‘History mends broken things’
KARACHI: Emperor Babar did not come to India to kill Hindus, but to fight his coreligionist, said Dr Taymiya R. Zaman while delivering her lecture titled ‘Misplacing the Mughals: Historical Memory and Pakistan’ at the Aga Khan University on Tuesday.
Dr Zaman tried to look at the kind of relationship that Pakistanis had with their past by flipping the pre-modern era and placing it in today’s context. She said people tended to associate the Mughals with the monuments that they built and the characters that had entered the subcontinent’s popular culture. “We, Pakistanis, didn’t get to learn about them in school, because in textbooks Pakistan’s history was taught as if it began with the arrival of Mohammad bin Qasim in the region, followed by a bit of Mahmood Ghaznavi’s achievements and assertions like Emperor Akbar was a ‘bad Muslim’, culminating in the creation of Pakistan.”
Dr Zaman said it was difficult to justify nation states or any nation for that matter. Nation states needed to justify their existence for which they required heroes and villains from the past, therefore, concepts like Akbar was a heathen and Aurangzeb resembled Ziaul Haq were played out in the media. History was often used as an attempt to rationalise our existence, and there was nothing to anchor us. Akbar was not secular she said and asked how could someone who thought of himself as ‘incarnation of Ram’ be secular?
Dr Zaman did an interesting thing. By flipping the whole scenario she wondered how might yesteryear kings see us if they lived today. She showed a map of the present dotted with nation-states and countries after which she presented a map from Akbar’s time. She said Babar established the Mughal Empire in 1526 by defeating Ibrahim Lodhi at Panipat. He came through Samarqand and Kabul to reach Delhi. At this point she mentioned another misconception (borne out of improper teaching of history) that Babar came into the region to kill Hindus whereas it was a Muslim that he had trounced, a fact that Hindus tended to forget. She said if today Babar was to conquer India he’d have to go through Samarqand which was in Uzbekistan, Kabul (Afghanistan), Lahore (Pakistan) and Delhi (India). He might require a passport too. India and Pakistan had fought each other and it had something to do with God. Pakistan was a homeland for Muslims while more Muslims lived in India. All of that would confuse and scandalise Babar.
The map of the Mughals suggested that boundaries were a tangible thing and king would rule from a city aligned to other cities. The goal was to capture a city rather than to convert people. It made sense to keep local culture intact. Every king had to invoke the divine because the common man could think ‘if my king is like me, why is he ruling over me’.
Dr Zaman raised another question as to why it was difficult to face ‘different’. Before colonial rule there were different ways of looking at ourselves. It didn’t make for an interesting query as to who’s a good Muslim and who’s bad. On the other hand, to know the nature of the divine was interesting.
Dr Zaman said Jehangir had differences with his father because his father thought he (Akbar) was god. It was difficult to have such a father. This made Dr Zaman point out that we came at different understandings of the past because we’re not taught history properly. We’re not told about our relationship with the land. History appeared to us in flashes. The Mughals were represented through the monuments they constructed. Our impoverishment of the present could be healed by a thorough study of the past. “History can mend things that have been broken,” she articulated, adding history helped you return to your map of home.
After the talk, the floor was opened for a question-answer session. Responding to a query, Dr Zaman said in history majorities had always acted horribly; they needed to be controlled. Answering another question, she said you shouldn’t try and impose your lens on the past; instead you should try and understand the past on its own terms.
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