A KING IN FULL
In Parvati Sharma’s biography of Akbar, we see him triumph in conflicts both military and ideological
The Mughals have been getting a bad press. There is the persistent clamour that they were foreigners and some were bigots to boot or that they so monopolise the medieval space that other deserving dynasties are ignored. But such is their hold on the Indian imagination that academics, popular historians and Bollywood producers alike stay willingly mesmerised.
Perhaps this is because the Mughals were avid recorders of their life and times, and enough survives in their chronicles of their frailties and flaws amidst great achievements that makes them human. Or perhaps it is that the story of the dynasty itself from its first faltering presence around Delhi and Agra to a mighty sub-continental empire and then its final sordid demise in Rangoon that has an inherent dramatic intensity that makes it irresistible. Or perhaps it is also because Akbar, the greatest of the Mughals, imparts to our medieval history a distinctive quality by initiating a debate about religion and politics that has not stopped resonating since.
He has attracted numerous modern biographers. Parvati Sharma’s book is one in a long list but has sufficient gravitas and depth to hold its own. Based on a careful reading of the translated primary sources and a diligent marshalling of a vast secondary literature, this is a sensitively written history of Akbar’s long reign. Sharma had authored a biography of Jahangir earlier and the current work skilfully navigates the reader through a more formative phase of the Mughal empire. With anecdotes and analysis alike, she depicts it well, imparting a granular feel to the principal characters, their circumstances and the clash of egos, ethnicities, ambitions and religious doctrine that mark so much of Mughal history.
Akbar’s court itself was a jostling ensemble of Persians, Afghans, Central Asians, Rajputs, Shias, Sunnis and others, and maintaining its balance required a ruler of personality, energy and the capability to continuously expand the territory of the empire. He proved proficient in executing conquests in all directions while suppressing periodic rebellions of which there were many: Sharma cites over 140 major revolts. Yet the court was also a kind of cockpit of conflicting ideas and imaginations about the empire itself. Here, orthodoxy
Sharma imparts a granular feel to the principal characters and their clash of egos, ethnicities, ambitions and religious doctrine
and heterodoxy ricocheted off each other, giving that enduring quality to the Akbari dispensation as it sought to find a synthesis and balance that could cement these frequently conflicting visions together.
Sharma is an obvious admirer but not uncritical; her treatment is balanced: Akbar was “as great as any man can be” because, notwithstanding the tough school he was reared in, “he strove for perfection not through power but through its just exercise”. He therefore strode into “storms of ideas and opinions” and stopped looking for the “one faith that can make an empire” or the “one true belief that would bring peace to all men”. Instead, “he turned the whole proposition on its head” and made “peace for all” the principal pivot of his rule.
An excellent read that demonstrates why we should claim Akbar and his dynasty as truly one of our own.
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