The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  The voice of flattery pervades all ranks of society. When a Mogul has occasion for my services, he begins with the preamble that I am the Aristotle, Hippocrates and the Avicenna of the age. In the beginning, I protested against such a fulsome mode of address by attempting to assure people that I was very far from possessing the merits they attributed to me and found such comparisons highly embarrassing. But finding that my modesty only increased the intensity of their praises, I became determined to close my ears to their flattery as I had done to their discordant music.

  The idolaters, servile by nature from centuries of oppression by their own princes as much as by the Mohammedans, are even worse than the Moguls in the extent to which they stretch their sycophancy. I shall relate only one anecdote to illustrate what I mean. One of their learned pandits, as scholars of Gentile laws are called, whom I had introduced into the Agha’s service, once began his panegyric to Danishmand Khan by comparing him to the greatest conquerors the world has known. His nauseous observations ended with these words, uttered in all seriousness: ‘When you, my Lord, place your foot in the stirrup, to mount your horse and march at the head of your cavalry, the earth trembles. The eight elephants on whose heads the earth rests find it impossible to support the extraordinary weight.’

  At the conclusion of this speech I put on a suitably grave face and told the Agha that it behooved him to be careful about how he mounted his horse since Delhi could not afford any more earthquakes which caused so much devastation.

  ‘Yes, my friend,’ he said with a smile, ‘and that is the reason why I generally choose to be carried in a litter.’

  The Agha possessed a subtle, dry sense of humour although he rarely displayed it and, then, only to those whom he had admitted to familiarity.

  Yet, Danishmand Khan was a Mogul too, although of Persian birth, and however astute his intellect and discerning his judgement he was not totally immune to flattery’s insidious charm. While rejecting it with his head, he could not help his heart’s thirst for admiration, regardless of the ugliness of the vessel and the baseness of its carrier. Perhaps Indians are more susceptible to this all-too-human weakness and rightly believe that there can never be too much sycophancy; if you scatter enough around, some of it will always find its target.

  If flattery is the coin of social discourse, then corruption is the currency of all transactions in the regime. This is easily evident in the number of words they have for a bribe in their language—dastoor, nazrana, baksheesh, and so on. It is an established custom throughout the country that without the intercession of influential friends or the payment of bribes nothing gets done; even princes of royal blood cannot get their work done without making some kind of payment. Bribes are, in fact, such an accepted part of life that if a courtier asks the king for a favour on behalf of a general or officer, be it an appointment or transfer, the king never neglects to ask how much money the former has received. The courtier ordinarily admits the exact amount and after leaving a portion of the bribe with the intercessor, the king takes the rest for himself and sends it off to the treasury.

  Surprisingly, it is not the lack of good laws that is responsible for the state of affairs. If properly administered, the existing laws would render the Indies as eligible a residence as any nation in Europe. But of what use are good laws if they are not observed and when there is no possibility of enforcing them? The sole aim of governors of provinces appointed by the king is to amass as much wealth as they can in the time they have left in their appointments before they are removed by the whim of the monarch or the machinations of enemies at the court. The magistrates, or kadis, and other officers of the state, follow the example set by the governor. If justice is ever administered, it is among the lower classes, among persons who, being equally poor, have no means of corrupting the judge or buying false witnesses who can be acquired in great numbers and at a cheap rate. The only hope of impartial justice is from the emperor himself, who has a reputation as a just ruler. But how is a poor peasant to defray the expense of a journey to Delhi in the hope of presenting his case at the court? My account, I know, is possibly at variance with those of some other travellers who have extolled the quickness of the judicial system of the Moguls. They have perhaps only witnessed the summary proceedings in a court where two poor men were hurried out to be dispensed hard blows on the soles of their feet. Unless the parties were lucky and were immediately dismissed by the kadi with the soft words, ‘Musalih Baba (Be at peace my children)’, though without being given a hearing. Moreover, if the party in the wrong possessed the means to put a couple of crowns in the hands of the police, the kadi and his clerks, or had enough money to buy two false witnesses, he would win his case or be in a position to prolong it for as long as he pleased.

  Given my irritation at the servile attitude of my interlocutors and their utter disregard for rational discourse (which was almost always a feature of my encounters with the idolaters) providing an objective account of the race that constitutes the vast majority of India’s population requires considerable effort on my part. They are so numerous, in fact, that there are five or six idolaters for every Mohammedan. It is astonishing to see how this enormous multitude has allowed itself to be subjected by so small a number of Mohammedan princes. But the amazement disappears when one remembers that the idolaters are not a united race and that their religion, which in reality is no more than gross superstition, has introduced such a diversity of opinions and customs among them that they seldom agree with each other.

  This is not to say that the Moguls themselves have a great sense of unity. As a doctor who was also once attached to a Mogul army, I have seen its units of foreign mercenaries, often representing a dozen Mohammedan lands, function like tribes keen to maintain their autonomy in an unwieldy mass of irregulars. I have been witness to the mutual jealousy of the petty nobles called mansabdars that makes it impossible for them to execute coordinated plans in attack or defence unless the prince at the head of the army commands both respect and fear. Five and twenty thousand of our veterans from the army in Flanders, commanded by Prince Conde, would easily overcome these oriental armies, however enormous. But, when confronted by infidels, the Moguls can bank on the solidarity and common patriotism engendered by their faith. Idolaters, though, are as impervious to appeals to religious unity as they are to the fate of their rulers, since, beaten down through centuries by tyrants, homegrown or foreign, all they desire is to be left in peace and, if that is not possible, then to merely survive.

  The divisions within the idolaters are so marked that of them will eat bread or drink water in a house belonging to a person of a different caste, unless it is nobler and more exalted than his own. These castes are like the tribes once were among the Jews, and although it is commonly believed that there are seventy-two of these castes I have ascertained from pandits that idolaters can be reduced to four principal castes from which all others derive their origin. The second caste, below the Brahmins, that of the warrior Rajputs, is the only division that is brave and distinguished in the profession of arms. If united, they could have disputed the rule of the Moguls but their rajas, who are like so many petty kings, are constantly scheming or fighting against one another and it is their disunion that has made them tributaries to the Great Mogul. The Kachhwahs of Jaipur and the Rathors of Jodhpur do not display half as much zest in fighting the Safavids of Persia or the Moguls of Delhi as they do in opposing the Sisodias of Udaipur.

  Most of the Rajput princes are now in the emperor’s service and are firm supporters of the empire. The Mogul emperor recompenses some of the principal rajas by paying them handsome salaries and giving them generous presents, and binds them even closer to the throne by taking their princesses into the seraglio as wives.

  The Mohammedans rightly despise the idolaters as a naïve and primitive people who have no conception of God as the Creator of the world but believe in hundreds of god and goddesses. They worship these beings, both divine and demonic, many of them no more than garg
oyles, some with multiple arms, others with bulging eyes and lolling tongues, or even with faces of animals—a lion, an elephant, a boar or a monkey—in garishly painted stone idols. They placate spirits in trees by making offerings of flowers and grains of rice.

  Partly on my solicitation and partly to gratify his own curiosity, the Agha, had taken into his service one of the most celebrated pandits in the Indies who had once belonged to the household of Prince Dara and who introduced me to the other pandits he attracted to the house. I tried to understand their beliefs but found that I got a headache whenever the pandits tried to explain something to me.

  Every idolater belief, every idolater law, seems to have its opposite, and the pandits gravely maintained that all of them were equally true. Since they have not had the benefit of our Enlightenment, even their best minds continue to live in an enchanted world, which makes for confused thinking, lacking the clarity of thought of our best thinkers. Never having heard of Descartes, they are lamentably ignorant of basic facts like the impossibility of the coexistence of opposites. Instead of an unambiguous ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question that can have but one answer, they inevitably slide into rambling discourses which simultaneously communicate assent and dissent. If one were to persist and try to pin them down, their response would be amusing enough: ‘We do not pretend that our laws are of universal application. God intended them only for us. We do not even say that yours is a false religion; it may be adapted to your wants and circumstances, for the gods have no doubt appointed many different ways of reaching heaven.’ Try as I might, I found it impossible to convince them that the Christian faith was designed for the whole of mankind, and theirs was mere fable and gross fabrication. For instance, they believe that their souls are constituent parts of God and therefore it is, in fact, we humans who have imposed upon ourselves religious worship, belief in paradise and in hell—which is patently absurd. It is impossible to rid idolaters of their errors, because they will not listen to reason and entirely subordinate their judgement to their ancient customs. They are tender-hearted towards animals of every description, save man; they have scruples about killing a snake or even a bug, yet regard it as a highly meritorious action to cause a living woman to be burnt on a pyre, along with the body of her deceased husband. The Mohammedans, at least, are unambiguous and consistent in what they believe, even if that belief be in error, and there is no difficulty in carrying out a conversation or disputation on religious matters with an educated adherent of the Mohammedan faith.

  In spite of their subjugated condition and the absurdity of their beliefs, learned idolaters, all of whom belong to the caste of Brahmins, are an arrogant race that holds that when a man is above others in the nobility of his descent, as they are themselves, he also surpasses the rest of mankind in understanding. They assert, relying on this unsound prejudice shared by all idolaters, that only those who are as high-born as Brahmins can know true religion and true science. They state openly that a man of low birth is as despicable as a farangi; such a man may be rich and brave but he can never be wise. Just as all that the pandits say about their religion is chimerical and fantastical, so it is with their notions of nobility. I have seen many Brahmins carrying loads on their backs day and night, or working with an axe and doing other acts which are considered humble by Europeans. To this, I must add that a majority of them are illiterate and ignorant and consequently very superstitious, and even the ones who consider themselves to be intellectually superior are no more’ than arrant sorcerers.

  The idolaters are also firm in their belief that they are the only people who are polite in manners and the cleanest and most orderly in search of new knowledge. The Agha evinced keen interest in the country and the nature of its government. The ambassador was a mine of information on the country and the customs of its people: the worth of a man in Ethiopia, for instance, is estimated by the number of his children; the emperor had fathered over eighty and he was the father of sixteen, including the lad accompanying him, who was his favourite. I concede that after a while I stopped paying attention to the ambassador’s talk since I found myself being distracted more and more by his son who sat quietly in a corner. From time to time the boy would exchange quick looks with me in which curiosity, interest and speculation were evident. The lad was remarkably well made; his skin was of the clearest black, his nose was not flat nor his hps thick, and he had the longest eyelashes I have seen on a boy. Danishmand Khan, who noticed my interest—little escaped his keen gaze—and was aware of my predilection in these matters, took me aside one day after the Ethopians had left and told me that he had talked to the ambassador, who had agreed to sell the boy to me for fifty rupees. ‘We shall yet make an Amir out of you, Bernier, if not a poet,’ he said, patting me on the shoulder and referring to the taste I now shared with men of refinement among upper-class Mohammedans. Here, I should perhaps mention that any European who has spent as much time at the Mogul court as I cannot help but be infused with the easy carnality of the Omrah, which makes little distinction between woman or boy as its object. Suffice to say that the warm springs, hot summers and the fecundity of the earth of the Indies encouraged my soul to bloom with flowers other than the ones found in the gardens of our Holy Church as I reclaimed the heritage of the ancient Greeks.

  Danishmand Khan’s intervention led to the Ethiopian ambassador being granted an audience at the imperial court. With his usual generosity, the emperor invested the ambassador with a serapa, a robe of honour consisting of a brocade vest, an embroidered silk girdle and a turban of the same material. He also gave orders for the maintenance of the Ethiopians as long as they stayed in Delhi and presented the ambassador with six thousand rupees, which is the equivalent of three thousand crowns.

  With the change in his circumstances, the ambassador turned out to be an ingrate. He sent word that he would not part with his boy for less than three hundred rupees rather than the contracted fifty. I was furious with him for breaching an agreement he had made with the Agha but paid the three hundred rupees, mostly for the satisfaction of telling people about a father who had sold me his own child. Habshi, as I called the boy after the land of his origin which is also known as Abyssinia, was a lovely, even-tempered lad who provided me much solace during my sojourn in the Indies and after my return to France. He is a handsome young man now, pursued by many Parisian ladies ever on the lookout for new sensations, but remains devoted to me even as he spreads his favours among women; the lad has now become a refined ‘man of two tastes’ as the Indians would call him.

  ‘I am more skeptical dar’ s claims about the fruits of his quest than of its sincerity’

  FRANCOIS BERNIER

  IN SUMMER, WITH THE emperor departing for cooler climes, Delhi transforms into a sleepy little provincial town and reveals its real face, otherwise concealed behind the mask of a cosmopolitan city.

  I am aware that most inquiries on my return to France will pertain to the capital cities of the Mogul empire and that my patrons and well-wishers will be anxious to know if Delhi and Agra rival Paris in beauty, size and the number of inhabitants. I have prepared, therefore, to gratify the understandable curiosity upon these points by taking careful notes on the surroundings and a few other matters that my readers might find interesting.

  Delhi is a city that is made up of parts both very old and very new. The older part consists of ruins of mosques, serais, tombs, tanks, fortifications built by kings of other Mohammedan dynasties that ruled the country before the arrival of the Moguls. These lie scattered over a large area to the south beyond the city walls that is slowly being reclaimed by scrub and jungle and is reputed as being the refuge for bands of robbers who waylay travellers on the highway to the Deccan. The new portion, less than twenty years old, is called Shah Jahanabad— after the emperor who built it—but since this name is unknown to Europeans, I shall continue to call the city by its old name.

  The emperor had shifted his capital from Agra to Delhi in 1639, citing the scorching summer as the rea
son for what was still the largest city in the Mogul empire being unfit to be his residence. The real reason, I suspect, was more personal and may have had to do with the death of his favourite wife; after Mumtaz Mahal was no more, the monarch decided to leave Agra and embarked on frenetic construction activity that included the building of the Taj Mahal as well as Shah Jahanabad.

  Delhi is built in the shape of an imperfect crescent moon on the bank of the river Jamuna. A brick wall has been built to fortify the new capital on all sides except the one defended by the river. It is said that on the advice of an astrologer, Shah Jahan had the heads of hundreds of decapitated criminals deposited in the wall’s foundations to ensure that the capital will never be sacked by invaders or its inhabitants put to sword. Tall towers flank the wall at every hundred paces, and it has twelve entrances of which the two main gates open on to the roads to Agra in the east and Lahore in the northwest. I found Delhi’s fortifications to be unimpressive since there are neither artillery pieces placed on the towers nor ditches for additional defence. A European battery of moderate force would have little difficulty in breaching the walls.

  Between the city and the suburbs the countryside is interspersed with extensive gardens and sprawling fields, and beyond the suburbs are the residences of the great Omrah and the camps of the idolater rajas in service with the Great Mogul. Some of these camps, such as Jaswantpur and jaisinghpur, named after the Rajput kings of Jodhpur and Jaipur, two generals among the most loyal in the monarch’s army, have grown into small townships exclusively inhabited by idolaters.

  In France, I had avidly perused accounts of the fabled wealth of the Indies and the magnificence of the Mogul court and was thus sorely disappointed with my first impressions of the capital city of the Mogul empire. Oh, Delhi has some fine avenues and not a few splendid palaces that are in no way inferior to those of the same class in Paris. Its imposing main bazaar, wider and more spacious than any street in any European capital, flanks the road that leads from the emperor’s citadel to the Lahore gate and is covered by a high, arched roof with large, round apertures which allow an abundance of air and light to stream in. Outside the walls of the city, are the fine mansions of the Omrah and rich merchants, nestled in luxuriant green foliage, giving them an appearance of castles located in the heart of a forest. In a hot and parched country, where the eye seeks refreshment and repose in verdure, such landscapes are inordinately pleasing. I must also admit that in my experience there is nothing more spectacular in the world than the great Royal Square in front of the emperor’s citadel at certain hours of the day when the Omrah, rajas and the mansabdars come to mount guard or to attend court. Dressed in finery and mounted on a fine Turkish horse, even a lowly mansabdar is normally escorted by at least four servants, two leading in front and two following behind. The Omrah and the idolater rajas, as befitting their exalted status, come riding on magnificently caparisoned elephants, or are conveyed in richly carved palanquins inlaid with silver or gold leaf, leaning against thick brocade cushions and chewing betel leaves. The palanquins are carried on the shoulders of six men wearing the livery of their masters while a servant walks on one side bearing a spittoon of porcelain or silver and two servants walk on the other side of the palanquin, flapping away flies with peacock-tail fans. Footmen march in front, clearing the way, while a posse of best-mounted horsemen bring up the rear of an Amir’s retinue. If I had not regarded this display of magnificence with philosophical indifference, I might have been carried away by such flights of imagination as inspire idolater poets and cause them to represent the royal elephants as conveying not noblemen but goddesses concealed from the vulgar gaze of mortals.