The Emperor Who Never Was

Title: The Emperor Who Never Was – Dara Shukoh in Mughal India

Author: Supriya Gandhi

Publisher: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780674245969

Pages: 338

Education is not a prerequisite to a glorious career.At least, as far as the Mughals were concerned! Akbar was an illiterate who turned himself into an eclectic philosopher in the latter half of his reign and consolidated the empire. Aurangzeb was a learned man but sowed the seeds of destruction of the Mughal Empire. However, Aurangzeb ascended the throne through a bloody, fratricidal war of succession in which he killed two of his brothers and exiled another. Dara Shukoh, whom Aurangzeb replaced, was a man with a character totally opposite to that of his rival. Dara was the eldest son of Shah Jahan who was nominated as the crown prince, controlled the administration of the Mughal state for a few years and most important of all, offered a path of compromise and mutual respect between the conflicting religions of Islam and Hinduism. This book is a survey of Dara Shukoh as a faithful son, unsure administrator, eager mystic, broad-minded syncretist and a tepid warlord. Supriya Gandhi grew up in India, took her PhD from Harvard and now teaches at the Religious Studies department of Yale University. She addresses the issue of whether the destiny of the Mughals and India as well would have been any different if Aurangzeb was foiled in his efforts by Dara and comes out with a prudent answer that the ascendancy of Dara wouldn't have made any significant deviation on the flow of subsequent history.

Dara Shukoh attracts much scorn from Islamists and jihadi elements even now. Pakistani poet Muhammad Iqbal comments that Dara ‘represented a dangerous shoot of heresy in the Mughal dynasty that needed to be uprooted’! Moderates and Hindus generally appreciate the good efforts of the prince. The author brings out the true state of affairs behind this ambiguity. Dara never renounced Islam. His universalist position only allowed him to embrace ideas from other traditions while remaining a Muslim. Even though he exhibited much interest in Hindu spiritual philosophy, there is no evidence that he evinced any concern for ordinary Hindus and their rituals of worship. In his paraphrasing of the episode of Kabir’s disappearing dead body which was claimed by both Hindus and Muslims as their own, Dara’s indifference to Hindus is obvious. He could have used the term hunud (Arabic plural for hindi) but instead he refers to them as kafirs. Dara was a strict monotheist too.

Dara Shukoh successfully integrated himself into a community of the spiritual elect. The author’s original contribution in this book is to explain in some detail Dara’s detour into Sufism and his quest in search of monotheism in Hindu religious principles. She examines Dara’s works such as Sakinat-ul-Auliya, Safinat-ul-Auliya, Haqqnuma, Hasanat-ul-Arifin and others. Qadiri Sufis like Mulla Shah and Shah Dilruba guided him. His ecstatic declarations upon receiving a spiritual ‘high’ were sometimes shocking to the bigoted ulema who did not understand the implied meaning. His cry “praise God, praise God, that from the blessing of love of this noble, revered, great community (taifa), insincere (majazi) Islam has fled from the heart of this faqir, and true infidelity (kufr-i-haqiqi) has shown its face” (p.155). On closer inspection we can see that what he meant is a firm adherence to the ultimate truth of divine unity. Unthinking minds took it as a confirmation of his turning an apostate.

Supriya Gandhi gives pride of place to two of Dara’s great contributions to Indian thought. His insightful work Majma-ul-Bahrain (confluence of two seas) compares the religious tenets of Hinduism and Islam and comes up with some common ground. Quran is given a prominent place in this treatise. Dara quotes and elucidates Quranic verses as proof texts to demonstrate the validity of the Indian concepts he describes. Contrary to critics’ accusations, the Quran is the primary locus of authority in the Majma-ul-Bahrain. This was later translated into Sanskrit as Samudrasangama. Dara’s magnificent feat is the translation of Upanishads into Persian as Sirr-i-Akbar (The Greatest Secret). In this, the Mughal prince contends that Upanishads represent a distillation of the Vedas and outlined the ancient secrets of mystical knowledge and pure, original monotheism, which is fully in agreement with the Quran. He addressed the conundrum of multiple gods that appear so frequently in several Upanishads in an ingenious way. He cleverly sidestepped their divinity and enfolded them within an Islamic framework. So a god (deva) becomes either an angel (firishta) or a spiritual guardian (muwakkal).

The book includes many instances where the famed tolerance of Sufi saints is worn thin. The Sufi sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi deplored even the presence of Hindus in the Mughal administration. If they were employed at all, he argues, they should be given insignificant jobs. They are to be avoided like dogs, taxed and disgraced (p.71). Even though it is said that Sufis have no sense of religious distinctness, we read about many instances otherwise in this book. Dara’s mentor Mulla Shah openly asked a Hindu disciple Banwali Das to convert to Islam. The author also remarks that though today we might think of the ulema and Sufis as two fiercely opposing camps, this was not the case in Mughal times (p.90). Supriya Gandhi has also successfully brought out the contrast between the broad-based eclecticism of some Chishti Sufis and the narrower, more tightly bounded view of religion by the Naqshbandis.

A characteristic trait of the leftist historians in India is their unfortunate manipulation of historic data to portray extremely bigoted sultans in a benevolent light. By the same token, if they are to attempt the history of Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the characters that come out of their fabrication shops would look more like Akbar or Saladin than the original zealots. What is pathetic and bordering on the comical is the sheer effort taken by the author to find a reason to justify every act of religious outrage we typically associate with a jihadi. Supriya balances Jahangir’s desecration of the temple at Pushkar in 1613 with the argument that it was ‘a threatening provocation and warning to the nearby Mewar prince Rana Amar Singh’. In 1633, Shah Jahan ordered the razing of all temples in the kingdom that were currently under construction. This heinous act was focused especially on halting the building of temples in Varanasi where no fewer than seventy-six unfinished temples were destroyed (p.73). The author mitigates this with the claim that it was done ‘to mould his image as a sovereign guided by religion and to assert his power in the empire’s heartland’. She also soothes the victims with the consolation that it ‘was not routine for the destruction of seventy-six temples in one go’. Otherwise, the Hindus would not have started construction of so many temples in one city. What she fails to conceive is that Varanasi is not just ‘one city’ for the Hindus. It is the holiest! Shah Jahan also destroyed the Chaturbhuj Temple in Orchcha and converted it into a mosque. Supriya asserts that it was ‘to stamp out the most important symbol of Bundela sovereignty’ and therefore justifiable. Aurangzeb destroyed the Jain temple at Saraspur and converted it to a mosque. Author’s thinking is that it served ‘to assert his authority in the new territory of Gujarat’. In short, numerous reasons are cited for these brutal acts, but the most obvious one – the ruler’s bigotry – is never listed. She even strives to exonerate Aurangzeb from the charge of beheading his brother Dara because the murder is attributed to the opinion given by his sister Roshanara and his Iranian physician who was a fanatic.

The name Dara Shukoh means ‘as majestic as Darius’, the legendary ruler of pre-Islamic Persia. The author has been able to provide a clear snapshot of Dara’s work, rather than him as a person – a son, a husband or a father. This may be because she often finds fault with colonial historiography that privileges the study of the lives and larger than life personalities of Mughal rulers. The book contains many illustrations from contemporary manuscripts, but is not so pleasing to read. It includes a dutiful Dramatis Personae, detailed notes and index but surprisingly, no bibliography!. This is a serious shortcoming in a book of this nature that should be set right in future editions.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star