Chopping of hand is brutal, barbaric and anti-Islam

TO A question - �Is Akbar an ideal for you in any way ?� in an interview with Professor Gauri Viswanathan of Columbia University the acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie replied, �No, I worry about the idealism of Akbar, because a lot of that is backwards projection. We want to have a liberal, tolerant, almost democratic man in the 16 th century. But Akbar was a despot. He was a man jealous of his power, and exercised it.

So I think what interested me was to write about that conflict in him: between the self that was disputatious and open-minded and the other self that did not anyone to argue with him. Of course he tried so hard to break down the barriers created between the people of India - the barriers created by their different systems. Well, hes attractive because he has open-mindedness on the subject.