All language subtitles for The.Story.of.India.E05.The.Meeting.of.Two.Oceans.720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits

[Indistinct chatter
and chanting]

MICHAEL WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
There are moments in history

when civilizations aspire to
greatness.

India had done so
in ancient times,

and at the end of
the Middle Ages,

it did so again,
and it was the coming of Islam

that inspired the next great
phase of Indian history.

Today the sub-continent
is home to half of

all the world's Muslims.

The ebb and flow of its history
has been shaped by the encounter

of the two civilizations of
India and Islam.

And in all of history,
there is no more dramatic tale.

The next chapter
in the story of India.

[Chanting]

In the long story of India,

there have been many
waves of invaders:

Greeks and Kushans,
Huns and British.

But the most fateful, perhaps,

were the Afghan
and Turkic armies,

who in the middle ages brought
with them the faith of Islam.

Islam had first burst out of
Arabia in the seventh century,

spreading as far
as Spain and china.

But it only began to
work profound change

in the history of India

in the Middle Ages

with the establishment of Muslim
kingdoms in the north.

And that's where our story
begins,

a thousand years ago
in the city of Multan

in what's now Pakistan.

Here in Multan,
a series of events began

which would shift
forever the balance of history

in the sub-continent,

and the key figure was
Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni.

To some, he was a great prince,
a builder of empires,

and a champion with a faith;

to others, an oppressor,
a fanatic, and an iconoclast.

The head of a great Muslim
empire in Afghanistan,

Mahmoud occupied the then-Hindu
city of Multan

and used it as a base for
a series of raids into India.

So your family were connected
with Mahmoud of Ghazni's family?

Yes. Yes.

And you've been here
in this quarter of the city

for 900,
nearly a thousand years?

Nearly a thousand
years old.

Living here
all the time.

When our ancestor
came, you see,

and when he camped
here, you see,

at the site
where he is buried.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: the Gardezis'
ancestor came with Mahmoud's son

in the 11th Century.

HUR: It's through those doors
that he came riding on a lion.

WOOD: Oh, yeah.

HUR: With a live snake
as a whip in his hand

and a pair of pigeons
fluttering over his head.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
But their ancestor wasn't

a warrior, but a holy man,

one among many who came
in the middle ages into India.

So this is from the 12th
Century, then, as it were.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
This is his tomb.

He was a Sufi,
an Islamic mystic,

and the Sufi saints,

who are still loved
across Pakistan and north India,

will be very important
in this story,

for it was the Sufi saints
who first brought Islam and

the people of India together.

HUR: Amongst the saints
of Multan, I think

Shah Yusef, our ancestor,
he is the first of

the Muslim saints
to arrive in Multan.

I would call him the founder
of Muslim Multan.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
So the age of Mahmoud

was a time of violence

but also the beginning
of a meeting of minds,

for, like the Hindu holy men,

the Sufis taught that people
should strive to be with god

without any attachment.

And there lay the common ground

between Islam
and the religions of India.

WOOD: Ah, the old
Gardezi library.

I remember this place.

HUR: This was founded by my
great-great-great grandfather.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And even the dreaded Mahmoud

himself is remembered here as
a prince of high culture.

I'm an old
manuscript type.

Musty old books.

HUR: Some of them are
400-500 years old.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: he was
the patron of the famous epic

Ferdousi's "Book of Kings."

WOOD: The one I'm interested
in is the Ferdousi.

HUR: This is the Ferdousi.

Ferdousi, as you know,
was commissioned,

by Mahmoud of Ghazni to write
the history of Persia

and this part of the world
in poetry form.

And Mahmoud promised
that he would give him

one gold coin
per couplet.

- For a couplet.
- For a couplet.

He wrote
40,000 couplets.

40,000 couplets?

HUR: So Mahmoud, I think, had
a second thought, and he said,

"Oh, a gold coin is too much.

"I think I'll give you
a silver coin per couplet."

And he refused
to accept it,

and he went back home,

and he wrote a satire against
Mahmoud which became so popular

in which he criticizes Mahmoud's
ancestry and everything,

especially his mother's side,
his mother's ancestry.

And he says at one point...

[Speaking Persian]

"Oh, king Mahmoud, oh, conqueror
of the countries, of nations,

"if you are not scared
of anyone,

"at least be scared of God."

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Mahmoud led
a dozen great expeditions

into India.

The most famous left Multan
in November 1025.

In these early attacks
on India,

the goal wasn't conquest,
but plunder.

Their target in 1025:

the famous Hindu temple
town of Somnath,

which was said to be incredibly
rich in gold and silver.

Though, as can still happen,

the invasion was given
a different public justification

as a war against the infidel.

There's many stories about
why Mahmoud attacked Somnath.

Long, long ago in Arabia,

there was a goddess
called Manat.

When Islam came, the shrines of
the goddesses were destroyed,

but according to one version
of the story,

the stone image of Manat
was taken away from Arabia

and brought here to India,

and Somnath became her temple--
Somanatha--

and it was to fulfill
the work of the Prophet

that Mahmoud led his expedition
to the sea.

[Man speaking foreign language]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
That story no doubt

made Mahmoud look good
with the caliph in Baghdad

as a defender of the faith,

but it was fantasy.

He'd come to loot
the wealth of India.

And these tales became
part of the mythology

of the people in the border land
of Rajasthan.

To them, Mahmoud is
still a bogeyman,

and they still sing
of their heroic battles

in the Middle Ages against
the Afghans and the Turks.

[Clapping]

[Animals grunting]

[Flatulence]

Ah, nothing like that old sound
of grumpy camels

clearing their throats
and farting all night, is there?

Well, there isn't.

It took them a month to get down
from Multan to the sea.

To survive through
this kind of terrain,

they took 20,000 camels
to carry the water.

[Man singing
in foreign language]

There on the seashore lay the
rich pilgrim shrine of Somnath

inside a fortified town.

The Shiva temple here

was destroyed and rebuilt
several times

before it was restored
in the 1950s after independence.

[Indistinct chatter]

Mahmoud reached here
in January 1026,

sacked the city,
destroyed the idol,

and plundered the temple's gold.

In today's India,

the tale is still remembered
with bitterness.

WOOD: Mahmoud's expedition
to Somnath

was written up by his Persian
and Turkic court poets

as an emblematic clash between
Islam and Hindu idolatry.

The great historian Al Biruni,
who was no fan of Mahmoud,

went with him to India,

says that the 12 great
plundering expeditions

engendered a hatred
among Hindus for the Turks,

by which he means the Muslims.

But as always in history,

and especially
in the history of India,

there's another story,

and what appears to begin here
as a clash of civilizations

will become over time

one of the most
remarkable cultural crossovers

in the history of civilization,

what a great Indian Muslim
prince will later call

"the meeting of two oceans."

And it's Al Biruni,

a Muslim scholar
who learned Sanskrit,

who gives us the first signpost.

"You must bear in mind,"
he says,

"that the Hindus entirely
differ from us

"in almost everything

"and the barriers
separating us are many:

"language, manners, customs,
rules of purity.

"and India is
such a diverse land,

"from Kashmir in the north
to the southern cultures:

"Telagu, Kanada, and Tamil.

"In religion, the Indians
totally differ from us,

"as we believe in nothing
in which they believe

"and vice versa.

"India's hard to understand,

"though I have a great liking
for it.

"And our apparent differences
would be perfectly transparent

"if there were more contact
between us."

But in 1192 came
a new phase of contact:

military conquest of the north

by armies of Muslim Afghans
and Turks

whose leaders now grandly
called themselves

"Sultans of Delhi."

Here they built a giant minaret

which doubled
as a tower of victory.

240 feet high, it's one of
the wonders of the world,

the Qutub Minar.

MAN: The might of Islam.

WOOD: The might of Islam.

So this is
a statement of conquest?

This is foreign
conquerors coming in

and creating
their base here.

This base
was very important

for taking the conquest
into other parts of India.

So you can very well imagine
the Qutub complex

was the place which established
Muslim rule in India.

This was built around the end
of the 12th century.

There was a time
when this local area

was taken over
by the Afghans.

This is the first
Indo-Islamic mosque in India,

- is this particular mosque.
- This is the place.

This is the place,
the first mosque.

WOOD: And all around us,
the remains of Hindu columns.

BALASUBRAMANIAM: The inscription
on the eastern gate

says that 27 temples
were actually dismantled

to construct this
Islam mosque.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
It was as much a political

as a religious statement.

Since its first spread
in the seventh century,

the Islamic world
had encountered

many other religions

but nowhere as big and diverse
as India.

The fact was, as the Delhi
sultans soon realized,

they couldn't possibly
convert India.

Coexistence had to follow.

And at grass-roots level,

that process happened through
a meeting of hearts and minds,

driven by the wandering
Muslim saints, the Sufis.

You can still find
their shrines today

everywhere in the back streets
of old Delhi.

And these are really,
really basic,

the idea being that
the people who came...

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
through the Sufis,

Hindus and Muslims
found a common ground.

Now, you can see
the pots in the trees

really well from here, can you?

So these are all
successful wishes?

WOMAN: these are wishes
that have come true, yes.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: And not just
in folk beliefs,

but in an idea deeply rooted
in Islam's mystical traditions,

the unity of all being
and of all religions.

[Speaking
foreign language]

The person who lies
buried here

is Abu Bakar Sheik Haidery Tusi.

He belonged to
the Qalanderya Silsala.

This is a Sufi order
that came from Iran or Iraq?

MAN: Iran.
WOOD: Iran?

This is not just a kind
of conquest, is it?

This is
an intermingling?

No, and a lot of people now
increasingly see in India,

at least
in north India,

Islam didn't spread
through the sword,

it was through men like
the person who's buried here,

these Sufis.
And it sort of went on

like a continuous stream,
as it were,

for 300-400 years.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: And perhaps
real change in history

has to happen
at the grass roots.

The poet Amir Khusro grew up
here in the Delhi sultanate.

He's still a household name
in old Muslim families.

He's typical of the age--

a Muslim whose parents
were Turkic who spoke Persian,

and this is his voice.

"India is our beloved
motherland, a paradise on Earth.

"Intelligence is the natural
gift of its people.

"There can be no better guide to
life than the wisdom of India."

WOOD: This cult
is frowned on

by the really orthodox
kind of Islamic authorities .

JALIL: In Wahabi Islam,
you will find this sacrilege,

almost all of it--

considered completely
un-Islamic, actually.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Soin
the Middle Ages in the north,

despite war and violence,
forced conversion,

discrimination against Hindus,

the foundations were laid
for the amazing events

which would follow
in the 16th Century.

This is one of the most
wonderful viewpoints in history.

This is the end
of the Khyber Pass,

the border between
Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This is the route taken by many
of the great invaders in history

who came into the Indian
subcontinent--

Alexander the Great,
Genghis Khan, and Tamburlaine.

In late 1525,

new invaders came down
this corridor of history

from Afghanistan.

Originally from central Asia,

the Moghuls had
made Kabul their base

from which to mount an invasion
of the plains of India.

After 4 failures,
this was the final throw,

on which their leader Babur
had staked everything.

It's April 1526,

the heat already clamping
on the Delhi plain,

temperature pushing up
towards 40 degrees.

The Moghul army--
12,000 men,

their leader a grizzled veteran
at 43 years old,

inured to war towards war
since he was 10,

descendant of Genghis Khan
and Tamburlaine.

And ahead of him at Panipat,

the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim,

with an army of 100,000 men
and 1,000 war elephants.

Babur's place of destiny,
Panipat, just north of Delhi,

was the scene of several great
battles in Indian history

going back to the legendary wars

of the ancient epic
of the "Mahabharata."

but now it was Muslim ruler
against Muslim invader.

Both sides had taken
their positions a week before.

Both sides
were preparing.

We know about Babur's
preparation more than Ibrahim's

because Babur has left
a record behind.

He was outnumbered
by 1 is to 5.

- Wow.
- Yeah.

WOOD: He's commandeered,
he says, about 700 carts

and tied them together
with fiber cables.

What's he trying to do there
to protect himself?

He tied cannons
in these carts, yes.

There are about
several hundred cannons

tied like this
right in front.

He shoots his enemy
with this cannon,

which is for the first time
happening in India--

it's in the battle
of Panipat that

it's happening in India--

WOOD: The use of artillery.

The use of artillery
on that scale.

Behind that, his cavalry,

and behind that,
his infantry.

And how does he win?

Is it the artillery
that makes the difference?

Partly. Very largely,
it does make a difference

because, you know,
what do the elephants

and the horses do
against artillery?

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: So like his
contemporaries Cortes

and Pizarro in the new world,

in one battle, the Moghul
conquistador Babur

had gained
the heartland of India.

In thanksgiving,

he built a little mosque
overlooking the battlefield,

the first Moghul mosque
in India.

So this place marks the start
of a new age

and of a new style
that we now think of

as quintessentially Indian.

[Indistinct chatter]

This is a palace built
by Babur for his queen

while he's saying it's
a mosque built by Babur

for his army to say
their prayers.

So there are
two different stories.

In India, Babur is known as
a warrior, as a conqueror,

a great soldier.

In his home, back home
in Tajkan area,

probably nobody even knows
that he came to India

and conquered,

but they remember him
as a great poet,

a very, very great poet.

He's a man of
many, many parts,

and above all,
a very honest, sincere man,

very charming,
lovable man.

He was also
a devout Muslim,

not a very, uh,
what shall I say?

Dogmatic Muslim,

but a devout Muslim who said his
prayers very regularly,

5 times a day.

After saying
his prayers he went

and had a cup of wine,
of course.

But...it's a very human figure,
you know?

It's a live man.

Yeah. A regular guy,
you said to me earlier.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And after the battle,

what Babur does next is another
clue to what will follow.

He enters Delhi but doesn't
plunder the city.

Instead, he comes here to the
old Sufi shrine of Nizamuddin,

still a favorite among Delhiites
of all communities,

Hindu as well as Muslim.

And here he offers
a humble prayer

before going back to camp
to have a cup of wine

and write poetry.

Thank you very much.

And that will set the tone
of the next amazing phase

of the story of India.

Devotion to the Sufis will mark
all of Babur's descendants,

just as respect
for all religions

marked his ancestors
back to Tamburlaine.

Beautiful place.

Under the Moghuls,

the story of Islam and India
will move onto a different plain

which still has lessons
for the world today.

Oh, that's very, very kind.
Thank you.

Thank you very much.

This is the most important,

the shrines of the
saints in Delhi.

Yes, this great Sufi saint.

WOOD: Great Sufi saint.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The tale of the Moghuls
is a family story.

One of the most remarkable and
gifted dynasties in history,

they ruled India for 330 years

before they were deposed
by the British.

But immediately
after Babur's death,

his son Humayun
was driven into exile,

where his wife gave birth
to a son

who would become one of the
greatest of all Indian rulers:

Akbar.

The tale of Akbar takes us first
to Rajasthan,

where the local Hindu rajas
had always resisted

the Muslim conquerors.

In the 16th Century,

the majority of Indian people
in the north were still Hindus

who followed the old religions
of India--

of Shiva, Vishnu,
and the goddess.

They had often endured
intolerance

and forced conversion
under the medieval sultans.

MAN: Kushbu.
WOOD: Kushbu.

I am Michael.
My name is Michael.

And this is your brother?

WOMAN: Mohit.

WOOD: Mohit. Mohit,

thank you. This is
best place in Jodhpur.

Ha ha ha!

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
Akbar would change the relations

between Hindu and Muslim
in India.

When he was born
in the house of relatives

of the royal family of Jodhpur,

there were omens which foretold
his future greatness,

just as there were for other
giants of history,

like Alexander.

So back in 1542, when the
astrologers did his horoscope,

what did they see
in Akbar's line of life?

I asked the present maharaja's
astrologer to redraw his chart.

Mr. Sharma, it's lovely
to see you again.

Hello, Abhisekh.

That's great.
So, how did we do?

What--first of all,
the date:

the 25th of October, 1542.

Sunday morning.

Saturday night
and the Sunday morning.

- 2:00 A.M. Is the--
- 2:00 A.M.

ABHISEKH: That at the time
of his birth,

Sagittarius was
in the fifth house.

That's astrologically.

WOOD: So this is the emperor
Akbar's chart here?

Fantastic.

ABHISEKH: Yes, and this becomes
computer-made chart.

He born
in the Leo ascendant.

WOOD: In a Leo ascendant.

These people
are very, very confident

about what they are doing,

and they are very keen
and they are focused

about their goals.

The aspect
of sun and Saturn,

it is the kingdom yog,

as we describe
in the astrology,

which is
the maharaja yog.

See, he was born when Scorpio
was in the Fourth House,

and that was
the reason that

he was bound to have led
a good and comfortable life

though born
at a different strata.

But the horoscope
also indicates

that he was not to get
ancestral property,

and this holds good because he
later acquired kingdom.

ABHISEKH: After the sixth day
of his birth,

the astrologer must have
calculated his birth chart,

because we believe
that on sixth day,

the goddess
of fortune comes,

and he writes
the fortune of the child.

They saw the future
fortune--

Because the Sun
and Saturn--

the Saturn is the main planet
who gives the kingdom.

If the Saturn is
on the highest state,

it must have given
the kingdom,

it will give at that time,
they have thought.

WOOD: And they were right.
I suppose, yes.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
Akbar became king in 1556

when his father died

after falling down his library
steps in Delhi.

At that moment,
much of north India

was controlled by their enemies,

and the Moghuls might just have
been an unlamented blip

in the story of India.

It's an unlikely place,
isn't it?

But there was a beautiful
Moghul garden here in 1556.

Akbar was proclaimed king
here at Kalanar

by generals loyal to his father.

Thank you.

So where is
Takhti-Akbari?

Here? This is it?

Well, how about that?

Isn't that extraordinary?

Doesn't look as if there's any
of the garden left, does it?

It's a beautiful spot.

Akbar came back several times
in his later life.

Gorgeous, isn't it,
this evening?

So this is the place where he
was formally proclaimed king

in February 1556.

That was the throne
platform there.

He would have sat on that.

You have to remember
he's only a 13-year-old boy.

He'd been brought up in exile

among tough warriors
in Afghanistan.

You can imagine the sort,
I'm sure.

He played truant from school,

preferred outdoor sports
and games,

and remained illiterate
all his life.

WOOD: What is your name?

Namke? Yeah?
And how old are you?

[Speaking foreign language]

MAN: 12.
WOOD: 12.

12. So you are nearly
the same age as Akbar.

He was 13,
and you are 12.

It's an incredible
thought, isn't it,

that he was
only this age

when he became king?

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Maybe
because the intellectuals

and the scholars
and the mullahs

had never got their intellectual
straitjacket on him,

he retained a wonderful
capacity to make unexpected,

unconventional connections--

as we would put it,
to think outside the box.

At this point, the Moghul
kingdom had shrunk

to a few small pockets around
Kandahar, Lahore, and Delhi.

But young Akbar acts fast,
defeats his enemies,

and wins the kingdom.

And then over the next 10 years,

he expands it across to Bengal
and down to the Deccan

to become one of
the world's great powers.

[Nan chanting]

And soon the illiterate
young tough guy

was showing unexpected skills
in rulership

and an unsuspected interest in
India's different philosophies.

Akbar is not
very religious.

He has attachments
to Sufis--

superstitious attachments,
let us say,

to the Ajmer shrine
and so on.

India was
what he experienced.

He liked this language.

He liked mixing with
the people.

As you know, he was a bit
of a lover in the beginning.

So he loved the people

and often went to
gatherings,

even when he had
become a king,

without courtiers, incognito.

He was a different
type of sovereign altogether.

In January 1575,

Akbar came with his closest
Hindu advisor

here to the junction
of the Ganges

and the Jumna Rivers

at the time of
the great bathing festival.

What Akbar saw here was one of
those great Hindu melas,

where millions of people
come down to the junction of

the rivers to take a holy bath.

Akbar's advisor tells the story.

A strange thing happens
at that time, he says,

when the planet Jupiter enters
the constellation of Aquarius.

And then a small mound island

rises in the middle
of the River Ganges,

and all the people go out to it
to do worship.

Akbar was so touched
by his experience

that he named the Hindu sacred
place of Prayag lllahabas,

or today, Allahabad,
the City of God.

So here, having already lifted
the hated tax on Hindus,

Akbar begins to embrace
all India's religions.

The Sikhs were one of
the radical religious groups

who'd sprung up out of
the interaction of Hinduism

and Islam in the 16th century.

Their first guru, Nanak,
who died in 1539, asserted,

"There is no Hindu or Muslim,"

and laid stress on the worship
of one god and works of charity.

[Man chanting]

His legacy today
is a world faith,

singled out by the turban
that all men must wear

to enter their holy shrines.

[Man speaking
foreign language]

And it was Akbar who gifted
them land here in Amritsar

to build the Golden Temple,

the most famous landmark
of Sikhism today.

It would be under
the later Moghuls

that the Sikhs became
a military sect,

bearing the symbols carried
by all practicing Sikhs today,

what they call the 5 Ks.

MAN: The first "k" is the Kesh,
which is unshorn hair.

You don't cut your hair.

No. Hence, therefore,
the appearance, the beard.

You don't cut your hair.

And second one is Khanga,

which is a wooden comb.

- Comb?
- Wooden comb, yes.

And you keep that with you?

We keep that
in the hair here.

And third one is bracelet.

It is called Karra--
starts with "K."

fourth "K"
is your Kachera,

which is a baggy shorts.

- And the fifth one finally...
- Is Kirpan.

Kirpan is...actually,

now, if I can take you
through this--

this is not a sword,

and it's not a knife, either.

May I look?

Yes, sure.
It is called Kirpan.

It is to defend
your respect,

to stand against
the tyranny of the time,

so that we could
defend the faith.

WOOD: "Now it has become clear
to me," said Akbar,

"that it cannot be wisdom

"to assert the truth
of one faith over another."

"In our troubled world,
so full of contradictions,

"the wise person
makes justice his guide

"and learns from all.

"Perhaps in this way,

"the door may be opened again
whose key has been lost."

The new age demanded
a new capital.

Fatehpur Sikri was
built in the 1570s

in the plain near Agra.

At this time, Akbar oversaw
a great reform of government,

but his mind was now turning to
philosophical questions

about the nature of rule
and the nature of religion.

HABIB: The administrative
structure of Moghul empire

is practically complete.

Provinces are established
from 1580.

The centralized
administration is then

already established.

In 1574, he establishes
his military service.

Bureaucracy
and army are combined.

He has the new
land revenue system.

Conquers are going on.

But now Akbar is not
personally involved.

So actually
this philosophy

is the philosophy of
politically leisure hours,

let us say.

- Partly leisure hours.
- Personal search.

But, you see,
he's seeking for

a justification
of sovereignty.

WOOD: And how to justify
sovereignty?

To create an allegiance
in a nation of such diversity,

that was the question.

Akbar's big idea
was very simple.

No one religion can
claim absolute knowledge,

absolute authority.

He'd already had discussions
with Muslim wise men,

Sunni and Shia,

but he'd been shocked
by how quickly they'd

come to blows with each other.

Now he summoned leaders of all
the religions of the world--

Christians, Muslims, Hindus,
Jews, Parsees, Jains--

to find the common ground
of all religion.

And in those weekly seminars
here at Fatehpur,

perhaps for the first time
in human history,

the absolute claims of religion
itself were put under scrutiny.

[Speaking foreign language]

HABIB:
Every religion is wrong,

but all differences
have to be tolerated.

He says in India
there are so many religions,

and therefore
the sovereign

should not identify
with one.

He's the--just as God
can't identify himself

with one religion,

so the sovereign can't
identify, as sovereign.

WOOD: From Moghul India
to Christian Europe,

it was a renaissance world,

and Akbar even received a letter
from his contemporary

Elizabeth I.

In her letter
to the Emperor Akbar,

Queen Elizabeth of England
says something very interesting.

She says that
"the singular report

"of your majesty's humanity

"has reached even these most
distant shores of the world."

Humanity--not power,
glory, riches.

But it's right to talk about
Akbar's humanity still.

It's what makes him one of
the most engaging figures

in the history of the world.

But it's not the whole story.

The other side
is his rationality.

Don't think for a moment
that his dream of one religion

was some new-age whim.

It was conceived as rationally

as all his other
great policies--

his drastic overhaul
of the land revenue

and taxation system
of his great empire,

his overhaul of
the Moghul civil service,

his effort to make
his Hindu subjects

more equal under the law.

These were all big ideas,

the sort of big ideas that would
become part of the mainstream

in Europe in the 18th-Century
Enlightenment.

But in 16th-Century Europe,

no Renaissance prince, not even
the brilliant Elizabeth Tudor,

tried so consistently as Akbar
to bring in the Age of Reason.

After a reign of nearly 50
years, Akbar died in 1605,

two years after Elizabeth I.

He would be succeeded
by his son Jahangir

and his grandson Jaha--

both men of high sensibility
but with inner demons,

drawn to dissipation.

Akbar had laid the foundations--

administrative,
fiscal, and moral--

for Moghul India's
future greatness.

At his death, India had
the largest GDP in the world.

Before it lay the possibility of
an Indo-Islamic enlightenment.

So what went wrong?

Why did it fail
after Akbar's death?

Why did the age of reason
not come?

Well, it wouldn't be the first
time in history

and it certainly
wouldn't be the last

that an empire lost its way
because of overconsumption,

extravagance, bad leadership,
and unwise foreign wars.

Through the 17th Century,

the Moghuls pursued
their futile dream of regaining

their ancestral homeland
in central Asia.

And at home, they engaged
in vast building projects.

The most famous
was the Taj Mahal.

Now, you might have thought

that the best-known building in
the world had no more secrets.

The Taj is told
in all the tourist guides

as a monument to love,

the tomb of Shah Jahan's
favorite wife, Mumtaz,

and later of Jahan himself,

"a teardrop
on the face of time."

But new discoveries suggest
the design may go back

to the Moghuls'
beloved Sufi saints,

that the key to the Taj may be
a mystic map of a Sufi's dream.

It's a map of
the day of judgment.

The cosmos is seen
as a rectangle.

On one side,
the fields of paradise;

on the other side, the path--
a serat--

the way, the bridge over which
the righteous must pass

and be judged on judgment day.

In the middle, a pool

and the congregation grounds
for the faithful

on that day of judgment.

And in the center,
the throne of God himself.

But there's another
recently discovered clue

to the cosmic design of the Taj.

Across the river was a walled
paradise garden.

In it were night-scented
trees and flowers,

red cedars and magnolias.

There were fruits and nuts,

jujubes, mangoes, sugar palms,

chironjis--whose sweet kernel
tastes like pistachio.

Here the great Moghul could sit
in his pavilion in the moonlight

and look at his creation.

But the world's richest economy
had begun to decline.

British visitors
give graphic accounts

of the shocking poverty
of the rural workforce

in the days of Akbar's son
Jahangir,

even though the cities were
still wealthy--

Agra here 3 times
the size of London.

But more than 20% of
the national income

was spent on the court elite,

on an upper class who lived
at a higher level of consumption

than any European aristocracy.

And that's a perennial
issue in history, isn't it?

Even in our own time,

the riches of high culture
are paid for by the masses,

and architecture and art
are used to advertise

and reinforce power.

You can still glimpse
the artistic brilliance

of that time in the jewelers'
workshops in Jaipur.

The Kasliwal family were
jewelers to the Moghul court

in the 17th Century.

MAN: Jewelry was
always considered

to be a symbol of power.

WOOD: And what stone is this?

- A ruby.
- Ruby.

MAN: And also with the Moghuls
what was quite treasured

were the spinels, you know,
which are quite rare stones.

- What is--what is spinels?
- Spinels.

For a long time, spinels
were confused to be rubies.

So when we see those pictures
of the Moghul emperors

with, often with
what look like rubies,

it's probably these.
God, how amazing.

These exquisite Moghul arts
went from the scale of the Taj

to the smallest turban pin.

If you see, that's
the base of the box,

and then you
open it inside.

See, there are
various--

WOOD: Oh, yeah.
Gosh, now look.

So you can see
through it, it's so--

it's just like filigree.

KASIWAL: It's all cut work,
it's almost like

lacework in gold.

So it's perfect
from each angle.

It was your ancestors that
actually made these things.

WOOD: I like this one here,
like an opium box.

All these are rubies

which have been calibrated
to fit into this shape.

WOOD: So the great Moghul
would have kept

his opium
in something like this

and what, laced
his wine with it?

Did they smoke it or
put it in their wine?

No. Opium was,
you know, we used to have

opium ceremonies
where you would offer opium

to your guests.

The Moghuls came to India
as conquerors,

and they would rule north India
for more than 300 years.

Of course, the legacy of
conquerors is often destructive

but, at their best, the Moghuls
created an extraordinary fusion

of Hindu and Muslim culture--

almost healing
the wound of history.

And now with hindsight,
after the British

and the partition of
India in 1947,

their wonderful buildings
and creations

have become memory rooms
for the story of India.

And also, perhaps, symbols of
what might have been.

But go to great cities like
Lahore in Pakistan today,

the most romantic
of Moghul cities,

and you still feel the living
presence of that lost world--

its poignant beauty
and its refinement.

[Man vocalizing]

But in the mid-1650s, behind
the extravagance of the court,

discord was looming.

The ailing and now incompetent
Jahan, the builder of the Taj,

was imprisoned, and his sons
fought each other

for the kingdom.

The civil war was as much
about faith as about empire.

The younger son, Aurangzeb,

wanted to return
to orthodox Islam.

The elder, Dara, following
in Akbar's footsteps,

had translated
Hindu sacred texts.

It's gorgeous, isn't it?
When was this written?

WOMAN: This was
written in 1655.

He explains
in the introduction,

that he, having become a Sufi,
he wanted to find out

about the wisdom of
the Indian religions,

and he also mentions
that he's written this work

for his family only,
not for the general public.

Dara even tells how
the Hindu god Rama had met him

in a dream and embraced him.

Dara's project was bold
in his own time,

but now in the age of wars
on terror, almost inconceivable.

He took his lead
from the Sufi idea

of the unity of being
and the Koran's revelation

that God had sent
messengers to earth

before the Prophet Mohammed.

And he argued
for the unity of religion.

Islam and Hinduism
were twins, he said,

hairs of the same head.

He tells us, "Il talked
to the Hindu holy men,

"people who had attained
the highest level

"of spiritual enlightenment,

"and in our conversations
that were free and open,

"I detected--

"although there were
verbal differences--

"no essential disagreement
on our understanding of God.

"And so I decided to write
a book about that,

"about the religions
of the two communities.

"And I called it, The Meeting
Place of the Two Oceans."

It was a project that was
heroic, quixotic even,

and it would cost him
his life and his crown.

The decisive battle between
Dara and Aurangzeb was fought

outside Ajmer in 1658.

Now the story unfolds
with all the momentum

and awful sense of destiny
of a Shakespearian tragedy.

The battle was fought here,
in this wide valley,

just outside Ajmer, on the
railway line to Rajasthan.

Dara and his European
artillery officers

had chosen a good position,
with their wings anchored

on the hills
on either side of us.

But there was one weakness
to Dara's position:

a secret path led
over the mountains

and round to the back
of his army.

And Dara was betrayed
and captured by Aurangzeb.

The issue now was
what should be done with Dara.

To gauge the public mood,

Aurangzeb decided
to humiliate him,

strip him of all marks
of office,

and mount him on a clapped-out
old female elephant

driven by a slave in rags,

parade him here, down the great
market street of Delhi.

But the onlookers were
all horrified by Dara's fall;

many of them burst into tears.

And with that, Aurangzeb decided
that Dara should die.

The killers came that night to
his prison by Humayun's tomb.

There, they found Dara cooking
lentils with his little boy,

Prince Salim.

His son clung desperately
to his father's legs

but was dragged away.

Dara was overpowered,
and they cut his head off

and sent it to his brother.

"Ugh," said Aurangzeb,
"I wouldn't look the kafir

in the face while he was still
alive and I won't now."

And he sent his head in a box
to their father, Shah Jahan,

in his prison
in his palace in Agra.

Jahan opened it at table while
he was eating and collapsed,

fainting, broke his front teeth.

As for Dara's little boy,
he was given a draft of opium

and then strangled.

The father and the son
were buried here

in the tomb of Humayun.

Dara's death marks
the end of that story.

But for all the ebb and flow
of India's history since then,

the quest for Hindu-Muslim
unity has never been abandoned.

MAN: religions still,
from that time till today,

religions are the same,
the teachings are the same,

and it is the misinterpretation

that takes
the brotherhood apart.

Whether it is Hindu or Muslim
or Sikh or Christian,

if that person follows
his religion correctly,

So I don't think there
will be any problem

because you are doing,
you will do correct

each and every
thing correct.

We are talking about
specially India, and in India,

it's so diversified as far as
religions are concerned,

I think the most diversified
country in the world.

I think so.

As far as religions
are concerned,

as far as the cultures
are concerned,

as far as the languages
are concerned.

WOOD: Can we judge
the past by the standards

of the 21st Century?

Should we judge our time
by theirs?

The Moghul Empire began
and ended with war.

In a few decades, they created
a civilizational wonderland

here in India, a kind of
Indo-Islamic synthesis.

Their rulers were
not only practical men

but visionaries:

Babur's imperial dreams,
Akbar's utopian visions.

But waiting in the wings
with ominous patience

were the British,
who had a very different idea

of what bringing in the age
of reason could mean.

Next in "The story of India,"
the last invaders: the British.

And what happened here?

The British
have destroyed it.

With a 16-pounder gun.

WOOD: And the horrors of
the great mutiny

and the coming of freedom.

WOMAN: Bondage nobody likes.

Everybody likes to be free.