Dara Shukoh: The Man Who Would Be King

In memoriam

Dr Benoy Chandra Sen (Dada-Bhai)

(1899–1981)

CONTENTS

IMAGES

IMAGES

I Miniatures

Prince Khurram (Shah Jahan) and his son, Dara Shukoh, with jewels; a leaf from an album made for Emperor Shah Jahan, c. 1620

Dara Shukoh as a boy, c. 1628–30

Shah Jahan, with three of his sons – Dara Shukoh, Shah Shuja and Aurangzib – and their maternal grandfather, Asaf Khan (to the right)

Portrait of Dara Shukoh, c. 1635/1645

State entry of Dara Shukoh

Dara Shukoh’s marriage procession, c. 1740–50

Dara Shukoh, holding a portrait of Nadira Banu, c. late eighteenth century

Calligraphy by Dara Shukoh, c. 1631

Portrait of Princess Nadira Banu Begum

A page from Majma-ul-Bahrain

Shah Jahan accepts a falcon from Dara Shukoh, c. 1630

Portrait of Jahanara Begum, c. 1635

A prince in Iranian attire, Dara Shukoh album, Agra, 1633–34

Dara Shukoh with Mian Mir and Mullah Shah

Dara Shukoh hunting nilgai, c. 1635

Shah Jahan and Dara Shukoh, c. 1638

Dara Shukoh with Sarmad, and an attendant, c. eighteenth century

Dara Shukoh with three holy men, c. 1650

Dara Shukoh with Sulaiman Shukoh, c. 1665

Equestrian portrait of Aurangzib, c. 1650

Dara Shukoh with his army, c. seventeenth century

II Monuments

Ajmer Fort

Agra Fort, interior

Dargah of Sufi saint, Moinuddin Chishti, Ajmer

Red Fort, Delhi

Diwan-i-Aam, Red Fort, Delhi

The Emperor’s jharokha, Lahore Fort

A section of Dara Shukoh’s library, Delhi

Gwalior Fort

Dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya, Delhi

Jahanara’s Tomb located inside the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, Delhi

Mian Mir’s Mausoleum, Lahore

Nadira Banu’s Tomb, Lahore

Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi

Dara Shukoh’s cenotaph, located inside the premises of Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi

EXTENT OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE (1530–1707)

MUGHAL EMPERORS & PRINCES (1483–1712)

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE IMPERIAL MUGHALS

Babur: First Mughal Emperor

Humayun: Babur’s son; the second Mughal Emperor

Kamran: Humayun’s renegade brother

Akbar: Humayun’s son; the third Mughal Emperor

Salim/Jahangir: Akbar’s son; the fourth Mughal Emperor

Nur Jahan: Jahangir’s wife; Empress of Mughal India

Ladli Begum: Nur Jahan’s daughter from her first marriage; wife of Prince Shahryar

Khusrau: Jahangir’s renegade son; died under mysterious circumstances while in Khurram’s care

Shahryar: Jahangir’s son, briefly crowned Emperor; deposed and murdered swiftly under Khurram’s instructions

Parvez: Jahangir’s son; died prematurely of chronic alcoholism

Khurram/Shah Jahan: Jahangir’s son; effectively the fifth Mughal Emperor

Arjumand Banu/Mumtaz Mahal: Shah Jahan’s wife and Empress of the Mughal Empire, after Nur Jahan

Dara Shukoh: Shah Jahan’s eldest and favourite son, heir-apparent to the Mughal throne, prior to being defeated by Aurangzib

Nadira Banu: Prince Parvez’s daughter and wife of Dara Shukoh

Sulaiman Shukoh: Dara Shukoh’s elder son

Sipihr Shukoh: Dara Shukoh’s younger son

Jani Begum: Dara Shukoh’s daughter

Salima Begum: Dara Shukoh’s daughter

Raushanara Begum: Shah Jahan’s daughter, loyal to Aurangzib

Jahanara Begum: Shah Jahan’s daughter, loyal to Dara Shukoh

Aurangzib/Alamgir: Shah Jahan’s son; Mughal Emperor following Shah Jahan

Shuja: Shah Jahan’s son, defeated in the War of Succession and later murdered in the Arakkan region, where he had fled

Murad Bakhsh: Shah Jahan’s son and Aurangzib’s ally in the War of Succession, but later imprisoned and murdered by him Aurangzib

Sultan Muhammad: Aurangzib’s son

Muhammad Akbar: Renegade son of Aurangzib

Muazzam: Son of Aurangzib; later Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah I

Kam Bakhsh: Aurangzib’s youngest and favourite son

Zebunissa: Aurangzib’s daughter

Zubdat-un-nissa: Aurangzib’s daughter; later married to Sipihr Shukoh

OTHER MONARCHS

Shah Ismail: Persian Emperor

Shah Tahmasp: Persian Emperor, and Humayun’s supporter and host during the latter’s period of exile

Murad IV: Ottoman monarch during the reign of Shah Jahan

NOBLES, COURTIERS AND COMMANDERS

Abu’l-Fazl: Noted statesman, scholar and author who was Prime Minister during Akbar’s reign

Abdur Rashid Dalemi and Abdul Latif Sultanpuri: Dara’s tutors

Ali Mardan Khan: Persian governor of Qandahar during Shah Jahan’s reign; defected to Hindustan

Asaf Khan: Prime Minister during Jahangir’s and the early part of Shah Jahan’s reign; brother of Nur Jahan and father-in-law of Shah Jahan

Azam Khan: Commander during Jahangir’s reign

Bahadur Khan: Commander in the Mughal imperial army

Baqi Beg: Commander loyal to Dara Shukoh

Baqi Khan and Ibrahim Khan: Commanders loyal to Shah Jahan

Danishmand Khan: Seasoned courtier at the durbar of Shah Jahan, antagonized by Dara

Daud Khan: Army commander loyal to Dara

Dilir Khan: Faujdar of Kanauj

Itimad-ud-Daula: Nur Jahan’s father

Izzat Khan: Dara’s stooge; commander in Qandahar campaign

Jafar/Barqandaz Khan: Dara’s stooge; artillery chief in Qandahar campaign

Jahangir Beg: Mughal commander who served under Dara at Qandahar

Kasim Khan: Governor of Bengal under Shah Jahan

Khwaja Khan Uzbeg: Commander in the Mughal expeditionary force during Dara’s Qandahar campaign

Mahabat Khan the Younger: Veteran Mughal general, who fought in Qandahar under Dara

Medini Singh: Rajah Prithwichand’s son

Mir Jumla: Military commander and strategist loyal to Aurangzib

Mirza Abdullah: Paymaster of Dara’s contingent during the Qandahar campaign

Mirzai Maghasi: Chieftain of the Maghasi tribe, who sheltered the fugitive Dara

Mukund Singh Hada and Lashkar Khan: Mughal detachment leaders who served under Dara at Qandahar

Murshid Quli Khan and Zulfiqar Khan: Generals under Aurangzib’s command, at the Battle of Dharmat

Muzaffar Hussain Mirza: Persian governor of Qandahar during Akbar’s reign; defected to Hindustan

Najabat Khan: Five-hazari commander in the imperial army; served in Qandahar campaign under Dara

Qasim Khan: Artillery chief of the Mughal army under Shah Jahan

Qilich Khan: Commander of imperial troops during Dara’s aborted Qandahar campaign

Rai Chandrabhan Brahman: Hindu functionary, scholar and author in the employ of Dara

Rajah Jagat Singh: Rajput commander, who accompanied Murad Bakhsh on his campaign in Central Asia

Rajah Man Singh Gwaliori: Sycophant in Dara’s entourage during the Qandahar campaign

Rajah Prithwichand: Hindu king of Srinagar

Ratan Singh Rathor, Dayal Singh Jhala, Arjun Singh Gaur, Rai Singh Sisodia, Sujan Singh Bundela, Ram Singh Rautela, Mohan Singh Hada, Iftikhar Khan and Amar Singh Chandrawat: Commanders under Jaswant Singh, at the Battle of Dharmat

Rao Chhatrasal Hada: Rajput commander, loyal to Shah Jahan

Rajah Rajrup Singh: Commander under Dara in the Qandahar campaign; later a loyalist of Aurangzib during the War of Succession

Rustam Khan: Veteran commander loyal to Shah Jahan, who fought at the Battle of Samugarh

Rustam Khan Firuz Bahadur Jung: Mughal army commander, who served in the Qandahar campaign under Dara

Rashid Khan: Calligrapher; Dara’s tutor

Saadullah Khan: Wazir or Prime Minister during much of Shah Jahan’s reign

Shah Nawaz Khan: Commander loyal to Dara; served under him at the Battle of Deorai

Syed Hidayatullah and Fazil Khan: Envoys from Shah Jahan to Aurangzib

SUFIS AND ASCETICS

Abhaychand: Hindu companion of Sarmad (see on the following page)

Abdul Qadir Gilani: Founder of the Qadiri sect

Baba Lal Bairagi/Khatri: Hindu yogi, consulted by Dara in Lahore, following the Qandahar campaign

Mian Mir: Qadiri leader; briefly Dara’s spiritual teacher and guide

Moinuddin Chishti: Sufi teacher and founder of the Chishti silsila

Mullah Shah: Mian Mir’s successor in the Qadiri sect; also Dara’s guide

Nizamuddin Auliya: Sufi teacher and philosopher, who was Amir Khusrau’s spiritual guide

Sarmad: Jewish convert to Islam; self-styled Sufi teacher

Shaikh Fazullah: Sufi saint in Burhanpur

PHYSICIANS, ATTENDANTS AND SLAVES

Aitbar Khan: Eunuch in Aurangzib’s employ

Amina Gujrati: Commander loyal to Dara

Amir Khan, Saf Shikhan Khan, Shaikh Mir and Tahir Khan: Part of Aurangzib’s contingent

Askaran, Maheshdas Gaur and Govardhan: Officers in Rajah Jaswant Singh’s contingent; fought at the Battle of Dharmat

Ayub: Servant of Mughal functionary, Malik Jiwan

Bahara Mahal: Dara’s diwan

Basant: Eunuch, loyal to Dara

Bisharat: Eunuch; Murad Bakhsh’s loyal servant

Champat Rai Bundela, Faqir Khan and Shaikh Farid: Disgraced at the imperial court of Shah Jahan and subsequently rehabilitated by Dara

Dhunichand: Dara’s envoy

Fidai Khan: Officer in Aurangzib’s army

Firuz Mewati, Jani Beg and Syed Ibrahim: Part of Dara’s contingent at the Battle of Deorai

Gul Muhammad: Faujdar of Surat; loyal to Dara

Indar Bhat and Fidai Khwaja: Secret envoys from Aurangzib to Raj Singh

Maaqul: Eunuch in the employ of Dara, who accompanies the cortège of Nadira Banu to Lahore

Muhammad Amin Khan, Bahadur Khan, Hakim Daud and Takarub Khan: Part of Aurangzib’s court entourage, unanimously advocating Dara’s execution

Nazar Beg: Slave loyal to Aurangzib; Dara’s jailer

Maqbula, Mahram, Mashhur, Asarun, Farad, Murad and Fateh Bahadur: Followers of Nazar Beg

Rao Ramchand Chauhan, Raghodas Jhala, Sanwaldas Rathor and Gharibdas: Hindu contingent from Mewar to the court of Shah Jahan

Siti-un-nissa: Faithful attendant of Mumtaz Mahal; later assistant to Jahanara

Syed Ahmad Bukhari: One of Dara’s trusted lieutenants

Udaikiran Chauhan and Sankar Bhatta: Secret envoys from Raj Singh to Aurangzib

Wazir Khan: Physician at the court of Shah Jahan

THE ANTAGONISTS

Abdul Aziz Khan: Nazar Muhammad’s son; King of Balkh

Abdullah Qutab Shah: Ruler of Golconda state in the Deccan

Adil Shah: Ruler of Bijapur

Champat Rai Bundela: Served under Dara at Qandahar, but later switched allegiance to Aurangzib

Khalilullah Khan: Commander in the Mughal army; an Aurangzib-loyalist, who betrays Dara at the crucial battle of Samugarh

Khan Jahan Lodi: Afghan commander, governor of Malwa under Jahangir, and rebel

Khojah Mushkin: Eunuch; robs Dara of his treasure following the Battle of Deorai

Mahabat Khan: Commander under Jahangir, turned rebel and his kidnapper

Maharana Pratap Singh: Son of Uday Singh, Akbar’s arch-rival

Malik Ambar: Rebel commander during Jahangir’s reign

Malik Jiwan: Mughal functionary sentenced to death by Shah Jahan, saved and rehabilitated by Dara; eventually, a traitor and Dara’s captor

Nazr Muhammad: King of Balkh

Rajah Jai Singh: Chief of the Rajput Kachhawa clan; imperial commander in the Mughal army; and later a loyalist of Aurangzib during the War of Succession

Rajah Jaswant Singh: King of Jodhpur, who was commander in the Mughal army under Shah Jahan

Ram Singh: Jaswant Singh’s son; a vakil at Shah Jahan’s court

Rana Sangha: King of Mewar during Babur’s reign

Rana Uday Singh: Son of Rana Sangha, who succeeded him to the throne of Mewar

Rana Amar Singh: Maharana Pratap’s son, who is defeated by Mughal forces under Khurram’s command and is compelled to become a vassal of the Mughal empire

Rajah Raj Singh: King of Mewar, against Shah Jahan

Saubhag Singh/Sultan Singh: Son of Raj Singh

Syed Dilawwar, Hadidad Khan, Islam Khan and Bahadur Khan: Commanders loyal to Aurangzib, who fought at the Battle of Samugarh

Shah Abbas I: Persian Emperor during Shah Jahan’s reign

Shah Abbas II: Shah Abbas I’s successor

Shaista Khan: Brother of Mumtaz Mahal, general in imperial army, loyal to Aurangzib

Sher Shah Suri: Afghan general and ruler of Delhi after defeating Humayun in successive battles

Subhan Quli: Abdul Aziz Khan’s younger brother

SCRIBES, ARTISTS AND HISTORIANS

Abdul Hamid Lahori: Official chronicler at the court of Shah Jahan; author of Padshahnama

Abdul Rahman Jaami: Author of the Nafahat-ul-Uns, a collection of biographies of Sufi saints

Alberuni: Muslim scholar, theoretician, historian and author in the eleventh century

Amir Khusrau: Legendary poet, chronicler, statesman and Sufi teacher, under the Delhi Sultanate

Arif: An imperial servant, who provided medical care to Jahanara after her accident

Badi-uz-Zaman Rashid Khan: Fought under Mahabat Khan the Younger during Dara’s Qandahar campaign; author of the Lataif-ul-Akhbaar

Chitarman and Govardhan: Master painters at Shah Jahan’s court

Faizi: Abu’l-Fazl’s brother; poet laureate of the Mughal Empire, during Akbar’s reign

Hamun: A mendicant who cured Jahanara of her wounds, following her accident

Khafi Khan: Chronicler; author of Muntakhab-ul-Lubab

Mirza Muhammad Qazim: Author of the Alamgirnamah

Muhammad Hussain al-Kashmiri: Famous calligrapher

Muhammad Masum: Author of Tarikh-i-Shujai

Muhammad Salih Kambu: Calligraphist and chronicler at the court of Shah Jahan; author of the Amal-i-Salih

Saqi Mustad Khan: Chronicler and author of Maasir-i-Alamgiri

Sher Khan Lodi: Author of Mirat-ul-Khiyal

Rumi, Jaami, Saadi, Omar Khayyam, Hafez, Firdausi and Urfi Shirazi: Persian poets admired by Dara

MAGICIANS, DIVINES AND QUACKS

Indra Gir: Tantric yogi, prominent during Dara’s Qandahar campaign

Shaikh Nazir: A conjurer who could, purportedly, turn water into honey; Dara was momentarily taken up by his miraculous powers

THE EUROPEANS

François Bernier: French physician; memoirist

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier: French traveller in seventeenth-century Mughal India; and memoirist

Peter Mundy: British traveller to Mughal India during Shah Jahan’s reign

Niccolao Manucci: Italian soldier of fortune; Dara’s captain of artillery at Samugarh; and memoirist

Revs. Estanilas Malpica, Pedro Juarte and Henri Buzeo: Jesuit priests who had an association with Dara

Sir Thomas Roe: British ambassador to Mughal India during Jahangir’s reign

Willem Verstegen: Dutch soldier of fortune, partisan to Dara

PROLOGUE

ROMANCING HISTORY

I had no views or opinions, no system. I was interested in history;

but I was also interested in landscape; above all, I was interested – at times

frivolously – in people as I found them.

~ V.S. Naipaul

Museums have the power to transport one into the past. At the Ajmer Fort, the freshly painted walls have been renovated over the original stone-face of the fort that is four-and-half centuries old. Inside, there’s the hush of that once-grand durbar – the compulsive silence before an imperial presence – that has still somehow been preserved. The spotlights stoop from above, glimmering like mashaals. Footfalls and voices in adjacent galleries float in like souvenirs from a bygone age. At the point where a door leads into the main hall of the museum, a large full-length portrait of a youth fills the wall. Wearing a long orange tunic, he has two rows of a pearl necklace cast lavishly over his torso, and a thin ornately handled staff cradled about his arm, reaching the ground. But his face is soft, the skin as yet unbroken by a beard, and only the first hint of a moustache surfaces beneath an aquiline profile. A prince of the imperial Mughal family, no doubt, perhaps a future Shahenshah. Larger than life, he looms suddenly like the vision of some demi-god. But, in a moment, it becomes apparent that he has scant interest in the visitors, his gaze directed towards an infinite distance, otherworldly, hypnotic.

This is not the youthful Akbar, who, later during his reign, laid the foundations of this fort. Nor Salim, later the emperor Jahangir, who used it as a strategic military base to launch successful campaigns against Mewar, and who, at this same place, also issued a firmaan permitting trade to Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador from England.

This is Dara Shukoh, vilified and venerated, the dreamer and the misfit, misunderstood in his own time, and beyond – the undisputed Emperor of inchoate dreams…

The emperor Shah Jahan’s favourite son, heir-apparent to the Mughal throne prior to his defeat by Aurangzib, Dara has sometimes been portrayed as an effete prince, utterly incompetent in all military and administrative matters. But his tolerance towards other faiths, the legacy of his philosophy and the myriad myths surrounding him, have far outlived him and continue to fuel the popular imagination. In truth, the Crown Prince was a highly complex person: a visionary thinker, a talented poet and prolific writer, a scholar and theologian of unusual merit, a calligraphist and connoisseur of the fine arts, and a dutiful son and warm-hearted family man. He was also cold and arrogant to the mass of courtiers and commanders, whom he felt were inferior to him, intensely superstitious by nature, easily swayed by mystery and magic, an indifferent army general and shockingly naïve in his judgement of character.

Dara Shukoh stands at the centre of one of the biggest ‘what if’ questions in Indian history. Even today, over 350 years after his death, the debate rages on. If this ‘Good Mughal’ had ascended the throne instead of his pugnacious younger brother, Aurangzib, how would that have changed the course of Indian history? Would the Mughal Empire have witnessed its collapse and dissolution within such a short period? Would sectarian tensions in the country have been averted? Would India have even been colonized?

There’s been a little writing about history, in my family, on my mother’s side. My mother’s great-grandfather was a man called Dinesh Chandra Sen, an educationist whose prodigious literary output of over thirty-five publications was surpassed by his love of learning and knowledge. A scholar of the history and evolution of the Bengali language and literature, particularly its folk tales, he faithfully compiled, annotated and breathed fresh life into them. Amongst his sons, two grew up to be academic historians, Arun Sen and Benoy Chandra Sen. The latter, my mother’s grandfather, was an expert in ancient Indian history, as equally at home with Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit as the English he wrote his books in. For some reason, I would fondly call him ‘Dada-Bhai’ as a child, during the many visits I made with my parents to his home. But even more fascinating than the fleeting, occasional company of Dada-Bhai was the sheer volume of books, mainly on history, in that house, inhabiting whole spaces and chunks of rooms, ever-present, proprietorial, as sentient and gregarious as all the people who lived there.

I have this distinct childhood memory. Me, aged six or perhaps seven, seated beside Dada-Bhai, the two of us gazing out the window of his bedroom, for a long time. He spoke, not exactly of history, but of change. At an unobtrusive distance around us, were shelves stretching from the floor to the ceiling, packed with books, both old and new, advising, educating but also strangely reassuring, protecting us, a child and a man in his late seventies, from the perils of the world. History books.

Then came an unimaginably long hiatus.

And when, more than three decades later, a combination of ennui and circumstances brought me back again to thoughts about history, I noticed that one aspect had endured through all those years of wilful worldliness: the love of all things old. During some of this time, I had been living abroad, but surprisingly enough, the hotels, office towers and shopping arcades – invariably kitted like giant Christmas gifts – didn’t leave any lasting impression on me. Instead, it was always the past that remained and haunted: museums and Renaissance paintings, the demure smile of the jewelled Madonna in the Kölner Dom or some intricate inner lane of Venice, rain-wept, wind-lorn, sequestered with spires, facades, balustrades and little pontoons that were all decaying very slowly, but all the more full of hubris because of it. Such motifs revealed themselves in my jottings, which morphed into poems.

Looking back, it seems only natural that my steps would bring me back, at least for a while, to Calcutta, where I had spent the first twenty-odd years of my life. Notwithstanding a formal re-appellation of its name, changing political regimes, evidence of globalization, the rampant pulling down of buildings that ought to have been designated as heritage, to be supplanted by mini-malls and squat five- and six-storey structures completely devoid of identity – there were still some things about it that remained Calcutta. A product of the Raj, the city had enjoyed an early first blossom and then, past its halcyon days, fast degenerated through the post-Independence era to its present condition, marginalized and smarting for being cheated out of its place in history. Returning to this city, again, after all these years, I found it to be succoured by its need for this absent past. In Venice, around 1,500 years old, the elements aid in the ageing process; with Calcutta, one relies on neglect and disrepair. The peeling plaster, weeping stucco of church and gravestone statues, the frail inscriptions in concrete still clinging to an alien Latin, make the extant landmark structures of the city look centuries older than they actually are.

And then slowly, that atavistic, glamorous, fulfilling notion of history returned to me. To write a ‘history book’, not as redemption – but purpose. I had been saved from panic, and crushing, mind-numbing boredom. I got passes at the National Library, and began to scour zealously through the pages of musty books. My incipient sense of purpose was nourished by the smell of those books and the old, childhood memories they evoked. Their pages worked like a charm, opening up mysterious avenues and catacombs, always encouraging, illuminated by torchlight; then that light strengthened and the walls became shelves, packed with volumes. And in those tenuous pages, those thumb-struck, moth-flown, sepia-toned archives of the Rare Books Section that had so generously been opened up for me, I found my subject.

Romancing history, like the act of any other romance, while exhilarating, is also fraught with a prospect of danger. In the case of history, particularly when it comes to as charismatic and controversial a figure as Dara Shukoh, the challenge is magnified when working with secondary sources, as I have. The translations of the official chronicles from the original Persian texts may be coloured, and the personal interpretations that follow, perilously skewed. This is due not only to the conditioning that is a function of the times the works were produced in, but also the politics of the historians themselves. Consequently, there are interpolations and forceful conclusions, heavily reliant on individual predilections and motivations – rather than on a more measured, objective Rankean project of representing ‘things as they were’.

This phenomenon is quite pronounced in colonial-era historians, where the preoccupation was with the ‘character’ of the subject – and where, consequently, the defence of any position, once formed, was paramount. Thus, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Zahiruddin Faruki, researching at roughly the same time, about the same historical personage, and referencing many of the identical original Persian manuscripts, came to very different (and clamorously contradictory) conclusions in their respective assessments of the emperor Alamgir: be they about the sovereign’s character and integrity, bigotry and brutality, casting him as a tragic figure (or otherwise), and ultimately, his very place in history. Accordingly, in referencing translations and other works produced between the early- to mid-twentieth century, I’ve kept to the facts as recorded by the authors, but avoided being persuaded by their individual positions.

In this effort of mindfulness, I’ve benefited particularly from two books. Jagdish Narayan Sarkar’s History of History Writing in Medieval India: Contemporary Historians helped to sensitize me to the nuances and predilections of contemporary chroniclers. It also underscored the danger and fallacy of typecasting medieval history, and by corollary, its rulers, along the lines of intolerance, sectarianism, bloodshed and horrors. Likewise, Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book, The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth, opened up keen insights for me, in drawing out the relationship between identity and history, the scholar’s pursuit of historical authenticity, and the business of writing history – based on evidence and logic – marred, however, by ideological colourations.

Besides contemporary official accounts, chronicles of European adventurers, physicians and functionaries presented me with narratives of many of the same events as the official annals, but viewed through a different, albeit at times partisan, lens. Above all, the wealth of research-based literature on the Mughal period produced by generations of scholars, in the hundred years since Sir Jadunath published his first seminal volume on Aurangzib, has been invaluable. What the bibliography at the end of this book offers is only a glimpse of this vast scholarship.

Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty narrates that in the course of writing The Calling of History, there were times when he could feel an almost palpable presence of the protagonist – the late, and greatly controversial Sir Jadunath Sarkar – looking over his shoulder. My biggest reward in writing Dara Shukoh: The Man Who Would Be King, is that there were certain moments, indelible and almost numinous, in the grip of which, one could attest to a rather similar experience.

After a long period alone with my heart, I understood that one must write as though one is in the time of utter happiness…

~ Abu’l-Fazl

ONE

RITES OF PASSAGE

God has decreed life for you

and He will give

another and another and another

~ Rumi

Ajmer, where this story begins, has long had its place in the sun.

At first, this was just another tract of land, clumps of bramble and briar interspersed with unexpected natural clearings in the flat valley. Millennia of harsh summers had parched the soil to the texture of desiccated tree-bark, chipped and cracked. There were no lakes or temples. Here and there, boulders, bleached white by the sun, shone upright like shrines from some ancient civilization. To the west, the Aravalli hills formed a phalanx of shields against the Thar Desert. A dust-track through the hills took the occasional lonely traveller to the pilgrimage town of Pushkar, with its famous lake, its banks hallowed with temples. The land brooded and waited. Then, early in the twelfth century, king Ajaymeru of the Chauhan clan chose this place as the capital of his incipient but expanding dominions, and Ajmer came to be named after him.

Hereafter, under the patronage of a successive line of kings, a city morphed into being out of this wilderness: with temples, a citadel and even a meticulously engineered artificial lake, it became both a sanctuary and a bastion of Rajput strength. As it turned out, there was much need for valour, for there was no dearth of enemies. The Chandelas of the neighbouring state, for instance, but more worrying, a previously unknown foe. Foreigners from Ghori and Ghazni, who swore to a different faith, burned and pillaged all in their path, destroying holy temples and defiling the idols.

Repulsed at first, these soldiers of Islam displayed a disturbing characteristic. Each failed incursion only seemed to double their resolve, and they’d return like a dust storm, in even greater strength. In the end, the raiders proved too wily, tenacious and powerful, even for the bravest of the Rajput clans, as Prithviraj Chauhan, the grand hero of his people, was defeated and killed in battle in 1192 by Muhammad Ghori. After his death, Ajmer became a Muslim vassal state, bowing to the burning ambition of Ghori, and with this started the train of the slow but irrevocable decline of the Rajputs.

Years passed, the dust of the raids began to settle, and gradually the indigenous Hindu populace awoke to a new realization: the marauders had become colonizers. An inchoate Sultanate centred in Delhi, although marred by ceaseless internal strife and power struggles, had begun to take root in this land. Before long, in the footsteps of the warriors came men of learning, philosophy and mysticism. These were a new kind of people – mendicants, dervishes and fakirs, and Sufis of the Islamic credo – whom the locals hadn’t encountered before. Equipped with nothing but faith and wanderlust, they set out on horseback or camel, sometimes even on foot, from far-flung Ghazni, Khorasan and Samarqand, seeped into the newly conquered territories of Hindustan and made it their home. One of them was a man who later came to be known as Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.

Moinuddin Chishti was born in 1142 AD in Sistan (etymologically, from Sakastan – land of the Sakas), then part of Persia, under the Nasrids. His father, a miller, died when Moinuddin was very young. Craving not just a surrogate father but spiritual guidance, the adolescent attached himself to a dervish and adopted the itinerant way of life. From Samarkand to Bukhara, Khorasan and then Nishapur, for twenty years he travelled, fasted and meditated, and under the tutelage of successive khwajas (guides), lived the life of a spiritual apprentice.

When he arrived in Hindustan, he initially made his dwellings in Lahore and then journeyed to Ajmer, where he spent the rest of his life. Against the hard, polemic intolerance of the Muslim orthodoxy, Moinuddin Chishti’s approach of compassion offered a refreshing change. Philosophies at variance with his were tolerated, discourse encouraged. Even music, anathema to Islamic puritans, was allowed. Naturally, people were drawn to his teachings and many amongst the local population converted to Islam. Like other Sufi saints, Moinuddin was reputedly gifted with the power of fulfilling supplicants’ wishes, and by the time he died, at the age of 94, he had founded his own silsila (spiritual order).¹

Over the next 200 years, Ajmer gained a fresh identity. Dynasties swelled, toppled and shattered; and Sultans ascended the throne of Delhi in quick succession and were murdered with sickening regularity. The dargah of Moinuddin Chishti, with its fabled powers, however, endured. Then, a puissant new dynasty began in Delhi – that of the Mughals. Its doyen, Jalaludin Muhammad Akbar, paid homage to the Chishti shrine on fourteen separate instances during his lifetime. Whether during a tour of his dominions, en route to a campaign against the Rajputs, or on the way back, Ajmer became a favourite point for rest and replenishment.

Not far from the dargah, Akbar commissioned a fort–palace, an imposing, beautiful, Mughal-styled building. More than just a luxurious abode, this was a territorial flag-post, challenging the warrior clans of Rajasthan, as Akbar continued to stretch the map of his empire westwards. Of all the communities he had battled against, none fought so bravely and with such reckless indifference for their own lives as the Rajputs. A haughty, unpredictable people, their pride easily touched to the quick. And of all their kings and chieftains, there was no greater adversary than the ruler of Mewar, Maharana Pratap Singh. Akbar’s own imperial forces had crushed the Rana’s troops at Haldighati. That elusive king then took to the hills and, garnering fresh support from a motley brand of soldiers, traders and tribal Bhils, began to wage a nefarious kind of war. No longer giving battle in the open but resorting to skirmishing, ambushing, snapping at the tail of the Mughal supply-line caravans.

By this time, Akbar’s vast empire spanned sixteen subas (provinces): Agra, Allahabad, Bengal, Berar, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Kabul, Khandesh, Lahore (the Punjab), Malwa, Multan, Orissa, Oudh, Thatta (Sind) and, of course, Ajmer. Each of these was administrated by a provincial subedar or governor, handpicked by the Emperor himself. But Delhi and Agra were too deep into the mainland for him to direct campaigns westwards. True, Amber (or Amer) was friendly territory and would gladly host his army. Ajmer, however, was his very own. From here, he would run offensives to bring all the Rajput dominions to his feet – a dream that would remain unfulfilled in his own lifetime.

Akbar’s son, Salim, likewise warmed to Ajmer. During his visits as a prince and later as Emperor Jahangir, he found much to marvel at here. Though west of Agra and much closer to the desert, Ajmer was less hot and dusty than the capital, with a most pleasing winter. This was probably on account of the lakes. The surrounding land was arid and sandy, but a good spell of rains presented some scope for agriculture.² Jahangir paid numerous visits to the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti, occasionally – following the example of his father – on foot. During an inspection of the city he found that Lake Bisal, an ancient waterbody favoured by the Hindus, lay in ruins; so, he ordered the banks to be dammed and the lake filled up. Ana Sagar, the largest of the lakes, brimmed with water and beside it, he built a lovely garden, Daulat Bagh, using it for his personal leisure strolls in the evening. The land that had witnessed much bloodshed in the past, was now a veritable oasis. But the Rana of Mewar remained the one painful thorn.

On the eve of Dussehra, in the September of 1613, after five continuous years in Agra, Jahangir commenced a pilgrimage to Ajmer. A distance of some 250 miles from Agra, it took the contingent almost two months to complete the relocation. When a Mughal sovereign shifted base, even temporarily, the whole of his court followed, a portable microcosm of the empire: princes and members of the royal harem; ministers and generals; clergymen and political advisers; cavalry and infantry; standard bearers, dancers and musicians, engineers, architects, traders, transporters, painters, sculptors and artisans, cooks, cleaners, water-carriers and cup-bearers, servants and other camp-followers, including women and children, as well as every conceivable beast of transport – elephants, horses, mules, camels, bullocks and oxen, along with the armour, weapons, provisions and equipment that they carried – in all, a company of well over a hundred thousand of his subjects.

Mounting a magnificent white horse, that from a distance stood out like a flare under the sun, Jahangir rode out. He wore a richly embroidered turban with plumes rising high above his crown; a ruby on the right, a diamond on the left, were set into the turban; and in the middle, was a gleaming green emerald. His qamarband (sash) was an equally exquisite affair, girded by a chain of rubies, pearls and diamonds. Around his neck hung a heavy, three-layered pearl necklace, the jewels increasing in size as they extended over his chest. On every finger was a ring, set in the finest precious stone, while his gloves, commissioned from England, were tucked into his sash. For his travel-coat, Jahangir wore a long robe embroidered in gold thread and his feet dipped into a pair of leather nagras, embroidered with pearls, the toes turning sharply up. A sword and buckle studded with jewels completed his attire for the journey.³

En route, the party camped several times. There was much hunting during the day and in the evenings, music and merrymaking. A perpetually curious and astute observer of nature, Jahangir made notes on plants and animals, people and local customs. Arriving in Ajmer on 8 November 1613, he proceeded right away to the holy shrine of Moinuddin Chishti. As it came into view, Jahangir dismounted and made his way on foot to the dargah, where he spent the rest of the day, praying and giving alms to the poor.

Once he took up residence in the fort–palace at Ajmer and things settled into the usual routine of the court, his retinue, staff and followers filled and overflowed out of the premises into the surrounding township, and when even that seemed too confined to contain the people, they pitched camp outside the gates. The perimeters of Ajmer shifted and grew, as more incumbents converged towards it and the city itself resembled some gigantic visceral organism spreading itself out, slowly, over the valley.

It was night, and the rain came down on Ajmer like a fine screen of beads and crystals. The Emperor, under the ruse of being tired, had dismissed his courtiers, cancelled his day-end meeting with the Secret Council and retired to his private quarters. His personal attendants stood waiting outside the door at a hand-clapping distance. Around the room, tapers burned in gilded candle-stands: they picked the light off cups of jade inlaid with tiny chips of rubies and emeralds, the marble table on which his writing materials were laid out, the jewelled rings as Jahangir flexed his hands, and the richly brocaded cushion against which he leaned back and rested his head. Now and again, a breeze through the open window bent the flames sideways, and for a moment all the shadows in the room changed shape and leapt about.

No wine or opium thus far this evening or even the distraction of the harem, affording him a clear head, and this heavy silence, to think, he cast his mind on the day’s proceedings at court: there had been nothing out of the usual. And it was this very ordinariness that reassured him. All things had settled to their regular, measured rhythm. If one were to