Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s son Dara SHikoh is the embodiment of religious consonance and cultural tolerance and is part of the ICCR’s series of seminars and plays. Team Viva reports
The Mughal dynasty produced warriors and intellectually curious men such as Akbar but prince Dara Shikoh was its lone scholar. The son of emperor Shah Jahan, he was the eldest and the intended heir of the Mughal throne. Justifiably so, for he had an eclectic and assimilative mind. He judiciously studied the Holy Quran, the holy books of the Jews and Christians and had a deep knowledge of the Vedas and the Upanishads. He was an avid yoga practitioner and laid the foundations of the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.
Before the Mughal policies of tolerance wilted under the rule of Aurangzeb, who brought violence in the face of religious plurality, Dara Shikoh resonated the Mughal ideals of harmony among the people of the empire through his understanding and acceptance of holy texts and culture from other religions apart from Islam. He was an eminent scholar of Sufism and Vedanta philosophy and worked for the amalgamation of the Hindu and Islamic cultures.
So Prof lokesh Chandra, president of ICCR, took the initiative in re-establishing and reclaiming his holistic legacy to heal the torn extremities of Indic solidarity. “Because of Dara Shikoh, the whole process of the study of India’s culture began. We have seen the Mughal courts only as Islamic courts and not seen their Mongol dimensions or the dimension of encouraging Sanskrit. There were pandits present in all Mughal courts,” he said while addressing a conference on Thursday.
Apart from translating Hindu texts from Sanskrit to Persian for encouraging a cross-cultural dialogue, Dara Shikoh also wrote texts about the Hindu culture and way of life. His works include Majma-ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of Two Oceans), a comparative analysis of Hindu and Muslim religious beliefs and Sirr-e-Akbar (The Great Secret), his translation of the Upanishads in Persian. Also poignant are his Persian translations of the Yoga Vasishta and Bhagvad Gita.
“India is a land of diversity, diverse traditions, religious tolerance, cultural exchanges, dialogues and continuity between various religious and cultural forms. Dara Shikoh as a historical entity represents such glorious principles of Indian history, culture and heritage,” shared Amarendra Khatua, director-general, ICCR.
Akhtarul Wassey, president of Maulana Azad University, Jodhpur, said, “The narrators of the legacy of Indian secularism are often the names related to the Bhakti and Sufi movements. Inside the walls of the Mughal castles and in the atmosphere of monarchy, Dara Shikoh wove together and celebrated the synonymous nature of the Hindu and Islamic cultures. His efforts in bringing together the two religions by translations of ancient texts like the Vedas and epics like the Mahabharata worked to place the multitude of cultures on the same platform. Aurangzeb assassinated Dara Shikoh once but by not remembering what he represents in today’s multi-cultural India, we have killed his spirit many times over.”
Prof Chandra felt that Shah Jahan chose Dara Shikoh as his rightful heir not because of his seniority but because of his vision of harmony and unity among people. His vision, his works, his memory need to be resuscitated to be presented to modern India.
Recalling the significance of Dara’s legacy, the ambassador for Iran, Gholam Reza Ansari, remarked, “The school of thought that Dara Shikoh represented can be inculcated for finding solutions for today’s problems in societies and among cultures which emphasise on the essence of tolerance and introducing great civilisations like India to the world. It is important to bring nations together and teach each other to accommodate and appreciate each other through our differences”.
Most of Dara Shikoh’s works were completed in Kashmir and some scholars urged that his favourite sites be protected there.
A 90-minute play, directed by NSD professor Tripurari Sharma, was staged as part of the conference. It relived the intense conflict of Mughal India in the mid-17th century and used the struggle of succession among the sons of Shah Jahan as a setting to follow the evolution of Dara Shikoh as a scholar and secular thinker.
The play began with Dara’s own desire to succeed his father as emperor of India, and the competing inclination within him to also venture into the realm of spiritual enquiry and mystical realisation. He was engrossed in the study of major religious texts and in discourses with spiritual leaders of the time. He was convinced that there is a core unity in all religions. He was inspired in his search by the great Sufi saint, Hazrat Sarmad.
His untiring study, his translation of Sanskrit texts into Persian, as well as his work as a poet and philosopher, made him quite oblivious of what it took for a Mughal prince to ascend the Peacock Throne.
Further, this prince, having always lived in the comfort of imperial palaces, was no match for his younger brother, Aurangzeb, who was a shrewd military strategist with years of experience fighting and surviving in the Deccan. Resentful of Dara being Shah Jahan’s favourite and feeling bereft of the affection of his father, Aurangzeb became relentless in his ambition and was determined to rule.
In parallel with the aspirations of the brothers were the lives of their sisters, Jahanara and Roshanara. Without families of their own, they allied themselves with different brothers, to find individual purpose, and thus had their own role in taking the conflict beyond the perimeters of the family. But they were just as capable as the men.
Hazrat Sarmad was key to shaping Dara’s political outlook. An Armenian Jew, who made his home in India, he called himself a Hindu priest, a Christian monk, a Jewish Rabbi, a Muslim as well as an infidel. He went around naked, saying that only those with blemishes needed to cover themselves. His open support of Dara and his refusal to submit to any form of authority became a serious problem to an orthodox and ambitious Aurangzeb.
Mir Yekshatur, the outspoken camel keeper, understood everyone’s inner anguish. Once a small man in charge of 500 camels, he decided to become a one-camel man. In this fall was his ascent, since to understand one camel would take a lifetime, and this understanding would lead to his self-realisation. Mir Yekshatur was Dara’s true companion even as many others deserted or betrayed him. The other interlocutor of Mir Yekshatur was Janab-e-Chatur, voicing the feelings and wisdom of the common people. These two were the only fictional characters in the play, with all the others being historical. The play ended with the execution of Dara followed by that of Hazrat Sarmad.