WHY THE RAJPUTS WERE UNABLE TO DEFEAT MUSLIM INVADERS?

Muslim chroniclers record that the Indian soldiers were resolute in battle and that the Afghans and Turks had initially been terrified by their huge armies led by gigantic elephants. They however also record that Indian armies were not trained to combine effectively. Rajput armies relied on one crushing victory and their martial pride could not face the ignominy of losing small tactical battles to win a greater war. Becoming a captive also entailed an unacceptable loss of caste that made death preferable to defeat. So whenever the prospect of victory faded the morale of the Rajput armies would be totally crushed. They fought according to inflexible rules of war and did not understand the principles of strategy and the importance of surprise.

Indian armies had also always been deficient in war horses and their reliance on elephants slowed them down and could often disrupt their own ranks if wounded. Muslim armies were much better mounted and their hardy ponies trained in rugged mountains were trained to make fast battlefield maneuvers. Indian armies always advanced slowly in big blocks according to a fixed, and thus predictable science that had hardly changed since it had been defined in the third century BC in Kautilya’s Arthashastra. Pomp and show was more important than strategy.

The hot Indian summer resulted in Indian armies choosing to only fight during the campaigning season between the end of September and the end of March usually marked by the festivals of Dusshera and Holi. Armies then rested in cool palaces during the appalling heat of summer with the result that both soldiers and their horses were weakened when they had to face invading armies. Enemies had to be awed by magnificence and surprise, a key element in warfare, had little part in their set piece planning. Their colorful tents and elaborate arrangements for food, religion and comfort required a huge train of camp followers including wives with the result that they moved slowly with a low ratio of fighting teeth to supporting tail. The caste system also played a big role as the masses of infantry were almost always poorly armed low caste infantry and archers. Though they were very numerous they were poorly trained and easily demoralized. Caste Hindus always rode on horses or elephants.

The short recurved bow, shot by mounted archers, was another big factor in the success of Afghan and Mughal armies. Indian archers who had been feared by Alexander’s Macedonians had degenerated into poorly skilled low caste infantrymen. A trained Muslim mounted archer could let loose six arrows in as many seconds while at full gallop. It was the mounted archers that mopped up Ibrahim Lodi’s army and later crushed Rana Sangha and Hemu. The eye of the latter was pierced by an arrow.

The courts of Indian rulers were also hotbeds of intrigue where courtiers, priests and womenfolk, behind the scenes, jostled for influence. Rulers were easily flattered to overlook their own weaknesses and to believe in their invincibility. Rivals with ability, sincerity or integrity were also dangerous in the courts of sycophants. These completely undermined the cooperation and teamwork so vital for sustained attack or defense. Rajput pride was a barrier to learning and new ideas, new weapons and new battle tactics were not welcome. There was great reliance in old traditions.

Astrology was a major problem. The Brahmins in all the royal courts had no conception of the importance of the opportune moment and would not allow military movements except at times that they deemed auspicious and after elaborate religious rituals. They were also so inward looking that they had little awareness of external threats and did not appreciate the fact that the Afghan and Turk invaders were a terrible menace that would destroy the very fabric of their way of life.

Rai Pithora (1149–1192 AD), who later called himself Prithviraj (world ruler), belonged to the Chauhan lineage but had received the kingdom of Ajmer from his maternal grandfather Anangpal and ruled from his twin capitals of Ajmer and Delhi. Prithviraj quite easily defeated Muhammad Ghori in the first Battle of Tarain in 1191. Ghauri however attacked the following year and Prithviraj despite having an army alleged to have 3,000 elephants and 300,000 soldiers was defeated at the second battle and later executed. Ghori’s victory was partly due to guile for he had by now learned that Hindu soldiers liked to only go to battle after sunrise subsequent to performing the rituals of their ablutions and prayers. A dawn attack therefore caught the great army unprepared. Prithviraj’s armies did however rally but were deceived into chasing a fake retreat to be hit by Ghori’s mounted archers who routed them.

Prithviraj had also been let down by Rajput allies he had been waiting for. The most important Rajput ruler was Raja Jaichandra Rathor of Kanauj whose honour, according to legend, had been deeply offended when Prithviraj had eloped with his daughter Samyukta seventeen years earlier. According to some legends he had even invited Muhammad Ghori to invade India to punish Prithviraj. His name soon became a metaphor for treachery. Despite a long period of several hundred years from the first plundering Afghan raids to the time the Mughals settled down, the Rajputs had learned nothing from their setbacks but forgot no insult to their pride.

Paradoxically, although there was a large religious and cultural chasm between Hindus and Muslims, they were remarkable tolerant about hiring mercenary soldiers of the other faiths. There were many Muslims in all the Hindu armies and vice versa. Maharana Pratap, was one of the few Rajput maharajas to staunchly oppose the Mughals till the end but his army at the battle of Haldighati (1526) had a large contingent of Afghans led by Hakim Khan Sur. At a later time even the great Hindu hero Shivaji had many Muslims in his army while his adversary Aurangzeb’s army was commanded by a number of Rajput generals including Raja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur and Raja Jai Singh of Amber.

SAMUGARH – TURNING POINT OF FUNDAMENTALISM

It was on an exceptionally hot day on May 29 1658 that India’s history changed forever. Two great Mughal armies led by Shah Jahan’s eldest son Dara Shikoh and his third son Aurangzeb clashed on a dusty plain about twenty kilometers south east of Agra. It was not only a battle for the Mughal throne but a battle for the very soul of India pitting Dara an eclectic scholar who respected all religions against Aurangzeb who was an orthodox Sunni Muslim. Dara had first translated of the Bhagavat Gita and the Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian to make them known to the public for the first time. But he had been a pampered prince facing a smaller battle hardened army that Aurangzeb had marched up from the Deccan.

My forthcoming novel `Ocean of Cobras’ graphically describes the epic battle through the words of a narrator who writes… Aurangzeb moved as fast as his army could to quietly slip behind Dara’s lines before they were aware of his movements. They reached a secret ford across the Chambal at Ater by nonstop double marches over two days. Then there was consternation when Dara realized that Aurangzeb’s armies had come very close to Agra so he was forced to abandon much of his heavy canon and rush eastwards to intercept them.

The two armies met on a flat dusty plain east of a village called Samugarh on an unbelievably hot day at the end of May and the sun was like a furnace in the cloudless sky. There was not enough water to drink so many soldiers and horses simply collapsed with heat and sun stroke. The crash of the opposing mass of horse and men with the thunder guns and the screams of the wounded soldiers and the whinnying of the terrified horses would haunt the sleep of the survivors for the rest of their lives. I began to see that the battle was no longer just a contest between Dara and his rebel brothers but was beginning to be a religious war with the Hindus valiantly supporting Dara and many Muslim mansabdars supporting Aurangzeb.

It was with great difficulty that I was able to reach the side of Dara’s magnificent elephant but was unable to get his attention as my voice was drowned by the deafening sounds of gunfire, clashing swords and the screams of the wounded.  Dara was oblivious to all except the prospect of his immanent victory. His elephant was to soon become a signal of his doom. One of the enemy rockets exploded near it and our commander Khalilullah Khan rushed up and insisted that he must dismount and finish the battle on a horse. I heard him urgently shout… ”Praise be to Allah this victory is your own! But my God! Why you are still mounted on a lofty elephant? Have you not been sufficiently exposed to danger? If one of the numberless musket balls or arrows touch your royal person who can imagine the dreadful situation to which we will all be reduced? In God’s name descend quickly, mount this horse and pursue the miserable fugitives with all vigour.” As Dara descended, a huge shout was sent up by Khalilullah Khan’s squadron that Dara Shikoh had been killed. When the bewildered soldiers saw through the thick swirling clouds of dust and smoke that the howdah of Dara’s elephant was empty they feared the worst and quickly fled towards Agra.

The noise of battle quite quickly subsided and the dust and smoke began to slowly clear to reveal some fifteen thousand corpses lying on the dusty battlefield in hundreds of piles coated in vivid crimson blood. The Rajput corpses in their yellow jamas looked like untidy fields of saffron. For every dead body there were another three who had been wounded and were lying on the ground crying out piteously. But the intense heat quickly parched their throats so the devastating silence that followed the thunder of battle was almost uncanny. A sharp summer wind suddenly blew from the south and all the fallen bodies were quickly shrouded by a huge cloak of choking yellow dust. A few swirls of spiraling dust curling above the scene looked like ghosts rising up from the devastated plain until they too subsided and absolute silence pervaded the scene.

Dara rode in silence to his mansion from where he collected his family and valuables and left for Dilli shortly before dawn. Dara retreated to Lahore and then down the Indus and a year later was able to muster a big army to fight a fierce three day battle against Aurangzeb at Deorai near Ajmer. He then fled towards Kandahar to be betrayed once again and brought to Delhi where the imperial Qazis sentenced him to death for the crime of heresy. He had written a book called the `Mingling of the Oceans’ showing the many similarities between the Quran and the Brahma Shastras of the Hindus. 

Aurangzeb’s greatest weakness was his inflexible religious bigotry that made him lose the support his Shia subjects as well as his many Hindu and Rajputs followers. His intolerance became more acute after twenty years of rule as he became frustrated by endless rebellions. Though he did no more than Jehangir or Shah Jahan by permitting Hindu worship at old temples and forbidding the construction of new ones his reputation as a destroyer of temples became widespread. He was very unforgiving and by persecuting his Rajput followers cut off his own arms and weakened his military power. The Maratha leader Shivaji initially had no anti Muslim sentiment and had been quite willing to become a Mughal Amir. Aurangzeb’s obstinate pride however alienated him and gave him a new weapon to turn a purely political war against the Mughals into a religious war. The rebellion of the Marathas not only encouraged the Sikhs to revolt but spawned many other Hindu rebels. Aurangzeb died a feeble, broken and a deeply disappointed old man and is buried in a plain grave near Aurangabad. His bigotry was to make the Indian sub-continent the hotbed of Islamic extremism for the next four centuries. If Dara had won at Samugarh it is possible that his rule might have promoted harmony between India’s turbulent peoples and a united Mughal empire might have prevented India becoming so easily colonized by European powers. Samugarh was the turning point.

OCEAN OF COBRAS

Synopsis of my forthcoming novel

The chronicle of a slave to

The Mughal prince Dara Shikoh

The story about a beautifully tragic life as related in a long lost manuscript written by Mubarak Ali, a faithful palace eunuch who was Prince Dara Shukoh’s constant companion and witness to all the battles, intrigues, scholarship, trial, death and events of his tumultuous life. The book is packed with military action, the magnificence and intrigues of the Mughal court and a battle for the very soul of India with Dara’s religious tolerance pitted against the puritanical Islamic intolerance of Aurangzeb.

Mubarak Ali’s adventures are pure fiction set in the actual history of the Mughal empire between 1620 and 1660 where emperor Shahjahan’s eldest and favorite son Dara battles against his brothers Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad for the Mughal throne after Shahjahan becomes seriously ill. Over five battles, the conflict eventually narrows to one between the liberal Dara and the orthodox Aurangzeb. Betrayal gives Aurangzeb a very narrow victory.

Dara was a liberal thinking scholar (also of Sanskrit) who first had the Upanishads and Bhagavat Gita translated from Sanskrit to Persian to become widely known for the first time. He also wrote his own book `Mingling of the Oceans’ showing the commonality between the Quran and the Hindu Shastras. If Dara had won the Mughal throne India might have enjoyed a long period of Hindu – Muslim amity instead of centuries of communal strife.

Mubarak, the fictitious narrator of this epic story, is a faintly foreign eunuch of the emperor’s Zenana. Aged six years younger than Dara he is intimate with all the members of the imperial family from their childhood to their adult years. Over the years he develops from a nine year old boy into a capable soldier and reveals intimate insights into the lives of the powerful men and women of the court. In the cloistered zenana he also develops a secret and strictly forbidden intimate relationship with a royal princess.

His adventures describe the exciting royal hunts, the passing of Mumtaz Mahal, the building of the magnificent Taj and the new city of Delhi. He shares his experiences while among tribals in the jungles, worship in Hindu and Muslim holy places, Dara’s grand marriage to Nadira Bano and the trade at the sea port of Surat with its many taverns and brothels. He shares Dara’s spiritual quest for Hindu-Muslim brotherhood exploring the many religious ideas of a time when Hindu’s were just beginning to assert their position in a Mughal world. The reader will follow Mubarak on a colorful tour of Hindustan from the limpid lakes of Kashmir to the craggy terrain of the Deccan and Kandahar, the lush pastures of the Punjab, the forested hills of the Himalayas to the sandy wastes of Sind and Baluchistan.

Mubarak describes many scenes of battle where the Mughal strategies and command structures are described for the first time. He rides with Dara at the battle of Samugarh and follows him on the long retreat to Lahore and then down the Indus. He then assassinates an enemy commander and helps rally Dara’s forces for his final battle at Deorai near Ajmer. He then travels with Dara’s family and retainers through the cruel deserts of Sind and Baluchastan until Dara is again betrayed and taken to Delhi as a prisoner. He is with Dara when he is paraded through Delhi and taken before the imperial Qazis where he is tried for heresy and condemned to death.       

The Ocean of Cobras is a tale of love and war, of compassion and cruelty in a period of Mughal grandeur and passionate pride. The story of Dara is a true story that many people in India still remember despite the passage of the centuries. 

105,000 words with three maps.

Rs. 350