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When I was growing up, I thought history was something that happened in the past.
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At its worst, it's a bunch of dates and boring factoids.
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At its best, it's wild, exciting stories of mad kings and dissolute courtesans and
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When we look at history, I thought we are looking back.
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But anyone listening to this podcast in 2020 knows that this is not true.
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History gave us a DNA of every single conflict in the modern world.
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History has been weaponized in our politics.
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And indeed, history keeps changing depending on what narrative one wants to believe, to
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the extent that I sometimes wonder if all history is just mythology and whether what
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happened in the past is both utterly unimportant and also utterly crucial.
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In India, nowhere do we find these contestations as in the case of Mughal history, regardless
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of where the Mughal dynasty itself originated, should we regard them as Indian rulers from
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whom we took so much that is beautiful about our culture, from our language, our cuisines
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and even our clothes, such as the elegant churidar kurtas worn by our prime minister?
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Or should we look at the Mughals as invaders who destroyed temples and massacred Hindus
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and who must be avenged by the othering of modern Indian Muslims?
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This is a political question, but it can only be answered through history.
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is a journalist and author, Manimukta Sharma, whose recent book, Allahu
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Akbar, considers the legacy of Akbar in the light of the recent revisionism around him.
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As Manimukta writes in his introduction, Jawaharlal Nehru once described Akbar as, quote, the
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great representative of the old Indian ideal of a synthesis of differing elements and their
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fusion into a common nationality.
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Indeed, this has been the traditional view of Akbar the Great, as he is called, referring
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to his syncretism and tolerance, and yet he has also been recently described as, quote,
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a genocidal monster no better than Hitler.
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Which of these is closer to the truth?
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Are they both true to differing degrees and does it matter?
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I shall ask Manimukta these questions and more after a quick commercial break.
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If you enjoy listening to the Seen and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Seen and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe,
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and hopefully yours as well.
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But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off the show.
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Although the Seen and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken
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up to the insane engagement level of podcasts.
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I do many, many hours of deep research for each episode, besides all the logistics of
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producing the show myself, scheduling guests, booking studios, paying technicians, the travel
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So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping the scene going and that involves you.
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My proposition for you is this.
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For every episode of the Seen and the Unseen that you enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee or
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even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth.
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You can do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contributing an amount of
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This is not a subscription.
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The Seen and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation.
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Help keep the scene going.
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sceneunseen.in slash support.
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Manimogh, welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
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Thank you very much, Ahmed.
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It's my pleasure to be here.
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Before we sort of start talking about your book and the old hoary past, which is still
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so alive, tell me a little bit about yourself, like, you know, where did you grow up?
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What kind of stuff did you read?
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What are the influences?
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How on earth did you sort of come to history and then journalism and then back to history?
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So this will be a long story.
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I grew up in Guwahati, Assam, I'm Assamese and I as a child read all kinds of stuff.
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I grew up when the Soviet Union was still around and therefore in our home, we had a
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lot of Soviet literature because that used to be the trend back then.
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And more than, you know, political stuff, it were the folk tales, which really interested
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me and then Soviet literature used to be rich in that.
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And so my parents, both my parents are deeply interested in history.
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So they used to get me in all those stories because stories are also history.
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And fairy tales and all of that were understood to be as a kind of history back then.
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So they surrounded me with that kind of literature.
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So I would read Assamese stuff as well when I learned my own language and then I would
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read these stories and I would read Chinese tales and Japanese tales.
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So we had all kinds of things, plus I was heavily, you know, got a heavy dose of comics.
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So it would be Tinkle and some Amar Chitra Katha, not very much.
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And again, there used to be the Soviet children's book called Misha, which I used to read.
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And then there was this magazine called Target, which eventually became Teens Today and then
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But so it was generally a very good mix of things that I read.
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I'm not sure if my parents wanted to raise me in a certain way.
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That's why they, you know, loaded all of that.
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I don't know that, but I was a fairly well informed child for my time.
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And that's why I got interested in quizzing.
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And quizzing used to be, you know, I am not sure how big it is today.
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Of course, when it comes to prize money, it's pretty big.
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But then as an activity, it used to be far more engrossing in our times.
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So from class four onwards, I was into quizzing and then I would do quizzes in schools.
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Then of course, these inter-school competitions, Maggie quiz used to be pretty big back then.
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So are you a winner of the Board Vita Quiz Contest?
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Sadly, Board Vita Quizzes, you know, they were still considered to be the big city fundamental.
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So I never really got the chance.
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But yeah, Maggie quiz was the other one, which was pretty big.
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So I did win that in my city, at least.
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And then of course, when I came to college and then I started, you know, participating
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in these, you know, inter-regional, intra-regional or inter-regional competitions and on radio
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as well as not on TV, but on radio as well as those live events.
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So then I, because of my participation in quizzes, I also got a chance to, you know,
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And again, the history of those places would interest me.
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So whenever there was one quiz, I remember, I will not name it for a reason, but then
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that really got me the chance to travel North India for a month.
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And that was an eye-opening experience because certain things that I had read as a child,
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I got to see them and experience them from very close quarters for the first time.
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So that was a learning experience.
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Otherwise that experience was terrible because of certain other three reasons, but this was
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pretty much interesting.
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So, you know, quizzing plus these, you know, initial reading and then history was one thing
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that really interested me because like I said, both my parents are deeply interested in history.
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So they used to take me to these, you know, places, heritage buildings, you know.
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So I went to very early, we went to Orissa and then got to see the Kunar temple.
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I was just four or five at that time.
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Then we went to Calcutta because for people growing up in Assam in the 80s, the biggest
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city for us in our imagination was Calcutta.
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It was not Delhi, Delhi became a phenomenon in the late 90s over there.
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But until the 80s at least, it was Calcutta, which was considered to be the big city.
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And because all my grandfather also had studied in Calcutta, so that thing was pretty much
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So then I got to see those places, Victoria Memorial, for instance, and I still remember
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certain artifacts which I had seen and which had, you know, thrilled me, especially weapons
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And then you had the serial called the Sword of Tipu Sultan, which happened and that was
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I mean, I still, you know, get goosebumps, you know, thinking about that because what
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really excited me were the war scenes, the battle scenes, you know, they were very realistic
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And back then, you know, the Bollywood didn't really make good war films or, you know, war
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sequences, but this was very well laid out, very well made.
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So that really excited me.
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So Tipu Sultan, because of that portrayal is still a very positive first figure in my
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mind and Heather Ali, of course.
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So then I went to college and I was still not sure what I'm going to study eventually.
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So for us, college used to be class 11 and 12 onwards.
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So we used to go to, I went to Cotton College in Guwahati.
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So there I took up political science, history, anthropology and those two years were formative
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years because I probably, if I remember it right, I was more interested in political
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So I thought that maybe I'll take that up as my honours.
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But then I read Atlas of the Mughal Empire written by Irfan Habib.
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And that was in the higher secondary or class 11-12 and that really changed my whole understanding
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of a subject and interested me more in history.
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So when I went to my grads, so I picked history as my honours.
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So that way I have, I think I mentioned that in my book as well that, you know, I was kind
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of like an Ekalavya learning from Dronacharya because Irfan sir was like Dronacharya for
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Except you didn't have to give...
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I didn't have to sacrifice my thumb as Guru Dakshina.
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So and then once I started history, then of course I went deeply into it and again, it
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was the more military aspects of it that really excited me.
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So back then, it was not fashionable to talk about warfare, you know, because it was seen
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as something bad and no major historian really dealt in that.
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So military history as a discipline was still not very well known back then.
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Now, of course, it's different now and because there's also political reason behind that.
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So Indian contribution in the First World War was completely unknown back then.
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So and even when we studied the Second World War in college, for us, it started suddenly
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with Hitler invading Poland and then there was...
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It went on and on and suddenly there's some mention about Indian soldiers when Singapore
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surrenders and, you know, these men become eventually part of the INA.
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So for us, the understanding of Second World War even back then was through the INA, we
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never really talked about the bigger contribution that, you know, Indians in the British Army.
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So this was how I grew up and I learned things both by reading as well as by experiencing
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them and then, of course, when I was in the first year of college and this internet boom
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happened and internet was something very new, you know, it was very exciting, it was very
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expensive back then though.
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So I remember it used to be rupees 100 per hour for one hour of browsing and if you are,
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if you could produce a student iCard, you were given rupees 20 discount, so it used
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to be 80 rupees per hour, this was still very expensive.
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So now if you look at how internet has penetrated, it seems impossible.
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And even at 80 rupees per hour because we grew up in the same time, it was so incredibly
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Yeah, it was slow, slow.
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Like no one, you know, people today cannot understand, imagine the pain of that dial-up
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and, you know, gradually you're downloading picture of Pamela Anderson and it's taking
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40 minutes for one picture to come.
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Our generation knows that pain.
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So we had to be very patient, it used to frustrate me completely because there were so many things
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that you wanted to know and Google is now, of course, the default search engine, but
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back then we had so many other search engines like Alta Vista and Yahoo was also fairly.
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When Ask Jeeves came, it was like the hottest thing around for six months.
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So, you know, that fun and, you know, that feeling of that sense of discovery that, you
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So that again, you know, added to my interest and understanding because I was reading things
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for the first time, blogging was pretty big back then, you were also with India Uncut,
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So, you know, all those things had started coming.
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So there was so much to read and more than spending time in the libraries, I would confess
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that I was spending more time on the internet, you know, reading these blogs and because
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I was part of many Yahoo groups of that time, so, you know, Yahoo groups had this thing
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called, you know, mailing list, so, you know, your email would get, you know, all kinds
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of emails and many of those emails were on history, you know, and authored by people
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who were analyzed at that time.
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I still run a couple of mailing lists, in fact, because, yeah, I'm in Google groups
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and all that now, not Yahoo anymore.
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Yahoo has, I think, shut down, yeah, we're drawing it.
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So you know, these mailing lists also contain, you know, history or let's say their understanding
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of history, which was very, very different and for the first time, I didn't really realize
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It's only, you know, after a few years when I was far better informed and I started working
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as a journalist, only then I could, you know, connect the dots.
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But that was pretty loaded propaganda about India's past.
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So you would have those, you know, tidbits like, you know, did you know that Sanskrit
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is the only suitable language for computers?
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And did you know that ex Adi Shankaracharya did this or did that?
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So there, this anti-Muslim, anti-Mughal propaganda used to feature very prominently.
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So India's soul was plundered, you know, kind of things like that.
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And did that because you had already studied and you'd read Professor Habib's book and
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all of that, you were quite familiar with that history.
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Did it strike you as, you know, what's going on?
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Of course it did strike me as odd and I used to in fact laugh about it.
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You know, I used to share these things with my friends and I used to laugh about it.
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That just look at the silly propaganda, but there were friends who had also started getting
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onto the internet and who were not very well, you know, informed about India's past.
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They had started believing in all those things.
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So now of course I realized what had happened.
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So it was a very steady dose of propaganda which was coming in, which is corrupting minds
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and in ways that, you know, we didn't understand back then.
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So what I was laughing off in my late teens or early twenties, now I regret because I
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now feel that maybe I should have done more and spoken more to my friends and shared more
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Now, of course, internet is much more well laid out.
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So now you can share information, you just go on Twitter and put out a thread and then
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people RT it and then even those who don't agree with you, they also get to see what
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But back then it was difficult.
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So either you write a huge long blog somewhere or you just speak to your friends and have
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these, you know, canteen conversations and then you try to, you know, change things.
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But then of course those were not consistent.
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So these didn't have any, they didn't, did not produce any substantial result.
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So yeah, so my growing up would be essentially reading plus internet and lots of propaganda
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and busting propaganda in my own mind, of course.
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And what strikes me is very interesting is I almost feel a little jealous of it is that
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when I was a kid and growing up in the eighties and so on and you know, I'd, I'd, for example,
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I take trips to Chandigarh, I mean, I was born in Chandigarh, I take trips to Delhi.
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Then I did my, I studied in Pune and I was surrounded by history, but I took it for granted
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So you're, you know, you're in the most historical places and you don't realize when I studied
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in Ferguson college, Pune, for example, I didn't, I didn't know that that's a place
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where in 1894, Gandhi first met Gopal Krishna Gokhale and they took a lawn on the grounds
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That's the first time they met and they had a long conversation and that it was a hotbed
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of atheism at the time.
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But what seems to be the case with you is that you would relish traveling to different
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cities because you would not be jaded about the things that are around you and you had
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a sense that everything around me is living history in a sense and has a past connected
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Did you still feel that same way after all of these years or has some of that, you know,
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that childlike wonder, do you have to try to sort of keep it alive?
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Because if I go to a new place and I see a new monument, for instance, so I still get
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the thrill and there are some monuments which thrill me every time I go there.
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So it's been, you know, for instance, the Atma, the dollar's tomb in Agra, you know,
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which is fascinating because it's in many ways a precursor to the Taj and is not visited
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Say if you compare it with the Taj, of course you can't really beat it, but even other prominent
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monuments in Agra, this doesn't feature very prominently.
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People do go there, but not so many as, you know, people would go to Agra Fort or some
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other more prominent building.
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So that really fascinates me.
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So every time I see it and this is also with my wife, you know, so we've gone there together
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and we have gone there many times because every time somebody comes, some relative comes,
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so we have to take them to Agra.
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So every year there's one trip, short trip, two, three days trip to Agra that we plan
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because there's some relative or the other who's here.
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So if you're not a journalist or a historian, one day you can be a tourist guide.
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Of course, and I could charge heavily for that, you know, just to tell people that this
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is propaganda and this is fact.
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But yes, so when I visit a place, I do get thrilled because that sense of discovery has
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still not left me and the curiosity has not left me.
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And I'm imagining that, you know, in modern times, let's say I go to an interesting monument,
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I can instantly Google it and very soon I can enter a rabbit hole of information about
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it and get all the context.
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But 80s, 90s, you don't really have all that.
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Some things are very famous.
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You know what the Taj Mahal is, but otherwise you see a very interesting Khandaar somewhere
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and you're like, wow, this looks fascinating, but what's the history?
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So, but thankfully, you know, my parents invested in a lot of reading material, so, and this
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I will credit entirely my parents because even before I was born, like I was in the
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womb, my father had purchased the whole Britannica series, hoping that the child would grow up
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someday and, you know, would pick it up.
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So, it was not open for a very long time.
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So my father, you know, he thought that probably this would be, this is good investment.
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It used to be very expensive at that time, it still is.
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But back then, if you remember 80s, so, it was quite a challenge to make a big investment
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So, people would normally make such investments for building a house, for instance.
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My father has still not been able to build a house, so we still live on a rented accommodation.
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But there is no regret because he thinks that he did the right thing by putting his money
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Constructed edifices of knowledge.
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Well, maybe, but, so, this is one thing I can never fault my parents on.
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And I feel grateful that, well, I still remember those trips.
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I recently shared a picture of a five-year-old me with my father, which my mother had taken.
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My brother was not born then.
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So, it was in front of this Ahom Palace called Talatl Ghor, which is in Sipsagar.
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So, we had been transferred there.
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My father, he was with the state bank of India.
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So, every two years, we would be in a new city.
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So, we had gone to the city and the first thing that my father tried to discover was
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So, this one photograph, which, you know, which really, you know, now that I look back
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on it, now I realize that, okay, this is what my parents were doing, making me interested
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in history in their own way and heritage.
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So, I still feel that sort of a thrill when I see a new thing.
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So, they must be so proud of your book, no?
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However, it is quite possible that even the way journalism was looked down by people of
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our parents' generation, that your, did your parents wonder why you're becoming a journalist
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or how did you get into journalism?
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Yeah, because I had no idea what I'm going to be till I was in my masters.
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So, and I was in history.
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I have an MA in history.
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So, I had no idea and no plans whatsoever to be in journalism.
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In fact, I didn't know what to do.
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So, now, you know, I get tremendous complex when I hear, in fact, we had put out this
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story about IIT toppers, you know, just last year.
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So, one of the toppers who made it to the IIT JEE mains, who cleared it, and he said
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that he knew when he was in class six that he wanted to be an engineer and wanted to
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So, from that age, he had gone for tutorials, and then his parents had, you know, ensured
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that he was in the right kind of study groups and reading the right kind of books.
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So, I, you know, I thought.
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It's not something to aspire to.
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I'm not aspiring to it.
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I'm just saying that, you know, that gives me that disconnect, perhaps, that my generation
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had absolutely no idea what it wanted to do till very late.
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Yeah, my friends who studied science, many of them became engineers, they still are,
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and some of them doctors.
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So, they were very clear after 12 that, you know, they wanted to do this.
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But for me, because I didn't have the brains to study science, that's how I describe my
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career choice, but I was unsure what to do.
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So, and then, of course, I thought that maybe civil services could be the option because
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everyone was studying history and all that, was going for civil services.
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So, and then, you know, I, that idea got sold to me pretty well.
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So, I decided I'm going to sit for the civil services.
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First day in my preparation, I realized that this is not going to work out for me because
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I'm not, I can't mug up things like that or I don't have, you know, that kind of acumen
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perhaps to make it big there.
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And I sat for it and it didn't work out for me.
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So, I didn't go back and I realized that this is not something that's going to work out
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So, I, because I was in Delhi by then, so I took up a job in a magazine and I told my
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parents that this is just momentary and I'll leave whenever I get into the civil service.
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So, I thought then maybe I'll try UP civil services, UPPCS, because that's what my friends
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were also doing, you know, who are in this civil services.
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So, once you get into that, you know, realize that it's a completely different world.
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So, they are appearing for MPPCS, UPPCS, Bihar PCS and so on.
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So, it's every PCS is like they're going and taking a shot.
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So, the place at North Delhi, where I was staying at that time because of the civil
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services preparation, that area is colloquially referred to as Batra Dham by some people because
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it's like a pilgrimage kind of, so people go there to study and for the civil services
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and Batra Dham because there's Batra cinema, which is there, so the only form of entertainment
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for available to us was that cinema hall.
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So, every movie that used to come, used to go and watch, so and I worked with this magazine
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for a year and then I left it, I realized that I couldn't continue.
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So, after that, there was a period of crisis.
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So, I didn't have a job and I didn't know what to do and then I worked with another
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magazine for three months, then I left it and then I applied to, you know, the Times
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of India and Indian Express.
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So, I got a call from Indian Express and this was for a sub-editorial role in one of their
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So, I appeared for the test and I got through and then again I told my parents, okay, maybe
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this is just, you know, the next step, before the next step, so this is just a momentary
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So, I then worked for the Express and then this was now a mainstream newspaper, this
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was mainstream media now, so in after three years working there, I realized that maybe
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I need to expand in this.
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I still wanted to do something different, I was constantly thinking that maybe I need
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to do something different, but what, that absolutely I had no clarity.
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So then I applied to the Times of India and got through and this is my eleventh year in
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the Times of India now, so you can see that I still not found that what really I want
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to do, but this is pretty much my identity now as a journalist.
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And as a journalist, have you been more of a writer, more of an editor, have you had
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any beats, how has the journey been like?
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No, I was primarily on the editing desk, I still am, though my role has now changed,
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so I was editing mostly and in the Indian Express, I was editing, not writing, but I
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was writing a quiz column for the daily news line and because the quiz column is really
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my thing with the media because I also wrote a column for many years for the Telegraph
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and this was again a quiz column and it started when I was in my masters, so this is pretty
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much my introduction to journalism that way.
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And so after I came to Times of India, of course, it became a much more complete journalistic
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experience for me because now I was not just editing, I was also writing, the Times of
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India is pretty open about it, so they don't want to fix you in silos, they let you do
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whatever because it's primarily a desk-driven, a production-driven exercise, so a lot of
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people who are on the copy desk, they also produce content.
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So I was writing, I was reporting, I was writing special features and then of course, I did
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this whole series on India and the First World War which I was probably the first to do that
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for any mainstream news publication in India.
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This was just before the commemorations had started in 2014, so that really gelled well
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with whatever was happening.
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And now of course, I have moved to the Sunday Times and where you write for us and I get
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to edit your pieces and apart from that, I also write, I cover heritage for the city
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pages of the paper, so not a proper beat per se, but yeah, it's like my primary area of
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I mean, in this sense, I've been reading your writing for a few years and for me, in my
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mind, you're somehow slotted as a history guy, which I mean in a good way because you
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know, once in a while, there'll be this long article or an essay by you on history and
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it's always fascinating and that's kind of you mentioned how the idea of this book came
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So tell me a bit about that.
#
So well, this will obviously be more political because the reason was pretty much political.
#
So I am known more as an author of military history than any conventional history because
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that's where I have focused my writing on for many years now.
#
But of course, people have this misconception about military history that it doesn't give
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It actually does because a lot of changes happen because wars and battles happen.
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So that way it's a very good way of studying, you know, changes in the context for military
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history is all of history.
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Yes, of course it is because it is shaping changes.
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It is if there's anything that can bring about abrupt changes, it's actually a war or a battle,
#
So the downfall of Napoleon, Waterloo, right?
#
So these are things that change history about 1857, for instance, changes completely finishes
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of the Mughals, also finishes the East India Company.
#
So these are abrupt changes, right?
#
So that way it really helps.
#
Now, I was focusing more on that, but then the new regime came to power, the Modi government
#
and suddenly there was this culture war that started and it started with the vilification
#
Now, there were always voices or noises about Aurangzeb versus Dara Shoko and Aurangzeb being
#
the bad Muslim and Akbar being the good Muslim.
#
So in fact, this was even part of our syllabus in many ways, because there was always this
#
question that Akbar founded the empire and Aurangzeb filtered it away.
#
So you had Aurangzeb and Akbar as, you know, adversaries.
#
So these binaries really work very well, even in the academia, but then now it didn't stop
#
Now even Akbar became a bad guy.
#
Now Akbar versus Rana Pratap was always there, but it did not result in the complete demolition
#
of Akbar or denigration of Akbar.
#
So he didn't have to be pulled down for Rana Pratap to be propped up.
#
But now it was happening and in 2015, as you mentioned in the intro itself, so there was
#
this spokesperson of the ruling party who announced on social media that Akbar was as
#
And then of course, this was aired and magnified and amplified by the Hindutva ecosystem.
#
And of course, it started with Rajnath Singh making a curious comment that, you know, why
#
not Rana Pratap as the great, Akbar can remain the great, but why not Rana Pratap as well?
#
But of course, this was taken as completely stretched and twisted and changed into something
#
Now I thought that maybe there's a need to correct some of the misconceptions.
#
I mean, Adolf Hitler is completely different.
#
You can't compare Akbar or any other ruler with him.
#
So I wrote a series of articles in the paper.
#
One of them, of course, was it was picked up very well by social media.
#
And then I also got the name Jihadi Sharma after that.
#
Are you still trolled heavily?
#
And especially after, after I wrote this book.
#
In fact, one of the interesting incidents that I remember, I mean, I've been called
#
names and you know, then all kinds of things have been said about me.
#
But this one incident that I remember when I laugh about it is when I shared the cover
#
of this book and it had Allahu Akbar written on it.
#
And somebody put a comment there, actually retweeted it.
#
And then with a comment, without even bothering to check my profile or the profile picture,
#
he said that this shameless Hindu lady has crossed all limits of decency.
#
You are a shameless Hindu lady that doesn't in any way seem like a slur actually.
#
So, and then of course, there were others who were saying, what did we do wrong?
#
Where our education has failed?
#
There are no people like this, a Sharma guy writing Allahu Akbar.
#
So all of this happened.
#
So yeah, I got the name Jihadi Sharma writing those articles and then I wrote another article
#
because this Akbar thing went on for quite some time and still going on in many ways.
#
So you had the Akbar Road signage being tarred and then you had the former chief and minister
#
General VK Singh, he making a demand that, you know, this should be renamed as Ramana
#
And even the general denigration of the Mughals like you pointed out, Mughals arriving after
#
Yeah, absolutely after Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.
#
So if the name Mughal comes, it is problematic for the Hindutva people and in a way, it's
#
quite an irony because the Mughals themselves hated this term.
#
So they were prouder of their Timurid past and their Mughal past.
#
And if any reference was made, in fact, they joked about the Mughals, the Persian for Mughal
#
So there is one incident which I have mentioned in the book where Humayun with Johar of Tabchi,
#
you know, one of the biographers, chroniclers of Akbar's court.
#
So he writes in his memoirs in Taskeeda Talwakyat that, you know, he was given a promotion by
#
his master and also given an advice and he cracks a Mughal joke.
#
Humayun cracks a Mughal joke and tells him that you should not become like the Mughals.
#
So they hated this term.
#
So for their official, you know, identification, if you, even if you go to Iran today, so in
#
their museum, they have these, you know, depictions of Humayun meeting Shah Tahmas and the name
#
mentioned is Humayun Gurkhani because that's what they were, the Gurkhanids, sons-in-law
#
So I wrote these articles and then my publishers had also read that, Bloomsbury.
#
And one of our common friends, so we had this, my publisher is Praveen Tiwari, you know,
#
So he had read those articles and we had a common friend.
#
So I think she had a word with him or something like that had happened.
#
I have never really asked her in detail about that, but then she asked me one day, then
#
you know, you should meet Praveen.
#
And we spoke actually before meeting.
#
And then Praveen asked me if I could expand on this thought that I have been putting out
#
in the newspaper in the form of a book.
#
So then of course I said, okay, but I didn't really know what I'm going to write because
#
there have been biographies of Akbar and so much has been written about.
#
It's very well known, fairly well known.
#
Akbar is in fact the most well known of the Mughals.
#
So the challenge was to find something different to say about him.
#
And then I thought about it for a while and then I realized that maybe this comparison
#
of the past with the present could be a good idea.
#
The academia does not approve of something like this.
#
So, but then I didn't have the compulsion.
#
So I thought maybe I can try this out.
#
So I suggested the idea and Praveen liked it and said, let's go ahead.
#
So that's how the whole idea of the book happened.
#
So had Mr. Modi not come to power or as ministers not said those things and the Hindutva ecosystem
#
not amplified those voices.
#
Maybe I would not have written a book on this.
#
I would have written something else perhaps.
#
Something good has come out of that even if Ache Din will never come, Ache Books will
#
You know, so when you started, like you said, he's been written about so much.
#
There's a host of secondary material that there are also, you know, the standard primary
#
sources like Abu Fazl and all that.
#
So what was sort of your process of researching?
#
And then, I mean, these are separate, two separate questions, your process of researching
#
and then your process of writing, especially as you also had a day job at the same time.
#
So it was very tough managing both.
#
And at that time when I wrote this book, I was with the city desk.
#
So my timings were like from 4.30 till 12.30.
#
So what I would do mostly, I would come back home, sit on 1.30, then I would sit down to
#
write or read and I would go on till about 5.30, 6 in the morning.
#
After that, I would be completely exhausted and I'll go to sleep.
#
Again wake up around 12.30 and utilize a couple of hours there and by 3.30, I'm out of home.
#
So you're sleeping six, seven hours a day basically.
#
And even five hours, four hours at a time.
#
So it was exhausting and on my off days and this is why I have thanked my wife because
#
for one full year, we were not going anywhere on Sundays because that's the only day that
#
we both get our chattis and that's the only day we both get to meet and see each other.
#
So she has a day job morning though, she leaves very early in the morning, I leave late.
#
That's why it took me a long time and it became very stressful towards the end because I realized
#
that I can't finish this book on time and there was also a deadline.
#
And then of course, when I was writing it, I realized that okay, how do I end this?
#
Because now the intention was not to write a biography, but it was shaping up like a
#
biography in many ways.
#
So the challenge was to finish and draw the line somewhere.
#
So I was in a very confused state of mind.
#
I didn't know how to finish it and then of course, gradually I figured and after many
#
stressful hours of thinking and not doing anything, there would be days when I would
#
sit in front of the computer and not read a single line.
#
And then there would be days when I would be, you know, after reading three, four chapters
#
from two, three different books, I would end up producing just two or three lines, you
#
So that was very stressful and with a deadline, which is constantly at the back of your mind,
#
it becomes very stressful for authors, especially for those who have a day job or a very demanding
#
Press jobs are demanding.
#
I was perhaps luckier that I was in a newspaper and not on television, because that would
#
have meant more hours in office.
#
Now I have a different timing, but even though the timings are different, the workload hasn't
#
So I still have to think about ideas to write about, I still have copies such as yours.
#
But maybe a bit, perhaps a bit less in terms of the freedom to think or at least the time
#
I get some more time that way.
#
But to write another book within this sort of a deadline would be very difficult, I think.
#
So I don't know how I pulled it off, just that it was very stressful.
#
I put on a lot of weight because of sitting and not eating properly, not sleeping properly.
#
And one day I realized that I had put on a lot of weights because my clothes were not
#
And my wife got very worried.
#
She said, you know, this is very bad because I put about 10 kilos of weight over two years,
#
which is terrible actually.
#
And then I realized that others have also suffered from this.
#
So they have, other authors have somehow tried to strike a balance by, you know, going out
#
for walking or jogging or doing whatever.
#
I couldn't maintain that balance because the only other time if I'm not writing or reading,
#
So I really suffered because of that.
#
But I'm glad that eventually I managed to, you know, put everything together.
#
Now the sources, I was reading not just the primary sources, but even the secondary material
#
because I think secondary material is also important because different authors have perceived
#
the same historical character differently.
#
And the secondary literatures means the biographies plus other texts, research papers and all
#
So it was very stressful.
#
So if you can just go through my bibliography, you'd realize it's an 18 page bibliography.
#
So I had to read and compare.
#
And one big problem that I had was my poor skills in Farsi.
#
So I would struggle, so I had to take help of course.
#
Now of course I'm reading and learning Farsi, but at that time it was very difficult for
#
I knew Urdu, I could read, but Farsi is a very different language and most of these
#
So if you have to read the original script, which is in Shikasta, it's very difficult.
#
So then you go for those edited texts, which are again in Farsi, but then sometimes the
#
meanings or words change.
#
For instance, there is this line in Bayazid Bayat's chronicle of Akbar's court.
#
So it is, Tazkirat-e-Humayun wa Akbar.
#
So there's one line where Akbar uses a gali.
#
And so I did the Huma Hidayatul, of course I couldn't read it properly, I had to take
#
So I asked Professor Nadeem Rizvi, what does this line say?
#
So he says that this is what it says.
#
And then I realized that, okay, maybe that's what it is, because that's how it is written.
#
The line was, Hazrat Baazaban, in that text Hindustani Farmudand, that the emperor in
#
the Hindi language said this.
#
So he was not speaking Persian, that's what he indicates.
#
And then he uses a gali, which is, you know, it's a very well known gali even today.
#
So he's talking about this execution of Adam Khan.
#
So it's like, Hazrat Baazaban Hindustani Farmudand, ke ag dot dot dot, chera atka mara kushti.
#
Which means, hey you g dot dot dot, why did you kill my atta?
#
So he's specifically referring to Shamsuddin Atka Khan's murder and Adam Khan has killed
#
So Abul Fazal gives that scene, constructs the scene differently.
#
So and he doesn't use this gali, he uses some other gali.
#
Akbar apparently said, bachha ilaara, which means son of a bitch.
#
Sounds much better in Farsi.
#
So you know, that text had Hindustani.
#
So I wrote it that way and I have also credited Professor Nanim Rizvi for that.
#
Now when Harbans Mukheya, Professor Harbans Mukheya read my book and he said ki, yaar
#
tum na toh galti kar di, ki the line says Hazrat Baazaban Hindui Farmudand ke.
#
So and then I went back and checked and the edited text by Hidayat Hussain says Hindustani.
#
Then I asked Professor Rizvi, why did this happen?
#
But in the original, the unabridged, unedited text, it says Hindui.
#
So Hindui was the language, which you know, eventually this Hindi and Hind, Urdu and all
#
of that has evolved from there.
#
So even Amir Hussain wrote in Hindui.
#
So Bayazid Bayat said Hindui and it was in the edited text by Hidayat Hussain, it was
#
Maybe it was done for the sensibilities of that time.
#
The Hindustani would be more familiar than Hindui.
#
But that's what Mukheya Sahib told me that, you know, you should have consulted the original
#
Of course, I could not have read the original one.
#
I can to some extent now, but not back then when I was writing this book.
#
So because I didn't know that good Farsi, I had to rely on translations.
#
Now there's a problem with translations is the fear or the danger of mistranslation,
#
which has happened in many cases.
#
So the next best option available to me was to compare different translations.
#
So for every source I was, whatever translation was available by different people, I was reading
#
There are places where Low, who translated the Muntakhab-ut-Tawariq by Bala Honeen, he
#
And I can figure that out that, okay, the lines are not clear, the translation.
#
So I'll check somebody else to figure out where he has gone wrong, Nizamuddin Ahmad,
#
for instance, or Abul Fazl.
#
So that's how I was doing that.
#
So it was taking a lot of time.
#
So that's why I felt that, you know, maybe I will not be able to finish the book the
#
And the secondary sources are also very important.
#
So there are authors who believe that you just have to rely on primary sources, but
#
I do think that secondary sources are also important.
#
And these sources also have their politics because we often forget that these were political
#
documents of that time.
#
So with particularly Persian historiography, there was this constant attempt by the biographers
#
to legitimize the Sultan or the Badshah because otherwise Islam does not have or does not
#
So how do you legitimize kingship?
#
You do that by positing them as, you know, great warriors of Islam, comparing them to
#
the prophets of Islam, not just the last prophet, but the others in the tradition.
#
And therefore they also bring in the pre-Islamic traditions, you know, the other prophets from
#
Christianity which Islam took eventually.
#
So and Quranic references which were brought in to, you know, justify and legitimize the
#
For instance, just to give you an example, so if it is Feroz Shah Tughlaq, for instance,
#
one of his biographers was Shams Seraj Afif, you know, Tariq-e-Feroz Shahi.
#
So in that what he does, so Feroz Shah Tughlaq has this, you know, terrible disaster going
#
He loses his way or he's misled and then the entire army ends up at the run of Kutch.
#
So and there's tremendous drought, there's no water, people are dying, the pack animals
#
are dying and then there is rain suddenly, okay.
#
So he was just lucky, but Feroz Shah Tughlaq is by his biographer projected as Moses.
#
He makes it rain, yeah.
#
So Musa, so he finds a way through the desert and then there is rain.
#
So then you also have Noah who comes into the picture, so Noah, the Prophet Noah and
#
So we have to understand them as political documents of that time.
#
So every time, you know, you are trying to bring legitimacy for your Sultan.
#
And what the English translators or the European translators in the 19th century missed was
#
They thought that these were unnecessary references, so during their translation, they cut them
#
For instance, Ravarty who translates the Juzjani's Tabakat in a series, so he completely removes
#
the Quranic references and even the mention of the pre-Islamic kings.
#
He thought that these were unnecessary, so he completely removes them.
#
So in Persian biographies or histories, we see that, you know, even the Sassanid kings
#
are being mentioned, which Abul Fazl also does.
#
So these are non-Muslim kings, right, but these are part of the Persian tradition.
#
So the tradition is brought in and we don't see this contradiction back then.
#
But today, of course, you can make other way.
#
And in a sense, it's almost like they are creating a history, a glorious history for
#
themselves in the same sense as we find in the current time, where, you know, we have
#
people sort of trying to co-opt Patel into their tradition and even Ambedkar and pretending
#
that they fought the British when, of course, they did not.
#
And all of that and it's really the same process.
#
So the king had to be legitimized and today we have a Safran king in his court.
#
So he has to be legitimized and that's why you have temples coming up in his name that
#
has his idol and then you have Mughal Sarai, which we named after the Indian allopathy.
#
So you are trying to remove a previous tradition by starting your own.
#
And even we see this in this proposed central Vista revamp, you know, that they want to
#
change how Lutyens Delhi is laid out, right?
#
So many of their ministers have said this, that these don't reflect Indian traditions.
#
That's why these have to be removed.
#
If it's with Lutyens Delhi today, it could be Shah Jahanabad tomorrow, so you never know.
#
And in some ways, it is also consistent with the past because all these medieval rulers
#
were trying to remove, at least intellectually, if not physically, the past traditions and
#
So there's nothing new in that.
#
It's not just to be clear, it's not just the Mughals or our current dispensation which
#
You know, I had an episode with Madhav Khosla on his book, India's Founding Moment, where
#
he talks about how even Nehru's discovery of India, which you have also quoted in your
#
book, was not meant specifically to be an accurate work of history, but almost a construction
#
of an idea of India, which is syncretic and tolerant and all of that.
#
And even, you know, you've quoted what Nehru had to say about Akbar at length in your book.
#
And even that, it seems to me that, you know, he's placing Akbar in a certain tradition
#
because that's his idea of India.
#
And the truth obviously is always far more complex.
#
But you have to understand Nehru as a politician, Nehru was not a historian and maybe history
#
writing in his time was very different, but Nehru was also creating these foundational
#
myths and you need foundational myths, right?
#
So the whole national movement was based on certain foundational myths.
#
So that's why 1857 became the first war of independence.
#
That's why you had a Subhadra Kumari Chauhan talk about, Kho Blari Mardani Wato Jhansi
#
Rawali Rani thi, when these were originally just, you know, oral traditions, wandering
#
minstrels were singing songs, but these were solidified and consolidated in a whole new
#
mythology where all these, you know, kings and queens were made out to be freedom fighters.
#
That's why even Tipu Sultan became a freedom fighter, right?
#
So these are foundational myths and Nehru mentions that, you know, Akbar was the first
#
And at least he was the founder of Indian nationalism.
#
That's what he says in the glimpses of world history.
#
And that sounds completely bizarre to me.
#
Absolutely, absolutely.
#
And we are in the 21st century, so, and we are not building a new country.
#
So sadly there are certain things, but yeah, but at least we are not doing that.
#
But Nehru and people of his generation were building a new country and there was this
#
tremendous insecurity and inferiority complex because you were a colony of a foreign power.
#
So you had to dig up and even create most of the time, these fantastic tales about the
#
past, because that would inspire your people to look at themselves as being part of a larger,
#
more glorious tradition, which has only been momentarily marred by colonialism.
#
Yeah, so you already belong to a 5,000 year old civilization when there's absolutely no
#
physical memory before James Princef, who would have known about Ashoka, right?
#
The Mughals had absolutely no idea.
#
Feroz Shah Tughlaq brought these, you know, Ashokan pillars from different parts because
#
he thought these were Bhim's walking sticks, right?
#
So that's how they were referred to Bhim's lot.
#
And he thought that though, because he heard those tales and that's how the people had
#
told him, he thought that, oh, maybe Bhim was such a great man.
#
So if he was such a great man, his legacy should be preserved.
#
That's why he brought those walking sticks of Bhim and installed them in Delhi.
#
But then he reinvents this whole idea of India.
#
Others have also done it for him, but Nehru really articulated the voice of a new nation
#
yearning towards independence and yearning for independence and to begin something new.
#
So to give people hope, all these things had to be done.
#
So I think that's very evolved politics, but from a historical point of view, that is not
#
In fact, this is yet another similarity between Nehru and Modi in a sense.
#
And we might agree with one more and disagree with the other more.
#
But regardless of that, it shows that if you are constructing narratives, which legitimize
#
your ideology and your way of looking at the world, then history becomes a tool.
#
And history has always been a tool.
#
We have to remember that.
#
Like I said, with these biographers, what they were doing, they were just creating new
#
myths for their later generations to follow and then believe.
#
So every Sultan who came to power or every king who came to power had to create these
#
myths about himself so that his successors would have some ideal to look up to.
#
And we see this very strongly with the Mughals because their gold standard was Aamir Taimur,
#
So every king was trying to call himself Saheb-e-Kiran.
#
Akbar is referred to as Saheb-e-Kiran, Lord of the Conjunction.
#
Shah Jahan calls himself Saheb-e-Kiran-e-Sani, the second Saheb-e-Kiran.
#
So Taimur was really the gold standard that these people have.
#
And even to a certain extent, now that we are talking about that, this whole image of
#
Akbar being illiterate is mostly because Abul Fazal says so.
#
Now we need to look at it from a different angle because there's new research to suggest
#
that Akbar could actually read and write.
#
And there was an older theory that he was probably dyslexic, which has been again, rubbished
#
Now the understanding is that what Abul Fazal was doing was to create a legacy or fit Akbar
#
into Taimur's legacy because Taimur was illiterate.
#
So Akbar had to be presented in that way.
#
Most probably Akbar was just disinterested in formal learning, but he had a very fertile
#
So when I look at Akbar now, I and there are certain things that are mentioned, for instance,
#
his ability to quote from memory, great texts, and the explanation given is that the texts
#
were read out to him by people and he had employed people.
#
But that was probably more because he had very little time for all those things.
#
It's very difficult to imagine that Akbar was completely illiterate or uneducated.
#
And then to have said all those things, quoting from memory, something different, right?
#
But unless you actually see the read the text, is it really possible to quote something from
#
So I think he did, he could read and write is just that this image of him had to be created
#
to fit into the Timurid tradition and to equate him in many ways because Saheb-e-Kiran is
#
So you are comparing him to Taimur and that that was a legacy that they were really proud
#
of because and very distinct from the Mongols, at least that's how they tried to present
#
it as, but Taimur was part of the Persianid system and the Mongols were not.
#
So Persian in those times was a cultural identity as well.
#
And he were considered to be a man of culture if you could write tremendous poetry, I mean
#
So one of the complaints that Babur has against Shahbani Khan Uzbek, his nemesis pretty much
#
in Central Asia, who eventually Shahi Ismail defeats.
#
The Babur is complaining about him and also saying that he writes terrible poetry.
#
That's also one thing to loathe him for.
#
So Taimur that way was a greater king for them than Genghis Khan.
#
So that's why it is that legacy that they adopted and not the other one.
#
But yeah, so that was also good politics of the time.
#
Let's take a quick commercial break and get back to your actual book, which we haven't
#
spoken much about after the break.
#
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Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen, I'm chatting with Manimukta Sharma, author of
#
Allahu Akbar, which is an important book, not just of history, but to contextualize
#
modern day politics and what's really going on here.
#
And you know, coming to your book now, one of the things that sort of struck me and a
#
question that I wanted to ask is that when you're studying history of that period, a
#
lot of your primary sources, people like Abu Fazl and Badani and all that, are fundamentally
#
unreliable because they have their own kind of imperatives and incentives to look at.
#
Like Abu Fazl is essentially a hagiographer where, you know, Akbar is the be all and end
#
And as you pointed out, he's adding all of these other references because, you know,
#
to place him on a pedestal alongside Timur, Badani also has his own sort of perspectives.
#
And as you point out, he's not a big fan of the syncretism of Akbar and this kind of,
#
so how hard is it to sort of navigate that?
#
Because what seems to me is that many of the primary sources are motivated primary sources
#
They're not, there's no academy there, there are no historians.
#
It's like these guys like these that we retrospectively call historians.
#
And also that it's very hard, I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, to get a sense of
#
what society itself is like.
#
There's a lot of writing about the Royals and the courts and all of that, but to get
#
a sense of the common person and what is the actual discourse in the market, so to say,
#
it's very hard to get an idea.
#
So what's your, what's your...
#
But then that is also the challenge of the historian.
#
So you should let your sources speak to you.
#
And that's what I have done.
#
And also I went with the idea that these were essentially political documents.
#
So I did have this thing that I didn't take them literally.
#
And I tried to figure out what the politics behind all of those claims were like.
#
And that's why I said, you need to compare different sources and see.
#
And then of course, there are also the other sources, like for instance, the Rajput sources.
#
So how are they talking about the emperor or the Mughals or who was their adversary
#
at one point or their ally?
#
So that is also a way of, you know, comparing.
#
And so once you have all these, you know, different sources and different voices speaking
#
to you, then that patchwork begins to become coherent.
#
So then you can figure out that, okay, no, this is what it must have been like.
#
Now, of course, there is also the thing about imagination, which I have tried to avoid.
#
I think it is terrible for any historian to use imagination.
#
Oh, yeh aisa kaha hoga.
#
There have been people who have written dialogues, imagined dialogues.
#
Yeah, I was just like, so yeah.
#
So I tried to very consciously avoid all that because I didn't want, even though this is
#
not an academic work, I didn't want the academia to diss it.
#
So anyway, for a very long time, biographies were not seen in kind light by historians.
#
So there are terms like the biography being the bastard child of academia.
#
So you know, these kinds of comments and claims have also been made by historians.
#
So it was very important, therefore, because I was conscious of all these things I had
#
So I tried to ensure that I get my imagination limited as far as possible when it came to
#
interpreting the sources.
#
Now, of course, the other objective that I had was to compare it with the present.
#
And there it becomes a bit easier because if you see certain similarities in the present,
#
for instance, then you can figure out the possible motivation of the king or the queen
#
or whosoever historical character you're writing about that he or she had in the past.
#
So you know, as people, we have not really changed that way.
#
The emotions have remained the same, gullies have remained the same as you see.
#
Except they sound much more prosaic.
#
And I'm sure when Abul Fazal uses a gully, so he was trying to refine it as much as possible.
#
So this is perhaps the most acceptable gully that Abul Fazal would insert because Akbar
#
was going through all of that and he would not have allowed anything that would diminish
#
But the fact that Bayat also mentions this gully and this is one thing which struck me
#
because when Annette Beveridge, she translated the Humayun Nama by Bukul Vadhan Begum and
#
there in one of the pages, she puts that in the footnote that we should ignore the abusers
#
and the expletives used by the emperor.
#
I'm forgetting the exact lines there in my book, but a refined and chaste man like Akbar,
#
it's quite unlikely that he would have used this kind of a language and especially for
#
somebody who was a son of his foster mother.
#
So he would not abuse that woman because she was very close to him.
#
So obviously calling him son of a bitch means abusing his mother as well.
#
So he would not do something like that.
#
Although he just murdered someone very dear to him.
#
So she dismisses all of that and she says that these are just fanciful ideas of, you
#
know, chroniclers of that time, which should be summarily rejected.
#
Now that was her Victorian sensibility, which was coming into the picture.
#
So somebody as good as, as chaste as Akbar in her mind could not have used these languages,
#
these kind of language.
#
So she ignores them completely.
#
So I found that very interesting.
#
And so that is again, you know, how your present shapes your understanding of your past.
#
So I live in the 21st century.
#
I have my own inherited biases about the past.
#
And so because I went through a secular education and then most of the history that we studied
#
was secular history, it was not, you know, black and white, but it was not very accurate
#
So, I mean, some would argue like I did an episode with Kapil Khome Reddy, who has written
#
It's an excellent book.
#
And one of the points he makes is that just as there is historical revisionism happening
#
today, the history that is revising is also revisionism of a form in the sense that the
#
history that was popularized under Nehru and so on in the Nehruvian era, white washes the
#
damage that the Mughals did.
#
You know, it aired on the other side, so to say, that's sort of Kapil's point.
#
You know, but here I would also disagree with him in the sense that, you know, the harm
#
that they did, it's essentially again, we have to understand that what colonial historiography
#
So these colonial historiographers, once they started translating these Persian texts, they
#
highlighted the parts where the atrocities of the violence was mentioned.
#
So, and I have- Because they were building their own narratives to justify their civilizing
#
So Indian history essentially was divided into three groups, the Hindu period, the Muslim
#
period and the British period.
#
The British period, not the Christian period, British period because they are secular, right?
#
And then you have the Hindu and the Muslim.
#
So this is what James Mill does in the early 19th century.
#
So- Without visiting India.
#
And if you see the bracketing of history, even today or at least when I was in the university,
#
it was ancient, medieval and modern, three groups again.
#
So ancient is primarily Hindu, though we have not used that term, medieval is primarily
#
Muslim and modern India for us began with 1757, the Battle of Plassey.
#
When I went to the university, it was again 1757 to 1964.
#
So we had modern and contemporary India.
#
So till the death of Nehru.
#
So we know that was again one point.
#
So that grouping has not changed essentially for us.
#
Now of course you have pre-modern, early modern, post-classical and all of that.
#
So it's much more better laid out than what the groupings were, at least when I was in
#
college and university.
#
So while they were doing this, they were defining these periods through their religion.
#
So it's not just that the 13th century was only about the Delhi Sultan, there were other
#
things happening in the rest of the country as well.
#
So to see India through the dominant empire in Delhi was what the British had done.
#
And also because they were trying to show themselves, prove themselves as the legitimate
#
successors of the Mughals.
#
So when you see the planning of New Delhi, for instance, what is its parallel, the central
#
vista is parallel to the central vista that runs from the Red Fort to Fateh Puri Masjid.
#
So it's the same, the Chandni Chowk, it's parallel to that almost.
#
And then you create these grand buildings, which are very Mughal-esque in their appearance,
#
but even grander in scale.
#
So this idea that was going on.
#
So their historiography essentially focused on these texts.
#
Of course there were people who had different methods, but essentially it was still the
#
highlighting of atrocities and all of that, that the Muslims were doing, the Muslim kings
#
were doing to the Hindus, which of course, even today, when you see on social media,
#
you would find the moment you talk about Akbar or anyone else, you would find that these
#
colonial texts are being quoted.
#
So you have screenshots of different books and then you say, well, what about this?
#
So you talk about lynching of, you've condemned the lynching of Pehlu Khan or Akhlaq.
#
And then suddenly somebody puts out an extract, how Aurangzeb had tortured Sambhaji.
#
And they will ask you, what about this?
#
So you know, using this past to justify the outrages of the present.
#
So this thing has been on and only there I would disagree with them that, you know, these
#
colonial translations also had a purpose.
#
So we should not forget the politics behind that as well.
#
So when we consider, so the actual history is, is, it will not please anyone, the real
#
And the real history contains everything.
#
It contains the brutality, it contains the other stuff.
#
And that's the complete picture, right?
#
So you have the shades of gray and you have to see that if you're a good historian, you
#
need to, and you should see the shades of gray.
#
But then you also have to understand that there are politics behind every interpretation.
#
In fact, what you just said adds a layer to, you know, a quote that I had picked out where
#
you quoted William Wine writing in his 1903 book, the army of the Indian moguls.
#
And he said, quote, that spirit of exaggeration runs through everything done in the East at
#
any rate in the Indian portion of it, as could be easily shown, were it worthwhile to labor
#
the point further, stop quote.
#
And on the one hand, this, it seems like, Hey, this is true because, you know, some
#
of the hagiographers like Abufazen were exaggerating that spirit of exaggeration as it were.
#
But at the same time, it's very condescending as you've pointed out.
#
And if this also comes layered with the politics of its own, that, you know, you want to downplay
#
the good stuff that happened because you want to justify your colonial imperatives, right?
#
And this condescending tone is there in many of these, you know, translations or even Vincent
#
Smith's Akbar, the great mogul, he actually makes fun of another Englishman who writes favorably about Akbar,
#
And Vincent Smith said there was not a drop of Indian blood in Akbar.
#
And then he goes to mock this other Englishman who has written favorably about Akbar and
#
Now, I have also counted that saying that, you know, that he ignores the fact that, you
#
know, this is a man who has poured an Indian soil, you know, was tied to a Hindu woman
#
Who was in fact nursed by the Hindu woman, as you said.
#
So, Daya Bhawal is one of the concubines of whom I own, Khidmatgare Khas, that's how Abul
#
So, she's nurse Hamidah Bano Begum immediately after birth.
#
She nurses the child and passes it on to Daya Bhawal.
#
And after Daya Bhawal comes Jiji Anga.
#
And Jiji Anga eventually becomes the woman who, you know, who actually, you know, nurses
#
That's why Akbar was very fond of her.
#
And Jiji Anga's husband, Vashamsuddinath Kakhan, whom Adham Khan kills.
#
So, Mahamanga, mother of Adham Khan, who is also one of the leading women of the Seraglio,
#
But when Akbar shaves his head, only when his mother dies and Jiji Anga dies.
#
Only two occasions when he actually taunches his head and mourns, properly mourns, someone
#
was his mother and Jiji Anga.
#
So, you see that, you know, I have mentioned that.
#
So, he's, and I have taken a liberty there.
#
And I have mentioned that specifically that I am taking a poetic license here that, you
#
know, he is tied to, you know, Hindus and other Indians at that very moment.
#
Of course, there are other ways of being tied to them through marriages and all of that.
#
And Akbar constantly, as I see that he was trying to prove himself as somebody who belongs
#
to the Indian tradition.
#
So, this competition with, you know, till that time the general term that was used for
#
Muslims was Mlecha, in the chronicles at least, which means savage or outsider, usually used
#
So, Akbar, and there's this incident of a, of a drunken brawl which happens in Gujarat,
#
It's after the victory in Gujarat and he has this, he and his close nobles, they have a
#
drinking party and then, and these Rajput, they start, you know, bragging about their
#
I mean, when I read that, I was like, what are these, what are they smoking?
#
Are they only drinking?
#
Kindly describe what the, what the whole scene is, it's fantastically entertaining.
#
So, it was very illuminating in many ways.
#
So, he has these, you know, his cronies, if I may use that term.
#
So, they all have this drunken brawl and, and they start talking about their bravado.
#
They say, we Rajputs are so brave that, you know, when two Rajput warriors want to fight,
#
they will put a spear through them and so that they can come as close as possible and
#
so that nobody can come in between them and then they will have the sword.
#
And Akbar, he's dead drunk and he says, he stands up and says, I am also a brave Rajput.
#
I'm as brave as a Rajput.
#
So, I'm going to do the same thing.
#
He fixes a sword on the seal of a wall, of a window and he's about to run into it when
#
he's stopped by Mansingh because everyone was like dumbfounded.
#
They were just throwing these, you know, tails just to show their bravado.
#
This would have been the craziest way for an emperor to die, bro.
#
There have been other crazy ways, but this would have been the ultimate.
#
This was completely crazy.
#
So, Akbar, you know, despite being a very sensible man, there's also this side to him.
#
He's completely reckless.
#
I am braver than a Rajput, so I will impale myself on a sword.
#
Yeah, I'll impale myself on a sword and then Mansingh stops him.
#
In the process, he cuts Akbar's finger and Akbar is so angry, he throws him to the ground
#
and tries to strangulate him.
#
He doesn't realize that he's actually, you know, trying to harm him.
#
He says, you fool, you've taken away the chance from me.
#
I would have been brave as a Rajput.
#
And then one of his other nobles, they twist his thumb and that loosens Akbar's grip.
#
Otherwise, that would have been the end of Mansingh.
#
And Akbar would have, you know, after waking up, he would have realized what he had done.
#
A long hangover would have followed.
#
And because Mansingh was also the most favorite noble, so, and I have mentioned that he was
#
the son that he never had.
#
And he referred to him, called him as Farzan, it means son.
#
And he's also the first noble, not just first Rajput, but the first noble who is raised
#
to the rank of a half-thasari or 7,000 Mansav, a half-thasari Mansavdar.
#
So that way he was very close and very part of the inner circle of the emperor.
#
And he had a lot of pull when it came to Akbar.
#
So even when Todd later on writes his Annals and Antiquities of Rajputana.
#
So there he mentions the scene very differently where, you know, Rana Pratap and Mansingh,
#
So where he goes to ask Rana Pratap to come to Delhi and accept Susan into Akbar.
#
So Rana Pratap doesn't meet him really.
#
So he comes, welcomes him and hosts a banquet in his honor, but he does not come himself.
#
So then, of course, Mansingh gets angry and then Rana Pratap says nasty things to him.
#
Then, no, we don't eat with people who have married off their daughters to the Imperial
#
Harim, to the Mlechaas again.
#
So he gets angry and then he says, I'm going to go now.
#
I'm not going to have this food, but he will pay for this.
#
And then one Rajput mocks him, when you come next time, bring your Fufa along, which means
#
So this thing, of course, it becomes twisted towards the end because what Todd is doing
#
essentially he's mouthing the propaganda of the Mewar Court because that's where he was
#
But Akbar was very fond of Mansingh and I also want to ask you, like one of the similarities
#
and you've pointed out many, many similarities and you know, in the context of what's going
#
on here and the role of optics and the sort of the hagiographers and historians, one of
#
the things that sort of struck me also was that Akbar is constantly, as you point out
#
comparing himself to Khilji, like Timur is somewhere else, but there are these efforts
#
to show Akbar as greater than Khilji, which in modern times today we can look back and
#
say, yeah, obviously he was, but at that time he's just this insecure dude and his father
#
So it's not like the empire is something you can take for granted.
#
And at one point in your book, you write quote, this constant competition with Khilji would
#
be a hallmark of Akbar's reign and he wouldn't be the only one to do so as Khilji himself
#
thought of himself as a conqueror, as great or even greater than Alexander of Macedon.
#
Khilji Christian himself as Sikandar-e-Sani or Alexander the second, stop quote.
#
And this is quite like Modiji and Nehruji, isn't it?
#
See the, he was comparing himself because Khilji was the gold standard for his time,
#
because he, the idea of Khilji, because that's what I get after reading these sources, that
#
he was the greatest King for them in that age.
#
And given the fact that, but how do they actually know this because there isn't much reading
#
and writing happening, right?
#
In the sense that how does knowledge and how does popular culture transmit itself for an
#
Akbar to come to power long after Khilji and have this sense that Khilji is the greatest
#
Because the legacy that was left behind was also through buildings.
#
And if you see the Alai-Darwaza, there are inscriptions that allow, then Khilji has put
#
up where he is declared as a Sikandar-e-Sani and such a great conqueror.
#
The other way of course was through these chronologies or chronicles, the others who
#
preceded Akbar and Abul-Fazal, they had left.
#
The Abul-Fazals of Khilji in a sense.
#
So, so Barney, Isami and even till Akbar in the 17th century, so Khilji was still being
#
written about by chroniclers like Farishtha and Haji-ud-Dabir.
#
So that intellectual legacy of Khilji was pretty much there and had been established
#
And there must have been popular stories, we don't know them, but there must have been
#
popular stories that were extant at that time.
#
So otherwise, how would Khilji know about Alexander, right?
#
So because Alexander is also, I think, mentioned in Muslim traditions.
#
So Akbar was constantly and like Abul-Fazal does, that he was even greater.
#
So he took six months to conquer Chittor, Akbar took five months.
#
He took eight months to conquer Anthambore, Akbar took just one month, right?
#
So you know, my master is greater than the greatest.
#
So this tendency of, you know, propping up the rulers and, you know, try to improve upon
#
the previous legacy, this was constantly done.
#
As you see, Mr. Modi, you know, tries to outdo Nehru in every way.
#
So whether it is rebranding the Nehru jacket as a Modi kurta and whether it is, you know,
#
using the term which Nehru had used for the first time, Pratham Sevak, the first servant,
#
has been changed to Pradhan Sevak by Mr. Modi.
#
This is what Nehru had done, right?
#
And the irony is that he's actually destroying the good parts of Nehru's legacy, like the
#
secularism and so on, and copying the bad parts, such as, you know, the vision of state
#
over society and the whole central planning mindset and all of that, which strikes me
#
as profoundly ironical, but which also echoes the past because Akbar in many ways was also
#
doing the same kind of brutal things that Khilji did in a sense.
#
For example, you describe in your book how after sort of conquering Hemu, there's a tower
#
of heads made in Panipat, something you think of more as, you know, maybe in character with
#
an Aurangzeb, but Akbar does it because he's got to send that signal.
#
And it's not just Akbar that was doing it.
#
For instance, later on in my book, you would also find that I have written about this,
#
this Kuch kingdom and the Ahom kingdom fighting, right, in 1546, the Ahoms defeat the Kochs
#
and they were pushed behind because Guwahati was under the Kochs.
#
And so the Koch King, Naranarayan, he sends an army of 3000, defeats the Ahoms, severs
#
their heads and erects a skull tower of hundred Ahom heads to send a signal that, okay, we
#
have arrived and we are here to stay and you have to deal with this.
#
So it's also terrorizing.
#
Therefore, it's not a Muslim thing or a Hindu thing.
#
These are the imperatives of power.
#
You have to signal your brutality to cast a chilling effect on others.
#
So I mentioned Bhram Chobin was assassinate King.
#
He creates erects skulltars.
#
So this tradition of erecting skulltars, impaling people was pretty much there.
#
So we hear even in Assamese folk tales, for instance.
#
So I have mentioned this one somewhere, I think, that there is this concept of, and
#
you've heard this in even in Hindi movies, Suli Pe Chadha Dena, right?
#
It's actually a stick which is passed through you, right?
#
So in Assamese, there's this term called Nossasa Khul.
#
Nossasa means an unsharpened stick which is driven through you, right?
#
And that's supposed to be the most brutal form of punishment that the state could inflict
#
on anyone who was at war for the state.
#
And we see this everywhere, right?
#
So Mehmet goes to Constantinople Sultan, the great Ottoman Sultan, the Fatih.
#
That's how he's called, right?
#
And he, you know, once, you know, the harbor is captured and they do it in a very fascinating
#
So all the ships are taken over land.
#
And that's how you put that in the harbor, all the ships, right?
#
And they are completely closed.
#
Because they're expecting that there's a huge chain, iron chain, which is blocking the approach
#
of the mouth of the bay.
#
The ships can't get in and suddenly the ships appear.
#
Ships have appeared suddenly one fine morning and the whole thing was done over several
#
So nobody had any clue.
#
So that was very strong control over the information as well.
#
So all the ships come in suddenly one fine morning.
#
You realize that the entire Ottoman fleet is here, but where did they come from?
#
And just to terrorize the people, the Christians, the Byzantines whom he captures and he impales
#
And of course we know the story of eventually in 1453, Constantinople falls and become the
#
The same Mehmet goes on a campaign against Vlad the Impaler to Wallachia and his army
#
is terrorized completely because that's like the next step.
#
And he says, I can't deal with this because everywhere there are stakes.
#
What he did in a very small way at Constantinople is being done to him in a much larger scale.
#
This guy is way more extreme.
#
He's actually called the Impaler.
#
And then he realized that like, I can't deal with this.
#
It's like Modi and Adityanath in a sense.
#
Well, thankfully nobody is being impaled.
#
I think we are the first people to compare Adityanath with Vlad the Impaler in this limited
#
context of increased extremism.
#
So then Mehmet fails to deal with it.
#
So his army has to withdraw because they are completely demoralized.
#
Everyone, everywhere you have these people on the stakes.
#
So what you do yourself, you don't realize the extent of it until you see it happen to
#
So he has to withdraw from Wallachia.
#
Eventually, of course, he manages to put Radu, Vlad the Impaler's brother on the throne
#
and eventually Vlad is defeated.
#
But then yeah, the psychological impact that the skull tower that Akbar erects at Panipat,
#
which he also erects after Chittor.
#
And the skull tower that Babur erects or the skull tower that Taimur erects everywhere.
#
He goes to Syria, he erects a skull tower.
#
He goes to Iraq, he erects a skull tower, Herat, Kandahar, everywhere.
#
Wherever Taimur goes, there's a skull tower.
#
Would you have any idea when was the last skull tower?
#
Like when did this delightful practice go out of history?
#
So there was this in Serbia in the uprising.
#
So this is 19th century, 1800 something, I'm forgetting the exact date.
#
But in Serbia, there was this rebellion and uprising against the Ottoman rule and to some
#
extent was supported by the Russians as well.
#
And eventually the Ottoman sent an army under one of the grand viziers and it's brutally
#
put down and skull towers are erected.
#
So that's skull, one of the skull towers is now a national monument.
#
Are there skulls still on it?
#
They are, they are, absolutely.
#
So that was, I think the last time, the last documented skull tower, last documented.
#
So as, as late as mid 19th century.
#
So this practice continued in India, of course it did because yeah, you had the colonial
#
state, which had the monopoly of violence and, and 19th century British were, were not
#
They were not doing skull towers.
#
They were many other things.
#
So they didn't have to do that.
#
And that's why, like I said, so they use the colonial, you know, translators to give this
#
impression of the Muslims that they are the skull tower guys, no, they're the bad guys.
#
We only create famines where millions of people die or we change colonized minds, change the
#
nation's morality, destroy the religion, practically solidify the caste system.
#
So they refused to interfere completely.
#
See the moguls at least tried to do something about, you know, changing certain evils in
#
For instance, the sati system.
#
In fact, that's what I want to come to now because it's very interesting.
#
You point out about how Babur prohibited cow slaughter in 1527 and he's sort of almost
#
taking local sensibilities into account.
#
And later on you talk about how Humayun stopped eating beef and, but with Akbar, we see an
#
acceleration of this process where for example, he's against a death penalty as Abu Fazl in
#
very poetic language expresses, he is genuinely aghast by crimes against women like rapes
#
And he has people executed for things like that.
#
He abolishes pilgrimage tax.
#
He is against infanticide, which is otherwise common.
#
And he tries to do something about that.
#
So there's all of this stuff happening now to what extent is this instrumental and to
#
what extent is it moral in the sense that how much of this is coming from his own beliefs
#
about what is good and what is bad and how much of it, like for example, the cow slaughter
#
banning and all of that, how much of it is coming from the practicality of, look, I am
#
reigning over a kingdom where there are so many Hindus.
#
So I also have to carry them with me.
#
You see, I think it would be both because he was a pragmatic monarch despite these curiosities
#
and strange eccentricities in certain ways.
#
He was at the end of the day, a powerful sovereign and a very wise and pragmatic sovereign.
#
So he had to keep local sensibilities, the sensibilities of his people in mind.
#
And he was also very approachable, like he was very close to the Jains and the Jains
#
ask him, approach him to somehow ensure that animals are not slaughtered during the Parayushan
#
And Akbar issues Ferman after Ferman banning not just cow slaughter, but even any kind
#
of animal slaughter during those 12 days.
#
And which BJP tries to do in 2014 and you see how the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman
#
Sena, they resist the ban saying, how can you do this?
#
Now of course, Akbar with the Jains, at least he was rational enough to use or prohibit
#
animal slaughter in those pockets where the Jains were living, not throughout his empire.
#
But here you see that that pragmatism is abandoned.
#
And when you try to enforce that because the Jains have Parayushan, the entire country
#
should stop, you know, animal slaughter.
#
So that's very, not taking the lesson properly.
#
At the same time, Akbar's personal beliefs were also pretty strong about this.
#
So in his own life, see, we have to see how serious a monarch is about things that he
#
says or the stand that he takes, to what extent he has been able to implement all of that
#
And stories we hear about other Sultans where, you know, this famous story about a mother
#
coming with her son to the Sultan's court and the Sultan is some Khilji, but not, no,
#
Jalaluddin Khilji or maybe it's some other Sultan, I'm forgetting the exact story.
#
But this woman comes and complains to the Sultan that my son has, he eats too much sweet.
#
Can you please advise him?
#
And then the Sultan says, come to me after a week or a month, I think, I'm forgetting
#
So this woman returns and then the Sultan tells the boy that you should not have sugar.
#
You should know, you don't have too much sweets.
#
And then a woman asked him, why did you, my Sultan asked me to come after a month?
#
He said, you know, I wanted to do this in my own life first.
#
I was very fond of sugar and sweets.
#
So I had to let go of it first myself before I had any form of legitimacy or, you know,
#
any moral right to even tell your son about this.
#
So these are the stories that we have heard.
#
So it sounds incredibly apocryphal because I almost can't believe that a guy like that
#
It's an apocryphal tale.
#
I don't believe in it, but it's a wonderful tale.
#
So you want to believe it.
#
But then of course, the rational person inside you tells you that, no, this is not right.
#
This cannot be the same because a woman would not go to a Sultan with that trivial complaint.
#
Anyway, so Akbar does believe in moderation.
#
So he stops eating meat after a certain point in time.
#
Which is perhaps what the BJP spokesperson meant in 2015 by comparing him to Hitler,
#
who was also vegetarian.
#
See, you misinterpreted her.
#
You know, do you remember this old song by a sang by Mohammed Rafi, I think, ki maine
#
pi sharab tumne kya piya, tumne kya piya aadmi ka khoon.
#
So, yeah, anyway, so to come back to that, so Akbar implemented all these things in his
#
He stopped touching meat after a while and there would be certain days when he would
#
On his birthday, specifically, he would not touch any kind of meat, which I find very
#
That's not crazy because that's a specific day I would have my biryani.
#
I would gorge on meat today on my birthday.
#
So in fact, if there's any time, which I don't, I can't remember, but if there's any day,
#
any birthday that I have not eaten meat is, it sounds like a waste, you know, it feels
#
But Akbar stopped eating meat on his birthdays.
#
So it was very strange, but yeah.
#
So while he was passing those orders, he was also, you know, in his own life, he was trying
#
to, so it was a reflection of his own life, perhaps what he was ordering.
#
So for meat eaters, it must have been really difficult to be in that period in Akbar's
#
So they'd be like, except the question of course is to whom, perhaps to himself.
#
And so, and all these practices of the evil practices of, of Hindu society, like for instance,
#
Dauri or Sati, Infanticide, Dauri, I don't see any, any mention of Akbar doing anything
#
But with Sati and Infanticide, he does try very strongly.
#
And it's clearly conviction because you pointed out a story about where he personally goes
#
and intervenes to save a woman, the Mota Raja's daughter.
#
So it's quite, you can make out that this is a very serious man and the intent is pretty
#
So he wants to stop it.
#
Though it is only involuntary Sati, we need to make a distinction.
#
So voluntary Sati is still going on.
#
It's only involuntary Sati that has been banned.
#
So if you cannot force a woman against her will to jump into the funeral pyre.
#
So even later on when Jahangir's time comes and then, you know, so the state officials
#
are supposed to ask and convince a woman before she actually plunges into the fire.
#
If she's doing it out of her own free will, and then we could give you money, there could
#
You know, the state will ensure that you have a comfortable life.
#
But if she still wants to do it, then of course you can't do anything.
#
I'd in fact discuss this in an episode I did on Jahangir with the only other Sharma on
#
the show, Parvati Sharma.
#
So the only second Sharma then.
#
What is it all these Sharmas are writing about Mughals, is it something else?
#
I got the term Jihadi Sharma because of that.
#
And that was pretty interesting because consent is also so complicated in situations like
#
But yeah, at least an effort is being made.
#
But having said all that, we also need to understand that there were great failings
#
So as long as, you know, it was nobility that was doing all of that.
#
The Mughals could not prevent any of this.
#
Infanticide was also going on.
#
Sati was also going on.
#
It's only when he gets to know that the Motharaja's daughter is being forced, that's why he intervenes
#
That's a very interesting story because as you pointed out, he was scared to send somebody
#
because something may go wrong.
#
So he gets on a horse himself and goes.
#
So he does that himself.
#
He doesn't want to entrust this to a lieutenant because he's not sure how it's going to turn
#
out because he may be silenced or he may not do the job properly.
#
So he just wanted to save this woman.
#
And of course, later on, we have these foreign travelers who also mentioned the Sati incident.
#
And then they say that, you know, it has become so difficult to perform any kind of Sati because
#
the state does not sanction.
#
You have these officials.
#
You have to go and take their permission.
#
So yeah, so he's portraying the scene and, but then it was also possible to grease the
#
palms of the officials and get the sanction that they wanted.
#
So that was also happening.
#
So you do get a hint of corruption that is happening there, right?
#
But overall, because the state, see, there is so much corruption in India even today,
#
It must have been so in the past.
#
Where there is power and discretion, there is corruption.
#
I mean, that's a given.
#
But the moment you have laws in place that prohibit something, it becomes very difficult
#
for state officials to bend the law and do things.
#
So it's only, you know, by bribing, which happens even today, so laws are bent, but
#
then you cannot justify it legally.
#
Same was happening with the Mughal state as well.
#
So it had prohibited that involuntary sati, but even voluntary sati was becoming difficult.
#
So that's what these foreign travelers have written about.
#
So there, I think the intent was pretty clear, but the execution of course is questionable.
#
We can always doubt that and we don't have proper stats from that period to figure out
#
exactly how many sati incidents were stopped and how many actually happened.
#
With the British, of course, there were more records.
#
But you know, that sati legislation was successful because it was the British at that time, they
#
were not really bothered about their own image or the state's image among the locals because
#
After 1857, the colonial state completely stopped interfering.
#
They would not do anything to change local customs and traditions or upset caste hierarchies
#
And we know this for a fact that sati incidents continued even in independent India.
#
So the last incident was in 89, that Rukanmar in Rajasthan.
#
So and then even today you have, you hear people, some people associated with the ruling
#
party or people who follow that ideology, they justify and you know, even worship these
#
They talk good things about sati.
#
So we have commented on Twitter about these wherever news has come from different states.
#
So such a social evil could not have been completely eliminated by the modal state.
#
It's very difficult with the kind of communication that were there in that age.
#
I guess you can have the laws and the laws can even play a small part in stopping some
#
incidents and can also play a small part in prodding the culture to change, but ultimately
#
the culture has to change.
#
So you're even saying that, you know, women enjoyed equal status in the Mughal state or
#
under the Mughal state.
#
They never did and don't even today.
#
So even crimes like rape, for instance, so Zina, it's a crime, right?
#
So you had to have four other people, you know, give testimony that, you know, this
#
woman has been violated.
#
The woman's word was not taken at face value.
#
Similar to some Islamic countries still today.
#
So they didn't get more equal rights under the Mughals than they did under others.
#
So it was not like that, but at least when it came to read the Mughal state acted with
#
So the kind of punishments that were meted out to them.
#
So there's one incident from the Ainyangbari that I mentioned, Begoglu.
#
So there the punishment was instant death.
#
So I mean, you don't want that sort of a thing today, but at least there was some degree
#
of firmness that we can figure out in those times, but not that women got a better deal.
#
Let's, you know, the most interesting thing about Akbar is I can't think of any emperor
#
or ruler in that medieval period who is making such a conscious effort to expand his intellectual
#
vistas and what sort of exemplifies this is the Ibadat Khana.
#
Tell me a bit about that.
#
What was going on there?
#
So Ibadat Khana also has a very interesting history.
#
I mentioned that, you know, it started from a room that used to be of a Sufi mystic who
#
eventually became a Shiv Bhakt.
#
So it's a very weird thing to happen for a Sufi, Muslim Sufi to become a Shiv Bhakt.
#
So that room was, you know, expanded and into the Ibadat Khana by Akbar.
#
And so it was this interfaith discussion that was going on.
#
It was, I think it started off as a fancy of the emperor, but eventually it became much
#
I mean, it was, it seems to me reading about it the way you've written almost it's a cultural
#
It's practically a mini lit fest where there are panel discussions and people from all
#
religions are discussing and one Mani Mughdo is probably moderating and, you know, but
#
how do you respond to what he just said about Sati?
#
And you know, you quote Abu Fazl, who is talking about a list of the faiths that were represented
#
and you say quote, there were Sunnis, Shias, Brahmans, Jains, Charvakas, Christians, Jews,
#
Sabians, Zoroastrians and others, stop quote.
#
And this is a wider list than that mentioned in the CAA for example.
#
It's a pretty inclusive list.
#
Of course it lists Brahmans and Charvakas separately and doesn't, you know, so obviously
#
some, there is some exclusion there of other cast presumably, but it seems extraordinary
#
for a Mughal emperor to sort of build a space like this.
#
And say it was a mingling of minds and ideas and, and Akbar was trying these experiments
#
of rationality by, you know, pulling all these people together.
#
So on certain days, I think on Thursdays, if I remember it right.
#
So you had these Ibadat Khana meetings and a lot of things were happening there.
#
So you had these Jesuits who were coming and, you know, talking about their own faiths and
#
then there were these, you know, Akbar was trying to play one group against the other.
#
So that he was doing pretty much there.
#
So if the Muslims, the Ulema come and they say, they state a position and then he would
#
get the Jesuits to counter them, you know, and, you know, pose difficult questions to
#
the Ulema so that they end up looking foolish.
#
And Akbar enjoyed that.
#
You know, one of the complaints about liberals today by conservatives, I will not use the
#
word bhakts because that would just limit it to one segment of people, but conservative
#
people by and large have this problem with liberals.
#
They say that they mock our religion, they mock our practices.
#
The fact that we are, you know, devoted to our gods, they don't like that.
#
So they abuse religion.
#
That's what the common complaint is.
#
That was also the complaint against Akbar and his immediate coterie.
#
He was called a kafir and so on.
#
So because he and the others were mocking people.
#
So if you have a prayer mark on your head, which comes after, you know, five times in
#
If you have very long beard, he would mock that.
#
So he was playing shias against Sunnis and Badawni was completely scandalized by whatever
#
was going on in those conversations.
#
And he hated the fact that even the conservative and powerful Ulema in Akbar's court were not
#
objecting to all these, you know, idiosyncrasies of the emperor and heretics that he calls
#
people like Birbal, for instance.
#
He uses the word haramzadeh, that haramzada, Birbal.
#
So because he has completely turned the emperor's mind away from his own faith.
#
He also mentions a couple of other shias who have come from Iran, right?
#
So they are together with the haramzadeh and they would find that language is very similar
#
to what, you know, the BJP minister, you know, when she said that, you know, the collection
#
is between haramzadeh and haramzadeh.
#
So sort of othering and painting them as a villain and all of that, you know, one of the
#
similarities that crops up again.
#
So, and also it was a political exercise because the ultimate objective was that the emperor
#
So he gives you the final interpretation, the correct interpretation.
#
The Jesuits also struggled to deal with this because they are convinced because the emperor
#
quotes them publicly and then he uses them to put down the ulema.
#
They are convinced that Akbar is going to convert to Christianity and Akbar tells them
#
that, you know, I have my faith.
#
I'm not going to abandon it, but if my children want to convert, then they are free to do
#
They are free to choose their own gods.
#
But eventually the Jesuits realized that he's not going to do that nor are his children
#
And that's why, you know, when Pierre Dujaric writes about the Jesuit missions and he complains
#
that, you know, Akbar displayed all the flaws of an atheist that he's refusing to subject
#
his rationality to dogmas of faith.
#
So what sort of a man is that who wants proof for every, every divine claim?
#
So he is an atheist, you know, that's how the Jesuits eventually read him.
#
And Jawaharlal Nehru, again, you know, in the glimpses of world history, then he says
#
that everyone should be like him.
#
If he's an atheist, if this is what makes an atheist, then everyone should be like Akbar.
#
That's a model to emulate.
#
So it is a spiritual exercise, a political exercise, because you see that gradually
#
after these discussions and he is completely turning away from religion, organized religion
#
in many ways, and also ending state patronage of religious institutions.
#
So that is a remarkable thing for a 16th century monarch to do because his mind is now, you
#
know, completely, he's convinced that every religion has its own path.
#
And he hates Islam for claiming that it is the ultimate faith.
#
So it denies legitimacy to all the faiths.
#
So Akbar says that how is, how is that possible that only one religion claims to be the true
#
faith and every other faith is like false.
#
Every faith has its own path of receiving or preaching the right path.
#
So all those paths are correct.
#
So that's again, very Hindu, you know, intellectual way of putting it.
#
In fact, a point that many people make is that true believers of all faiths who believe
#
with that passion that my faith is the only right one, are actually atheists when it comes
#
to all other faiths because they don't believe in any of them.
#
Whereas, so, you know, one thing that kind of one line that struck me when I was reading
#
your book and which I wanted to sort of examine further is, and you sort of, you know, answered
#
my doubt about it yourself, but I'll just kind of cite it.
#
So on page two 18 you wrote quote, that is 16th century emperor could put reason ahead
#
of tradition and want religion to be rooted in reason isn't something one comes across
#
frequently in the pages of history.
#
And I, you know, the moment I read this, I thought that, wait a minute, if he really
#
put reason ahead of tradition, he would be an atheist, which as you're now saying is,
#
and in the very next page 219, you sort of address this doubt of mine where you say that
#
quote while talking about Akbar's rationality, it is important to understand that his rationality
#
was very Indian and not European as is generally understood.
#
And then to elaborate, you quote the historian Harbans Mukhiya on this, where you write quote,
#
the times have certainly changed, but certain continuities have remained.
#
Akbar's rationality and also of Abufazal is very important to understand because when
#
you utter the word rationality, you generally pit it against religion and religiosity.
#
That's what post Renaissance Europe had seen rationality taking over from religion and
#
So the idea of rationality is very European.
#
Akbar is also seen to be rational in that way, but I think Akbar's rationality is deeply
#
It's a different kind of rationality, very indigenous, very Indian is the rationality
#
of giving everyone equal rights, non-discriminatory rights.
#
And this was something I'm still processing.
#
And I realized when I read this, that look, my notions of rationality and reason and the
#
first principles that they arise from are really influenced from the enlightenment which took
#
place in the West well after Akbar, right?
#
So my question to you in so far as you have made out through your studies and you can
#
make out, what do you think is the source of Akbar's morality?
#
And part two, how divergent is it from the morality of society around him?
#
Look, Akbar, as I have mentioned, and even Abufazal, because we have to remember that
#
most of what Akbar is being quoted is coming from Abufazal, right?
#
So it is also Abufazal's rationality and understanding of the world.
#
So his understanding could have been imperfect and Akbar may actually have been an actual
#
Could have been, but we don't know that.
#
But the way he quotes him and he tries to put him in a certain tradition.
#
So this is derived from Kabir's, you know, Tauheed or interpretation of Tauheed.
#
So before that and Mukya Sahib tells me that we had this long conversation and I have recorded
#
that, that before Kabir, the concept of Tauheed was reinterpreted within the traditions of
#
Tauheed essentially means monotheism.
#
But Kabir was probably the first in India to have reinterpreted Tauheed to include other
#
faiths, take it outside Islam, include Hinduism in it.
#
So Akbar's rationality was eventually, you know, rooted in this Kabir's interpretation
#
And is it almost an intuitive rationality rather than a, you know, reasoned rationality
#
coming from say first principles like a Longian kind of thing?
#
And because Kabir eventually at the end of the day was a weaver man who became a rebel
#
against the society and the dogmas of both Hinduism and Islam.
#
So he rebelled against that.
#
So the his was a very, you know, so you can't say that Kabir was very well-informed man
#
being coming from the weaver class.
#
So you could not have read those heavy texts at all that all the intellectual traditions,
#
but of course a very intuitive rationality as you said.
#
So Abul Fazal of course takes it further, Akbar takes it further and so and also because
#
Akbar was paternalistic.
#
So we have to remember that as well.
#
There have been kings who have tried to talk to you as a paternalistic figure, Ashoka for
#
instance, the way his inscriptions are laid out, the inscriptions on stone and how is
#
he communicating to his people as if a father is talking to his children, right?
#
So on certain days you have to respect your parents and so you have to be nice to the
#
So constantly have these stone inscriptions and you can hear the voice of the man that
#
okay there's his father telling his children, this is the right way to behave, the exact
#
thing Akbar does as well.
#
So he does things, he says things, see that equality could not have come if it were not
#
a father looking at his children, right?
#
So if you are just a Hindu king or a Muslim king and then you treat your people as just
#
mere subjects, then of course it's quite possible that you would make distinctions among them.
#
But if it's the father in you and you see them as your children, then of course you
#
are bound to be equal to them, right?
#
And this is what happens to Akbar as well and we see this in later times when you know
#
he makes a very curious quote in the Aayana Akbari it is mentioned.
#
He says later in life that and we have to remember that this was written between 1590
#
and 1595 that's the period when Aayana Akbari or Akbar Nama is written.
#
He says that had I been wiser in my early life, I would not have married any woman from
#
my empire because they are like my daughters.
#
So we see this paternalistic instinct in Akbar and this is what actually you know makes him
#
see his subjects as his children and which is why it becomes important to you know create
#
some sort of a common ground for them to stand on.
#
Therefore this rationality had to come in, it's very intuitive as you said and also rooted
#
in Kabir and Abul Fazal articulates it very well all throughout.
#
So and we have also had to figure out then that of course Abul Fazal was also the one
#
who was influenced by him and Abul Fazal's father.
#
So Sheikh Mubarak, Sheikh Mubarak was hated by the orthodox people of that time and he
#
was even in fact hounded by the people and he was dismissed as a Mahdavi.
#
So the orthodox people at some point wanted Sheikh Mubarak to be executed but eventually
#
it's Sheikh Mubarak and his two sons Abul Fazi and Abul Fazal who are articulating Akbar's
#
intellectual dimensions of Akbar's empire, his reign.
#
So they are the people who are articulating it.
#
So I think that's what it is you know the Kabir's tauheed and its interpretation of
#
And at this point I should digress very briefly and recommend to my listeners one of my favorite
#
books of poetry of all time is a translation of Kabir's work by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
#
which is absolutely beautiful.
#
Moving on to sort of Akbar, what he does is he doesn't only create the space for discussion
#
where there is a you know the discourse is enriched and you have all these all this dialogue
#
happening but he also starts what is in a sense a gigantic translation project where
#
he is just doing this mass translation across languages and all of that.
#
Tell me a little bit about that and there are aspects of which which are fascinating
#
for example even Badawani who is so orthodox and against all of this is set to task translating
#
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
#
Which he does with great difficulty there's a moral conflict which is going on within
#
Badawani and then he in fact says and this is like useless literature which I'm being
#
forced to translate but he does a good job and Akbar he knew that this man was very orthodox
#
in many ways and could be bigoted as well because there's one instance where you know
#
Akbar is completely frustrated and he gets angry that when the copy of the Ramayana is
#
presented and then he sees that you know he has talked about heaven and hell and Akbar
#
gets completely angry at that.
#
He says that he thinks that what Badawani has done is he has tried to interpret Hinduism
#
through Islam where there is a Jannat and there is a Jahannum.
#
So he shouts at him screams at him you know calls him you know names and again uses ghalis
#
as it is a captain haddock which is no abusing intent in coming.
#
He calls him a haram khor and a shalgam khor.
#
Shalgam khor is a turnip eater.
#
I am not able to figure out why what sort of a gali that is that's why I've said that
#
it's a very captain haddockish because he is calling blistering barnacles, thundering
#
typhoons and all the art of art and a turnip eater.
#
Badawani laments him because it's only Badawani who tells us that he says that I have worked
#
so hard I put my heart and soul into this project but what did I get in return?
#
This is what I got from the emperor the slur of big haram khor and a shalgam khor.
#
Janay wo kaisa log te jin ko plaudits hi plaudits mile.
#
So it's a very intellectual exercise a very interesting exercise that you know he commissions
#
the translation of many works many which are today considered to be Hindu literature, religious
#
So the mahabhar which is like the grandest of the translation process which eventually
#
becomes rasamnama or book of war.
#
So Akbar is delighted so he was already hearing these tales which were pretty much extent
#
in his empire and we also have to understand that it was during Akbar's time that Tulsidas
#
was writing the Ramcharitmanas right so this was happening at the same time.
#
So these tales must have been extent at that time so he must have heard them and he wanted
#
these to be translated into Persian so that a wider audience could get access to them.
#
See the religious texts of Hinduism were written in Sanskrit that was never a common language
#
so the great majority of the people were completely clueless they did not have any access to this.
#
So it's not just that the Muslims who speak Farsi don't have access to it even the common
#
Hindu doesn't because it's all Sanskrit.
#
Yeah it's all Sanskritized right so it was very difficult and that's how the language
#
And which is how the Brahmins become the elite as the interpreters of the holy books.
#
Absolutely absolutely and you also have this where you know this line in some Shruti I'm
#
forgetting which one which says that you know if a Shudra hears the Vedas being recited
#
then you should pour molten lead into his ears so you should not even hear it.
#
So this was how the Sanskrit was like.
#
So these works were translated into Persian and that's how they became accessible to the
#
western world because when these go to Europe they go in the Persian form and from there
#
these are then translated into French and English and what not.
#
And the English version comes back to India.
#
Yeah it comes back to India right so from trans Sanskrit it's Persian and it's the
#
Persian which actually makes them popular texts.
#
So even when Dara Shoko does his Sere Akbar you know translation of the Upanishads.
#
So this is what exactly happens so these are Sanskrit texts which are being interpreted
#
to him in the language that he understands and then translates them into Persian.
#
So this knowledge which was so far restricted which was available through you know tales
#
perhaps for the first time is now available to a wider audience.
#
So this is what it does and to the Mughals themselves an Akbar is so fascinated by the
#
Razamnama that he makes it compulsory read for the princes.
#
Till a very late period also this text was read by the princes the Mughal princes all
#
of them in fact they were reading all these Hindu texts they had a fair idea for the people
#
on the literature that of the land so this is also an announcement that okay this is
#
our literature as well because we are translating it it's no longer us versus them which is
#
So this is our literature a combined inherited literature and we need to translate it to
#
make it available for for the people.
#
Now Persian was also as you should understand that it was a language what English is to
#
us today Persian was to the people back then so it was a language of class of finesse it's
#
where you know you could seek employment with any anyone if you're a common man you could
#
rise to the rank of a Munshi if you knew Persian so many Hindus had started learning Persian
#
and this was an older tradition of course when Mughals come Persian is known by very
#
many people so these translation projects also do that so they for the first time helped
#
in transmitting this these texts to a great majority of people so there is this intellectual
#
legacy that is left behind and also they wanted to understand what sort of people they were
#
dealing with right so it also helped that you know once you get to know the stories
#
you're part of the culture yourself so it's a it's a fascinating exercise that he did
#
and quite unheard of it's not that such works were not commissioned earlier but in that
#
scale this was attempted for the first time so there have been other works as well in
#
the past for instance in Bengal so you had these you know two sultans you know we were
#
very considered to be very progressive for that time you had Alauddin Hussain Shah and
#
his son Nasir Shah we in Assam get to hear more about them because you know it was during
#
these two sultans and many invasions of Assam took place or the Ahom kingdom took place
#
so you know Bengal being this marshy swampy land at that time so there it was infested
#
with snakes you know and that's where you have the tradition of Manasa puja you know
#
the goddess Mansa who is Shiva's daughter and she is the deity for snakes and that's
#
why you have stories like Biwala Lakhindar you know where you know Manasa is upset and
#
then she takes the form of a snake and then stings and kills Lakhindar and then that's
#
the whole story this is a very East India tale so there you have these stories you know
#
or these books on Manasa which are being written and these start with invocations of the sultan
#
that he is the govoreshwar, his beauty is that of god dharma, his wrath is like lord
#
Yama you know so the nipati, the avatar and all that so all of these are happening in
#
those quotes as well but in this grand scale that the Mughals do and it's no longer confined
#
just to the quote in Agra or Delhi it's happening in the subhas as well so in the 16th century
#
later in the 17th century actually so you have this book which is written in Bengal
#
under the subedar was a Mughal subedar called Navibangsa which is the story of the prophet
#
so what is happening is very interesting so you hear the Islam is being communicated to
#
the Hindus in a language that they understand so the prophet is projected as the avatar
#
of god right the god who is Allah his avatar is Muhammad so you are telling the story of
#
Muhammad through the very Hindu tradition so it's almost a converse of what Badawani
#
was doing where he introduced Jannat and you know into his reading of the Hindu texts yeah
#
but what Badawani was doing was actually not alien to what Hinduism was because the concept
#
of Swarga and Patal is always there so Akbar actually misunderstands him he thinks that
#
you know this was not part of the Hindu tradition but it actually was which is why Badawani
#
is there I did everything to the best of my ability but it was very difficult for him
#
to do that but and that's the only time when Akbar you know complains trouble fuzzle and
#
he says you know I thought that Badawani was a scholar but he has turned out to be the
#
scholastic bigot so I did not expect this from him and then it's very hard for the
#
rest of them to convince Akbar they know actually what Badawani has done is the right thing
#
there's actually this concept of who's going to tell the emperor he has no clothes in this
#
particular instance yeah absolutely so he does that so he also works on the Razamnama
#
then he translates the Ramayan Ramayan is of course his greatest project and we have
#
to credit Badawani for that because he does and that's what scholars have said that it's
#
a very decent translation that has been happening that has been done by him and in that we also
#
see Akbar's ability to get work out of people who otherwise would not have done that so
#
you would not expect with the kind of writing that Badawani has put out eventually in the
#
Muntakhaba Tawarekh and he finds all this heretical so you don't expect and it is it's difficult
#
for us to imagine that Akbar would not have known all that right so as a man who was good
#
at nurturing talent he must have figured out what sort of a man this guy is to get work
#
out of him but he also realized that he had this talent he had this potential and it should
#
be put to good use so Akbar really got work out of him so that was you know his strength
#
of of being a boss a good boss yeah so these eventually become part of a larger tradition
#
and these select set of a process so what Dara Shukodal is actually not very noble because
#
his grandfather has done that already yeah do you have a sense of how much of a cultural
#
difference did this translation project make like was it one idiosyncratic thing that an
#
emperor did and it's fine we can look back and praise it or did it actually make a difference
#
in the culture there are so many more books now available in so many more languages is
#
it possible to see it's very difficult to figure out what sort of an impact it had in
#
those times right because we don't have enough subaltern history for that period but it was
#
an unlocking of wisdom which happened with these translations because eventually these
#
were then translated into Hindi these Persian translations that were you know translated
#
into English and all of that and in Urdu as well which emerged later so there's an Urdu
#
Ramayan as well which comes later and Urdu is a much later language as we know so in
#
fact my friend Ajay Gandhi from Hyderabad runs a sing called Manthan and they call speakers
#
there every month to speak on various subjects I've spoken as well but they had a conference
#
last year on the second of October every second of October they have a Manthan samvad where
#
they invite a bunch of speakers and last year and I'll link it from the show notes there's
#
a beautiful YouTube clip of a gentleman they invited who is reading out an Urdu version
#
of the Bhagavad Gita okay and it's quite stunning sorry no no no it's a very good digression
#
actually so yeah so all of this happens with this first translations of these great works
#
of Indian literature and because Persian as I said with you unlock wisdom and make it
#
available for a great number of people because Persian as a language was pretty extend at
#
The English of the day.
#
The English of the day of course and Persian net system was pretty dominant and from an
#
earlier period so now that we are talking I remember an incident which I want to share
#
with you there's this ambassador of Mirza Shah Rukh who was the son of Taimur you know
#
and Mirza Shah Rukh was he deputed this guy called Abdul Razak you know to go to India
#
and he goes to Calicut actually to the court of the Zamarin and and also see if the territories
#
that Taimur had conquered if the rulers could you know still continue on a recognize Shah
#
Rukh as their greater ruler so if that's possible so Abdul Razak goes to Calicut he has a terrible
#
experience because the language is very unfamiliar and then there are Arabs know where he has
#
encountered and they are speaking Arabic you know which for him is an alien language in
#
many ways the customs are also very different so he leaves behind an account and then he's
#
invited by the emissary of Vijayanagar who happens to know that he's here so he's there
#
in the court and then he asks him to come and even though Vijayanagar is not the suzerain
#
of Calicut but still the Zamarin sends him that okay you should go to Vijayanagar and
#
in Vijayanagar he feels so comfortable because there the language is Persian and their Persian
#
mannerisms are there so he feels very comfortable he considered this to be a great relief that
#
okay I've come out from that place and now I'm here and the Persian is spoken and then
#
all the mannerisms are there so there he feels very free at home and so you know this is
#
just one example this is happening in the 15th century right so and we are talking about
#
the 16th century now and late 16th century and and so all of this has been you know and
#
by that time it was a fairly common language and the language of the elites even though
#
I mean the language that you could know aspirational language so this this translation project
#
unlocks that wisdom for a greater number of people so eventually when these translations
#
come back to the people in their own language you know then there are Hindi and all that
#
later would do so that's when the greatest spread happens before that time it was very
#
difficult to imagine something of this sort so Valmiki's Ramayan eventually becomes the
#
common Ramayan Ramcharitmanas is of course a more laudatory account of Valmiki's Ramayan
#
is very different from the Ramcharitmanas we know that today so yeah these set in motion
#
a tradition which takes shape and you know it spans eventually into this great Indian
#
literary tradition that we talk about and feel proud of today it starts from that period
#
really incredible I've taken more than two hours of your time so I won't talk much more
#
about your book I have a set of broader questions that I want to get through but you know for
#
the listeners I just say that one pick up the book it has besides a beautifully vivid
#
recounting of the history of that period it also has a lot more of the parallels between
#
those times and these times so when you you know read about the propaganda and the fake
#
news or the ways in which people were othered or how political enemies were neutralized
#
there's a lot more in the book that you'll find a lot of resonance with Manimukta so
#
one sort of question that struck me is that the book is very interestingly both a historical
#
project and a political project you're also coming to it with a political point of view
#
which is to counter this notion this bizarre notion of Akbar as some kind of Hitler right
#
does that political imperative of showing him in a different light lead to a danger
#
of romanticizing him too much is that something you were conscious of that I must not romanticize
#
the guy too much and try to and how do you guard against that then yeah because like
#
I said that I was very conscious right from the beginning that this is the trigger for
#
the book that whatever is happening politically and because politics of the past is happening
#
in the present therefore to address that you have to look at past from the prism of the
#
present so that was my approach pretty much yes there was definitely the danger of romanticizing
#
the past and so I was very careful about that and I was very conscious that this is what
#
you know is the pitfall of you know looking at the past to the present that you tend to
#
romanticize and give a different picture so that's why I have limited my assessments
#
to whatever is available on record and I have also talked about all the bad things that
#
Akbar has done like the tower of skulls like the sculptors of course and we can always
#
say that that was the norm back then but then of course for a 21st century reader for 21st
#
century man that I am of course it is revolting and if we apply these standards then pretty
#
much everyone from the past is a bad guy right so I was very careful about that so I was
#
doing two things I was trying to put Akbar in his own time and context and also look
#
at our present and contrast it with the past so that helped me in understanding the motivations
#
of the people that people had back then about doing certain things and also realize in a
#
nasty sort of a way that there are so many medieval things that are part of us even today
#
this medieval impulse to look at people as kings and emperors in a 21st century democratic
#
India this constant reference to the Prime Minister as the Hindu Hridaya Samrat the key
#
word is Samrat the Emperor so and the whole I have called him Saffron Chayensha Ji Hadi
#
Sharma strikes again oh yes he had to strike this is where it should go right from the
#
beginning so yeah so I've called him a Saffron Chayensha because that is pretty much what
#
the whole mannerism is like you see even Ambedkar talks about this Bhakti you know in politics
#
being dangerous his reference point at that time was Jawaharlal Nehru because he feared
#
that you know this was a man who was like worshipped by the people but we don't have
#
Jawaharlal Nehru temples today do we we do have Modi temples and therein lies the danger
#
because well we were lucky that Nehru was not like that he didn't see himself as some
#
sort of an Emperor he was a Democrat completely democratic socialist Demsoc and he remained
#
that throughout his life but here we have somebody who has emerged just as a Hindu Hridaya
#
Samrat I mean that's his legitimacy right so you talk about him only in terms of that
#
later on of course you have used terms for him like in the visionary leader and all of
#
that but primarily the core is that the Hindu Hridaya Samrat and even if there were other
#
competing positionings such as you know Prashan Jha points out in his book how the BJP won
#
about the 2014 elections where he points out that there were sort of three different positionings
#
that he managed to employ simultaneously I would say that right now in 2020 one of them
#
is completely dominant and that is the Hindu Hridaya Samrat there is no doubt about that
#
absolutely so and this is an Emperor in many ways so your style of functioning you have
#
centralized power I give an instance where Bairam Khan does something similar you know
#
he takes all decisions himself he dismisses the wazir takes over the revenue administration
#
In fact I was reading about Bairam Khan and I was thinking of Amit Shah and you know I
#
don't know when this episode will be released we are recording this on February 20th but
#
I have actually heard murmurings of discontent between Modiji and Mr. Shah so who knows how
#
you know that will play out and of course Akbar and Bairam Khan did fallout as you described
#
in your colourfully new book yeah and so there's a very Bairam Khan way of doing things where
#
you centralize everything in his in the office of the Khan-e-Khana right so you even dismiss
#
the wazir of revenue so you take over his powers as well because the fiscal power is
#
what eventually drives political power right so that's essentially what Bairam Khan was
#
doing today when we see the Prime Minister's office you know superseding everything else
#
you know the Defence Minister is not talking about defence it's talking about finance the
#
Finance Minister is talking about education because these are irrelevant positions you
#
have only one office which is supreme that is the Prime Minister's office and only one
#
person actually the Samrat the Samrat and which is very scary because you are there's
#
a country of 1.3 billion people you know it's just one man who is deciding everything for
#
us so that's very scary but that's also very 16th century or 17th century if you can call
#
it so Akbar was trying to be a good ruler a model sovereign and also nurturing the sacred
#
kingship and my book is called Allahu Akbar because Akbar loved this phrase and he used
#
as a double entendre because here you had a Quranic expression where you are showing
#
piety by being a good Muslim ruler who is saying Allahu Akbar but at the same time
#
in a twisted way it can also be Akbar is Allah and this is precisely the thing that you know
#
many people at that time object to there are rebellions against Akbar because he is dismissed
#
as a heretic that he is and not just in India as far as the court of Spain news reaches
#
that the Hindustan the Badshah of Hindustan has completely abandoned Islam so the news
#
reaches there and there are no global condemnations which happen because how can you know do this
#
you're quitting yourself with God but he does that so in a way you know even Mr. Modi
#
is not bothered about the bad press that he is getting right so he's continuing to do
#
whatever he wants to do so the international condemnations are not having any bearing so
#
that is one thing then so I have mentioned this incident and Abul Fazal mentioned this
#
in great detail so does Baroni that Akbar decided to put Allahu Akbar on his imperial
#
seal on his coins and then the yes men of the time most of them were yes men they wanted
#
to please the emperor in whatsoever way possible they don't object to it even the orthodox
#
ulema they don't object to it only some voices there's one person called Haji Ibrahim you
#
know stands up and says but Badshah this is wrong this is blasphemy people will think
#
that you are equating yourself with Allah so instead of Allahu Akbar why don't you
#
put Allah Zikrullah-e-Akbaro and Akbar gets very angry he says who is that fool is going
#
to think that I'm trying to equate myself with God right but it doesn't matter deniability
#
just as Modi absolutely and what does Mr. Modi supporter do he goes to file his nomination
#
papers in Banaras and then everyone starts shouting har har Modi har har Modi and eventually
#
BJP comes up with a slogan har har Modi ghar ghar Modi right this har har Mahadev has been
#
changed into har har Modi so it's a very similar thing that both have done just divided by
#
several centuries which is very horrifying at the same time because here you have see
#
a medieval or an early modern king who was doing this and now you have a 21st century
#
democratically elected leader who is functioning in a very similar manner so you think that
#
you are an emperor because the people treat you like that and you have power great power
#
it's just that he doesn't yet have the power of life and death of a people but then otherwise
#
in every other way he shares a similar kind of a thing which is very scary and that's
#
what I was trying to you know connect.
#
No and it's very interesting that what also struck me was that of course there would be
#
similarities because you know as I keep hopping on about people respond to incentives everywhere
#
and the incentives of power and politics are always going to be the same absolutely so
#
you know it's not in that sense merely Akbar and Modi but you know you can take different
#
leaders from different political systems across different spans of times and you will have
#
the same imperatives playing out you have the same fake news everywhere the same propaganda
#
tools the same othering oh absolutely you know and all of it has kind of played out
#
before absolutely and we never learn from history absolutely you see when it comes to
#
propaganda so I mentioned this you know Abul Fazal is a master propagandist of his time
#
you know Humayun he had actually a terrible experience in Persia so the Safavid Shah humiliates
#
him at every step you know he conjures up things just to humiliate Humayun so when he's
#
they meet at Qazvin which was the capital of this is by the way when Humayun was on
#
the run and he'd gone to take refuge in Persia before he came back and conquer absolutely
#
yes 1542 1543 that's the period when he goes there and so you know the Shah sends him an
#
unbroken horse because if it's an unbroken horse untrained horse yeah so if it's an unbroken
#
horse then it's very likely that the moment you would mount it you will fall right and
#
then everybody will laugh yeah so everyone will have fun at your expense but the Shah
#
did not anticipate that the Humayun was actually a consummate horseman and he was one of those
#
few princes who knew that typical stirrup archery the Mongols are very famous for and the Turkic
#
archery that's very that's their trump card when they come to India so that's why he could
#
mount it with ease he controlled it and then they know that's one chance at humiliating
#
him which the Shah could not utilize so he's very angry but then he takes Humayun into
#
this court then you know treats him nicely overall but then of course humiliates him
#
at every step so when Humayun goes and he asks if my entourage can sit the Shah says
#
no in our court the custom is to stand so only you will have a seat all your other princes
#
and everyone will stand so you have this great painting at the Chahal Suton in Iran where
#
you know Humayun is sitting to the right of the Shah and he appears as a smaller man somewhat
#
in comparison and everyone on the Shah's side is sitting everyone on Humayun's side is standing
#
the same painting is there in the Akbar Nama similar painting which of course shows that
#
both the Shah and Humayun are almost equal everyone is seated there so that's Abul Fazal's
#
propaganda Abul Fazal does not even mention that the that Humayun was humiliated in this
#
way it's only Johar Afzabchi who is saying in fact a lot of the beautiful paintings and
#
period and miniatures of that period yeah are actually also being used for propaganda
#
which we don't imagine today absolutely and you've given many examples yeah yeah so if
#
you just imagine these dream paintings of Jahangir for instance so there's one painting
#
where you know he's standing on a globe which is supported on a fish and there's the severed
#
head of Malik Ambar on a spear and Jahangir is trying to shoot an arrow at him because
#
Malik Ambar was his adversary right so the Mughals could not penetrate that far as long
#
as Malik Ambar was there and they never beat him so it's fantasy absolutely so he never
#
beats him he never kills it they don't even meet in real life but because he had been
#
frustrated so much at every step by Malik Ambar that's why he had to humiliate him in some
#
way you know just do this fake news thing okay I have killed him finally so that's the
#
Bala quote of its time.
#
Bala quote of its time absolutely so you have yes in his dreams at least he has managed
#
to defeat and kill Malik Ambar now the Abul Fazl does that with Humayun and with Akbar
#
as well so all those humiliations are projected as you know the Shah treating the emperor
#
of India with equality when actually he doesn't but in fact when they go on a hunt together
#
the Humayun and then the Shah and then there's some animals the game escapes through the
#
Mughal lines and Humayun has to monetarily compensate for the game animals that for each
#
animal one horse and something yeah absolutely yeah so he had to compensate so this is not
#
equal treatment this is humiliation but he was lucky that the eventually the Shah decided
#
to give him 14,000 cavalry but on a condition that Kandahar would be ours because Kandahar
#
was an important point it was a point of contestation even during Aurangzeb's time because eventually
#
the Mughals lose Kandahar in Shah Jahan's time and then they get it back for a short
#
while and they lose it again finally and eventually permanently so Abul Fazl tries to show it
#
as some sort of a magnanimity of the Shah and also because the Shah is so impressed with
#
the princely qualities of Humayun that you know he decides to treat him in the fairest
#
way possible Humayun in fact backtracks on his promise so the slightest opportunity he
#
gets to get back he throws away the Persians and occupies Kandahar himself after handing
#
over the fort to them he betrays them literally but that's what you know power politics of
#
the time was like so everything was just politics of every time yeah absolutely yeah true so
#
that was the propaganda of the time and at the othering of course wow what Babur does
#
he defeats so many princes in Mawarannahar which is like Transoxiana Central Asia he
#
doesn't kill anyone comes to Afghanistan that's no longer Mawarannahar starts killing everyone
#
Muslim tribes are wiped out in Herat near Kandahar in Kohat which is now part of Pakistan
#
in those places these Afghan tribes are literally wiped out one tribe had thrown stones after
#
he had ravaged a village in punishment wipes them out completely Erek's skulltars with
#
their heads you pointed at 150 skulls yeah yeah absolutely so Babur does that so for
#
him people in Mawarannahar are his own people so he's not going to harm them in any way
#
but people outside of it are the others the same tribal sensibility absolutely unfortunately
#
today what is happening the only difference is now the people whom you are othering are
#
your own people you are not talking about people in some other country it's your own
#
people whom you are othering in every way possible so that's the only change that has
#
happened the worst kind of a change I would say but yeah so that's how different it is
#
and similar at the same time.
#
So I was also going to ask you about something you've already answered in a sense the dangers
#
of looking at the past through the prism of the present you know imposing the morality
#
of these times and judging people accordingly you've already addressed that so I'll sort
#
of end by going back to the personal that A how has this book been received and B what
#
do you think in general of this sort of simmering tension between academic historians and popular
#
historians which you sort of alluded to towards the start that have academic historians for
#
example looked at your book favorably and what are your plans from now from here on?
#
Yes because I you would find that there are three blurbs from three academic historians
#
and there is a review by Professor Harbrans Mukhiya which is largely favorable that's
#
an academic historian there is Dr. Sapna Little who has commented positively on my book which
#
I put up on Facebook and once we go into reprint that will also feature in the blurb that's
#
again an academic historian so so far whatever I have heard from academic historians is largely
#
positive I'd also shown it to Professor Sunil Sharma Sunil Sharma says that it's a it's
#
a great work coming from a non-academic historian so though he is not a historian but still
#
he's a he's an authority on Persian literature so he says he has commended my work so that
#
way I think the academia has so far positively received the book also because I have not
#
violated what is academically establishable history so I have not used any fanciful imagination
#
to you know give a twisted picture of something but yes I do understand that for somebody
#
in the academia this sort of an experiment would have been really difficult almost taboo
#
that you look at the past from the present but I had to do it because there was a specific
#
reason behind that and even I didn't know that what sort of a shape my book would take
#
eventually but I'm glad that at least two colleges under Guwahati University have included
#
my book in their reading list for their graduation honours this is so mind-blowing because my
#
impression has always been that you have to freaking die or at least get a Nobel Prize
#
before you get on to a syllabus and here you are young man on a syllabus with your first
#
book amazing well done I'm so glad and I feel grateful to the people who have done this
#
so but talking about this difference between the academia and and and trade historians
#
so-called yes there is a gap there is in fact for many in the academia they treat this dainfully
#
trade historians or non-academic historians there are reasons for that of course some
#
are valid some are just jealousy prejudice if you speak to William Dalrymple that would
#
be jealousy definitely because William Dalrymple is really the first person who has for me
#
at least I mean I read his the last Mughal first and then I read the white Mughals and
#
I found that these were very remarkably well laid okay now there can be certain academic
#
disagreements between the process or the method involved that can of course that can always
#
happen with people but the fact that especially with the white Mughals now I had I specialize
#
in modern history especially that period you know the 18th century 19th and 20th centuries
#
these were my master specializations and the fact that this was I knew that they were these
#
people you know who were very favorable to the Mughals who dressed themselves as Octoloni
#
and all those people dressed like Mughals but the fact that he figured out such an interesting
#
story between William Kirkpatrick a Scottish officer of the East India Company and Khairun
#
Nisa Begum a Nizam a royal noble lady and the tragedy of their lives and the world around
#
them I thought that was remarkable which I think nobody in the academy had attempted
#
before that and would you say that there is fundamentally a great value itself in getting
#
history out to the masses in a language that they will enjoy and actually consume because
#
history has a greater importance than just oh we should know our history as your book
#
sort of illustrates so vividly history is current.
#
It is and you know there is of course I will have to speak for both because there is always
#
great value that people are bringing the popular authors who are interpreting and breaking
#
down history the complexities of history in easier terms for the masses to consume at
#
the same time there is also a danger that while doing that you might not draw a line
#
and use fanciful imagination to give a very different picture of history which is at variance
#
with history itself no variance of with past itself so there is always this risk so everyone
#
writes about history I mean it's free world it's a free domain everyone can write it
#
so far yeah yeah so far yeah but I understand that the fear and the insecurity that academia
#
also has the academia is also at fault because it has not been able to figure out a language
#
suitable enough for the people to read the other thing of course is the pricing you see
#
these university press books while in doing my research I had to buy I had to spend so
#
much money one book is available for 2500 another one that I did not even touch was
#
priced at 8000 rupees so with that kind of costs involved you know the layman will never
#
be able to get access to that kind of literature so how do you do that so you have these this
#
gap is being filled by people who are popular authors people like William Dalrymple who
#
has studied history in the university who is a great author himself who has been a journalist
#
a very successful one at that so he has really tied these two worlds together he has received
#
academic disdain there's definitely that but at the same time he has also made history
#
fun I think an author like me would have never emerged had there been no William Dalrymple
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who wrote about 20 years back all these fascinating books which made biographies possible right
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because nobody wrote about biography no wrote about great people from the past India's past
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there's always those colonial biographies that Vincent Smith had authored or somebody
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else had we had to rely on those now you see there are so many biographies you have Manu
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Pillay who has written so many books you have Parvati Sharma has written about Jahangir
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you have Ruby Lal who has written about Noh Jahan you have Audrey Trushki who is an academic
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historian but still has written a popular book on Aurangzeb you have Munis Farooqi who
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is I think writing a book on Aurangzeb next and this is a professor from so many people
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Ira Mukhoti, Shupriya Gandhi, Rana Safbhi you know Rana Safbhi's contribution to history
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writing is this that she has unlocked so many sources that were so far not being touched
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by the academia all these books like Begumat Ke Asu and all that so which she has brought
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together and you know to give a picture of post 1857 and pre 1857 Delhi which we didn't
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know until now we only had some sort of a rough idea but the way she has put everything
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together I think that is significant what Ira Mukhoti has done with the Daughters of
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the Sun she has talked about all these you know women of the far the lesser known Mughal
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women and then you have Ruby Lal who has written this biography of Noh Jahan so and there are
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many more authors who are going to write there is going to be many other books on Akbar I
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am sure which are being written on which will be written I will be writing about something
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In fact when Ira was on my show a few months ago she said she was writing a book on Akbar
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and I think Parvati may have mentioned something like that as well.
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So Parvati is also writing a book on Akbar so like good luck to you guys you got a book
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out first so whatever let them come.
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Yeah but also I didn't want it to clash with anyone so I have I knew that Parvati had written
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about Jahangir so I have completely kept out Jahangir from my book I have just mentioned
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the birth of Jahangir and I have not talked about the celebration because I know Parvati
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has covered that so that way I was at an advantage so I did not repeat things and also because
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my approach is different I am only comparing the past with the present.
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All of you have delightfully different voices which you know I mean I enjoyed Ira's book,
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Parvati's book, Manu's books of course they have all been on my show as well and that's
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one of the delightful things that you have all these different voices of historians also
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coming up in these stories.
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So to see you write about Akbar and Parvati and Ira also write about Akbar but their different
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Absolutely so I think that is adding to the variety and it is also enriching scholarship
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right so the academia can also benefit from it right so if you look at these and tomorrow
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you can write an interpretation of Akbar by comparing three different books that were
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written in the 21st century so you know that sort of a thing is also possible so whatever
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we are doing is also history for the future.
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So what's your next project?
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I mean you can't just keep editing my columns forever what drudgery why would you want to
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Okay so I am producing a book on the Delhi Sultanate on specifically on the Khiljis and
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Is that also through the prism of the present and whatever or it's just a standalone?
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No it is just a standalone thing though I will be addressing some of the politics because
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Delhi Sultanate is the next most you know almost dehumanized dynasty or empire of Indian
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history especially if you talk about Alauddin Khilji he is such a fascinating man but then
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of course this portrayal at least in the mass media has mostly been negative so I want to
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address not that I want to you know rescue him or redeem him why biographers should not
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do that and I'm also not attempting a full biography because with the Khiljis or with
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the Tughlaqs the proper biographies are not possible because there is so much ambiguity
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about their earlier lives it's only after they become kings do they do we know more
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Akbar we know right from the birth everything is possible but the sultans of Delhi many
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of them it's not possible so I'm not doing that.
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There's of course another more academic project that I'm involved in which is on comparing
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different strands of warfare in Indian history and over four centuries so how different cultures
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have met on the battlefields of India.
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Wow I'm so excited because that just sounds like such a mind-blowing subject for a future
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episode I hope after this grueling experience of two or forty minute conversations you will
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I'll end with the final question which is that listeners of my show often like it when
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I or my guests recommend books for them to read.
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So you know what are three books of history that you absolutely love and number could
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be greater or smaller whatever that you absolutely love that you when you think of the book you
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think to yourself I want everyone to read this.
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Well of course of the popular history books I would definitely recommend William Dalrymple's
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White Mughals and then I would recommend History of India by Vincent Smith is one I mean it
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gives you a very comprehensive picture then JF Richards, Mughal Empire that part then
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you have Irfan Habib's Agrarian System that is one great book I would always recommend
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that because you also get to know about the Indian society then there's Western Way of
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I do have problems with that approach but it's still a it's worth a read.
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So that is one book and among Indian authors there's Anglo-Maratha War by Randolph Cooper
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which I absolutely adore this is one book which I really like then there is Irfan Habib's
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Akbar which I would always recommend it's a collection of essays that he had edited
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which I've also consulted heavily there is Aqtadaar Alam Khan's work on gunpowder and
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Indian history that is an absolute must read then there is Afzal Muin's Millennial Sovereign
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that is one book on Mughal history which I would recommend then there's so many of them
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really and I would also recommend Rana Safvi's Asaroos Sanadid which I mean it's Saeed Ahmad
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Khan's but she has translated it and made it available for all of us in English and
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there is Sehrul Manazal which Swapna Little has translated edited rather that is one book
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then the Western Way of War by Robert Citino I mean it's a great way to understand German
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warfare over the Western Way of War and then since I'm more a military history guy so it
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is also one book which I want to recommend is and that's one of the books that I had
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to pay a fortune to get because it is published by University of Nebraska I think and that
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is When Titans Clashed How the Red Army Stopped Hitler I mean if you have to understand Second
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World War and how these two huge power blocks how they fought their wars you have to have
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on one hand How the Red Army Stopped Hitler and Titans Clashed by David Glantz and Jonathan
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House and then the German Way of War and all the three other books that Robert Citino has
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written yeah so Rob Citino and Johnny House these are my you know like the Bibles that
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I would this is really fascinating I thought I thought this episode will end with me feeling
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extremely relieved that my work is over but now I have to go and read these books so my
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work isn't over but I'm looking forward to it thank you so much for coming on the show
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Manimugd such a pleasure.
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If you enjoyed listening to the show why hesitate you know the routine go to your nearest online
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or offline bookstore and buy Allahu Akbar by Manimugd S Sharma also you can follow him
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on Twitter at Quizical Guy you can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma A M I T V A R
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M A you can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene unseen dot I E N and
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thinkprakati dot com thank you for listening and happy reading.
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