A Mughal Emperor/ Prince converts

[chornedsnorkack]

No; he would be seen as stupid for converting for no reason. Before the modern era, if your parents followed Religion X, you usually followed Religion X.

There were a lot of converts to Islam.
Hemu almost overthrew Mughals, and he was a Hindu - a low-caste one at that.
But he had no ties to draw on, Hindu or Mohammedan. A Mughal prince who made the step of converting to Hinduism would not thereby gain enough Hindu following - they could as well follow a ruler who was born a Hindu.

 

[Indicus]

And yet, there was no uprising in response to the Din-i Ilahi Di which (whilst not a formal religion) syncretically borrowed from numerous religions.

Converting to Din-e-Ilahi would probably have dangered Akbar if he weren't so great. In any case, that faith only had nineteen adherents. It could probably have gotten to the hundreds of thousands, but it would always be even smaller than Sikhism and probably even Jainism, because Akbar would probably not convert enough people.

To answer the question, no. The Mughals weren't just any Indo-Islamic empire. They were the people who defined Indo-Islamic culture. Converting to Hinduism would disconnect them from their culture and heritage. If you want a Hindu "Mughal" Empire, you're better off with Hemu Vikramaditya, who seems to have had some of Akbar's knack for syncretism. He'd also probably retain Persianate culture to a point, if a more Hindu-influenced form of it, as that culture had already merged with that point with Indian culture.

 

[VVD0D95]

Converting to Din-e-Ilahi would probably have dangered Akbar if he weren't so great. In any case, that faith only had nineteen adherents. It could probably have gotten to the hundreds of thousands, but it would always be even smaller than Sikhism and probably even Jainism, because Akbar would probably not convert enough people.

To answer the question, no. The Mughals weren't just any Indo-Islamic empire. They were the people who defined Indo-Islamic culture. Converting to Hinduism would disconnect them from their culture and heritage. If you want a Hindu "Mughal" Empire, you're better off with Hemu Vikramaditya, who seems to have had some of Akbar's knack for syncretism. He'd also probably retain Persianate culture to a point, if a more Hindu-influenced form of it, as that culture had already merged with that point with Indian culture.

Alright interesting.

 

[XanXar]

This is a very hard scenario to go through with and to achieve it you may have to change the very meaning of Mughal. What I mean by that is it is almost impossible to further the amount of localisation the Mughals underwent without not making them the Mughals but just some other Islamic dynasty ruling Hindustan.

Without going into too much detail, by the time the Mughals were entrenched in India so was Islam, nearly all of Sindh Kashmir and at least half of Bengal being Muslim with large pockets and enclaves throughout the north. Coupled with the fact that until Akbar's treaty with the Rajputs there was NO place for Hindus (hell, even Indian Muslims!) in the Mughal feudatory system I doubt this can be achieved. Since the only people associating with the Emperor would be his Turkmen kinsmen and loyalists, Afghan officers, Persian artists and courtiers and Arabian traders many Mughals (excluding Akbar) would not even talk to Hindu sages, much less get them to convert!

Next one must view the mindsets of the House of Gurkani itself. The thing about the Mughals was that they considered themselves above all other families and Lordlings in the entire sub-continent and their domain. Why? Because they believed they were born from different stock, Chengeizī Khūn, as one would put it in Urdu. In English that means 'Genghis' Blood'. That also inadvertently made them paternal descendants of Timur, a man who had left so deep a psychological impact upon north India and the Middle-East up till the Levant that simply uttering his name was said to silence the entire court according to the Baburnama. In their minds they were belonging to a 'race' unlike any other and given that Mughal is a bastardisation of the word Mongol, the few thousand Chagatai Mongols that came with Babur to India found themselves more akin to the eyes of commoners than simple rulers. They were expected to be better at everything than the masses of their Indian subjects, Afghan soldiers, Persian tutors and etc. The only apt comparison I can find is the Targaryens from ASOIAF (if one can replace Dragonlords with Horselords).

The reason something like the Din-I Ilahi can even exist is because the Mughals considered themselves far above all they ruled. Even the Safavids in Iran, also of Turcoman descent, tried to bring some sort of religious syncreticism between Sunni Islam, Shia Islam and Zoroastrianism under Mohammed Khobanda but it fell apart within a few years. The only reason Akbar could suggest something so audacious to the Ulema was because of the immense amounts of power the House of Gurkani held even in their early days. And it was also pretentious of Akbar to do so, after all he was supposed to be the defender of the Islamic faith and been Ghazi since the age of 12 when he had to knife a dying and twitching Hemu. However many Mughals considered themselves above such things and did as they pleased.

And there have been Mughal princes in the harem who have had both a Muslim and a Hindu naming. Jahangir was known as to his Rajput grandfather and mother Prithopal, a Rajastani version of his Persian name. Jahangir was quite open about his Indian heritage and merged it with his Mughal one, furthering them in the eyes of the nobility and peasantry.

Some (probably most) of is may seem disjointed since it is quite late here and I am writing this a bit groggy but I hope my argument at least ,Ames a little bit of sense.

This is such a good summing up of the Mughal rule in India, I couldn't have put it better myself. Although I must ask, if there were very few Hindu sages or Pandits in the Mughal court, then how did things such as the commissioning of a Persian translation of the Mahabharata and Ramayan come from? Did the Nawabs and Nazims of the late Mughal period also share this sort of cultural superiority with their Mughal predecessors, even though most were not of Mongol stock?

(the Targaryen comparison was also very good might I say).

 

[Indicus]

Next one must view the mindsets of the House of Gurkani itself. The thing about the Mughals was that they considered themselves above all other families and Lordlings in the entire sub-continent and their domain. Why? Because they believed they were born from different stock, Chengeizī Khūn, as one would put it in Urdu. In English that means 'Genghis' Blood'. That also inadvertently made them paternal descendants of Timur, a man who had left so deep a psychological impact upon north India and the Middle-East up till the Levant that simply uttering his name was said to silence the entire court according to the Baburnama. In their minds they were belonging to a 'race' unlike any other and given that Mughal is a bastardisation of the word Mongol, the few thousand Chagatai Mongols that came with Babur to India found themselves more akin to the eyes of commoners than simple rulers. They were expected to be better at everything than the masses of their Indian subjects, Afghan soldiers, Persian tutors and etc.

I think you may be overstating the Mongol element in the Mughal Empire. I believe they did see themselves as Timurids, and of course Babur was obsessed about Timur's capital of Samarkand. The people who Babur brought didn't see themselves as Chagatai Mongols. They saw themselves as people fleeing from the fall of one of the last states to be descended from Timur.

And Mughal - didn't that term fall into use after the end of the Empire?

 

[Sol717]

Which is why the religious demographics of countries never ever changed until the year 1901.

My post was an extreme simplification of things. However, rulers would rarely convert without a good reason, especially if they followed an Abrahamic faith (Though it was more usual for rulers to convert from one Abrahamic faith to another)

Edit: The point I intended to convey was that a ruler wouldn't convert just because he liked Hindu beliefs. Religion was highly linked to culture and social status before modern times, as you probably already know.

 

[Shahrasayr]

This is such a good summing up of the Mughal rule in India, I couldn't have put it better myself. Although I must ask, if there were very few Hindu sages or Pandits in the Mughal court, then how did things such as the commissioning of a Persian translation of the Mahabharata and Ramayan come from? Did the Nawabs and Nazims of the late Mughal period also share this sort of cultural superiority with their Mughal predecessors, even though most were not of Mongol stock?

(the Targaryen comparison was also very good might I say).

I think I phrased it wrongly. Rather than there not being that many Hindu sages in the Mughal court what I meant was that there was almost no religious interaction in the court itself. Outside in their personal times many Mughal princes sought counsels with Sufis and Sadhus and what not but to give one a seat in court would completely nullify their relation with the ulema (not that it meant much, the ulema in the Mughal Empire was weak and corrupt till Aurangzeb. And once he gave them power the power of the Mughal emperors began to wane and the decline began).

As for the other Nawab's and Nizams of the Mughals, I'd say maybe. It definitely was the case for the Nizams of Hyderabad who saw them selves as Turks and used to marry with the Ottomans occasionally. Otherwise there was a smiling mentality but not too much of it. The Nawab's of Awadh and Bengal barely used to do any administration on their own, they had Tilaqdars to do it for them. When reporting to the Emperor in Delhi they would send emissaries to navigate politics for them further alleviating their responsibility. This gave them a lot of free time making them think that in some cases they were just as good as the Mughal Emperor themselves, who's till had to deal with the factions of court whereas the Nawabs were free of any such obligation.

I think you may be overstating the Mongol element in the Mughal Empire. I believe they did see themselves as Timurids, and of course Babur was obsessed about Timur's capital of Samarkand. The people who Babur brought didn't see themselves as Chagatai Mongols. They saw themselves as people fleeing from the fall of one of the last states to be descended from Timur.

And Mughal - didn't that term fall into use after the end of the Empire?

Maybe a little bit but not by too much. Perhaps the people Babur had accompanying him didn't have any such ideas (after all, they were refugees) but the people Jahangir and Shah Jahan ruled definitely did. It boils down to who to claim descent from, the current House of Windsor claims descent from William the Conqueror but if they wanted could also claim it from Charlemagne. It all boils down to what people want to do at the moment.

As for the word Mughal- its first documented in the Shahjahanama, where Inayat Khan begins the works with the word Mughal to reference the Badshahs. Many suspect this may be thanks to Nur Jahan, who really pushed for her step son Khurram to highlight his descent and ancestry so he could dazzle the nobles and take precedence over his older brother Khosrau. She used to call him Mughalai Bagh or the Mongol Tiger to boost his ego as a child after his mother died and that's how the name really came to stick.

 

[Artillery Gnome]

It's a stretch, but if the Mughal Empire is collapsing into revolts and civil war, a Mughal Prince in a predominately Hindu area might consider converting to Hinduism or producing some sort of new syncretic religion in order to appease the local populace. He wouldn't be able to win the civil war and take control of the Mughal Empire, but he and his descendants could maintain their autonomy for a while.