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Role in history

Ziya us Salam, May 31, 2016: The Hindu

Who is Dara Shukoh?

HIs famous work "Majma-ul-Bahrain" which translates into "The Mingling of Two Oceans" explain his commitment to religious tolerance and hence, Hindu-Muslim unity.

He used to write under the name "Sirr-e-Akbar".

Gopal Gandhi’s Dara Shukoh: A Play raises the relevance of Dara Shikoh in contemporary India

Few men who read history in school remember Dara Shikoh, the philosopher-prince of Mughal India. He is but a fleeting figure even if an enlightened one. The spotlight is well and truly on Aurangzeb, terse, taciturn, untamed. In a world looking for convenient, even if inaccurate, summations, Dara is reduced by our historians to being a favourite son of Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, a fratricidal ruler who did not hesitate to put to the sword his own. That almost all kings in the years of yore did the same matters little. That Dara had a life before the fatal battle of Samugarh with Aurangzeb, that he had a life quite removed from that of any of his brothers is never pointed out. For most, Aurangzeb is a convenient villain, Dara the easy but fallible hero.

However, today as our nation faces the prospect of being ruled by revisionist politicians — ironically, they seem to be getting mixed up with their history lessons too — it is important to take some time out, and realise what we lost when Dara lost, and what we can gain if we imbibe his spirit. With such a thought, I picked up Gopal Gandhi’s Dara Shukoh: A Play. It was released some time ago and I had all but left it on the shelf with the likes of Dilip Hiro’s Baburnamah for company.

However, the events unfolding in the run-up to the general elections made me go back to it. Dara is relevant, even necessary today. The book instantly set in motion a series of conjectures: what if the heterodox Dara and not the more orthodox Aurangzeb had won the battle of brothers? If mid-17th Century India had thrown up a different victor, would the nation have been partitioned? Didn’t medieval India throw up a man who was wedded to pluralism of thought and faith much before the founding fathers of our Constitution made it a benchmark for future generations? And would Hindus and Muslims have lived here, as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan said, like the two eyes of the nation? Imagine if a Sufi had outlasted a warrior! Imagine.

The questions shall never be answered. But revisit Dara we must. Understand what he stood for, preach many of his things, and we might just end up with a nation that takes pride in its pluralist culture, a society where Hindus read both the Vedas and the Quran, the Muslims appreciate that the concept of one universal God precedes their arrival here; appreciation rather than mere tolerance of each other’s culture being the hallmark. Follow this, and the need to combat the challenge thrown up by communal elements disappears. Who can argue with a man who drinks from the common nectar of Sufis and bhakti saints?

And Gopal Gandhi, with an enviable and apt lineage for such a project, goes about demolishing many prejudices, exposing many lies. He chooses to spell him Shukoh, explaining beautifully that ‘Shikoh’ in Persian means ‘terror’ while ‘Shukoh’ stands for ‘glory’. Gandhi’s Dara is not a tragic figure; rather he is a man whose time is now. Gandhi chooses not to dwell much on a failed general — a poet is doomed to be a failure on a battlefield anyway. He stays focussed on the undercurrents of the thoughts of the man who translated the Upanishads into Persian — ideas that did not endear him to the radical elements on both sides of the religious divide. A play may not necessarily be an ideal substitute for a history textbook, but hey, did not Rajkumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munnabhai do more for introducing Mahatma Gandhi to the bubblegum brigade than any academic book or lecture?

The best help often comes from the source least expected. A play, a film, a book, a philosopher may yet show us the way. After all, amidst all the political mudslinging and a society being rapidly polarised, we could do worse than heed Dara’s words. Remember what he said when his followers screamed, “Shuja — his brother and fellow claimant to the throne — murdabad”? Dara replied, “Let us not wish death to any one/That is base;/All of us have God’s breath in us,/In any case./We live and have our being/ With his grace.”

Defeat at Samugarh, 1658

The Times of India, May 28 2016

Murad Ali Baig

 Not Plassey 1757 but Samugarh 1658: Fateful tipping point that fixed the subcontinent's future course

 On May 29, 1658, India's history changed forever. Aurangzeb's victory over his brother Dara Shikoh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry in India that not only alienated Hindus but the much more moderate Sufis and Shias as well. Aurangzeb's narrow Sunni beliefs were to make India the hotbed of Muslim fundamentalists, long before the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia sponsored the fanatics of Taliban and Islamic State. Two great Mughal armies, led by Shah Jahan's eldest son Dara Shikoh and his third son Aurangzeb, clashed on a dusty plain 20 km southeast of Agra.It was not only a battle for the Mughal throne, but a battle for the very soul of India.

It pitted Dara, an eclectic scholar who respected all religions, against Aurangzeb who was an orthodox Sunni Muslim. Dara had translated the Bhagwad Gita and Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian, to make them known to the public for the first time. The fact that he had been a Sanskrit scholar shows that there had been considerable Hindu-Muslim amity in the time of Shahjahan.

But Dara had been a pampered prince who faced a smaller battle-hardened army that Aurangzeb had marched up from the Deccan, after defeating an Imperial army at Dharmat near Indore. Blocked at the Chambal River, Aurangzeb quietly slipped behind Dara's lines to reach a secret ford across the Chambal by non-stop double marches over two days.

Dara now realised that Aurangzeb's armies had outflanked his army and come very close to Agra, so he had to rush east without most of his cannons.The two armies met on a flat dusty plain east of a village called Samugarh, on an unbelievably hot day with the sun like a furnace in a cloudless sky . There was not enough water so many soldiers and horses collapsed of heat and sun stroke.

The battle was more than just a contest between Dara and his rebel brother. It was becoming a religious war with the Hindus supporting Dara and many Muslim nobles supporting Aurangzeb.

Dara was on the brink of victory when he was betrayed by one of his commanders, Khalilullah Khan. He then retreated to Lahore and then down the Indus. Eventually , he was brought to Delhi and put on trial.

He had written a book called the `Mingling of the Oceans' showing the many similarities between the Quran and the Brahma Shastras. At the trial the imperial Qazi asked Dara to hand him the jade thumb ring that was still on his left hand. He is reported to have turned it over and asked why the green stone was inscribed with the words `Allah' on one side and `Prabhu' on the other.

Dara evidently replied that the creator was known by many names and called God, Allah, Prabhu, Jehova, Ahura Mazda and many more names by devout people in many different lands.He added that it is written in the Quran that Allah had sent down 1,24,000 messengers to show all the people of the world the way of righteousness and he believed that these messengers had been sent not only to Muslims but to all the people of the world in every age. Aurangzeb casually signed the order of execution after the Qazis found Dara guilty of heresy .

Aurangzeb's inflexible religious bigotry made him lose the support of his influential Shia subjects as well as his many Hindu and Rajput followers. By persecuting his own Rajput followers he cut off his arms and weakened his military power.

If Dara had won at Samugarh his rule might have promoted harmony between India's turbulent peoples. A united Mughal empire may have prevented India from becoming so easily colonised by European powers.Samugarh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry that led over the centuries to the Partition of India, the creation of Pakistan and the backlash of radical Hinduism. Samugarh was a tipping point in India's history.

See also

Aurangzeb, emperor