We rarely watch Indian movies these days unless it comes *highly* recommended by a million people! This wasn't the case for Jodha Akbar. But we are both huge history buffs. So we recently watched it anyway. It was certainly not a bad movie. Though I wouldn't say it was phenomenal or anything. The pacing was good and songs few in number (which we forwarded of course). Hrithik Roshan did a decent job of playing Akbar. Aishwarya as usual was her pretty self without much to offer on the acting front. Seriously, for the Rajput she played, the woman wouldn't sport a sword convincingly. Overall not a bad movie although mostly fictitious.
So naturally, the trivia girl within me got curious and I went searching for articles on Akbar the Great. I remembered very little about him from my history books. All I could recall was that he was the most tolerant of the Mughal kings and quite successful in uniting large parts of the Indian subcontinent into a single kingdom under his rule. The first article I came across was, of course, a wikipedia entry. As A & I read along, it became increasingly evident that it was either written or edited heavily by a Hindu fanatic. It portrayed Akbar in a rather anti-Hindu light. After browsing through several other articles, it was quite clear. Sad.
Akbar was known as an intellectual. He had quite a collection of artists and learned men in his court. He was apparently very fond of intellectual debates on religion and spirituality. He expanded his mind beyond the borders of his own religion and even tried to start a new one garnering the hope of a united civilisation. Though that didn't get very far. I would love to read and find out more about him. I'm still looking for a good book though. Hopefully, it will confirm my (and many many others') suspicions about the biased wikipedia article. Aah, humans!
3 comments:
Problem is, you never know what is accurate history...or even what is the "best effort" at recording it.
Nowadays they may have panels comprising of different backgrounds to corroborate facts and come to a consensus. Back in those days, the "official" historians (often within within the king's court) must have felt obligated to hype up certain/most deeds...the same goes for the opposition. Who knows which side is exaggerating ?
In Akbar's defense he has tonnes of artifacts across the India, Pakistan to prove his greatness.
My dad had the DVD..i wish I had read this blog earlier..its back in the US with my bro, SIL.
I tend to take anything in history with a grain of salt. The scientific side of me tends to question the verifiability of anything.
That said, I am surprised by the Wiki article. I've only heard of Akbar regarded as the most liberal and secular of Mughal kings.
If you have material that indicates to a reasonable extent that the article is wrong, feel free to update Wiki. It has a pretty user friendly interface. Incorrect info is like poison that can easily spread.
Yep that's true. Anything from historical literature is to be taken with some skepticism. Depends on so many factors - who wrote it, what was the purpose, when was it documented etc.
The Wikipedia article already had a huge discussion going on about the article and it's been marked as disputed for neutrality. When we read the comments section, some people had mentioned that they had edited it to remove some of the biased content but it was re-edited back.
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