The Mughal Empire occupies a deeply contested place in contemporary Indian discourse. For some, it represents an era of political consolidation, artistic brilliance, and cultural synthesis; for others, it symbolizes foreign conquest and religious oppression. Between these competing narratives lies a far more complex historical reality, one that deserves examination through evidence rather than ideology.
One of the great ironies of Indian history is that the Mughals, despite being medieval monarchs of Central Asian origin, accommodated within their political structure a remarkable number of Hindu courtiers, generals, advisers, financiers, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. Yet these same rulers are frequently portrayed today as foreign invaders and anti-Hindu tyrants.
At the same time, many of those advancing such narratives function within a democratic order where Muslims, despite constituting one of the world's largest religious minorities, remain underrepresented in legislatures, ministries, universities, bureaucracies, and other centres of influence.
Mughal’s Inclusive Framework
History demands comparison rather than slogans. The Mughals ruled under an absolute monarchy. They faced neither elections nor constitutional obligations to share power. Yet instead of excluding large sections of society, they incorporated them into the imperial framework. The question, therefore, is not whether they sought power - every state does - but how they exercised that power within India's extraordinarily diverse social landscape.
Nowhere is this more evident than during the reign of Akbar. Raja Todar Mal became the architect of the empire's celebrated revenue system. Raja Man Singh emerged as one of its most trusted military commanders. Birbal occupied a position of influence and confidence at court, while Mian Tansen, whose Raga Darbari Kanada became synonymous with Mughal cultural refinement, enjoyed extraordinary patronage. Rajputs entered the nobility not as ceremonial figures but as partners in governance, while Kayasthas and Khatris occupied important administrative positions.
These appointments were not acts of charity. They reflected a vision of statecraft rooted in accommodation. Every durable political order involves calculation; what distinguished Akbar was that his calculations moved towards inclusion rather than exclusion.
The same outlook informed his broader policies. The Mahzar of 1579, the establishment of the Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri, the abolition of jizya and pilgrimage taxes, the incorporation of non-Muslim elites into the highest levels of administration, and the doctrine of sulh-i-kul collectively point towards an effort to create a political culture that transcended sectarian boundaries.
The Mughal conception of justice was equally significant. Contemporary chronicles repeatedly emphasize the ideal of impartial adjudication. Akbar and Jahangir punished officials accused of oppressing local populations and ensured that Hindu pandits participated in cases involving Hindu litigants.
Jahangir's celebrated Zanjir-i-Adl (Chain of Justice) enabled any subject, irrespective of faith, to appeal directly to the emperor. Shah Jahan is also said to have ordered the demolition of a mosque built on the site of a demolished Hindu temple, reflecting the principle that a place of worship founded upon injustice lacked legitimacy.
Selective Amnesia
Yet contemporary political discourse often remembers history selectively. Jizya is repeatedly invoked as evidence of medieval discrimination, while far less attention is paid to inequities under later rulers. During Dogra rule in Kashmir, Muslims bore the burden of numerous taxes and exactions. In addition to begaar (forced labour), they paid levies such as Zar-i-Ashkhas, taxes on cow dung, and Zar-i-Nikah or Sathrashahi—the seventeen-rupee marriage tax. Kashmiri Pandits, as in the case of begaar, were exempt from this levy.
Equally revealing was the Dogra state's approach to prostitution. In nineteenth-century Kashmir, prostitution was not merely tolerated but regulated and taxed. Brothels operated under official supervision and contributed revenue to the state treasury. While peasants, artisans, and shawl-weavers groaned under oppressive taxation, the state also augmented its coffers through the licensed sex and white slave trade. Such facts rarely find a place in romanticised portrayals of indigenous rule.
History becomes distorted when one set of rulers is judged solely by religious identity while another is exempted from scrutiny for comparable or worse practices. The past was rarely as simple as modern political rhetoric suggests.
It is perhaps because of Akbar's reputation for openness that some contemporary Brahmins reportedly regarded him as an embodiment of Vishnu and would not break their fast without his darshan.
Whether symbolic, political, or devotional, such accounts reveal the degree of acceptance he enjoyed among sections of his non-Muslim subjects.
A similar legacy can be seen in Kashmir's Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, whose justice, religious tolerance, public works, and concern for ordinary people earned him the enduring title Budshah - the Great King.
In the nineteenth century, Maharaja Ranjit Singh likewise demonstrated that political legitimacy in the subcontinent often rested on accommodation rather than exclusion. His administration included prominent Muslims and Hindus, and his patronage crossed religious boundaries. Though separated by time, faith, and geography, these rulers came to be remembered less for the identities they represented than for their ability to govern diverse societies with fairness and restraint.
Equally significant was the intellectual climate that evolved under the Mughals. Sanskrit was never banned. Hindu pathshalas were not closed, nor were Hindu scriptures proscribed. On the contrary, Akbar sponsored one of the greatest translation movements in Indian history.
The Mahabharata was translated into Persian as the Razmnama, while the Ramayana, Yoga Vashishta, and several Upanishads also received imperial patronage. Scholars of different faiths participated in debates at the Ibadat Khana, creating a rare forum for intellectual exchange.
Persian functioned as the language of administration, yet Sanskrit learning continued to flourish. Banaras remained a major centre of scholarship. Temples functioned across the empire, pilgrimage centres survived, and Hindu landed elites retained considerable authority. More than a hundred Hindu temples dating to the Mughal period still survive in Old Delhi, including areas associated with Shahjahanabad.
Such realities complicate the popular image of Mughal rule as a sustained civilizational war against Hinduism. Even where temples were destroyed, the reasons were often political — linked to rebellion, the assertion of sovereign authority, economic considerations, or military conflict — rather than part of a uniform programme aimed at eliminating Hindu civilization. Such actions were not unique to Muslim rulers.
Hindu Kings Who Demolished Temples
In Kashmir, several Hindu kings are recorded by chroniclers as having dismantled temples for political or fiscal reasons, appropriating their wealth to replenish state coffers. Kalhaṇa even refers to rulers who desecrated images and idols in the course of such policies, underscoring that temple destruction in pre-modern South Asia was frequently intertwined with power, politics, and economics rather than driven solely by religious motives.
Had forced conversion been the central objective of Muslim rule, the demographic profile of India would look very different today.
Akbar was not a modern secular democrat, nor should he be judged by contemporary standards. Yet in a sixteenth-century world marked by the European wars of religion, the Inquisition, and widespread sectarian violence, his experiments with dialogue and coexistence acquire undeniable significance.
Even Aurangzeb, despite his orthodoxy and controversial policies, cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional caricature. His administration included substantial numbers of Hindu nobles, military commanders, bureaucrats, and revenue officials. Jahangir and Shah Jahan likewise retained significant Hindu participation in governance. Dara Shikoh carried this engagement further by translating the Upanishads into Persian and describing them as repositories of profound spiritual wisdom.
None of this transforms the Mughal Empire into a utopia. It remained a hierarchical polity marked by inequalities, conflicts, and periodic coercion. Yet serious scholarship has long demonstrated that it cannot honestly be described as a monolithic project of religious persecution.
Irony of Contemporary India
The irony of contemporary India lies elsewhere. Many who invoke Mughal intolerance do so within a constitutional democracy where Muslim representation in legislatures, ministries, universities, bureaucracies, and other centres of influence remains disproportionately low. The contrast is difficult to ignore. It becomes sharper in the sphere of education and culture.
Mughal rulers generally engaged with India's intellectual traditions through translation, patronage, and debate. Contemporary India, by contrast, increasingly witnesses suspicion towards madrasas, hostility towards Urdu, and the securitisation of Muslim educational institutions. Minority institutions are often viewed through the lens of distrust rather than engagement.
The same unease is reflected in public life, where rhetoric of inclusion frequently coexists with bulldozer politics, punitive demolitions, and symbolic displays of state power directed at vulnerable communities.
The tragedy of contemporary discourse is its attempt to reduce centuries of Indian history to a simplistic binary of Hindu victim and Muslim invader. Such narratives may serve politics, but they rarely withstand historical scrutiny. India's civilization evolved through encounter, adaptation, synthesis, and coexistence. Its architecture, music, language, literature, cuisine, administration, and aesthetics all bear the imprint of this shared evolution.
The Mughal Empire endured not merely through military strength but because it succeeded in incorporating diverse social and political groups into its governing framework. Its durability rested as much upon accommodation as conquest. That may be the most enduring lesson of Mughal history: in India, stable political authority has historically depended less on exclusion than on inclusion.
History should illuminate rather than inflame. The purpose of revisiting the Mughal past is neither nostalgia nor apologetics, but the recovery of historical complexity from ideological simplification. The Mughals ruled India, but they also became part of India. Their legacy, like India's history itself, can only be understood through evidence, nuance, and a willingness to confront the past in all its complexity.
Have you liked the news article?