“Was Mughal emperor Aurangzeb a bigot who imposed jizyah on his non-Muslim subjects? Wasn’t he a great warrior whose empire extended from Kabul to Bengal, from Kashmir to the South? Yes, Aurangzeb did impose jizyah but that had little to do with his faith. He probably needed the money to finance his extensive military campaigns, some of which lasted 25 years. He was a pious man who stitched caps to earn his living and copied the Glorious Quran. He was no bigot; on the contrary Hindus were active participants in his administration as also his army. He gave annuals grants to temples for maintenance.
“And what about Babur? Didn’t he hate Hindustan and long for Bukhara even after conquering Delhi? Yes, he did long for Bukhara, but his battles here had nothing to do with religion. They were all political conflicts. He loved his fruits, he loved his wine. He loved his son more, for whose life he took an oath to give up wine.”
This is no history sermon, but nuggets I gather from the Salman Khurshid-Ather Farouqui scripted play “Sons of Babur”. Such a delectable experience! Such an enlightening exercise in this directorial venture of Sayeed Alam! These are my sentiments as I leave FICCI auditorium in New Delhi after watching the two-hour long play. Before that, it is an experience akin to watching a flower unfold gradually, one petal at a time.
The first petal unfolds with Tom Alter as the hapless, helpless Bahadur Shah Zafar, an emperor more comfortable with a poet’s pen than a warrior’s sword. Languishing in faraway Burma, he comes face to face with an eager student of history, Rudrangshu Sengupta, a youngster who has his own take on heroes and villains of the past. The director gets Alter to take the youngster on a guided tour of history. So we get interesting interpretations of the reigns of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. A new window opens to every emperor. If Babur is a man who loves his wine, Akbar is an emperor for whom Sulh-e-Kul, not quite a faith in itself, is something akin to a vision document of a modern day government. Jehangir loves his art, but his canvas is dominated by his wife, Noor Jahan. Shah Jahan has his Mumtaz and also his daughter, but it is his son, Aurangzeb who decides the time of the end of his reign. And Aurangzeb? He has his faults, but he has his accomplishments hard to find fault with. And what about Zafar, the man who found himself foisted to the title of King of Hindustan?
All these little windows keep opening, and quietly shutting in Alam’s masterpiece. All combining to give a consummate theatre experience. Consummate purely on the basis of the past? No, far from it. All the way, there are little digs at our own society, the decline of language and culture. For instance, the history student who calls Zafar as Jafar – and is admonished for it by the emperor – struggles to pronounce lengthy names of the kings. Everything has to be brief for the new generation, everything has to fall into a pattern. And knowledge of Urdu does not fit the compass, so we get Aurangjeb for Aurangzeb! These little asides evoke smiles for a moment or two. They come back later to stab us at the dereliction of our composite Ganga-Jumni tehzeeb.
So that makes for consummate theatre experience? No, the whole cast makes it a complete experience. As I said the first petal opens with Alter, he of trembling hands, long pauses, then a few words followed by lingering silence; then Alam himself as Babur and others in the cast bring up other petals. Alam is alternately, and effortlessly, robust and vulnerable. Characterisation of each successive king is impressive; even the female characters, otherwise oft reduced to sidekicks, get their moments under the sun. And doesn’t the flower bloom!
“Sons of Babur” does for medieval history what Raj Kumar Hirani’s much lauded film “Lage Raho Munnabhai” did for arousing interest in Mahatma Gandhi. Khurshid and Farouqui cover themselves with much grace and tick all the boxes for meaningful theatre. Want proof? It comes when at the end of the play, I find my ten-year-old daughter writing down the names of all Mughal emperors in succession with a little note in parenthesis which says, “good king, loved all, was not a bigot, knew Urdu well”.
Really, “Sons of Babur” should be seen by sons and daughters of our great land to know history lives beyond textbooks.
