Piety, laity and Royalty:Jains under the Mughals in the first half of the seventeenth century

Abstract

This article explores the ‘community–state relationship’ during post-Akbar Mughal rule, a largely marginalised arena in the existing historiography. Contrary to Akbar’s religious–spiritual discourse with Jain ascetics, the second phase of Jain–Mughal engagement under Jahangir and Shahjahan saw a materialistic engagement with the Jain merchants who were slowly gaining eminence as the representatives of their community in their interaction with Mughal royalty. However, Mughal policies of social negotiations with the Jains more or less continued amidst minor hiccups, that is, two banishment orders issued by Jahangir against the Jains. The situational context and content of various farmans issued by Shahjahan, Murad Baksh and Aurangzeb as well as imperial actions argue in favour of a basic continuation in the policies of the Mughal state to negotiate social harmony and to expand its own social base. The ideological underpinning of the Mughal emperors into their relations with the Jains reflects the subtleties of the making of Mughal India necessary to understand the complexities of the period under review. In the larger context, this fusion symbolises the ethos of a composite culture as a routine matter of the medieval society even under an autocratic rule.