BABAR'S WILL

Did Babar's Will call for religious tolerance in India?

The Udbhavna Trust has published a series of books. Some of these publications are said to mention the last Will of Babar (1483-1530, founder of the Mughal Empire in India). Babar's Will supposedly instructs his son (Humayun) to "look after all religions, win the love of all religions, especially Hinduism by respecting their faith, not allow the slaughter of cows and look after temples".

This is nothing more than the wishful thinking of some Indian liberals. In fact, Babar's Will is considered a forgery by scholars. Annette Beveridge (who translated Babar's chronicle, the Babur-nama, into English) dismisses Babur's Will as a forged document citing 15 different problems, including: language and style, calligraphy and spelling, the "unroyal" quality of the seals, mutually contradictory chronology (the top of the Will is dated 933 A.H. and the bottom 935 A.H.), the same title is used for the father and the son, etc. (See: A.S. Beveridge, Journal of the Royal Society of Britain and Ireland, January, 1923, pp. 78-82 for the details).

Babar's memoirs do not contain any messages of tolerance towards the Hindus - who Babar always referred to as Kafir. Babar wrote in his Babur-nama about destroying Jain temples at Urwa near Gwalior; and, he raised a tower of Hindu skulls at Fatehpur Sikri and Chanderi (Babur-nama, Volume II, p. 612). Babar assumed the title of Ghazi (killer of infidels in Jihad). He never made any apologies for his actions. In fact, he wrote:

"For Islam's sake, I wondered in the wilds,
Prepared for war with pagans and Hindus,
Resolved myself to meet the martyr's death.
Thanks be to God! a ghazi I became."
(Babur-nama, Volume II, p. 574-75).

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