Great Mughal Scramble

YUSUF ANSARI, who is writing a biography of Akbar, restores some of the complexity to the great Mughal’s life, after the mauling it received in the film Jodha Akbar

“As directed by the word of God, we, as far as it is within our power, remain busy in Jihad and owing to the kindness of the supreme Lord, who is the promoter of our victories, we have succeeded in occupying a number of forts and towns belonging to the infidels and have established Islam there. With the help of our bloodthirsty sword we have razed the signs of infidelity from their minds and have destroyed temples in those places and also all over Hindustan.” —



Declaration of Jalal-ud-Din Mohammad Akbar, after the conquest of Chittor, 1568.

AKBAR MARRIED the Kachchawa princess of Amber, Harka Bai, in 1562, when he was 20. Six years later, he conquered Chittorgarh, with bloody consequences for its largely Rajput garrison. The farma’an quoted above is ample demonstration that if anything, or anyone, led to his evolution as a secular monarch, it was not Harka Bai, but compulsions of state craft.

Akbar’s initial contact with India was dominated by militarism but evolved and settled into a genuine functioning partnership with would-be rivals or rebels through his doctrine of Sulh-I-Qul (peace with all). This dynamic of force and conciliation laid the foundation of an empire so strong, it would take 150 years of decline for it to be completely extinguished.

Akbar forged a distinct identity for his dynasty and, at the same time, created a new cultural context for India. Towards the end of his reign, ‘The Great Mughal’ became synonymous with the riches of the East, in the Western imagination. His contemporaries were personalities such as Elizabeth I of Tudor Britain, Tsar Ivan of Russia and Shah Abbas of Persia, but Akbar the Great towered over them. At its zenith, his empire included 100 million subjects drawn from the most diverse social, ethnic and religious backgrounds.

For a man who was born the son of a refugee, without the privilege of security or even parental presence (Humayun was in exile in Persia), Akbar did well to survive his childhood. He did even better to create the Mughal empire, as we know it, with the additional handicap of being illiterate.

HISTORY IS a narrative of man’s quests, chronicled by cultural constructs, be they monuments, literature or art. Any attempt to understand them is an attempt to comprehend where we come from and where we are headed. A study of historical figures must question what faith and motivations drove an individual; what fears and hopes and desires propelled their evolution and, if they were rulers, the evolution of their policies. Naturally, a hunger for facts and an honest work ethic are critical to any endeavour that seeks to interpret history. Ashutosh Gowarikar, the maker of Jodha Akbar, evidently does not agree. In this, he is part of a trend in Indian society that treats history and historical facts as a malleable “thing” that can be moulded, stretched, rolled up or shrunk to feed any kind of demand. The terrific tamasha over the nomenclature of his film blocked out more serious questions about artistic integrity, poetic license and the distortion of historical truth. Before we examine that further, consider some examples from the movie that ignored very basic facts of Indian history.

First, the film states that the Mughals arrived in India in 1430. Had the makers of the film consulted even a schoolboy, he would have pointed out that the first battle of Panipat was fought by Akbar’s grandfather, Babur, in 1526. In fact, Babur, the first “Mughal”, was born only in 1483! Then, the director states, “I have chosen the middle period of the twenty-eighth year of his age.” At 28, Akbar was already father to prince Salim (Jehangir). He was also far removed from the secular monarch he became later. While it is correct that he abolished the Teerth (pilgrimage) tax (1563), and the Jiziya tax (1564) in this period, he had not yet developed a stable, secular polity. After all, the Jiziya tax was reintroduced in 1575. Also, Hrithik Roshan bears no resemblance to Akbar. According to sources of the time, Akbar was stocky, of medium height (about 5 feet 7 inches), and had a very loud voice and eyes that revealed his Mongolian/Timurid ancestry.

Besides, court protocol and royal etiquette subscribed to a very stringent set of rituals. The Queen Mother, Hamida Banu Begum, did not stand around in corners, waiting for her daughter-in-law to serve the court their mid-day meal. Nor could Adham Khan have dared to raise his voice at the emperor, much less attack him. In fact, after the fall of Malwa, so worried was Adham Khan at the consequences of his usurpation of war booty that he literally kissed the stirrups of Akbar’s horse when the emperor reached there.

A national propensity to accept whatever cinema is served up as history, simply because the medium is stimulating, is an alarming prospect. This is as true of creative media as it is of politics. All historiography represents the dominant ideology prevailing at the time. Thus, Jodha Akbar is a case in point. Its embarrassing mix of kitsch and pastiche and the director’s nonchalant statement — “I accepted which (sic) I thought might be the truth” — is a reflection of a dominant complacency within the world of Indian pop culture. It reflects a fatigue with inquiry and scrutiny. Jodha Akbar is ornamentally superb, but the director arrogantly dismisses any intellectual criticism of his film, saying, “I feel literature is for the books, and that’s where it should stay. I needed to reach out to the masses.” Clearly, we are in the company of a mind-set which believes that “the masses” do not merit an understanding of literature or a more articulate, truthful and sensible rendition of one of the greatest characters in Indian history, that “the masses” deserve titillation, not truth. When will the Indian film industry accept that intelligent historical films can also be commercially viable? Did not K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam and Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah set the precedent for viable, sensible historical/period films?

India’s cultural traditions lay very strong emphasis on argument and a constant search for knowledge. In his own lifetime, Akbar consistently sought rational answers to imponderable abstracts. Despite his wars of expansion and conquest, he also waged a personal battle against entrenched mindsets of dogma, blind tradition and false social precepts. He was flawed too. He abhorred the practice of sati, banned child marriage and promoted interreligious dialogue, but Akbar also slaughtered his enemies in the name of religion, and denounced rebels — such as the Afghan, Raushania — as heretics. Though he was the first Mughal emperor to marry a non-Muslim, he was only following an established principle of Muslim rulers marrying into Hindu (mostly Rajput) families. Baz Bahadur of Malwa, various rulers of Sindh and a scattering of Afghans regularly married across religious lines. The traditional khyats of Rajputana are full of references to such alliances. Prof. Norman Ziegler, a leading authority on Rajput history states: “In understanding medieval Rajput cultural conceptions of rank, power and sovereignty, it is important to note that the Muslim was also included within this hierarchical scheme as a Rajput. The traditions generally represent the Rajput jati as being divided into two categories Muslim (or Turk) and Hindu. Within Hindu Rajput cultural conceptions, Hindu Rajput service for the Muslim emperor or one of his subordinates was thus no different from service for a local ruler or thakur.”

In such a milieu, with regard to matrimonial mixing, 16th century India was perhaps more accepting than our present society. Akbar merely formalised such an arrangement as a policy, but he was by no means the first Muslim ruler to marry a Rajput princess.

We can only hope that cinema, arguably the greatest medium for the communication of ideas and emotions, will create a more meaningful tribute to one of the greatest men to ever rule India. And while one may not be justified in asking for a ban on Jodha Akbar, one cannot allow its glamour to substitute or mitigate our cultural and intellectual sensibilities. •
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 25, Dated June 28, 2008