Akbar and resources on Indian history ?

The historian Vincent Smith, in his biographical study of Akbar, declares that the emperor, after he had returned from his successful expedition against the rebels, called a formal council to promulgate [[161]] his new religion the Din-i-Ilahi./6/ This reading of the evidence is, however, almost certainly erroneous. The Jesuits apparently had not heard of any such proclamation. In fact, Father Monserrate, who accompanied Akbar to Kabul and back, thought that the emperor had grown more cautious in the expression of his views. On the return journey Akbar performed prayers in the customary Muslim manner in a mosque near Khyber, was reluctant to have religious discussions with the Jesuits, and during one debate in which Muslim spokesmen appeared likely to lose, Akbar took their side and brought his own knowledge into play./7/ Not only Smith, but most European historians, have assumed that Akbar abandoned Islam. Hindu writers, on the other hand, have generally held that although he followed a tolerant policy, he lived and died a Muslim. Muslim historians are about equally divided on the question. These conflicting judgments partly reflect the inevitable differences that result from assessing a complex personality, but they are due also to conflicting contemporary accounts and, in no small degree, to erroneous translations of the relevant Persian texts.

The foundation for the misunderstanding of Akbar's religious history was laid by Blochmann in the introduction to his translation of Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari; here he set the pattern for relying on Badauni, Akbar's enemy, rather than Abul Fazl, his friend, for studying Akbar's religious history. The crucial question about Akbar's religious activity is whether he established a new religion or a new spiritual order. Badauni's account is clearly intended to give the impression that Akbar no longer respected Islam and, indeed, actively persecuted it./8/ The expressions used by both Abul Fazl and Badauni in this connection, however, are iradat or muridi (discipleship) but Blochmann habitually translates these expressions as "divine faith," thus converting a religious order (or even a bond of loyalty) into a [[162]] new religion. He translated the expression ain-i-iradat gazinan, which correctly means "rules for the (royal) disciples," as the "principles of divine faith," and gives the subsection the heading, "ordinances of the divine faith," although there is no such heading in the original text./9/

The sharp difference between the viewpoints of Abul Fazl and Badauni is obvious, but our study of the subject has revealed a surprisingly large area of common ground between them, and if the present divergence of opinion about Akbar's religion is to be resolved, more attention will have to be given to what is common ground between these two principal sources of our information. It appears that modern historians, fascinated by the wit and sarcasm of Badauni, have paid scant attention to Abul Fazl's informative sections on Akbar's religion contained in his Akbar-Nama and Ain-i-Akbari. Akbar's regulations which were not of an ephemeral or tentative character have been preserved in the voluminous Ain-i-Akbari, and it would be illogical to suppose that important royal orders, which were to be given general currency in the empire, would have been omitted. Since the Ain's accounts of Akbar's religious innovations and of the practices of the royal disciples contain much that would shock an orthodox Muslim, there is no reason to suppose that regulations for the Din-i-Ilahi would not have been included. Judging by its contents and the public nature of the information which is sought, the Ain appears to be the most dependable source of information regarding Akbar's religious regulations and spiritual practices.

According to Ain-i-Akbari the emperor discouraged people from becoming his disciples, but the person whom he accepted for initiation approached him with his turban in his hand and put his head on the emperor's feet. This was to express that the novice had "cast aside conceit, selfishness—the root of so many evils." The emperor then stretched out his hand, raised up the disciple and replaced the turban on his head. … The novice was given a token containing the ruler's symbolic motto Allah-u-Akbar (God is Great). When the disciples met each other, one would say, "Allah-u-Akbar" and the [[163]] other responded, "Jall-u-Jallaluhu." "The motives of His Majesty in allowing this mode of salutation," Abul Fazl wrote, "is to remind men to think of the origin of their existence and to keep the Deity in their fresh, lively and grateful remembrance."/10/ The disciples were to endeavor to abstain from flesh and not to make use of the same vessels as butchers, fishermen, and bird catchers. Each disciple was to give a party on the anniversary of his birthday and to bestow alms. The dinners customarily given after a man's death were to be given by a disciple during his lifetime.

The religious policy of Akbar has ever remained a controversial issue for the historians of Mughal Rule in India. Some of them like Muhammad Husain Azad, S.R. Sharma, Dr. R.P.
Tripatbi, Dr. Tshwari Prasad and others have taken pains to argue that Akbar lived and died as a Muslim and that Dvi-i-ll&hi was neither a religion nor Akbar ever intended the establishment of a church. They reject the testimony of Badauni as reckless and indiscriminate and swayed by fanalicism. Their argument rests on the ground that Badatlni’s chaiges are not substantiated by Abul Fazl and other contemporary accounts save the Jesuit versions which, however,
show reliance on hearsy and apprehensions of the orthodox
party in Akbar’s court. These historians place confidence
only in court chronicles and shut their eyes to the mass of
contemporary accounts found in the biographies, memoirs,
letters and the discourses (malfuzat) of the sufi Shaikhs written
during the period. What is still more surprising, they lightly
pass over the references to Akbar’s un-Islamic views and measures given in the Ain-i-Akban itself some of which havebeen quoted by us. Actually, we find a few references even in the other writings of Abul Fazl as, for example, in the Akbar Namah Akbar is described as enlisting thousands of
disciples (chelas) to his new religion in the twenty-seventh
year of his rule.1 A'in-i-Akbari also mentions many thousand
novices belonging to all classes.2 These historians are never
weary of praising Abul Fazl’s catholicity and broadmindedness
but conveniently forget that several historians who have studied
Abul Fazl’s writings have accused him of suppressing the
truth3 and warned ‘against the prejudice which he draws on
his favourites by his fawning fulsome adulation..., 3nd against
the suspicions which he excites by his dishonest way of telling
a story, even in cases where the action related was innocent
or excusable;’4 Of a fact, no historian who is motivated or
unsympathetic to Islam can be expectcd to make an assessment
of the great harm done to the faith of the Prophet by Akbar’s
religious policies. These writers, however, acknowledge the fact
that Akbar’s religious policy was a complete failure and some
have now began to realise that if Akbar had pursued the policy of religious neutrality, the complicated communal problem of India would have found a correct solution very long ago.5