BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

AKBAR’S INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE, POST-SECULARISM AND GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Author: Md. Ziaul Haque Sheikh

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2016v37n4a4

ABSTRACT

Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori depict a conceptual map of a range of possible approaches and ways in which Global Intellectual History (GIH) can be formulated as an academic discipline. Various scholars from different fields propose to widen its scope and boundaries - from trans-local and western-centric to intra-regional, trans-continental, trans-national and even beyond the geographical designation. In this writing, an attempt has been made to bring the idea of “Suhl-i-kul”, a state sponsored ‘interreligious-dialogue’ initiated by Akbar (1556-1605), a mediaeval Mughal emperor of India, as a content of GIH. This study assumes that the concept of “Suhl-i-kul” can be matched with the idea of ‘post-secularism’ which demands that such concept can create a trans-religious global formation and contribute to establish a peaceful society in a religiously pluralist world, especially from the perspective of multi-religious South Asia.