A moderate rain stopped sometime in the morning and the sun is searing again. The road from Gurdaspur to Kalanaur in Punjab winds through paddy fields and dense sugarcane. There are plots where aubergines grow.
I am driving in muggy heat, on a border road flanked by poplars and eucalyptus, in search of a forsaken place where the historical idea of a syncretic India first germinated. After a half-hour’s drive we sharply turn right on to a sodden tract. In the far distance is a brick kiln chimney spewing black smoke.
We walk down a mud trail, carefully side-stepping dried dung, and find before us a stark and bare structure. It is a large platform on top of which is a smaller one and a broad stone bench. This is the Takht-I-Akbar, the throne on which Akbar sat, on February 14, 1556, at his coronation as the Emperor of Hindustan. A site board in blue grandly states that the ‘Gram Panchayat Kalanaur welcomes you to the Coronation Site of Mughal Emperor Akbar The Great (1556-1605AD)’ and a larger board gives you a description in gurumukhi.
ASI monument
Takht-I-Akbar is a protected monument under the care of the Archaeological Survey of India. But no one really seems to know much about it. There is no caretaker. A local farmer says he has never seen anyone visit to inspect the monument, to check on its maintenance. Ordinarily ASI monuments are surrounded by planned, symmetric gardens, but not here.
The 11 sq.mt. platform is made of brick and coated with plaster. At the centre is a water tank intended more as an aesthetic element rather than for any practical use. When filled with water, it would have reflected the throne and the emperor, adding drama to the coronation optics. The water from the tank would have overflowed down red-painted chutes into four miniature reservoirs.
The utter simplicity of the throne and the edifice, the absence of decorative elements are all pointers to the circumstances of Akbar’s ascension. There was certainly no time for the usual Mughal pomp.
Heading the army
A 13-year-old Akbar and his guardian Bairam Khan were at Kalanaur when news of his father Humayun’s demise reached him. The Mughals, at that point, had only a tenuous clasp on power. Babur’s reign was fleeting. Humayun’s rule was turbulent. Sher Shah Suri occupied the throne and sent him to exile in Persia. After Sher Shah’s death Humayun’s path to Delhi was clear but there were still revolts and rebellions. A major insurrection was raised in the Punjab by Sikander Shah Suri. Akbar was sent as the head of the Mughal army to quell it, and he returned victorious.
After Humayun’s sudden demise, succession could not be taken for granted. Rival claimants were surfacing. Akbar was in Kalanaur more than 300 miles away from Delhi.
And this is where Bairam Khan’s strategic genius came into play. With the concurrence of the Mughal nobility, he proclaimed Akbar to be the emperor of India. Though the nobles believed that the young prince should return to Kabul, Bairam Khan insisted that they should move to Delhi. A few days after the Kalanaur coronation, a formal one was held somewhere in Punjab with due state ceremony.
Akbar’s coronation had an air of unreality about it as he controlled no land or province. For that he had to establish his authority over Delhi, which had been occupied by Hemu. Hemu was an effective military leader, but in the Second Battle of Panipat, Akbar defeated him and captured Delhi. Thus began his fifty-year reign.
Akbar had an elaborate garden laid out at the Kalanaur site to commemmorate the event. The royal garden has perished and the structure is devoid of contextual meaning. That it survived 500 years without being vandalised is a surprise.
New constructions
In this period, many notable buildings were constructed in the area: the Hammam-Lukk-Chupp, Jamil Beg’s Tomb, Begum Sultana’s palace, Peer Budhan Shah’s Mosque and the Anarkali Bazaar on the road from Kalanaur to the coronation site. None of them exist except Jamil Beg’s Tomb, which is in a semi-decrepit state. According to ASI, floods destroyed most of them.
Akbar’s stone throne at Kalanaur maybe bare and unembellished. But its proportions are beautiful, the water tank for reflection a master-stroke, and the garden around it, by all accounts, was breathtaking. This was perhaps the beginning of real Mughal architectural splendour. Akbar later built the city of Fatehpur Sikri from red sandstone. And then, less than a century later, his grandson Shajahan would build that marvel in marble, the Taj Mahal.
The writer spends time pretending to read and write. His other interests are photography and Western classical music.
