Emperors Of The Peacock Throne , livre ebook

ABRAHAM ERALY
Emperors of the Peacock Throne
The Saga of the Great Mughals
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Preface
Chapter One: The Mughal Advent
1. Like a King on a Chessboard
2. If Fame Be Mine
3. Black Fell the Day
Chapter Two: The Struggle for Survival
1. The Dreamer Cometh
2. The Feast Is Over
3. What Is to Be Done?
Chapter Three: The Afghan Interlude
1. Man of Destiny
2. Peaceable Kingdom
3. Fiery End
Chapter Four: The Mughal Restoration
1. Humayun in Exile
2. The Reluctant Boy King
3. Behind the Veil
Chapter Five: The Empire Takes Hold
1. Earth Hunger
2. Invincible Emperor
3. Person and Persona
4. Illiterate Savant
Chapter Six: An Experiment in Synthesis
1. My Mind Is Not at Ease
2. Reason, Not Tradition
3. Allahu Akbar!
4. Tyranny Is Unlawful
5. The Long Farewell
Chapter Seven: The Middle Empire
1. His Father s Son
2. Scientist Emperor
3. Sons and Rebels
4. Another Son, Another Rebel
5. Light of the World
6. An English Aristocrat in the Mughal Court
7. The Coup
Chapter Eight: The Paradise on Earth
1. The Man Behind the Mask
2. Pyrrhic Victories
3. Ya Takht, Ya Tabut!
4. For the Sake of the True Faith
5. Dara s Last Stand
Chapter Nine: Over the Top
1. God s Elected Custodian
2. Fear the Sighs of the Oppressed
3. Born to Trouble Others
4. The More One Drinks
5. Now That the Shadows Fall
Chapter Ten: The Maratha Nemesis
1. Maratha Beginnings
2. Enter Shivaji
3. Lord of the Umbrella
4. Kirti Rupen
5. Maratha Collapse
6. Rafizi-kush
7. Maratha Eruption
8. Of the Future There Is No Hope
Epilogue
Death of the Future
Incidental Data
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
EMPERORS OF THE PEACOCK THRONE
Born in Kerala, and educated there and in Chennai, Eraly has taught Indian history in colleges in India and the United States, and was the editor of a current affairs magazine for several years.
He now lives in Chennai, and is working on a study of classical Indian civilization. He can be contacted at abraham_eraly@yahoo.co.in
For SATISH who in the summer of a year of crisis asked, What s it again? Can t begin anything new at your age? Why not? and got me going.
Akbar: Tell me, if you please, what is the greatest consolation that man has in this world? Birbal: Ah, sire! it is when a father finds himself embraced by his son.
In this history I have held firmly to it that the truth should be reached in every matter, and that every act should be recorded precisely as it occurred I have set down of good and bad whatever is known -Emperor Babur in Babur-nama
I give the story as I received it; to contradict it is not in my power. -Francois Bernier in his report on Mughal India.
Preface
I have in my study, on the old, worm-hole pitted teak desk at which I work, an antique stone head of Buddha, less than a foot high, which I had picked up many years ago in Madras from a pavement junkwallah. It is a fine piece, its chiselled features perfect, head slightly bent sideways, as if trying to anchor a memory or a dream, eyes half-closed meditatively. A thick patina of grime tinges the handsome, serene face with a peculiar sadness, the anguish of a compassionate outsider, concerned with the human predicament, but not involved with it.
Over the years, as I laboured on this book, the dispassionate compassion of Buddha had seemed to me the perfect ideal for students of history, though of course we would all fail disgracefully to live up to it, as the passions of our lives and the furies of our age knead and rework us continually on the slow wheel of time.
As time reworks us, we rework history. All works of history are interim reports, says American historian John Noble Wilford. What people did in the past is not preserved in amber immutable through the ages. Each generation looks back and, drawing from its own experience, presumes to find patterns that illuminate both past and present.
Nothing ever quite dies. The past is nearly as alive as the present, and it changes as the present changes, the historical past as much as our personal past. The bare facts of history do not of course change, except for occasional emendations, but the way facts interlock and change colour to make patterns is unique to each generation, indeed to each historian. No particular representation of the past has therefore any absolute validity, and the value of any historical work depends largely on the felicitous catalysis of the personal vision into a universal vision. It is essentially a triumph of art.
The mutability of human perceptions apart, there are other obstacles to a definitive understanding of the historical processes. Man cannot, as Albert Camus says in The Rebel , grasp the totality of history since he lives in the midst of this totality. History, as an entirety, could exist only in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. It is in fact impossible for man to know the final truth even about any particular event in history, however trivial it might be, for he, himself swirling in time, does not have the perspective to see all its relevant connections and discern where it would ultimately lead, as its consequences, intersecting with the consequences of myriad other events, proliferate endlessly into the future. Historical reason will never be fulfilled and will never have its full meaning or value until the end of history, argues Camus. The purely historical absolute is not even conceivable.
When we consider these all too evident limitations of writing history, it seems amazing that academic historians in modern times have generally laid claim to scientific precision for their methodology, and objective validity for their theories. Historical investigation has of course become more sophisticated lately, especially in the evaluation of archaeological and philological data. But this has come about mainly because of advances in science and technology, and not because of any radical change in the methodology of history. The character of history has not changed.
But the garb of historians has changed, for they have suited up for their new role as social scientists. Unfortunately, many historians, in their excitement at being recognized as social scientists, overlooked the fact that while scientific discoveries are sequential and mark a linear progress-with new discoveries displacing or modifying old theories-new interpretations of history seldom displace old interpretations, for they are only tenets, at best philosophies, not discoveries. The unpredictability of human affairs makes historical analysis, for all its vaunted scientific methodology, essentially an act of faith. What we find depends a lot on what we are.
There were other complications too. Observes Harvard professor Simon Schama: As historians institutionalized themselves into an academic profession, they turned away from historical realities to historiographical obsessions . Their focus then shifted from persons and events, the flesh and blood of history, to abstract structures of their own construction. This pursuit trapped historians in a maze of sophistry, the sterile, self-abusive game of thought, involving over-elaborations and supersubtleties which made little sense.
Now at last historians are beginning to grope their way out of the maze. And gradually, renouncing the conceits of the recent past, they are returning to their primary function, to resuscitate the past and release it into the present. That is what history is all about. Herodotus, the fifth century BC Greek father of history, has said it all in the opening sentence of his book: This is a publication of the researches of Herodotus Halicarnassus, in order that the actions of men may not be effaced by time The historian s profession, as the nineteenth-century French scholar Jules Michelet stated, is to bring things back to life . Says Schama: I have tried to bring a world to life rather than entomb it in erudite discourse.
In this role, the historian does not merely log and interpret data; he portrays life and tells a story. Meticulous research is essential, and so is vivid writing, to enable readers to vicariously experience life in other times, other places. When history is yoked to theories and formulas, its sap dries up. Then it neither enlightens nor sensitizes.
The sloughing off of the ill-fitting vestments of science by historians does not make history worthless, but it does change the nature of its worth. Sensitizing the present to the past is not a value neutral process. Every retelling of history, if it is anything more than just a banal catalogue of events, involves ideation, if only because, even at the primary level, a process of selection and evaluation of data, a pattern-making, is involved. The historian might not be overtly judgemental, but judgement is implicit in the very telling of the story. Facts speak for themselves, and when vividly presented, speak loud and clear.
The historian is not a moral eunuch. In fact, it is his moral voice that gives his work its unique timbre-not to raise the moral voice is to treat history like paleobotany, with bland detachment. So, even while the historian acknowledges the provisional nature of all historical perceptions, he, like the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, affirms his subjective certainty in the world of objective uncertainties. He might not have any cosmic conclusions to offer, but he does take positions that are appropriate and necessary to his tune and place.
The essential corollaries of this relativistic attitude are moderation and tolerance. The historian affirms his views, but humbly, conscious that there are no absolutes. As the saying goes, the white heron in the snow has a different colour. All perceptions, all truth, are relative. As Vedantists would say, all are maya, mental constructs. The eye looks, the mind sees.
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