How an English poet reimagined Akbar

A dying Mughal emperor dreaming of religious harmony — not conquest — will be brought back to life on August 10, when the world marks the birth anniversary of a largely forgotten English poet.

Laurence Binyon, best known for his Remembrance Day verses, imagined Akbar not as a warrior or tyrant, but as a visionary ruler weary of bloodshed and longing for spiritual unity. Writing in 1908 from the heart of Edwardian London, Binyon gave Akbar a final voice — one that still resonates in today’s fractured world:

“I would have gathered men

Into one equal bond: the Hindu priest,

The Moslem scholar, and the Christian

monk…”

More than a century later, ‘Akbar’s Dream’ still feels radical. At a time when Akbar’s name is being quietly erased from Indian textbooks and reduced to polemic, it’s striking to recall that a British poet — writing at the peak of colonial arrogance — chose to portray the emperor as a philosopher-king, not a foreign usurper. Binyon saw in Akbar something India itself seems in danger of forgetting: a dream of coexistence, a politics of dialogue, and a vision of empire grounded not in territory but in truth.

That dream had deep roots in Punjab. Akbar travelled through the region, forged alliances with Punjabi rulers, and maintained lasting friendships with Sikh Gurus — most famously Guru Ram Das, whom he is believed to have met in Goindwal.

His links to Punjab were more than strategic; they were spiritual.

Binyon never visited India, but he immersed himself in Persian texts, admired Mughal aesthetics, and believed in the civilising power of art and philosophy. His Akbar is imagined at the edge of death — reflective, sorrowful, and searching for meaning beyond the sword. The poem was published in The Nineteenth Century and After, a journal read by Edwardian elites, but its tone is anything but imperial.

There is no triumphalism here, no smug British superiority. Instead, Binyon channels real reverence. His emperor is not a warning, but a mirror — someone who tried, however imperfectly, to rise above the sectarian strife of his age.

“I dreamed a truth/Beyond the creed,

the book, the temple, mosque…”

Binyon is remembered today for a different poem — ‘For the Fallen’ (1914), written in response to the First World War:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.”

Those lines are now part of Remembrance Day ceremonies across Britain and the Commonwealth. But ‘Akbar’s Dream’, written six years earlier, reveals another side of Binyon — not the chronicler of war’s losses, but the seeker of moral vision in an age of imperial certainty.

To modern readers, his Akbar may feel idealised — more saint than sovereign, more symbol than man. But that idealism carries weight, especially in a time when India’s pluralist traditions are under strain. Binyon’s words remind us that Akbar, for all his flaws, tried to imagine a court where reason could speak louder than rage, and where no single faith held a monopoly on truth.

Punjab, with its centuries-old tradition of interfaith dialogue and spiritual experimentation, reflects much of what Akbar hoped to achieve. The region gave shape to his vision before it ever became court policy. From the poetry of the Sikh Gurus to the ethos of shared sanctity, Punjab kept alive a dream that was bigger than any throne.

Laurence Binyon died in 1943, too early to witness India’s Independence. His poem is rarely read today — in Britain or India. But as his 156th birth anniversary (August 10) approaches, just five days before India marks 78 years of freedom, it is worth revisiting what he saw so clearly from across the seas: that Akbar’s greatest legacy was not military conquest, but moral ambition.

Akbar’s dream was never fully realised. Perhaps it never could be. But it remains one of South Asia’s most powerful ideas — that the highest form of leadership is not domination, but dialogue. And that an empire of the spirit may outlast one built with steel and stone.

— The writer is the London correspondent of The Tribune