Battle of Khanwa —The advent of the Mughals — 1527 CE [Part 1]
The Prince and the Nomad
He had never seen his sultan as restless as he was today. His job as the sultan’s personal attendant was to make sure that he was taken care of at all times. He had made doubly sure that the jars of wine were full and his opium pipe was always ready, but the badshah had not touched it for the last 2 days….he was sure that something was amiss and the sultan was annoyed at him for something that he overlooked. He stiffened when he heard the footsteps of his lord approach.
“Summon my commanders”, his voice was steely, with conviction.
The attendant ran to the commanders quarters.
Babur saw that his trusted commanders had assembled and were waiting impatiently for him to make the announcement to leave the kafir lands and march back home. Panipat had taken a toll on his men, not to mention the unholy heat of the Indian summer!
He knew that they loved him. Some of them were with him from the time he sat on his father’s throne in Fergana for the first time. He knew that many of them did not approve of him drinking and his indulges in the colourful pleasures of life, but he also knew that they will give up their life for him without a second thought. Many familiar faces were missing, having made their ultimate sacrifice for him at Panipat.
He walked up to them, and before anyone could say anything, he poured the wine from his goblet on the ground in front of them.
“I swear to not touch this foul thing again in my life…I swear in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.” He threw his goblet away.
“I know that you are thirsting to go back home, to your wives and children. I know that this land of infidels is not as good as ours.” His men nodded approvingly.
“But this is our new home. The infidel army is preparing to destroy us, but we will endeavour, like we always have. We have the blessings of The Merciful.”
“They have their elephants and the kafir hordes…but we have the Almighty on our side and we shall prevail!”
He took out his holy Q’uran and exhorted, “Noble men and soldiers, every man that comes into this world is subject to dissolution. It is much better to die with honour than to live a life of infame. Let us then in one voice swear on this holy Q’uran that none of us will turn our back on this battle with the kafirs till our soul is separated from our body!”
By the time he was done, the chorus of “Ghazi” rent the air. The wine, barrels of his precious nectar of pleasure, was being poured into the dry well nearby. At that moment, he knew that his destiny was set, that the ultimate test is upon him. He knew that Khanwa will decide the rest of his life.
It must be a general knowledge for anyone following Indian history that the Mughal rule in India started with Babur’s victory at the first Battle of Panipat. It is both true and not so true. Let me explain.
The first battle of Panipat was surely a resounding victory for Babur. The control over the vast dominions of the Delhi Sultanate led Babur to settle down in India instead of going back to his stronghold in Kabul. But the clash at Panipat was against the forces of the Lodi dynasty, weakened by internal strife and external aggression, in its final throes of decline. Moreover, Babur also had the help of defectors from the Lodi camp.
Though the victory at Panipat was significant for Babur, it brought him face to face with a powerful and much more dangerous adversary, an adversary that struck fear in the hearts of the Turks and Afghans in Babur’s army — the brave Rajputs led by Maharana Sangram Singh, popularly known as Rana Sanga.
Background
Rajputana
Tracing their lineage back as early as the 7th century CE, the Rajputs were famed to be descendents of the Kshatriya clan, born to be warriors. The name Rajput, a variation of Raja Putra, literally means Sons of Kings.
By the early 10th century, multiple clans of Rajputs had established their fiefdoms and chieftaincies across the western and northern parts of India, in the Gangetic Plains, present day Rajasthan and some parts of what is now in Pakistan.
Different dynasties held sway over the Rajput lands and established their own kingdoms like the Chahamanas of Shakhambari, the Sisodias of Mewar, the Pratiharas of Kanauj, the Rathores of Marwar, the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, Parmars, Chalukyas, Tomars, Guhilas etc. Fiercely loyal to their clan more than anything, these disparate Rajput kingdoms were as much at loggerheads with each other as they were with the Arab invaders who made constant forays into their territories.
Under Maharana Hammir and later Maharana Khumba, the territorial expansion of the Rajputs reached its zenith in the 14th century. Bordering the Sultanates of Gujarat and Malwa in the south and the Sultanate of Delhi in the north, a united Rajput front inflicted crushing defeats on the Sultanate armies in multiple battles, notably routing the Tughlaqs at Singoli in 1336 CE.
After the death of Rana Khumba, the fragmented Rajputs were again united by his grandson — Maharana Sangram Singh, popularly known as Rana Sanga when he ascended the throne of Mewar in 1508 CE.
Rana Sanga relentlessly continued the task of subjugating the surrounding sultanates, defeating the armies of Gujarat, Malwa and Delhi Sultanates in 18 different battles, crushing the Lodi army in the battles of Dholpur, Khatoli and Ranthambore.
The victories took a heavy toll on his body though, with the Rana losing an eye, an arm and maiming a leg across the years of establishing Rajput supremacy, but never denting his spirit of upholding the legendary Rajput valour and martial superiority.
A feared warrior, he had fought more than a hundred battles, and not lost a single one of them. With Rana Sanga at the helm there was no stopping the growing clout of the Rajput confederacy and its unceasing territorial expansion. With no one to stop his advance in the north, he was considered on par with the great Krishnadeva Raya, the lord of the vast Vijayanagara empire in the Deccan.
The young Turk
Around the time when Rana Sanga was pummelling the Delhi Sultanate around the northern plains, a 17 year old boy was making his way across the deserts of Samarkand with his defeated army hotly pursued by the Uzbeks.
Born in 1483 to the ruler of Fergana, a small principality in Uzbekistan, Mirza Zahir-ud-din Muhammad (nicknamed Babur) had the bloodline of Timur from his father’s side and that of Genghis Khan from his mother’s. The Timurid race, nominally from Mongols (Mughal in Persian) and predominantly Turkic, considered themselves kings by profession and believed in their right to rule the vast territories of Timur. And so began Babur’s quest to conquer Samarkand, the old capital of his ancestor Timur.
Succeeding his father to the throne of Fergana at the age of 12, a young Babur was obsessed with the idea of conquering Samarkand. He laid siege to the ancient city in 1497 CE and captured it after 7 months. When he was busy in Samarkand, he lost his seat in Fergana to a rebellion. He immediately set out to Fergana to regain control when his troops deserted him enroute leaving him with neither Samarkand nor Fergana.
Babur regained control of Samarkand again in 1501 CE but was defeated by the powerful Uzbeks at Sar-e Pol (Northern Afghanistan) and driven out. With neither Samarkand nor Fergana, Babur roamed around as a nomad for the next 3 years and focused on building his army. During this time, Babur endured many hardships and had to live the life of an unwelcome refugee in many places.
In 1504 Babur crossed the snowy Hindukush mountains and seized Kabul in Afghanistan with his personal followers. In Kabul he gained a wealthy new kingdom and assuming the title of badshah he began to re-establish his fortunes.
The long years that he put into building an army transformed Babur into an extremely capable and skilful commander. A strong strapping young man, he had honed his abilities not only to inspire loyalty and devotion among his followers, but also in drawing revenue from the trading and agricultural class in his domain.
During his reign in Kabul, Babur was introduced to gunpowder from the Ottoman empire. He employed an Ottoman, Ustad Ali to train his troops in the use of matchlocks and cannons, and builds units of artillery and conscripts matchlocksmen or banduqchis. Before long Babur was able to use them in battles and quickly found out that small units of banduqchis proved lethal against large armies using traditional weapons.
His last unsuccessful attempt to subdue Samarkand in 1511–12 convinced him to give up the futile quest and to look for expansion elsewhere. During his period of wandering without a kingdom, he had nursed the idea of invading India, motivated by the exploits of his ancestor, Timur. Now with a firm base in Kabul, he turned his attention to Sindh (Pakistan) and India.
With his eye on the famed riches of India, Babur started making plans for his campaign. Between 1519 and 1522, Babur made repeated incursions into Indian territory through the Khyber pass in way of reconnaissance and put down any resistance that would hinder his eventual passage into India. By 1522 he had secured Khandahar, a strategic area on the road to Sindh and his route to India was open.
While at Khandahar, Daulat Khan Lodi, the governor of Punjab approaches Babur with a request which seems almost prophetic to him. Daulat Khan invites Babur to invade Delhi and promises help in return to getting complete control over Punjab. Babur sees this as a golden opportunity to fulfil his dream of repeating the exploits of his glorified ancestor and readily agrees.
Unholy neighbours
After Babur routs the Lodi forces at Panipat, he becomes master of all the dominions of the Delhi Sultanate. He sends his son Humayun with an advance guard to Delhi to prepare for his arrival and coronation. The Delhi sultanate created by the Turkic slave Qutb ud-din Aibak, having passed through five different dynasties was changing hands to a new tribe — the Mughals.
In spite of the hard earned victory at Panipat and the immense prize that came with it, Babur was a troubled man. He could see that there was discontent brewing in the ranks of his army. The Persians, Turks, Tajiks Uygyurs and Afghans in his army, his veterans, were used to the cooler climes of Central Asia and were finding the oppressive heat of the northern Indian summer extremely unsavoury.
They had also heard of this Rana Sanga, chief of the confederacy of Rajputs in the southwest of his newly acquired empire. The Rajput had designs on Delhi and Babur’s spies had warned him about the huge Hindu army advancing towards Agra. The reputation of Rajput bravery and valour preceded them and their superior numbers added to the battered Mughal army’s desire to withdraw back to Kabul.
The Rajputs were closely watching the developments in their neighbourhood. They were aware of the heavy casualties inflicted on Babur’s army by the Lodi forces at Panipat. The Rajput army had routed the sultanate forces of Lodi multiple times and they believed that with their numbers they can easily trounce the invader and drive him back beyond the Sindh. The time had come to bring the whole of Hindustan back under Hindu rule since the time of the great Chauhan 300 years back.
Needless to say, the grounds were ripe for an epic showdown for the control of the throne at Delhi.
Continued in part 2
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