Having organized the newly-conquered territories into three subahs of Ahmadnagar, Berar and Khandesh, and appointed Prince Daniyal viceroy of Southern and Western India, that is to say, of the three Deccan subahs with MaIwa and Gujarat, Akbar returned to Agra in May, 1601, to deal with the rebellious Salim. The Deccan campaigns of Akbar resulted in pushing the Mughul frontier from the Narmada, to the upper courses of the Krishna river (called here the Bhima,). But “the annexation was in form only. The new territory was too large to be effectively governed or even fully conquered. Everywhere, especially in the south and the west, local officers of the old dynasty refused to obey the conqueror, or began to set up puppet princes as a screen for their self-assertion. The Sultans of Bijapur and Golkunda seized the adjacent districts of their fallen neighbours”.
The Last Days of Akbar
The last days of Akbar were rendered unhappy by grief and anguish. His beloved friend and poet, Faizi, passed away in 1595. In eagerness to seize the throne, Salim set himself up as an independent king at Allahabad and entered into intrigues with the Portuguese to achieve his end. In 1602 he further wounded his father’s feelings by causing Abul Fazl, a close friend of the Emperor’s, to be put to death on his way back from the Deccan. In 1603 a temporary reconciliation was effected between father and son through the mediation of Sultana Salima Begam. But Salim again proceeded to Allahabad and began to act in a highly objectionable manner. Meanwhile Khan-i-A’zam, Raja Man Singh and some other nobles of the court, plotted to secure the succession for Salim’s son, Khusrav. But their scheme failed owing to the opposition of other nobles. The other sons of Akbar had already died. Salim, the only surviving son of Akbar, became reconciled to his father after the removal of all the rival claimants. Akbar treated him like a petulant child, rebuked him severely, and confined him for some time before pardoning him in November, 1604. But Akbar’s end was drawing near. He was attacked by severe diarrhoea or dysentery in the autumn of 1605 and died on the 17th October.
Akbar and the Deccan
The sublimity of Akbar’s conceptions, and the catholicity of his temperament and ideals, were moulded by various influences. Firstly, the influence of his heredity “endowed him with those qualities of head and heart that prepared him to receive the impress of his environments, and reflect it in the best possible way”. In spite of their being conquerors, Timur and his descendants were lovers of art and literature and rose above religious orthodoxy, largely owing to their contact with Sufism. Akbar’s mother, the daughter of a Persian scholar, sowed in his mind the seeds of toleration. Secondly, Akbar’s early contact with Sufism, during his stay in the court of Kabul, where many Sufi saints had fled away from Persia under the pressure of Safavi persecution, and subsequently the influence of his tutor, ‘Abdul Latif, impressed upon his mind the worth of liberal and sublime ideas and made him eager to “attain the ineffable bliss of direct contact with the Divine Reality”. Lastly, his Rajput wives and his contact with Hinduism, and the reformation movements of his time, made an impression on his imaginative mind. Thus, “intelligent to an uncommon degree, with a mind alert and inquisitive, he was best fitted by birth, upbringing and association to feel most keenly those hankerings and that spiritual unrest which distinguished the century in which he lived. He was not only the child of his century, he was its best replica “. It might be that Akbar’s political aim of establishing an all-India Mughul Empire had some influence on his religious policy, as political factors largely influenced the religious settlement of his English contemporary, Queen Elizabeth. But there is no doubt that he had a yearning after truth and often “tempests of feeling had broken over Akbar’s soul”. We are told even by the hostile critic Badauni that “he would sit many a morning alone in prayer and melancholy, on a large flat stone of an old building near the (Fathpur) palace in a lonely spot with his head bent over his chest, and gathering the bliss of early hours. The conflicts of the different religious sects shocked his soul, and he devoted himself “to the evolution of a new religion, which would, he hoped, prove to be a synthesis of all the warring creeds and capable of uniting the discordant elements of his vast empire in one harmonious whole”.
Akbar observed the external forms of the Sunni faith until 1575, when his association with Shaikh Mubarak and his two sons, Faizi and Abul Fazl, produced a change in his views. He then caused a building to be constructed at Fathpur Sikri, called the Ibadat-Khana or the House of Worship, with a view to discussing philosophical and theological questions. He first summoned there the learned divines of Islam, but their discussions soon took the shape of “vulgar rancour, morbid orthodoxy and personal attacks” and they could not reply to some of the queries of Akbar to his satisfaction. In fact, their petty wrangling, of which Badauni gives a graphic picture, failed to satisfy his inquisitive soul, and led him to seek truth elsewhere. He therefore called to the ‘Ibadat Khana the wise men of different religions and sects, notably Hindu philosophers like Purushottama, Devi and some others; some Jaina teachers, the most prominent of them being Hari Vijaya Suri, Vijaya Sen Suri and Bhanuchandra Upadhayya; and Parsi priests and Christian missionaries from Goa. He patiently attended to the arguments of the exponents of each faith, and “went so far in relation to each religion that different people had reasonable grounds for affirming him to be a Zoroastrian, a Hindu, a Jaina or a Christian “. But he was not converted to any of these faiths, and there is no reason to exaggerate the influence of Christianity over him more than that of any other religion. It seems that being dissatisfied with the bitter controversies of the Muslim Divines, he was prompted to study “other religions by means of discourses and debates, which eventually resulted in his eclecticism ” and in the promulgation of the Din-i-Ilahi. It was a new religion, “compounded”, as the Jesuit writer Bartoli says, “out of various elements, taken partly from the Koran of Muhammad, partly from the scriptures of the Brahmans, and to a certain extent, as far as suited his purpose, from the Gospel of Christ”. A firm believer in the policy of universal toleration, Akbar made no attempt to force his religion on others with the zeal of a convert or a religious fanatic, but appealed to the inner feelings of men.
