Babur, Baburi, and Baburnama: Was Babur Gay?

Key Points

In those leisurely days I discovered in myself a strange inclination – nay! – as the verse says, ‘I maddened and afflicted myself’ for a boy in the camp-bazar, his very name, Baburi, was amazingly appropriate. I developed a strange inclination for him—rather I made myself miserable over him.

Thus began Babur’s account of the time he met his first love.

Babur

Babur was India’s first Emperor – the one who founded the Mughal Empire. He was born in present-day Uzbekistan in 1483. He was a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, born to a Governor in the Timurid empire. He first ascended to the throne at the age of twelve.

He began his reign ruling over parts of Uzbekistan, which were soon wrested from him by an Uzbek prince. In 1504, he conquered the city of Kabul in modern-day Afghanistan before turning his attention eastward, to India.

With help from the Ottoman Empire, Babur marched into India and defeated the last Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. In 1527 he furthered his conquest, defeating Rana Sanga, the Maharana of Mewar, at the Battle of Khanwa – thus establishing the Mughal Empire in India.

His reign, however, was short lived. Babur died soon after in Agra in 1530, at the age of 47, leaving his heir, Humayun, to succeed him. Babur is remembered today as one of the more temperate and open minded Mughal Emperors.

Though he had a religious and traditional childhood, customary for a prince like him, he grew more tolerant over time. During his reign in India, he promoted religious coexistence within his kingdom and in his court – time even saw his own beliefs mellow from a strict Sunni philosophy to a more humanistic stance.

Babur was a great patron of the arts and sciences, promoting them in his court, and displayed a great love for poetry and literature as well. He composed countless couplets, ghazals, and poems over his short life. But his most famous work is his journal-turned-autobiography, Baburnama.

The Baburnama

Compared to the Mughals who came after him, and the Sultans that came before, Babur is said to have lived an ascetic life. He obsessed himself with books and art and was bashful in all his relationships.

He had many wives and many children, as customary for a ruler like him to ensure his lineage. But over time questions have arisen about the nature of these relationships. They were necessary, yes, but were they voluntary? Babur seemed to have enjoyed a close acquaintance with his many wives, but was this intimacy romantic? Or perhaps platonic?

The Baburnama sheds some light on the matter, talking about Babur’s first wife, Aisha-sultan Begum:

Though I was not ill-disposed towards her, yet, this being my first marriage, out of modesty and bashfulness, I used to see her once in 10, 15, or 20 days. Later on, when even my first inclination did not last, my bashfulness increased. Then my mother Khänīm used to send me, once a month or every 40 days, with driving and driving, dunnings and worry.

Babur recorded his ideas and beliefs, his poetry and prose, and everything he considered worth remembering from his life, in his journal. This was unusual for a Mughal prince – to write down his most private thoughts and memories so plainly without concealment. Of course, Babur never made his journal public himself. It was his grandson Akbar who commissioned the work to be translated and published as the Baburnama.

And today, his life, and his accounts of it, have left many of us wondering, was Babur gay?

See Also: India’s First Gay Magazine, Bombay Dost: A Revolutionary Voice of Hope for the LGBTQ Community in the 1990s

Babur and Baburi

Baburi Andijani was a slave-boy, running errands and doing odd jobs at a camp market in Khujand, Uzbekistan when Babur first saw him. The year was 1499, Babur was 17 at the time, and Baburi, only 14 or 15. Recalling their first encounter, Babur writes:

At that time I composed Persian couplets, one or two at a time; this is one of them:

‘May one be so distraught and devastated by love as I; May no beloved be so pitiless and careless as you.’

The young prince seemed to be taken.

Occasionally Baburi came to me, but I was so bashful that I could not look him in the face, much less converse freely with him. In my excitement and agitation I could not thank him for coming, much less complain of his leaving. Who could bear to demand the ceremonies of fealty?

Reading this, it is hard not to think back to one’s own childhood crushes, full of fawn-eyed adoration and word-ending embarrassments.

One day, during this time of infatuation, a group was accompanying me down a lane, and all at once I found myself face-to-face with the boy. I was so ashamed I almost went to pieces. There was no possibility of looking straight at him or of speaking coherently. With a hundred embarrassments and difficulties I got past him.

A couplet of Muhammad Salih's came into my mind:

‘I am embarrassed every time I see my beloved. My companions are looking at me, but my gaze is elsewhere.’

His description of young love seems to clear all doubt from the mind – the way he could think of no one else, the way he “wandered bareheaded and barefoot” lost in thought, the way he had no control over his feelings.

Sometimes I went out alone like a madman to the hills and wilderness, sometimes I roamed through the orchards and lanes of town, neither walking nor sitting within my own volition, restless in going and staying.

‘Nor power to go was mine, nor power to stay. I was just what you made me, o thief of my heart.’

Babur, it turned out, would not be able to let go of his love for Baburi. He employed the boy to his company before departing the market, assigning him to work at the stables. Baburi would accompany him from then on, on his conquest in Kabul, his campaigns across Turkestan, and on his march to India.

The exact details of their relations during this time are not known, but having recorded their encounter years later, Babur’s feelings are not likely to have diminished – even after Baburi was killed in 1526, at the Battle of Panipat.

Babur wrote a couplet the following year:

I deeply desired the riches of this Indian land; What is the profit since this land enslaves me?
Left so far from you, Babur has not perished; Excuse me, my friend, for this is my mistake.

[Rh/DS]

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