A look back at the Mughal era at Aalekh '24

By Radhika Gupta

Bennett University hosted various Indian authors and journalists during its two-day literary carnival ‘Alekh’ amongst whom was Ms.Parvati Sharma a Delhi-based fiction writer. A lot of her works including ‘Jahangir: an intimate portrayal of a great Mughal’, ‘The story of Babur’ and ‘Akbar of India’ are based on the stories of historical figurines.

At the author discussion held at Bennett on Thursday, Ms. Parvati talked about her genuine love for writing, her enjoyment while reading literary texts like Jahangirnama- the autobiographical diary of Jahangir and the hurdles she faced in her journey. Talking specifically about the challenges of writing ‘Akbar of India’ she said- “Whenever we read of Akbar he is portrayed as a larger-than-life persona so putting him off his pedestal and seeing him as a human while writing my story was a challenge. Also, Akbarnama which is the main source of our knowledge about Akbar’s life was a biography written by his loyal courtesan, companion and biggest fan Abul Fazl which makes it highly biased.” She also spoke about how it took her about three years to complete this work due to the in-depth research required.

The session was moderated by Soumyabrata Gupta a journalist at Times Now. He asked the author insightful questions about her books and the ruling periods, religious beliefs, popularity and personalities of Indian Mughal emperors Jahangir, Akbar and Humayun in detail.

Various students of Bennett also attended the event and interacted with the author. One such first-year journalism student, Aditi Saxena, said “Through this session, I learnt about the role ofMughal queens like Noor Jahan in shaping Mughal History. The author also cleared some misconceptions I had like Akbar’s wife was named Harka Bai and not Jodha Bai and made me aware about books written by the Mughal emperors like Akbarnama and Jahangirnama. I learned a lot of new facts about history today”.

Bennett’s literary club Cerebrum and its Learning Resource Center were the teams behind the literary fest Alekh organized on 20^th and 21^st April 2024 in the university premises itself.