Din-e-Ilahi: Akbar and Abul Fazal’s Vision of Secular Governance

Around 1582 CE, the Mughal emperor Akbar introduced one of the most debated experiments in the history of political thought: a spiritual order known as Din-e-Ilahi, the “Religion of God.” Working closely with his chief ideologue and chronicler Abul Fazl, Akbar attempted something audacious for his time. He tried to build a framework of governance that did not derive its authority from any single religion, but instead rested on reason, universal ethics, and loyalty to a just sovereign. Many scholars see in this experiment an early, if imperfect, anticipation of what we would now call secular governance. To understand how a sixteenth-century Muslim monarch arrived at such an idea, we need to look at the political problem he faced, the philosophy Abul Fazl built around it, and the controversy it still provokes.

The problem Akbar was trying to solve 🔗

The Mughal court of the late sixteenth century governed an enormous and religiously diverse population. Hindu rajas, Muslim nobles, Persian scholars, Jain monks, Zoroastrians, and Christian missionaries all lived under one administration. As ruler of this varied empire, Akbar faced the challenge of uniting people of very different faiths without alienating the majority of his subjects, who were not Muslim.

Traditional Islamic kingship offered a ready-made answer, but a limiting one. A ruler was expected to govern according to the Sharia, and the religious scholars, the ulama, claimed the authority to interpret that law. This arrangement created two problems for Akbar. First, governing a largely non-Muslim society strictly through Islamic law was politically difficult. Second, it made the emperor dependent on the clergy for legitimacy. Akbar wanted neither limitation.

The Ibadat Khana experiment 🔗

The intellectual groundwork began in 1575, when Akbar established the Ibadat Khana, or House of Worship, at Fatehpur Sikri. Here scholars of different faiths were invited to debate theological ideas in the emperor’s presence, with Abul Fazl helping to organise and shape these discussions. Over years of listening to learned representatives of every major religion argue their case, Akbar drew a striking conclusion. He came to believe that no single religion could claim a monopoly on truth. This realisation is widely cited as the philosophical seed from which Din-e-Ilahi later grew.

The Mahzar: shifting authority from the clergy to the emperor 🔗

Before Din-e-Ilahi could take shape, Akbar needed to free himself from the religious establishment. In 1579 he issued a decree often called the Mahzar (or Mazhar), which Abul Fazl is believed to have helped draft. Through this decree, Akbar gained considerable authority to interpret Islamic law himself whenever the legal scholars disagreed among themselves.

The Mahzar did not declare Akbar a prophet, nor did it claim he could override the clear commands of the Quran. What it did was crucial in practical terms: it made the emperor, rather than the ulama, the final arbiter in disputed matters of law. This was the institutional turning point. Once the sovereign, not the clergy, held the deciding voice, the path was open for a framework of governance that stood above any particular religious authority.

Abul Fazl’s theory of kingship 🔗

Din-e-Ilahi cannot be understood apart from the political theory that Abul Fazl developed to justify Akbar’s rule. As the author of the Akbarnama and its administrative third volume, the Ain-i-Akbari, Abul Fazl was not merely a court historian. He was, in effect, the chief theorist of Mughal sovereignty.

The divine light and the meaning of Padshah 🔗

Abul Fazl argued that kingship was a gift from God. He described royalty as a light emanating from God, a ray from the sun of divinity, drawing on the Persian and Sufi-influenced “theory of light” associated with the philosopher Suhrawardi. In this view, the just ruler received divine radiance directly, and everyone was expected to submit to one who possessed it.

This had a sharp political consequence. If the king’s legitimacy flowed straight from God, then the ruler did not need the clergy to validate his rule. Abul Fazl also analysed the very word Padshah: “Pad” signified stability and “shah” meant owner, so a Padshah was a powerful, established ruler who could not be removed by anyone. The emperor became the ultimate authority on all social, economic, political, and judicial matters.

Divine right balanced by social contract 🔗

Abul Fazl’s theory was more sophisticated than simple absolutism. Alongside the divine origin of kingship, he also accepted the idea of a social contract as the basis of sovereignty. He pictured a disordered society that needed a sovereign to bring order, and argued that the ruler, in return for obedience and a share of resources, was bound to protect his subjects and promote their welfare.

The result was a model sometimes described as “liberal absolutism.” The king held vast power, but that power carried heavy duties: maintaining justice, fostering harmony, encouraging reason and science, and caring for the wellbeing of all subjects regardless of their faith. Divine light legitimised the ruler, but it did not release him from responsibility.

Sulh-i-Kul: peace with all 🔗

The bridge between Abul Fazl’s theory of kingship and the practice of inclusive governance was the principle of Sulh-i-Kul, an Arabic term meaning “universal peace” or “peace with all.” Devised by Abul Fazl and implemented by Akbar, this principle drew on a Sufi mystic idea of harmony among all communities.

Sulh-i-Kul was not vague sentiment. It functioned as a working state policy with concrete features: equal treatment of all subjects irrespective of religion, freedom to practise one’s faith, and the conviction that religious strife was a chief source of human suffering. Crucially, it liberated the temporal sovereign from the dictates of any one faith or its theologians. The ruler could now govern as a “godly king,” combining temporal authority with a duty to act as a moral and spiritual guide to the entire nation, not just to its Muslim members.

The administrative consequences 🔗

This ethos translated into policy. Akbar abolished discriminatory measures such as the jizya, the tax historically levied on non-Muslims, and the pilgrimage tax on Hindus. He promoted Hindus, including Rajputs, to high office, and patronised the translation of Sanskrit texts. Scholars have seen these steps as laying the foundation for a tolerant, broadly secular state policy and a reduction of clerical influence over government. Trade, revenue assessment, and military organisation were administered on grounds of efficiency and merit rather than religious identity.

So what exactly was Din-e-Ilahi? 🔗

Din-e-Ilahi itself was the most personal and limited expression of this larger vision. It was syncretic, drawing on Islamic, Hindu, Christian, Zoroastrian, and other beliefs to create something that transcended individual dogmas. It emphasised purity of individual life, ethical conduct, and devotion to a higher truth over ritual and orthodoxy.

Several features make it clear that Din-e-Ilahi was more an ethical order than a conventional religion. It had no prophet, no place of worship, no religious text, and no priestly class. Membership was voluntary and tiny. The Ain-i-Akbari lists only around eighteen people who formally adopted it, and Akbar reportedly never forced anyone to join nor tried to expand its numbers. Notable members included Birbal and Abul Fazl himself. New members pledged loyalty to Akbar as their spiritual guide, the Imam-i-Adil or just leader.

This is why many historians prefer to describe Din-e-Ilahi as a spiritual discipleship programme rather than a new faith. Its purpose was less to convert and more to bind together the empire’s intellectual and political elite around a shared ethic of tolerance and loyalty to a just, divinely sanctioned ruler.

Was this really “secularism”? 🔗

Applying the modern word “secular” to a sixteenth-century empire requires caution, since the term itself is anachronistic for that age. Akbar did not separate religion from the state in the way a modern constitution might. If anything, he fused spiritual and temporal authority in his own person.

Yet the substance of what he built does anticipate important secular principles. By placing reason above orthodoxy, treating subjects equally regardless of faith, and refusing to let any single religion dictate the terms of governance, Akbar’s system foreshadowed ideas later associated with the secular state. Some scholars frame this as an “Islamicate theology of religions,” a religiously grounded justification for pluralism that arrived at tolerant conclusions by a very different route than modern liberal arguments. Sulh-i-Kul in particular has been described as an early form of secularism in South Asian history.

The orthodox backlash 🔗

Not everyone admired the experiment. Various pious Muslims, including the influential Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, condemned the order as blasphemy against Islam. The contemporary chronicler Badayuni was bitterly critical, and Jesuit observers offered their own suspicious interpretations. Critics accused Akbar of apostasy and of inventing a heretical new religion. Modern historians such as Iqtidar Alam Khan, by contrast, have read the policy as a deliberate move toward liberalism and inclusion, prompted partly by the rise of a composite nobility of Indian Muslims and Rajputs.

Why it still matters 🔗

Din-e-Ilahi did not survive Akbar’s death in 1605, and it never gained a meaningful following. But its underlying ideas proved more durable than the order itself. The principles of religious tolerance, rational governance, and concern for the welfare of all subjects continued to shape Mughal policy for generations. In the longer run, the vision of a shared identity that transcended religious division would echo in the thinking of later reformers and nationalist leaders who sought to imagine a unified polity for a deeply plural society. For students of political thought, Abul Fazl and Akbar’s experiment remains a powerful early case study in how rulers attempt to legitimise authority and hold a diverse population together.

What do you think? Was Din-e-Ilahi a genuine step toward secular governance, or simply a clever tool to concentrate power in the emperor’s hands by sidelining the clergy? And can a system that fuses divine authority with the ruler ever be truly “secular” in the modern sense?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din-i_Ilahi
2. https://www.gktoday.in/din-i-illahi/
3. https://www.gktoday.in/abul-fazal/
4. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/university-of-delhi/indian-political-thought-i/abul-fazl-a-short-note/15319333
5. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/indraprastha-college-for-women/history-honours/abul-fazls-notion-of-kingship/59792680
6. https://lotusarise.com/abul-fazls-concept-of-monarchy/
7. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/university-of-delhi/ba-honours-political-science/abul-fazl-theory-of-kingship/17540014
8. https://unacademy.com/content/upsc/study-material/medieval-india/policy-of-sulh-i-kul/
9. https://historywithahmad.com/religious-policy-of-akbar/
10. https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/history/the-mughal-empire/din-i-ilahi/
11. https://lotusarise.com/din-i-ilahi-and-its-critique-upsc/
12. https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/history/the-mughal-empire/sulh-i-kul/