Assignment 2

2020-04-18

Q.Examine the religious policy of akbar . Was he trying to introduce a new religion
through Din-i-Ilahi?

Akbar had been brought up in an atmosphere surcharged with conflicting religious

influences. His father was a Central Asian Sunni given to belief in superstitious mysticism. In
his childhood he came in contact with Sufism and from 1562, for eighteen long years, he
made annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Sheikh Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer.His Rajput
wives, his Hindu officials like Todarmal, Birbal and Man Singh,scholars like Faizi and Abul
Fazl and the Bhakti movement of the sixteenth century helped in molding his religious views.
He developed a passionate love for philosophical discussions and spiritual quest, which led to
the foundation of the Ibadatkhana (Hall of Worship) at Fatehpur Skirl.It is argued and widely
debated that all of Akbar’s religious policies were in fact initiated to gain popularity from the
masses, both Hindu’s as well as Muslims.

 But if this was a fact then he would have gained mass popularity instantly only on the basis
of religious reforms and need not introduce several other reforms relating to revenue,
military, diplomacy etc. But he did all those not because he wanted to but because he had to.
It was one of his notions of Sulh-i-kul, which will be discussed later.The exposition of
Akbar’s religious policy was not the sudden outburst of an idea nor a calculated political
move. Its growth and development was spread over the years. His policies would be
discussed under four stages each one, a step further than the last. Akbar is often considered as
national king who united all sections of the people and he is also said to have been secular
ruler who kept his personal religious ideas from framing state policies and adopted policy of
religious tolerance.

There are few reasons why Akbar became secular king,being influenced by teachings of his
broad-minded mother, teacher and his relatives, He was influenced by the prominent cultural
ethos of timurid polity-YasaE-Chingesi(treating all the religions alike),The increasing
presence of Irani nobles at Humayun’s had created an atmosphere for Akbar to learn religious
tolerance, His childhood psychology fearing about god shaped his religious outlook. For
instance, abulfazl states, as akbar says” if he had displeased God in any manner, 'may that
elephant finish us for we cannot support the burden of life under God's displeasure.'” , His
personal engagement in Islamized version of greek philosophy through Shaikh Mubaraq and
his sons faizi and abul-fazl shaped his religious world outlook through Ibadatkana debates
from 1575- 1578.

One knows from unimpeachable evidence, including some of Akbar's own sayings recorded
after 1581 that in his early years he was not only a practising Muslim but also had a very
intolerant attitude towards Hindus. He regretfully admits of having forced many
Hindus,during those early years, to be converted to Islam. Akbar was then looked upon by
Muslim orthodox elements as a pious Muslim committed to defending Islam against
infidelity. Rizqullah Mushtaqi, a well known Shaikhzada of Delhi, writing around 1580, says
that Akbar was sent by God to protect Islam from being suppressed by Hemu. In one of his
passing remarks Badauni suggests that during this period (early years of his reigns) Akbar
was under the influence of Nagshbandiya order. At the same time, his marriage relations with
rajpoot princes had forced him to initiate some liberal measures. The measures like the
announcement of the abolition of Pilgrimage Tax (1563) and Jizia (1564) or the
establishment of an in 'am grant for the support of a temple at Vindravan (1565) testify the
fact,during the same period when Akbar was showing increasing respect for Hindu beliefs
and practices (i.e. during the sixties), he had a manifestly suppressive attitude towards the
sects condemned by the orthodox Muslims .

The Iranian nobles, mostly Shi'as were encouraged and used against the discontented Turanis
throughout the sixties. But at the same time their freedom to profess and practise their faith
was sought to be restricted. A glaring example of such a restrictive attitude towards Shi'as
was the exhumation, in 1567, of Mir Murtaza Sharifi Shirazi's remains from the vicinity
(Jazvar) of Amir Khusrau's tomb in Delhi at the suggestion of Shaikh Abdu'n Nabi. The
argument put forward in justification of the exhumation was that a 'heretic' could not be
allowed to remain buried so close to the grave of a renowned Sunni saint. It was no doubt an
extreme expression of sectarian hatred. Even Badauni had criticised the exhumation of Mir
Murtaza Sharifi Shirazi's remains as a very unjust act. Akbar's hostility towards the
Mahadavis was still more pronounced. His attitude towards them continued to be repressive
down to 1573 when he is reported to have suppressed them harshly in Gujarat. It was in the
course of this suppression that the leading Mahadavi divine, Miyan Mustafa Bandgi, was
arrested and brought to the court in chains.

Sulh-kul and the 'Policy of Tolerance' then meant that while you ideologically reject religion,
you upheld Sulh-kul. I think that explains a passage which is found in an early version of the
Akbarnamah in a correspondence between Murad and Akbar. Murad says: 'What am I to do
with these people who still undergo physical exercises and think that it is the worship of God,
which is of course for Muslims, Nawaz, and for others their main ritualistic worship.' And
Akbar says: 'You should persuade him not to do this because physical exercises cannot be
equated with worship of God, but if they don't agree, then you should let them worship God
in whatever manner they feel because we believe in Sulhkul.'

From the year 1573 to 1581, Akbar was undergoing religious experimentation. He founded
separate place where constructed a building called Ibadatkana and this was the space where
many intellectuals from various religious traditions were called upon and they engaged in
active religious intellectual dialogues. The prime intention of Akbar was to draw positive
elements from different religious traditions such as Christianity, islam, Parci and of course
Hinduism. Yet, he was not convinced with the way the religious priests entered into
polemical dialogues and with the dialogues that they have produced. Therefore, he dissolved
the religious engagements in 1578 and in the year 1579, Akbar brought a document called
Mazir which declared that the subjects had to surrender four things namely, life, property,
honour and faith. This measure clearly shows akbar being convinced with the fact that no
religion or religious person is capable of coming into terms with other tradition and no
religion has absolute truth. The conception of Akbar’s religious universalism came to be
pronounced in the form of Sul-E-Kul in 1581. When Akbar formulated Sul-E-Khul, he rejects
both the ideological traditions, both the religious traditions. It is not an ideological act of
acceptance and synthesis as one often seems to think. It is an act of rejection—essentially an
act of rejection, and the part of synthesising, if there is any possibility of synthesis, is
seciadary, in ideological terms. Argument on din and duniya given by Abul Fazl in the
chapter called Ain-e-Ranamuni substantiate our view on Sul-E-Khul. According to Abul Fazl
the important thing which has happened is the creation of intellect within man by God. it is
not the act of creation of man, it is the act of creation of intellect in man. And when intellect
is created, he argues, then two things happen. On the one hand reason develops and on the
other hand self-interest interferes. Therefore, where ideas developed differences also
developed. And two false things are created by the intellect. They are not created by God,
they are created by the intellect—Din and Duniya—i.e. Religion and the Temporal World.
Both are untrue. Religion and Din are untrue. It is an illusory creation, a deception of the
intellect. Temporal World is also a deception of the intellect. Things are not what they seem.
In other words, there is a complete rejection of religion, of Din, not spiritual relationship
between God and man but the religious form of that relationship

Rajputs were known for their bravery and the vigor with which they fought at the battle field.
Akbar saw their zeal and was so much impressed by their undaunted courage and valor that
he forthwith stopped the practice of enslaving the prisoners of war and their forcible
conversion to Islam. This was the first step of its kindtaken purely on humanitarian
considerations by a Muslim ruler of India.Akbar won great applause from the people,
especially the non-Muslims, for this noble gesture.Akbar took the, most revolutionary step on
March 15 1564, in granting religious freedom to Hindus by abolishing jaziya. This was a
polltax, charged from the Hindus in their capacity as zimmis, whereby they were denied full-
fledged citizenship of the state under their Muslim rulers. The Hindu population was divided
into three grades on the basis of their economic standing: richest paid 48 dirhams, the middle
class 24 dirhams ,and the poor 12 dirhams per annum. Akbar didn’t  discriminate between his
subjects on the basis of religion; instead, he was eager to establish hisreputation as an
impartial ruler of all the people.The abolition of jaziya caused a tremendous financialloss to
the state exchequer. Akbar was even opposed by Muslim ministers and bitterly criticized by
the orthodox ulama for having violated the age old tradition of the Islamic polity.

Akbar’s next desire was to create a spirit of love and harmony among his people by
eliminating all the racial, religious and cultural barriers between them. Under the influence
Sheikh Mubarak, he ordered in January 1575, the construction of Ibadat khana-the house of
worship at fatehpur sikri. Here he initiated the practice of holding religious discourses with
the learned and the saints of the age. To begin with Akbar used to call only the Muslim
theologians, including the ulama, sheikhs and sayyads.Muslim theologians were divided into
two groups who did not see eye to eye with each other in the matter of interpretation of the
Islamic canon. Sheikh Makhdum ul mulk and sheikh abdun nabi were the leaders of the
orthodox Sunni party while Sheikh Mubarak, faizi and abulfazl represented the group of free
thinkers and liberal minded theologians.They failed to arrive on at agreed opinions on many
Islamic belief and practice.Akbar when he realized that that the mullahs have failedto give
satisfactory answers to his yearnings for spiritual enlightenment. In disgust he threw open the
gates of ibadat khana to the priests and scholars of other religious faiths, including Hinduism,
jains, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity.

Akbar was a religious minded and god fearing person, but being a man of action, his
attachment to the worldly affairs was very much real. He had established himself as
the impartial ruler of his subjects- Hindus as well as Muslims, and had adopted secularism as
hi state policy.He was eager to weld all the Indians, irrespective of their castes, creeds and
religious beliefs and practices, into homogenous society.Thus national integration was the
ultimate goal of Akbar’s actions.The outcome of his deliberations was din-i-ilahi in the
beginning of 1582. It was not a new religion, nor did Akbar attempt to play the prophet. His
real objective was to unite the people of his empire into an integrated national community by
providing a common religious-cum-spiritual platform for the meeting ground.

. This way he formalized this institution so that more people would come to know about it.A
person who wanted to become a member of this organization approached abul fazl for the
purpose. They applicant was presented to Akbar with turban in his hands; he performed the
sijdah. The latter blessed him by raising him up, placed the turban back on his head and gave
him the shast (his own portrait) on which was engraved the phrase-Allah Hu Akbar. Theil
lahias (member of the din-i-illahi) greeted each other with the words like Allah Hu Akbar
and Jalle Jalal-E-Hu. An Illahia celebrated his birth anniversary by throwing a feast to
his associates and also gave a dinner once in his lifetime. There were four grades of devotion
to Akbar as the spiritual guide of the illahias; these were in ascending order of importance-
property, life, honor and religion.

 Akbar was an absolute monarch who claimed himself to be the shadow of god on earth on
the basis of“theory of divine rights of kingship. Din-i-illahi was not a new religion, it had no
holy book of its own, no priests or missionary organization to propagate it, and no religious
dogmas or beliefs to be enforced by it, he never compelled anybody to adopt the new creed
although it would not be difficult for him to do so. According to abul fazl the total number of
the illahias of all grades did not exceed a few thousands.

To conclude, His acts such as roviding jharoka darshan to his people every day before
sunrise and that of proclaiming allah hu akbar were seen as a way of popularizing himself and
providing himself legitimacy from his people. But he in no way wanted to be next to
god. Muslims were greatly offended by this and a reaction began against Akbar's policy
which was to destroy much that he had created.Akbar's failure was also due to forces
operating outside the court.Thus being able to create what can somewhat be called a secular
state.
Bibliography-

 Ali, Athar- Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture; Oxford
University Press, New Delhi, 2012
 Chandra, Satish- Medieval India:From Sultanate to the Mughal Empire (1526-1748)
Part-2; Haranand Publications Pvt. Ltd (2006)