Whose History is it anyway?

History tends to be the handmaiden of those who flirt take licenses with it at convenience. Instead of taking lessons from it and choosing our actions based on it, we often tend to reverse-engineer our history and interpret it based on our actions. Akbar-Jodha is a case in point.

I grew up reading tales of Akbar-Jodha, where Jodha bai, a beautiful Rajput princess, captures the heart of young Akbar, and extracts the promise of monogamy, on the wedding night. She then influences the young monarch enough to make him open to Hindu rituals and tolerant to his Hindu subjects.

This was a convenient story for everyone collectively as a nation, and individually as citizens, we never questioned its veracity.

Behind this box-office folklore though, is an entirely different story. Akbar was a promiscuous young man, a man of great spiritual and metaphysical bent, had an insatiable sexual appetite up to his late 40s. All contemporary records mention how the emperor would make his Amirs give up their wives, if his eye fell on them; a normal Mughal custom.

Akbar took his first wife at a very early age and was already married twice by the time he met and married the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber , who today we know as Jodhabai.

It has always puzzled me why monogamy is considered by modern society as a virtue and pitted directly against polygamy, but I wont dwell on that since it would sidetrack this post. The reason I bring this up at all is, that it appears, at closer introspection, that somebody somewhere decided it was a good idea to give Akbar a romantic, we-fall-in-love-only-once-in-a-lifetime, kind of image.

Marriage, in medieval India was an important political tool in the hands of emperors and empire building was always the first priority for Akbar. Forget biographical records, its just plain commonsense that Akbar-Jodha is an absolute myth.

It is more likely that Jodha (which wasn’t really the name of the princess in question, but I will continue that name, purely for convenience) enjoyed her prominence and stature at a later age, simply because she was the mother of the crown prince, Salim. Most of Akbar’s earlier children from other marriages had perished (7 to be exact) and Jodha's contribution to the royal line, would definitely make her a powerful woman in the royal harem.

Incidentally, Akbar did turn celibate by the time he turned 40, but this was more due to his increasing involvement into the affairs of the state, the influence of different philosophies and religions, and because he started feeling like a father figure to his subjects.

With time, Akbar also developed great tolerance, even acceptance to other religions, though he was a devout and orthodox Muslim in his younger days. His growing disillusion with Islam and the infighting of the ulemas made him turn towards other religions, mainly Hinduism, for answers to his inner spiritual questions and finally made him found din-i-illahi.

You might argue, that since the net effect, the story of a liberal, steadfast, tolerant monarch, is what the popular folklores and legends narrate, do the minor details of how and why really matter?

It probably doesn’t matter. But I am curious. The process of intermarriage between Hindu princesses and Muslim kings and conquerors, was common practice, both before and after Akbar. Then why this special treatment to Akbar's conjugal life? Why go to great lengths at trying to attribute Akbar's pro-Hindu behavior to a Hindu wife?

Of course, box-office economics of stories like Akbar-Jodha, will continue to be a success, and could explain their importance. But I also suspect a silent conspiracy to fit in Akbar into our modern religio-political equations.

It’s much more convenient for saffron brigade historians, politicians and others to explain Akbar's liberal mindset in more popular, and conveniently Hindu light. And by silently accepting, or ignoring the facts behind the fiction, all of become party to this conspiracy. For orthodox Hindus, until you come to Akbar, you can explain everything in medieval Indian history as Muslim aggression, torture and subjugation. Akbar is history’s problem child for fundamentalists in India. And since we cant ignore him, what better than to claim his greatness as influenced by us.