Were Mughals Humans? (And Other Allied Questions)

Thanks to a combination of shrewdly engineered circumstances, a vast number of children in India today will soon grow into adults without learning who the Mughals are. Kings who ruled and contributed to India’s mixed cultural ethos have been shunted off textbooks to ensure misinformed graduates grow up believing a country of billions has a monolithic past. Young readers, a little way off into the future will be battle ready on reams of WhatsApp forwards claiming assuredly accurate versions of all the cruelty Mughal rulers got up to. A source of information they are taught to consider most authentic – their own textbooks – will not shed enough light on the art, culture, language and stories of this rich chapter of our past. 

For them, and for adults in search of beauty, The Book of Emperors: An Illustrated History of the Mughals presents succour.

Written by Ashwitha Jayakumar and illustrated by Nikhil Gulati, the book takes head on the primary challenge posed by the gnaw of Islamophobia at our reading habits – the task of seeing Muslims as humans.

Generations of emperors – despite their emperor–ly concerns — are presented as hobbyists, warriors, tired men in search of wine and poetry, ruthless punishers, lovers of beauty, patrons of art, votaries of literature and thus, very interesting people. As a reader, you are freed from the imposition of the fact that pages of codified history already exist on the topic, as well as the politics of un-acknowledging this history.

If the text is easy to read, then the illustrations are easy to lose yourself in.

The book squeezes 300 years into around 130 pages, utilising every corner, margin, gutter, nook, and cranny to offer an indulgent visual tour de force. Even the inner covers unfurl into sprawling, old–timey maps of Asia, pointing out places key to the Mughals and thus, to their story.

Palatably put, with none of the stuffiness common to and necessary in academic books (many of which are mentioned in the two–page bibliography), Jayakumar’s story–telling is meant to fascinate. For younger readers, the book can act as a gateway to further discovery, but even for those blighted generations who have answered multiple exam questions on exactly when Shahjahan died and Aurangzeb sighed, there are treasures to find, and an irreverent and flowing narration to enjoy.

The cadence of Jayakumar’s prose makes this very big world appear graspable. The simplicity hides the fact that this illustrated book is a deft study of intertextuality, where art, text and the essence of history together create a maddeningly immersive experience.  Nikhil Gulati’s illustrations do not just accompany the text, they differentiate registers, signify shifts in time, herald cultural changes before the text makes them apparent. In their lush greens and deep blues, they are, frankly, gorgeous.

An example of the smoothness with which art plays its role in the book is this:

On the corner of a page where you read of Babur deciding to put down his roots is a three–inch fruit tree, rich in its orange and green (below). The page is unpopulated by paintings otherwise. You wonder what is up.

It is only when you turn the page that the double-spread solidifying Babur’s decision to make India home greets you (below), complete with what has now become a fully verdant garden, full of the same fruit tree you saw a chapter ago.

This attention to unfurling a sweeping story bit by bit helps focus the book on a vital aspect of history that is easy to overlook – the fact that life and times then, as it is now, straddled contradictions.

Sample this passage:

“And when he describes the rush of falling in love as a teenager or the pain of losing his mother and grandmother, about loneliness, shame and anxiety, the things he says seem so relatable that it’s almost a shock when he starts talking about making towers out of the skulls of his enemies.”

Not out of place perhaps even in literary fiction, this line is curiously on Babur. As the pages turn and you travel onwards, you have similar treatment of Humayun’s struggles, Aurangzeb’s complicated efforts, and later emperors’ frustrations. Shah Jahan has ruthlessly killed every claimant to the throne, says the text, but the illustration shows him utterly alone, with his back to the reader, on a balcony from which he can see the Agra Fort being made. This chink in the grandiosity makes these stories less forgettable.

There are two–page spreads to break the passage of time, here focusing on what a day in the life of an emperor looked like, there on the marketplace, somewhere else on the women who were key players in the Mughal scheme of things, and so on.

If intricate art can be said to be a special kind of tyranny to its beholder, then Gulati’s illustration frees the reader. The use of delicate Mughal motifs is subtle, and as with Tintin, the simplicity of two dots and a mouth – and a variety of noses – goes a long way to convey every human emotion possible while retaining a levity of things.

A book on Mughals is a brave decision at this time. The writer, illustrator and publisher must be congratulated for it. Gulati dedicates the book to the Mughals, ‘for living such colourful lives’. He and Jayakumar have done a beautiful job of remembering these colours.