Excerpt

Mughal Endowments in Ajmer and Pushkar, 1560s–1700

Generous patronage of religious institutions was a core element of the ethics of kingship, common to both Hindu and Islamic ideals of rule in precolonial South Asia. Kings and emperors granted village revenues and gifted valuable items to temples, mosques, Sufi shrines, Hindu ashrams, ascetics and prominent religious scholars and leaders. In exchange for this largesse, religious leaders and institutions offered prayers for the longevity of the ruler and state. These patterns of patronage are recognisable across South Asia in a variety of locales and time periods, from royal patronage of temples in the twelfth-century Chola Empire in southern India, to the construction of mosques in Sultanate and Mughal cities, and Maratha support of Brahmins in Varanasi in the eighteenth century. In Rajasthan, patronage of religious institutions from 1500 to 1800 took place within this broader context.

The shared ethic of patronage interlinked religion and politics in significant ways. First, such patronage was related to claims to sovereignty and, in particular, to the notion of the ruler as benefactor and protector. Through their support of religious sites, rulers linked their worldly power to the otherworldly power of deities and saints. Religious patronage also created a body of elite religious leaders and scholars who had loyalties to the empire, or, as Mughal emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) memorably put it, an ‘army of prayer’.1 Second, rising rulers often took over the patronage at sites favoured by prior rulers, leading to common practices and sustained support for these sites even in the face of rapid political change between Mughal, Rajput and Maratha authorities. And yet, new patrons often supported different factions of religious specialists within an institution than their predecessors, hence contributing to conflicts within local religious communities. Religious support etched political conflict into local communities because of how closely it identified rulers with particular cities and institutions. In this sense, patronage became a realm of political competition with profound local impacts.

These patterns of patronage are clearly visible in the history of the Rajasthani pilgrimage centres of Ajmer and Pushkar, both of which received the greatest amounts of support, extending also to other Rajasthani pilgrimage centres. This chapter examines the patronage of Ajmer and Pushkar by the Mughals between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century. When the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) embraced the Chishti Sufis, rather than the Naqshbandi Sufi lineage that had been favoured by his ancestors, he gener- ously patronised the city of Ajmer, home to the dargah (tomb shrine) of the Sufi luminary Khwaja Muʿin al-Din Chishti (d. 1236), who is considered to be the founder of the Chishti lineage in South Asia. Throughout the next century, Mughal emperors and nobles continued to give grants to religious institutions in Ajmer and nearby Pushkar. Mughal patronage patterns tied the shrine administration to imperial politics and reshaped the politics of Ajmer and its environs. In doing so, these urban centres became the administrative and symbolic centres of Mughal authority in Rajasthan.

1 Jahangir used this phrase when he confirmed all prior grants to ulama shortly after his ascension to the throne. See Jahangir, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. W.M. Thackston, Washington, DC 1999, 27.