Eight decades after Independence, the present rulers are rewriting the history of India to suit their own political preferences, particularly with the intention of portraying Mughal rule as barbaric: a period in which rulers governed ruthlessly, destroyed temples, plundered India’s wealth, and forcibly converted local populations.
Before discussing Mughal rule in India and its impact on the lives of Indians, it is worth looking briefly at the evolution of historical writing in India. Strangely, for nearly four thousand years of civilization, down to the arrival of Muslims in India in the eighth century AD, India produced very few texts that can be described as historical works in the modern sense. Kashmir was an important exception, where a tradition of historical writing emerged. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, written in the 12th century, stands “unique as the only attempt at true history in the whole of surviving Sanskrit literature.” In addition, there is Bana’s important historical biography, Harshacharita.
It was with the arrival of Muslim travellers, historians and, at times, rulers themselves that the systematic recording of political and social events became more widespread. These accounts represented an important development in the writing of Indian history, as they provided detailed records of contemporary events.
Jagdish Narayan Sarkar writes in his book History of History Writing in Medieval India: “The advent of the Muslims and the establishment of Turkish rule in India constituted a seminal age in Indian history. The Muslims introduced fairly well-developed ideas of historiography in India’s intellectual history.” Sisirkumar Mitra writes in The Vision of India: “The appreciation of the religion and culture of the Hindus by the Arabic and Persian scholars shows the breadth of their outlook and the sympathy and care with which they tried to understand things Indian… These revealing utterances of the Muslim scholars show how deep was their insight into Hindu life and thought and how correct was their understanding of the Hindu character. They only can build up unity who can appreciate the culture of others as well as they do their own, for it is on mutual understanding alone that unity can thrive.”
In any case, the history of Mughal India was not written by Muslims alone. Europeans and Indian historians also contributed to it. Its sources include eyewitness accounts, chronicles, monuments, inscriptions, coins and other material evidence. To reduce this complex body of evidence to a single communal narrative is therefore misleading.
Mughal rule began on April 21, 1526, when Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat. Babur described the victory in his memoir, the Baburnama: “I placed my foot in the stirrup of resolution and my hands on the reins of confidence in God and marched against Sultan Ibrahim… 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.”
Yet Babur’s approach to governing his new dominion cannot simply be characterized as religiously intolerant. In his instructions to his son Humayun, often referred to as Babur’s will, he advised him to govern a country of diverse faiths with justice and restraint. He urged Humayun to respect different religions, avoid the slaughter of cows, and refrain from desecrating temples and other places of worship. These instructions are reproduced in R. Nath’s India as Seen by Babur.
Babur’s successors, though by no means uniformly tolerant in every period or circumstance, continued a complex tradition of accommodation. According to Dr. Henny Senderin in 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 contributed to the gradual cultural interaction and integration of Hindus and Muslims. It was also facilitated, at various times, by the personal attitudes of Mughal rulers, who incorporated or tolerated Hindu customs at court, including jharoka darshan, rakhi bandhan, Deepawali celebrations and tuladana, the ceremonial weighing of the ruler against gold and precious stones. Mughal rulers also visited Hindu saints and maintained relationships with Hindu religious figures.
In this respect, one of the most enduring achievements of the Mughal period was the formation of a composite culture. Its influence has lasted for centuries and is still reflected in what is broadly described as “Mughlai” culture—in language, literature, art, architecture, dress, food and manners.
The political structure of the Mughal Empire, even at its height, was more hierarchical than uniformly centralized. Power existed at several levels, and much of it was exercised locally rather than directly by the imperial state. Although Mughal emperors achieved a remarkable degree of political supremacy across large parts of the subcontinent, local Hindu rajas, zamindars, chiefs and village authorities retained considerable power. A local warrior could defeat neighbouring rivals, collect revenue and seek recognition from the imperial court as a raja. The emperor’s authority provided legitimacy, while local rulers continued to exercise substantial authority on the ground.
Perhaps one of the most lasting Mughal influences was in administration. The Mughals developed an elaborate system of governance, with administrative institutions, concepts, titles, ceremonial practices and modes of revenue collection that influenced both their contemporaries and later regimes. Local rulers and nobility adopted many of these practices, as did the Marathas, who fought against Mughal political domination. The British subsequently incorporated and modified several institutional practices that had evolved under earlier Indian regimes, including the Mughals. Independent India, too, inherited aspects of this administrative legacy.
Persian, the language of the Mughal court, became an important administrative and judicial language across much of the subcontinent. It was also adopted at the courts of Hindu rulers and became a language of prestige among sections of the Hindu nobility and ministerial classes. Its interaction with local languages had a profound linguistic impact.
The cultural interaction between Persian, Turkish and Indian vernaculars contributed to the development of Urdu. The word “Urdu” derives from the Turkic ordu, meaning army or camp, reflecting one of the environments in which linguistic interaction took place. Over time, Urdu developed into one of the great literary languages of the subcontinent. Despite the predominance of Hindi in post-Independence India, Urdu continues to enjoy a significant cultural presence, particularly in poetry, literature, music and cinema. Its influence is conspicuous in the songs and dialogues of Indian films and remains deeply embedded in popular culture.
The Mughal contribution to painting and calligraphy was equally significant. Beginning particularly under Akbar, interaction between Mughal and Rajput traditions produced a distinctive artistic synthesis. Mughal ateliers developed a refined school of miniature painting characterized by delicate lines, detailed compositions and sophisticated use of colour. The paintings often depicted royalty, nobles and courtly life, and the artistic exchange between Mughal and Hindu traditions became an important feature of the period.
Architecture, too, underwent a remarkable transformation. Mughal architecture evolved from early Persian influences, visible in structures such as Humayun’s Tomb, through the Indo-Islamic architectural synthesis of Akbar’s reign and eventually to the extraordinary monument represented by the Taj Mahal. The Mughal forts and palaces at Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri also incorporated elements derived from indigenous architectural traditions. Carved beams, brackets, columns and other decorative features were combined with Persian and Central Asian forms to create a distinctive Mughal architectural vocabulary.
According to historian Percival Spear in A History of India, the Mughals regarded India as a political and geographical whole. Their concept of empire was an all-India one. Consequently, they did not necessarily regard the extension of imperial power over Rajput, Maratha and other regional kingdoms as aggression in the modern national sense, but as the restoration or consolidation of political unity under a single sovereign. Whether one accepts that imperial justification or not, it helps explain the political logic of Mughal expansion.
The Mughal emperors eventually became powerful symbols of sovereignty and, for long periods, served as a unifying political force across much of the subcontinent. The enduring symbolic authority of the dynasty was demonstrated dramatically during the uprising of 1857. Indians from different backgrounds rallied, at least symbolically, around the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, even though by then he possessed little effective political power.
History, however, is rarely as simple as either glorification or condemnation. The Mughal Empire was marked by conquest, political intrigue, warfare, taxation and episodes of religious intolerance, just as it was marked by administrative innovation, cultural exchange, artistic achievement and political accommodation. Different emperors followed different policies, and their record cannot honestly be reduced to either a golden age or an age of barbarism.
The danger today lies in selectively remembering only one side. If temples destroyed during periods of conflict are presented as proof of an exclusively religiously motivated Mughal policy, while the participation of Hindus in the Mughal administration, military and nobility is ignored, history becomes propaganda. Conversely, portraying the Mughal period as uniformly tolerant and harmonious would be equally misleading.
India’s history belongs to all Indians. It cannot be rewritten to flatter the political preferences of the present, nor should the crimes or achievements of historical rulers be judged through simplistic communal categories. The task of history is not to manufacture heroes and villains for contemporary politics, but to understand the complexities of the past. If we genuinely wish to preserve India’s unity, we must resist the temptation to rewrite its history according to the demands of the present.
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*Contact: osman_sher@yahoo.com
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