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Documentary, Treasures of the Indus - Part 2 - The Other Side of the Taj Mahal
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00:00The Indus River is where I started a journey that is taking me thousands of miles deep into
00:13the Indian subcontinent to which the river gave its name. A journey that will help me
00:18discover some of its most hidden treasures and reveal secrets from its distant past.
00:24In the last program I traveled back five millennia in time to the ancient civilization that first grew
00:33up on the shores of the Indus and explored the lost Buddhist culture of northern Pakistan.
00:39Now I want to see what happened when the Muslim invaders who had occupied modern-day Pakistan
00:45moved further south and produced an extraordinary flowering of art and architecture and some of the
00:51world's greatest treasures.
00:56As an art historian and museum curator I've looked after these treasures for most of my life.
01:01In this series I want to explore their stories and the people who created them.
01:06For hundreds of years India was ruled by a foreign empire.
01:21These invaders came from the north and spread their influence right across this vast land.
01:26From the peaks of the Himalayas to the plains of the Punjab to the jungles of central India.
01:32They were the Mughals.
01:37The Mughals were a race of Islamic warrior kings from central Asia who were also poets, scholars and traders.
01:45In matters of religion and philosophy they were more progressive and liberal than most European rulers of the time.
01:51They made some of the world's most beautiful art.
01:56They presided over advances in science and technology.
02:00They brought war but also great prosperity.
02:02Freedom at first but later intolerance.
02:06In modern India the Mughals remain controversial.
02:12The question is, did their impact change India for the better or the worse?
02:19Where do you come from?
02:32Well, my parents are from Kolkata.
02:35But I was born in England.
02:37So India is one of my homes.
02:41Yes.
02:42My ancestral home.
02:43But being in India always feels like coming home.
02:47Very nice.
02:48Yeah.
02:49To tell the story of the Mughals will take me not just to India where they created an empire,
02:54but also to Pakistan where that empire began.
02:59The Mughals originally came from the mountains of central Asia, what is now Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
03:11Then at the beginning of the 16th century, they moved south towards the riches that lay beyond the river Indus.
03:25In 1526, just as King Henry VIII began to woo Anne Boleyn in England,
03:30the Mughal King Babur arrived at the outskirts of the great city of Lahore.
03:44Babur had been a king since he was 12 years old.
03:46He was descended from Genghis Khan and Tamalei.
03:49By 17 he had conquered Samarkand and by 22 he had Babur.
03:54He was 43 by the time he got to Lahore and deeply unimpressed with what he found.
04:01In his diary Babur wrote,
04:03Hindustan is a country of few charms. Its people are ugly, rude and have no artistic talent.
04:10There are no good horses, no good dogs, no grapes, muskmelons or first-rate fruits.
04:16No ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in the bazaars, no hot baths and not even any candlesticks.
04:25It seemed the only thing that impressed him about India was that it was a large country and that there was masses of gold and silver.
04:34Homesick for the ordered beauty they knew in Central Asia, the Mughals transformed Lahore into a garden city.
04:49These Mughal gardens were nothing like India had seen before.
04:53They were grand in scale and their emphasis on symmetry and balance was completely new.
04:59Flowing water was as important as greenery.
05:02It helped to cool the gardens on hot days and showed off the wealth and ingenuity of the new rulers.
05:08In Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, paradise is often represented as a garden.
05:18The creation of beauty and order in these gardens was about more than just making pleasant spaces.
05:24It was symbolic of the arrival of the Mughals.
05:29By the end of their rule, these gardens have been constructed in all major cities and towns throughout India.
05:35These warriors turned gardens into a symbol of their power.
05:44But they also brought gardens and flowers into their buildings, together with a sensuous love for the pleasures of life that they had left behind in the valleys of Central Asia.
05:53Although one pleasure they had brought with them.
05:58The Mughals created exquisite drinking vessels, but they had a very complex relationship with alcohol.
06:03They consumed it publicly, and yet it always remained an illicit pleasure.
06:08But Barbour, on the one hand, he was descended from the very public drinking culture of Genghis Khan.
06:15And on the other, he wanted to be a good Muslim.
06:18Barbour knew his drinking was controversial amongst his orthodox Muslim army.
06:28And if he was to continue his invasion further into India, he would need to inspire his tired troops.
06:34Particularly if he was to capture the fort here, in Agra, the second capital of Hindustan, whose sultan was fabulously wealthy.
06:43A year after he had conquered Lahore, Barbour arrived in Agra, 600 kilometres to the south.
06:50He now took a vow in front of his men never to drink wine again, and also not to trim his beard.
06:56And he told them that the war they were engaged with, with the Hindu kings of India, was a holy struggle.
07:02If we fall in the field, we die the death of martyrs. If we survive, we rise victorious, the avengers of Allah's sacred cause.
07:17He then had his jewel-encrusted gold and silver drinking goblets destroyed and distributed amongst the poor.
07:28According to legend, Barbour's men were deeply moved by his vow.
07:32And the following day, they won a stunning victory over the Hindu king.
07:36We know an unusual amount about Barbour, because he detailed both his struggles with alcohol and his conquests in a remarkably frank autobiography.
07:49In it, he described how once he had crossed the Indus, he found himself in another world, of fakirs, magicians and exotic animals.
07:59And how India was ruled by a whole set of Hindu Rajput princes, consumed by petty infighting.
08:15Barbour's army swept these princes aside to lay the foundations of the Mughal Empire in northern India.
08:21But he didn't only bring war. He and his successors brought elements of culture and architecture from Central Asia.
08:31And this magnificent monument is the earliest example of Indo-Persian architecture in Mughal India.
08:39It takes the shapes and forms of Central Asia and Persia in the cusp arches and the domes and marries them with the red sandstone of India.
08:49And then you have these small flourishes on top of the chatris, which is a Sanskrit word meaning umbrella or pavilion.
08:57You see this glistening tile work, which is, of course, reminiscent of the architecture of Samarkand and other places in Central Asia.
09:05So they brought to bear all these different influences.
09:08And for the first time, you see a new kind of architecture in India.
09:13Barbour would only briefly enjoy the new kingdom he had conquered.
09:23Four years after arriving in India, he died, aged just 47, still homesick for the gardens of Central Asia.
09:30And some say the greatest of all the mobile emperors who followed him was his grandson, Akbar.
09:46Akbar came to the throne early, at just 13, and inherited his grandfather's driving ambition and focus.
09:53During Akbar's rule, India became one of the most powerful and richest empires on the face of the earth.
10:04He expanded it beyond even the vast lands of his grandfather, Barbour.
10:10One reason for the Mughal's startling military success was that they brought their Central Asian skills as fast-wheeling horsemen down to the plains of India.
10:24These descendants of Genghis Khan often had five times as many cavalry as they did foot soldiers in their army, so they could run rings around the slow-moving Hindu forces.
10:35Traditionally, and given their nomadic roots, Mughal emperors had lived most of their lives under canvas and were constantly on the move.
10:44But as his military campaign went from strength to strength, Akbar could indulge in the luxury of a new, more permanent city to rule from.
10:54Here, Akbar was a fabulous pop-up capital out of red sandstone in the middle of nowhere.
11:06It remains one of the most tantalizing and bizarre architectural sites in the whole of India.
11:12English traders first arrived in the 1580s, when Elizabeth I was on the throne back in London, lured by tales of its grandeur.
11:22They had never seen a city so large or magnificent as Svartipur Sikri in their lives.
11:27There was nothing in the world like it, and certainly not in their own relatively poor nation.
11:33Here, courtiers wore the finest fabrics, dripping in gold and jewels.
11:39The palaces were cooled by continuous motion of the pankawalas, waving peacock feather fans.
11:46Akbar created his own perfumes and had the air scented with precious ambergris and aloes wood.
11:52Servants burned incense in gold and silver censors.
11:57So the sun is setting in this beautiful open courtyard with this central pool, with four paths leading to it,
12:06and a platform for musicians who would have performed usually as the sun was going down and the heat of the day was passing.
12:15And just up there, a viewing gallery for the emperor to get the best view.
12:22And this whole courtyard would have been filled with the sound of music and dance.
12:30All across this palace complex, Barbour's roving entourage of encampments and tents has now been translated to stone.
12:39And you have this series of spaced out, beautiful pavilions.
12:46One tradition that the Mughals had brought with them from the steppes of Central Asia was a passion for the hunt.
12:54As a young man, Akbar kept a thousand cheetahs, trained for the chase like dogs were in Europe.
13:01North India was rich in wildlife, and the Mughal emperors built hunting pavilions like this across their domains.
13:08But it was during one of these hunts that something happened that changed the entire course of Akbar's reign.
13:15Hunting was a great sport during the Mughal emperor's time.
13:20And Akbar, in a hunting lodge much like this one, gathered his courtiers,
13:25who for ten days drove animals from a circumference of 80 kilometres surrounding this lodge.
13:32But just at the moment when the hunt was ready, all the animals were gathered, he stopped.
13:39Because he had had an epiphany.
13:41His biographers described it as an epileptic seizure or some kind of delusion,
13:46but whatever it was, it was a moment of complete change for Akbar, and he cancelled the hunt.
13:51One witness described how suddenly, all at once, a strange state and strong frenzy came upon the emperor,
14:00and an extraordinary change was manifested in his manner,
14:04and everyone attributed it to some cause or other, but God alone knows such secrets.
14:10He set the animals free and he declared that none of them were going to be hurt henceforth.
14:17This strange experience seems to be the turning point in Akbar's reign,
14:23because after this, nothing was the same again.
14:26After the hunting incident, Akbar became a much more spiritual man.
14:38He stopped eating meat, shaved his head, and started to ask questions of himself and of others.
14:45In the middle of this whole complex, of this magnificent pop-up city called Fatah Prasikri,
14:53there is this real conundrum, a hall of public audience.
15:00But architecturally, it suggests, well, it remains enigmatic. Why?
15:06Because in the middle, you've got this central column, which is really reminiscent on the one hand of the pillar
15:15that you see outside every Hindu temple, which represents the axis of the universe,
15:21the cosmic axis, if you like.
15:26But then, space doesn't lend itself to conversation, because the seating area is up above.
15:35There's a theme in Persian painting of the treehouse, which is a space that's elevated.
15:45It's actually not public, it's private.
15:48And really, there is greater license when you're above the realm of the everyday,
15:56to engage in the kind of discussions or activities that might not otherwise be allowed.
16:05As soon as you step up here, you get a real sense, of course, that you're elevated in a rather unusual fashion above the ground.
16:14There are these very low balconies and wonderful ventilation all around,
16:24which would have made this a fantastic little hideaway, in a sense, from the world, for Akbar to come up with whomever he pleased,
16:34to sit and discuss affairs of the heart or state.
16:39I can imagine Akbar sitting here, inviting certain people from all four corners to come and join him in the centre for intimate conversation.
16:50It doesn't really give a sense of public audience, it's a much more private space.
16:55It's elevated above the ground, and you really get a sense here that you need to be invited up to the emperor's treehouse,
17:03in order to converse with him in the most intimate fashion.
17:10For the rest of his 50-year long reign, Akbar now dedicated himself to the exploration of other religions.
17:16Okay, I'll take one from each.
17:29When the Mughals had first arrived in India, they found a country of many other religions.
17:34They smell beautiful.
17:36Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism all flourished.
17:39Akbar decided he would not try to suppress any of these, but rather embrace and encourage them.
17:45It is this open-mindedness that, above all, distinguishes Akbar from his successors.
17:54I'm on my way to the Sufi shrine of Nizamuddin in Delhi, one of the most important in India.
18:04It lies at the heart of a labyrinth of narrow alleyways and stalls, selling rose petals to scatter on the grave of the saint.
18:12Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that believes there are many different pathways to God.
18:28Some stricter interpretations of Islam forbid music and dancing entirely, but for Sufis, music is the expression of religious ecstasy.
18:37Agbar came to just such a Sufi shrine to pray for the birth of a son and heir to the throne.
18:54It worked. He got three. And after the hunting incident, he became intensely drawn to Sufism and its openness to all people and all faiths.
19:03The traditional music still played at Sufi shrines like this is called Kawali, and fuses Indian music styles with Arabic poetry, which is why the Mughals loved it.
19:17As they sought to integrate themselves into their new Indian domains, Agbar looked for other ways to combine Islam with elements of Hinduism, in song, in imagery, and in architecture.
19:32Sages, gurus and spiritual leaders of all sorts were now welcomed at Fatibur Sikri, although they did not always agree.
19:48Giles Tillotson has written about how the peculiar architecture of Agbar's palace both facilitated and reflected his new tolerance to religions other than Islam.
20:02According to Agbar's court historian, Abel Faisal, these discussions had as it were their own institution.
20:08He describes the discussions taking place in a palace that contained four interlocking rooms with concurrent discussions going on in each,
20:17and that the emperor used to move from one room to the other to participate in the discussions as they were continuing as they were taking place.
20:25So, how exactly did the discussions go? I mean, what sort of format did they take?
20:31Well, I think actually there's a hint in Abel Faisal that they didn't always go terribly well.
20:36I think Agbar's hope was that by getting the most learned people from different religions together,
20:41that he would solve some of the central eternal questions of the universe, as it were.
20:47But to his frustration, though perhaps not to our surprise, the priests often took entrenched positions
20:53and refused to, ready to exchange ideas at all.
20:57So how unusual was it for Agbar to have such an expansive vision of all these different religions?
21:04I think this was probably the first time that a Muslim court had been so open to the investigation of religious matters
21:12from the perspective of other religions around them, rather than simply pursuing different schools within Islam itself.
21:18Agbar's new openness to different religions can be seen also in his playful approach to architecture.
21:30When you encounter some of these buildings as you approach them, there is a sort of Christmas cake effect,
21:35where different elements are sort of plonked on top of the other.
21:38Yes, it's clearly a design school, if you like.
21:41Slightly unresolved.
21:42Yes, it's a design school that's used to working with the certain traditions.
21:46But very different traditions have come into the same space.
21:51And the designers have thought, well, how can we play with the new material that's available to us
21:56in the hope of creating something different?
21:58The experimental nature of the design is very clear here, for example,
22:02where you have above a line of ornamental niches and then below them this line of dado panels with the decorated border.
22:12But these are features that you would normally expect to find on the interior of a room.
22:16Right.
22:17Here they're expressed on the exterior of the building.
22:19It would be rather like, in modern terms, putting wallpaper on the outside of your house.
22:23Clearly, this is meant to be experimental. It's playful. It's not to be taken entirely seriously.
22:28They're trying new things out. And as with the mixture of motifs from different sources,
22:35it's like, again, to put it in modern day terms, like producing a design in Photoshop to see whether it works or not.
22:44But after only 14 years, this fantasy city of Akbar was abandoned, was impractical.
22:55Some say because there was a shortage of water.
22:58The ever restless Akbar moved on, leaving Fatibur Sikri like an abandoned Las Vegas in the desert.
23:05Despite his many other achievements, modern Indians often think of Akbar as a romantic hero,
23:18as in this Bollywood box office smash, Jodha Akbar, about the emperor and Jodha, a Hindu princess.
23:26It was huge. I think it was a big hit mainly because Hrithik Roshan is so cute.
23:33And Aishwarya is very beautiful. And both of them really light up the screen.
23:38There's a scene in which he's waggling a sword. And he's got a bare torso. And Aishwarya is looking at him from behind.
23:49And she's totally giving him the eye. And there is, you know, you can actually feel, you can feel the person.
23:57So I think the film did very well, essentially because it was, it had great music.
24:02It had these two very lovely looking leads. And the fact that they got together really well.
24:06What has always given the story of Akbar and his Hindu wife, Jodha, such box office appeal,
24:16is that this is a west side story of Montagues and Capulets. Akbar, the Muslim emperor, marrying a Hindu princess,
24:24a subject that still has controversial resonance in India today, and has helped make Akbar a talismanic figure in history.
24:33Do you think Akbar, the historical figure, makes a good hero?
24:38I think he makes a wonderful hero because of the fact of what he did.
24:42Because he had Jodha as his wife, who was a Hindu.
24:47Nobody else before that had actually made one of his prime Ranis a Hindu.
24:53And he was steadfast. He stuck to that position despite the kind of conflict that happened as a consequence of his act.
25:02He stuck firm to his guns. And I think it was Akbar who gave India, India of the medieval era,
25:09its first taste of what it was like to be a unified country.
25:13Despite the fact that it had all these little, you know, principalities and kingdoms fighting on the side.
25:19But he really brought it together.
25:20He really unified and the unity. And celebrated.
25:23Yes, because Akbar did what he did. It became a country that it wasn't before.
25:34Akbar also married Hindu and Islamic styles in art, to great effect.
25:39He initiated an immense expansion of the imperial studio and recruited artists from all the conquered kingdoms of northern India.
25:46These brothers can trace their lineage directly down from one of the greatest of the Mughal artists,
25:53who achieved an intense saffron yellow in his paintings with the urine of mango fed cows.
26:00His descendants still use the same painstaking technique, using tiny squirrel hair brushes, which can take many months just to finish a single picture.
26:11Nitin Bhayana is a leading art critic and collector, who is an expert on how native Rajput painting changed with the arrival of the Mughals.
26:30A sequence of Mughal emperors brought artists from the courts of Persia,
26:34and then later developed a school of painting in India by enrolling various artists and made karkhanas or factories,
26:43where they would produce a huge number of paintings.
26:47And you see, slowly but surely, in a span of 50 or 100 years, paintings moving from styles like this, cruder styles like this, to something like that.
26:59You still see Rajput elements, and then you see them really melting away into a painting like that from the state of Bikaner,
27:08which is closely aligned to the Mughals, and this could be a Mughal painting.
27:13Couldn't it?
27:15Look at the hills, look at the distance, look at the perspective on the buildings, and look at the faces.
27:21Absolutely.
27:22If you look at the difference in the faces, you couldn't almost, you know, you couldn't tell who these people are.
27:26Absolutely.
27:28So, as we went along, I think it became more and more, more and more Mughal.
27:33Yeah.
27:35Akbar commissioned his artists to do increasingly ambitious scenes of the spectacle of court life, as here, where the Emperor's seen riding an elephant, one of his great passions.
27:47And here, Akbar's now heroically trying to tame an escaped elephant, and this picture exemplifies how the Mughals brought a new sense of verve and dynamism to Indian art in their use of space and perspective.
28:00One of the things that really first drew me towards Indian art was its completely different conception of space.
28:10Ever since the Renaissance in European art, there's been this ambition to recreate reality on the canvas, to effectively punch a hole through it.
28:18For Indian artists, you've got reality in spades, so what did they do?
28:21They made space, and they would use as many different viewpoints within a single painting as they needed to tell the story they wanted to tell.
28:31And those multiple viewpoints were necessary for the stories Akbar commissioned.
28:37Large-scale illustrations of court life and history, often with scenes of violence or boisterous energy, like hunts, battles or sieges.
28:46But under his successors, the painting style became more intimate.
28:51You can start to see individual portraits emerge, as in this picture of the most famous Mughal emperor of them all, Akbar's grandson, who, when he came to the throne, took the name Shah Jahan, glory of the world.
29:14Patronage of the arts continued under Shah Jahan, and you see the emperor here on his imperial elephant, clomping through a very elegant landscape.
29:31And the devil is really in the detail. You can see each of these individually painted flowers here.
29:38And behind him there are geese flying through the sky and the billowing clouds.
29:43What's interesting about a Mughal painting is that you have the flatness and the palette of the indigenous Rajput courts married with attention to detail in everyday life.
29:57I mean, look at the way the emperor's features are portrayed. They're highly naturalistic.
30:03And then the halo around his head, of course, comes from the European tradition.
30:08So there are many different influences converging in a single painting.
30:12When Shah Jahan came to the throne, Mughal architecture changed dramatically.
30:21All his predecessors had used red sandstone for their buildings, as here at the aptly named Red Fort in Agra, where generations of Mughal emperors had lived.
30:31So it's a good place to see the spectacular difference when Shah Jahan decided to build in a new area of the palace.
30:46He started to cover everything in dazzling white marble.
30:50Unlike the roving entourage of Babur and the outward looking symposium of Akbar's court, the rituals of Mughal India were literally set in stone under Shah Jahan.
31:09Like the architecture, it elevated and framed the impossible grandeur of the great Mughals.
31:24The Mughals were really interested in gardens, but they weren't only concerned in their formal beauty and in them as spaces for relaxation and enjoyment, but also in flora.
31:45They were great botanists, and they famously collected specimens of different flowers and had them painted.
31:54But what you see here in Shah Jahan's magnificent private quarters is the transposing of that interest in flora into stone.
32:04And they used this technique called Pietra Dura, which was then current in Renaissance Italy.
32:09So it was absolutely a la mode, but made it a very Indian experience and using semi-precious stones like lapis, carnelian, jasper, jade, and setting them into the marble to create these incredible designs.
32:29So it wasn't about botanical representation anymore. It was about taking that interest and creating something completely new and unique.
32:39This technique was, of course, derived from Italy, but you see it here transposed to a whole new context under the patronage of Shah Jahan.
32:50In the nearby city of Agra, there are still traces of the craftsmanship that was brought to peak under Shah Jahan's rule.
33:01Although you have to look hard to find it in the busy, sprawling streets.
33:06The thing about India, that even with the massive boom that's driving its economy today and throwing up skyscrapers in Mumbai and Delhi,
33:30you just need to step back from that for a moment and wander down some of the back streets and find life pretty much unchanged for a large majority of the population.
33:40And hidden away there, you'll find practices, crafts, techniques that are still cherished.
33:49Just off the maze of back streets is a stonecutter's workshop.
33:56It's a family business that seems to have been going for more generations than anyone is able to remember.
34:02And they specialise in decorative marble inlay.
34:05Designs are traced out and like some kind of beautiful jigsaw, individual elements are crafted to fit the master pattern.
34:14It's very reminiscent of the emperor's quarters up on the nearby hillside.
34:21You really get a sense of when the water is applied and the dust is cleaned away.
34:27These incredible range of colours emerge and how they stand out against the white marble.
34:33They may not be big on health and safety, but it's shown me how incredibly painstaking this work is.
34:41As they chisel away at these intricate forms and then inlay them with precious stones.
34:46And how many thousands of man-owls it must have taken to create these fantasy buildings of white marble for Shah Jahan.
34:54I first came here when I was about eight years old and I remember how amazed I was then at the sheer amount of white marble.
35:09A fairytale wedding cake of a palace.
35:12And of course I already knew the story of how its builder Shah Jahan, the grandson of Akbar and Jodhabai, had his own passionate love affair.
35:24A marriage which had its final consummation in one of the most famous buildings in the world.
35:31Like all Mughal rulers, Shah Jahan was married to several women at once.
35:38Yet the love of his life was unquestionably Mumtaz Mahal.
35:42Here portrayed with the spring flowers and cherry blossom of Kashmir that Shah Jahan loved so well.
35:49Sadly in 1631 she died giving birth to their fourteenth child.
35:54And Shah Jahan was so distraught his beard turned white overnight.
35:59And he kept the course in mourning for over two years.
36:02He also vowed to build her the greatest monument to love the world has ever seen.
36:08Anywhere else this incredible gateway would be a destination in its own right.
36:36But here it serves as a magnificent reveal.
37:06Every time I come here it absolutely takes my breath away.
37:21Rising like a mirage out of the early morning sunshine.
37:25The Taj Mahal was built by the finest artisans from across the Islamic world.
37:34Stone cutters from Balochistan, architects from the Ottoman Empire and calligraphers from Persia.
37:41Native Indian craftsmen also brought their own cultural influences to bear on the design and detail.
37:47And in so doing honoured the Hindus of India as well as the Muslims.
37:54A British poet, Sir Edwin Arnold described it as not a piece of architecture as other buildings are.
38:00But the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stone.
38:05And it is still largely thought of as a monument to love.
38:09Whenever I come to this place, I feel love. So if I sit somewhere by myself, I can't express my feelings for Taj Mahal.
38:19The Taj symbolizes only affection and love. So that is the main motto of our life. So the Taj symbolizes that.
38:30I mean India is generally known for the Taj. People from outside come so we thought we must.
38:35My first visit was invited by Mrs. Gandhi. Indira Gandhi.
38:39Yes.
38:40Yeah. 1979.
38:42This is the building of love. A husband built this beautiful building for his beloved wife.
38:47Yeah. So we can all live in hope.
38:49Exactly.
38:50It's being the seven wonders of the world. That is the only reason I've come.
38:54And yes, we are very close to it so we should definitely see one of them.
38:58And as Indians, what do you feel it represents or symbolizes to you as Indians?
39:03I guess it symbolizes love.
39:06But in thinking of the Taj Mahal as mainly a monument to love, have we completely misunderstood what the moguls were trying to do?
39:15Giles, hi. Hi, Shona. I hope you've had your photograph taken. There are certain important rituals in this place.
39:21Absolutely. As you can see. So there are a number of mythologies that one grows up with. When I first came here when I was eight, I was told by a guide that the architect's hands were cut off so that he couldn't reproduce a monument such as this again. And I grew up believing that.
39:41Yeah. And I think of all of all the myths about the Taj, that is perhaps the most objectionable. I mean, one can't debunk all of them. People will have their myths. But that one does seem particularly inappropriate. In fact, the architect was busy by the time the building was completed, was busy designing the Red Fort in Delhi. So he didn't do another Taj, but another great mogul masterpiece.
40:00I think it's impossible for us today to approach the monument from any perspective other than that of the legend, the famous love story between Shah Jahan and Muttaz.
40:12We're all told so emphatically that it's a symbol of love that it's impossible to see it in any other light. But there's a sense in which I think we have to try to get beyond that to see it more as the moguls saw it, not as a symbol of love, but as a symbol of paradise.
40:27Recreated on earth? Sort of thing, yes. I mean, the tomb itself is actually the mansion of the departed soul in paradise. Right.
40:34And that paradise imagery extends not just to the building, but to the whole of the garden, the layout of the garden. So have the gardens changed since mogul times?
40:44Oh, I think very considerably, yes. A lot of the mature planting that we see now is of much more recent times. From contemporary accounts, it's clear that the garden originally
40:55originally was mostly occupied by flowering trees and by fruit trees. And the produce was marketed, it was collected and sold in the market in order to raise money to pay the salaries of the tomb attendants.
41:06So it's really quite pragmatic and sensible. Yes, you had, as it were, this sort of form of market gardening, if you will.
41:14Tourists often make the mistake of thinking that the gardens around the Taj are just a municipal park to frame the jewel at their centre.
41:26But Shah Jahan, like all his ancestors, thought of the moguls as children of the high mountain valleys of his beloved Kashmir, which he visited every year.
41:36And these gardens were an attempt to recreate such a paradise on earth for the tomb of his wife.
41:43The Taj Mahal is often said to be one of the greatest monuments to love. And it is without doubt, one of the greatest achievements of mogul architecture.
42:12But while it signals the climax of the empire, in some ways, it was also the start of its decline and fall.
42:28You only have to travel a short distance from the Taj to find yourself in another world, with ruined mogul buildings abandoned in the countryside.
42:39These are the old palaces and gardens of mogul nobles.
42:42Stretching for miles up the river bank, they are not protected by the Indian government and are simply rotting away.
42:59This eerie, dilapidated building, which today seems only to be home to a swarm of bees, was once the home of Muldaz's eunuch.
43:12And there's this magnificent view of the Taj just across the water there.
43:17And there's actually some graffiti here on the wall which says,
43:22Hindu-Musulman ikhtar jindavag. Hail to Hindu-Muslim unity. Quite appropriate for an old mogul monument.
43:33The Taj Mahal is the height of mogul achievement, the crowning glory of a great and controversial empire.
43:41But the Taj also marked the beginning of a terrible end.
43:46Shah Jahan and Muldaz had many sons. However, unlike in Europe, the eldest son wasn't necessarily the heir.
43:58And if the strongest son could seize power, he too could rule legitimately as any of his brothers.
44:05Shah Jahan named his eldest son, Darashika, as his heir. There were high hopes for him.
44:17Like his great ancestor, Akbar, Darashika was a progressive, tolerant and intellectual man with interests in all the world's religions.
44:26Darashika, as you can see, is a pretty dressy kind of guy. He's got a little string of pearls across his face.
44:32Yes. He's dressed up in the finest mogul kit, all his jama, and he's on horseback.
44:38He's absolutely dripping in jewels. Yes.
44:41And the contrast between this man settled at court, getting on with his dad, living his family life,
44:47reveling in everything that the capital had to offer, is in stark contrast to Aurangzeb, the younger brother.
44:54Aurangzeb is hated by his father, and this sort of twists him.
44:58He becomes this very... A child who is rejected becomes crabbed in some way.
45:05And Aurangzeb is determined to destroy the existing rulers, his father and his obvious heir, Dara.
45:15And Aurangzeb has the advantage, of course, because he's been in the field. He's been a general.
45:20Yeah.
45:21He's a Puritan. He is ruthless. He's Machiavellian. The whole thing is very like in King Lear,
45:27where you have the two sons, Edgar and Edmund, and Edgar's the beloved son of Gloucester.
45:31Sure.
45:32And grows up weak and hopeless.
45:33Yeah.
45:34While Edmund is the illegitimate one who has never given any love, but is ruthless.
45:38But has to fight for his position. Yeah.
45:39And there's a great Shakespearean quality, I think, in the way that these two sons battle it out.
45:43Dara, for all that he represents, he represents everything that we find most attractive in the Mughals.
45:49Not only does he have exquisite taste, does he commission beautiful art, is he responsible for extraordinary architecture.
45:55He also has this wonderfully tolerant attitude, inherits from the tradition of Akbar.
46:00Akbar, yeah.
46:01And Aurangzeb is this tough guy who's had to make his own way, who's been ignored by the court, ignored by his father.
46:07He's frankly fed up.
46:09And he's frankly fed up.
46:10And the more that his father and his brother indulge in jewels and manuscript illumination, the more he rejects that whole world.
46:16And yet, when it comes to the final battle, when Aurangzeb advances from the Deccan with his battle-hardened troops,
46:21although they are a fraction of the size of the Imperial army, which Dara Shuko leads into battle,
46:26the spoilt, silly young prince doesn't know how to fight a battle.
46:30And Aurangzeb, with this small, cracked force, makes mincemeat of him.
46:34.
46:41Aurangzeb's war of succession was short and brutal.
46:45He took his father and brother prisoner, killing most of their generals and men.
46:50He then began planning his coronation to be held here, in Delhi.
46:55Dara Shuko was brought back to Delhi and paraded through the streets in rags and chains.
47:04He was sat mockingly on top of an old, broken-down elephant.
47:08Francois Bermier, who worked as a doctor in the court of Shah Jahan, witnessed the event.
47:14I could not divest myself of the idea that some dreadful execution was about to take place.
47:26The crowd assembled upon this disgraceful occasion was immense, and everywhere I observed the people weeping and lamenting the fate of Dara in the most touching language.
47:38For the Indian people have a very tender heart, men, women and children wailing as if some mighty calamity had happened to themselves.
47:47Arangzeb was shocked that the people had wept for Dara, and decided that his brother must be put to death.
47:59On the 30th of August 1659, he was attacked by four assassins, who held him down and hacked off his head.
48:08Dara's head was brought to Arangzeb, who had to wash the blood away in order to recognize his brother's features.
48:15Then he wept and exclaimed,
48:18Let this shocking sight no longer offend my eyes. Take away this head, and let it be buried in Humayun's tomb.
48:27So Dara Shukka was buried here, in an unmarked grave, amongst his ancestors, and with him was buried the liberal era of Mughal rule.
48:48At the end of his life, Shah Jahan was imprisoned here, at the Red Fort, by his own son Arangzeb.
49:04And you can imagine how he would have felt, looking out at the Darj, the very monument he built to his beloved Mumtaz,
49:12that was later described as a teardrop on the cheek of time.
49:32Arangzeb changed the face of Mughal rule in India.
49:36With fire and sword, he conquered even more territory for the Mughal Empire,
49:40which had nearly doubled in size by the 1700s.
49:46The generous treatment of non-Muslims, which had begun under Akbar, came to an end.
49:52It is said that Arangzeb forced Hindus to convert to Islam, and demolished some Hindu temples.
49:59To symbolize the importance and dominance of Islam, Arangzeb built the huge Badshahi Mosque in Lahore,
50:05positioned opposite the fort to emphasize the unity of Islam and power.
50:14Here in Delhi too, Islamic prayer was now a very public and political statement of faith.
50:20But even though Arangzeb now forbade the use of music and discouraged the arts it has caught,
50:27the Mughal influence continued to live on elsewhere in India.
50:30We've been given privileged access to this exquisite and rare 18th century manuscript from Bikaner,
50:42where all the script is in Sanskrit, it's been handwritten.
50:47And it's got this beautiful illustration, so it's a real treasure to be able to view this at such close quarters.
50:57Arangzeb, as a more traditional Muslim, did not patronize the arts in the way that his ancestors had done.
51:05And the court atelier dispersed, and artists moved away from the royal court to the regional Hindu and Deccani courts,
51:18where they began practicing, but bringing the skills they had learnt in the Mughal courts to the region,
51:25such as at Bikaner, which is where this manuscript is from.
51:27And I've just found a snakeskin inside, which is a traditional conservation technique for deterring termites from eating one's paintings.
51:37And what's wonderful about this manuscript is that you really see the coming together,
51:45the joining of the two great Indian traditions of Hindu and Mughal art,
51:51such as Shiva here, sitting on top of Mount Kailash.
51:54And the mountains are painted in exactly the tradition of Mughal painting.
52:05And this painting in particular, you have a very naturalistic landscape,
52:11which would sit very comfortably in a Mughal painting as much as it would in a Gainsborough,
52:16with this elegant marble pavilion on the left-hand side, painted in full perspective,
52:22and then two Shaiva yogis, sitting, one of them with a halo around his head,
52:29which again comes from European painting.
52:32And they're holding audience with one of the Princess of Bikaner, who has arrived,
52:37dressed very simply apart from the crown upon his head.
52:40It's a great sadness that artistic endeavours like these would not have survived at our Engzab's court under his new austerity regime.
52:51Music, painting and poetry held no interest for the emperor.
52:56Instead, he was a man whose fervent wish was to leave the legacy of a well-ordered Islamic State.
53:01Yet his heavy-handed rule led to resentment and ultimately rebellion.
53:09And unlike his forebears, it was a regime that had no room for consensus.
53:14After almost 50 years on the throne, he died and the Mughal Empire weakened,
53:20leaving the way clear for India's new conquerors, the British.
53:24During the British Empire, a far more short-lived one than the Mughals, the rulers of the Raj tried to emulate the grandeur of Mughal ambition.
53:37However, the British, unlike the Muslims, never became Indian.
53:42They capitalised on existing tensions between Hindus and Muslims, befriending some communities and fighting others.
53:49This imperial strategy worked for a while, but by dividing and ruling, by pursuing a strategy so different from Akbar's,
53:59the British essentially created division in India and applied so much pressure that eventually the country was ripped in two.
54:06The prologue to agitation for Indian independence caused great tensions between Hindus and Muslims, which resulted in communal riots across India.
54:25By the time of Indian independence in 1947, the liberation from British rule was short-lived as India was brutally split.
54:34And millions of lives were lost, brutalised, families were severed as Hindus rushed over the border into India,
54:46and many Indian Muslims moved north into what was to become the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
54:52And the tragedy today is that there hasn't been any public national acknowledgement on either side of the border of the great loss that happened at partition.
55:07Families were torn apart.
55:11Families were torn apart. In my own family, on the one hand, people had to give up their lands overnight and rush across the border into what's now West Bengal and Kolkata.
55:25And the people who were living in Kolkata had to give up their lands overnight for the millions of refugees who are coming over the border, which they did.
55:35It's one of the reasons why today Indians don't really know what's happening over the border in Pakistan and vice versa.
55:45And the real tragedy of that is that they have an incredible shared history and you can't really understand one country without looking at the other.
55:56So I've left India and come back to Lahore in Pakistan, where the Mughal Empire began, to talk to leading journalist Ahmed Rashid about the lasting divide left by the Mughal emperors.
56:13So I was interested in what the imprint or historical memory of Akbar and our exhibit is in Lahore.
56:24Well, it's very, very sharp. I mean, if you read the school textbooks, which were really rejigged by Ziaul Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan in the 80s, who was an Islamist.
56:42He was a great admirer of Aurangzeb and he saw himself as a kind of Aurangzeb type figure.
56:48Remember, under him, Pakistan helped the Mujahideen in Afghanistan fight the Soviets.
56:55And under him, we had this whole revival of the war in Kashmir and the use of extremists in Kashmir and a great belief in Islamic fundamentalism and going back to the precepts of law and all the rest of it.
57:08So, in fact, I mean, the real lesson of Akbar, which we desperately need now in Pakistan, the message of tolerance, of accepting other religions, accepting minorities, letting them pray as they wish,
57:22which is, of course, also the message of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan in all his most famous speeches.
57:29He said, you know, now you can go to your mosques and your temples and your churches and your synagogues and you are free to pray as you like, you know, all that is unfortunately forgotten.
57:40And the originator of that was really Akbar.
57:43For over 300 years, the Mughals united India and then divided it.
57:53They gave the country some of its greatest monuments, but also cut some of its deepest scars.
58:00They were often liberal and tolerant, but also laid the foundation for a much stricter interpretation of Islam.
58:06Even today, their legacy is extraordinarily controversial, as Mughal history has become the battleground for a new India, as it struggles once again with its religious and cultural identity.
58:17In the next episode, I will be traveling even further down into India to explore the temples of Tamil Nadu and the exuberant art of the Hindu heartland.
58:33And the final part of Treasures of the Indus is here on BBC4 at the same time next week.
58:47There's plenty more to come from the India season, though.
58:49Stay with us for a little taster next.
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