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Babar In His Own Words
- by N.S. Rajaram
The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor.Translated,
edited and annotated by Wheeler M. Thacktson 1996. Oxford University Press:
New York and London. 472 pages. $39.95
In the pantheon of Indian Secularist heroes, Zahiruddin
Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Moghul Empire of India,
occupies a uniquely important place. Apart from his obvious importance
to history, he has left us his Memoir containing a first hand account
of his life and experiences - from his failures in his struggles to hold
on to his ancestral kingdom in Central Asia, to his founding of an empire
in Hindustan.But what interests us today is that the Baburnama gives us
an intimate look at the man and his methods, allowing us to contrast this
with the sanitized version found in history books.
And this has now acquired additional significance in the
light of the Ayodhya dispute.Indian students for several generations have
been told that Babur was a highly cultured and charming prince who went
on to found an empire that epitomised secularism and tolerance. For instance,
Pandit Nehru - that High Priest of Indian secularism wrote:Babur was one
of the most cultured and delightful persons one could meet. There was
no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as
his ancestors used to.And Akhilesh Mithal, a modern, fiercely secular
admirer of Babur, lamented (The Asian Age, 14 February 1996; Babur: An
Emperor and a Gentleman): The Prince Charming is seen as a horror and
the expression Babur kee aulad (offspring of Babur) is meant to be the
worst form of abuse which can be heaped upon a Muslim head.
The tragedy of India today is that people today do not have
time to read history and judge characters like Babur for them. Instead
of enjoying his many splendoured being and the achievements of his short
(47 years only) life people are misled into the belief that he was a mere
iconoclast.This extravagant praise of Babur by our modern Secularists
is vitiated by the observations of the great Guru Nanak, a contemporary
and an eyewitness to Babur's invasion; in his Babur Vani, Nanak denounced
him in no uncertain terms, giving a vivid account of Babur's vandalism
in Aimanabad.
Now, thanks to a superb new edition of the Baburnama (Oxford
University Press, 1996), here is an opportunity for all of us to decide
whether Babur was indeed a prince charming or if the abuse Babur ki aulad
has any basis in fact. The book under review is not of course the first
English version of Babur's famous Memoir.The best known is undoubtedly
the Annette Beveridge translation which appeared in four parts from 1912
to 1921. All translators of the Baburnama are hampered by the fact that
Babur wrote in his native Chaghatay dialect of Turkish - an obscure dead
language, and there are not many scholars in the world today capable of
reading Babur's work in the original. The editor and translator of the
present edition, Professor Wheeler Thacktson of Harvard is obviously one
of the best.
Here is what he has to say about Mrs. Beveridge's
earlier effort: Annette Beveridge was timid in her approach, opting for
a literal, almost word-for-word rendering of the Chaghatay ... [Her] translation
... reads like a student's effort-all the words have been looked up in
a dictionary and put together in a meaningful fashion, but without certainty
as to the force or nuance of the original.Since Mrs. Beveridge is no longer
with us to defend herself, here is something worth noting on her behalf:
she knew India well, and visited many of the places personally, including
Ayodhya and the Babri Masjid, where she recorded the inscription of Mir
Baki telling us that the Ram Temple was destroyed to build the mosque.Also,
she didn't have the resources at Professor Thacktson's command, so we
probably shouldn't be too harsh in judging her work.
This brings up a point of primary importance: What does
the Baburnama have to say about the Babri Masjid.Unfortunately nothing,
for the work as it exists today is incomplete. It has a gap of about five-and-half
months - from April to September of 1528 - precisely the period during
which the temple was demolished and the mosque built. Babur tells us that
he had reached Oudh in March, and on 28 March, we find him camped a few
miles downstream of the town, reconnoitering the area for good hunting
grounds. Then on April 2, the Memoir breaks off abruptly and picks up
again on September 18, 1528. But we know from other sources that the Ram
Temple was destroyed and the mosque built during Babur's stay in Oudh.
This point is important: the part of the Memoir describing Babur's
stay at Ayodhya is missing from all extant copies of the Baburnama.Thus,
the claim made by some Secularist historians that the Baburnama does not
record the destruction of the Ramjanmabhumi Temple is entirely fraudulent,
as it is based on a non-existent source. (Even if the part did exist,
and did not mention the destruction, it still does not follow that the
temple was not destroyed, but only that he failed to mention it. All this
is moot anyway since archaeology confirms the temple destruction.)
The Baburnama is a voluminous work. A third of it is concerned with India,
containing detailed descriptions of the land, its flora, fauna and his
experiences. But the parts that are of particular interest are those that
shed light on his personality and character. Was he tolerant and 'secular'
as Nehru (and his followers) describe him, a delightful person without
any religious bigotry? The picture of Babur we get from his Memoir is
the exact opposite of this.He was cruel and bigoted even by the standards
of Medieval Turkestan. He thought nothing of massacring even those who
had surrendered to him.
He writes of some Afghan prisoners: Those who were brought in
alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower
of skulls was erected in the camp.(p 188) How about his tolerance of other
religions, especially Hinduism.Here is Babur speaking:Chanderi had been
in the daru'l-harb [Hindu rule] for some years and held by Sanga's highest-ranking
officer Meidini Rao, with four or five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28],
through the grace of God, I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred
the infidels, and brought it into the bosom of Islam ... (p 331) And when
in a particularly happy mood, he composed the following poem:For the sake
of Islam I became a wanderer;I battled infidels and Hindus.
I determined to become a martyr. Thank God I became a holy warrior. (p
387)And what did he find interesting in India"Hindustan," he
wrote, "is a place of little charm. ... The one nice aspect of Hindustan
is it is a large country with lots of gold and money."All told, a
reading of the Baburnama fails to impress one with the author's charm.
He comes across as studious, pragmatic, calculating, and yes, bigoted
and cruel, without a touch of warmth or spontaneity in him. He speaks
so often, and with obvious glee of having made 'a tower of skulls', that
one soon begins to sicken at the expression. It is not hard to see why
Babur ki aulad is considered the worst form of abuse in North India. He
was beyond dispute a soldier of ability, but his being a 'Prince Charming'
is a modern Secularist myth of which one finds not a trace in his own
writing.
The Baburnama, giving as it does the story of his life in his own words,
sheds light not only on the true personality of Babur, but also on the
magnitude of the falsification which the Secularists have indulged in
- beginning with Nehru himself.Babur succeeded in India largely because:
first, he had been driven out of his homeland to which he could not go
back, and second, he was more than ordinarily ruthless. He pursued to
the limit the concept of Jihad - a total war for the annihilation of his
adversaries as prescribed by Islam of which he was a practitioner.He was
a product of his age and his environment, and that is exactly how we must
see him. Whitewashing his blood-soaked record to turn him into a figure
of chivalry and prince charming is an exercise in juvenile fantasy. Babur
saw ruthlessness as a virtue, and terror as a useful tactical tool.In
this he was a true descendant of Timur and Chengiz Khan - both of whom
were his ancestors.
Guru Nanak's eyewitness account gives a better picture
of Babur and his methods than almost any modern history book.
The same holds true for the Baburnama: it is a primary
source of great importance that goes to demolish romantic tales about
him.At the same time, Babur was successful because he was pragmatic. He
negotiated with Hindu rulers and made deals with them. His own string
of defeats in the early part of his career had taught him to be prudent.
So, in dealing with the Hindus he was being practical, and not showing
tolerance for its own sake. He prided in being a Ghazi - a holy warrior
for Islam - but never allowed himself to be drawn into a reckless venture.He
was anything but foolhardy.
All in all, he was a practical soldier, who by no stretch of the imagination
was a tolerant prince charming as our Secularists would have him. He himself
would have laughed at their absurdity. In summary, Wheeler M. Thacktson
and the Oxford University Press (supported by the Smithsonian Institution)
deserve our gratitude for having produced a magnificent volume that is
of great value to historians.The production is sumptuous with lavish illustrations
including paintings from the period. The production quality, not to mention
the literary quality of the translation and the generous annotations fully
justify its seemingly hefty price tag.
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