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In the 1,000-year-long drama of Muslim misrule in Hindusthan there were at times some unintended weird tragic-comic interludes. One such was provided by the lewd excesses of the last teenager of the Khilji dynasty, Sultan Kutubuddin, who had a penchant for the female attire. He kept long hair and graced the throne in open court decked in female finery. Simulating a blushing young bride, the sultan used to sport a thin veil of the finest muslin drawn tantalizingly over his face.
The locale of the melodrama used to be the magnificent 1,000 pillared Hindu palace in the Siri suburb of Delhi, usurped by the Muslims; or the sultan's camp if he were traveling.
Forestalling by 600 years the 20th century western type twist, rock and roll, belly-dancing, strip-tease and night-club orgies all rolled into one, the command performance of Sultan Kutubuddin's royal assembly consisted of a sodomitic and sexual free-for-all. Warming to a dead heat, the human forms used to roll, wriggle and contort in the grossest debauchery to the accompaniment of fast, sensual and hot tunes struck by the royal orchestra.
Then followed the pi=8Ace de resistance, a lusty dance-mime executed by the sultan himself. The sultan attired like a base strumpet tripped down the steps of the high throne like a prima ballerina to join the revelers. Swinging his hips and shaking his stuffed breasts in suggestive overtures the sultan flung his arms wildly around with drugged and drunken abandon, rolling his eyes in coquettish glances. And then came the climax - the act of royal strip-tease. In the midst of approbatory grunts and cheers, Kutubuddin stripped and threw away, one by one, the pieces of his clothing which he wore, until he stood stark naked revealing his male form to his drunken courtiers. That gave the signal for the assembly to dissolve into a pandemonium of the most beastly acts.
Ziauddin Barni has left a record of this adolescent sultan's excesses in his chronicle, Tarikh-i-Firozshahi. But it should not be imagined that Sultan Kutubuddin had a special lecherous inventive genius. He only followed a well-trodden path of regal Muslim behavior laid out by his forefathers.
Such sickening acts of lechery continuing unabashed and unabated for a thousand years, have been glibly glossed over and cleverly blurred over to be described in current history texts as the wonderful and glorious Muslim culture which by a lucky chance came India's way as a godsend and windfall. But for this fortuitous circumstance, we are told, Hindusthan would have been poorer. It is such sentimental nonsense, politically and communally motivated, which makes up the Indian history that is being taught in schools, colleges and academies the world over.
Author : Shri Purushottam Nagesh Oak
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