Ira Mukhoty > Quotes

“They were pragmatic about women who ‘fell’ to an enemy, unlike their contemporaries, the Rajputs, who invested so heavily in their women’s sexual chastity that death, through sati, was preferred to ‘loss of honour’ to an enemy.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“The honour of Mughal men was not as irretrievably bound to the sexual chastity of their women.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“But the journey to the building of the Taj Mahal is not straightforward. It involves monstrous egos, a flawless aesthetic vision, profligacy and also, fragile as the bulbul’s song, love.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“Today, in a world fatally fractured along religious lines, it seems inconceivable that in the sixteenth century an emperor worked so hard to promote religious harmony and reverence for all faiths.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Akbar proposed that ‘all religions are either equally true or equally illusory’.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Because the Mughals did not follow a system of primogeniture, any Mughal prince, sufficiently ambitious and talented, could hope to ascend the throne one day.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“Indeed, the Mughal women will be better educated than most of their contemporaries anywhere in the world.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“The Rahimi is one of the largest vessels of any kind to sail the Indian seas.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“Unlike his studious father, fascinated by the occult, Akbar can never be made to sit and study, preferring by far the company of his racing pigeons, dogs, horses and companions in arms. He never will learn to read and will remain effectively illiterate, the only Mughal padshah to be so, possibly due to his hyperactive nature exacerbated by extreme dyslexia.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“It is through Gulbadan’s account, and only hers, that we can see Babur as a loving father, a tempestuous family man and a devoted husband. The fiery warrior or the marauding opportunist is for the other biographers.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“Akbar raised the minimum age for marriage to sixteen years for boys and fourteen for girls, and instructed the kotwals to establish the ages of the bride and groom before allowing weddings to take place.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“The only way to maintain the illusion of this increasing sanctity is to veil, to sequester and to hide the women behind the anonymity of the high walls of Fatehpur Sikri and the grandeur of their titles.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“Under the vaulting sky in this place where all stories end, the Woman suddenly finds she can’t walk any more. Each step has been an agony of effort and will and now she can do it no more.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Song of Draupadi

“Humayun though”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Sher Shah the Lion King, no stranger to matters of gallantry himself, is so impressed by the valour of this one lone woman that he not only leaves the grave unmolested but sends an escort with Bibi Mubarika and has Babur’s remains transported to Kabul, where they lie today in the Bagh-e-Babur.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

“There was no universal language, Akbar realized, having put the idea to the test.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Krishna sees her looking at him and Draupadi nods slightly at him and then looks back at the pyres, for she has understood a small, insidious truth. She remembers their precipitous flight from the camp in the middle of the night while her sons and brothers were left behind to be murdered in their sleep. There is no Vrishni pyre at this mass funeral and while all the major clans of the river valleys are laid low, Krishna's clansmen are unscathed. Moreover, the only heir with a claim to the throne of Hastinapur to have survived is the secret that Uttara hides in her frail body. So Krishna's nephew is dead but through his hastily arranged marriage to Uttara, the clan of the Vrishnis finally has a claim to kingship and the eternal kingmakers will at last be rajas.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Song of Draupadi: A Novel

“urged people to learn about others’ religions, so as to dispel intolerant prejudices against each other and develop, instead, a sense of empathy. This, Akbar was convinced, would lead to a spirit of universal peace and active tolerance, which he called sulh kul. All religions, he believed, were either equally true or equally untrue and so deserved equal respect and protection.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Rembrandt would be influenced by the luminous paintings of the Mughal court, the world would get its first translation of the Mahabharat into Persian through the Razmnama, and the West would discover the Upanishads through the translations of Dara Shukoh, Akbar’s great-grandson.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“By 1404, when he returned to Samarkand, Timur had sacked Baghdad and Delhi, marched up to Moscow, overrun Tiflis, Aleppo, and Damascus, and had accepted offers of submission from the Sultan of Egypt and the co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire, and was even contemplating the conquest of China.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal

“Harkha Bai herself had a profound interest in the region as did her entire family and, as for Salim, Braj was his mother tongue.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal