On Wednesday, RSS joint general secretary Dr Krishna Gopal, at an event in New Delhi, made the statement: "I can say with confidence that if Dara Shikoh had ruled India then Islam would have flourished in the country and Hindus would have also understood Islam better." On the same day, the minority affairs ministry announced it will stage a play based on the life of Mughal Emperor Shahjahan's son Dara Shikoh in various parts of the country to promote his inclusive ideas. Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Mughal prince was a victim of planned conspiracy by some historians who committed a sin of erasing and destroying his message and thinking of "Hindustani culture and tradition" from the pages of history.
So, what explains this renewed interest towards the elder brother of the "tyrannical" Aurangzeb? It is certainly nothing new. In 2017, after a proposal put forward by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, the NDMC had renamed Dalhousie Road in the national capital as Dara Shikoh Road. "The council has decided to rename the road to honour Dara Shikhoh for bringing Hindus and Muslims together," Lekhi had then said.
So, who was Dara Shikoh? Shahjahan's heir apparent, Dara Shikoh, was a poet and a scholar of Sanskrit, studied the Vedantic philosophy in detail, translated the Upanishads into Persian and was of the firm belief that the Upanishads are the 'hidden books' which the Quran spoke of. He wrote a work called the Majma-ul-Bahrain (Meeting of the Two Oceans) in which he concluded that the difference between Islam and Hinduism was merely verbal. He sought the company of Brahmans, yogis and sanyasis, and used to wear a ring with the word Prabhu inscribed on it. Shikoh was a man who once wrote: "Paradise is where no mullah exists, Where the noise of his discussions and debate is not heard". After Shahjahan fell ill in 1657, a bitter feud over the throne erupted between Shikoh and Aurangzeb—the latter succeeding in his bid. Shikoh was executed in 1659, and his writing the Majma-ul-Bahrain one of his crimes.
