Why is Taimur foreign and evil but Sikandar is not?

Just when I thought that social media would stop throwing up articles on Kareena Kapoor Khan’s pregnancy glow and how elegantly she carried herself during those nine months, things took an ugly turn and the Bollywood A-lister and her husband Saif Ali Khan, were in the throes of a fresh controversy (about which how much they care is yet to be known). The controversy now is centred on the name that Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan have given their new born son — Taimur Ali Khan.

That junior Khan would dare to do something like this after indulging clearly in "love jihad" (an elitist version of it, if you will) and that Kareena Kapoor could be brainwashed into going along with this sinister plan has undoubtedly enraged many Indians, who ask righteously: “Why deliberately choose a name that can hurt sentiments, when so many nice and unique names could be chosen from?”

Is this not an attempt to glorify the cruel invader from central Asia who wiped swathes of population in his invasion of India? Interestingly, a name like Sikandar, Hindi for Alexander, raises nary an eyebrow in India, and holds a different meaning in our heads. Famous Greek ruler Alexander attempted India’s invasion around 327 BC, and yet it is unlikely that Anupam Kher’s stepson Sikandar Kher, for example, would have faced many raised eyebrows and questions about the origins of his name. That the names Taimur and Sikandar do not arouse the same rage tells us something about how we see things around, knowingly and unknowingly. Alexander is not a hated figure in Indian history, while Timur definitely is.

Titles like Sikandar Mahaan (Alexander the Great) are found in the description of the Greek ruler in old textbooks and on the internet, and Taimur Lang (Timur the lame) has been the label that stuck with Timur. One does not need to have a refined knowledge of language to understand how vastly different are the impressions of both the names.

While the tales of Taimur’s invasion talk of only destruction and desolation, with around one lakh dying in Delhi alone, a quick glance at Alexander’s invasion of India tells us how the contact was more peaceful, which resulted in deaths of some 22,000 Indians. Indeed the destruction and desolation caused by Timur took a century to be undone, so much so that Jawaharlal Nehru talks vividly about his cruelty in the Discovery of India. But Timur was not the first - let alone the last to invade India.

The multiple invasions by Afghan ruler Nadir Shah and later by his general Ahmad Shah Abdali also caused vast amounts of wealth being taken away and endless number of men dying on the battlefield - and in the raids by the Afghan armies. And yet neither of the two names — Nadir or Ahmad, would cause much anxiety in today’s India.

This is purely because the names have been Indianised over the centuries. Similarly, the name Sikandar has become a part of Indian culture, so much so that Amitabh Bachchan’s song in Muqaddar ka Sikandar exalts the man as the ultimate victor. Invasions are always about wars, and deaths and ultimately treaties with the local rulers if the invader seeks to continue reaping the rewards of his invasion after he is gone. But the difference in how we view two foreign invaders depends a lot on how history has been handed down to us and more importantly on our present world view.

There is no denying that Timur’s status as the ancestor of the Mughals (who reffered to themselves as Timurids and not Mughals), and Alexander’s western roots also determines our views about the two historical figures.

The present political discourse around India’s pre-colonial past exists in two camps — those who view the Muslim rule as a break with the golden "Hindu" rule, and those who don’t. Any figure that’s a part of this unjust Muslim invasion of India has to be hated and all memories of this figure erased.

All this is not to exalt a man who indulged in a cold-blooded genocide of scores of indigenous people of the Indian subcontinent, but to drive the point home that past exists in another world altogether. In all probability the choosing of this name by the Bollywood couple would have been pre-decided.

Like any normal couple, they would have their reasons and rationale behind choosing the name, which we may never know (apart from the fact that Taimur is Arabic for iron and Saif means sword).

But this self-inflicted misery about what someone decided to name their kid seems immature at best. It’s hard to imagine two learned people associated with arts to have a sinister intention of glorifying a 14th century ruler, all at the cost of facing the ire of so many self-righteous Indians.

It’s worth remembering that kings and conquerors have all been murderers and they have all done it without batting an eyelid. Who we hate more and continue to hate are defined by our respective attitudes to history and the present.

Also read - Glad that Saif-Kareena named their son Taimur (it's not lame)