Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire

The British Library is currently hosting an exhibition on the Art and Culture that arose during the reign of the Mughal Empire across the sub-continent. This alone made it an inevitable visit, but I must admit that I was pretty surprised by the scope of the whole thing once I arrived.

The sheer number of items on display was pretty overwhelming. Around 90% of the material were, unsurprisingly maybe, books or pages, while the remainder consisted of artefacts, photos and painted art. Even the two hours or so we were there wasn't quite enough to soak it all in.

As someone who is largely ignorant of the history of India of that time I found it pretty eye-opening. I didn't realise how relatively recent the last of the Mughals was around, and neither did I know how deep and wide their governance was during the initial incline and peek of their time over India.

The exhibition was set up pretty well, with various sections covering a different aspect of Mughal life, and another in the middle tracing the life of each and every one of the Mughal emperors - you could just about imagine how the whole epic unfolded. Everything was also very well curated and I found myself spending as much time reading about each item as I did looking at the item itself. Most of my many revelations came from the information boxes under each exhibit.

Rich, interesting and quite rewarding, the Mughal India exhibition at the British Library is running till the 2nd of April, and I definitely think it's worth a look.