Babur and the Blunders of Bias

In an attempt to give a historical account of the Mughal ruler, the narrative confuses polemic as an exercise in history

- By ANUJA CHANDRAMOULI

Reading Babur: The Quest for Hindustan by Aabhas Maldahiyar is an excruciating experience that will test tolerance levels to the utmost.

It begins with some florid verses on Rajput bangles that burned like blades, which is every bit as awful as it sounds, glorifying Jauhar, where women burned on the altar of male ego: "To the Rajputi womb, so fierce, so wide, that bore no child for comfort or pride... To the wrists, the wombs, the war-torn soil—to the hands that chose fire over spoil." You wouldn't think it possible, but it gets progressively worse, since Maldahiyar's prose is even more execrable.

The author makes it clear that he wishes to expose Timurid rule for what it was, without the colonial-era bias that has, in his view, fed lies to clueless Indians in the guise of history: "The romanticised sauce of Ganga Jamuni Tehzib often overflows its historical vessel, drowning reason under tales of imagined harmony and fabricated tales of Hindu-Muslim marital alliances. Yet, when the varnish of poetic exaggeration is stripped away, the hard stone of historical reality remains cold and unyielding." The reader is assured that the Mughals were invaders and conquerors without a single redeeming trait, whose sole aim was to rape and loot 'Hindustan' while decimating Hindus with jihadist fervour.