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Why the great Emperor Akbar continues to haunt Hindutva

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Why the great Emperor Akbar continues to haunt Hindutva Empty Why the great Emperor Akbar continues to haunt Hindutva

Post by Guest Tue Mar 14, 2017 8:52 pm

Qasemi sahib read out a lovely story from his Persian papers about Emperor Akbar. The ruler had ordered the translation of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharat into Persian. His close associates found Abdul Qadir Badayuni appropriate for the job. Highly competent in his work, Badayuni was a narrow-minded Muslim. Akbar knew of this tendency, and was wary of him.

When the first translation of Mahabharat, translated mostly as Razm Nama — or chronicle of wars — came before him, Akbar wondered why it carried references to heaven and hell for the righteous and evil-doers in the epic. As a young prince he had learnt of the Hindu faith in transmigration of souls, but nothing of hell and heaven. He reported the matter to the Fazl-Faizi duo, who collared Badayuni.

For all his puritanism, Badayuni writes how he called the Brahmin priests before the emperor who advised Akbar that the concept of hell and heaven did in fact exist in Hindu philosophy. That’s how Akbar the ruler-cum-editor let his second edition of Mahabharat be published. He got it distributed to the elite to make them understand and embrace the great culture they were privileged to savour, says Prof Qasemi.

Meanwhile, by not celebrating Dussehra or Diwali I have saved time to start reading the Hindi translation in three volumes of the epic Ramayan. To make it more intractable for the Hindutva simpletons, a Hindu scribe named Sumer Chand wrote it in Persian. To make it even more perverse for Hindtuva, two Muslim scholars at Rampur’s famed Raza Library translated Ramayan into chaste Hindi from its original Persian. Votaries of Hindutva can eat their hearts out.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1137764

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Why the great Emperor Akbar continues to haunt Hindutva Empty Re: Why the great Emperor Akbar continues to haunt Hindutva

Post by Guest Tue Mar 14, 2017 8:53 pm

About this Badaoni (or Badayuni) mentioned in the article above, Akbar had once commented: "No sword can cut the jugular vein of his narrow mindedness." This comment, in my opinion, applies to religious fundamentalists of all stripes.

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