddhanand whom he said that you know it's almost like
#
we are fighting our elections in in the 16th century or 17th century you know those are
#
the those are the burning topics of the day you know we must have the mughals be accountable
#
now our demand answers from them and and it's a very it's a it's a clever thing because
#
you know when if you're demanding answers from the mughals then you don't have time
#
to demand answers from your current rulers or current government you know all the attention
#
is just over there and even that you know today we are talking and i mean i don't know
#
the whole news yet but that you know section 144 should have been imposed on many parts
#
many cities in the country we are recording this on the day of the ayodhya judgment by
#
the way so yeah and and you know imagine that to to that these are the kind of debates that
#
we are embroiled in and yet at the same time this very fact that you know i find uh you
#
know that one of the one of the nicest and most heartening things about writing with
#
this book was that whenever i have spoken not just you know spoken outside or met people
#
or people have read it there's been such a huge amount of interest and curiosity that
#
obviously exists and people people perhaps as a result of this perhaps because of this
#
kind of you know these these visceral emotional reactions that are that are sort of taking
#
over our public discourse perhaps because of this people now want to know what uh what
#
really happened and secondly you know people that you meet every day are very happy to
#
enjoy history you know i mean i think that's the all these complications and these nuances
#
and all these wheels within wheels and stories within stories and all this sort of soap operanness
#
of it is what makes it so interesting and thrilling and absorbing you know because these are stories
#
and people want to hear those stories and there's nothing about the complication that
#
puts them off in fact that's what attracts people so and i think the fact that you know
#
more and more people are writing this kind of book is obviously an answer to sort of
#
a growing demand and that that is definitely a good good i think nice hopeful sign that
#
uh people are not just willing but uh but want to sort of take a deep dive into into
#
the past and and just swim around you know looking at the fish and the corals not judging
#
all of it or getting hyper excited about all of it just enjoying the view no i could agree
#
with you more and you know i feel extremely hopeful about the fact that i mean i just
#
think the more people dive into these stories as you put about and swim about in these strange
#
waters that they will begin to uh get rid of the otherness of others and hopefully through
#
you know books like you and your elka writing thank you so much for coming on the show thank
#
you very much amit it was lovely to be here thank you very much if you enjoyed listening
#
to this episode hop on over to your nearest bookstore online or offline and pick up jahangir
#
an intimate portrait of a great mughal by parvati sharma i promise you'll finish it
#
in one sitting that's exactly what i did uh parvati very smartly because she's written
#
so many books is not on social media but i am you can follow me on twitter at amit varma
#
a m i t v a r m a you can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen on scene unseen
#
radhaya and ivmpodcast.com and thinkprakriti.com the scene and the unseen are supported by
#
the takshashila institution their postgraduate courses start in january check them out at
#
takshashila.org.in thank you for listening and don't behead anyone today poor abu fazl
#
the modern world is obsessed with food and agriculture everywhere you look new and exciting
#
technologies are bringing food innovation to your street market your grocery store your
#
doorstep and your plate from our quest for the perfect food photos to our rediscovery
#
of ancient grains quite simply food has never been sexier but guess what the modern food
#
system is broken it's a major cause of climate change antibiotic resistance and global poverty
#
so how did we get here and where are we going most importantly how are we going to feed
#
10 billion people globally by the year 2050 through better more sustainable means i'm
#
varun deshpande and i'm ramya ramurti and we work for the good food institute a global
#
non-profit accelerating the transformation to a more healthy sustainable and just food
#
system the next food revolution is here on feeding 10 billion we're giving you the inside
#
view you can tune into us every tuesday on the ivm podcast app or ivm podcast.com or
#
wherever you get your podcast from
#
i am satyajit hi i'm racheta we are from the open library project and we host a podcast
#
called paperback paperback is a podcast where we engage with stalwarts and experts from
#
various industries suggesting non-fiction titles that contributed to their journey in
#
a big way we've had guests like anjali rena dr marcus rani dr swati lodha ambi parmeswaran
#
apurva damani and many more on our show paperback find new episodes every wednesday on ivm podcast
#
app website or wherever you listen to podcasts
