Introduction
The Mughal dynasty is a fascinating bunch. These leaders are one of the most significant empires in the history of the Indian subcontinent. Emperors like Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb are very famous figures. But one of the most famous of the Mughal royals is one who was never actually an emperor himself. He was a prince who much like his predecessor Akbar is not remembered much for political reasons but for his exploration of spiritual and intellectual pursuits. This figure was Shah Jahan’s eldest son Dara Shukoh. He was born in 1615. It is not really Dara’s political life that one gets interested in rather it was his thoughts on religion and society that attracted our attention.
Dara Shukoh’s Spiritual Journey and Sufi Influences
Being an initiate of the Qadri Sufi order as well as deeply and seriously exploring the religious traditions of the Hindus Dara represents the fascinating ways that religious traditions can meet and be in dialogue with each other without necessarily being subsumed into each other. In his early life, he became devoted to Sufism. Some stories suggest that this devotion towards Sufism was sparked off by a meeting with the famous Qadri Sufi saint Mian Mir(d.1635) who lived in Lahore. He became the disciple of Mian Mir. This Sufi master would have a lasting impact on the prince’s trajectory. Unfortunately, Dara’s time as the disciple of Mian Mir was short as the Sufi master passed away in 1635. Dara found another master in the form of Mulla Shah Badakshi who lived in Kashmir. At this time both Dara and his sister Jahanara started diving deep into Sufi literature both classics and contemporary works. As a result of these spiritual and intellectual pursuits, both siblings decided to write hagiographical works of their own which it is claimed that they both finished on the same day on 21st Jan 1640. Jahanara’s work entitled the “Munis-ul-Arwah” (The Confidant of Soul) was a kind of compendium of stories about Chishti saints. On the other hand, Dara’s book entitled “Safinat-ul-Awliya”(The Ship of God’s Friend) was more ambitious in scope and retells stories of Sufis of many different orders. He would also start to teach himself and dedicate himself to developing his approaches, writing works of sufi literature as well as engaging in debates and discussions with a wide spectrum of people in the region. He also wrote a treatise entitled “Risala-i-Haqqnuma”. The book is meant to show the path to reaching the divine by explicating and explaining a number of spiritual and meditative practices of Sufi doctrines. This very well explains the actual teachings and philosophies that Dara Shukoh adhered to. The treatise also tells us about Dara’s more metaphysical or ontological positions. Generally,y it is clear that Dara follows the teachings or school associated with Andalusian Sufi Ibn-al-Arabi (d.1240) which has become Wahdat-ul-sujood (The unity of being) a form of monistic interpretation of Islam where reality is identified with God and all appearance in the world is the reflection of God’s infinite attributes, all created things are nothingness and their being or “wujood” is God. What is interesting about this treatise is that it gave the first indications of Dara’s engagement with Indic thought and Hinduism in particular. The connection between Hinduism and its ideas would continue to be a significant part of Dara’s legacy. He tried to see significant common grounds between Islam and Hinduism for example ideas like Wahdat-ul-wujood and Advaita Vedanta.
Engagement with Hindu Philosophy and Advaita Vedanta
In order to understand Dara’s thoughts on religion and society it is necessary to have a look over the socio-religious and cultural milieu of that time. Dara’s thought was not very uncommon at the time infact even long before Dara’s time 'Muslim emperors like Akbar or Jahangir engaged in meeting with Hindu ascetics and discussing with them and also considering them to hold divine wisdom. Indeed the Mughal courtier Mutamad Khan(d.1639) wrote, “These days the science of Vedanta is taken to mean tasawwuf (Sufism)”. Hence in a nutshell Dara Shukoh inherited and used a tradition of fashioning political authority—asceticism and piety—that monarchs in India had used for a very long time. Hence there were many who thought that the two traditions essentially expressed the same divine truth. They believed that many so-called Hindus fell under the category of monotheists.
After writing “Risala-i-Haqqnuma” Dara started studying deeply some Hindu classics like Ramayana and engaging in meetings with Hindu ascetics like the sage Baba Lal who was following the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. Dara was so influenced by the interactions with Baba Lal that he refers to him as “one of most perfect gnostics”. This interaction with Indic thought is well reflected in Dara’s next major writing “Hasanat-al-Arifin” (Fine words of Gnostics) which is a collection of ecstatic utterances by various sufi authorities and also Baba Lal and Kabir.
Major Writings and Syncretistic Philosophy
Through his works, Dara made it clear that he did not consider divine truth to be exclusive only to Muslims but could also be reached to practitioners of other religious texts. In the text he stated,
“...in every community and in every garb, there are visible and hidden friends of the Divine Truth”.
These ideas seem to have intensified as one reaches to the final years of Dara’s life and all these interactions and discussions with teachers of different schools of thought culminated in what is one of Dara’s most famous works. In 1655 he wrote a treatise entitled “Majma-ul-Bahrain” (Meeting place of Two Oceans). The two oceans in the title refer to on the surface at least “Islam” and “Hinduism” but one should keep in mind that these categories were much more nuanced back then. The scholar Supriya Gandhi in her work “The Emperor Who Never Was” pointed out, “The prince refers to two religious traditions, but these are not the crystalized, rigidly-bounded Islam and Hinduism that we know in modern times. His project does not seek to synthesize two separate streams of Islam and Hindu religion. Instead, he aims to uncover and document a common font of truth shared by Muslim and non-Muslim, Indian ‘monotheists”. Majma-ul-Bahrain basically compares teachings, terms and ideas within Islam and Hinduism showing which different terms correspond to each other and emphasizing the common ground that both the traditions share. Dara himself writes in his treatise, “Apart from linguistic differences in discerning and knowing, I saw no divergence. From this perspective, I brought together the words of both parties and collected some terms that are essential and valuable for the seeker of truth to know and arranged them in a treatise.” The Majma remains a huge part of Dara’s legacy.
Dara Shukoh’s Legacy and Relevance Today
During the last years of his life, Dara’s translation project continued and intensified. His aim was to find the most primordial and ancient truths about god’s oneness which he claimed to find in the Upanishad. He argued that the Upanishads as scripture were the source of monotheism and tauheed. He wrote about the Upanishad, “which contain all the secrets of mystical path and meditative exercises of pure divine unity”. He calls this collection of translated Upanishads “ Sirr-e-Akbar”(The Greatest Secret). It's a syncretistic interpretation of Upanishads. This was the first translation of Upanishads into Persian and Dara’s Sirr-i-Akbar became a very popular and famous document surviving beyond the years of the prince’s life. But these fortunes were short-lived as he lost his life on 29th August 1659 in the bloody war of succession. This war of succession is quite often given very religious undertones and themes. According to one version, Aurangzeb’s victory cleared the way for Muslim political assertion. In a 1918 collection of Persian verse, Rumuz-i-Bekhudi the poet-philosopher Iqbal, pronounces judgment on two brothers. For him, Dara represented a dangerous shoot of heresy that was uprooted by Aurangzeb. While on the other hand columnist Ashok Malik considered Aurangzeb’s victory as “partition before partition” and with the death of Dara the lasting hope of the Hindu-Muslim compact also died. But this is of course quite a modern anachronistic way of looking at the situation.
As scholar Supriya Gandhi writes in her book, “In their multiple guises, Mughal royals like Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb still inhabit in today’s south Asia. Their names are regularly invoked in the public realm. Their personalities seem luminously transparent.” The works and thoughts of Dara Shukoh are very much relevant in our modern time. In today’s time, Dara is considered the most prominent representative of syncretistic culture and philosophical thoughts. Although it would be the anachronistic interpretation of the historical past in the current atmosphere where there is animosity between the followers of different beliefs the late prince can be considered a harbinger of secularism and pluralism. Tagore has realized the importance of Dara Shukoh as a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity. Through his works, Dara put forward the view that how Hinduism and Islam are different in terminologies but at a philosophical level they both are the same and they share many commonalities. And they both lead us to the same destination. According to him, the two religions could mutually co-exist without any kind of hatred. Hence Dara’s thoughts are not only an important aspect of history but it’s something that feeds very much into the present.