Anything that
moves
If only Indians knew the Mughal ruler better, those
not blinded by bigotry might find a person worthy of admiration.
Babur in
court. | Babur, public domain.
Nov 06, 2019 · 08:30 am
Girish Shahane
After decades in the courts, a
conclusive verdict is finally expected in the dispute over a site in Ayodhya
considered by the faithful to be the birthplace of Ram. For over 450 years, a
mosque stood at that location, before being razed by Hindutva activists on
December 6, 1992. The argument went that the mosque had been built on the ruins
of a demolished temple, although the evidence
in favour of that theory is thin.
The mosque was commissioned by a
general serving the first Mughal emperor, Babur, and was therefore known as the
Babri Masjid. Babur has been vilified for his association with the controversy,
and for being the foremost representative of a hate-figure in contemporary
India: the Muslim Invader. Although he never sought a fight against a Hindu
adversary in his life, spending his career battling fellow Muslim kings, Babur
serves the Invader stereotype perfectly, being the only monarch, Muslim or
otherwise, to have launched a successful incursion into India and then stayed
on to rule the land.
If only Indians knew Babur better,
those not blinded by bigotry might find a person worthy of admiration. One
could say with justice of him, as of very few people, what Shakespeare’s Antony
said of Brutus, namely that, “the elements so mixed in him that Nature might
stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’” He was brave, honest,
generous, convivial, considerate to his wives, children and relatives, an acute
judge of character, intellectually curious, piercingly rational, though given
to bursts of endearing sentimentality, a man of letters, and a lover of nature.
Notable ancestors
Zahiruddin Muhammad Mirza, to
provide his full name at birth, traced his ancestry back to two of the greatest
generals the world has known. He was the son of Umar-Shaikh Mirza, son of
Sultan Abusaid Mirza, son of Sultan Muhammad Mirza, son of Miranshah Mirza, son
of Amir Timur, known as Timur-i-lang, meaning Timur the Lame. His mother,
Qutlugh Nigar Khanum, was daughter of Yunus Khan, son of Ways Khan, son of
Sher-Ali Oghlan, son of Muhammad Khan, son of Khizr Khwaja Khan, son of Tughlaq
Timur Khan, son of Esan Buqa Khan, son of Dua Khan, son of Baraq Khan, son of
Yasuntoa, son of Moatukan, son of Chaghatai Khan, son of Chingis Khan, whose
conquests created the Mongol nation and the largest contiguous empire in
history.
He gained the name Babur because
his rustic maternal uncles couldn’t pronounce “Zahiruddin Muhammad”. It was
once assumed that “Babur’’ was derived from the Persian babr, meaning
tiger. Current thinking leans towards the Turki baboor, or beaver,
which is unfortunate, because Babur the Beaver doesn’t have the same ring as
Babur the Tiger.
We don’t know when or why Babur
chose to begin writing his memoirs. No autobiography composed by a Muslim
before it has survived; maybe none was written. He kept a diary from his early
adulthood, and put the notes together in a coherent form near the end of his
life. Many of the pages were lost during his final campaigns in India. More
vanished in the course of his son Humayun’s wanderings. By the time his
grandson Akbar established a secure kingdom, and commissioned a translation of
the Baburnama from Turki to Persian, several years of his
grandfather’s life had disappeared.
Writing the truth
The closest Babur comes to
expressing a credo is in a passage from the year 1507. Having listed betrayals
he has encountered from family members, he justifies himself: “I have not
written all this to complain: I have simply written the truth. I do not intend,
by what I have written, to compliment myself: I have simply set down exactly
what happened. Since I have made it a point in this history to write the truth
of every matter and to set down no more than the reality of every event, as a
consequence I have reported every good and evil I have seen of father and
brother and set down the actuality of every fault and virtue of relative and
stranger. May the reader excuse me; may the listener not take me to task.”
If Babur is critical of those near
and dear to him, he is no less harsh on himself. The Baburnama’s early chapters
delve into the author’s failures and shortcomings. After his father falls to
his death from a dovecote, the 11-year-old Zahiruddin Muhammad is raised to the
throne of Ferghana which lies “on the edge of civilisation”.
In 1497, at the age of 14, he gains
the prize city of Samarkand for the first time. But he falls seriously ill, and
courtiers place his younger brother Jehangir on the throne of his home
province. Once his health improves, he sets out to recover Ferghana, but ends
up losing Samarkand without gaining his original kingdom.
