Originally posted by: sashashyam
Look, my dear girls, this is all too strong and sweeping. You cannot make such broad generalisations either about Akbar or about Shivaji or about India, and I am afraid your laments too sound typically like the Indian penchant for breast-beating and pessimism. Let us try for a bit of balance, though I am almost sure I shall be pulled up for going off topic😉.
Every great leader and visionary the world has ever seen has had his legacy corrupted and degraded after his passing away, and this not so much by enemies, but by his followers and in his name. This is not exclusive to India. I am sure Jesus Christ would have disowned and condemned the Spanish Inquisition and other excesses in the name of Christianity, and the Lord Buddha would have disowned and condemned the highly politicised and corrupt Sanghas that came up in all the Buddhist countries in South Asia and South East Asia a few centuries after his passing away. I could cite any number of other such example thru the ages.
It was the same with Akbar; his magnificent legacy of sarva dharma samabhavaI and justice for all - which was way ahead of even our times, and not just in India but the world over - was tarnished after his passing, and by the time Aurangzeb came along,he completed the job and it was in tatters.
This happened because ALL human nature, and not just among the genus Indica, is 'like that only". It is very difficult, as all the great prophets found out for themselves, to rise above one's baser instincts. It is far easier to give in to them, to be prejudiced, insular, bigoted, clannish. Just as, on the moral plane, but for a few blessed individuals, being unfailingly good is a perennial struggle.
So the segment of humanity that had the good fortune of coming under the influence of a great soul, a Mahatma, in their time, rose above their baser self to reach at least 10% of his/her greatness. But after his/her passing away, the glow faded with time, and then it was back to business as usual.
He is the most magnificent Indian that our History has seen??
This is too much. Please do not talk as if there was no great leaders in India before, or after Akbar till today. Leaving aside the likes of Lord Buddha and the innumerable saints that dot our history down the ages, on the all India level, there was Mahatma Gandhi, for one, and a little earlier there was Swami Vivekananda. And I am not even mentioning the great social reformers of the 17th century onwards. I am a very great admirer of Swami Vivekananda, whose passing away at 41 was one of our great national tragedies.
Gandhiji went much further than any other leader or ruler before him in extolling the power of unconditional love and caring to change even the hardest of hearts. Nor was he a mere armchair preacher, he changed the course of not just Indian history but of that of many other lands, by influencing and helping generate peaceful movements for change in apartheid-ridden South Africa, the racist American deep south, and Communist Poland, to cite just a few.
With no rank or power or army to back him, he not only restored our sense of pride in ourselves and our civilisation, but got rid of not the East India Company, but of the British Empire on which the sun never set, and this without having to fire a shot or wave a shamsheer.
It was said of Gandhiji that he had the ability to "draw millions into a circle with him". But who were these millions and why did they come to him? Why, they were the common people of India, who not only gave up their tan, man, dhan to join his civil disobedience movement, but also, and the most difficult of all, adopted his doctrine of ahimsa, and took beatings and bullets without raising a hand to defend themselves. This was truly a miracle, for violence in self-defence is etched in the human DNA. But they did it.
These were simple people from every part of India, from every caste and creed, of both sexes and of all ages. How were they able to absorb Gandhiji's very demanding philosophy and then live up to it? Even the fierce Pathans of the Northwest Frontier Province, now in Pakistan, who lived and died by a violent code, bowed to him and became his followers.
They did it because it was in them, this readiness to accept all that Gandhiji stood and fought for. You could not say of them that they" deserved Nadir Shah and the East India Company", could you?
It is true that Gandhiji's hold on us has faded in this age of crass commercialisation of everything and the obsession with getting ahead at all costs, and the consequent exploitation of the solidarity of class, caste,religion, regionalism - all the demons that he had tamed but not exterminated, for they can never be exterminated, any more than Satan can be destroyed once and for all. But this is just the downside of a never ending cycle.
Then there was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose vision for and of India was as broad and all-inclusive as Akbar's and as emotional as Mahatma Gandhi's. He too was greatly loved and admired in every part of India. Why was this so? It was because inside every Indian is the ability conquer his inner demons and aspire to the great and the good. It has faded now in so many of us, but it is still dormant and it will resurge when there is a leader who can tap it anew.
Even today, across India, there are millions of young people who share the vision of these great men and work to spread the same message in a quiet way. There are also so many who are ready to exploit every division that they can find in the mass of humanity to bring out the worst in these human beings. It is the latter who hog all the headlines, that is all. The ones who do good without tomtomming it do not make good copy, just as a good, sensible serial rarely gets good TRPs.
And it is not as though these demons have a permanent resident status only in our Bharatvarsha. It took a century after slavery was abolished in the USA for the civil rights legislation to be passed, and that too was achieved only because of the shock of the Kennedy assassination and the legendary wheeling dealing skills of Lyndon Johnson. The brutalities perpetrated on black Americans in the deep south if the US till the 1930s would turn your stomach.
The Nazi regime, which reduced the extermination of 6 million Jews to an industrial assembly line, was full of people who loved grand opera and wept over Wagner arias, votaries of high culture in fact, in one of the most culturally advanced countries in the world. What does one say to that?
Brutal apartheid flourished in South Africa till very recently, with the full, and when necessary clandestine support of the UK, the US and the European countries. And as for the Belgian atrocities in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold II, why that would make you throw up (in whichever colour you choose!).
So, these vile traits are part of the human DNA, in India as elsewhere, of course in varying degrees in different individuals. When a great soul comes along, the transformative power of his goodness prevails over these traits for while, Not forever. After all, we are not in the Satyuga, but in the Kaliyuga!
Akbar too, for that matter, was extremely violent at times, as after the fall of Chittore in 1568, when he had all the defenders massacred. I was remembering this when I was listening last night to Jalal telling Jodha about how his battle gear turned him into a khoonkhar darinda, as if he was getting ready to do an Asoka.
Except that Asoka switched to non-violence after he had conquered practically everything left to conquer. Plus, Akbar did undertake many more wars of conquest after 1563, which is where we are, and none of them, to the best of my knowledge, were purely defensive like this one. But when did this serial ever make any sense?
Next, coming to Arieltabi's question about Shivaji and Akbar, no one can say that Shivaji is adored only by fanatics, and Akbar, being a moderate, has no constituency. Shivaji Maharaj was a very great man, who stood for the same values that Akbar stood for, and for that, as also because he stood up to the might of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and did quite a good job of it, he is admired universally across India.
In Maharashtra, there is a special, fierce local pride in him that will not tolerate even the mildest hint of any derogatory comment about him. There might be the same admiration for him elsewhere in India but not the same readiness to take to the streets to defend his prestige and his name. This kind of violent public reaction surfaces in many cases across the world in various cases.
As for Akbar, he is universally and deeply admired all over India, and when I was studying his reign at school, I was barely conscious of his being a Muslim. There was Asoka the Great and there was Akbar the Great, and one admired both unconditionally. I do not think much has changed in this respect, except that Gen X and Y are not as much interested in history!😉
But Akbar's greatness, for most of us is, as the Americans put it, like motherhood and apple pie. It is there and it is taken for granted without too much thought being given to it. Most people who have high regard for him do not think that his prestige is going to be in any way affected by the idiocies he is being subjected to by the likes of Ekta Kapoor. So they shrug their shoulders, laugh at this nonsense, and pass on.
This is not because Akbar has no constituency. He has all those who, just a few decades ago, walked behind Gandhiji at Dandi and Noakhali, and their children and their children's children. It is because he is thought by these people not to need the support of violent followers.
Which of course works just fine for Ekta, who does whatever she wants to with the image of Akbar, and goes laughing all the way to the bank.
One consolation, if it is any. If Asoka was treated the way Akbar is being treated in this serial, then too there would be no public protests. Why, Shahrukh Khan made Asoka dance in village squares, and reduced his epiphany on the battlefield of Kalinga to a purely personal conversion due to his love for the Princess Kaurawaki. (Shades of Jodha Akbar?). But there was not a squeak of protest from anyone. The film bombed at the box office, which was some consolation!😉
Lastly, my dear Arieltabi, the absence of protests against this shabby treatment of Akbar is not because Akbar was "Muslim and not Indian", which is itself a non-starter. India has more Muslims than any other country except Indonesia, and they are all both Muslims and Indians.
We have had Muslim Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Supreme Court Chief Justices, Air Force Chiefs, Ministers galore including the Home Minister, Governors of States, Secretaries to the Govt. - the list is endless, not to speak of megastars made so by public acceptance and affection. And the first recipient of the Param Vir Chakra, the highest gallantry award the Indian Army has to offer, for courage and dedication during combat, beyond the call of duty, was Havaldar Abdul Hamid. So please, my dear, let us not go down that road, shall we?
Oh dear, this had become a Ramayana. Sorry. I am sure I am going to be booted off the forum for being so massively off topic! Which, come to think of it, might be something devoutly to be desired!😉
Shyamala Aunty
Real Estate
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