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Introduction
(Those who rule in Delhi are thinking of naming a new State-owned hotel after Akbar, the Moghul emperor. This being done probably to fabricate the secular balance because one hotel in Delhi is named after Emperor Ashok. When the State recalls a name from history to christen something, it invites the people to look back upon some endearing and inspiring qualities of the person chosen. This article reveals what Akbar, the Moghul tyrant, wrongly described as Great was in real life. If at all, only a brothel can be named after this man. - The Late Baburao Patel.)
Whoever chose Akbar's name for a proposed public sector hotel betrays crass ignorance of history. Even in an ostensibly partisan account of Akbar's reign, titled "Akbar, the Great Moghul", Vincent Smith cannot help observing on page 32 of his book that "Akbar would have laughed at the remorse felt by Ashok for the miseries caused by the conquest of Kalinga, and would have utterly condemned his great predecessor's decision to abstain from all further wars of aggression."
The view that Akbar's conquests were intended to achieve the great goal of welding the lesser states into a great empire, Smith dismisses as just "sentimental rubbish".
A perusal of accounts of Akbar's reign by contemporaries like Abul Fazl, Nizamuddin and Badayni and by western scholars like Vincent Smith is enough to convince the reader that slavery in its most abject forms flourished under Akbar and his reign was full of atrocities, lawlessness, repression and relentless conquests of a kind rarely paralleled in history.
To arrive at a correct appraisal of Akbar's individuality it would be proper to review the traditions and standard of behavior of the family from which Akbar was descended.
On page 7 of his book, Vincent Smith observes, "Akbar was a foreigner in India. He had not a drop of Indian blood in his veins." This shows how generations of Indian students have been cheated into learning by rote and repeating in their answer papers that Akbar was an Indian and one of the greatest one at that. We have already seen that he was not an Indian. As for the other part of the myth that he was a great man and ruler, we propose to prove in this article that he was one of the most detested by even his nearest of kins and all Indians, and, therefore, ought to be ranked as such in Indian histories.
In continuation of the above quoted remark, Vincent Smith says that Akbar was a direct descendant in the 7th generation on his father's side from Tamerlain (or Timur) and on his mother's side from Chengiz Khan. Thus Akbar was descended from two of the most cruel marauders known to history who made the earth shrink in fear during their life times. But Indian historical texts would almost have us believe that Akbar belonged to a family of people as saintly as St. Francis of Assissi and Abou Ben Adhem.
Author : Shri Purushottam Nagesh Oak
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