The Overthrow of Bairam Khan
By 1560 AD, Akbar, as a young sovereign of eighteen years, had outgrown the regency and the regent. Openly encouraged by his mother, Hamida Bano, and other members of the royal household, Akbar abruptly dismissed Bairam Khan. The latter, after some hesitation, offered his resignation and complied with the royal orders to proceed to Mecca.
En route, however, he raised a half-hearted revolt. He was, however, easily defeated and subsequently pardoned. On his way to Mecca, he was murdered (January 1561 AD) by a Lohani Afghan. His minor son, Abdur Rahim, was brought to the imperial court and later became a great poet and an important noble in the Mughal court, Akbar had got rid of Bairam Khan but failed to shake off the shackles of regency for the next two years.
From 1562 AD onwards, for the next forty-one years, Akbar remained his own adviser and the entire state authority was vested in him. Akbar, overtly ambitious and equally far-sighted, had clearly discerned that the consolidation of his territories was meaningless unless various territories of India were cemented into one political whole and so set off on a series of conquests.
He conquered northern India from Agra to Gujarat and then from Agra to Bengal and the borders of Assam. Next he strengthened his northwest frontier and then proceeded to subdue the Deccan. He conquered Malwa from Baz Bahadur (1561), Garhkatanga (Rani Durgavati and her minor son, Bir Narayan, died fighting the Mughals) and Gondwana (1564), Gujarat (1572-73 – he built the famous Buland Darwaza at Fatehpur Sikri in commemoration of this victory), Bihar and Bengal (1574-76), Kabul (1581), Baluchistan (1586), Sind (1591), Orissa (1592), Kandahar (1595), Khandesh and a part of Ahmadnagar from Chand Bibi (1593-1601).
In 1585, Akbar moved to the northwest frontier in order to foil the attempts of the ambitious Abdullah Khan Uzbek to seize Kabul and stayed there until Abdullah Khan’s death in 1598. During his stay in the area till 1598, Akbar conquered Kashmir (1586), Baluchistan and Sind (1590-91) and subdued the Afghan tribes and a religious movement called the Raushaniyas.
Akbar’s early military operations against the Yusufzai tribes was unsuccessful, and in 1586 his trusted friend Birbal was killed by the Yusufzais. Early in Akbar’s reign, the Shah of Iran’ had captured Kandahar, so Akbar sent an army under his famous general Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan. The governor of Kandahar surrendered, and it became a part of the Mughal empire.
The Mughal boundaries, extending from Sind, Baluchistan, Kabul, and Kashmir to the Hindukush, were the strongest line of defence that had ever existed in India, and no other Indian ruler ever controlled such a formidable frontier as Akbar.
Akbar’s Rule And Rajput Policy
Akbar’s treatment of the Rajputs was not the outcome of thoughtless sentiment but was a result of a deliberate policy. based on the principles of enlightened self-interest, recognition of merit, justice and fair play. Akbar had realised at an early age that most of his Muslim nobles were not loyal while the Rajputs who were the masters of the large strategic region of Rajputana were renowned for their valour and fidelity, could be depended upon and converted as friends.
So he accepted the submission of Raja Bharamal Kachchhwaha of Amber who married his eldest daughter to Akbar. Raja Bhagawan Das (Raja Bharamal’s heir) and Man Singh (his nephew and adopted son) were subsequently given senior positions in the imperial hierarchy, One by one all the Rajput states submitted to Akbar and they were either given compensation or were absorbed into Mughal service.
But the Ranas of Mewar continued to defy Mughal suzerainty despite several defeats, particularly the one in the battle of Haldighati (1576) in which Rana Pratap was severely defeated by the Mughal army under Man Singh. But Rana Pratap recaptured a large part of the area and Mewar was only annexed during Jahangir’s reign.