By Victor M Fontane
Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar the Great, and also as Akbar I, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India.
Akbar was accorded the epithet “the Great” because of his many accomplishments, including his record of unbeaten military campaigns that consolidated Mughal rule in the Indian subcontinent.
What did Akbar accomplish? Akbar extended the reach of the Mughal dynasty across the Indian subcontinent and consolidated the empire by centralizing its administration and incorporating non-Muslims (especially the Hindu Rajputs) into the empire's fabric.
In order to preserve the unity of his empire, Akbar adopted programs that won the loyalty of the non-Muslim populations of his realm. He reformed and strengthened his central administration and also centralized his financial system and reorganized tax-collection processes. Although he never renounced Islam, he took an active interest in other religions, persuading Hindus, Parsis, and Christians, as well as Muslims, to engage in religious discussion before him. Illiterate himself, he encouraged scholars, poets, painters, and musicians, making his court a centre of culture. Akbar is credited of inviting all the scholars to debate in his palace and his interaction with people of different faiths made him realise that religious scholar who emphasised ritual and dogma were often bigots. Their teachings created divisions and disharmony amongst his subject. This finally led Akbar to the idea of Sulh-i Kul or universal peace. By using such a policy of tolerance Akbar was able to formulate governance guidelines which were based on a system of ethics.Among his ancestors were Timur (Tamerlane) and Genghis Khan.
However, today’s societies are unable to remove emotions from the debate process and create discussions that come close to the search for truth, consensus and solutions, thus degrading these ancient systems. They do not realize that in conversations what we think we know is just what others put on our mind and is just memory, nuanced opinions generally discussed for personal benefits without delving into the concepts. An example is the atom, which for the first time in 2009 through an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), scientists from the IBM laboratory in Zurich (Switzerland) managed to visualize for the first time the atoms that make up a molecule despite the fact that they already spoke and taught for years without without studying it in detail.
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