The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.197

v4.c16.197

Difference of religion was the chief bar between the nations of India and the ruling class, and to remove this Akbar first announced his adherence to the principle of *sulh-i-kull*, universal peace or toleration. He was so far ahead of his age that it was not surprising that he was misunderstood, for in that age toleration, in the East as in the West, was the symbol not of an enlightened and humane mind but of laxity of principle, for if a man would tolerate error he could not love truth; but toleration would have served Akbar well had he remained content with it as a means to his end. Unfortunately he lost patience with the obstinacy of the orthodox and was persuaded by self-seekers to assume the spiritual as well as the temporal sovereignty over his peoples, and, ere long, to violate the conditions under which his spiritual sovereignty had been accepted, to abjure Islām, and to found a faith of his own. This was not, as one writer has described it, merely “an association of students and free-thinkers who had transcended the barriers of faith and creed, and shaken off the tyrannous yoke of age-long customs”; it was a new sect, with minute rules of ritual and belief, and the acceptance of it was urged on all the leading men in the state; but it was condemned by Hindus and Muslims, Sunnī and Shīah alike. Akbar perceived that all his subjects would not accept Christianity, Islām or Zoroastrianism, and knew that they could not, even if they would, enter the fold of Hinduism. He believed that he could invent a faith better than any of these, a faith which would be accepted by all, except perhaps an obstinate minority of his subjects. This was certainly, as Dr Vincent Smith describes it, "the outcome of ridiculous vanity, a monstrous growth of unrestrained autocracy", and Akbar was bitterly disappointed. But we must not lose sight of his object, which was to make all his subjects one people. The object was noble; the means adopted for attaining it absurd.