MJ Akbar
Aurangzeb, disruptive in anything that did not conform to his narrow view, changed the official calendar from the Persian 12-month span beginning with Navroz in March to the rotating lunar Arabic year even though, as advised by his officials, it affected revenue collection. There was a yawning gap between reality and the advertising. Aurangzeb’s admirers claim that he was a man of simple habits who lived off his earnings from copying the holy book and sewing prayer caps.
This is nonsense. Aurangzeb lived and dressed like an emperor. Bernier, who travelled in his entourage to Kashmir, writes that Aurangzeb wore “magnificent attire”: white delicate satin shirt, with silk and gold embroidery of the finest texture, an aigrette on the turban of gold cloth, diamonds of an extraordinary size, a topaz with the lustre of the sun, a necklace of immense pearls from neck to stomach.
Nobles offered the king “gifts of extraordinary magnificence sometimes for the sake of an ostentatious display, sometimes to divert the King from instituting an enquiry into the exactions committed in their official situations or governments, and sometimes to gain the favour of the King”. It was business as usual. There was no saint sitting on the throne.
Liberal Dara Shukoh
Aurangzeb’s devotees in Pakistan elide over the paradox that their 20th-century hero Jinnah was a Shia. Shias were abhorrent to Aurangzeb. He called them ghul-i-bayabani (corpse-eating demons) or batil mazhaban (apostates). When Aurangzeb claimed that his campaign against Bijapur and Golconda, which had Shia sultans, was a holy war, his Shaikh-ul-Islam or chief priest could no longer tolerate the bigotry and resigned. He was forced to accept Shia Persians in his armed forces because they were good soldiers but ordered them to adopt the Sunni form of namaz.
The people were with the liberal, inclusive Dara Shukoh, not the acerbic and insular Aurangzeb who had won the throne but failed to conquer hearts. Bernier describes the people’s reaction when Dara was beheaded after being defeated. They wept and wailed; and even Aurangzeb was seized by a touch of remorse after seeing the severed head of Dara, crying out that he had become a wretch.
Shah Jahan wanted Dara Shukoh as his heir, supporting his preferred heir in the wars of succession with state resources. Dara believed in wahd-al wujud, or unity of all beings. He built intellectual and emotional bridges with Hindu seers and savants. He helped Gosain Vithalrai, a religious leader of Gokul, obtain a land grant in 1643. His wide-ranging conversations with Baba Lal, the spiritual leader from Punjab, are recorded in painting and text. The range can be gauged from two examples. What is kingship for a faqir, asked Dara. Being aware of oneself, without a care, answered the mendicant.
Honouring Sanskrit
Dara honoured Sanskrit as a source of knowledge. He was patron of Banvali Das who adapted Prabodhacandrodaya (Moonrise of Enlightenment), an 11th-century Sanskrit play, into Persian as a text of Sufism; and sponsored the Persian translation of Advaita Vedanta works like Astavakragita (Song of Ashtavakra), Atmavilasa (Play of the Soul) and the Bhagavad Gita.
In the winter of 1656, he summoned a large group of Sanskrit scholars in Banaras to work on a Persian translation of the Upanishads, which was completed by July the following year. Dara gave the title and wrote the preface of Sirr-i-Akbar (The Great Secret), submitting that the Islamic concept of Tawheed, or the unity of God, was found in the Upanishad, which could serve as a virtual commentary on the “noble Quran”.
Dara’s eclectic challenge to orthodoxy included association with the Persianspeaking Armenian mystic Shah Sarmad who made India his home and preached that all faiths represented different routes to the God he loved. Sarmad claimed that he obeyed the Quran, but was simultaneously a Hindu priest, a Christian monk, a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim. Dara addressed Sarmad as a guide and philosopher in the single letter on the subject that has survived. In 1661, or the third year of Aurangzeb’s reign, Sarmad was beheaded for heresy. He is buried in Delhi.
Status of Hindus
Dara took a question on behalf of his father-emperor Shah Jahan on the status of Hindus in the empire to the religious scholar Shaikh Muhibullah (1587-1648) in Allahabad. The answer is a definition of secularism in the 17th century: “…
justice requires that the welfare of the people should be the concern of the administrative officers, whether the people be believers or unbelievers, for they have been created by God”. A government must treat all subjects equally. The Prophet of God had taken “the lead in being merciful to the righteous and the evildoers, the believers and the unbelievers” (The Indian Muslims, citing Maktubat-i-Shah Muhibullah Ilahabadi, Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University). The larger point is: why should the decisions of 17th-century feudalism be visited upon the children of an egalitarian, democratic 21st century?
Aurangzeb’s life ended, as I have detailed in my forthcoming book Astrology in the Mughal Empire, not in the triumph of a pious man on his way to heaven, but the despair of a disjointed, confused, dejected failure who had triggered the ruin of a majestic empire.
