Rulers of India: Akbar

by G. B. Malleson

Among the firmest of the protected allies of the Emperor was Bhagwán Dás, Rájá of Jaipur, who had not only himself rendered splendid military service to Akbar, but whose nephew, Mán Singh, held a very high command in his armies. At the period at which we have arrived this Rájpút prince was governor of the Punjab. From his family Akbar now selected a wife for his son, Prince Salím, afterwards the Emperor Jahángír. The marriage was celebrated at Fatehpur-Síkrí, with great ceremony and amid great rejoicings. Until this reign the Rájpút princes had scornfully rejected the idea of a matrimonial alliance with princes of the Muhammadan faith. But it was the desire of Akbar to weld: to carry into action the cardinal principle that differences of race and religion made no difference in the man. He had many prejudices to overcome, especially on the part of the Rájpút princes, and to the last he could not conquer the obstinate resistance of the Ráná of Mewár.

The others were more complaisant. They recognised in Akbar the founder of a set of principles such as had never been heard before in India. In his eyes merit was merit, whether evinced by a Hindu prince or by an Uzbek Musalmán. The race and creed of the meritorious man barred neither his employment in high positions nor his rise to honour. Hence, men like Bhagwán Dás, Mán Singh, Todar Mall, and others, found that they enjoyed a consideration under this Muhammadan sovereign far greater and wider-reaching than that which would have accrued to them as independent rulers of their ancestral dominions. They governed imperial provinces and commanded imperial armies. They were admitted to the closest councils of the prince whose main object was to obliterate all the dissensions and prejudices of the past, and, without diminishing the real power of the local princes who entered into his scheme, to weld together, to unite under one supreme head, without loss of dignity and self-respect to anyone, the provinces till then disunited and hostile to one another.

One of the means which Akbar employed to this end was that of marriage between himself, his family, and the daughters of the indigenous princes. There was, he well knew, no such equaliser as marriage. The Rájpút princes could not fail to feel that their relationship to the heir to the throne, often to the throne itself, assured their position. When they reflected on the condition of Hindustán prior to his rule; how the Muhammadan conquests of the preceding five centuries had introduced strife and disorder without cohesion, and that this man, coming upon them as a boy, inexperienced and untried in the art of ruling, had introduced order and good government, toleration and justice, wherever he conquered; that he conquered only that he might introduce those principles; that he made no distinction between men on account of their diversity of race or of religious belief; they, apt to believe in the incarnation of the deity, must have recognised something more than ordinarily human, something approaching to the divine and beneficent, in the conduct of Akbar.

His toleration was so absolute, his trust, once given, so thorough, his principles so large and so generous, that, despite the prejudices of their birth, their religion, their surroundings, they yielded to the fascination. And when, in return, Akbar asked them to renounce one long-standing prejudice which went counter to the great principle which they recognised as the corner-stone of the new system, the prejudice which taught them to regard other men, because they were not Hindus, as impure and unclean, they all, with one marked exception, gave way. They recognised that a principle such as that was not to be limited; that their practical renunciation of that portion of their narrow creed which forbade marriages with those of a different race, could not but strengthen the system which was giving peace and prosperity to their country, honour and consideration to themselves.

It was in the beginning of the thirty-first year of his reign that Akbar heard of the death of his brother at Kábul, and that the frontier province of Badakshán had been overrun by the Uzbeks, who also threatened Kábul. The situation was grave, and such as, he concluded, imperatively required his own presence. Accordingly, in the middle of November, he set out with an army for the Punjab, reached the Sutlej at the end of the following month, and marched straight to Ráwal Pindí. Learning there that affairs at Kábul were likely to take a direction favourable to his interests, he marched to his new fort of Attock, despatched thence one force under Bhagwán Dás to conquer Kashmír, another to chastise the Balúchís, and a third to move against Swát. Of these three expeditions, the last met with disaster. The Yusufzais not only repulsed the first attack of the Mughals, but when reinforcements, sent by Akbar under his special favourite, Rájá Bírbal, joined the attacking party, they too were driven back with a loss of 8,000 men, amongst whom was the Rájá.³ It was the severest defeat the Mughal troops had ever experienced. To repair it, the Emperor despatched his best commander, Rájá Todar Mall, supported by Rájá Mán Singh, of Jaipur. These generals manoeuvred with great caution, supporting their advance by stockades, and eventually completely defeated the tribes in the Khaibar Pass.

³ Rájá Bírbal was a Bráhman, a poet, and a skilful musician. He was noted for his liberality and his bonhomie. 'His short verses, bon mots, and jokes,' writes Blochmann (Ain-í-Akbarí, p. 405) 'are still in the mouths of the people of Hindustán.'

Meanwhile, the expedition sent against Kashmír had been but a degree more successful. The commanders of it had reached the Pass of Shuliyas, and had found it blockaded by the Musalmán ruler of the country. They waited for supplies for some days, but the rain and snow came on, and before they could move there came the news of the defeat inflicted by the Yusufzais. This deprived them of what remained to them of nerve, and they hastened to make peace with the ruler of Kashmír, on the condition of his becoming a nominal tributary, and then returned to Akbar. The Emperor testified his sense of their want of enterprise by according to them a very cold reception, and forbidding them to appear at court. But the mind of Akbar could not long harbour resentment, and he soon forgave them.

Of the three expeditions, that against the Balúchís alone was immediately successful. These hardy warriors submitted without resistance to the Mughal Emperor. As soon as the efforts of Todar Mall and Mán Singh had opened the Khaibar Pass, Akbar appointed the latter, the nephew and heir to the Jaipur Rájá, to be Governor of Kábul, and sent him thither with a sufficient force, other troops being despatched to replace him in the Yusufzai country, and Pesháwar being strongly occupied. Akbar had himself returned to Lahore. Thence he directed a second expedition against Kashmír. As this force approached the Passes, in the summer of 1587, a rebellion broke out against the actual ruler in Srínagar. The imperial force experienced then no difficulty in entering and conquering the country, which thus became a portion of the Mughal empire, and, in the reign of the successor of Akbar, the summer residence of the Mughal sovereigns of India. It may here be mentioned that to reach Jamrúd, at the entrance of the Khaibar Pass, Mán Singh had to fight and win another battle with the hill-tribes. He reached Kábul, however, and established there a stable administration. The Kábulis and the heads of the tribes, however, complained to Akbar that the rule of a Rájpút prince was not agreeable to them, whereupon Akbar translated Mán Singh in a similar capacity to Bengal, which just then especially required the rule of a strong hand, and replaced him at Kábul by a Musalmán. He announced at the same time his intention of paying a visit to that dependency.

First of all, he secured possession of Sind (1588); then, in the spring of the following year, set out for Kashmír. On reaching Bhímbar, he left there the ladies of his harem with Prince Murád, and rode express to Srínagar. He remained there, visiting the neighbourhood, till the rainy season set in, when he sent his harem to Rotas. They joined him subsequently at Attock on his way to Kábul. The Passes to that capital were open, all opposition on the part of the hill-tribes having ceased, so Akbar crossed the Indus at Attock, and had an easy journey thence to Kábul. He stayed there two months, visiting the gardens and places of interest. 'All the people, noble and simple, profited by his presence.'⁴ He was still at Kábul when news reached him of the death of Rájá Todar Mall (November 10, 1589). The same day another trusted Hindu friend, Rájá Bhagwán Dás of Jaipur, also died. Akbar made then new arrangements for the governments of Kábul, Gujarát, and Jaunpur, and returned towards Hindustán.

⁴ Elliot, vol. v. p. 458.