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Home | 16-17th Centuries Index
INDIA, MUGHALS, SIKHS and EUROPEANS
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By the 1500s, internal trade linked much of India. In each region of the country people grew a variety of crops. Cotton and silk were produced. More was being sold abroad than was being imported -- the imports including horses, a few black slaves and ivory from Africa. India's economy was slowly growing, but because India was divided politically it was not strong enough to prevent or discourage an invasion from the northwest.
Babur (Baber or Babar), the son of Shaikh Mirza of Ferghana, traced his patrilineal bloodline back to the legendary Timur (Tamerlane) and his matrilineal bloodline to Genghis Khan. Babur tried to expand to Samarkand - what had been Timur's homeground, but Uzbek tribes, led by Shailbani Khan, drove him out of Samarkand and out of Ferghana to Kabul. From Kabul Babur tried again to take Samarkand but again he failed. Then he made a series of raids through the Khyber Pass and into the Indus Valley, seeking plunder. Finding forces against him weak, he chose to stay. In 1526, at Panipat (about fifty miles north of Delhi), he routed the forces of the Sultan Ibrahim Lodi -- an Afgan who had ruled much of India since 1489. Babur went on to defeat others, spreading his rule in India but well short of all of India.
In 1530 the old warrior Babur died, leaving his rule to his twenty-two year-old son, Humayun. Humayun made some of his warriors provincial governors or other government officials. And the governors were paid lavishly. They had troops at their disposal, ranging from several hundred to several thousand. Their households used numerous male and female slaves and in some instances discreet sex services for masters or mistresses. Some of the slaves had been castrated as young boys after having been bought at slave markets in Bengal.
In 1540, Humayun was dislodged from power by Islamic nobles from the old Lodi regime, who were allied with Afghans. Humayun went into exile and allied himself with the Safavid sultan in Iran. He returned to India with 14,000 Safavid troops began retaking territory. In 1545 he captured Kabul. The leader of the regime in India that had driven him into exile had died. Squabbling over succession had weakened the regime, and, by 1555, Humayun had driven them from power and recaptured that part of India that he had inherited from his father.
Humayun had come from Iran influenced by the Iranians, including ideas that had apparently made him acceptable to Iran's Shia ruler, Tahmasp I. In 1556, the year after Humayun returned to Delhi, he rushed immoderately to prayer, fell down steps from his library and died. Humayun was succeeded by his son Muhammad Akbar, who had been born thirteen years before by the Iranian wife that Humayun had taken while in exile.
Muhammad Akbar's inheritance stretched from Kabul to Delhi, 600 miles southeast of Kabul, and his rule stretched about one hundred miles north and south of Delhi. And carrying on the family tradition of conquering, he aimed at expanding his rule across the whole of India.
Akbar's military machine was a combination of artillery, mounted archers, and infantry with muskets -- replacing the elephant system of warfare. Rival powers in India could not afford the cost of artillery and had difficulty in obtaining mounted archers. Rather than his opponents meeting him on the field of battle, many preferred to remain behind their city walls. For Akbar, besieging these cities took much time and the lives of many of his warriors, but in fourteen years of incessant warfare Akbar conquered across much of northern India:southwest to Gujarat, south into Malwa and as far eastward as Bengal. One of Akbar's titles was Slayer of Infidels, and like Timur, in places he slaughtered and erected a monument of the heads of the vanquished. He is reported to have killed more than 30,000 unarmed Hindu peasants after he conquered Chitod in February, 1568.
As was traditional among conquerors, Akbar kept as subordinates some local rulers, who were allowed to keep their own armies, but he demanded loyalty from the troops of these local rulers. And he kept his own military units in command of captured fortresses as a deterrent to revolt. Like other empires Akbar's empire remained essentially united by force rather than agreement. And, like other conquerors, Akbar tied his rule to the heavens. At Akbar's court, kingship, was described as a special emanation from God that had reached compete fruition in Akbar.
Akbar began his day with prayer, and at dawn he stepped out onto his balcony and showed himself to his subjects who had gathered below -- subjects awed by Akbar's success and power. Akbar went along with the notion as old as civilization that elevated the conqueror as the most significant doer -- above the farmer. And like some others Akbar believed that he was beginning a new age. He saw himself as the creator of peace (sulh-i kull) and of a new and perfect political system. He foresaw his descendants extending his rule for a thousand more years, so he created a new calendar. It was a solar calendar, reflecting his belief that the fire of the sun was "the torch of God's sovereignty.
Drawing from Sufi philosophy (such as the philosopher Muhiyy al-Din, who lived around the year 1200), Akbar was said to have the attributes of perfect, or universal, man, the perfect man being a microcosm of the universe. Akbar was described as father to his subjects, with paternal love for all his children. Akbar's influential minister, Abu Fazl, wrote the Book of Akbar, in Persian, in which he described the different roles of people. Soldiers, he wrote, had the nature of fire and might have to burn "the rubbish of rebellion." Fazl described artisans and merchants as the breeze that nourished the tree of life. The learned, he wrote, were water, irrigating the world with their knowledge. Husbandmen and laborers he described as the earth nourishing the grain of life. Everyone, he claimed, had his proper place -- an order maintained by the king.
As father to all his subjects, Akbar chose to eliminate the distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims that had characterized Islamic societies before him. He recognized the benefits of integration. Integration increase loyalty to his rule. He recruited Hindus into his military. He abolished the taxes on Hindu pilgrimages and other taxes that Islamic rulers had imposed on non-Muslims. Akbar married a Hindu princess, Padmini, whom he permitted to conduct Hindu rites in his harem.
Akbar was concerned with economic well-being of his subjects, and he decreed that farmers would be taxed no more than a third of what they produced. He is credited with innovations in textile manufacturing. Under Akbar, coins high in metal purity were maintained. Revenues exceeded expenditures. And during Akbar's reign of fifty years the imperial treasury grew in gems, precious metals and currency.
But power and success did not assure happiness. Akbar is reported to have suffered from bouts of melancholy and from what might have been epileptic fits, which he saw as spiritual experiences.
Akbar was illiterate, but he loved learning and disputation. He subsidized scholars, and he invited clerics of various religions to argue in support of their faith. He built a House of Worship where men discussed theological problems. Jesuit missionaries accepted his invitation to discuss with him their beliefs, and they tried to convert him to Christianity. But Akbar could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, nor did he want to give up his hundreds of wives or the pleasures of the harem.
Akbar combined Muslim, Hindu and Parsee (Zoroastrian) festivals. Seventeen nobles converted to his blend of religions. But he ran into objection from traditional Muslim scholars and jurists -- the Ulama -- who refused to recognize his claim to authority on matters of religion. So Akbar dissolved their status, crushing their independence, forcing them to subscribe to his infallibility.
None of Akbar's children adopted his religion. A son rebelled against him, claiming to be a defender of the Islamic faith. The rebellion failed, but Akbar moved toward accommodation with Islam.
Akbar lived to 1605, his conquests having extended to Kashmir, Sind, Baluchistan, Kandahar, parts of Orissa, and Kandesh, Berar and parts of Ahmadnagar. But rather than Akbar having created a new order, the old problems of succession remained.
Akbar was succeeded by one of his sons: Jahangir. Sons brought up believing they were special were inclined to be troublesome, and Jahangir had trouble with one of his sons, Prince Khurram. In 1624 the prince rebelled against his father, and in 1626 the father, Jahangir, died, and the prince, at age 35, became Shah Jahan (King of the World).
Twenty years later, Shah Jahan put his sons in charge of costly attempts to recover what he believed was his ancestral home around Samarkand. All attempts failed, and the effort left the empire weakened militarily. In 1649, Iran pushed the Mughals out of Kandahar, and Shah Jahan put one of his sons, Aurangzeb, in charge of recovering that territory. Aurangzeb failed, and so too did Shah Jahan's favorite son, Dara Shikoh. Meanwhile, to meet the expenses of making war, the emperor, Shah Jahan, raised taxes to fifty percent of a farmer's crops, while he sat upon his throne amid a display of great wealth, impressing visitors from abroad.
Shah Jahan called his high ranking ministers to audience twice daily. He treated them as children, and he inspired obedience. Under Shah Jahan, imagination and the expression of rival points of view were not encouraged. And, in turn, the high-ranking treated those beneath them as children.
But nature was highest ranking of all, and, in 1657, Shah Jahan became ill. Aurangzeb moved against his brother, the crown prince, Dara Shikoh. Dara Shikoh was interested in Sufi and Hindu wisdom and spirituality. Like his great grandfather, Akbar, Dara Shikoh had been religiously eclectic, and Aurangzeb, who saw himself as an orthodox Muslim, characterized Dara Shikoh's views as heretical. In 1658, Shah Jahan recovered his health and tried to help his son Dara Shikoh defend his position. The rival armies of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb clashed, and some of Dara Shikoh's Muslim soldiers were loyal to Islam and disloyal to the "heretic." Aurangzeb defeated his brother. Dara Shikoh was decapitated and his head delivered to Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb imprisoned his father and his other brother, Murad, and in 1658 he crowned himself, taking the title Alamgir (Grasper of the Universe). In 1671 the other brother, Murad, was also beheaded. The father, Shah Jahan, languished in prison during the first eight years of Aurangzeb's forty-nine year reign, dying there in 1666. The political system that Shah Jahan's grandfather, Akbar, had believed perfect had proven to be otherwise.
Alamgir forbade courtiers from saluting in the Hindu fashion, and he prohibited Hindu fairs and festivals. He re-instituted the tax on non-Muslims that his great grandfather had removed. He crushed the semi-independent status that had been given to Hindu kingdoms, and he is accused of having backed a Muslim rampage against idol worship which laid waste to Hindu temples and sacred shrines.
Muslims who defend Aurangzeb point to evidence of grants of land for Hindu temples, and they claim that Alamgir was as solicitous of the rights and welfare of his Hindu subjects as he was of his Muslim subjects. Alamgir would be hailed by Sunnis as India's only caliph. But he would be reviled by Hindus for the suffering he imposed on people of the Hindu faith. Using naked force, Alamgir spent the first twenty-five years of his reign trying to consolidate tenuous Mughal rule across the empire he had inherited. He sent his military against tribal peoples near the Khyber pass east of Kabu and against Hindus in Rajputnana (between Delhi and the Sind). In the second half of his reign he tried to conquer toward the southern tip of the subcontinent, a push that ended around 1689 -- short of Cannanore and Calicut.
With the Hindus alienated, Alamgir's conquests produced something less that the consolidation of his empire. Alamgir's rule strained his army, bureaucracy and India's economy. When Aurangzeb died in 1707, the Mughal empire was near the point of implosion, and India was more vulnerable to incursions by the Persians and by the British.
Sikhism was established by ten Gurus, teachers or masters, over the period 1469 to 1708. These teachers, believed to be sent from God for the troubled people of the land, were enlightened souls whose main purpose in life was the spiritual and moral well-being of the masses, or the equivalent of Prophets & Messiahs of the other major respective monotheist religions. Each master added to and reinforced the message taught by the previous, resulting to the creation of the religion of Sikhism. Guru Nanak was the first Guru and Guru Gobind Singh the final Guru in human form. When Guru Gobind Singh left this world, he made the Guru Granth Sahib the ultimate and final Sikh Guru.
In India by 1500, a man named Kabir had gained millions of followers in his call to a simple love of God that transcended both the Islamic and Hindu religions. Also, in the early 1500s, a world view called Sikhism had arisen in the Punjab, led by a man named Nanak, who been born into a Hindu family but exposed to Islamic doctrines. His view of God was similar to that of the Muslims. He was monotheistic, and he was opposed to caste, declaring that all had a right to search for God. Nanak acquired the title of Divine Teacher (Guru). He is looked upon by Sikh's as the first of ten Gurus who established Sikhism.
Guru Nanak died in 1533 and left two sons, but the position of guru passed to someone other than one of Nanak's sons -- to a man who took the name Angad. Guru Angad wrote the Sikh's Granth Sahib (Holy Book), which included his report on Guru Nanak's teachings and his own observations. Guru Angad died in 1552, and Sikh leadership passed Guru Amar Das. And emphasizing Nanak's opposition to caste, Guru Amar Das ordered all Sikhs to dine together.
Before his death in 1574, Guru Amar Das made his servant and son-in-law his heir, who took the name Ram Das. Guru Ram Das built the Sikh's Golden Temple at a site at Amritsar granted him by the Mughal ruler, Akbar, while Akbar was attempting unity among India's various faiths. Akbar's son, the Mughal ruler Jahangir, had Guru Ram Das tortured and killed for having aided a rebellion against him. Guru Ram Das was succeeded by his son, Har Govid. With the Sikh's having suffered from abuse by the Mughals, the new guru became a military leader, taking the first step in his dynasty's devotion to self-defense.
Guru Har Govid was succeeded by his grandson, Guru Har Rai, who was a supporter the pious Mughal Dara Shikoh who was competing for power with the vicious Alamgir, his brother. After Dara Shikoh was defeated by Alamgir, Guru Har Rai was summoned to the Mughal capital, Delhi. Instead, Guru Ram Rei's eldest sone went to Delhi and there was a hostage when Guru Ram Rei died. Guru Ram Rei's younger brother, Har Kishen, succeeded him, although still a child. Then Har Kishen died and his great uncle, Tegh Bajadur, became Guru.
The Mughal ruler, Alamgir, had Guru Tegh Bajadur executed in 1675 for having refused to accept Islam. Tegh Bajadur's son and successor, Gobind Rai, vowed to avenge his father's murder and to combat Alamgir, who was demanding that all Sikhs convert to Islam or be killed. Guru Gobine Rai lost his father, mother and his four sons in the war between Alamgir and the Sikhs. The Sikh acquired devotion for military defense. Gobind Rai created what he called the Khalso (Army of the Pure). He adopted the surname Singh (lion) and gave his closest followers the same surname. They vowed not to cut their hair or beard, to carry a saber, wear a steel bracelet on their right wrist and wear knee-length soldier's shorts. Alamgir continued to harrass the Sikhs, and he crushed them militarily. But Guru Gobind Singh had the satisfaction of outliving Alamgir, who died of old age in 1707. Guru Gobind Singh was the tenth and last of the Ten Gurus of Sikhism and is described as having finalized the many elements of Sikhism and compiling the writings of his predecessors .
Following the Portuguese, in 1542 the first Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, arrived in India, at Goa, but within a few years he left for Japan, disappointed that the Indians were, in his words, "without inclination to virtue" and little interested in biblical instruction. He left behind a small community of Portuguese and Indian Christians, and, drawing from Portuguese experiences in India, in northern Europe the view spread that Indians were heathenish and cunning.
In the early 1600s, the Dutch and British came to India. Being Protestants and competitors, they were harassed by the Jesuits and Portuguese. In 1611, the Dutch East India Company built a factory in India's southeast, at Pulicat. The Dutch and British drove out the Portuguese, a British fleet defeating the Portuguese off the coast of India in 1612. The Mughals, without a navy, had looked to the Portuguese to protect the ship that took Muslim Indians on their annual pilgrimage to Mecca, and now they turned to the English for this protection. This was accompanied by an increase in trade with England, dominated by the British East India Company, which built a factory at Surat, on India's western coast, in 1619.
Sailors, traders, diplomats and adventurers flocked to India. Europeans were allowed to roam about. They brought to India technical advances, such as a hand-driven pump to transfer water. And they brought technical skills. Some of the Europeans set up shop, and some were hired by Indians. Mughal artillery was not keeping pace with European developments, and the Mughal government hired Europeans as artillerymen -- men who were often deserters for the East India Company ships and garrisons.
In the first thirty years of Alamgir's reign (1658-1707), European demand for Indian textiles rose steeply, while India in return received a few luxury items, precious metals, a modest amount of woolens, tin, lead and copper from Britain, and the Dutch brought spices from Southeast Asia. The two British and Dutch trading companies were buying their goods largely with silver and gold, on average 34 tons of silver and a half ton of gold every year.
Crops from the Americas, such as tobacco and maize, were being grown in India. Peasants reclaimed tracts of land from jungle for wet rice cultivation. Farming took over lands that had been used for pasture. Cotton, sugarcane, indigo and opium grew well in India, with farmers prospering as they produced agricultural goods for the market, including mulberries and silk production. Demand for food grew with the population and the rise of market towns.
By the 1680s, hundreds of prosperous market towns dotted northern India, the towns occupied by traders in grain, moneylenders, retired military officers and other officials, by religious figures and other recipients of subsistence grants, and Muslim gentry. The millions of people on state salaries increased demand for manufactured and processed consumer goods, some goods supplied by the government sector of the economy, but most by the private sector.
Foreigners arriving in India continued to be impressed by the opulence of Mughal Empire, by the ceremonies, etiquette, music, poetry, paintings and art objects at the imperial court. But despite its affluence, India, like Russia, had little of what could be described as a merchant fleet. By tradition the Mughals were horsemen. Seafaring had been foreign to them. This and the more aggressive pursuit of technological advancement in Europe was impacting India. India's, moreover, had the largest of populations -- about ten times more dense than Russia's -- reaching from 100 million to 150 million between 1500 and 1700.
Recommended Books
A New History of India, Fourth Edition, by Stanley Wolpert, Oxford University Press, 1993
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Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.