The other day I was reading Octavio Paz “In Light of India”, it is an easy read. Most things he wrote one is aware of but the outsider’s perspective is what makes it interesting, also the comparison of experience of India and Mexico. This blogger’s understanding of Mexico is limited to few books here and there, 
caricatures in movies and few interactions with tourists…well that is true about any country for most of us. But yes in recent times Net has opened up lots of avenues for understanding through chat rooms and blogs, sometime back I found myself chatting with a Mexican!! . It was while reading this book that I came across Dara Shikoh, Paz writes “Shikoh… translated Upanishads into Persian. A French traveler and Orientalist, Anquetil du Perron, made a Latin version of Dara’s translation. That version, published in two volumes in 1801 and 1802, was the one that Schopenhauer read. The philosophic influence of that translation has been enormous; on one side, Nietzsche; on the other, Emerson”. Don’t know why but I couldn’t continue reading, I had read so much about Dara Shikoh that my focus shifted.
If there is one figure from medieval history who’s brutal and untimely death pained me deeply it was this prince. If he had become the king the history of northern part of this subcontinent (indeed the whole Indian subcontinent) would be significantly different. As Paz writes “the religious politics of Aurangzeb was, however, a more serious violation; it did not affect merely the individuals of one family, but rather the majority of people he governed. The execution of Dara Shikoh for the crime of heresy was a sign of the fatal direction events would take. The religious question, a strictly spiritual matter since the inauguration of the Sultanate in the eighth century, turned into matter of life and death” (emphasis added by the blogger). The fatal direction set by fanatic Aurangzeb engulfed generations to follow, sowed the seeds of communalizing in the society and weakened the dynasty, eventually these were exploited by colonial Britain. Rest as they say is history. And some tend to live a lot in history and not “understanding history to move forward” (former philosopher President S.Radhakrishnan).
This blogger feels it to be very important to spend some time on this amazing prince who had such a tragic end. Dara Shikoh, whose name means “The possessor of Glory”, was born to Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal in 1615 at Sagartal near Ajmer (now of Rajasthan) It is said that his father, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, visited the tomb of the great
Chishti saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti and had prayed there with folded hands and down knees. It is for no reason that Dargah is considered special, I too have felt the vibration of this place (decades back I spoke my first sentences in English after visiting Dargah at Ajmer-also Pushkar…these two places are quite special to me. I should write about this one of these days). Dara was a unique and marvelous personality. He had combined in himself the qualities of his two great ancestors Humayun and Akbar. The habit of passing more and more time in the Library to acquire knowledge was inherited by him from Humayun who had lost his life while descending from the stairs of the royal Library, while the interest in comparative religions, universal brotherhood, humanism and peace came from the great emperor Akbar. These influences played a notable role in shaping his mind. He had no likings for luxuries and sensual pleasures but had developed refined tastes in his life. The credit should also go to one tutor named Mulla Abdul Latif Saharanpuri who inculcated in him the habit of reading and unquenchable thirst for knowledge. The Sufi leanings of his tutor had great influence over young Dara. Besides this, the influence of contemporary Sufi saints had played a significant role in shaping young Dara’s mind.
In 1640 he was introduced to Lahore’s famous Qadri Sufi saint, Hazrat Mian Mir who had urged both Jehangir and Shah Jahan to be kind to all their subjects (this Sufi saint was so respected by the people that he was invited to put the foundation stone of Golden temple-the most sacred place of Sikhs), also Mulla Badakhashi and other saints. This was a remarkable phase of his life when he spent his major time in the royal Library busy in intensive studies in mysticism, the philosophy and the principles of the Qadiri order. This resulted in the publication of his major works on Sufism namely, the Safinat-ul-Auliya (1640 A.D.), the Sakinat-ul-Auliya ( 1643A.D.) the Risala’i Haq Numa (1647 A.D.), the Tariqat-ul-Haqiqat and the Hasanat-ul-Arifin (1653 A.D.). The first two books are biographical dictionaries of the Sufi saints and the last three contain his exposition of some of the Sufi fundamental doctrines. This was in fact a period of intellectual pursuits for Dara.
His interests
took a steep turn when he met Baba Lal Bairagi, a Hindu agnostic, conversations with whom he recorded in a little book entitled Mukalama Baba Lal wa Dara Shikoh.. Majma-‘ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of the Two Oceans). Like his great-grandfather Akbar (the pic here), Dara tried to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Islam was also devoted to a revelation of the mystical and pluralistic affinities between Sufic and Vedantic speculation. This book came to light in 1656, just three years prior to his execution. In fact it was a pioneering attempt to find out the commonalities between Sufism and Hindu monotheism. He describes this book as ‘a collection of truth and wisdom of two truth-knowing groups’. Contemporary Hindu pundits too acknowledged him (one Jaganath Mishra even wrote a book named “Jagatsimha in praise of Dara”).
The Emperor Akbar had strongly believed that his Mughal nobles needed to understand their Hindu subjects and had set up a translation bureau to render the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata into Persian. Prince Dara Shikoh went much further his translation called the Sirr-e-Akbar (The Greatest Mystery) and in his Introduction he boldly states that the work referred to in the Holy Quran as the Kitab al-maknun or the “hidden book” is none other than the Upanishads. Dara Shikoh carried forward the enlightened tradition of Akbar to evolved understanding.
In the war of succession, Aurangzeb- his fanatic younger brother, defeated him. Despite the fact that Dara was favored as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum (Aurangzeb was also to place Shah Jahan too under arrest till he died a depressed man), Dara was brought to Delhi, placed on a filthy elephant and paraded through the streets of the capital in chains and murdered on the night of August 30, 1659. He was buried without ceremony, his headless body dumped in a hastily dug grave. And so died a beautiful prince. It is no surprise that after Aurangzeb the Mughal Empire collapsed.
The struggle between Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb has a reflection in contemporary world, the struggle between the fundamentalists (religious and market, as also self serving power mongers) and the people who understand religion and its goodness for humankind. There is an amazing play The Trial of Dara Shikoh by Dr. Akbar Ahmed he says this story serves as a powerful metaphor that explains the current struggle of Muslims to establish a true identity in a culture (Dr. Ahmed was also Pakistani Ambassador to UK) that has labeled the Islamic faith violent and extreme. He writes "Dara was an enlightened Sufi intellectual and a lover of the arts, music, and dancing. Anticipating the challenge of ruling a religiously diverse empire, Dara sought to build friendships with members of different religious traditions. This approach to governing dovetailed with his own deep adherence to Islam’s mystical and universal message. Aurangzeb, on the other hand, practiced a more orthodox and fundamental interpretation of Islam. As emperor, he enforced a strict interpretation of Shari’a law for the entire empire, forbade dancing and music in his presence, and reinstituted a jaziya tax on all non-Muslims in the empire". Through this play Akbar Ahmed tries
to draw a picture of a larger struggle within Islam today, a struggle for meaning, identity, and perception. The prevailing and dominant perception of Islam in recent centuries has been an interpretation of orthodox adherence to the religion’s laws and teachings, with the implication that Islam requires violent practices and terror. This interpretation is vividly embodied in Aurangzeb’s diatribes and cruelty towards Dara and his family. In exposing the story and character of Dara Shikoh, there is an attempt upon Muslims and non-Muslims alike to rediscover a richer and more diverse expression of the religion of Islam. "The tragedy of Dara Shikoh is not only the loss of an extraordinary scholar, not only that his death pushed a large part of the world in dangerous directions, but the fact that he appears to have been erased from history. Dara has become the forgotten man of history. As the twenty-first century confronts a world locked in religious and cultural conflict Dara’s story becomes urgently relevant. Salvation in the future could lie in the message of Dara Shikoh". The transcript of the play is available on the Net…
Dara Shikoh a beautiful prince who could have been a great king, a king who could have carried forward the tradition of Ashoka and Akbar to greater heights.
caricatures in movies and few interactions with tourists…well that is true about any country for most of us. But yes in recent times Net has opened up lots of avenues for understanding through chat rooms and blogs, sometime back I found myself chatting with a Mexican!! . It was while reading this book that I came across Dara Shikoh, Paz writes “Shikoh… translated Upanishads into Persian. A French traveler and Orientalist, Anquetil du Perron, made a Latin version of Dara’s translation. That version, published in two volumes in 1801 and 1802, was the one that Schopenhauer read. The philosophic influence of that translation has been enormous; on one side, Nietzsche; on the other, Emerson”. Don’t know why but I couldn’t continue reading, I had read so much about Dara Shikoh that my focus shifted.If there is one figure from medieval history who’s brutal and untimely death pained me deeply it was this prince. If he had become the king the history of northern part of this subcontinent (indeed the whole Indian subcontinent) would be significantly different. As Paz writes “the religious politics of Aurangzeb was, however, a more serious violation; it did not affect merely the individuals of one family, but rather the majority of people he governed. The execution of Dara Shikoh for the crime of heresy was a sign of the fatal direction events would take. The religious question, a strictly spiritual matter since the inauguration of the Sultanate in the eighth century, turned into matter of life and death” (emphasis added by the blogger). The fatal direction set by fanatic Aurangzeb engulfed generations to follow, sowed the seeds of communalizing in the society and weakened the dynasty, eventually these were exploited by colonial Britain. Rest as they say is history. And some tend to live a lot in history and not “understanding history to move forward” (former philosopher President S.Radhakrishnan).
This blogger feels it to be very important to spend some time on this amazing prince who had such a tragic end. Dara Shikoh, whose name means “The possessor of Glory”, was born to Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal in 1615 at Sagartal near Ajmer (now of Rajasthan) It is said that his father, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, visited the tomb of the great
Chishti saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti and had prayed there with folded hands and down knees. It is for no reason that Dargah is considered special, I too have felt the vibration of this place (decades back I spoke my first sentences in English after visiting Dargah at Ajmer-also Pushkar…these two places are quite special to me. I should write about this one of these days). Dara was a unique and marvelous personality. He had combined in himself the qualities of his two great ancestors Humayun and Akbar. The habit of passing more and more time in the Library to acquire knowledge was inherited by him from Humayun who had lost his life while descending from the stairs of the royal Library, while the interest in comparative religions, universal brotherhood, humanism and peace came from the great emperor Akbar. These influences played a notable role in shaping his mind. He had no likings for luxuries and sensual pleasures but had developed refined tastes in his life. The credit should also go to one tutor named Mulla Abdul Latif Saharanpuri who inculcated in him the habit of reading and unquenchable thirst for knowledge. The Sufi leanings of his tutor had great influence over young Dara. Besides this, the influence of contemporary Sufi saints had played a significant role in shaping young Dara’s mind.In 1640 he was introduced to Lahore’s famous Qadri Sufi saint, Hazrat Mian Mir who had urged both Jehangir and Shah Jahan to be kind to all their subjects (this Sufi saint was so respected by the people that he was invited to put the foundation stone of Golden temple-the most sacred place of Sikhs), also Mulla Badakhashi and other saints. This was a remarkable phase of his life when he spent his major time in the royal Library busy in intensive studies in mysticism, the philosophy and the principles of the Qadiri order. This resulted in the publication of his major works on Sufism namely, the Safinat-ul-Auliya (1640 A.D.), the Sakinat-ul-Auliya ( 1643A.D.) the Risala’i Haq Numa (1647 A.D.), the Tariqat-ul-Haqiqat and the Hasanat-ul-Arifin (1653 A.D.). The first two books are biographical dictionaries of the Sufi saints and the last three contain his exposition of some of the Sufi fundamental doctrines. This was in fact a period of intellectual pursuits for Dara.
His interests
took a steep turn when he met Baba Lal Bairagi, a Hindu agnostic, conversations with whom he recorded in a little book entitled Mukalama Baba Lal wa Dara Shikoh.. Majma-‘ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of the Two Oceans). Like his great-grandfather Akbar (the pic here), Dara tried to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Islam was also devoted to a revelation of the mystical and pluralistic affinities between Sufic and Vedantic speculation. This book came to light in 1656, just three years prior to his execution. In fact it was a pioneering attempt to find out the commonalities between Sufism and Hindu monotheism. He describes this book as ‘a collection of truth and wisdom of two truth-knowing groups’. Contemporary Hindu pundits too acknowledged him (one Jaganath Mishra even wrote a book named “Jagatsimha in praise of Dara”). The Emperor Akbar had strongly believed that his Mughal nobles needed to understand their Hindu subjects and had set up a translation bureau to render the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata into Persian. Prince Dara Shikoh went much further his translation called the Sirr-e-Akbar (The Greatest Mystery) and in his Introduction he boldly states that the work referred to in the Holy Quran as the Kitab al-maknun or the “hidden book” is none other than the Upanishads. Dara Shikoh carried forward the enlightened tradition of Akbar to evolved understanding.
In the war of succession, Aurangzeb- his fanatic younger brother, defeated him. Despite the fact that Dara was favored as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum (Aurangzeb was also to place Shah Jahan too under arrest till he died a depressed man), Dara was brought to Delhi, placed on a filthy elephant and paraded through the streets of the capital in chains and murdered on the night of August 30, 1659. He was buried without ceremony, his headless body dumped in a hastily dug grave. And so died a beautiful prince. It is no surprise that after Aurangzeb the Mughal Empire collapsed.
The struggle between Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb has a reflection in contemporary world, the struggle between the fundamentalists (religious and market, as also self serving power mongers) and the people who understand religion and its goodness for humankind. There is an amazing play The Trial of Dara Shikoh by Dr. Akbar Ahmed he says this story serves as a powerful metaphor that explains the current struggle of Muslims to establish a true identity in a culture (Dr. Ahmed was also Pakistani Ambassador to UK) that has labeled the Islamic faith violent and extreme. He writes "Dara was an enlightened Sufi intellectual and a lover of the arts, music, and dancing. Anticipating the challenge of ruling a religiously diverse empire, Dara sought to build friendships with members of different religious traditions. This approach to governing dovetailed with his own deep adherence to Islam’s mystical and universal message. Aurangzeb, on the other hand, practiced a more orthodox and fundamental interpretation of Islam. As emperor, he enforced a strict interpretation of Shari’a law for the entire empire, forbade dancing and music in his presence, and reinstituted a jaziya tax on all non-Muslims in the empire". Through this play Akbar Ahmed tries
to draw a picture of a larger struggle within Islam today, a struggle for meaning, identity, and perception. The prevailing and dominant perception of Islam in recent centuries has been an interpretation of orthodox adherence to the religion’s laws and teachings, with the implication that Islam requires violent practices and terror. This interpretation is vividly embodied in Aurangzeb’s diatribes and cruelty towards Dara and his family. In exposing the story and character of Dara Shikoh, there is an attempt upon Muslims and non-Muslims alike to rediscover a richer and more diverse expression of the religion of Islam. "The tragedy of Dara Shikoh is not only the loss of an extraordinary scholar, not only that his death pushed a large part of the world in dangerous directions, but the fact that he appears to have been erased from history. Dara has become the forgotten man of history. As the twenty-first century confronts a world locked in religious and cultural conflict Dara’s story becomes urgently relevant. Salvation in the future could lie in the message of Dara Shikoh". The transcript of the play is available on the Net…Dara Shikoh a beautiful prince who could have been a great king, a king who could have carried forward the tradition of Ashoka and Akbar to greater heights.
