Dirty, sexy politics

Italian traveller and writer Niccolao Manucci, known for his work Storia do Mogor, worked for Dara Shukoh, emperor Shah Jahan’s eldest son and chosen heir, and thus had first-hand knowledge of the Mughal court. He is one of the two narrators of Kakar’s book. The other is François Bernier, a French physician and traveller, who for 12 years was attached to Aurangzeb, who killed elder brother Dara to become emperor. Bernier is credited with writing the first published post-Classical classification of humans into distinct races. He also wrote Travels in the Mughal Empire, which is mainly about Dara and Aurangzeb.

Kakar’s triumph is in choosing his two narrators, who speak to the reader in alternate chapters. It’s also his undoing.

The book is set in the dying years of Shah Jahan’s reign. The monarch indulges in the pleasures of the flesh to divert himself from the travails of an aging body. A fratricidal battle is brewing among his sons — Dara, Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad — for the Peacock Throne, which epitomises the splendour of Shah Jahan’s rule.

This may not be the best period of the Mughal rule, but it is certainly the most intriguing. The chief contenders to the throne, Dara and Aurangzeb, are the dream-come-true for a fiction writer weaving a tale of two warring protagonists. Dara is the charismatic heir, the emperor’s favourite son, who is full of tolerance for diverse religious beliefs. He has written much on the Oneness of God and Man, the immanence of the Divine and the consequent assertion that there is no difference between various religions. He also writes about a dream in which he saw Vashishtha and Rama and Rama embracing him.

Full report here Business Standard