Mughal Emperor Jahangir was fond of eating pork and drinking wine. And his favorite holy man was a Hindu.

by Guest Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:37 pm

Yet Jahangir was not eager to demonstrate his devout Islamic profile, much less in opposition to kufr. Indeed, if there was one man in his empire for whom he had the most profound respect, it was a Hindu hermit, Yogi Jadrup, to whose hermitage he paid several visits and considered ‘association with him a great privilege’. The Yogi too was effusive in his compliment to the emperor: ‘In what language can I return thanks for the gift of God, that in the reign of such a just King I can be engaged in the worship of my own Deity in ease and contentment, and that from no quarter does the dust of discomposure settle on the skirt of my purpose?’ Niccolao Manucci – the Italian traveller who came to India in 1656 hiding in the hold of a ship, and stayed on until his end in 1717 – observes of Jahangir that of all his subjects, he was kind to everyone except the Muslims. Indeed, this sentiment is repeated several times over in our sources. Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, a significant and influential theologian of Akbar’s and Jahangir’s time, lamented the deplorable state of Islam in India. His countrymen, he felt, set little store by the dogma of prophethood in general and that of Muhammad in particular. The law of God, which Muhammad had preached, was, in the Shaikh’s view, no longer honoured in India and unbelief was openly propagated even in the Persian language. A Persian-language text composed in 1025 H./ad 1614, less than a decade after Akbar’s death, records the written instruction sent by Akbar to his son Danial, after appointing him Governor of the Deccan and Khandesh in 1601, that ‘he should demolish the Jama mosque at Asir and raise a temple along the pattern of the Hindus and kafirs on its site’. The prince, though, wisely sidestepped the implementation of the order, notes the author.

In a similar vein Jahangir’s grandfather Humayun, too, had been accused of being anti-Muslim by a Sufi, Shaikh Abd al-Quddus Ganguhi. Francois Bernier, the celebrated French doctor who travelled to India in the mid-seventeenth century, announced that Jahangir ‘died, as he had lived, destitute of all religion’. Manucci, also, tells the story of Jahangir’s fondness for pork and wine growing more intense during the holy month of Ramazan – when devout Muslims observed strict fast from sunrise to sunset! Implored by the theologians to abstain from pork, at least, both in everyday life and more determinedly during the Ramazan, for if Christianity allowed its consumption, for Muslims it was a mortal sin, he resolved to turn to Christianity instead! He did not actually convert, but such was the casualness of his regard for Islam. He did, however, let three of his nephews, brother Danial’s sons, actually turn Christian and there was a public procession through the streets of Agra to celebrate their baptism. The three were given Portuguese names: Tahmurs became Don Felipe; Baisangar, Don Carlos; and Hoshang, Don Henrique. Four years later, ‘they had rejected the light and returned to their vomit’, observes Maclagan in utter disgust. Sir Thomas Roe, King James I’s ambassador to India during Jahangir’s reign, also tells the story of two princes’ conversion to Christianity only to enable Jahangir to demand a Portuguese wife for himself; on not obtaining one, ‘the two Princes came to the Jesuits, and surrendered up their crosses and all other rites, professing they would be noe longer Christians’. Simple explanations do carry blissful satisfaction.

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