Father has taken and occupied the formidable fortress of Kandar and driven away its ruler, Hasan. That, however, was merely a foretaste of things to come. Like a desperado running out of time, he has been picking up towns and cities from the erstwhile Lodi kingdom. The tally as of now is two hundred new territories, some minor and trifling, others substantial. The spoils of war, they call them. But the fact is, the spoils did not belong to His Majesty. The Rana neither fought nor won the war against Ibrahim Lodi; Babur did. All this landgrabbing has also led to a lot of displacement. In some cases Muslim chiefs have been replaced by Hindus, not all of whom are tolerant and open-minded. What we are ensuring is that all these malcontents will gravitate to Babur and start looking upon him as their leader and saviour. While Father’s helping himself to whatever he can, the two most interested parties, Mahmud Lodi and Babur, are watching the dismemberment of what they consider their territory with growing resentment. The former can do little about it, at least for the time being. The latter can, and I suspect, will.
A war with Babur at some point or another, may be inevitable but does His Majesty want, what other conclusion can one draw, a war right away? (Why now? Delhi was there for the taking all these years but he turned a deaf ear to my pleas.) This seems unnecessary and foolhardy. The Padshah is eminently capable of seeing sense and self-interest. All we’ve got to do, at least for the moment, is propose a pact from a position of strength whereby both sides respect the boundaries between the two kingdoms.
* * *
Future number five: Kausalya.
I ask the same stupid questions of Mangal every two or three days, sometimes twice or thrice on the same day.
‘How do you mean it seems that she’s disappeared? This is Chittor, Mangal, the capital of Mewar, not some ancient village where the natives are still savages. I’m telling you, she can’t disappear. It doesn’t make sense. You are not doing your job, that’s what it is.’
‘I checked with the police, Sire. They showed me their records. Every year from Chittor alone close to seventy people are found missing and are never heard of again.
‘Mangal don’t give me this....’ I have to stop abusing him. What’s the matter with me? I’m edgy, crabbed and short with everyone and not just on my bad days. All that meditation and talking to myself gets me nowhere. I’m still screaming. ‘You are the head of intelligence, I got Father to appoint you. And you can’t find your own mother. Everyday you give me the same,’ I switched the word just in time, ‘story. Instead why don’t you find her?’
‘I’m trying, Highness. I have contacted the Malwa, Gujarat and Delhi police. My people have been questioning pilgrims returning from Kashi, Mathura, Prayag, Kedarnath, Madurai. I haven’t given up.’
‘Did Mamta have a fight with her? Did you say something nasty to her?’
‘You know Mamta, Highness. Mother was never close friends with anybody and Mamta was no exception. But Mamta never had the courage to raise her eyes to look at Mother and talk to her. The last time Mother came over, she seemed pleased that Mamta was carrying.’
‘When is the baby due?’
‘Another month, Highness.’
‘You had better find Kausalya before that, hadn’t you? I mean what’s she going to say if she was not there for her grandchild’s birth?’
‘I’ll do anything to find her.’
‘Do you remember what they told us when they couldn’t find Leelawati? They said she had been smuggled out of Chittor or Adinathji had done away with her. We couldn’t find her but she was right here in the fort. Imagine my humiliation when she turned up pale and starved and said that I would have found her if I had tried hard enough to look for her. Search every house in Chittor, Mangal, every hut. I’ll speak to the Commissioner of Police.’
‘I already have. His Majesty signed the search warrant. We are combing the third muhalla now.’
‘Don’t leave out the houses of the rich. Don’t leave anybody out. And what about your underworld connections?’
‘They doubt that she was kidnapped or murdered for her jewellery or for a ransom. They usually know about these matters and they haven’t heard anything.’
I knew I would start again tomorrow. Talking distractedly and in circles got me nowhere but that was my only way of keeping her alive. It occurred to me then that barring that one foolish mistake on my part, Kausalya and I had never fought. I can’t explain this but my image of her was of her riding a tigress. Things always got murky at this point. Was she the tigress or was she the lady who rode one? Or was she both?
I was her’s and to keep me she would share me with whoever I wanted.
I felt unprotected without her. What was the point of being Maharaj Kumar if I couldn’t even look after my own?
Where are you, Bhootani Mata? What have you done with Kausalya?
* * *
Future number six: the Padshah of Delhi.
Things may change but since the time Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi and occupied Delhi there was really only one future for Mewar: the resolution of our relationship with the Moghul king. Our allies as well as all our other small and big enemies knew this. On the 17th of October, Father has called all the leading Rajput, Muslim and Bhil princes and kings to a War Council to confer and to decide upon the future course of action.
I’m not quite able to answer the question why the whole confederacy of Rajputs and many Muslim jagirdars, amirs and kings had invested Babur with such importance and were persuaded to think that the threat to their lands would come from him. Till very recently he was nothing but a minor, displaced king who had after many wanderings and vicissitudes secured the inconsequential throne at Kabul. Did Delhi have something to do with it? Was it the defeat and death of the Delhi Sultan at the battle of Panipat that enhanced his reputation and made him the focus and centre of our lives? Or was it his avowed claim, repeated almost like a mantra, that he would take possession of Hindustan? I’m certain that there are many answers to these questions and yet I doubt if anyone will ever be able to give one that is wholly convincing.
Since the Moghul Padshah has been preoccupied with travel, battles, messages to and from Kabul, embassies to distant kingdoms, and his administrative duties have doubled if not tripled, one would have expected the entries in his diary to have dried up entirely or become perfunctory. But the conquest and annexation of a kingdom at least thirty to fifty times larger than his eyrie in the Hindukush mountains seems to have had exactly the reverse effect. Perhaps he has more than a couple of amanuenses and calligraphists to take notes and make copies.
Hindustan certainly excites his curiosity, disdain, opprobrium and sense of wonder. He sounds more self-assured now – and with good reason – but his self-importance hasn’t drowned his wit or sharpness of observation. And as always, he is one of the most objective reporters of geography and scenery, people and their habits and mores, that I have come across. But more of that some other time. What concerns Mewar now is his mood, tone of voice and strategy at Panipat.
‘After dispatching the light troops against Ghazi Khan, I put my foot in the stirrup of resolution, set my hand on the rein of trust in God, and moved against Sultan Ibrahim….in possession of whose throne at that time were the Delhi capital and the dominions of Hindustan, whose standing army was a hundred thousand, whose elephants and whose begs’ elephants were about a thousand.
‘When everything was ready, all the begs with such braves as had had experience in military affairs were summoned to a General Council where opinion found decision at this: Panipat is there with its crowded houses and suburbs. It would be on one side of us; our other sides must be protected by carts and mantelets behind which our foot and matchlockmen would stand. With so much settled we marched forward, halted one night on the way, and reached Panipat on Thursday the 12th of April.’
I drew sketches and diagrams to understand the schematics of Babur’s defence, the placement of his army and his strategy. He had ordered every man in his army to colle
ct carts. The final tally came to seven hundred carts. The idea was to treat even the open battlefield as a moveable fortress. The carts and mobile shields of thickets of branches called mantelets were tied tightly together in front of the infantry to form a protective barrier. Ibrahim Lodi’s men would have to breach it to come to grips with Babur’s forces, an interregnum in which the Delhi cavalry and infantry would suffer heavy casualties. Babur had secured the right flank by using the town of Panipat and its suburbs as an impregnable wall. On his left and elsewhere Babur had dug ditches. At intervals of an arrow’s flight, there was enough space left open for a hundred or two hundred horsemen to sally forth. All this was not only very interesting but an eye opener. Where the Turki tactics differed from Sultan Ibrahim’s – and our own – concepts of defence was in extending the principle of fortification to every point of the battlefield itself. The ditch, for instance, was nothing but the moat around the fort.
‘From the time that Sultan Ibrahim’s blackness first appeared, he moved swiftly, straight for us, without a check, until he saw the dark mass of our men, when he pulled up and, observing our formation and array, made as if asking, “To stand or not? To advance or not?” They could not stand; nor could they make their former swift advance.
‘Our orders were for the turning-parties to wheel from right and left to the enemy’s rear, to discharge arrows and to engage in the fight; and for the right and left wings to advance and join battle with him … Orders were given for Muhammadi Kukuldash, Shah Mansur Barlas, Yumas-i-ali and Abdullah to engage those facing them in front of centre: From that same position Ustad Ali-quli made good discharge of firingi shots; Mustafa the commissary for his part made excellent discharge of zarb-zan shots from the left hand of the centre. Our right, left, centre and turning parties having surrounded the enemy, rained arrows down on him and fought ungrudgingly …. By God’s mercy and kindness, this difficult affair was made easy for us! In one half-day, that armed mass was laid upon the earth. Five or six thousand men were killed in one place close to Ibrahim. Our estimate of the other dead, lying all over the field, was fifteen to sixteen thousand, but it came to be known, later in Agra from the statement of Hindustanis, that forty or fifty thousand may have died in that battle.’
Firingi and zarb-zan. I was finally face to face with the new technology. Unlike us, Babur was not only using matchlocks routinely, he had field-cannons for that’s what those two marvellous-sounding words signified. Forget casting them, just buying and transporting them from abroad would take at least a year or a year and a half. No point thinking about that time-frame now. The important thing was to find out who would sell them to us and order them instantly. Lakshman Simhaji was my ally in this matter and he has asked Mangal to make enquiries with the Portuguese and the Persians.
Mangal has been instructed to buy at least half a dozen of these field-guns from whoever was willing to supply them to us.
Here is the strangest note I have come across so far in the Padshah’s diaries:
‘While we were still in Kabul, Rana Sanga had sent an envoy to testify to his good wishes and to propose the plan: “If the honoured Padshah will come towards Delhi from that side, I from this will move on Agra.” But I beat Ibrahim, I took Delhi and Agra, and up to now that Pagan has given no sign soever of moving.’
Was I to give credence to this entry? And if I did, for my experience and assessment so far are that Babur is not given to fabricating stories, what does one make of Father? What could his motives be and what did he expect to gain? Did he really believe, as did so many of my ancestors and Rajput brethren, only to discover without fail how grievously mistaken they were, that my enemy’s enemy is my friend? Did the Rana of Mewar wish to invite a foreigner into Hindustan merely in the hope of splitting the bounty of war and perhaps even the Delhi Sultanate? Did His Majesty have so little confidence in his army and his leadership that despite being the most powerful sovereign in the region, he felt he needed the help of Babur to reduce a decadent and debauched Ibrahim Lodi whose hold on the Delhi Sultanate was fast slipping? But there was something even more inexplicable: why make an offer if you have no intention of backing it with action? That, it would seem evident to anyone, is the surest way of turning an unknown king into the worst kind of vindictive enemy.
But the deed is done and it is so much water under the bridge.
There is no dearth of malcontents in Agra and so we are never short of reliable information about Babur’s court from Mangal’s agents in the city. Every Monday morning, sometimes during the week too, Mangal sends reports with quotes and analyses, revenue figures, military movements, who’s in favour and who’s not and an update about the thinking and debates in Agra regarding Mewar. One thing is clear, that while Babur views us with extreme hostility, he is fortunately preoccupied with troubles nearer his new home. The peasantry and the previous soldiery are afraid of Babur and his men. More importantly, almost every Afghan amir in the service of the late Sultan is in either open or insidious rebellion against the Padshah. Babur’s son Humayun had already ridden to Junpur in the east to subdue some of the more troublesome rebels. All this is to the good. We need to buy as much time as possible to get those field-cannons, purchase at least ten thousand matchlocks and train our men in their use and we need to do some major rethinking about both attack and defence strategies against Babur’s battle tactics.
But the omens don’t augur well. It is my habit to give Mewar’s enemies their due and to take even the weakest of them seriously. Babur, however, is in a class by himself. As I got to know him from the odds and ends from his diaries, I grew not just to like him but to respect him. I felt he would make a good friend and a worthy enemy. But in the last few months he has begun to exhibit facets that I find disturbing. These are doubtless a consequence of his faith, but faith, it seems to me, must be tempered by wisdom and tolerance, especially if you are a king. Babur’s language has undergone a radical change since he came to Hindustan. It is only while talking about a war with us that he repeatedly speaks of a Holy War. What then does one call his wars with Ibrahim Lodi and all the other Shia and Sunni chieftans, not to mention kings and sultans?
It seems sad, not to say counterproductive, if one has only contempt for the people one has conquered, and all one wants to do is to dash, to quote Babur, the gods of the idolaters. Follow this path and you’ll never look upon the vanquished as your own subjects and will not want to take care of them as a father must. If a king is to be strong he must be close to his people. They must all feel that he is their shield and sword regardless of their religion or caste or creed. Anybody who thinks that these are new-fangled ideas is a fool. Any enlightened leader will tell you that this is but self-interest, for in division lie the seeds of the destruction of your kingdom.
Even at the time when Babur attacked Bajaur on one of his earliest forays into India, he thought of himself as a defender of ‘the Faith’. He reverted to the ways of his ancestor Timur, sacked the town and massacred all the denizens, barring the few who managed to escape to the east, because they were not true believers. Now that he’s assumed the throne in Delhi, he has begun to cast himself in the role of a Ghazi, Avenger in the name of God. Strange word that, avenger. For what slights and grievances, does Babur wish to exact vengeance from infidels on whom he has never set eyes nor had any social or other commerce? Our only crime seems to arise from an accident: that we were born to another faith.
Since his victory over Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, the Padshah has been razing temples and building mosques on the same sites or if time and funds are short, converting Hindu places of worship to that of Islam.
Nothing special about that. We’ve done the same with Buddhist sacred places as well as mosques, as the Muslims have been doing with our temples since they first invaded India.
This is truly one of the great mysteries of life. Why this obssessive need to occupy the very precincts of a defeated belief? However, while the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism may have been adver
sarial, they did not think of each other as tainted or unholy. But what could be more profane for Islam than the idolatrous temples of Hindu gods?
I’ve heard it said that the conqueror will forcibly take over the geographic site of another faith because there is an inherent sacred quality to the place which he wishes to appropriate. There is as much substance to this reasoning as there is sophistry. Perhaps a far simpler explanation will suffice. It is the naked assertion of brute power. The victor is signalling that the old order is dead and letting his new subjects know who the new master is.
Chapter
39
There is but one male and his name is the Flautist.
The night of his debacle with Sugandha, he went straight to the Little Saint’s room.
‘Where have you been?’ she grabbed his arm and shook him. She was in a rage of impatience and had difficulty speaking. ‘How you make me suffer. How can you be so cruel and heartless?’
Was he late? They hadn’t fixed a time for their tryst last night, they never did. As far as he could make out, he had arrived at about the same time, give or take a minute or two, as he had done all these nights.
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