It's been over three years since I published The Final Puzzle.
The main antagonist was an Islamic cleric by name Badauni. He was inserted into Akbar's close network by the clergy to thwart Akbar's permissive and tolerant religious views. Upon his arrival however, Akbar tasked Badauni with translating Hindu religious texts to Urdu, a task he considered heresy.
Akbar was never swayed by Badauni. In fact, with time, Akbar abandoned Islam and embraced his new order of faith called Din-i-Illahi which incorporated the best tenets of all faiths in the land. Unfortunately, this religion did not survive Akbar.
Badauni kept a secret: a frank and critical account of Akbar's reign. It was published only after Akbar's death in 1606. Although Akbar's son Jehangir acceded to the throne after his father's death in 1606, Badauni knew that Jehangir did not much care for his late father. There were even rumors that Jehangir may have fatally poisoned Akbar.
Knowing Badauni's dislike for Akbar's religious views, one has to interpret his account with a sack of salt.
In light of the recent document leaks case, I searched JSTOR website for leaks in history and could not find any. It is probably because any leakers in a kingdom invariably "disappeared" for good.
And just for kicks, here is something I found about educational curriculum in 16th century India.
"Every boy had to read books on the following topics: morals, arithmetic, agriculture, house management, the rules of government and medicine."
Which brings us to the question: what about the education of girls? What jobs did they do?
I am reading an interesting article called " Middle Class Women in Mughal India" by A Yasmin.
I will write about the salient points from this interesting paper in my next post.
