Book review: Ratttan Lal Hangloo,Enquiries in Medieval India: Religion,Society,Culture and Polity

The author at the beginning of the book (p. ix) regrets that administrative preoccupations drew him away from academic work for the past seven years; however, now at last he could return to his profession and publish or republish his various essays dealing with various aspects of medieval Indian history. In his Introduction (pp. xi–xix), he rightly makes a plea for looking at medieval Indian history without ideological (i.e., communal) lens.

This reviewer would have little quarrel with much of what the author says, except in some matters of detail. What dismayed me, however, is the inaccuracies of fact that occur and the loose treatment of sources that the author displays throughout the volume. A few examples should suffice: We learn of Babur turning into a ‘fantastic Muslim’ (p. 85); and Akbar is reported to have kept pigs near the palace to enable his Hindu wives to use the beasts in their rites of worship every morning (p. 87)! For the latter assertion, he cites Badāūnī’s Muntakhabu’t Tawārīkh, Bib. Ind., pp. 54–56, 141–54, 172–87, 205–12, i.e. 41 pages in all: yet on none of these pages is the statement to be found! A similar statement indicative of the extent of the liberty Hangloo takes with facts is the following (p. 89): ‘Badāūnī records that it was during Jahangir’s reign that the orthodox ulema, who had been sidelined during Akbar’s rule, staged a comeback’, a reference to Badāūnī’s text, Vol. 2, p. 175, being offered for this statement (p. 100 f.n. 23). There is nothing naturally in Badāūnī’s work to this effect on the page given or anywhere else, because, as any serious student of the Mughal period knows, Badāūnī’s work closes some seven years before Akbar’s death, and thus nowhere even remotely refers to any event of Jahāngīr’s reign let alone celebrating his tolerance of Muslim orthodoxy.

Hangloo also makes certain statements clearly in tune with current official prejudices: thus, for example, his assertion that ‘the Tablighi movement’ had its seeds sown in Aurangzeb’s reign (pp. 98–99). The influence of the official propaganda against the Tabligh movement upon the outbreak of the covid epidemic in 2019 is manifest here.

These and other such slips are unfortunate, particularly since Hangloo has read widely, especially as far as secondary literature is concerned. Indeed, now that there is an official campaign to erase Muslim rulers from Indian history, Hangloo’s engagement with them is, perhaps; still something we should be thankful for.