The Last Spring – The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals

Abraham Eraly,

Viking, 1997

The book begins with a question posed by Akbar to Birbal.  Akbar asks, Tell me, if you please, what is the greatest consolation that man has in this world?  Birbal answers, Ah Sire!  It is when a father finds himself embraced by his son.  One revelation of this mammoth exercise of Eraly is that Akbar and the succeeding Mughals would be deprived of this consolation as the sons – and brothers  - schemed against their fathers and  revolted against them in bloody battles.  


This exhaustive study of the lives of Mughals must remove some of the romantic notions which have come to be associated with them.  India was hopelessly divided that it was easy prey to Babur, the man who established Mughal rule in India.  The Afghans led by Ibrahim Lodi and the Rajputs headed by Rana Sanga of Mewar offered fierce resistance.  He had to fight his way inch by inch.

The Afghan interlude was a fascinating period, which, if it had continued would have turned the destiny of India and the sub-continent upside down.  Sher Shah had admirable qualities of a ruler.  He was firmly committed to administrative reforms with eradication of corruption being the topmost.  He saw eradication of corruption as an issue of morality.  He built infrastructure, forts and caravanserais with one observer calling north India under Sher Shah the safest place in the world for the traveler.  But for an accidental explosion in the battle to take over Kalinjar,  Sher Shah could have changed the course of history.  Thus, Luck and destiny played grater roles in the restoration of Mughal dominion than their celebrated valor. 

Akbar’s many battles were not gentlemanly, as Chitor and Ranthambhor were conquered by terror. He did not pursue a path-breaking Hindu policy since other Muslim rulers too had Hindus in powerful positions. Even his  much acclaimed marriage of Rajput women for cementing political relations was not new.  In fact, he had to give the Rajputs their due place, even if under his tutelage. Like other Mughal emperors before and after him, he had to fight battles with his own son, Jehangir. 

Both Jehangir and Shah Jahan had more artistic sense than military virtues.  The empire did not expand an inch when they were in saddle.  Even the many forts built and gardens they put in place were done at great cost, extracted from the people by way of heavy taxes.  These forts gave the Mughal empire a look of grandeur, but it also concealed its weakness, already evident during this period. 

The real decline of the Mughals started because of the  mindless adventurism of Auranghzeb. He fought battles after battles in southern India for over 25 years trying to conquer the Shia Kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda and also to tame the Maratha warlord Shivaji. 

Aurangzeb had an excellent opportunity to shape an Indian nationhood.  He could have at least left behind  a less chaotic empire, forming an embryonic nation-state which could have gone on to experience a revolution of the kind that happened in America and France.  Even if this is far fetched, at least India could have repulsed British domination, avoiding all the consequence of colonialism and developed its own kind of nationalism.  Alas, that was not to be!  The rest, as they say, is history!

The Hindu Phenomenon – Girilal Jain, UBSPD  1994

Communalism – A Primer by Bipan Chandra, National Book Trust, 2008

These are two different books, espousing diametrically opposite view points on one of the most pressing issue of contemporary India, namely the question of Indian national identity.  Girilal Jain’s  little book published in 1994 was a defence of  the attempt at reinvention of the Hindu civilizational identity and its embracing. More particularly, Jain emphasises the need to embrace the country’s Kshatriya values.  Along the way, he points out how the country was enslaved at different times by the inability of its rulers to bring to the fore its Kshtriya values.

Jain refers to the inability of India to offer the kind of vigorous resistance to Mahmud Ghaznavi and subsequent invaders that was offered by Chandragupta Maurya against Alexander the Great. The reason, in his opinion was that political power had already moved down to the South as exemplified by the presence of Rashtrakuta, Satvahan, Chola and Vijaynagar empires. Perhaps this was also the reason why even the great Mughals could not fully conquer the South as they did the North. 

When did the Hindus begin the process the consolidation and self-affirmation after the traumatic invasion and subsequent conquest by the Muslim armies?  Early eighteenth century when Mughal empire collapsed and there was a stalemate when the British entered India.  The fact that the British did not come on a proselytizing enterprise also helped in this process.  In fact, Hinduism could come to terms with the Graeco-Roman heritage of western Christianity, which provided for a plurality in every sphere of human activity, a value close to the Hindu view of life whereas the same value system posed a challenge to Islam.

Partition, in the opinion of Jain did not affect this process of Hindu consolidation and affirmation and it provided the Hindus with a well-armed modern state of their own, which they did not have at any point of time in their History.  This echoes the cynical remark of  someone who noted that Partition of the sub-continent was perhaps the best  that could have happened to the Hindus as it got rid of a highly troublesome and problematic populace.

How would the phenomenon of ‘communalism’ of post-partition India fit in this narrative of Hindu evolution and assertion?  Jain views it essentially as difference in the conception of the Indian State by secularists and the Hindu religionists.  In the words of Jain, “the secularist-national position is that the Indian State embodies an ideal, and is there to serve it, that while it is a creature of the Constitution, it is above the people; that in our multi-religious society, there is no other choice.  In the Hindu view, the state has to be an expression of the Hindu ethos and personality.  Such a state cannot either discriminate against any religious group or seek to impose a uniform pattern on the inhabitants.”

This postulate  begs the question, what is intrinsic to Hindu civilization which prompts its intellectuals to assert that Hindus – and by derivation a ‘state expressing Hindu ethos and personality’ – would be non-discriminatory and protective of other religious followers?  Look at similar assumptions underlying the concept of the ‘Islamic State’ of our next door neighbour, Pakistan.  The Islamic State there was also projected to express Islamic ethos and personality and for this reason alone, non-discriminatory of minorities.  Look where it had travelled.  Leave alone its religious minorities, Pakistan has not been able to protect the sub-religious Islamic sects such as Shias and  Ahmadiyas.

While it is true that the secularist ideal of the Indian state  lies outside the religious  ethos  of its people,   for that reason alone it need not be divorced from the personality of the Indian people.  It is not an ideal to which the people of India cannot relate to and cannot uphold.  Even the Hindu religious notion of a personal god and the presence of diverse gods across castes, communities and even families encourage tolerance and forbearance of other communities, thus lending a helpful hand to the Indian State in upholding the ideal of non-discrimination.

While the book of Jain is provocative, “Communalism – A Primer” is a dull propagandist material which is also devoid of any kind of  analysis of what the left often  calls, ‘the ideology of communalism’.  There is nothing in this Primer which cannot be found in magazine such as “Frontline” and “Communalism Combat”.