Elliot Halpern and Pauline Duffy

The dome of the Taj Mahal is of bricks. The marble forms only the cover. Facts like this come to light in The Mughals, a History Channel documentary recently shot in India on the dynasty that ruled the country from 1526 to 1858. “Solid marble would have been too heavy,” explains producer Pauline Duffy, over phone from New York.

The shooting brought to India Elliott Halpern, the first independent producer to win the Emmy for investigative journalism. But this was not his first trip to the country.

Halpern and Duffy, who helm Yap Films that made The Mughals, came to Delhi and Calcutta five years ago to shoot a documentary on street magic. “We shot the magic bullet trick in your city,” says Duffy.

Explaining what made them focus on the Mughal period, Halpern says: “People in the West know of Taj Mahal, but they don’t know about the people who built the Taj. The age also has not been explored by the West.” With an aim to “try and make history relevant to today’s life”, the film examines the Mughals’ feats in engineering, architecture and weaponry. “Our focus was on developments that helped people. That way, it makes history active. We have used a lot of reenactment and computer graphics to explain our point,” says Duffy.

One example of a people-oriented development is the study of how water was brought up to Fatehpur Sikri.

“This was the most difficult part of our research, as there is not much documentation of the process,” Duffy recalls. “The building of the city with its water gardens and water courtyards on top of a ridge so far from a natural water source was a remarkable achievement. We have shown how water was drawn through a series of water pulleys from the valley below after dams were built to store the water when it got flooded.”

After six months of research, the shooting happened in late-2005. The two criss-crossed the country, from Rajasthan to Delhi to Hyderabad, taking the camera to areas where the Mughals went. Even the experts, like weapons specialist Lukas Novtny, who takes the audiences through the Mughal armoury, were flown down to the spots.

Having received “great feedback” after premieres in the US and UK this summer, the two are excited about the show being beamed in the land of its origin.

“Perception about India is rapidly changing in the West with so much development happening here,” Halpern says.