India: A History. Revised and Updated (55 page)

To such an adventurer direction was dictated as much by fate as by forebears. On his mother’s side Babur was a distant descendant of Ghenghiz Khan, and on his father’s he was a fifth-generation descendant of Timur, he who in 1398 had sacked the Tughluqs’ Delhi. This latter conquest would furnish Babur with a cherished but highly dubious claim to legitimate sovereignty in northern India. But India was not his first choice. Nor was Kabul. His inheritance lay much further north beyond the Oxus in Ferghana, a minor kingdom to the east of the modern city of Tashkent. He had
been born there in 1484 and, though of Mongol blood, it was in the Turkic and Islamic milieu of this subordinate kingdom of Timur’s erstwhile empire that he was educated. Turki would remain his first language; he even wrote of himself and his followers as Turks. His Islam was a robust, workaday faith tempered more by the winds of circumstance and the exigencies of campaigning than by the niceties of theology. And it was to Samarkand, Timur’s capital and the cultural focus of central Asia, that he aspired. Briefly, aged fifteen, he actually occupied it, but was quickly dispossessed by an Uzbeg rival. Twice more he would take the city and twice more he would lose it. Kabul, on the other hand, was just a distraction. Yet for a virtual fugitive it offered consolation. From Afghanistan Timur himself had launched his bid for Samarkand and had then gone on to conquer much of Asia. Babur could do worse. In 1504 he crossed the Oxus, then the Hindu Kush, and seized Kabul.

Apart from that one ominous raid across the Indian frontier in 1505, Babur spent the next fourteen years securing his position in Afghanistan and chasing the dream of sovereignty in Samarkand. In his memoir, which was written towards the end of his reign, he insists that ‘my desire for Hindustan remained constant’. Yet it was not until 1519 that he resumed the quest and not until 1525 that he launched his successful bid. He did so with a highly mobile force which had shared his exploits in central Asia and which, as it was ferried across the Indus north of Attock, was carefully counted. ‘Great and small, good and bad, retainer and non-retainer, [it] was written down as twelve thousand.’ For the task in hand so modest a force must have seemed pitifully inadequate. But in the interim two factors had greatly emboldened him.

One was the acquisition and potential of firearms. In the new gunpowder technology, as in much else, Babur’s Lodi adversaries lagged behind the kingdoms and sultanates of the Deccan and the south; there is no evidence to suggest that their forces were acquainted with either cannon or matchlocks. He, on the other hand, had both. Though personally more proficient at archery, he had studied the use of artillery in central Asia, had recruited Turkish gunners, and now took a close interest in the casting of siege-cannon and the transport of field guns. On a previous raid into the Panjab the sharp-shooting potential of matchlocks had also impressed him. For what his forces lacked in numbers they compensated with a capacity, terrifying alike to man, horse and elephant, for deafening and increasingly lethal bombardments.

The other consideration which worked in his favour was the now terminal rivalry amongst his enemies. Sikander Lodi had been succeeded by
two sons who, on the insistence of the Lodis’ fractious power-brokers, had divided the sultanate between them. Ibrahim, inheriting Delhi, had since overcome his brother in Jaunpur but had thereby alienated the most senior nobility and alarmed Indian rivals like the rajput chief, Rana Sangha of Mewar. The latter now encouraged Babur with offers of collaboration against the Lodis, while in 1523 it had been the Lodis’ own governor in the Panjab who had invited Babur to capture Lahore and challenge for the sultanate. This man, Daulat Khan, had since changed his mind and now threatened to oppose the invasion, although other Lodis, including his own son, continued to back Babur.

In the event the twelve thousand Mughals advanced across the Panjab’s rivers unopposed. Near the city of Lahore Daulat Khan, old though he was, donned a couple of swords and bragged about halting the invader. ‘Was such a rustic blockhead possible!’ scoffed Babur. ‘With things as they were, he still made pretensions!’
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When the old man then sheepishly surrendered, Babur ordered him to submit on bended knee with his ridiculous swords dangling round his neck. Milking the moment for mirth rather than vengeance, Babur then pressed on to Rupar, Ambala and Delhi.

I put my foot in the stirrup of resolution, set my hand on the rein of trust in God, and moved forward against Sultan Ibrahim … in the possession of whose throne at that time were Delhi, the capital, and the dominions of Hindustan, whose standing army was rated at a
lakh
(100,000) and whose elephants and whose begs’ [nobles’] elephants were about 1000.
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The same figures are given for the host with which Ibrahim now moved out from Delhi to oppose him. Although Babur says that his own forces had, if anything, shrunk during their progress across the Panjab, they had also been supplemented by Lodi deserters. When in April 1526 the two armies met at Panipat, eighty kilometres due north of Delhi, Ibrahim is thought to have still enjoyed a numerical advantage of about ten to one.

Babur was not discouraged. For the Lodi he had nothing but contempt. Ibrahim was a novice who knew little of battle-craft, ‘neither when to stand, nor move, nor fight’. After a week-long stand-off he had to be prodded into action by Mughal raiders; he then moved forward without guile or stratagem. Babur awaited him in a carefully chosen formation with the close-packed walls of Panipat on one flank and an ambuscade of brush on the other. Seven hundred carts, commandeered in the neighbourhood, were lashed together across his front with matchlock-men sheltering between them and gaps every hundred metres for the cavalry to charge
from. Additional flying columns were held in reserve. As soon as battle was joined they swung round the enemy’s flanks and pressed hard from the rear. Ibrahim had no room to manoeuvre. Despite repeated charges, he failed to break through the cordon of carts. His forces became ever more compacted, the wings falling back on the centre, unable either to advance or withdraw. That very numerical supremacy which should have overwhelmed the Mughals now overwhelmed the Lodis. ‘By God’s mercy and kindness this difficult affair was made easy for us,’ recalled Babur. ‘In one half-day that armed mass was laid upon the earth.’ The most conservative estimate put the slain at fifteen thousand; amongst them was Ibrahim himself.

Hot in pursuit of survivors, Babur headed for Delhi while Humayun, his son, was ‘to ride light and fast for Agra’, there to secure the Lodi capital and treasury. Amongst those sheltering in Agra Humayun found Ibrahim’s mother and also the family of raja Vikramaditya of Gwalior. Gwalior had finally submitted to the Lodis in 1519; Vikramaditya, Man Singh’s successor, had thus become a Lodi feudatory and, fighting under Ibrahim at Panipat, had been duly ‘sent to hell’. It was supposedly to curry favour with the conqueror that his family now made a ‘voluntary offering [to Humayun] of a mass of jewels and valuables amongst which’, notes Babur, ‘was the famous diamond which Ala-ud-din must have brought’. The weight of this stone he gives as eight
misqals
, perhaps 186 carats, and its value as equivalent to ‘two and a half days’ food for the whole world’. If the Ala-ud-din in question was the Khalji sultan, the diamond had presumably been obtained during that ‘Aladdin’s’ Deccan campaigns, since the main diamond fields were in Golconda (Hyderabad). How it came into the possession of the Gwalior rajas is not known; but many experts think that this notice in the
Babur-nama
constitutes the first reference to the famous Koh-i-Nur, ‘the mountain of light’, a gem credited with conferring on its owner either rulership of the world or imminent extinction, depending on how its erratic history is read. It is also sometimes called ‘Babur’s diamond’, although the first Mughal never actually claimed it. Humayun did offer it to him but, perhaps wisely, Babur declined: ‘I just gave it back to him.’
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For far from being any kind of world-ruler, Babur, although now possessed of the Panjab, Delhi and Agra, was in a critical situation. It was one thing to defeat the unloved Ibrahim, quite another to secure the submission of the unruly Afghan nobles who had poured into India at the invitation of the Lodi sultans and amongst whom the Lodi territories were now parcelled out. The populace of even Agra was openly hostile and, ‘Delhi and Agra excepted, not a fortified town … was in obedience.’ The entire
Doab was in enemy hands; so were Aligarh, Bayana and Dholpur, all within easy striking distance of Agra.

Babur’s situation was further worsened by growing dissatisfaction within the ranks of his own forces. India had few charms for a God-fearing Mughal
beg
. In a long inventory wherein he reveals as much enthusiasm for India’s birds as for its revenues, Babur candidly lists the country’s defects: ‘no good horses, no good dogs, no grapes, musk-melons or first-rate fruits, no ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in the bazaars, no hot-baths, no colleges, no candles, no torches, and no candlesticks.’ Perhaps his men could have managed without candlesticks, but amongst what Babur dubbed an unattractive, unsociable, uncouth and exceedingly numerous race of infidels they could never live at ease. In short, like Alexander’s Macedonians, Babur’s Mughals had had enough. It was May, one of the hottest and dustiest months of the north Indian year. Honours had been won, booty had been secured and vast amounts of treasure distributed. A more successful raid could scarcely have been hoped for. Now all they wanted was to return to their homes and families, to drink the cooler air of Kabul and in due course resume the struggle for Samarkand.

Babur, like Alexander, remonstrated with them. Sovereignty, he said, depended on the possession of resources, revenues and retainers. After long years of struggle and at appalling risk they had at last obtained such things: broad lands, infinite wealth and innumerable subjects were awaiting their command; who would seriously abandon such plenty for ‘the harsh poverty of Kabul’? A close friend, who was also one of his most senior commanders, would do just that. Babur let him go, and took less exception to his departure than to the parting couplet he had daubed on his house: ‘If safe and sound I cross the Sind,/Blacken my face ere I wish for Hind.’ Most, however, stayed. Babur says they were swayed by his just and reasonable words. More probably they were shamed by his resolution. A few weeks later the monsoon brought relief from the heat. Then, in the campaigning season that followed, Humayun lead a force east to Awadh and Jaunpur, scattering the Lodis’ recalcitrant feudatories and at last securing those broad lands and that infinite wealth. Greed could be gratified with spoils and ransoms, loyalty rewarded with offices, contracts, revenue assignments and landed fiefs.

There remained, though, one more obstacle to Mughal supremacy in the north. Listing the native powers of India in order of territory and forces, Babur placed first ‘the Raja of Bijanagar’. This was Krishna-deva-raya, the greatest of the Vijayanagar kings; since his kingdom was more than a thousand kilometres from Agra he posed no threat. But the second, wrote
Babur, ‘is Rana Sangha [of Mewar] who in these days has grown great by his own valour and sword’. Though contemptuous of the rajput’s idolatry, Babur seems to have had a sneaking regard for Rana Sangha. It was not because Rana Sangha had originally encouraged him to invade. No treaty had ever been signed, and it was obvious that the rajput had simply hoped for a Lodi defeat and then a Mughal withdrawal which would leave the coast clear for his own ambitions. As it was, Rana Sangha had taken the opportunity to strengthen his hold over Rajasthan, and now, in early 1527, he swiftly advanced at the head of a largely rajput army to see off the invader who had so obligingly disposed of the Lodis.

By February the rajputs were at Bayana, seventy kilometres south-west of Agra and lately occupied by the Mughals. Babur moved out to give battle amidst news that his Bayana garrison had been heavily defeated and a reconnaissance party, a thousand strong, routed by ‘the fierceness and valour of the pagan army’. It was an ominous beginning and brought gloom amongst the Mughal ranks. A soothsayer predicted disaster; subsidiary forts defected, Indian recruits deserted; ‘every day bad news came from every side.’ Once again Babur dug deep to rally his men, this time by appealing to their Islamic convictions. Since the rajputs were infidels, the war was designated a
jihad
. Cowardice thus became apostasy while death assumed the welcome guise of martyrdom. Better still, an acquisitive venture of doubtful legitimacy became the noblest possible of causes while any ambiguity in the minds of former Lodi retainers who were now under his command was dispelled. ‘The plan was perfect,’ confides Babur, ‘it worked admirably…’ All took an oath on the Quran to fight till they fell. Babur himself made what for him was the ultimate sacrifice by ostentatiously abjuring alcohol. Decanters and goblets were dashed to pieces, wine-skins emptied, and a quantity of the latest vintage from Ghazni salted for vinegar. At one, now, with both his men and his troublesome conscience, the born-again Babur prepared for battle.

Unfortunately the details of the great encounter at Khanua (just west of the later Fatehpur Sikri) are not altogether clear. For the forces available to Rana Sangha and his confederates a figure of 200,000 was calculated, but he probably never commanded half that number in battle. Babur, on the other hand, had far more troops than at Panipat; he had just received reinforcements from Kabul, and had now been joined by numerous ex-Lodi retainers including Ibrahim’s son. Presumably there was nothing like the disparity of Panipat and, since the battle raged for a whole day, it seems to have been more evenly and much more fiercely contested. Babur again relied on a semi-fortified arrangement of ditches and fascines flanking
the same chain of carts which were again interspersed with artillery and matchlock-men; and again he deployed his cavalry so that they early encircled the enemy. But the rajputs fought with the courage, if also with the lack of co-ordination, that was their wont. In the end, according to their annals as seen by Colonel Tod, defeat resulted not from tactical naivety but from treachery. ‘The Tomar traitor who led the [rajput] van went over to Babur, and [Rana] Sangha was obliged to retreat.’
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But if such a defection did indeed take place, it clearly came when the issue was already decided.