The Theory (and Practice) of the Mughal State

What, apart from the sheer right of conquest, were the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of the Mughal state? And how, in turn, did these political philo­sophical ideas inform the actual administration of the empire? To many, it would seem a relatively straightforward proposition to categorize the Mughal Empire simply as one of many “Muslim,” “Islamic,” or “Islamicate” polities throughout his­tory.^[1896] However, while there is no doubt about the religious identity of the Mughal dynasty—they were indeed Muslim—this tendency to foreground, even to privi­lege, their religious identity as the most salient feature of their imperial identity is worse than inadequate: in fact it obscures and often distracts us from the true com­plexity and plurality of cultural, philosophical, and political influences that shaped the court's imperial vision, and the theory and practice of politics generated by that vision.

Recall, for instance, that ethnically speaking the earliest Mughal emperors were Turko-Mongol in origin. Certain tenets of the (semi)nomadic warrior ethos of the Central Asian steppes were thus an important touchstone for Mughal imperial pol­itics right from the outset—such as, for instance, the notion of being “loyal to the salt” of one's commander (namak-haldli), irrespective of the ethnic, linguistic, or even sectarian differences that might come into play.^[1897] Another cornerstone of what some scholars have referred to as the “Turko-Mongol theory of kingship” inherited by the Mughals was the so-called Tura-yi Chingizi (a.k.a. Yasa-i Chingizi), or “Code of Chingiz Khan.” Babur makes a point in his memoir of noting its importance, for instance, to the notions of kingship, civility, honor, and good conduct that he and his forefathers observed, even though it did not carry the force of divine sanction or religious obligation (and indeed, in spite of its pagan origins).^[1898]

But while these general Turko-Mongol traditions were an important layer of Mughal imperial identity and ideology, they were far from the only one.

If the goal of refashioning the Timurid legacy for the Indian context was a key feature of Mughal courtly identity, so too was the belief—especially from Akbar onward—that the Mughals were not only the inheritors, but in fact the new trustees, of the grand tradition of Indo-Persian literary and political culture. The Mughals did not introduce the Persian language to India, of course. It had already been a lingua franca for literary and political culture across South, Central, and West Asia for centuries, including in India, long before the Mughals established their empire.

As a result, poets, intellectuals, mystics, and other literati from across the Persianate world flocked to the Mughal court, its major urban centers, and its sat­ellite courts—some fleeing religio-political turmoil and/or persecution at home, others lured by the lucrative patronage doled out by the Mughal court and its no­bility, and still others just looking for adventure and a chance to experience first­hand the wonders of exotic India (‘aja’ib al-hind). Most members of the royal family, including the women, dabbled in poetry themselves, as did many in the no­bility and indeed members of the Mughal administration and civil service. Witty repartee was a staple of everyday life at the court and among the urbane denizens of Mughal cities, while the prevailing themes of classical Indo-Persian literary culture—antinomian dissent against the hypocrisy of orthodox mullahs and clerics, cris de coeur and existential angst at the impossibility of truly knowing God's will, open celebrations of the mystical benefits of embracing heterodox practices such as idol worship and esoteric Sufi approaches to the divine, vivid dramatizations of all the exhilaration and vexation involved in romantic love, bacchanalian revelry in the flouting of social constraints on drunkenness, madness, and heretical wildness— were not just the preserve of professional poets, but part of the everyday mental universe of a broad spectrum of Mughal society, from the bazaars and army camps to the heart of the palace.

The era was also marked by a new, self-conscious, spirit of innovation and lit­erary experimentation that the Persian poets—both in India and elsewhere—often referred to as “speaking the fresh” (taza-gui), as they sought to reinvent the clas­sical style of “the ancients” (mutaqaddimln) for their own, more modern, times.^[1902] And this atmosphere of literary civility and creativity did not just provide a kind of outlet for unorthodox thinking; it infused the idiom of Mughal statecraft, and was integral to the values of openness, tolerance, and non-sectarianism promulgated by the state.

Another crucial element of Mughal state ideology that emanated from the world of classical Indo-Persian letters was the advice literature on moral and political wisdom that circulated widely in the post-Mongol world. Some of this literature came in the form of fables and other ancient wisdom generally classed as adab, with sources ranging from pre-Islamic India, Persia, and the Greco-Hellenic world, to later adaptations and travel and advice literature in Arabic. This capacious category of texts could comfortably include everything from the stories of the Kallla wa Dimna (whose original source, via Pahlavi translation, was the Sanskrit Panchatantra) and other cycles of moral fables such as the Tutmama (“The Book of the Parrot”), to later works from the classical Persian canon like Firdausi’s Shahnama, Rumi's Masnavl, Sa'di’s Gulistan and Bustan, and Nizami Ganjavi’s celebrated five epics (the khamsa), especially the latter’s Sikandar Nama, or “Book of Alexander.” All of the texts just named, and many more besides, were read widely and enthusiastically in Mughal India, and played a big part in Mughal ideas about kingship, moral wisdom, and good conduct.

Running parallel to this adab wisdom literature was another genre of Indo­Persian literature on moral and political advice (naslhat) known as akhlaq, which had a profound influence on Mughal ideas about the state's role in promoting har­mony, balancing competing social interests (i'tiddl), and assuring justice (adl).^[1904] Treatises such as Nasir al-Din Tusi's Akhlàq-i Nastri, Jalal al-Din Dawani's Akhlàq- i Jalàli, and Husain Wa'iz Kashifi's Akhlaq-i Muhsini were considered standard reading, and thus no one who had not imbibed their wisdom could pass himself off as a civilized member of Mughal society. Many of the principles elucidated in the akhlàqi tradition were rooted in Greco-Hellenic (especially Aristotelian) writings on ethics, statecraft, and society—a reminder that ancient Greek wisdom had its own dynamic historical trajectory in the Perso-Islamic world, one that the Mughals drew upon just as they drew on other classical cultures. Indeed, it was not at all un­common for especially wise Mughal nobles to be described as a “Second Plato” or “The Aristotle of the Age,” while talented doctors might be hailed as “The Galen of the Age” (jàlinùs al-zamàn).

The Mughal imperial identity can thus be seen as a dynamic composite of all of these various cultural vectors—the Turko-Mongol, the Persianate, the Greco- Hellenic, and yes, the Islamicate—to which we can add, of course, the Indic. Akbar was born in Sindh in 1542, a mere 16 years after Babur's initial conquest of northern India. And from Akbar on, all of the Mughal emperors were born in India, while from Jahangir on a great many of the princes and future rulers had Rajput mothers and/or grandmothers. Thus, contrary to the modern colonial and Hindu nation­alist dogma that treats all Muslims as somehow inescapably “foreign” to the sub­continent, within two decades of the dynasty's arrival in India the Mughal royal family had already begun to see itself as essentially Indian in character, proudly flaunting the wealth, power, and splendor afforded by their status as the rulers of Hindustan vis-à-vis other imperial rivals like the Ottomans and Safavids. If Babur and Humayun had shown an intense curiosity about India, from Akbar's era on­ward the Mughal court oversaw a remarkable synthesis—not merely of the “Indian” and the “Islamic” worlds, but one that drew insight and inspiration from all of the multiple cultural vectors discussed earlier (and others besides), and wherein, by and large, the official position of the Mughal state was that no matter your regional, ethnic, linguistic, or sectarian identity, as long as you remained loyal to the state you were welcome in the empire and entitled to its protection.