Among all the monarchs of India’s premodern past, one stands out: Akbar, who ruled the Mughal empire from 1556 to 1605.  When I was a schoolgirl in late 1980s India, I remember a history textbook gushing over Akbar like a squealing K-Pop fan.  At the time, India, the most diverse country in the world, had been a consolidated political entity only for a few decades, and the national motto of “Unity in Diversity” was everywhere.  Textbook authors wanted to remind us that we were always an accepting people, so they had a crush on Akbar for his religious tolerance, not his looks or dance moves, though miniatures depict a handsome, regal man and–who knows?–maybe he would have loved hip-hop.

Akbar’s birth was not a time of celebration.  His father, Humayun, had lost his empire and was homeless and wandering from one royal court to another.  Humayun’s father, Babur, had conquered northern India and founded the Mughal Empire, with its capital in Delhi.  Babur was a prince from Ferghana in what is now Uzbekistan.  Despite his modest territory, Babur had big dreams.  After all, he was a descendant of legendary conquerors Genghis Khan and Timur, and like everyone else in the era, he must have heard about India and its riches, the supposed gold rivers flowing with jewels, the magical beasts known as elephants.  The same vision, by the way, that Columbus believed too (sans the elephants) and prompted his quest to cross the Atlantic.  Columbus was confused when he reached the Caribbean, lovely in its own right but certainly not gleaming India.  It’s like being promised a trip to Disneyworld but ending up in your hometown park.  The swings are nice and all, but Space Mountain it ain’t.

Babur had a similar reaction after he defeated the ruler of northern India.  Riding victoriously into Delhi, he was sorely disappointed.  “There are no gardens here,” he purportedly bemoaned, “It’s ugly!”  Babur may be forgiven because Ferghana was a lush valley with orchards of apples, cherries, and apricots, silk, and flowers.  He had also spent considerable time in the beautiful cities of Samarkhand and Herat.  Delhi, in contrast, was dry, dusty, and battered by war.  Also, Babur, bless his heart, was upset by the absence of libraries, unusual for a conqueror whom we would normally expect to plunder, massacre, and burn every book encountered, like the Vikings in Lindisfarne or the Mongols in Baghdad.  Babur was a bibliophile who collected books from the cities he sacked.  Imagine his conversation with a surrendered governor: “Never mind the gold throne.  Give me your first edition of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics!  Now!”  In India, Babur promptly set about building a public garden resplendent with red roses, lilies, waterways, and pavilions, all set in geometric designs per Persian aesthetics.  He also started a library and authorized his memoirs, Baburnama, composed in the Persian literary style, as an epic.*

Upon Babur’s sudden death of an unspecified illness (some say poison), his heir-apparent, Humayun, ascended the throne.  As a nepo-baby, Humayun was undertalented and overwhelmed.  A rival ousted him, and for the next fifteen years, Humayun freeloaded from a series of sympathetic kings who would evict him for overstaying his welcome.  During one sojourn, Humayun met Hamida, a pretty teenager of Persian heritage whose father worked for Humayun’s youngest brother, Hindal.  Although Hamida was dating Hindal (implied in the biography Humayunama, written by Gulbadan, sister to Humayun and Hindal), Humayun pursued her nonetheless.  When Humayun proposed, Hamida did not respond.  She probably knew he was a loser.  Picture the proposal on a Coldplay kiss cam and the intended responding with “Um, I need a few months to think about it.”  Public embarrassment!

Hamida finally consented, maybe because she knew that if another Mughal were to sit on the throne, it would be the oldest son, and that was Humayun.  She must have regretted her decision soon after, when the couple was forced to flee across a desert, accompanied by a small retinue of horses, camels, and fewer guards.  With the exception of the hardy camels, the company almost died of thirst.  It was under these conditions that Hamida gave birth to her son, christened with the name Akbar.  “Akbar” means “great” in Arabic, Persian, and other related languages.  History textbooks often refer to him in redundant fashion as “Akbar the Great,” which translates as “Great the Great” and sounds kind of ridiculous, but it would be a good name for a pop star.  I mean, “Great the Great” couldn’t be any worse than “Bad Bunny” or “Lady Gaga,” right?

Infant Akbar was lucky to survive.  Sisters, born afterwards, did not.  When he was still young, Humayun and Hamida left him with family in Afghanistan and proceeded to Persia, where for years Humayun tried to persuade Shah Tahmasp to give him an army.  Tahmasp did, eventually, a strategic decision to use Humayun as a proxy.  When Humayun retook Delhi, Persians had a significant influence in the Mughal empire.  Tahmasp’s gamble had paid off, with great benefit to Persia.  Hamida’s gamble in marrying Humayun had paid off too.

Akbar was now the Mughal crown prince, and because of a rough childhood, possessed none of the nepo-baby faults of his father before him.  Rather, Akbar was brave, upstanding, and thoughtful.  He was skilled in the arts of war, and he understood the concept of peace.  Akbar’s political prescience would hold him in good stead when Humayun died a mere year after retaking the throne.  Apparently, he was descending the stairs of his library, arms full of books, when he tripped and fell.  Notice the irony.  The feted conqueror of India, the son of another feted conqueror, was not killed by a battlefield deathblow.  He was done in by library books.  Students!  You will never look at Geisel Library the same way again!

Akbar was fourteen-years-old when crowned emperor.  His almost fifty-year reign is regarded as premodern India’s golden age.  The Persian diplomats who had accompanied Humayun to India were present to instruct young Akbar on wise statecraft.  That included extending the borders of the empire for the sake of stability and offering defeated kings spots in the Mughal government, which several accepted.  Additionally, Akbar proposed to the princesses of annexed regions.  Unlike Hamida’s hemming and hawing when Humayun proposed, the princesses knew they were making a good match because Akbar’s reputation was well-known.  He may have been their overlord, but he was a Mughal prince charming who provided richly for his wives, supported their commercial enterprises (individual princesses owned trading ships), sponsored their girls’ trips (the aforesaid Gulbadan and other harem ladies traveled to Mecca and back), and Akbar did not force his wives to convert to his religion.  Akbar was a Muslim, but his wives were Muslims, Hindus, possibly Zoroastrians, and if some sources are to be believed, Christians and Jews as well.  He studied his wives’ religions and may have participated in some of their practices.

A reason for Akbar’s flexibility was his respect for Sufism, an approach to Islam that focuses on connecting with God, spreading tolerance, harmony, and living peacefully.  Akbar admired and was a devotee of the Sufi mystic, Salim Chishti.  Akbar even named his first son “Salim” after Chishti.  Akbar hosted religious leaders, and he would listen avidly to their catechisms.  He allowed Portuguese Jesuits to reside in his court.  Akbar synthesized what he saw as the best aspects of several religions and founded “Din-I Ilahi” (Divine Faith).  Although Din-I Ilahi did not take off, it was an honest effort to use religion for the greater good.

Today in India, Hindu extremists argue that Akbar and the Mughals should be excised from school textbooks.  They want only Hindu figures to be included, arguing that only indigenous Hindus (per their prejudicial definition of such) are legitimate models.  The position conveniently ignores the fact that the mother of Akbar’s successor, Salim, was a Hindu and that the mother of Salim’s successor was also a Hindu.  Additionally, Jews, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, and others have deep, centuries-long roots in India.  We are Indians who deserve to be in textbooks too.  An irony is that some years ago, scions of the Hindutva movement held a strategy meeting in a restaurant named “Akbar.”  Stuffing themselves with kebabs and biriyani (Mughal cuisine) while rewriting history per their political bias is a weird kind of hypocritical blindness.  Perhaps pop stardom as “Great the Great” is not such a bad idea.  People would ask, “How did you come up with your pseudonym?”  Then, we could tell them about Akbar, Humayun, Hamida, Gulbadan, and Babur, and we could reclaim our history–which is the extremists’ history too, though they would never admit it–one talk at a time.

*“Persian” refers to the peoples and cultures of a vast region including Iran and its environs.  In the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and even before, Persia was considered a model for literature, art, and architecture, as well as for medicinal practices and educational institutions.  The Persian language was a lingua franca of sorts in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and many governments employed Persians in a variety of professional roles, the Mughal Empire included.