Extending the narrative of the Baburnama, the memoirs of the founder of the Mughal empire, from the previous column:
Babur descends into the Indian plain at the head of 12,000 horsemen. Two decades earlier, his first foray into Hindustan had revealed “a new world – different plants, different trees, different animals and birds, different tribes and people, different manners and customs. It was astonishing, truly astonishing.” He has raided the fringes of India often since, but this time is determined to go all the way. The capital of North India is at Agra, having been shifted there from Delhi by Sikandar Lodi, whose son Ibrahim now occupies the throne. Babur’s camp proceeds steadily but without hurry, giving him time to examine India’s birds, beasts and flowers. He hunts, he has drinking parties on barges, he orders the construction of a garden at a pleasant spot.
The Battles of Panipat and Khanua
In April 1526, with the heat of the Doab grown insufferable already, his army approaches that of Ibrahim Lodi. Babur’s forces have, by now, perfected the flank attack in the manner of the Mongols. Two Anatolian artillery specialists have equipped his army with mortars and matchlocks unknown in India. He settles on Panipat near Delhi as the place that will give his outnumbered troops the greatest chance of victory, and plans his battle formation. The guns are strung out in the centre, with room between each shooter for cavalry to burst through. The wings are left free to outmanoeuvre the opposition with their speed.
His generals complain that no adversary will attack such a well-fortified position, but he predicts Ibrahim’s vastly larger army and the crushing power of his elephants will make the foe overconfident. His insight proves correct. The sultan marches to Panipat, and mounts an attack at dawn on April 20, 1526. The Lodi forces make a headlong charge, and are confronted by a volley of fire, before being encircled by a flank assault. Hemmed in and confused, they try to break out, but are repeatedly repulsed. By noon Babur’s army is victorious. He now controls all the land between Kabul and the frontiers of Bengal.
A few rebellions need crushing after the Panipat victory. Then the immense Lodi treasury is distributed, with every citizen of Kabul receiving at least a small share of the spoils. Humayun, who protected members of the Gwalior Raja’s family from harm in Agra after the battle, has been presented with a 40-gram diamond as a token of their gratitude. It is probably the gem from which the Kohinoor will be cut. He gives it to his father, who hands it back without a thought. This and other acts of generosity earn Babur the title Qalandar, which pleases him immensely. There are, however, kindnesses he regrets. Ibrahim Lodi’s mother, whom he has presented with a large estate, conspires to have his food poisoned. He recovers after falling violently ill, not having consumed enough of the deadly meat to die from it, but his health is never the same after the incident.
Before long, news arrives that the ruler of Mewar, Rana Sanga, is planning an invasion. Sanga heads a Hindu Rajput confederacy supported by a few Hindustani and Afghan Muslim generals. His army is well over a hundred thousand strong. He made overtures to Babur in the past, but no deal was concluded. The Rajput has waited on the sidelines, hoping to pick off the weakened army of the winner of the war between Babur and Lodi.
Babur has no faith in the forces he has inherited after Panipat, and dispatches them to protect different forts he now controls, depending on his Kabuli army to take on the Rajputs. But his soldiers are in no mood to fight, and his officers cannot understand why he is still hanging around in Hindustan. The operating procedure of invaders has been consistent for 2,000 years: get in through the Khyber, raid a few places around the Indus, grab as much loot as you can, go further if North India seems feeble, place a vassal on the throne who will pay tribute for a while, and get out.
Babur has other plans. He has finally conquered a real empire and isn’t about to let his place in history slip. His forces, though, are tired and homesick, and he fears their low morale could trigger a premature and self-fulfilling assessment that the battle is lost.
Facing a powerful non-Muslim enemy for the first time, Babur settles on a religious gambit. A few camel-loads of fine Ghazni wine have just arrived in camp. He orders the wine turned to vinegar, swears he will never taste liquor again, breaks his gold and silver drinking cups and has the pieces distributed to the poor. He exhorts his warriors that this is a heaven-sent opportunity to die as martyrs or live as holy warriors. He, who has often fled from battle, now asks his generals to swear with him on the Quran that they will all fight to the death. He is gratified with the outcome: “It was a really good plan, and it had a favourable propagandist effect on friend and foe.”
The armies meet at Khanua, near Sikri, on March 17, 1527. The battle is much harder fought than the one at Panipat, but Babur’s firepower, his superior battle formation, and the mobility and discipline of his horsemen eventually prevail over an army ten times the size of his own. The Rajputs are crushed and there is now no major power in India that can threaten him. He spends his three remaining years concluding treaties, quelling rebellions, collecting his poems into a diwan, and composing treatises on prosody and jurisprudence. He feels an aching nostalgia for Kabul and for Samarkand, but never returns to those temperate lands, remaining twice exiled until his death in 1530.
Ethnicity, faith, and nation
Babur’s birthplace, Ferghana, lies in modern Uzbekistan, but he hated the Uzbeks above all his enemies. His grave is in Afghanistan, but he railed against the untrustworthiness of Afghans. In India, where he died, he is known as a Mughal, Persian for Mongol, but he wrote, “Havoc and destruction have always emanated from the Mughal nation”. He thought of himself as a Turk, but to call him that today is to link him in peoples’ minds to West Asia, which he never visited. The identification of countries with ethnic or religious groups is the source of great confusion, doubly so when one maps a time before nation-states existed onto current borders.
Uzbekistan has adopted Babur as a national hero. Two statues of the emperor stand in Andijan, his poetry is admired, his exploits well known. This belated recognition would have gratified a man who valued history’s judgment: “In the end, only qualities survive a person in this world. Anyone who has a modicum of intelligence will take steps so that he will not be ill spoken of afterward… The wise have said that a good memory is a second life.”
In India, though, Babur gets a pretty bad press, even though he and his immediate heirs, remain household names centuries after their deaths. Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb: it is hard to find another instance anywhere of six such exceptional individuals ruling a large kingdom in succession. The Mughals were the last Muslim kings to control North India, but in the popular imagination, Muslim sovereignty in Delhi is synonymous with the dynasty, an acknowledgement that its achievements far outstripped those of its predecessors.