I have been
told in the past, that this blog is a waste of time, given my
inclination to prattle on about things that don’t matter. That is all set to
change now, as the blog turns 3, with me being committed to further our (you and me, dear reader) knowledge
base with strictly fact based posts. Read on to learn more about the Mughals.
Delhi is the coolest city EVER
For close to two years, I passed the Old Fort every day while
on my way to work. Without ever consciously registering that it was the same
fort outside which, Hemu the military commander of the Suri Dynasty and the
winner of 22 consecutive battles, was publicly hanged after the loss of the
Second Battle of Panipat.
The Red Fort, which you pass every other weekend to get to
the Daryaganj book bazaar is where the Mughal dynasty was brutally finished by
the British.
Todar Mal road and Bhagwan Das road (near Mandi House, where
you occasionally go to watch a play or eat at Triveni) are named after Akbar’s
revenue officer and brother-in-law respectively. And it is not inconceivable
that back in the day, they gallivanted across those very bits of land on
horseback.
Of course, the Sanghis may want to interrupt at this point,
abuse the Mughals and the other Muslim rulers (invaders, happy?) of medieval
India, and talk about how Delhi was first Indraprastha, the seat of the Pandavas.
Any which way, in your face, you colonial upstart, Bombay!
Professional rivalries were as
cutthroat then as today (maybe just more literally so)
Are you pissed at that senior who usurped all the credit for
work you did? Or the junior who managed to ingratiate herself in front of
the boss? Spare a thought then for Akbar’s wazir, who was back-stabbed (and I
can’t stress this enough-literally so)
by the Emperor’s foster brother Adham Khan, when Akbar refused to promote him.
(Score for meritocracy, though.)
Their forms of capital punishment would
put the Indonesians, firing squads and all, to shame
To punish Adham Khan for murdering his employee-the wazir, Akbar had Khan taken to the parapet of the Agra Fort and pushed from there. He died.
Was Akbar the dream boss (for the late wazir at least) or
what?
There was no trade-off between chasing
passions and having a comfortable bank balance
If you are still not convinced about Akbar’s greatness, you
will be when I tell you that his civil servants (mansabdars) were the highest
paid professionals in the world.
And I bet you already know about his navratnas- consisting of
singers, writers and jesters who also enjoyed high mansabs (ranks) and
attendant privileges.
The political leaders seem to have
stellar economic sense
Sher Shah Suri imposed only two taxes on goods-one, an ‘import
duty’ when the good entered his territory through Bengal or the North west, and
second, at the time of the sale. Specifically, no taxes were imposed on inter-state movement
of goods. To think, close to 500 years later, our leaders are still grappling
with issues of establishing a common market by subsuming the entry tax, Central
sales tax and octroi within the GST.
They were also as hypocritical as our
present ones
Akbar (yes, him again) tried to bring in social reform by
encouraging monogamy. A bit rich, coming from a man who used marriage as a tool
of foreign policy, don’t you think? Then again, reminiscent of present day sons
of the soil who insist on the adoption of vernacular languages as medium of
instruction in government schools but send their own children to private
schools, teaching in English.
Karma is a bitch You reap what you sow
Shah Jahan, who had revolted against his sick, dying father
to gain power had to taste his own medicine towards his last years. In fact, his
son, Aurangzeb, went one step further, imprisoning Shah Jahaan for eight years
within the Agra Fort, in his quest to become the emperor.
Don’t be stoned all the time
The you-reap-what-you-sow argument cannot be used for Humayun
who-bless his soul-did everything by the book. Not for him, his daddy’s
decadent practices of making mountains of skulls of the defeated enemy’s
soldiers, just for kicks. Not for him, his great-great-grandson’s power grab by
killing his own siblings. In fact, he let his brother Kamran, take over Kabul,
Kandahar, and Peshawar. He lost Gujarat and Malwa because of the idiocy of
another sibling. He rushed to protect the kingdoms of others when sent Rakhis by widows
of erstwhile opponents. Yet, after all this, after once losing his empire to
Sher Shah, and then winning it all back, he died, not as a warrior in the
battlefield or at the hands of a
scheming son/ underling, but due to a fall from the first floor of his library.
I can only blame opium (since he probably didn’t have access to LSD).
Religion will always be used for
furthering political ambitions
Humayun inherited his drug habit from his father Babur, who by
all accounts was a party animal. Yet when it came to motivating his troops for
the battle against Rana Sanga at Khanwa, he used religion. He called the battle
‘jihad’, throwing out his treasured stocks of alcohol to prove his religious fervour
to his soldiers.
Guess who won the
battle?
