Babur and the foundation (1526–1530)

Detail

Who Babur was

• Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur — a Turkic-Mongol ruler and sharp military planner.
• Descendant of Timur on his father's side. On his mother's side he came from Chingiz (Genghis) Khan [2].
• Born in Fergana, in modern-day Uzbekistan [3].
• He was thrown out of Samarkand (also modern Uzbekistan). Losing his home base in Central Asia pushed him to look elsewhere.
• He turned his eyes to India because the Delhi Sultanate was growing weak. A weak enemy meant an opening.

First Battle of Panipat, 1526

• Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last Lodi Sultan of Delhi.
• Fought in April 1526 — most accounts give 20 or 21 April 1526 [4].
• Babur's army was smaller than Lodi's, so he won by tactics and technology, not numbers [4].
• Gunpowder, field artillery and matchlock guns were the key. These weapons were new to Indian warfare at the time.
• How he used them (his battlefield method):
• He tied carts (arabas) together in a long line to make a wall [4].
• Behind this wall he placed cannon and matchlock men, who could fire in safety [4].
• He used the tulughma tactic (splitting the army into left, right and centre, with extra flanking units that swing around the enemy's sides) to surround the bigger Lodi army [4].

• Lodi's soldiers and elephants got jammed together and could not move or charge properly [4].

• Results of Panipat:

• It put a final end to the Delhi Sultanate and the Lodi dynasty [4].
• It founded the Mughal Empire in India [4].

Battle of Khanwa, 1527

• After Panipat, Babur's next big enemy was Rana Sanga of Mewar, the ruler who had united the Rajput clans into one front.
• Babur defeated him at the Battle of Khanwa in 1527 [5].
• Rana Sanga came with a very large force — by one estimate about 100,000 horses and 500 elephants — and led a confederacy (a group of Indian kingdoms joined together) [5][2].
• Babur again won while outnumbered [2].
• Meaning: Panipat removed the Sultanate; Khanwa removed the main Indian power that could have pushed the Mughals back out.

The Baburnama — his own memoirs

• The Baburnama ('Babur's Memoirs') is his candid autobiography — he writes honestly, including about his own faults.
• Written in Chagatai Turkic, a Central Asian literary language that is now extinct (no longer spoken) [6].
• Composed over a long stretch, roughly 1493 to 1529 [6].
• Written like a private diary, so it gives a rare close-up of daily life in Central Asia, Afghanistan and early Mughal India [6].
• Its contents include army reviews, the defeat of Rana Sanga at Khanwa (1527), and a famous natural history of India — rivers, trees, animals and seasons [6].
• An English translation, Babur-nama (English): Memoirs of Babur, is held as a rare book on the Government of India's Indian Culture Portal [7]. A copy of the Memoirs of Babur is also in the Library of Congress collection [3].

The double portrait in the Baburnama

The same book shows two very different men. UPSC likes this contrast.

• The cultured, curious observer:
• Keen eye for architecture.
• A poet himself, with a strong taste for poetry.
• Lists birds in careful detail.

• Writes closely about flora, especially fruit trees.

• The brutal conqueror:

• Slaughtered whole city populations.
• Enslaved women and children.
• Took pride in building 'towers of skulls' from the heads of the dead.

Babur's view of India

• He was homesick for Central Asia and called India a 'country of few charms'.
• But he also wrote: "Hindustan is a large country and has masses of gold and silver… There are countless artisans and workmen of every sort."
• Why this matters: India's wealth and skilled workers are the likely reason he stayed and built his empire here instead of going back to Central Asia.
• He died in 1530, only four years after Panipat. So his reign in India was short — he won the land but had little time to organise it.

Prelims Hooks

• Babur descended from Timur (father's side) and Chingiz Khan (mother's side) [2].
• Babur's birthplace: Fergana, in present-day Uzbekistan [3]. He was expelled from Samarkand.
• First Battle of Panipat: 1526 (20/21 April) — Babur vs Ibrahim Lodi; ended the Lodi dynasty and the Delhi Sultanate [4].
• Babur's Panipat tactics: tulughma formation + a wall of tied carts (arabas) shielding artillery and matchlocks [4].
• Battle of Khanwa, 1527 — Babur vs Rana Sanga of Mewar, unifier of the Rajput clans [5].
• The Baburnama was written in Chagatai Turkic, an extinct literary language [6].
• The Baburnama was composed roughly between 1493 and 1529 [6].
• Babur in the Baburnama called India a 'country of few charms' but praised its gold, silver and countless artisans.
• Babur boasted of raising 'towers of skulls' — the brutal side of the same memoir that lists birds and fruit trees.
• Babur died in 1530.

Mains Points

• Gunpowder changed Indian power politics. Babur's win at Panipat was not about army size — a smaller force beat a larger one using field artillery, matchlocks and the cart-wall + tulughma system [4]. This is the standard example of the "gunpowder empire" idea in Indian history.
• 1526 is a true break point, not just a change of ruler. Panipat ended the Delhi Sultanate and began the Mughal Empire [4]. Khanwa (1527) then broke the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga [5] — together the two battles cleared both the Afghan and Rajput blocks to Mughal rule.
• The Baburnama as a historical source — its strength and its problem. It is a first-person diary by the ruler himself, rich on nature, cities and armies [6]. But it is also self-written, so his pride in massacres and slave-taking sits beside his poetry and botany. Use it as evidence, but read it as one man's version.
• Economics explains why the Mughals stayed. Babur disliked India's climate and culture but recorded its gold, silver and skilled artisans. The pull of a rich, well-worked economy — not love of the land — turned a Central Asian exile's raid into a permanent empire.