The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  Danishmand Khan had known both the princes intimately as boys from the time when the boys’ grandfather, Emperor Jahangir, ruled the kingdom and Emperor Shah Jahan, or Prince Khurram as he was then called, was the viceroy of the Deccan. Intoxicated by the military successes of the previous years, when he had forced the Sultans of Bijapur and Ahmednagar to acknowledge Mogul suzerainty, Prince Khurram had already set his sights on the imperial throne. He had attacked Agra when his father was on his way to Kashmir for the summer but had been left frustrated by the city’s outstanding defences. Then, in a pitched battle near Delhi, the prince had been decisively defeated by the imperial army and was forced to flee to the south and take refuge in the very kingdoms he had left as a victor on an ill-fated venture to overthrow his father. The final terms of his surrender included the transfer of his sons, Dara, who was ten years old at the time, and Aurangzeb, who was six, as hostages to the imperial court, and Danishmand Khan had been entrusted with the responsibility of the princes’ education and accompanied the boys to Lahore where they were to stay for the next three years.

  ‘How different the two boys were, Bernier!’ the Agha reminisced. ‘Both received the same education as any other Mughal prince: lessons on the Holy Quran, the history of the house of Timur and Persian poetry. Dara and Aurangzeb were both conscientious students and diligent in completing their assignments, but it was evident that Aurangzeb did not share Dara’s love for poetry. Not only was he indifferent to the music of poetry but he also considered it a waste of time. He would rather spend hours studying the Holy Book.’

  We were sitting in the pavilion in the Agha’s garden, inhaling the soft scent of jasmine and roses. The idolater festival that marks the onset of winter was no more than two weeks away and the evenings had become cool. A single servant stood at a discreet distance in the shadows thrown by lit torches that dotted the garden. Another now approached us carrying fresh hukkas. I had developed a taste for tobacco, pleased that the Agha had invited me to smoke in his company; it was the ultimate mark of his favour.

  ‘I remember a hunt for tigers near Lahore, on which I had accompanied the emperor and the princes. Tigers are plentiful in the jungles bordering the road to Delhi. All the preparations had been made. A stretch of the jungle where the animals had been sighted was identified for the royal hunt. In the preceding three days, cows, buffaloes and goats had been pushed into this part of the jungle so that the tigers did not migrate to other areas. On the morning of the hunt, the jungle was encircled with high nets, with only one opening through which the royal hunting party could enter. Soldiers stood around the net, more to scare the tigers towards the hunters than to wound or kill them.

  ‘It was around eleven in the morning and the winter fog had just begun to lift when we entered the jungle. Emperor Jahangir had once again overindulged on alcohol and was sleeping off-the effects of his excesses. The empress Nurjahan, the boys’ grandmother, sat in an uncovered howdah on the first elephant. She was a beautiful woman, Bernier, surpassing even the comeliness of Princess Jahanara. I can still recall how she was dressed that day: tight grey silk breeches, a silk shirt and a long coat of the finest Kashmir wool embroidered with gold thread. A veil hung over her face from a long pointed cap studded with pearls and emeralds. Elephants carrying the princes and other nobles followed. Dara and Aurangzeb were with me somewhere in the middle of this procession of elephants trudging deeper into the jungle. Dara was like a twittering bird, his thin neck moving constandy from one side to the other as he sought to draw my attention to the plumage of unfamiliar birds or to the dexterous monkeys swinging on the branches overhead and barraged me with questions on natural history. Aurangzeb scarcely looked up. His attention was focussed on my matchlock. He was subjecting the weapon to minute scrutiny, determined to unearth the secrets of its working.

  ‘The empress shot a tiger that day—her first. In the celebration that followed in the jungle itself, the brothers were each presented with a mini matchlock. Their reactions were typical. Dara barely gave the gun a glance, his attention still focussed on the birds and vegetation. Aurangzeb sat alone, far from the festivities, absorbed in the weapon.’ I knew then that he was well on his way to what he has become as a man—an enemy of all graces.’

  Danishmand Khan acknowledged that, by nature, Dara had been more attractive than his younger brother. Even as a boy, Aurangzeb’s countenance had been composed at all times and his eyes were grave beyond his years. Not for him Dara’s open-faced delight and the quick laughter that crinkled up the corners of his eyes, seductive to even those who had heard of the boy’s easy charm and were determined to resist it. In contrast, Aurangzeb rarely smiled. And when he did, no one could be sure if it was merely a matter of courtesy, a calculated tribute demanded by the situation, rather than a spontaneous gesture. But even though rarely friendly, he was unfailingly polite. ‘Aurangzeb knew early in life that politeness makes people pliable, that courtesy is to human nature as warmth is to wax,’ the Agha said thoughtfully.

  As his teacher, Danishmand Khan could sense Aurangzeb’s hurry to flee from childhood and become a man. The man he glimpsed through the widening cracks in the eggshell of boyishness was confident and, above all, self-sufficient. He remembered that as a child Aurangzeb was quite content to be by himself, needing neither playmates nor adults for guidance or approval of his solitary activities. On the other hand, the older prince always needed an audience. ‘Admiration of others was the sun that made Dara flower. And admiration was a nutrient the boy had in abundance. Not only because he was the heir to the throne and the undisputed favourite of his father but also because he was bright, gifted, handsome, open and very, very generous. But Allah’s ways are unfathomable, Bernier, praised be the All-Merciful. He takes away with one hand and gives with the other. Allah saw it fit to compensate the younger child’s pain of being pushed into the background and his enforced exile into silence with a boon that all good kings require: Aurangzeb developed a heightened sensibility fot other people’s wants even when the want was unarticulated. Dara, who received so much, was and remains indifferent to everyone’s desires but his own.

  ‘It did not help that Prince Khurram showed an open aversion to Aurangzeb when the boys were reunited with their parents. He observed the formalities of fatherhood well enough. Aurangzeb was always included in the party when, after he became emperor, Shah Jahan took the princes with him on a hunt or on a visit to a mosque. There was no discrimination in the celebration of the boy’s birthday or in the value of presents Mughal tradition required the emperor to make to a prince. The emperor’s aversion to his third son took subtler forms. His brows would knit, his lips would purse and eyes become glazed and expressionless when Aurangzeb was ushered into his presence, whether in the harem or in the court. One only had to contrast Aurangzeb’s reception to the open delight with which Dara was greeted. Everyone could see the effort the emperor was making in not springing up from his seat and rushing to hug the boy and lift him up in his arms. To see your father’s eyes light up when they look upon your brother and become opaque when you come into his presence would deeply affect any child. I know that Aurangzeb was a reserved boy, not shy but self-sufficient, and did not feel the need to reach out to others. Even I, his tutor, never knew what was really going on behind his closed visage and consistent courtesy.’

  ‘Did something happen, Agha, that made the emperor dislike Aurangzeb so much? Or was it just that the boy was not personable?’ I asked.

  ‘Two incidents come to mind, Bernier. I was present at the first, the second I have heard of. The first incident took place two days before Aurangzeb’s birth. Prince Khurram was returning with Emperor Jahangir from Gujarat to Agra and the imperial household had set up camp next to the village of Dohad on the border of Gujarat and Malwa. The next day, after the afternoon prayers, when the emperor, accompanied by Khurram and a few nobles—I was among them—visited the village to grant an audience to its inhabitants, an old heathen woman approached him.


  ‘“My name is Nalini, Jahanpanah,” she said, “and my profession is to read the lines of fate on the forehead.”

  ‘Intrigued, Jahangir motioned his bodyguards to let the woman pass. “Can you read fate’s handwriting on the brow of my son, Prince Khurram?” he enquired.

  ‘Like any other fortune-teller, the woman was cryptic in her communications, her words laden with layers of meaning, none of them obvious. Yet there was one prediction that was less obscure than others, which chilled the blood flowing through Khurram’s heart. “The child who is in your wife’s womb will be incomparably brave and fearless,” she said. “Your destiny will rest in his hands. Remember, my prince, we begin to die at birth. The end flows from the beginning.’”

  The second incident the Agha recounted had occurred when, after his abortive rebellion, Prince Khurram’s fortunes were at such a low ebb that not many would have predicted his eventual ascent to the Mogul throne as Emperor Shah Jahan. In fact, the prince was virtually a prisoner of the Sultan of Bijapur who had been asked by Emperor Jahangir to restrain him, by force if necessary, if he made a move to leave the kingdom. While in Bijapur, Mumtaz Mahal, who was again pregnant, expressed a wish to eat apples. Dejected at his circumstances, which did not permit him to satisfy such a minor whim, the prince left the house and went out on the street. Here he met a fakir who hailed him by his name and offered him two apples.

  ‘You must be a holy man to know and fulfil what I crave for most at this moment,’ Prince Khurram said humbly. ‘Will you talk to me?’

  The fakir nodded his assent and they had a long conversation. Among other things, the fakir told the prince that he would fall ill often and on such occasions he should smell his hands. ‘If they smell of apples you will always recover, no matter how dangerous the illness appears to the doctors. But when the smell vanishes, even a common cold can be the vehicle of death.’

  ‘And after my death, will any of my sons dim the glory of the Mughals, be the destroyer of our race?’

  ‘It will be Aurangzeb,’ the fakir had declared.

  After this encounter, Prince Khurram found it difficult to hide his dislike for his son, then nine years old. In his unguarded moments he called Aurangzeb ‘the white snake’, referring to the boy’s pale complexion. It reminded him of the pallor of a leper’s skin, he would remark in the boy’s hearing, his mouth wrinkling in distaste.

  ‘But, even as a boy, Aurangzeb’s self-control was exemplary,’ Danishmand Khan said. ‘I could only guess at the embers of rage that smouldered under the icy layer of hate that coated his heart.’

  To his credit, Danishmand Khan did not for even a moment entertain the claims of the other princes, Murad and Shuja. As far as he was concerned, their abandonment to excessive and shameless luxury, their addiction to the vice of drunkenness, their unfeeling and brutal cruelty, had effectively taken them out of the race for the throne of the Indies. The Agha was scathing in his appraisal of Murad who spent most of his days absorbed in the pleasures of the chase and the table. He allowed that Murad was not unlike most Omrah, who can wax sentimental over a pack of dogs and lavish the beasts with attention and affection, while remaining utterly indifferent to the plight of the poor wretches who have to follow their master on foot through thorny bushes and thick scrub, in the burning heat of summer or on chilly winter mornings, in pursuit of game.

  The Agha was convinced that many of the vices of the Mogul princes could be directly attributed to shortcomings in their early education. The princes grew up in the seraglio, which is organized around the pursuit of pleasure and even raises such pursuit to the status of being the highest goal in one’s life. The Agha said that having witnessing their fathers indulging in drunken orgies from their earliest years, then-care entrusted to women and eunuchs—slaves with the mentality of being servile to superiors and oppressive towards inferiors—it was remarkable that a few of the princes yet turned out to be wise and just sovereigns. To a large extent, such felicitous outcomes depended on the calibre of the teacher the emperor chose for the education of his sons. ‘From the very beginning, my message to my young charges was that as you will surpass others in power and elevation, so must you be pre-eminent in virtue and knowledge. I was lucky that both Dara and Aurangzeb were receptive to this message.’

  As he rummaged deeper into his memories, it was apparent to me that the Agha had made his up his mind about which prince he would support, but he still wished to throw light on it from every angle before he confided his decision to the few people he trusted. What weighed in on Dara’s side was less the prince’s likeability than Danishmand Khan’s oath of loyalty to his emperor, which also implied obedience to his wishes. What inclined him in Aurangzeb’s favour were some of the qualities he had observed in the prince since the latter was a child and which the Agha believed would make for a good, perhaps even a great emperor. These qualities were not only of the mind but also of his body: his physical fortitude, for instance.

  ‘One evening in Lahore, in a fit of drunken rage, Emperor Jahangir had started slapping the boy. I forget the nature of his transgression. Something quite minor, I believe. He could not have been more than eight at the time. Aurangzeb bore his grandfather’s beating without protest or even a whimper. Enraged at getting no reaction, the king hit the boy with redoubled fury till blood oozed from a cut lip and the side of his mouth. Yet Aurangzeb stood still, any expression of pain buried deep in his eyes, invisible to witnesses. Later, when the emperor had calmed down—or was again sober—he presented the boy with a necklace of Basra pearls and asked how it was that he had not reacted to the beating. “My teacher has told me that it is the greatest shame for a Mughal prince to cry when in pain,” Aurangzeb replied.

  ‘Dara’s singular flaw is that he cannot hate and thus cannot summon enough energy and resolution to thwart his enemies since they do not exist in his mind but only in the world outside. And with the spiritual and philosophical cast to his mind, the outside world has never been as real to him as it is to the rest of us. In the absence of hate, Dara cannot recognize an enemy. Oh yes, he despises Aurangzeb; calls him a namazi, talks of him as ‘more a prayer mat than a man’, referring to his punctiliousness in the matter of carrying out the prescribed prayers. But has despising another ever given anyone as much energy as hating him? Aurangzeb can hate but his flaw is that he cannot stop hating. His enmities endure because he will never give his enemies a chance to become his friends. A truly great monarch, like their great-grandfather Akbar, must be able to hate but must also be able to control his hatred. Yet, how well Aurangzeb hides his feelings! He will not forget a slight but his face will never betray his true emotions.’

  I was not surprised when at the end of his agonizing Danishmand Khan declared that he would align himself with Aurangzeb, choosing the well-being of the empire over the wishes of the emperor.

  ‘Aurangzeb will extend the empire and keep it safe from external aggression and internal strife. Dara divides the Faithful. Aurangzeb will unite them. He will strengthen the empire’s foundations so that, insha’allah, the Mughal dynasty will continue to rule Hindustan for centuries to come,’ he said.

  He announced his decision to send Imran Khan, his trusted secretary, as his emissary to Aurangzeb in the Deccan to assure the prince of his support and to convey that he would do his utmost to ensure that no foreign power, neither Persia nor Balkh, intervened on behalf of any other prince. He asked me if I would accompany Imran Khan. ‘You will do me a great favour, my friend,’ he said, ‘if you will travel to Aurangzeb’s camp and return with your personal impressions of him. People tell me that he has not changed at all and, if anything, has become more resolute in his undertakings.’

  I answered that I would gladly embark on the mission in service of the Agha. Besides a closer look at Aurangzeb, it would also afford me an opportunity to travel and escape the oppressive confines of Delhi.

  Thus are a man’s noblest acts of love laid low by the indifference of fate‘

 
; NICCOLAO MANUCCI

  I DO NOT WANT to give the false impression that I was present when Prince Dara and his advisers discussed the strategies to counter the plans of his brothers. I was part of the Wali Ahad’s court, but not of the key circle. But there are no secrets in Indian courts, especially for one such as I, who had ministered to the harems of the prince’s closest advisers and was on cordial terms with most of them. I was a small man, but I had big friends.

  I must confess that the impending war had filled me with an unfamiliar sense of exhilaration. Like an approaching gale that spreads unrest among the trees in a forest, I could hear the sounds of war from afar: the heavy tread of the infantry to the flourish of kettle drums, the neighing of horses as trumpets were sounded, the roar of cannons shaking the sky. I wanted to be a part of it. War may be the trade of kings but everyone covets the merchandise. I could not stand aloof from the promise of a rush to glory, unable to envision that it could equally be a rush to the grave. My conviction that my star would help me ride out any storm remained unshaken.

  All I had wanted when I set out for India was to become rich, live out my youth in a tropical villa in the willing company of beautiful women, and return to Venice in my old age where, flush with money, I would walk with my head high even if I did not belong to the ruling classes. Now I found myself thrilling to the advance of a war in a foreign land, a battle between brothers in which my personal stake was low indeed. The prospect of participating in the war produced a restiveness in my veins quite different from the one I experienced when I occasionally looked into the chest under my bed, now bulging with treasure. In some ways, I felt this urge more keenly than the times when I had lain with Mala or Maria.