BABAR IN HIS OWN WORDS
-N.S. Rajaram

The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor.Translated, edited and annotated by Wheeler M. Thacktson. 1996. Oxford University Press: New York and London. 472 pages. $39.95

In the pantheon of Indian Secularist heroes, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Moghul Empire of India, occupies a uniquely important place. Apart from his obvious importance to history, he has left us his Memoir containing a first hand account of his life and experiences - from his failures in his struggles to hold on to his ancestral kingdom in Central Asia, to his founding of an empire in Hindustan. But what interests us today is that the Baburnama gives us an intimate look at the man and his methods, allowing us to contrast this with the sanitized version found in history books. And this has now acquired additional significance in the light of the Ayodhya dispute.

Indian students for several generations have been told that Babur was a highly cultured and charming prince who went on to found an empire that epitomised secularism and tolerance. For instance, Pandit Nehru - that High Priest of Indian secularism wrote:

Babur was one of the most cultured and delightful persons one could meet. There was no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as his ancestors used to.

And Akhilesh Mithal, a modern, fiercely secular admirer of Babur, lamented (The Asian Age, 14 February 1996; Babur: An Emperor and a Gentleman):

The Prince Charming is seen as a horror and the expression Babur kee aulad (offspring of Babur) is meant to be the worst form of abuse which can be heaped upon a Muslim head.
The tragedy of India today is that people today do not have time to read history and judge characters like Babur for themselves. Instead of enjoying his many splendoured being and the achievements of his short (47 years only) life people are misled into the belief that he was a mere iconoclast.


This extravagant praise of Babur by our modern Secularists is vitiated by the observations of the great Guru Nanak, a contemporary and an eyewitness to Babur's invasion; in his Babur Vani, Nanak denounced him in no uncertain terms, giving a vivid account of Babur's vandalism in Aimanabad. Now, thanks to a superb new edition of the Baburnama (Oxford University Press, 1996), here is an opportunity for all of us to decide whether Babur was indeed a prince charming or if the abuse Babur ki aulad has any basis in fact.

The book under review is not of course the first English version of Babur's famous Memoir. The best known is undoubtedly the Annette Beveridge translation which appeared in four parts from 1912 to 1921. All translators of the Baburnama are hampered by the fact that Babur wrote in his native Chaghatay dialect of Turkish - an obscure dead language, and there are not many scholars in the world today capable of reading Babur's work in the original. The editor and translator of the present edition, Professor Wheeler Thacktson of Harvard is obviously one of the best. Here is what he has to say about Mrs. Beveridge's earlier effort:
Annette Beveridge was timid in her approach, opting for a literal, almost word-for-word rendering of the Chaghatay ... [Her] translation ... reads like a student's effort-all the words have been looked up in a dictionary and put together in a meaningful fashion, but without certainty as to the force or nuance of the original.

Since Mrs. Beveridge is no longer with us to defend herself, here is something worth noting on her behalf: she knew India well, and visited many of the places personally, including Ayodhya and the Babri Masjid, where she recorded the inscription of Mir Baki telling us that the Ram Temple was destroyed to build the mosque. Also, she didn't have the resources at Professor Thacktson's command, so we probably shouldn't be too harsh in judging her work.

This brings up a point of primary importance: What does the Baburnama have to say about the Babri Masjid? Unfortunately nothing, for the work as it exists today is incomplete. It has a gap of about five-and-half months - from April to September of 1528 - precisely the period during which the temple was demolished and the mosque built. Babur tells us that he had reached Oudh in March, and on 28 March, we find him camped a few miles downstream of the town, reconnoitering the area for good hunting grounds. Then on April 2, the Memoir breaks off abruptly and picks up again on September 18, 1528. But we know from other sources that the Ram Temple was destroyed and the mosque built during Babur's stay in Oudh.
This point is important: the part of the Memoir describing Babur's stay at Ayodhya is missing from all extant copies of the Baburnama.

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Thus, the claim made by some Secularist historians that the Baburnama does not record the destruction of the Ramjanmabhumi Temple is entirely fradulent, as it is based on a non-existent source. (Even if the part did exist, and did not mention the destruction, it still does not follow that the temple was not destroyed, but only that he failed to mention it. All this is moot anyway since archaeology confirms the temple destruction.)

The Baburnama is a voluminous work. A third of it is concerned with India, containing detailed descriptions of the land, its flora, fauana and his experiences. But the parts that are of particular interest are those that shed light on his personality and character. Was he tolerant and 'secular' as Nehru (and his followers) describe him, a delightful person without any religious bigotry? The picture of Babur we get from his Memoir is the exact opposite of this. He was cruel and bigoted even by the standards of Medieval Turkestan. He thought nothing of massacring even those who had surrendered to him. He writes of some Afghan prisoners:

Those who were brought in alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower of skulls was erected in the camp.(p 188)

How about his tolerance of other religions, especially Hinduism? Here is Babur speaking:

Chanderi had been in the daru'l-harb [Hindu rule] for some years and held by Sanga's highest-ranking officer Meidini Rao, with four or five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28], through the grace of God, I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred the infidels, and brought it into the bosom of Islam ... (p 331)

And when in a particularly happy mood, he composed the following poem:

For the sake of Islam I became a wanderer;
I battled infidels and Hindus.
I determined to become a martyr.
Thank God I became a holy warrior. (p 387)

And what did he find interesting in India? "Hindustan," he wrote, "is a place of little charm. ... The one nice aspect of Hindustan is it is a large country with lots of gold and money."

All told, a reading of the Baburnama fails to impress one with the author's charm. He comes across as studious, pragmatic, calculating, and yes, bigoted and cruel, without a touch of warmth or spontaniety in him. He speaks so often, and with obvious glee of having made 'a tower of skulls', that one soon begins to sicken at the expression. It is not hard to see why Babur ki aulad is considered the worst form of abuse in North India. He was beyond dispute a soldier of ability, but his being a 'Prince Charming' is a modern Secularist myth of which one finds not a trace in his own writing. The Baburnama, giving as it does the story of his life in his own words, sheds light not only on the true personality of Babur, but also on the magnitude of the falsification which the Secularists have indulged in - beginning with Nehru himself.

Babur succeeded in India largely because: first, he had been driven out of his homeland to which he could not go back, and second, he was more than ordinarily ruthless. He pursued to the limit the concept of Jihad - a total war for the annihilation of his adversaries as prescribed by Islam of which he was a practioner. He was a product of his age and his environment, and that is exactly how we must see him. Whitewashing his blood-soaked record to turn him into a figure of chivalry and prince charming is an exercise in juvenile fantasy.

Babur saw ruthlessness as a virtue, and terror as a useful tactical tool. In this he was a true descendant of Timur and Chengiz Khan - both of whom were his ancestors. Guru Nanak's eyewitness account gives a better picture of Babur and his methods than almost any modern history book. The same holds true for the Baburnama: it is a primary source of great importance that goes to demolish romantic tales about him.

At the same time, Babur was successful because he was pragmatic. He negotiated with Hindu rulers and made deals with them. His own string of defeats in the early part of his career had taught him to be prudent. So, in delaing with the Hindus he was being practical, and not showing tolerance for its own sake. He prided in being a Ghazi - a holy warrior for Islam - but never allowed himself to be drawn into a reckless venture. He was anything but foolhardy. All in all, he was a practical soldier, who by no stretch of the imagination was a tolerant prince charming as our Secularists would have him. He himself would have laughed at their absurdity.

In summary, Wheeler M. Thacktson and the Oxford University Press (supported by the Smithsonian Institution) deserve our gratitude for having produced a magnificent volume that is of great value to historians. The production is sumptuous with lavish illustrations including paintings from the period. The production quality, not to mention the literary quality of the translation and the generous annotations fully justify its seemingly hefty price tag.