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India Booked | Understanding Akbar
365 Plays4 years ago
In the first episode, India Booked talks to Manimugdha Sharma, News Editor and author of Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today's India. Listen to discover about mughals, akbars, nationalism and how bollywood gets Akbar wrong.
Manimugdha Sharma is a quizzer, a journalist, and holds an interest and education in history. In Allahu Akbar, he combines his love and knowledge of the past, to give us an interesting oral account of what Akbar represents in today's times. We discuss Akbar's ruthless achievements in warfare, his political savviness and how media agenda setting and the (mis)representation of matters has not changed through times. We also touch upon the subject of secularism and discuss if Akbar was the statesman he's made to be and ask the pertinent question: should the present be judged by the yardstick of the past? Listen in to find out!
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Transcript
Introduction to India Booked podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
I am Ayushi Mona, your host on India Booked, a podcast where we lean into the idea of India through its literature and we speak to authors who bring this to life.
Akbar: Progressive Leader or Controversial Figure?
00:00:32
Speaker
That he was a medieval king who with a progressive bent of mind dared to look ahead to find that common ground for all his people to stand together. That he was a medieval king who today is tempting us to look back into the past to see our future through his eyes.
00:00:52
Speaker
While there were always voices that have tried to project the Mughals as an Islamic and just another Islamic empire, ignoring the civilisation impact that they had on India, Akbar has been a shining light in an otherwise era of darkness. Those talking in terms of easy binaries always found a good Muslim in Akbar and a bad Muslim in Aurangzeb.
00:01:15
Speaker
Why is there such hatred for then? Akbar, one of the most loved kings of India. What was the journey like from being great to not so great? And how is this India different from Akbar's Hindustan? Is he relevant in today's democracy?
00:01:31
Speaker
Allahu Akbar seeks to find answers to these questions while providing a profile sketch of the emperor, his empire and the times that he lived in. He compellingly draws this to the current milieu that we find ourselves in politically.
Inspiration Behind the Book on Akbar
00:01:50
Speaker
Tune into India Booked, a podcast where we lean into India through the eyes and voice of its literature to hear what Mani Mukta has to say about Akbar and understanding the great Mughal in today's time. Welcome to the show Mani. Thank you so much Ayushree. It is such a pleasure to be on your show.
00:02:18
Speaker
So for me, I think the most interesting part of this work was to see how you related the history of Akbar, not in isolation, and sort of splattered it across different canvases of history. Why the particular narrative? I was trying to experiment with something new. I have described the journey of this book in my intro, but I'll still repeat it for your audience. I wrote a series of articles in the Times of India.
00:02:49
Speaker
2015 onwards on this vilification campaign that was going on in the media as well as because of the ruling party and its various spokesperson's official as well as unofficial. So they were saying things about Albert and comparing him to people like Adolf Hitler. So I thought that was pretty ahistorical.
00:03:13
Speaker
and a very wrong understanding of history but which at the same time reflected present prejudices seeping into the understanding of the past or let's say present prejudices or the present shaping the understanding of the past. So with that in mind I wrote these articles and these were spotted by my publisher Bloomsbury and that's how the book was commissioned.
Challenges in Writing About Akbar
00:03:35
Speaker
And now when the book was commissioned, so they wanted a book on Akbar. Now, what different could I write on Akbar? Because there have been so many books on Akbar and the Mughals. Akbar is in fact the most well-known of all the Mughal emperors. And there has been tremendous amount of scholarship.
00:03:51
Speaker
on Akbar and the Mughal Empire. In fact, it's quite disproportionate if you see the Delhi Sultanate in comparison. So there's much more on the Mughal Empire than you have on the Delhi Sultanate or even the Deccani South. So the challenge was to find a new voice, a new form of storytelling. So I thought about it. And so since the book was commissioned without an objective or purpose in mind. So I really have to figure out
00:04:17
Speaker
a way to pull different threads together and then come up with a narrative. So then I proposed after some hard thought that maybe we should look Akbar, not in isolation, but situate him in his own time and context. And at the same time, you also look at him from a very modern perspective because that's where the politics lies. So the politics of the past is happening in the present. So in order to address that, you really need to take a relook
00:04:44
Speaker
Reevaluate history from that point of view so i was not bringing a bird to the 21st century and you know judging him by what i was doing was i was it waiting in his own time and i think that is very important to understand because we tend to apply modern standards to.
00:05:02
Speaker
16th or 17th century figures. So while it is very fun, but then there's always this risk of misinterpreting history in that process. So I had to do two things in that. So correct the perception at the same time, situate him in his own time and context, and also explain some of the modern problems that we have. So that was pretty much the objective that I had in mind.
00:05:23
Speaker
Of course, to what extent I succeeded is another debate. People can agree or disagree or have a different point of view with my approach, but I at least thought that. So to me, I think, you know, there's some books that are meant to be written by some people.
00:05:38
Speaker
a lot of times you will find that a lot of similar themes etc keep getting picked up by different people and being written about and of course Akbar in the popular era is one that has more than enough scholarship around it as you said but to me because you have a background in journalism because you're an ardent history buff and you're a quizzer all of these three things tie in together really well so
Influences on Mani Mukta's Writing Approach
00:06:02
Speaker
be a very authoritative voice, even though you're not a historian, right? So how did your professional interest or your hobby of quizzing or your, you know,
00:06:13
Speaker
interest in history sort of give you the conviction to write this piece. I guess you have made an interesting observation that is I think is quite correct because I have been a quizzer and being a quizzer you tend to do very obscure things at times and then you can make all these new connections so I think that came really happy because of that years of experience of quizzing and then of course my background journalism and that really helped.
00:06:40
Speaker
But I also had a background in history. I have an MA in history. So I was not really somebody who had never studied history in college and the university. So these three things helped really. So even though I'm not a professional academic historian, like I don't teach at the university, I don't have a PhD so far, but I still had this background in history. So it was not something that was unfamiliar to me.
00:07:08
Speaker
So these Akbar had studied in college and university. Yes, the scope was much narrower back then because now I was writing a book entirely on Akbar back then. He was just one of the chapters of all the characters that he studied.
00:07:23
Speaker
And also, academic history is a bit different from the kind of history that I have written. For instance, the focus is more on systems and processes than individuals. So you see individuals as products of systems and processes, not as shapers and movers of
00:07:41
Speaker
systems and processes themselves. So that was really a challenge when I was writing a book on Albert. So I was aware that maybe this is not a very academic approach, but at the same time, I was trying to be absolutely sure that I don't violate any academic tenets in the process.
00:08:00
Speaker
that I don't say things that I cannot support, that I don't say things that the academia cannot verify, because then your product becomes a work of fantasy. And I did not want that to happen. So I was trying my level best to keep it entirely grounded in scholarship that exists already.
00:08:18
Speaker
on new researchers as well plus my own understanding and own observations because I studied the primary sources very close and because I was a quizzer and I knew different things so the moment I started reading these sources I could figure out that hey okay this is similar to something I have seen in some other part of the world in some other history so and accordingly I could make those connects just to give you an example I have talked about
00:08:44
Speaker
various armies and various generals at different points in time crossing flooded rivers. So you have Alexander of Macedon who crosses the river and catches the army of Porus by surprise. The river was flooded at that time. It was raining. So he does that and he surprises the enemy. The same thing is done by Badamsar when he's fighting Albar's enemies. You know, and Humayun is still alive. He's the emperor and Albar is just a governor of
00:09:11
Speaker
one province of Punjab. And Bairam Khan crosses a flooded river and catches the Afghan army by surprise. And the Mughals win that stunning engagement. Akbar does that again, you know, when he is the emperor. And you see that, you know, Ahmad Shah of Dali does the same thing. You know, he surprises the Marathas at Panipat in 1761 because the Marathas had gone ahead towards Kurukshetra.
00:09:34
Speaker
They thought that because the river is flooded and they cannot cross it, Abdali cannot cross it either. But Abdali actually crosses the river and catches them by surprise. So I could spot these different threads and these trends in history. So the moment I was writing about Akbar and these episodes, I could connect it with other incidents. So being a quizzer really helped. Now being a journalist helped because I was commenting on the present as well. And as you see that the book has originated from
00:10:03
Speaker
a political incident. So therefore, a lot of politics had to be there as well. So by being a journalist, and because I've been writing all these stories over the years, and I've been handling the different stories I had been bringing out in addition of the times in India. So being familiar with all that, it was perhaps a bit easier for me to make those comments, because I could see things as very Shahin Shah, like functioning in our present leaders. So that way I could make
00:10:32
Speaker
or bring all these threads together. So I've been really lucky that so far all the academic reviews have been positive. The rigor in the research is so palpable. I think that there's some 18 pages of just the bibliography in the book which is commendable and to be able to pull all of this off with a day job and everything else that you're interested in is even more commendable. I think we've
00:10:55
Speaker
delve a lot into your journey while writing this book and you know what went into it. So why Akbar and why him as this figure which clearly cuts through your book, if I may call it a nationalist
00:11:11
Speaker
statesman and why the particular thread of tying it back to the present in the context of the person. The concept of bazaar history, if I may call it bazaar history, now propagated through WhatsApp messages. How do you reconcile the bazaar history with the academic journey you
How Myths Shape Historical Understanding
00:11:29
Speaker
took? How do you put the man in this picture and what does Akbar the figure mean to you and mean to what you perceive India to be?
00:11:37
Speaker
So you see, as you said, bazaar history also shapes our understanding of historical character. So most of the time, your minds are pretty much made up before you enter the education system or let's say you go to college, you read about the Mughals, but by then you already have heard about the Mughals from your parents or from other elders family who may have a distinct view about the past.
00:12:03
Speaker
In India, I think what is happening right now, it's very easy to blame on the WhatsApp forwards, but we need to understand that certain prejudices have always remained. For instance, the complaint that is made, and that's a very valid complaint as well, when people say that our history is very Mughal-centric, very North India-centric. This is absolutely true because you don't have enough emphasis laid on histories of other parts of the country. Like, for instance, we know about the Cholas because they were part of our
00:12:31
Speaker
But we don't know about the cholas in greater detail like we do about the Mughals. Similarly, we know about the sultans of Delhi, some of them, of course not all of them, but some sultans of Delhi are very familiar to us, maybe because of popular depiction of them. But we don't know much about the sultans of Gujarat.
00:12:50
Speaker
or the sultans of the Deccan but unfortunately when we make that complaint we really confine it to the Bhugas we don't see that you know it has always been these north Indian empires that are talked about the most so you talk about Harshwada so let's say the so-called Hindu period you know before the coming of Islam
00:13:07
Speaker
who are the dynasties or the empires that we talk about, the Muslim warriors. Again, a North India-centric empire ruled from Magat. We look at Harsh Vardhan, again, a North India-centric empire who ruled from Kanoj, and so on. So the Guptas, again, a North India-centric empire. So this focus has always been on North India. So when we pick up gossip, and that's why in our families, we have, or at least I have, or other elders, the depiction of the Mughals was never really negative.
00:13:34
Speaker
They will say certain things which don't make sense to you at that time, but now of course they do because you see that they had a very different sort of prejudiced understanding of history. So that's your bazaar core, that's how it shapes your approach. The problem
00:13:49
Speaker
with these characters is that different people perceive them differently. Now, my book has been read by different people and different people have understood Albar differently, even though it's the same book that I have written. And the message that has gone out has been very different to different sorts of people. So for the troll, it's like a glorious depiction of Albar.
00:14:12
Speaker
It's a so-called whitewashing of his quote-unquote genocidal crimes. So I keep getting accused of whitewashing history and all that. But at the same time, you have, as you mentioned, you have got a very different understanding from my book. So that understanding is very different. It differs from person to person.
00:14:33
Speaker
So, for me, Akbar was this mythical figure till the time I started researching for my book. He has, even though there have been much criticism about Akbar and some of his actions, for instance, the conquest of Chittor, which was by bloody, but by and large, even the Hindu nationalists.
00:14:52
Speaker
Don't take on Akbar head-on because they know that after some point the propaganda will not work because the depiction of Akbar is by and large very positive, even in bazaar circles. It's easier to vilify or enslave. It's much more difficult to do that with Akbar.
00:15:09
Speaker
Akbar was a very mythical sort of a figure for me. Even though I had studied him in college, I had this very close association, I had mentioned that in the intro of my book that Akbar was somebody who had never lost a battle. Someone like him was quite an inspiration for someone like me who was not yet 20 and this Kargil war had happened.
00:15:30
Speaker
There was a lot of patriotism and nationalist fervor back then. So I was still in school at that time. So my introduction to Akbar had just begun at that time. And this whole war happened. And then you read about somebody who never lost a war. So for somebody like me who was always interested in the military, it was quite something. So Akbar became a hero almost instantly.
00:15:55
Speaker
And by and large, you know, as I studied him in the university later, different facets of him, but then the image was quite positive, but of course there were more nuances now. So I knew about his religious policy, about his Rajput policy and so on. So the syllabus was pretty much structured that way. So it gives you a very structured view of Akbar and the Bhagavas. Anything beyond that requires a deeper engagement.
00:16:21
Speaker
which happened in my case when I started writing this book. And I realized that some of the things, some of the perceptions that I had about Akbar was actually quite different. So Akbar starts off as a very unremarkable ruler. So he's just like others in his family or before him.
00:16:39
Speaker
So he's guided by others. We have the regency of Badam Khan. Badam Khan is calling the shots. Then for a very brief period, you had people like Shambhirat Khan, Mahamanga and his son, Adham Khan, Munam Khan. So these are the people who are pulling the strings after that for a while. And till the time, of course, five years later, Akbar emerges.
00:17:01
Speaker
as an independent king and somebody who is free of all influences. He's no longer a puppet of anyone. But in these four, five years that you see that he is very pretty unremarkable as a ruler. So, you know, Abul Fazal is his biographer, or should we say, hagiographer. So he says things about the emperor that he was behind the base.
00:17:22
Speaker
I like that expression, he was behind the veil because his personality had not been, it had not matured, it had not been exposed. So people saw him through barang fan and all these others. Now, when I was in college, the second phase, which is when Mahamanga and others, you know, they are calling the shots, that is described in a rather offensive manner as a petticoat government because we have a woman who is pulling straight. So I thought that was pretty offensive, you know.
00:17:49
Speaker
So you see that the understanding, the modern understanding has also changed for over 15 years, 10-15 years when I was a student to now being an author.
00:18:02
Speaker
that understanding had changed and so after that, after this brief phase, we see that Akbar starts taking decisions on his own and he does things which are very cruel and by the same time he also shows this very receptive mind that he goes to Mathura on a hunt. He sees that there are a lot of pilgrims, Hindu pilgrims who are coming because Mathura and Vrindavan are still very holy cities for the Hindus because
00:18:31
Speaker
of their association with Lord Krishna. And Adpar goes there on a hand and he sees that there are devotees who have come from different parts of the country and they are paying a tax to the mobile empire. And so he asks them, why are you paying money? And they say that, you know, we have always paid this money to your government and to governments that came before you. So we have to pay a tax to you so that we can worship our gods and see
00:18:59
Speaker
the holy places associated with them. So Adbar, he walks back. He does not write back. He walks back, okay, comes back to Agra and announces the scrapping of that tax, the pilgrimage tax. And a year later, this was 1563. In 1564, he announces the scrapping of Zazia, so which every non-Muslim had to pay to a Muslim state.
00:19:30
Speaker
So you see that before the coming of the Mughals, even the Mughal state was also perceived to be a Muslim state. But the dynasty that they toppled, or the state that they toppled, the Delhi Sultan, that was also understood as a Muslim state. Because you had all these taxes, and then you had the ulema who would decide things in terms of the sharia. Even the sultans always had a very tenuous relationship with the ulema because no sultan could actually conform to the tenets of Islam.
00:19:59
Speaker
There would always be occasions when all those sharia will be violated or will not be followed. That's a different debate. I'm not getting into that. But the fact that a Muslim king for the first time decided to scrap these taxes, and this was before he married these Hindu women, I think that showed a very receptive mind that he was willing to take certain things, do certain things, which would help
00:20:28
Speaker
his people or help his subjects. So that he started to look at the people he was ruling as his own people. So I think we see a start in that. But at the same time, he was also doing other kinds of things like, you know, he was persecuting the Mahathivis who are Muslims. But again, they were not seen to be, you know, the true worshippers. And he was also pretty much cold to the shearers.
00:20:55
Speaker
And there were instances when he persecutes, or at least one instance, when he digs out, he orders the excavation of a grave of a prominent Shia Sufi mystic, was buried at the Dargah of Azad Rizamuddin. So he orders that body to be excavated, that remains to be excavated and thrown into the river. So this is also Akbar.
00:21:24
Speaker
And you have this other side of Akbar where he is showing a very tolerant approach and he is keeping people together, trying to bring everyone together. So I have explained this as the evolution of a personality. So he was growing, he was not a static personality and that makes him very human. So the mythical Akbar, he appeared in front of me in his different shapes.
00:21:51
Speaker
And it was remarkable, I thought, that somebody who was doing this, he was also doing that at the same time. That's how rulers are. And that's how 16th century rulers were like. Because for the British, you talk about Queen Elizabeth I. We are very proud of the fact that there was a woman who held the Tudor dynasty. And under whose reign the Sir Francis Drake led the Navy, the Royal Navy, defeated
00:22:18
Speaker
the Spanish Armada, so in terms of conquest alone, Elizabeth I comes out as a great queen, so the British are really proud of that. And you see that, you know, apart from doing this, she was also persecuting the Catholics. So that's how historical characters are, you know, so you have to accept them with their shades of grey, and certain modern standards do not apply there. So today, if you say things that are insensitive to
00:22:47
Speaker
SA feminists or the LGBTQ plus people, then you would be immediately branded a bigot. But back then those sensibilities did not exist. So we have to keep in mind that as well. So Akbar appeared in these different shades and I found all of that quite fascinating because now he was a very human being, a man with his failings, with his frailties, with his strengths as well.
00:23:12
Speaker
So he would unnecessarily put his own life in peril while doing certain things. There's constantly to be accepted and to be seen as someone who was not a Mlechcha, Mlechcha means the savage or the foreigner, who is outside the Hindu Varna system. So until the time of Akbar, Muslim kings were referred to as Mlechchas. From Akbar onwards, we see that that has changed.
00:23:41
Speaker
So to be able to come to a point where he was now seen as king by even Hindus, I thought was quite remarkable. And I have given this example earlier as well. There was somebody called Banarsi Das who was a merchant and later on he produces some scholarship in the time of Jangir. Banarsi Das was a merchant in Alba's empire who had never seen the emperor.
00:24:10
Speaker
But he was very happy that, you know, Akbar was his emperor. So he was a Hindu, a Shimbha. So when Akbar died, this man, he hears the news and he was coming down the stairs and he has a fall. He injures himself badly. And then he says that, you know, I always had my faith in Lord Shiva. But if Lord Shiva cannot protect, could not protect my emperor, what God is he? So, you know, that is the kind of sentiment that Hindus in Akbar's empire
00:24:39
Speaker
had for him. So I thought that was quite remarkable for me, but at the same time you had so much opposition. So now the whole understanding of Akbar gets reduced to either his abolition of Zazia or his conflict with Mewar, with Ram Maharana Pratap especially, or his marriages to these Hindu women. But all of that together makes Akbar. So I was trying to do
00:25:06
Speaker
And like you said, and my book starts with 1941. So you have somebody called Adi Munshi from Bombay writing a letter to the editor of the Times of India. And he says that Akbar was the greatest Indian nationalist of all time. Now, that was his modern understanding of Akbar. So Akbar was not a nationalist. The concept of a nation did not exist. Nationalism was quite alien, not just in India, but even in Europe.
00:25:36
Speaker
So he was not a nationalist, nor was he a secular, nor was he a liberal. So these are all modern tags that we have applied.
Modern Misinterpretations of Akbar's Legacy
00:25:45
Speaker
And sadly, some commentators have also called him an anti-national now, which I think is even funnier. But I think Akbar appeared to me in different shades, and I thought that was lovely. So that was pretty much what I have achieved personally
00:26:02
Speaker
that I have come out of it more well informed about our work and he is no longer that mythical figure in front of me. So I was in a bit of a trance when I was hearing you speak about the section till I woke up and I was like
00:26:19
Speaker
uh wow that was amazing and you know a lot of these things are things i wanted to ask you about which is obviously the pilgrimage tax fees and this um the whole attention with the Rajput for instance and and his policy there and and we began this podcast with me saying that you know he was like a nationalist statesman
00:26:41
Speaker
but you're right the concept of a nation does not exist right or the lens with which i ascribe that what anyone else does and even laughable things like i'd say an anti-national is us looking at it from you know our 21st century lens right and and that doesn't hold and it's so fascinating but i think even with removing those objectives out of the picture that whole feeling of
00:27:06
Speaker
having read about a statesman and having read about someone who married both physical and moral courage in leadership um in this sense you know my next question to you money is um and after this very very intense discussion is a little light-hearted what do you think personally huh and and you mentioned about the kind of personal impact that writing this book and the demystification of Akbar has been for you
00:27:33
Speaker
But what do you think about the depiction but in popular culture, whether it's Pithiraj Kapoor or Hrithik Roshan?
Akbar in Film: Historical Accuracy?
00:27:41
Speaker
I think I'm actually quite fascinated by both depictions because, you know, Mughal-e-Azam is a movie that I watched on TV as a child. And when I was in the university at that time, it was re-released in a colored form.
00:27:59
Speaker
So the colorization of the movie had happened. It was re-released with theaters. So I was fortunate enough to go to a theater and watch it on the large screen. And the colors were stunning. You don't realize the richness of the sets or of the costumes until you see that on the big screen in color. So the same movie appeared in a very different way in front of me. So I was completely mesmerized.
00:28:25
Speaker
So and that sort of a feeling also happened again, though to a much lesser extent with Jodha Akbar. Jodha Akbar, Hrithik Roshan for me was a bit difficult to accept as Akbar because I already had this rich image of Prithuraj Kapoor. So when you mention Akbar even today, it's the face of Prithuraj Kapoor that comes to my face. But then Hrithik Roshan was very different from
00:28:55
Speaker
That was my view till 2015-2016. Now I see it very differently. Now I think I like Hrithik Roshan as Akbar because the kind of vilification that has happened ever since, I don't think it is possible anymore for any film director in India to make a movie which glorifies a Muslim king or at least projects him in positive light. It is no longer possible and that's the sad realization that I have had
00:29:23
Speaker
over the last six years. Now, let's take out the history part of these movies. These were stunningly rich movies, but the moment you bring history into it, then you realize that, okay, these are way off the mark. Mughal-e-Azam, especially, was way off the mark. The way it showed Akbar as this family patriarch who has very strong class consciousness
00:29:51
Speaker
that he's not going to allow his son to marry a dancing woman. When the reality is completely opposite, so many Mughal emperors married dancing women. So you had Jahad Arshad, who was in love with somebody called Emtiazmihal, a dancing woman who was given the glorious name of Emtiazmihal. You had Batsha Mohamad Shah, who is also called Mohamad Shah and Gila. He was in love with another dancing woman.
00:30:22
Speaker
and who became known as Otziya Bhelum after marriage. And she built this huge garden, which rivaled the older garden of Johanna Bhelum, the Tisa Zari Bagh. She built Otziya Bagh as a rival and only one structure remains. But if you see the ostential sketch made by an English traveller, which exists in the British library today, you would find that it was a remarkable place. At least the palace was so, so magnificent.
00:30:49
Speaker
in the sketch. But if you go there, you won't realize the glory of that anymore because it was reduced to an English landscape garden from being a Mughal fruit garden. So just to give you this example that there were many Mughal emperors who had dalliances with dancing women or who ended up marrying dancing women or the British would offensively refer to them as the notch girls.
00:31:19
Speaker
So the Mughals did not have that. The moment you see that in Mughal-yazam, you realize that, OK, this is a very British-influenced understanding of the past. Because see, many of the things that we have, many of the cultural abhorrences that we have today are a direct legacy of the British Raj. The British brought their Victorian sensibilities
00:31:46
Speaker
And suddenly courtesans, dancing women were seen as bad elements of the society. So their depiction changed in cultural, the concept of the Tawayev. From being a positive woman in Mughal times, they suddenly became very negative, portrayed as prostitutes.
00:32:07
Speaker
So, and then, of course, after that, that sensibility was carried forward, even during the freedom movement, a great leaders of the freedom struggle, even though they were very enlightened in many ways, but they also carried forward the same colonial British prejudices. So they were also products of Victorian and Edwardian societies, but they had these prejudices at the same time. So you see that in Hokule Aza, that's very
00:32:36
Speaker
colonial phenomenon or post-colonial India colonial and post-colonial India that you know you look at people from a class angle so Akbar talking very simply about an arkali woman who is you know she's referred to as blondie who's like a dancing woman it's a very offensive term actually but
00:33:02
Speaker
So you see that Akbar doing in this, indulging in this class prejudice, which the real Akbar may not have done because that consciousness were not there at that time. So we also have to understand that when you talk about bloodshed in the Mughal family, there was no rule of primogeniture. So not just princes, but even slaves
00:33:27
Speaker
who were Muslims were entitled to kingship. So you just had to be the able man, and you could be a king or a sultan. This is not just about the Mughals, but also all other sultans that we have seen. There were several slave sultans that we must have heard. The slave dynasties was quite well known. The Mamluks, Qutbuddin Aibok, Yasir bin Balban, all these people. And there were slaves. And you see many African sultans
00:33:56
Speaker
Four of them in quick succession. These were Hapshi Sultan. Hapshi again is today a pejorative word which is used for black Africans. But at that time, it was a term to refer to Abyssinians, Ethiopia. Al-Habsh, that's how that region was called. So that's why Hapshi. And you had many of these people who occupied very important positions.
00:34:23
Speaker
They were being kingmakers in the history of India. Four of them were sultans in Bengal, the hapshi sultana. You don't realize all that if you see the depiction of Akbar or that theater. So if you see that movie, Raziya Suttan, my god, that is completely removed from history. Not just the costumes that they wear, but also the content. It's very different. The same goes with the Bhagavas. So Akbar comes off as this family patriarch.
00:34:53
Speaker
who has these class prejudices, who hates Anarkali just because she is a woman from a humble background. And he will not let his son marry. So the real rebellion of Jahangir, which happens in our first lifetime, that is depicted as one being of love. So he fights for his woman. That's why he rebels against his father's authority. Now, if you take out all of that aside, it's a very rich movie. It's a delightful movie. I still watch it every time it is aired.
00:35:22
Speaker
And both my wife and I, we love the way Madhu Bala delivers her dialogues. So that's the kind of dialogues which gives me goosebumps. So you don't hear that richness in Jodha Akbar because the dialogue writing is different now. The artist's name of Urdu is very different now.
00:35:51
Speaker
But again, in terms of historical accuracy, Jodhagbar was more accurate than Mughal-yazam. And Mughal-yazam showed both Jodhabai and Anarkali. Jodhagbar showed only Jodhabai. So there was nobody called Jodhabai. But had one Rajput wife. He had more Rajput wife. But the first Rajput wife was somebody who may have been called Khabai or Hirkanwar. Who was a princess of Amer, a Kachwaha woman.
00:36:20
Speaker
But in both these movies, she is shown as the only wife of Akbar. In reality, this Rajput wife was the fourth wife of Akbar. He had married three others before then, and he would marry more after them as well. So if you look for history in these two movies,
00:36:41
Speaker
But yes, by analysing the chronology is pretty much okay in Jodhana Akbar and some of the characters are fascinating as well. But then Akbar's equation with his mother is shown in rather poor light. He is shown as to be more closer to Mahamanga. When the real Akbar actually abused Adham Khan, called him Bachai Lada. When he kills Chamshudin of the Khan, Abul Fazal says that, you know, Akbar in a fit of rage, he referred to him as Bachai Lada. Bachai Lada in Farsi means son of a bitch.
00:37:11
Speaker
So that is, by doing that, he's also abusing Mahamanga. And here he is very chaste Urdu speaking, which is when Jodha or the Rajput characters will speak in Hindi and all the others will speak in Urdu, the Muslims will speak Urdu, the Hindus will speak in Hindi. So this is the stereotype that we are living with.
00:37:34
Speaker
And he would find that they have been even more disgusting. I'm using the word disgusting because they were actually quite disgusting. I have given examples.
00:37:43
Speaker
There's this seveal which was supposed to be a biopic of Maharana Pratap. There, you know, history was completely twisted where Akbar and Pratap were childhood adversities. So they meet in childhood where Akbar is constantly trying to seduce while being a teenager.
00:38:06
Speaker
a little girl who is involved in the love triangle already with the young pratap, okay, somebody called Lal Kanwar. So, and then, you know, the way Akbar, sorry, the young pratap comes and defeats Akbar's purpose, you know. He stops a Hindu girl from being seduced by a Muslim teenager who is also the emperor.
00:38:33
Speaker
Now, that is pretty much in tune with the politics of our time. So Jodha Akbar was still a very positive depiction, but now it's no longer possible. And you would find that increasingly, you find increasingly there'll be similar depictions of Muslim characters, not just Akbar, but of Muslim characters of these evil-minded, bad, sinister people who are forever plotting, not just the men, but even the women.
00:39:02
Speaker
So I think that's the sad reality. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I am going to head into our last section, Mani, where I'm going to ask you snappy questions. And you just tell me what is off the top of your head. So I'm going to start. Ebooks or paperbacks? Paperbacks. Quizzing or journalism? Both, I would say. Reading or writing? Reading. The past or the present?
00:39:30
Speaker
The present, to live for sure, but the past is study. The academic history of Akbar or the bazaar history of Akbar? Academic, any day. One change in the history curriculum you would like to see in this country? Get more authentic historians to write them and not fiction authors. Nowadays, that is a trend to get, you know, to rewrite history. Of course, rewriting is always fun, but of course that has to be done by competent professional historians.
Recommended Reading: Nehru's Discovery of India
00:39:58
Speaker
not lay people who have a different understanding of history. What's your favorite fictional book? I think there have been several actually. Bothering Heights is like the all-time favorite. What's your favorite non-fiction book? My most favorite non-fiction book
00:40:16
Speaker
right now is India and the Persianate Age by Richard Eton. Who's your favorite historical figure excluding Agpat? Tipu Sultan and Nabab Heder Ali, both father and son. And lastly, what's one reading recommendation that you would like to leave the listeners with that they should really read to get a better sense of the nation? Well, I would say this is a tough question. I would say
00:40:41
Speaker
Nehru's Discovery of India is a very good book to read. If you are patriotic and you are thinking about building a decent nation, rebuilding the nation, I think I would recommend that for a layreader, for specialists. Of course, the recommendation would be a bit different, but I think for your audience, I would recommend this. Please read Nehru's Discovery of India.
00:41:06
Speaker
Mani Mukdaur is on Twitter as the physical guy. Do not forget to follow him. You can also order his book from any independent bookstore or from Amazon. Do not forget to tune into us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Ghana, and HT Smartcuts.