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Akbar : (1542-1605), exemplary grandson of Babur (an exemplary descendant of Taimur Lang & Chenghiz Khan), he was the 3rd Emperor of Mughal Hindusthan (1556-1605). The history of Hindusthan in 1526-56 is mainly the story of the Mughul-Afghān contest for supremacy. The previous Mughul (Mongol) inroads…only added, through the settlement of the ‘New Mussalmāns’, a new element that at times harassed the Turko-Afghan Sultans. But the invasion of Taimur, who occupied the Punjab, accelerated the fall of the decadent Sultanate of Delhi. One of his descendants, Babur, attempted a systematic conquest of Northern India & thus laid the foundation of a new Turkish dominion (the so-called Mughuls really belonged to a branch of the Turks named after Chaghātai, the second son of Chenghīz Khān, who came to possess Central Asia & Turkestan), which being lost in the time of his son & successor Humāyūn, in the face of an Afghān revival. Humāyūn died in January 1556 & the next month Akbar was formally proclaimed as his successor. ─ Soon after Akbar’s accession, Hīmū, an adept Hindu slave-general-minister of the Afghan king Ādil Shāh Sūr, occupied Agra & Delhi by defeating Tārdi Beg, the Mughul governor of Delhi. Hīmū met Akbar & his father’s old comrade & Moghul Regent Baihrām Khān at Pāṇīpat with a large army including 1,500 war elephants on 5 Nov., 1556, a battle 19th century historians dubbed as Pāṇīpat II. Hīmū was winning against both wings of the Mughul army when one of his eyes was pierced by a chance arrow & he lost consciousness. As his soldiers began to disperse in confusion, he was put to death, whether by Baihrām or Akbar is still a matter of debate among professional historians but either way the Moghul blood took centre-stage. Pāṇīpat II marked the beginning of the Mughul Empire in Hindusthan. Between 1558 & 1569 Gwālior, Ajmer, & Jaunpur were incorporated in it. For the next forty years, Akbar went on a spree of annexation after annexation until he dominated the whole of northern & central India. But Mewād, which under Rāṇā Saṇga (q.v.) had contested with Babur for the supremacy of northern India, & was been provided with excellent means of defence in its steep mountains & strong castles, then under Rāṇā Ratan Singh not only did not bow its head but sheltered Bāz Bahādur, the king of Mālwā, this was an offence Akbar could not digest. So in October 1567, he laid such an implacable siege around Chittodgadh that Rāṇā Udai Singh fled to the hills, & Akbar captured that greatest pride of Mewād. After annexing Ranthambhor & Kālinjar (c.100-odd km SW of Allahabad) in 1569, Akbar decided to subjugate Gujarat due its rich & flourishing ports & special commercial position (Humāyūn’s occupation of it had not lasted). In 1572 Akbar marched in person against Gujarat, defeated all opposition & pensioned off the puppet king…. But no sooner had he reached his H.Q. at Fatehpur Sikri than insurrection broke out in Gujarat. He hurried back to Ahmadābād, having traversed 600 miles in eleven days & thoroughly vanquished the insurgents in a battle near Ahmadābād in September 1573. Bengal was conquered in 1576, Orissa in 1592, Kabul in July 1585, Kashmir in 1586, Sind in 1590-91. Soon after he conquered Baluchistan in 1595, he received the eager surrender of Qandahār (Anglicised spelling of Moslemised spelling of Gāndhāra) by its Persian governor. That must have been when Akbar disinfected the age-old city of Purūshapūra by renaming it Peshāwar. Thus by 1595 Akbar made himself he undisputed master of the lands from Himālayās to the Narmadā, & from the Hindukūsh to the Brahmaputra. ─ He then decided to extend his paramountcy over South India, i.e. the Sultanate of Ahmadnagar, Bijāpur, Golkundā, & Khāndesh. Miān Bahādur Shāh, a ruler of Khāndesh (q.v.), refused to submit to Akbar…. Akbar marched to the south in July 1599. He soon captured Burhanpur, the capital of Khāndesh, & easily laid siege to the mighty fortress of Asīrgarh, than which “it was impossible to conceive a stronger fortress, or one more amply supplied with artillery, warlike stores & provisions”. The besieged garrison, though greatly weakened own to the outbreak of a terrible pestilence which swept off many of them, defended the fortress for six months, when Akbar hastened to achieve his end by subtle means. Unwilling to prolong the siege as his son Salim had rebelled against him, the emperor inveigled Miān Bahadur Shah into his camp to negotiate a treaty, on promise of personal safety, but detained him there & forced him to write a letter to the garrison with instructions to surrender the fort. The garrison, however, still held out. Akbar next seduced the Khāndesh officers by lavish distribution of money among them, & thus the gates of Asīrgarh “were opened by golden keys”. This was the last ‘conquest’ of Akbar. His son Shah Jahan almost, & his grandson Aurangzeb fully, completed his goal of subduing South India not forgetting to use his “golden keys”. By 1601, with his conquest of Khāndesh, Akbar the Great’s Empire extended from Kabul to Bengal & Himalayas to Narmadā. According to his secretary Abu-l-Fazl, Akbar divided his empire into 15 subās: Kabul, Lahore including Kashmir, Multan including Sindh, Delhi, Agra, Oudh, Prayāga, Ajmer, Ahmadābād, Mālwā, Bihar, Bengal, Khāndesh, Berar, & Ahmadnagar. Over each subā was a subadar or Nawab Nazim with a Diwan in charge of the finances. Todar Mal organised Akbar’s land survey & settlement system, & assessment of taxation on farmers at the rate of ⅓ of the produce paid in cash or kind to state officers. [Vide S. Bhattacharya; R.C. Majumdar et al’s Advanced History…] “Hindu rulers had,” writes L.S.S. O’Malley, editor of Modern India & the West: A Study of Interaction of Their Civilisations, “charged cultivators one-sixth of the produce as tax, Akbar raised it to one-third, & his grandson Shāh Jahan to one-half”. [K.R.S. Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo: A biography & a history, 1985] “In 1579, Akbar issued The Infallibility Decree authorising the Emperor to five the final decision on any question concerning the Muhammedan religion ‘for the glory of God & propagation of Islam’. It made the Mughul emperor the final arbiter on all theological questions of Muhammadanism & largely increased his authority. Last, but not the least, Akbar dreamt of creating an Indian nation out of the fighting Hindus & Muhammedans in India. Feeling that it was religion which, more than anything else tended to keep them apart…in 1581 he promulgated a new religion called the Dīn Ilāhi. Akbar believed in the principle of universal toleration…& left its acceptance to the inner feelings of man. As religion is more a matter of faith than of reason, his new religion made few converts & failed in its object. But the effort to promulgate it ‘assured to him for all time a pre-eminent place among the benefactors of humanity’.” [Vide S. Bhattacharya; R.C. Majumdar et al’s Advanced History…] Sri Aurobindo: “Even exceptional rulers, a Charlemagne, an Augustus, a Napoleon, a Chandragupta, Asoka or Akbar, can do no more than fix certain new institutions which the time needed, & help the emergence of its best or else its strongest tendencies in a critical era. When they attempt more, they fail. Akbar’s effort to create a new Dharma for the Indian nation by his enlightened reason was a brilliant futility. Asoka’s edicts remain graven upon pillar & rock, but the development of Indian religion & culture took its own line in other & far more complex directions determined by the soul of a great people. Only the rare individual Manu, Avatar or Prophet who comes on earth perhaps once in a millennium can speak truly of his divine right, for the secret of his force is not political but spiritual. For an ordinary political ruling man or a political institution to have made such a claim was one of the most amazing among the many follies of the human mind.” [SABCL vol. 15, p.435-36]