The Mughals and the Indians
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
The long reign of the grand Mughals started on April 21, 1526, when “I placed my foot in the stirrup of resolution and my hands on the reins of confidence in God and marched against Sultan Ibrahim…whose army in the field was said to amount to a hundred thousand men and who…had nearly a thousand elephants… The sun had mounted spear-high when the onset began, and the battle lasted till mid-day, when the enemy was completely routed. By the grace and mercy of the Almighty God this difficult affair was made easy to me, and that mighty army, in the space of half a day, was laid in dust.”
This was the account of the founder of the Mughal Empire, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babar, given in his memoir, Babar Nama. But the intensely hot and humid climate of India was too unpleasant and unbearable for the army, his close companions and even for Babar himself, who admitted later: “Hindustan has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of frankly mixing together, or of sociable intercourse. They have no imaginative mind, no politeness of manners, no amiable feelings, no ingenuity in mechanical matters when planning or executing their handicraft works, nor skill or knowledge in their architecture…. Hindustan is a large country and has abundance of gold and silver. There are innumerable workmen of every kind, and for every sort of work and everything there is a fixed caste that has done that work or that thing from father to son until now. All artisans, wage earners and official workers are Hindus. In our country the wild folk have tribal names, but here those on farms and in towns are named like different tribes. Most of the inhabitants of Hindustan are pagans; they call a pagan a Hindu. Most Hindus believe in transmigration of souls.”.
This First Mughal had also advised the crown prince Humayun through his will of 1 Jamadi’al-Awwal 935 AH as follows: “O My son, the Empire of Hindustan consists of various religions. Domination and sovereignty whereof has been bestowed on you by the grace of the Almighty. It is incumbent that religious bigotries should be wiped off the tablet of the heart, and justice meted out to each religion according to its own tenets. Specially, abstain from the sacrifice of cows as this would tend to win the hearts of the people of Hindustan and the populace of the country would be loyal to the Royal favors. The temples and places of worship of whatever religion under the Royal authority may not be desecrated...” (India as seen by Babar by R Nath, p.21).
Babar’s successors continued this tradition with the result that tolerance remained the basic characteristic of the Mughal rule. According to Dr Henny Senderin, in his book, Kashmiri Pundits, “their ruling ethos was non-communal and led to the emergence of a cross-communal service class. Cleavages rested on class rather than religious lines; prevailing standards were aristocratic rather than communal. Among those who participated in the court culture, communalism was regarded as bad manners."
Such an environment acted as a catalyst in the integration process of the two major communities of Hindus and Muslims. It was also facilitated by the personal attitude of the kings themselves, who countenanced Hindu customs at the court, like jhrokadarshan, rakhibandhan, deepawali celebrations, tuladana(weighing of kings against gold and precious stones), and paying respect to Hindu saints by visiting them personally in their caves or huts. In this vein, the molding of the Indian culture is deemed as the finest achievement of the Mughals. It made a long lasting impact, so much so that even today it is referred to as the ‘Mughlai’ culture, which reflected itself in the language, literature, art, architecture, dress, and manners. The monarchs became universal symbols of power and remained a stable unifying force for two centuries. The loyalty for them remained so intense that during the War of Independence of 1857 the Indians of all shades gathered under the banner of the last Mughal emperor, although he was only a symbolic figurehead at that time.
The power structure, even in the heyday of the Mughals, was more of a hierarchic nature than administrative. There existed various levels of power, which emanated most of the time not directly from the state but locally. The Mughal kings achieved universal dominance in the country, yet the real authority of the State did not belong to them but to the local Hindu rajas and heads of villages, who virtually controlled the whole country. A warrior could overrun his neighbors, collect revenue from villages, and get recognition from the imperial court as the Raja. The semi-sacred imperial authority of the monarch was recognized by local rulers, hence all aspirants to power, big or small, had to obtain such titles and legitimacy from the Mughal sovereign.
Perhaps the most lasting of the influences of the Mughals was in administration. The Mughals gave India an all-pervading ordered administration. Apparatus of government, administrative concepts, nomenclatures, regalia, and dress, introduced by them was also adopted by local rajas and nobility, and even by the Marathas who were fighting to get rid of the Mughal political influence. The local rajas also invested Hindu officers with such designations as mufti, kazi, and kotwal and their coinage came out of mints with the Mughal emperor’s name prominently displayed. The British administrative system in the country, and even that of the independent India of today, owe a great deal to what the Mughals had done in this regard. H.G.Wells writes in The Outline of History, XXXII: “To Akbar it is necessary to give the same distinctive attention that we have shown to Charlemagne or Constantine the Great. He is one of the hinges of history. Much of his work on consolidation and organization in India survives to this day. It was taken over and continued by the British when they became the successors of the Mogul emperors… But Akbar made a new India. He gave the princes and ruling classes of India some inklings at least of a common interest. If India is now anything more than a sort of ragbag of incoherent states and races, a prey to every casual raider from the north, it is very largely due to him.” The Mughals gave to the English dictionary their name to denote ‘the grand’ or a giant in one’s own field of operation.
Persian, the court language, became the administrative language of the country, and also became the language of the courts of Hindu rajas. It turned into a symbol of prestige for the Hindu nobility and ministerial class and a tool of promoting careers of the youth. The beauty of the language was so intense that it embraced the local vernacular in its fold. This marriage of love between Persian and Hindustani languages, occasioned by mixing of the Mughal and Turkish armies with the local population in bazaars, gave birth to a new language called Urdu (from Turkish word ‘Ordu’ meaning army, with its English version 'horde'). This language, even after more than seven decades of post-Independence Hindi domination in academia, is holding its own so tenaciously that even today it may be termed as the lingua franca of the subcontinent. Its most forceful and conspicuous presence is found in the songs and dialogues of Indian films captivating the masses.
In the development of painting and calligraphy the Mughal monarchs had a personal role to play. Beginning with Akbar, a Mughal-Rajput alliance was forged in the artistic expression through paintings. The result was a school of painting specializing in a hybrid Indo-Persian mode creating a new style of Mughal miniatures with delicate lines and soft colors adorning the figures of royalty sometimes with a halo. Such pieces of art reflected little distinction in either dress or appearance between the Mughal royalties and their Hindu nobles and chiefs.
Architecture too was not left untouched. It started with a pure Persian phase as in a building like Humayun’s tomb through the Indo-Muslim style of Akbar’s day to its apotheosis in the Taj Mahal. On the other side the Mughal forts and palaces at Delhi, Agra and FatehpurSikri are the reminiscent of the beautiful sandstone palaces of the local rajas. Their adornment with beautifully carved beams, brackets, and columns is foreign to India, but this combination has produced a new Mughal-Hindu style of architecture
The historian Percival Spear writes in A History of India that the Mughals regarded India as one and indivisible. Their concept of empire was an all India one. Therefore, they did not consider their extension of power to the geographical limits of India and annexation of Rajput, Maratha and Muslim kingdoms as an act of aggression but an expression of the country's indivisibility. They deemed such regional independence only as an infraction and a temporary state of affairs, hence the corrective action taken by them as an expression of natural law. - osman_sher@yahoo.com
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