History remembers the Mughals as a powerful clan that brought much of the Indian territory under its wing, thereby according it the status of a single entity, as opposed to many small kingdoms. As invaders from Central Asia, the Mughals seamlessly blended their culture with local Indian customs and traditions, giving rise to a unique way of life that is followed to this day. Their history from being outsiders to powerful rulers of a widespread empire and finally to losing that power to the British, is a fascinating one. The newly launched ‘The Book of Emperors: An Illustrated History of the Mughals’ brings their story to life for children and adults alike.
Through well-researched, anecdotal writing and beautiful accompanying illustrations, this book chronicles the rise and fall of one of the world’s richest and most powerful empires through the emperors that shaped it. Published by Penguin, it’s a collector’s item that is sure to stand the test of time.
Sunday Guardian speaks to author Ashwitha Jayakumar and illustrator Nikhil Gulati about the experience of creating this book. “I wanted to convey all the chaos, the colourful characters and the complexity of the Mughal world using a narrative history approach, incorporating anecdotes from primary sources to tell a story that’s fun to read while also being informative. One of the greatest challenges of narrative history is finding the choice detail, the odd little quirk or custom that simultaneously makes the past seem like a strange and different place while making long-dead people feel as distinct and real as anyone we might meet today,” shares Jayakumar.
Gulati adds, “The art of the book draws heavily upon the large collection of Mughal miniature paintings that tell us how to depict the people, places and events spanning three centuries. We cannot go back in time and see what the Mughal world really looked like, but my goal was to give a flavour of the times, based on their art, so that the reader can imagine it for themselves.”
Excerpts from an edited interview:
Q: How did the idea of this book come about?
Ashwitha Jayakumar (AJ): As with many good ideas, it emerged in a conversation I had with an editor friend. We were talking about Indian history writing, the fact that history written for adult readers in India is seeing something of a boom with new writers adopting the narrative style that writers of popular history in the west have long employed. And in course of that conversation, we talked about how the Mughals are a bit of a paradox – they’re both well-known and yet, there aren’t many books that examine the dynasty in its entirety, from Babur to Bahadur Shah Zafar. We also wanted to try something new, an illustrated history that draws on the visual culture of the Mughals. That’s how this book came to be. Although we originally thought it would be written for kids, we ended up arriving at a book that’s meant for all ages — not something you see often in Indian publishing.
Nikhil Gulati (NG): We wanted to do a series of illustrated books on Indian history that would appeal to people of all ages. The Mughals were an obvious first choice to start with because of the amazing and colourful visual materials they left behind, not to mention the very colourful and dramatic stories of their lives.
Q: What is the importance of presenting history in an engaging and meaningful manner for readers?
AJ: I loved books about history as a child, but it was always the history of somewhere else. I found Indian history — the way it was presented in textbooks, at any rate — boring, and so I became obsessed with the history of Britain. This love of the past took me all the way to the University of Edinburgh, where I did a master’s in Literature and Society:1688-1900, a degree that allowed me to explore the ways in which literature and social constructs rely on each other. A few years later, I did an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds, where I got to study knights and kings, Norse and Anglo-Saxon texts, immersing myself in the past in a way that I never had back home.
When I returned to India, I worked in publishing and found myself increasingly depressed by the polarization around history and the way we project present social concerns backwards onto the past, creating heroes and villains out of people who lived in very different contexts. The study of history involves understanding the contours of places and times removed from ours, and how they shaped people’s lives and choices. It’s about empathy and understanding, making connections and getting to the roots of social mores, ideals and practices we still follow. That’s why I think it’s important to present history in a way that is relatable and interesting, not just to young readers but to anyone.
Q: What is the significance of the Mughals in particular?
NG: The Mughal dynasty comes to us in high-definition detail. We have hundreds of paintings, objects and other artefacts including letters, firmans, autobiographies, recipe books and so on that tell us a lot about what life was like in that time period. This is rare for Indian history. And because we have so much detail, we are able to see the kings, queens, nobles and other people as real flesh and blood human beings, and not as caricatured heroes or villains, who were driven by passions, interests, fears and flaws just like the rest of us, but were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. This allows us to see the past (and the present) with more empathy and enables us to get a sense of the forces that have shaped our world.
Q: What were the challenges you faced in this project?
AJ: Trying to compress three centuries of history into a slim 136-page volume, for a start! Our book isn’t meant to be a comprehensive history, but we did want it to cover the entirety of the Mughal period, and that means telling the stories of 19 padishahs, as well as empresses and begums, poets, painters and musicians, various noblemen and the leaders of rival kingdoms, allied groups and more. Finding the right words and choosing the most interesting moments and themes was extremely difficult to do. This was especially true of the last 150 years of the empire, when the padishahs recede into the background and a whole host of other characters take centre stage. Making that complex period comprehensible to our readers was tough, and the best way we found was to use illustrations to convey the chaos and confusion of this period effectively.
NG: One of the challenges was of collaboration. Because this is a work that uses both words and illustrations to tell the story of the Mughals, it was important that the two work together seamlessly. Often, we had different ideas about how something should be presented, and it required a lot of discussion and debate, trying things out, editing and re-doing them to make the whole thing work.
Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www.nooranandchawla.com.