Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2020 recruitment test, advertisement 421. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, NMJX-U-GTA); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

What did Ain-i-Akbari seek to promote within the frontiers of the Mughal State ?

(a)Social disharmony influenced by the whims of the nobility
(b)Cessation of the provincial units from central rule
(c)Social harmony with the support of a strong ruling class
(d)Establishment of a rule of rural republics by overthrowing the Mughal suzerainty

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) Social harmony with the support of a strong ruling class. The Ain-i-Akbari is the third and final volume of the Akbarnama, the official history of Akbar's reign written in Persian by Abu'l Fazl, one of the emperor's closest advisers, and completed in the late 1590s after several revisions. The first two volumes narrate the dynasty and the reign; the Ain is different in kind — an account of the empire as a working institution, arranged in books on the imperial household, the army and the nobility, the provinces with their revenue statistics, the beliefs and learning of the people of India, and the emperor's own sayings. Behind that arrangement lies a political argument, and it is the argument the question is asking about. Abu'l Fazl presents the Mughal realm as one that binds together peoples of many faiths, regions and lineages under a sovereign whose authority comes from a divine light and whose duty is to protect the essentials of his subjects' existence — life, property, honour and faith — in return for obedience and a share of what they produce. The principle he gives that vision is sulh-i kul, absolute or universal peace: not indifference to religion but a rule under which no community may be persecuted for its beliefs and none may attack another or undermine the authority of the state. The instrument through which the vision is realised is the ruling class. The nobility described in the Ain is deliberately composite — Turanis, Iranis, Afghans, Indian Muslims, Rajputs and others — ranked and paid through the mansab system of zat and sawar, moved between offices and provinces, and held to the emperor rather than to any region or faction. A strong, mixed, loyal nobility is what makes harmony among subjects enforceable rather than merely hoped for. That is the state the Ain sets out to describe and to justify within the frontiers of the empire.

Why the others are wrong

(a)Social disharmony influenced by the whims of the nobility — The exact inversion of the work's purpose. The Ain is an official chronicle written by the emperor's own adviser, and its business is to present the empire as ordered, lawful and harmonious. Its treatment of the nobility is a treatment of discipline: ranks fixed in zat and sawar, salaries and contingents specified, officers transferred between provinces and assignments so that no noble struck root in one place, and the emperor as the single point to which all of them are bound. Faction and personal whim are what the arrangements described in the book exist to prevent.
(b)Cessation of the provincial units from central rule — The opposite of what the Ain records, and the volume is the best evidence against it. Its longest book is a province-by-province account of the empire — the subas created in Akbar's reorganisation, each broken into sarkars and parganas, with figures for area, revenue, crops, castes and local particulars — and each province is run by a set of centrally appointed officers, the governor, the diwan for revenue, the bakhshi for the army, the sadr, the qazi and the kotwal. The point of collecting all of it in one place was to make the provinces legible from the centre, not to loosen them from it.
(d)Establishment of a rule of rural republics by overthrowing the Mughal suzerainty — Two different ideas fused into one wrong answer. The Ain, an official history commissioned by the emperor, could hardly propose overthrowing his own suzerainty; and villages appear in it as units of assessment and revenue, described through their land, crops and castes, not as self-governing republics. The picture of the Indian village as a 'little republic' having nearly everything it wants within itself is a nineteenth-century British one, put into circulation by Charles Metcalfe's minute of 1830 and taken up by later writers; it belongs to the colonial debate about land settlement, not to Abu'l Fazl.

Concept

Court chronicles are a source with a purpose, and reading them means separating what they record from what they argue. The Akbarnama, written by Abu'l Fazl at the emperor's command, does both. As a record it is indispensable: the Ain-i-Akbari, its third volume, is the closest thing to a statistical survey of sixteenth-century India, giving revenue figures, measured areas, crop rates, currency, prices, the organisation of the household, the army, the workshops and the provinces, alongside long accounts of Indian philosophy, sciences and social custom. As an argument it advances a theory of sovereignty. Kingship is presented as a light received from God, making the emperor the father of his people and the guarantor of their life, property, honour and faith; sulh-i kul makes peace among communities the working principle of that guarantee; and the nobility, recruited from every group in the empire and organised through mansabs, is the machinery by which it is enforced. This is why the Mughal state under Akbar is described as one that sought integration rather than uniformity: Rajput chiefs were brought into the imperial service and into marriage alliances, the jizya and the pilgrim tax were abolished, translation of Sanskrit works into Persian was sponsored, and religious debate was held in the Ibadat Khana. Historians also use the Ain critically — its totals do not always add up, some regions are covered thinly, and prices and figures were not uniformly updated — and knowing both its value and its limits is what an examination question about 'what it sought to promote' is ultimately testing.

The medieval history that appears on EPFO papers is thin but predictable, and the Mughals supply most of it: Akbar's administrative system, the mansabdari and jagirdari arrangements, the land revenue settlement associated with Todar Mal, the religious policy, and the chronicles that record them. Questions are usually one line with terse options, and this one is unusual in offering options long enough to be reasoned about. The technique it rewards is to ask who wrote the source and for whom: an official chronicle produced inside the court will present order, legitimacy and harmony, so options describing disorder, secession or the overthrow of the dynasty can be set aside before any detail about the book is recalled.

Key facts

The Ain-i-Akbari is the third volume of the Akbarnama, written in Persian by Abu'l Fazl and completed in the late 1590s after repeated revision.
The first two volumes of the Akbarnama narrate the history of the dynasty and the events of Akbar's reign; the Ain describes the empire as an institution.
The Ain is arranged in books covering the imperial household, the army and the nobility, the provinces with their revenue and statistical accounts, the beliefs and learning of the people of India, and Akbar's own sayings.
Sulh-i kul, absolute or universal peace, is the principle of religious accommodation that Abu'l Fazl places at the centre of Akbar's rule.
Abu'l Fazl describes the just sovereign as the protector of his subjects' life, property, honour and faith, in return for obedience and a share of their resources.
The mansabdari system ranked officers by zat, fixing personal status and pay, and by sawar, fixing the cavalry contingent to be maintained; the nobility was recruited from Turanis, Iranis, Afghans, Indian Muslims and Rajputs.
Akbar reorganised the empire into subas, each subdivided into sarkars and parganas and administered by centrally appointed officers including the subadar, the diwan, the bakhshi, the sadr, the qazi and the kotwal.
Abu'l Fazl was killed in 1602 by Bir Singh Bundela, acting at the instance of Prince Salim, the future Jahangir.

An official chronicle records — and it also argues

(c) Social harmony with the support of a strong ruling class→Abu’l Fazl presents the realm as binding peoples of many faiths, regions and lineages under a sovereign whose duty is to protect their life, property, honour and faith. The principle is SULH-I KUL, universal peace — not indifference to religion but a rule under which no community may be persecuted. The instrument is a composite nobility of Turanis, Iranis, Afghans, Indian Muslims and Rajputs, ranked through mansabs and held to the emperor. A strong, mixed, loyal ruling class is what makes harmony enforceable rather than merely hoped for.

(a) Social disharmony at the whims of the nobility→The exact inversion of the work’s purpose. Its treatment of the nobility is a treatment of DISCIPLINE: ranks fixed in zat and sawar, salaries and contingents specified, and officers transferred between provinces and assignments so that no noble struck root in one place.

(b) Cessation of the provincial units from central rule→The opposite of what the Ain records, and the volume is the best evidence against it. Its longest book is a province-by-province account — the subas created in Akbar’s reorganisation, each broken into sarkars and parganas, with figures for area, revenue, crops and castes — and each province is run by centrally appointed officers: the subadar, the diwan for revenue, the bakhshi, the sadr, the qazi and the kotwal.

(d) Rural republics overthrowing Mughal suzerainty→Two different ideas fused into one wrong answer. An official history commissioned by the emperor could hardly propose overthrowing his own suzerainty, and villages appear in the Ain as units of assessment and revenue, described through their land, crops and castes. The picture of the Indian village as a self-sufficient ‘little republic’ is a nineteenth-century formulation, not the Ain’s.

What the book actually is→The third and final volume of the Akbarnama, written in Persian by Abu’l Fazl, one of Akbar’s closest advisers, and completed in the late 1590s after several revisions. The first two volumes narrate the dynasty and the events of the reign; the Ain is different in kind, describing the empire as a working institution in books on the imperial household, the army and the nobility, the provinces with their revenue statistics, the beliefs and learning of the people of India, and the emperor’s own sayings.

How historians read it→As a RECORD it is indispensable — the closest thing to a statistical survey of sixteenth-century India. As an ARGUMENT it advances a theory of sovereignty, which is why Akbar’s state is described as seeking integration rather than uniformity: Rajput chiefs taken into imperial service, the jizya abolished, Sanskrit works translated into Persian, debate held in the Ibadat Khana. It is read critically too — its totals do not always add up.

Study next

The Akbarnama and other Mughal chronicles — the Baburnama, the Humayun-nama of Gulbadan Begum, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri and the BadshahnamaAkbar's administration — mansabdari, jagirdari, the zabt or dahsala revenue settlement and Todar Mal's role in itAkbar's religious policy — abolition of the jizya, the Ibadat Khana, the mahzar of 1579 and the din-i-ilahiMughal provincial government — subas, sarkars and parganas, and the officers who ran themThe Rajput policy and its part in building a composite nobilityThe historiography of the Mughal state — how the Ain's statistics are used and where historians treat them with caution

Common traps

Treating the Ain-i-Akbari as a separate book rather than as the third volume of the Akbarnama.
Attributing it to Akbar himself, or to Badauni or Faizi. Abu'l Fazl wrote it; Faizi was his brother and the poet laureate; Badauni was a hostile contemporary historian.
Reading the 'village republic' idea back into medieval sources. It is a nineteenth-century colonial formulation associated with Charles Metcalfe.
Confusing sulh-i kul, a principle of universal peace and accommodation, with the din-i-ilahi, a small circle of disciples around the emperor.
Taking the Ain's figures as complete and error-free; historians use them with care, and coverage across regions is uneven.

History supplies the largest share of this paper, mostly from the national movement, with a small and steady medieval component. Mughal questions favour the administrative vocabulary — mansab, zat and sawar, suba, jagir, zabt — and the named sources. When the Commission asks what a text 'sought to promote' rather than who wrote it, the answer is usually the political theory the text was written to advance, so pair each chronicle with the argument it makes as well as with its author and date.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q32Open & attempt →

Who among the following is the author of ‘Gandhi as Mahatma’ ?

(a) Mahadev Desai
(b) Shahid Amin
(c) Louis Fischer
(d) David Arnold

Answer(b) Shahid Amin

The paper's other item on a historical work and its author, asking who wrote 'Gandhi as Mahatma'.

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q92Open & attempt →

Which one of the following statements about the situation in the Ryotwari areas is correct ?

(a) A large amount of land passed into the hands of the money lenders, merchants and rich peasants, who usually utilised the services of the tenants.
(b) Landless labourers became the land owners.
(c) It stopped the practice of leasing out land to tenants at high prices.
(d) Landlordism was totally destroyed.

Answer(a) A large amount of land passed into the hands of the money lenders, merchants and rich peasants, who usually utilised the services of the tenants.

Land revenue from the colonial end of the same subject, on the situation in the ryotwari areas.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Ain-i-Akbari forms which one of the following parts of the Akbarnama ?
- (a)The first volume
- (b)The second volume
- (c)The third volume
- (d)An appendix added by a later writer
Answer(c) The third volume
practice — not a real PYQ
In the Mughal mansabdari system, the rank that fixed the number of cavalrymen an officer had to maintain was known as :
- (a)Zat
- (b)Sawar
- (c)Jagir
- (d)Zabt
Answer(b) Sawar

Why