There might be some merit to this idea, though I'm not sure it really applies to Akbar, or even the early Mughals. His youth was also fairly tumultuous, and in

There might be some merit to this idea, though I'm not sure it really applies to Akbar, or even the early Mughals. His youth was also fairly tumultuous, and in the early years the continuation of the Timurids in India was not a sure thing. Besides, while the early Mughals may have been only the latest new kids on the block in Delhi, they were part of the same Persianate culture that had dominated North India for close to half a millennia by that point. I doubt there would be much value in performative illiteracy in this context. For what it's worth, while Persian was the court language, the Mughals retained their Turkic dialect as a household language, and Akbar was conversant in the major Hindi dialects. There is evidence that subsequent Mughals and the vast number of Mirza princelings in the Imperial household grew up speaking Hindi as their primary language with their Rajput mothers, before formal instruction in Turkic, Persian, and Arabic.