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Akbar's Perfidy > Page1
Smith's account of Akbar's reign contains numerous instances of Akbar's perfidy. On page 57 he says: "An extraordinary incident that occurred in April while the royal camp was at Thaneshwar, the famous Hindu place of pilgrimage to the north of Delhi, throws a rather unpleasant light upon Akbar's character."
"The Sannyasins assembled at the holy tank were divided into two parties, called the Kurs and the Puris. The leader of the latter complained to the king that the Kurs had unjustly occupied the accustomed sitting place of the Puris, who were thus debarred from collecting the pilgrims' alms." Akbar asked them decide the issue by mortal combat. They were drawn up on either side with their arms drawn. In the fight that ensued, the combatants used swords, bows and arrows and stones..." Akbar seeing that the Puris were out-numbered, gave the signal to some of his savage followers to help the weaker party." In the fight between the two Hindu sanyasin sects, Akbar saw to it that both were ultimately annihilated by his own fierce soldiers.
At the battle of Haldighat, when Akbar's forces were ranged against Rana Pratap's, it was mainly a fight between Rajput and Rajput because Akbar, by his demoralizing atrocities had terrified a number of Rajput chiefs to submission and through them sought to subdue the proudest of the clan, Rana Pratap. At a time, when the two sides were locked in battle and it was difficult to distinguish between Rajputs allied to Akbar and those opposing him, Badauni fighting on Akbar's side, asked Akbar's commander where to shoot so that he may hit only the enemy. The commander replied it did not matter; he could merrily shoot in the midst of the Rajput armies and whoever was killed, it was a gain to Islam. With that assurance, says Badauni, he had no difficulty and he started with gay abandon, secure in the belief that no precautions were necessary. (During the first World War, when the Indian army was deployed in the Crimea, the Muslims soldiers of the same Indian army, stationed behind the Hindu soldiers, shot them at the back, killing many. The Muslims' grouse was that they did not want to fight against the Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and who held the Crimea. After that incident, the British never deployed the Hindu and the Muslim soldiers of the Indian army on the same front, ever. And now India has Muslim Foreign Secretaries helping Pakistan under the table.- The Publisher.)
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