Like Ashoka eighteen centuries before him, Akbar’s ascent to rule in India correlated to a 50-year period of religious tolerance which helped integrate a turbulent, multicultural population into a cosmopolitan, unified community. When religious freedoms were abridged under later rulers both societies fell into rapid decline. The similarities between the rise and fall of the Mauryan and Mughal Empires illuminate the importance of both religious tolerance and interaction among faiths as part of an official state policy to integrate people of disparate faiths into a cohesive civilization.
Ashoka’s turn toward religious tolerance came after violence marked much of his early reign. Around 260 BCE, eight years after his coronation, the Mauryan conquest of the Jainist state of Kalinga triggered a change in Ashoka’s spirituality. We learn from the thirteenth of the Fourteen Rock Edicts that “One hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred thousand were killed and many more died (from other causes)” in the conflict with Kalinga. It was directly due to his firsthand experience of conquest that Ashoka becomes “deeply pained by the killing, dying and deportation that take place when an unconquered country is conquered,” turning deeper toward Buddhism and a more tolerant nature toward all his subject people.
From this attitude blossomed some of the first documentation of religious freedom within an empire:
But it is better to honor other religions for this reason. By so doing, one’s own religion benefits, and so do other religions, while doing otherwise harms one’s own religion and the religions of others. Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought “Let me glorify my own religion,” only harms his own religion. Therefore contact (between religions) is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others.
Ashoka’s twelfth of the Fourteen Rock Edicts declares not merely a tolerance but a belief that the interaction between religions was essential for true growth individually and communally. Within this edict Ashoka asserts an understanding that spirituality cannot be static within a society.
But this tolerance was not bound to last forever. While tolerance was still officially preached by the rulers, the patronage of Jainist sects by Ashoka’s successors was perceived unfavorably by the Hindu and Buddhist populations of the empire. Despite the non-violent nature of Jainism — or perhaps because of their hypocritical practice of that faith — the society started to turn upon the Mauryan rulers as they became further linked with the minority sect. As much as this, though, the society started to turn once Ashoka’s successors started paying lip service to their support of interfaith interaction while their actions indicated more warlike intentions:
There will be Salisuka, born for the destruction of truth, the offspring of fate. That king, the offspring of karma, cheerful-minded [yet] fond of conflict, [will be] an oppressor of his own kingdom, of righteous speech but unrighteous conduct.
The Yuga Purana, the sacred Hindu history written around 250 CE, shows that Salisuka especially was viewed as a man of “righteous words but unrighteous conduct” by an increasing segment of the population due to his Jainist leanings.
These fractures in the religious pluralism of the empire would lead to its eventual dissolution. As infighting divided the empire back into its respective sects, virtually eliminating the daily commingling of faiths and weakening the tolerance that bound the society as one, the shaky foundations of the civilization started to crumble. Less than fifty years after Ashoka’s passing, the Yuga Purana notes, the Mauryan Dynasty officially came to an end as the final Mauryan ruler Brihadratha was assassinated in a military coup by his commander-in-chief Pusyamitra Sunga. Bactrian invasions by Demetrius I ensued soon thereafter, and the subcontinent returned to systems of regional governance until the Gupta emerged in the fourth century CE.
The early years of Akbar’s reign were similarly turbulent to those endured by the Mauryans under Ashoka. We learn in Sidi Ali Reis’ account of his time among the Mughal court that Akbar was traveling when his father Humayun passed away; because of the volatility of the early Mughal Empire, Humayun’s advisors were forced to “keep the Sovereign’s death a secret until the Prince should return.” Akbar battled throughout most of his first two decades in power, an adolescent when he first took power, all the while expanding the Mauryan sphere of influence further outward by his military prowess.
Like Ashoka it was a spiritual shift that led the maturing Akbar to take a more tolerant attitude toward his Hindu subjects. Despite the relatively tolerant nature of the early Mughal Empire, prejudices remained; the suppression of Madhavism in Gujarat and even Shi’a sects of Islam within the kingdom during the warring years of Akbar’s reign were in no small way both an effect of these lingering biases and the cause of their perpetuation. Like Ashoka this brush with war would shape his later worldview and influence his future sanction of deeper spiritual interaction.
As Indian historian Irfan Habib notes in his account, Akbar and His India, it was Akbar’s increasing interest in Sufi teachings that led toward the liberalization of his policies toward both Shia and Hindu populations within the Mughal borders. Akbar clearly understood the message that poets like Hafiz were trying to send to an orthodoxy “whose sense is dimmed with piety,” realizing that a hard-line sectarian stance was the root of the unrest within his kingdom. As it had for Ashoka in Kalinga, the suffering in Gujarat would drive Akbar toward spiritual tolerance.
He would build the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship) at his palace at Fatehpur Sikri in 1575 CE, first to facilitate debate among Sunni clerics but later opening its doors to more diverse meetings of leaders from across the spectrum of faiths within his empire. Sunni, Shia and Sufi theologians were joined by Buddhists, Jainists, Catholics, Hindus and atheists from around the empire for weekly spiritual debates. At these meetings the attendants sought to understand the correlations and deeper meanings behind their varied doctrines, ultimately leading Akbar toward his own Manichean-style amalgamation of these teachings into a short-lived sect, Din-e Ilahi.
Habib notes that this spiritual curiosity was merely one of Akbar’s diverse interests. A Jesuit missionary, Anthony Monserrate, stated in the Commentary of his trip to Mughal India in 1580:
Akbar is so devoted to building that he sometimes quarries stone himself along with the other workmen. Nor does he shrink from watching and even himself practising for the sake of amusement the craft of an ordinary artisan. For this purpose he has built a workshop near the palace where also are studios and work- rooms for the finer and more reputable arts, such as painting, goldsmith work, tapestery-making, carpet and curtain-making, and the manufacture of arms. Hither he very frequently comes and relaxes his mind with watching those who practise their arts.
For Akbar, technology and the arts provided a contemplative outlet much like his theological explorations. The ruler’s philosophies and patronage would turn his empire from a land of internal strife into one of the world’s foremost contemporary innovators in artistic, technological, theological and architectural advances.
Much as it had for the Mauryan Empire, though, the tenuous union under the Mughal leadership was led toward its eventual dissolution by a reversion toward previous prejudices. Under Aurangzeb, who would end ninety years of religious peace by reinstituting Sharia law for all subjects throughout the empire, oppression against non-Sunni populations was intensified. This reversion to orthodoxy antagonized much of the populace and would have long-term destructive effects.
François Bernier, a Frenchman who served as Aurangzeb’s personal physician for twelve years, was closer to the ruler than most. In his memoirs of his time in India, Travels in the Mogul Empire, Bernier recounts the duality of Aurangzeb’s diplomatic relations and his personal prejudices during a meeting with Dutch businessmen in 1662:
Although in his general deportment Aureng-Zebe be remarkably high and unbending, affects the appearance of a zealous Mahometan, and consequently despises Franks or Christians, yet upon the occasion of this embassy, his behaviour was most courteous and condescending.
Understanding the business realities emerging with the increasing arrival of European traders, Aurangzeb could temper his zealotry when required by affairs of the states; internally, his regressive policies included the restoration of the jizya tax against Hindus, Buddhists and even Shi’a Muslims.
Bernier’s account casts a light on the gradual fractioning of the empire during Aurangzeb’s rule. As his policies dissolved already weak bonds keeping the nation at a tenuous peace, Mughal India was undone from inside and out as the majority of the population found themselves at odds with the law. In his 1707 farewell before his death Aurangzeb declared, “The instant which has passed in power has left only sorrow behind it. I have not been the guardian and protector of the empire. My valuable time has been passed vainly.” In some way the devout Muslim seemed to realize in his last moments of rule how his deeds had left his successors with a state in demise.
In the remaining generations of Mughal rule, their influence would steadily devolve into a ceremonial function as India was overrun by colonial interests. Aurangzeb’s apprehensive cordialities to the Portuguese and Dutch had given way to the arrival of waves of French and especially British traders. Much as the Mauryan dynasty allowed for successful Bactrian invasions into India, the devolution of internal cohesion prevented the Mughal populace from mounting a credible resistance against the growing power of outside influences.
The extension of religious pluralism by Ashoka and Akbar would lead both the Mauryan and Mughal empires into their eras of greatest prosperity. But in both cases the peace would prove short-lived, as even the perception of state sanction for one religion over another would be enough to irreparably damage the loose alliances which tolerance was able to cultivate. Within fifty years the empires would revert to old practices, abolishing the policies that facilitated their rise to preeminence and leading to their ultimate demise.
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