Humour, Harmony, Hooch, Hubris: How India¡¯s ¡®Polite Civilisation¡¯ Peaked And Slipped During Mughals

History has been the cause of both the concord and contention in India. While there have been writers who have flamed embers of enmity between two major communities in India --- Hindus and Muslims, there have been writers who have presented the past to set the record straight and extinguish the inferno of communal divisions. In his latest book, Dolally Sahib and The Black Zamindar: Race and Revenge in the British Raj, MJ Akbar shows how the peak of Mughal India was the peak of communal peace and Indians were connected through a finely weaved net of harmony and humour rather than strictness of the law.

Ironically, the empire¡¯s fall triggered the beginning of communal strife and the onset of brutal colonisation of the country that made even ordinary Indians like dhobis (washermen) and nais (barbers) to take revenge against their white lords in their own daring and peculiar ways.

Artsy/Representational image

The first chapter of the book titled, The Wise Fly, it takes readers to a time when Akbar The Great, who Rana Raj Singh of Mewar [1629-1680], in a letter to Aurangzeb, recalled as India¡¯s true Juggut Guru (World Leader) because people of every faith lived in ease and happiness during his reign, whether ¡°they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of David or Mohammed; were they Brahmins, were they of the sect of Dharians, which denies the eternity of matter¡­¡±

Akbar¡¯s successors Jehangir and Shah Jehan followed these principles so that ¡°conquest and prosperity went before them¡­¡± the letter elaborates further.

During Akbar¡¯s time, wit, humour and laughter provided the emperor a counterintuitive voice to preserve his benevolent rule and check him from turning into a despot. ¡°Humour was not rebellion; it was a bond of confidence that sought to check power from becoming pompous. Monarchs without tolerance for laughter lost their compact with the people. In the political lore of India, the iconic king was blessed with an iconic jester,¡± reads the chapter.

It was as if the king was above the law, but he was not above the laughter.

The Mughal period, writes the author, was a time when life¡¯s essence like literature, music or poetry heralded by two voices on behalf of the people: the sage or sufi, empowered by a moral mystique, and the satirist, armed with pungent common sense.

Cultural India/Representational image

The most famous name known for his humour and wisdom was a Bhat Brahmin, aka Mahesh Das, famously known as Birbal. He was counted among the most famous of Akbar¡¯s Navratna (Nine Jewels). Birbal started as a poet of persiflage and piety in regional courts before his fame reached the monarch and he became an integral part of Mughal court. Akbar treated him as ¡°flesh of my flesh, and blood of my blood.¡±

¡°Birbal¡¯s status can be measured by the 25 honourifics before his name in a letter written by Abul Fazl on the emperor¡¯s behalf to another of the ¡®jewels¡¯, Mirza Abdur Rahim Khan-Khanan, praising Birbal for his poetry, wit and spiritual excellence. His influence can be equally measured by the vituperative jealousy of a foe, Abdul Qadir Badayuni, whose contrarian chronicle, Muntakhabut Tawarikh, is written from the perspective of those who opposed the inclusive policies, which were central to Akbar¡¯s statecraft,¡± writes the author of Birbal¡¯s status.

Interestingly, while we have heard, read and watched Akbar-Birbal stories since our childhood, there has been no concrete historical record of his witty companionship of Emperor Akbar. ¡°Neither Abul Fazl nor Badayuni recorded any specific Birbal anecdote, although Abul Fazl noted that Birbal stories were popular, and later commentators affirm their wide currency.

¡°Birbal was both a real personality and a metaphor, whose repartee symbolised the right to tell the mightiest monarch that he was only human. It did not matter whether the stories were apocryphal; what is relevant is that they were believed. Whether literary, homely or political, they served as a synchronised engagement between absolute authority and cleverly-crafted counterpoint,¡± writes the author. The writer quotes many Akbar-Birbal stories like Birbal sneering at and speaking high of the vegetable of brinjal as Emperor Akbar did and finally when asked the reason, he comes up with a quip ¡°You are my Emperor not the brinjal.¡±

It was once suggested to Birbal that he convert to Islam, writes the author quoting Prof C.M. Naim of Chicago University. Birbal replied: ¡°Your Majesty, I am already totally devoted to you, but I shall not recite the kalima that would ruin my religion¡±. Birbal wins plaudits for integrity, and Akbar for honouring that integrity.

When Birbal, commander of the campaign against rebellious Yusufzai tribes, was killed in 1586 near the Swat valley, the emperor was inconsolable.

Quartz/Representational image

Like Birbal, Raja Man Singh of Amber, Akbar¡¯s nephew by marriage and one of his greatest generals, was also once asked to covert to Islam. Man Singh quoted the Quran to say that until his heart had changed there could be no conversion. His heart didn¡¯t agree on conversion, neither did he.

According to Emperor Akbar¡¯s authorised biographer Abul Fazl, he asked his array of intellectuals to answer a central question: do the different religions have no common ground? For the ruler, the answer was not complicated. Consideration for the beliefs of every subject¡¯s faith was necessary for the emotional integration of the people and the state.

¡°The emperor knew that the Muslim practice of sacrificing cows created a gulf between the Muslims and the Hindus that could not be bridged, and he used both his personal influence and his political authority to reduce the eating of meat and to prohibit cow-sacrifice. He abolished the jizyah [a hated poll tax on Hindus] in 1564¡­Hindus who, in childhood or otherwise, had from pressure become Musalmans, were allowed to go back to the faith of their fathers. Conversion was permitted from Hinduism to Islam and Islam to Hinduism, only if it was voluntary. The previous compulsion upon Muslims to pray five times a day in court was abandoned; the decision was left to the individual. The eminent Shia, Mir Fathullah, could say his namaz in the manner of his sect, a deviation which angered the orthodox Sunni clergy,¡± writes the author, quoting Professor Mujib¡¯s seminal work, Indian Muslims.

According to the author, as he grew older, Akbar turned vegetarian on most days, and famously wondered why men should turn their stomachs into a graveyard for animals.

Not only the monarch himself, writes the author, the sage or sufi, whether Hindu or Muslim, was instrumental in fusing the philosophy of co-existence into the daily life of the people. Music was a potent vehicle of this message. Both Persian songs and Hindi (Sanskrit) devotional songs were in vogue and masses freely chanted them in public.

The author cites many tales from foreign travellers-historians like Francois Bernier and Niccolai Manucci to illustrate how Mughal rulers interacted with their Hindu subjects and proved to be their true benefactors and won complete loyalty of their courtiers just by the virtue of their belief in harmonious and humorous India.

There is a recorded encounter between Shah Jahan and the widow of a well-known Hindu moneylender who refused to share a legacy of Rs 200,000 with her son because of his profligate habits. The son took his case to the Emperor. Shah Jahan ordered the lady to hand over Rs 100,000 to the treasury, give Rs 50,000 to the son, and keep the rest.

¡°As court attendants tried to push her out, the courageous widow called out to the king. Shah Jahan responded: ¡®Let us hear what she has to say!¡¯ She replied: ¡®Hazrat Salamat! It is not perhaps without some reason that my son claims the property of his father; he is our son, and consequently our heir. But I would humbly inquire what kinship there may have been between Your Majesty and my deceased husband to warrant the demand of one hundred thousand rupees?¡¯ Chah-Jehan [Shah Jahan] was so well pleased with this short and artless harangue, and so amused with the idea of a banyane [from the bania caste], or Gentile tradesman, having been related to the Sovereign of the Indies, that he burst forth into a fit of laughter, and commanded that the widow should be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of the money of her deceased husband,¡± the writer quotes from Travels in the Mogul Empire written by Francoi Bernier.

After Akbar, the most committed Mughal ideologue of confluence was the man who could have become the sixth Mughal Emperor, Dara Shikoh, designated heir of Shah Jahan.

What he represented socially was the culmination of that understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims of which Akbar laid the foundation and which led to the creation of a mixed governing class with a common code of behaviour. ¡°This understanding reached its highest point symbolically in Dara Shikoh¡¯s translation of the Upanishads and in Sheikh Muhibullah Allahabadi¡¯s verdict that a ruler who believed in a Prophet called ¡®the Blessing for All Humanity¡¯ could not discriminate between his Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. The translation of the Upanishads was not due to literary curiosity¡­it was the result of a passionate search for truth, and Dara Shikoh must have felt that in the Upanishads the goal, ¡®the Confluence of the two Oceans¡¯ had been reached,¡± writes the author, again quoting Professor Mujib.

This prince, however, had many faults, most of which arose out of his inability to face difficult situations. He was weak, incompetent and irritable, unable to control others or himself. And ultimately, he lost both his vision of cohesion and claim to the Mughal throne to younger brother Aurangzeb.

The shared laughter began to ebb from the Mughal court in Delhi after 1658, when 40-year-old Aurangzeb defeated his elder brother and heir apparent Dara Shikoh at the battle of Samugarh near Agra, imprisoned his ill father Shah Jahan and seized the throne. For half a century, till his death in 1707, Mughal rule became militant instead of being benign.

TOI/Representational image

¡°Aurangzeb alienated the majority of his subjects by imposing a unitarian legal code, reviving jiziya against Hindus, promoting Sunni Islam supremacy, and damaging the framework of a fraternal culture,¡± laments the author.

The British in Surat had got a foretaste of what was to come when Aurangzeb became governor of Gujarat in 1645. Jain temples were desecrated. In 1667, nine years after Aurangzeb seized the throne, Sir George Oxden, President of the East India Company in Bombay, reported to London that Aurangzeb¡¯s religious zeal had ¡°greatly disturbed¡± the kingdom and forced non-Muslims to seek sanctuary in European towns.

The equilibrium of a hundred years had been destabilised.

Aurangzeb began his campaign for Islamic orthodoxy with a ban on alcohol and bhang. Very interestingly, major deviants of this ban were found in his zenankhana (quarter of women). The women in his own household, including the wife of the qazi Abdul Wahab, loved a drink or three, the writer quotes Niccolai Manucci, an Italian traveller-physician who lived in India during Shah Jehan, Aurangzeb and their successors¡¯ time, and also died in India.

¡°Many of the women in Aurangzeb¡¯s household ignored the ban on alcohol, arguing ingeniously that the edict applied only to men,¡± writes Manucci in his Storia do Mogor (Story of Mughals), aptly quoted by the writer.

Later, when Aurangzeb found that many of viziers (ministers), including chief vizier, Jafar Khan, loved drinking, writes Manucci, the prohibition order on alcohol was subdued gradually.

Aurangzeb, says the author, had the good sense to laugh at the discovery about his court comrades. ¡°He was surely aware that his injunctions had become impotent. Jafar Khan maintained his friendly relations with wine until his death in 1669,¡± the author writes.

Similarly, Delhi¡¯s urbane gentry were appalled when Aurangzeb banned music, an ancient art that had risen to fresh heights of glory with the patronage of Emperor Akbar. Orders were issued to destroy musical instruments. Delhi organised creative forms of protest. During one Friday afternoon prayer about a thousand musicians assembled at Delhi¡¯s Jama Masjid, lamenting loudly as they carried ¡°over twenty highly-ornamented biers¡±. Aurangzeb saw them from a distance, and enquired. Music, they said, had been killed and they were bearing the cortege to the graveyard. Aurangzeb calmly replied that they should ensure that music was thoroughly buried, and pray for her soul. Music, defiantly immortal, never died; it went into hiding, writes the author.

Aurangzeb¡¯s heir Bahadur Shah attempted course correction. But Bahadur Shah, who died in 1712, did not live long enough to repair a damaged environment. The consequences were profound.

Within a decade after Aurangzeb¡¯s death, the Rajput chiefs of Rajasthan began to reassert their independence. In 1724, Asaf Jah, the Nizam ul Mulk of eastern Deccan, proclaimed his own dominion; in 1739 Awadh became virtually independent under Safdar Jang; the following year, Murshid Kuli Khan disengaged Bengal. By the 1730s Marathas had taken Khandesh, Malwa, Gujarat, Berar, Agra and large parts of Orissa under rising clans like the Scindias, Gaikwads, Holkars and Bhonsales. In Punjab, the Sikhs created autonomous principalities before Maharaja Ranjit Singh wrought the first united Sikh state in 1799.

Ironically, the verse of radical liberalism touched an exhilarating peak in the phantom phase of Mughal rule in the first half of the 19th century, when power had shifted into British hands. A generation of poets, high priests of Delhi culture, lit the gloom with sparkling imagery. Some famous names of them were Mir Taqi Meer [1723-1810]; Shaikh Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq [1790-1854; poet laureate from the age of 19 till his death]; Momin Khan Momin [1800-1852]; Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh Dehlavi [1831-1905; his father Nawab Shamshuddin Khan of Loharu, was hanged by the British in Delhi for conspiracy to murder William Fraser in 1835]; Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta [1809-1869]; the last Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar [1775-1862]; Munshi Hargopal Tufta [1799-1879]; and the greatest of them all, Mirza Muhammad Asadullah Beg Khan [1797-1899], who adopted the takhallus, or pen name, Ghalib, or conqueror, a brave claim in the age of defeat.

The new conquerors were the British. The British were regarded as intruders with little understanding of what the academic P. Hardy has described as ¡°India¡¯s polite civilisation¡±.

The British were rarely in sync with Indian sensibility. Previous rulers of whatever faith or community had been lords with absolute rights. There was little distinction between the state treasury and their personal wealth. But, even if they began as invaders they learnt to adapt to the culture and kinship of their subjects, or praja, if they wanted to survive. The British ate differently, dressed differently, thought differently and indeed laughed for very different reasons from the Indian, writes the author.

And how the native Indians took revenge against these colonisers and fought for ¡°plural India¡± has been profoundly told by the author from the second chapter onwards.

The book, which is yet to hit stands, has been published by Bloomsbury.

The writer is a New Delhi-based freelance contributor.