He cultivated friendships with Hindu rajahs, knowing that he needed their support. Gandhi surmises that Dara knew well enough that he would be the next emperor and he was actively fashioning himself as a philosopher king. He was headstrong on the battlefield and showed great bravery in the Battle of Samugarh. Dara thought that the Upanishads were a book talked about in the Qur’an, a rather unusual idea, but it shows that he was ready to bend his intellectual curiosity to his mystical needs.ĭara should not be thought of as an otherworldly mystic. He got nearly 50 of the ancient Upanishads translated into Persian, the official language of the Mughal court. Dara took significant interest in Hindu philosophy. He met and conversed with the religious leaders and ascetics of any denomination. Dara studied every religious book available to him: Hindu, Christian, and Jewish. As he got closer to religious ecstasy - supported by many unusual dreams - he also began to cross the dividing line between Islam and other religions. In India, the Sufis wrote about the philosophies and religious practices extant there Yogic practices were found to be particularly useful in Sufism, and Dara Shukoh appears to have been no stranger to such practices. Famous poets like Rumi and Farid-al-din Attar, and great theologians, philosophers, and scholars embarked on the Sufi quest. The influence of the Sufis has been great, from Baghdad to Bosnia and from Mughal India to modern Turkey. Sufism is a spiritual quest within Islam that embodied the experience of God as a beloved with the aim of losing one’s self in God. The mystical spirit of India was made richer by the Sufis’ presence. Gandhi has delightfully careful descriptions of Mughal paintings in her book, and there is one about the painting devoted to the famous meeting between the emperor and Chidrup. The holy man lived in a smallish cave and it is remarkable that Jahangir visited him rather than commanding him to come to court. Jahangir, for instance, had visited and recorded his conversations with the Hindu ascetic, Chidrup. Mughal emperors were deeply attracted to Sufis and other ascetics. This softened the rather gruff Miyan Mir he found Dara to be a willing and able disciple. So great was Dara’s thirst to experience the ultimate reality that, once, while he had gone to meet a Sufi mystic named Miyan Mir, he stooped to pick up and eat the chewed cloves that had been spat out by Mir and were lying scattered on the ground. He didn’t have much interest in the common piety that religion often enforces, but wanted to experience the ultimate truth that lay behind this common piety. But Dara more than made up with his intense interest in mysticism. Nor did he have the flowing aesthetic sense of Jahangir, his grandfather (not that Dara was too far behind in his aesthetic abilities). He may not have possessed the magnificent writing skills of Babur, the first Mughal. Dara stood out, even among the talented Mughals. Gandhi’s account of Dara Shukoh shows why. There is a never-ending fascination about him: for a prince who never came to rule India, he has got more attention than many actual emperors have. His severed head, as a dubious story relates, was shown to Shah Jahan. Dara was on the run after the battle, and when finally captured, he was publicly humiliated and possibly beheaded. Its effects are too real to be driven into the sleepy corners of forgetful memory. But no battle reverberates in India, even today, as the one at Samugarh. The book is a picture of India of that time - a picture of emperors, princes, princesses, ascetics, mystics, poets, scholars, clerics, historians.ĭara Shukoh was defeated in battle by Aurangzeb, on a scorching day in June in Samugarh, a battle that Supriya Gandhi quite rightly describes as a “crucial battle in the subcontinent’s history.” India has had many battles that have shaped its history: Alexander got past Porus, Babur trounced Ibrahim Lodi, East India Company’s Robert Clive decimated the forces of Siraj-ud-daulah, Arthur Wellesley triumphed over Tipu Sultan. Supriya Gandhi’s book about Dara Shukoh is aptly titled The Emperor Who Never Was. Shah Jahan’s favorite son, Dara Shukoh, who was with his father during his illness, and who had been pretty much declared the next emperor of India, did not make it to the throne. Of these three sons, Aurangzeb, came to finally rule India in 1658. Three of his sons, who were far away, suspecting that he had died, conspired, individually and together, to get the throne. He recovered soon enough, but the die was cast. The Mughal emperor of India, Shah Jahan - the man who commissioned the Taj Mahal - fell ill. A RATHER UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT occurred in India in September 1657.