Published Paper Details:

Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), a Central Asian prince of Timurid descent, is best known as the founder of the Mughal Empire in India. Before seizing Hindust?n (as he called the Indian subcontinent), Babur spent his youth fighting to hold or regain his ancestral lands in Fergh?n? and Samarkand. Eventually driven out by the rise of the Uzbek Shaibanids, he conquered Kabul in 1504 and reigned there for two decades. In 1526, Babur defeated the Delhi Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat and established himself as ruler of northern India. Throughout these tumultuous campaigns, Babur kept a detailed diary in his native Chagatai Turki language. This memoir, later known as the Baburnama (or Tuzk-e-Babri), offers an intimate first-person narrative of his life and conquests, including vivid observations on India. Translated into English by Beveridge in the early 20th century, the Baburnama remains an invaluable primary source for understanding the man behind the conquests and his perceptions of the newly conquered land. Babur's account of Hindust?n is especially intriguing as a foreign outsider's lens on India during the early 16th century. Unlike indigenous chronicles, the Baburnama provides a candid, if heavily biased, commentary by a Central Asian Muslim king looking upon Indian society, geography, and polity with fresh eyes. This study examines Babur's perception of India as documented in the Baburnama, with a particular focus on how he justified the conquest and portrayed the land and its inhabitants. We will analyze Babur's own words to understand his motivations for invading Hindustan, his descriptive "idea of Hindustan" (both its beauties and defects), and the religious-racial ideology under-girding his narrative. We will also assess how Babur depicts his Indian adversaries (Lodi Afghans, Rajput kings, etc.) and consider what is omitted or glossed over in his telling. We shall arrive at an informed assessment of Babur's personality and ideological orientation as revealed in the Baburnama, and reflect on what his view of "Hindustan" tells us about the nature of conquest, memory-making, and power in early modern Asia.