Original subtitles

[ Slow music plays ]

♪♪

-This is the Indus River in Pakistan,

and we are on a journey of thousands of miles,

deep into the Indian Subcontinent

to which the river gave its name.

A journey that will help us discover

some of its most beautiful treasures

and reveal secrets from its distant past.

[ South Asian music plays ]

In this film, we look at what happened

when the Muslim invaders who had occupied modern-day Pakistan

moved further south, and produced

an extraordinary flowering of art and architecture

and some of the world's greatest treasures.

♪♪

My name is Sona Datta,

and as an art historian and museum curator,

I've looked after treasures like these for most of my life.

In this series, I'm exploring their stories

and the people who created them.

♪♪

For hundreds of years,

India was ruled by a foreign empire.

The conquerors came in from the north

and gradually spread their influence

to every corner of this vast land,

from the peaks of the Himalayas to the plains of the Punjab

and the jungles at the heart of India.

They were the Mughals.

♪♪

The Mughals were Islamic warrior kings

from Central Asia,

who were also poets, scholars, and traders.

In terms of religion and philosophy,

they were more progressive and liberal

than most Europeans of the time.

They made incredibly beautiful art.

They made great advances in science and technology.

They brought war, but also great prosperity.

In modern India, the Mughals remain controversial.

They changed India, but for better or worse?

♪♪

-Where do you come from?

-Well, my parents are from Kolkata,

but I was born in England. -Okay.

-So India is one of my homes.

-Very nice. -Yeah.

My ancestral home.

Being in India always feels like coming home.

-Very nice. -Yeah.

[ Vehicle horns honking ]

-To tell the story of the Mughals will take me

not just to India, where they created an empire,

but also to Pakistan, where that empire began.

♪♪

The Mughals originally came

from the mountains of Central Asia,

what is now Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

Then, at the beginning of the 16th century,

they moved south towards the riches

that lay beyond the River Indus.

♪♪

In 1526, just as King Henry VIII

began to woo Anne Boleyn in England,

the Mughal king Babur arrived at the outskirts

of the great city of Lahore.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

[ Muezzin chanting ]

A king since he was 12 years old,

Babur was descended from Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

By age 22, he had taken Kabul.

And he was 43 by the time he got to Lahore,

and he was deeply unimpressed by it.

♪♪

In his diary, Babur wrote,

"Hindustan is a country of few charms.

Its people are ugly, rude, and have no artistic talent.

It seems that the only thing he liked about India

was that it was a large country

which had masses of gold and silver.

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

Homesick for the ordered beauty they knew in Central Asia,

Babur and the Mughals transformed Lahore

into a garden city.

These Mughal gardens were

nothing like India had seen before.

They were grand in scale,

and their emphasis on symmetry and balance was completely new.

Flowing water was as important as greenery.

It helped to cool the gardens on hot days,

and showed off the wealth and ingenuity of the new rulers.

In Islam, like Judaism and Christianity,

Paradise is often represented as a garden.

The creation of beauty and order in these gardens

was about more than just making pleasant spaces.

It was symbolic of the arrival of the Mughals.

By the end of their rule, gardens had been constructed

in all major cities and towns throughout India.

These warriors turned gardens into a symbol of their power.

♪♪

But 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.

And they did bring one other pleasure with them --

alcohol.

♪♪

The Mughals created exquisite drinking vessels,

but they had a very complex relationship with alcohol.

They consumed it publicly,

and yet it always remained an illicit pleasure.

For Babur, on the one hand, he was descended

from the very public drinking culture of Genghis Khan,

and on the other, he wanted to be a good Muslim.

♪♪

Babur knew his drinking was controversial

amongst his orthodox Muslim army,

and if he was to continue his invasion further into India,

he would need to inspire his tired troops,

particularly if he was to capture the fort here in Agra,

the second capital of Hindustan,

whose sultan was fabulously wealthy.

A year after conquering Lahore,

Babur arrived in Agra, 600 kilometres to the south.

He took a vow in front of his men

never to drink wine again.

And he told them that their war with the Hindu kings of India

was a holy struggle.

♪♪

"If we fall in the field, we die the death of martyrs.

If we survive, we rise victorious,

the avengers of Allah's sacred cause."

He then destroyed his jewel-encrusted drinking goblets

and gave them to the poor.

Babur's men were deeply moved, and the following day

won a stunning victory.

♪♪

We know an unusual amount about Babur

because he detailed both his struggles with alcohol

and his conquests in a remarkably frank autobiography.

In it, he described how once he had crossed the Indus,

he found himself in another world,

of fakirs, magicians, and exotic animals...

[ Laughter and applause ]

♪♪

...and how India was ruled

by a whole set of Hindu Rajput princes,

consumed by petty infighting.

♪♪

Babur's army swept these princes aside to lay the foundations

of the Mughal Empire in Northern India.

But he didn't only bring war.

The Mughals brought elements of culture

and architecture from Central Asia,

like this magnificent monument...

♪♪

...the earliest example of Indo-Persianate architecture

in Mughal India.

It takes the shapes and forms of Central Asia and Persia

and marries them with the red sandstone of India.

There are these small flourishes on top of the chatris,

a Sanskrit word meaning "umbrella" or "pavilion."

This glistening tile work is

reminiscent of the architecture of Central Asia.

They brought to bear all these different influences.

This is a new kind of architecture in India.

♪♪

Babur would only briefly enjoy

the new kingdom he had conquered.

Four years after arriving in India, he died, aged just 47,

still homesick for the gardens of Central Asia.

And some say the greatest of all the Mughal emperors

who followed him was his grandson, Akbar.

♪♪

Akbar came to the throne early, at just 13,

and inherited his grandfather's driving ambition and focus.

♪♪

During Akbar's rule, India became one of the most powerful

and richest empires on the face of the earth.

He expanded it beyond even the vast lands

of his grandfather Babur.

♪♪

One reason for the Mughals' startling military success

was that they brought their skills

as fast-wheeling horsemen down into the plains of India.

♪♪

These descendants of Genghis Khan

were largely horsemen, so they could run rings around

the slow-moving Hindu foot soldiers.

♪♪

Given their nomadic roots,

Mughal emperors had lived most of their lives under canvas

and were constantly on the move.

But as his military campaign went from strength to strength,

Akbar could indulge in the luxury of a new,

more permanent city to rule from.

♪♪

Here, at Fatehpur Sikri,

Akbar built a fabulous pop-up capital

out of red sandstone in the middle of nowhere.

It remains one of the most tantalising

and bizarre architectural sites in the whole of India.

♪♪

In the 1580s, English traders arrived,

lured by tales of its grandeur.

They had never seen a city so large or magnificent

as Fatehpur Sikri in their lives.

There was nothing in the world like it.

Here, courtiers wore fabrics dripping in gold and jewels.

The palaces were cooled by the punkahwallahs,

waving peacock-feather fans.

Akbar created his own perfumes and had the air scented

with precious ambergris and aloeswood.

Servants burned incense in gold and silver censers.

♪♪

One tradition that the Mughals had brought with them

from the steppes of Central Asia was a passion for the hunt.

As a young man, Akbar kept a thousand cheetahs,

trained for the chase like dogs were in Europe.

North India was rich in wildlife,

and the Mughal emperors built hunting pavilions

like this across their domains.

But it was during one of these hunts that something happened

that changed the entire course of Akbar's reign.

♪♪

As was normal, over a 10-day period,

animals were driven from a circumference of 80 kilometres

surrounding this lodge.

But just at the moment when the hunt was ready,

and all the animals were gathered,

he stopped.

His biographers described it as an epileptic seizure

or some kind of delusion.

Whatever it was,

it was the moment of complete change for Akbar.

One witness described how, "Suddenly all at once,

a strange state and strong frenzy

came upon the Emperor, and an extraordinary change

was manifested in his manner,

and everyone attributed it to some cause or other.

But God alone knows such secrets."

♪♪

He canceled the hunt,

he set the animals free, and he declared

that none of them would be hurt henceforth.

This strange experience seemed to have been

the turning point in Akbar's reign,

because after this, nothing was the same again.

♪♪

After the hunting incident,

Akbar became a much more spiritual man.

He stopped eating meat, shaved his head,

and started to ask questions of himself and of others.

♪♪

For the rest of his 50-year-long reign,

Akbar now dedicated himself

to the exploration of other religions.

♪♪

-[ Speaking native language ] -[ Speaking native language ]

-Okay, I'll take one from each.

-One, 25.

-When the Mughals had first arrived in India,

they found a country of many other religions.

Mm, they smell beautiful.

Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism all flourished.

Akbar decided he would not try to suppress any of these,

but rather embrace and encourage them.

It is this open-mindedness that above all

distinguishes Akbar 'from his successors.

[ Crowd singing and clapping rhythmically ]

♪♪

The traditional music still played

at Sufi shrines like this is called qawwali.

and fuses Indian musical styles with Arabic poetry,

which is why the Mughals loved it.

♪♪

As they sought to integrate themselves

into their new Indian domains,

Akbar looked for other ways to combine Islam

with elements of Hinduism,

in song, in imagery, and in architecture.

♪♪

Sages, gurus, and spiritual leaders of all sorts

were now welcomed at Fatehpur Sikri,

although they did not always agree.

Giles Tillotson has written

about how the peculiar architecture of Akbar's palace

both facilitated and reflected

his new tolerance to religions other than Islam.

♪♪

-According to Akbar's court historian, Abul Fazl,

these discussions had, as it were, their own institution.

He describes the discussions taking place

in a palace that contained four interlocking rooms,

with concurrent discussions going on in each.

And that the emperor used to move from one room to the other.

- To the other. -...to participate

in the discussions as they were...

-Taking place. -...continuing,

as they were taking place. Exactly, yeah.

-So, how exactly did the discussions go?

I mean, what sort of format did they take?

-Well, I think, actually, there's a hint in Abul Fazl

that they didn't always go terribly well.

-Uh-huh. -I think Akbar's hope was

that by getting the most learned people

from different religions together,

that he would solve some of the central, eternal questions...

-Of the universe! -...of the universe, as it were.

But to his frustration, though perhaps not to our surprise,

the priests often took entrenched positions

and refused to -- really, to exchange ideas at all.

-So, how unusual was it

for Akbar to have such an expansive vision

of all these different religions?

-I think this was probably the first time

that a Muslim court had been so open

to the investigation of religious matters

from the perspective of other religions around them,

rather than simply pursuing different schools

within Islam itself.

♪♪

-Akbar's new openness to different religions

can be seen also in his playful approach to architecture.

♪♪

When you encounter some of these buildings,

as you approach them, there is a sort of

Christmas cake effect, where different elements

are sort of plonked on top of the other.

-Yes, it's clearly a design school, if you like...

-Slightly unresolved. -Yes, it's a design school

that's used to working with certain traditions.

But very different traditions have come in to the same space

and the designers have thought, "Well, how can we play

with the new material that's available to us,

in the hope of creating something different?"

The experimental nature of the design is very clear here,

for example, where you have, above,

a line of ornamental niches, and then, below them,

this line of dado panels with the decorated border.

But these are features that you would normally

expect to find on the interior of a room.

-Right. -Here, they're expressed

on the exterior of the building.

It would be rather like, in modern terms,

putting wallpaper on the outside of your house.

Clearly, this is meant to be experimental.

It's playful.

It's not to be taken entirely seriously.

They're trying new things out, and,

as with the mixture of motifs from different sources,

it's like, again, to put it in modern-day terms,

like producing a design in Photoshop,

to see whether it works or not.

♪♪

-But after only 14 years, this fantasy city of Akbar's

was abandoned as impractical --

some say because there was a shortage of water.

The ever-restless Akbar moved on,

leaving Fatehpur Sikri like an abandoned Las Vegas

in the desert.

♪♪

Akbar also married Hindu and Islamic styles in art,

to great effect.

He initiated an immense expansion of the imperial studio

and recruited artists

from all the conquered kingdoms of northern India.

♪♪

His descendants still use the same painstaking technique,

using tiny squirrel-hair brushes,

which can take many months just to finish a single picture.

♪♪

Nitin Bhayana is a leading art critic and collector

who is an expert on how native Rajput painting

changed with the arrival of the Mughals.

-A sequence of Mughal emperors

brought artists from the courts of Persia,

and then later developed a school of painting in India

by enrolling various artists,

and made karkhanas, or factories,

where they would produce a huge number of paintings.

And 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.

You still see Rajput elements. -Yeah.

-And then you see them really melting away

into a painting like that from the state of Bikaner,

which was closely aligned to the Mughals.

-Yeah. -And this could be

a Mughal painting. -Couldn't it!

-[ Chuckles ] And... -Look at the hills,

look at the distance, look at the perspective

on the buildings, and look at the faces.

-Absolutely. -If you look at the difference

in the faces, you could almost --

you know, you can tell who these people are.

-Absolutely. So, as we went along,

I think it became more and more --

more and more Mughal. -Yeah.

Akbar commissioned his artists to do

increasingly ambitious scenes of the spectacle of court life,

as here, where the Emperor is seen riding an elephant,

one of his great passions.

And here, Akbar is 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.

♪♪

Akbar commissioned

large-scale illustrations of court life and history,

often with scenes of violence or boisterous energy,

like hunts, battles, or sieges.

Under his successors,

the painting style became more intimate.

♪♪

You 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."

♪♪

♪♪

When Shah Jahan came to the throne,

Mughal architecture changed dramatically.

All his predecessors had used red sandstone

for their buildings,

like here in the Red Fort at Agra.

But out the back of the building,

there's a spectacular difference

when Shah Jahan decided to build there.

♪♪

He started to cover everything in dazzling white marble.

♪♪

This is a very different structure,

highly decorated, all in marble.

♪♪

And the gardens were just as important.

The Mughals were really interested in gardens.

They were great botanists, and they famously collected

specimens of different flowers and had them painted.

But what you see here,

in Shah Jahan's magnificent private quarters,

is the transposing of that interest in flora into stone.

♪♪

They used a technique called pietra dura,

and current in Renaissance Italy,

but they made it a very Indian experience,

using semi-precious stones like lapis,

carnelian, jasper, jade, set into the marble

to create these incredible designs.

This wasn't about botanical representation.

It was about taking that interest

and creating something completely new and unique.

This technique was, of course, derived from Italy,

but we see it here transposed to a whole new context

under the patronage of Shah Jahan.

♪♪

[ Horns honking ]

In the nearby city of Agra,

there are still traces of the craftsmanship

that was brought to peak under Shah Jahan's rule,

although you have to look hard to find it

in the busy, sprawling streets.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Hammering and grinding ]

Just off the maze of back streets

is a stonecutters' workshop.

It's a family business that seems to have been going

for more generations than anyone is able to remember,

and they specialise in decorative marble inlay.

[ Hammering ]

Designs are traced out,

and like some kind of beautiful jigsaw,

individual elements are crafted to fit the master pattern.

It's very reminiscent of the emperor's quarters

up on the nearby hillside.

When the water is applied and the dust is cleaned away,

these incredible range of colours emerge,

and they stand out against the white marble.

They may not be big on health and safety,

but it's shown me how incredibly painstaking this work is

as they chisel away at these intricate forms

and then inlay them with precious stones,

and how many thousands of man-hours

it must have taken to create these fantasy buildings

of white marble for Shah Jahan.

♪♪

I 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 --

a fairytale wedding cake of a palace.

♪♪

Like all Mughal rulers,

Shah Jahan was married to several women at once.

Yet the love of his life was unquestionably Mumtaz Mahal,

here portrayed with the spring flowers

and cherry blossom of Kashmir that Shah Jahan loved so well.

♪♪

Sadly, in 1631, she died

giving birth to their 14th child.

Shah Jahan was so devastated,

he kept the court in mourning for two years.

He also vowed to build her

the greatest monument to love the world has ever seen.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Anywhere else, this incredible gate

would be a destination in its own right.

♪♪

But here, it serves as a magnificent reveal

to the Taj Mahal.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♪♪

The Taj Mahal was built by the finest artisans

from across the Islamic world --

stonecutters from Baluchistan,

architects from the Ottoman Empire,

and calligraphers from Persia.

Native Indian craftsmen also

brought their own cultural influences to bear

on the design and detail,

and in so doing, honoured the Hindus of India

as well as the Muslims.

A British poet, Sir Edwin Arnold,

described it as, "not a piece of architecture,

as other buildings are,

but the proud passion of an emperor's love

wrought in living stone."

And it is still largely thought of as a monument to love.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

But in thinking of the Taj Mahal as mainly a monument to love,

have we completely misunderstood

what the Mughals were trying to do?

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-I think it's impossible for us today

to approach the monument from any perspective

other than that of the legend or a famous love story

between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz. -And Mumtaz.

-We'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 Mughals saw it --

not as a symbol of love but as a symbol of Paradise.

-Re-created on earth. -Sort of thing, yes.

I mean, the tomb itself is actually the mansion

of the departed soul in Paradise.

-Right. -And that Paradise imagery

extends not just to the building

but to the whole of the garden, layout of the garden.

-So, have the gardens changed since Mughal times?

-Oh, 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 was mostly occupied

by flowering trees and by fruit trees.

-Ah. -And, indeed, 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.

-So really quite pragmatic and sensible.

-Yes, you had, as it were, sort of a form

of market gardening, if you will.

♪♪

-Tourists often make the mistake of thinking

that the gardens around the Taj are just a municipal park

to frame the jewel at their centre.

But Shah Jahan, like all his ancestors,

thought of the Mughals as children

of the high mountain valleys,

of his beloved Kashmir, which he visited every year,

and these gardens were an attempt

to re-create such a paradise on earth

for the tomb of his wife.

♪♪

♪♪

The 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 Mughal architecture.

♪♪

But while it signals the climax of the Mughal Empire,

in some ways it was also the start of its decline and fall.

♪♪

You only have to travel a short distance from the Taj

to find yourself in another world,

with ruined Mughal buildings abandoned in the countryside.

These are the old palaces and gardens of Mughal nobles.

♪♪

Stretching for miles up the river bank,

they are not protected by the Indian government

and are simply rotting away.

♪♪

The Taj Mahal is the height of Mughal achievement,

the crowning glory of a great, if controversial, empire.

But the Taj also marked the beginning of a terrible end.

Shah Jahan and Mumtaz had many sons.

However, unlike in Europe,

the eldest son wasn't necessarily the heir.

And if the strongest son could seize power,

he, too, could rule legitimately as any of his brothers.

♪♪

Shah Jahan named his eldest son, Dara Shikoh, as his heir.

There were high hopes for him.

Like his great ancestor Akbar, Dara Shikoh was

a progressive, tolerant, and intellectual man,

with interests in all the world's religions.

-Dara Shikoh, as you can see, is a pretty dressy kind of guy.

He's got a little string of pearls across his face.

-Yes.

-He's dressed up in the finest Mughal kit.

All his jama, and he's on horseback.

He's absolutely dripping in jewels.

-Yeah.

-And the contrast between this man settled at court,

getting on with his dad, living his family life,

revelling in everything that the capital had to offer...

-Mm. -...is in stark contrast

to Aurangzeb, the younger brother.

-Yeah. -Aurangzeb is hated

by his father, and this sort of twists him.

He becomes this very -- a child who is rejected.

-Right. -Becomes crabbed in some way.

-Mm. -And Aurangzeb is determined

to destroy the existing rulers. -Mm.

-His father and his obvious heir, Dara.

-Mm. -And Aurangzeb has

the advantage, of course, because he's been in the field.

He's been a general. -Yeah.

-He's a puritan, he is ruthless, he's Machiavellian.

The whole thing is very like in King Lear,

where you have the two sons, Edgar and Edmund.

And Edgar's the beloved son of Gloucester.

-Sure. -And grows up weak and hopeless.

-Yeah. -While Edmund is

the illegitimate one, who is never given any love,

but is ruthless. -But has to fight

for his position, yeah. -Yeah.

-And there's a great Shakespearean quality, I think,

in the way that these two sons battle it out.

-Mm. -Dara, for all

that he represents, he represents everything

that we find most attractive in the Mughals.

Not only does he have exquisite taste,

does he commission beautiful art,

is he responsible for extraordinary architecture,

he also has this wonderfully tolerant attitude

he inherits from the tradition of Akbar.

-Akbar, yeah. -And Aurangzeb is this tough guy

who's had to make his own way, who's been ignored by the court,

ignored by his father, and... -Who's frankly fed up.

-And he's frankly fed up.

And the more that his father and his brother

indulge in jewels and manuscript illumination,

the more he rejects that whole world.

And yet, when it comes to the final battle,

when Aurangzeb advances from the Deccan

with his battle-hardened troops,

although they are a fraction of the size of the Imperial Army,

which Dara Shikoh leads into battle,

the spoilt, silly young prince

doesn't know how to fight a battle,

and Aurangzeb, with his small crack force,

makes mincemeat of them.

♪♪

-Aurangzeb's war of succession was short and brutal.

He took his father and brother prisoner,

killing most of their generals and men.

♪♪

Dara Shikoh was brought back to Delhi

and paraded through the streets in rags and chains,

sat mockingly on the back

of an old, broken-down and dirty elephant.

♪♪

Aurangzeb was shocked that the people had wept for Dara,

and decided then that his brother must be put to death.

♪♪

On the night of the 30th of August 1659,

Dara was attacked by four assassins.

They held him down and hacked off his head.

Dara Shikoh was buried here, in an unmarked grave

among the tombs of his ancestors,

With him, was buried the liberal cast of Mughal rule.

♪♪

Shah Jahan lived out his few remaining years

in the Red Fort at Agra,

from where he could always see the Taj Mahal,

a monument to great love,

but one later described as a teardrop on the cheek of time.

♪♪

Aurangzeb changed the face of Mughal rule in India.

With fire and sword,

he conquered even more territory for the Mughal Empire,

which had nearly doubled in size by the 1700s.

♪♪

The generous treatment of non-Muslims,

which had begun under Akbar, came to an end.

It is said that Aurangzeb forced Hindus to convert to Islam,

and demolished some Hindu temples.

To symbolise the importance and dominance of Islam,

Aurangzeb built the huge Badshahi mosque in Lahore,

positioned opposite the fort

to emphasise the unity of Islam and power.

[ Horns honking ]

[ Muezzin chanting ]

Here in Delhi, too,

Islamic prayer was now a very public

and political statement of faith.

But even though Aurangzeb now forbade the use of music

and discouraged the arts at his court,

the Mughal influence continued to live on elsewhere in India.

We've been given privileged access

to this exquisite and rare 18th-century manuscript

from Bikaner...

where all the script is in Sanskrit.

It's been handwritten,

and it's got this beautiful illustration.

So it's a real treasure to be able

to view this at such close quarters.

Aurangzeb, as a more traditional Muslim,

did not patronise the arts

in the way that his ancestors had done,

and the court atelier dispersed.

And artists moved away from the royal court

to the regional Hindu and Deccani courts,

where they began practising,

but bringing the skills they had learnt in the Mughal courts

to the regions, such as at Bikaner,

which is where this manuscript is from.

And I've just found a snakeskin inside,

which is a traditional conservation technique

for deterring termites from eating one's paintings.

And what's wonderful about this manuscript

is that you really see

the coming together, the joining of the great --

two great Indian traditions of Hindu and Mughal art.

Such as Shiva here, sitting on top of Mount Kailash.

And the mountains are painted

in exactly the tradition of Mughal painting.

And this painting in particular,

you have a very naturalistic landscape

which would sit very comfortably in a Mughal painting

as much as it would in a Gainsborough,

with this elegant marble pavilion on the left-hand side.

Painted in full perspective,

and then two Shaiva yogis sitting,

one of them with a halo around his head,

which again comes from European painting.

And they're holding audience

with one of the princes of Bikaner,

who has arrived, dressed very simply,

apart from the crown upon his head.

It's a great sadness that artistic endeavours like these

would not have survived at Aurangzeb's court

under his new austerity regime.

Music, painting and poetry held no interest for the Emperor.

Instead, he was a man whose fervent wish

was to leave the legacy of a well-ordered Islamic state.

♪♪

Yet his heavy-handed rule led to resentment

and ultimately rebellion.

And unlike his forbears, it was a regime

that had no room for consensus.

After almost 50 years on the throne, he died,

and the Mughal Empire weakened,

leaving the way clear for India's new conquerors,

the British.

♪♪

During 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.

♪♪

However, the British, unlike the Muslims,

never became Indian.

They capitalised on existing tensions

between Hindus and Muslims,

befriending some communities and fighting others.

This imperial strategy worked for a while,

but by dividing and ruling India,

by pursuing a strategy so different from Akbar's,

the British eventually created division in India

and applied so much pressure

that the country was ripped in two.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

By the time of Indian independence, in 1947,

India was brutally split.

Millions of lives were lost, family ties were severed

as Hindus rushed over the border into India,

and many Indian Muslims moved north

in what was to become the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Families were torn apart.

♪♪

The result is that people were split, dispersed.

So today, Indians don't really know

what's happening over the border in Pakistan.

Nor do Pakistanis really know what is happening in India.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♪♪

So 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.

So, I was interested in what the imprint,

or historical memory

of Akbar and Aurangzeb is in Lahore.

-Well, it's very, very sharp.

I mean, if you read the school textbooks,

which were really rejigged... -Yes.

-...by Zia-ul-Haq... -Yeah, yeah.

...the military ruler of Pakistan in the '80s,

who was an Islamist,

he was a great admirer of Aurangzeb,

and he saw himself as a kind of Aurangzeb-type figure.

Remember, under him, Pakistan helped the Mujahideen

in Afghanistan fight the Soviets.

And 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.

So, in fact, I mean, the real lesson of Akbar,

which we desperately need now, in Pakistan --

the message of tolerance, of, you know,

accepting other religions, accepting minorities,

you know, letting them pray as they wish --

which was, of course, also the message

of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

-Of course. -In all his most famous

speeches, he 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.

And the originator of that was really Akbar.

♪♪

-For over 300 years, the Mughals united India,

and then divided it.

They gave the country some of its greatest monuments,

but also cut some of its deepest scars.

They were often liberal and tolerant,

but also laid the foundation

for a much stricter interpretation of Islam.

Even 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.

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