DARA SHUKOH IN WHOSE DEBT INDIA FOREVER SHALL BE

DARA SHUKOH IN WHOSE DEBT INDIA FOREVER SHALL BE

Dara Shukoh should be honoured by the Government of India for his seminal contribution in getting the Upanishads translated into Persian from which it later got translated into European languages and its message got disseminated among the Western intelligentsia. The German philosopher Schopenhauer was inspired and influenced greatly by the Upanishads for which the credit after the Vedic sages must go to this one great prince of Mughal India whose life was snuffed out by his barbarous brother Aurangzeb.

The Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi ought to have been rightfully named Dara Shukoh Road instead of A.P.J.Abdul Kalam Road whose personality-stature does not quite match up to that of Aurangzeb Alamgir and, so, the renaming suffers greatly from disproportionate incongruity. Dara Shukoh Road would have served the cause of redressing both this imbalance and the historical heresy involved in naming the road after Aurangzeb in the first place.

Anyhow, time it is, indeed, in these days of rewriting the other version of Indian history from the nationalist perspective, to honour this friend of the Hindus, this erudite, enlightened Mughal prince, heir-apparent to Emperor Shah Jahan, one whose head that had absorbed and assimilated such liberal, harmonising Vedantic thoughts, was severed from body by his dastardly brother and presented before the ailing, imprisoned monarch at the Agra Fort -- time it is, indeed, to restore him to gracious national memory for rendering yeoman service to India and to humanity at large in letting out the sacred mantras of the Upanishads to the wide world and, so, ushering in the age of Indological research in Germany and the rest of the West.

The Hindus hate Aurangzeb but love Dara Shukoh for his love of the Sanatan Dharma and his service unto it. It is time for the Indian Muslims as well to alter allegiance from that embodiment of religious bigotry to this enlightened prince who was far ahead of his times, far wiser than his bigoted co-religionists.

Dara Shukoh was then denied his due and is now being denied it as well. This ought to be corrected forthwith. The sooner the better for peace and amity in a world fractured by adherence to archaic absolutism going in the name of religion. Honouring Dara Shukoh would be the first step towards changing this fanatical orientation of the ignorant masses lying horribly bound within the confines of their narrow scriptural dictates. 🕉 

Written by Sugata Bose