The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  I was as glad to be back in Delhi, now its normal hot and dusty self, as I had been glad to leave it three months earlier when the city was at its most pleasant. The Agha listened to my enthusiastic endorsement of Prince Aurangzeb’s character and prospects, which I gave in substantially the same words that I have employed in my writings, with his usual grave courtesy. ‘You have done well, Bernier, but then I never expected anything less,’ he commented as I finished. But the pensive look that overshadowed his face as I took my leave, left me perplexed.

  Two days later, Khwaja Chisti provided a clue to the puzzle. ‘The Agha appears to be reconsidering his commitment to Aurangzeb’s cause,’ he murmured under his breath. Yestetday, I heard him telling Jafar Khan, “It will be a disaster if he is planning to make Murad Baksh the emperor. If, however, this is only a ruse, then I find such a massive deception distasteful.’”

  Soon enough we heard that relations between Murad and Aurangzeb had begun to sour, although both brothers were at pains to maintain a façade of filial unity and close friendship. I believe it was Imran Khan who told me of the rumour, one peppered with enough detail for it to be easily true, that the brothers had begun to avoid visiting each other’s tents, preferring instead to conduct their confabulations at neutral venues. It seems that the eunuch Shahbaz, Murad’s chief adviser, who had no faith in Aurangzeb’s promises to his master and constantly warned him of his brother’s intentions, decided to take the matter into his own hands.

  After the battle at Dharmat and before the armies had resumed their march, the prince had, one evening, accompanied by his son Sultan Muhammad, gone to Murad’s tent for dinner. To protect his master, who seemed to be blind to his brother’s wiles, Shahbaz had planned to kill the prince and Sultan Muhammad and then take his own life. For this purpose he had asked three armed men loyal to him to hide close to Murad’s tent and wait for a signal. While the princes were in conversation, Shahbaz approached Murad, not quite prepared to take the next step without his master’s permission. Looking meaningfully at Murad he asked for permission ‘to cut some cloth’. Foolish though he was, Murad realized the import of Shahbaz’s words and replied that it was not necessary, but Aurangzeb had already grasped the hidden meaning of the conversation and, making the excuse of a sudden colic attack, hurriedly left for his own camp. He never went to Murad’s tent after that, citing the pressure of heavy work as his alibi and would send his son instead.

  Unable to resolve the conflict between his duty to the emperor and his belief that the empire would be safer in the hands of Aurangzeb, a conflict sharpened by the doubt my report seemed to have sowed in his mind, Danishmand Khan agonized over his course of action for more than a week and finally decided to remain neutral.

  ‘Let us withdraw into the pleasures of philosophy while the strife rages around us, Bernier,’ he said to me with a smile that did not hide the strain he had been through in the last four months. ‘We shall stay in Delhi and not join the court in Agra. And you shall unravel for me the mysteries of Descartes’s thought, especially his Fourth Discourse. I still cannot comprehend why Descartes says “I think, therefore I am” is the first principle of his philosophy. Why does he say that this was “so certain and so evident that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were not capable of shaking it”? To me, this seems like the avowal of a believer, not the reasoned conclusion of a philosopher.’

  ‘Stars can be cruel, too especially those whose fires have begin to die out’

  NICCOLAO MANUCCI

  THE WINTER OF 1657 was severe. The morning fog hung low, rebuffing until well past noon a pale sun’s efforts to break its hold. Even when it did emerge, the sun shone no warmer than a summer moon. A couple of hours of weak warmth in the afternoons merely stirred the cold in our joints without ever dissipating it. By five in the evening it was dark and again bitterly cold. Few people were out in the streets and the bazaars remained deserted. Hapless men huddled around wood fires trying to blow the sleeping remains of warmth back to life, wringing their hands over the glowing embers to absorb a little heat through the skin before they returned to the chill of their hovels. Even the Omrah, warmly clad in their overcoats and vests fined with sable, felt compelled to complain about the cold as they awaited news on the progress of the rebel princes.

  The chill was to keep its hold through the initial months of the following year when a time of eerie calm descended on the empire as factions and forces across the land aligned and realigned in a concerted effort to draft its fate. Although there was no sign of open unrest in the bazaars, or alarm among the nobility, I could sense an air of anticipation hovering uneasily over the city. Away from the familiar routine of my life in Delhi, I spent much of the time wandering Agra’s fog-shrouded streets.

  For someone who seldom thinks of the past and prefers always to look ahead, I found images from my childhood in Venice becoming frequent companions on my ramblings. This was a rare stabbing of homesickness. The images were not those I remembered with revulsion: the vomit surge of hatred for a brutish father, abject poverty and constant hunger. The memories that returned were of an earlier time, when my mother was still alive and I was the miracle who had turned back the Great Plague. As I walked through Agra’s deserted streets at night, I often found myself in Venice on a chilly February night when the city looks its most desolate, and most beautiful. Like most exiles, the images of my longing were of places, not people—of Venice’s churches, monasteries and palaces; of the Grand Canal, the fairest and best-built street in the world, its shops stocked with Murano glassware, silks and tapestries. I would cross a misty bridge, follow the twists and turns of a street along dark, silent canals and come out of my trance only to find myself in front of my house in Agra, waiting for a sleepy watchman to open the gate.

  For most of February 1658, Prince Dara was in a state of high excitement. The emperor’s health, judging from the first faint stirrings of his lust for women, was no longer a cause for anxiety. Yet he showed little eagerness to resume his royal duties. He was content to leave the governance of the empire to the Wali Ahad. Prince Dara assumed that such delegation of royal duties also extended to the execution of wars against his brothers. Here he was mistaken. The crafty old monarch, still protective of the other princes, was busy planning his own moves, beginning with secret instructions to Raja Jai Singh to press the imperial assault against Shuja with less than full vigour.

  ‘All we need is to make that ill-mannered prince realize the folly of his ways and retreat to Bengal. It will be catastrophic if a Mughal prince were killed in battle or, worse, brought to the court in chains as a prisoner,’ the emperor had said to the raja.

  Once in the field, Sulaiman Shukoh, sharing his father’s eagerness for swift and decisive action, had pushed towards Benares by continuous marches. Raja Jai Singh, on the other hand, constantly sought to delay the imperial advance. Puzzled by Jai Singh’s lack of dash, and unaware of the emperor’s secret instructions, Prince Dara tried flattery.

  ‘With the tongue of divine inspiration,’ he wrote, ‘His Majesty has said that just as your illustrious ancestor Raja Man Singh conquered and crushed Mirza Hakim, you will crush this unmannerly and luckless wretch. Through visions and books of astrology I have learnt what by divine guidance I firmly believe to be true: that this great victory will be achieved by you, the worthiest of the worthy.’

  The Wali Ahad was not naïve. In the stiffness and coldly formal tone of Jai Singh’s dispatches, he could sense that the raja’s devotion to his cause was less than enthusiastic. Yet, he could not afford to antagonize someone who was not only considered one of the finest generals in the imperial army but also one who exercised considerable influence on other Hindu princes. Even when his son’s letter, complaining of Jai Singh’s tardy prosecution of the war and expressing doubts regarding the raja’s motives, reached his court, Prince Dara did not hesitate to publicly adopt the emperor’s position and take Sulaiman to task. ‘His Majesty suspects that this must ha
ve been written out of enmity,’ he replied to his son. ‘My son is directed to have the dispatches from the field written by the great raja himself, so that His Majesty can accept them as accurate and authentic’

  At the same time, taking Wazir Khan’s advice, he wrote separately to Sulaiman that he should be decisive in pressing his attack and finish with the war as quickly as possible. The message carried a subtle reminder that as a Mogul prince Sulaiman was the commander-in-chief of the imperial forces. He was answerable to no one but his father and the emperor.

  To Jai Singh, he wrote: ‘His Majesty desires very much that the severed head of that unmannerly wretch (Shuja) be brought to him.’ The news of the outcome of the battle reached Agra on the morning of twentieth March 1658. A music recital in the Wali Ahad’s mansion welcoming the arrival of spring and featuring the royal musician Azim Khan and the great Hindu singer Ram Bhatt had just ended. I think there were perhaps twenty of us sitting on Persian and Turkish carpets in the central courtyard that day. As a special treat, the women of the harem had been allowed to hear the music from behind stone-latticed windows on the first floor. Sunshine streamed into the courtyard. Having shed its wintery mask, the sun was increasing its warmth with each day that took us towards the arrival of summer. Masses of crimson bougainvillea foamed over the walls. Hot, steaming milk, garnished with crushed pistachios, honey and saffron, was being served in silver tumblers.

  Before the recital, the prince had asked Sarmad to sing his favourite poem, which the poet had once dedicated to him. I was glad to see that Sarmad had made a concession for winter by wrapping a rough woollen blanket around his otherwise bare shoulders. As he began his song, the richness of the melody and fullness of the poet’s voice filled the air.

  ‘Which is the idol, who the maker?

  Who is the lover and who the beloved?

  Ask in the church, the temple, the Kaba

  And all is silence, all is darkness there.

  Yet in the garden where the sunshine glows,

  One perfect presence moves in all that grows.

  He is the lover, He the beloved,

  He is the bramble and He the rose.

  Is the heart wise? Then the beloved is there.

  Does the eye see? Then it sees Him everywhere.

  Does the ear hear? Then all it hears is talk of Him.

  Does the tongue speak? Then it lays the secret bare.’

  The prince’s eyes were moist when Sarmad finished. Even in the middle of a political crisis, the Wali Ahad’s spiritual body did not crawl away into a dark corner and lock the door behind it. To be fully engaged in affairs of the state did not mean that he had banished or was no longer aware of the softer emotions that continued to brush against his soul with a feathery touch.

  Just as the prince rose to embrace Sarmad, we heard excited shouts from the direction of the gate. Moments later, the captain of the palace guard rushed into the courtyard, trying hard to reduce his pace to a dignified stride as he approached the Wali Ahad. Shuffling behind him, his face a combination of exhaustion and exhilaration was a man dressed in the dusty green uniform of a messenger among Prince Dara’s guards who had been placed under Sulaiman Shukoh’s command. I watched the prince glow with pride as he listened to the messenger recounting his son’s victory.

  Having received his father’s last dispatch, Sulaiman had needed no further encouragement. He reached Benares within two weeks and had a bridge of boats constructed over the Ganges. Within twenty-four hours the prince had crossed over to the other side and set up camp. This was a decisive move since it contested Shuja’s hold on the bank of the river along which ran the great military road, to Shuja’s capital, Rajmahal. Meanwhile, Shuja too had reached the neighbourhood with his army and fleet. He camped in a well-chosen spot, hidden by a thick jungle in the front and bordered by the Ganges at the back. Provisioned by their boats and believing they were immune to an attack through the jungle, Shuja’s army soon relaxed its initial vigilance. Shuja himself was in the habit of sleeping till noon. His officers, unaccustomed to the chilly nights of northern India, were less than attentive to their duty of doing the rounds of pickets at night to keep the sentries alert. Early in the morning of fourteenth February, Sulaiman, riding at the head of a select group of mail-clad horsemen, suddenly fell upon Shuja’s sleeping camp, scattering the soldiers in all directions. Shuja himself had been lucky to escape to his fleet which immediately set sail, leaving the rest of the fleeing soldiers to be butchered.

  At the conclusion of the messenger’s report, the prince removed a string of large pink Basra pearls from his own person and pressed it into the messenger’s palm. His joy was such that in his haste to reward the bearer of these tidings, the string broke and some of the pearls scattered on the carpet. ‘Do not pick a single pearl that has touched the ground. Replace the missing ones with rubies,’ he commanded as he embraced the awe-struck messenger.

  Publicly, again at the urging of Wazir Khan, the prince awarded to Jai Singh all credit for the victory. In a letter that began with a sacred formula of the Hindus which defines God as ‘Satchitanand’—Truth, Consciousness, Bliss—he wrote to the raja, ‘You have achieved what even your grandfather Raja Man Singh could not have accomplished. Within the last hundred years no one has been granted such a victory.’

  Although still deferential to his father, The Wafi Ahad took Shuja’s defeat as a sign that his own reign had begun. His bearing became more regal, his mien graver, more imperial.

  Soon after this, Prince Dara’s favourite astrologer, Bhawani Das, reinforced the prince’s conviction of imminent triumph by solemnly presenting, in open court, a signed paper in which he had written that the prince would become the emperor of Hindustan within the next six months. I find myself to be both a believer and a non-believer of astrological predictions. On the one hand, I find it inconceivable that the planets whirling unconcernedly in their heavenly orbits could influence the life of a human being. On the other hand, in India, I have come across predictions, such as the exact date and details of a misfortune or perhaps even a windfall, to be so specific and accurate that they have left me astounded. Undoubtedly, most of the predictions are so general that they can always be interpreted as having come true by a believer who tends to forget all the instances when the astrologer was wrong. Yet, that single, correct prediction will outweigh hundreds that were false, and compel complete faith in astrology.

  Bhawani Das was fond of me and visited me often. Perhaps he was simply fond of my wine, which he drank in large quantities. I asked him how he had had the courage to commit himself thus on paper.

  ‘What will happen to you if your prediction does not come true?’ I queried.

  Deep in the cups, the astrologer laughed heartily. ‘Ah, my dear Manucci, if my prediction comes true, the prince will reward me liberally. If not, he will be so busy trying to save his own head that he will not have time to seek mine.’

  Perhaps I believed in my friend’s prediction more than he did himself. In any event, enthused by the news of Sulaiman Shukoh’s victory and the prophecy of the Wali Ahad’s ascension to the throne, I was more than determined to hitch my star to Prince Dara’s and take an active part in the war.

  Since much of my medical practice was in the harems of the nobility which had not yet moved to Agra, I had a good deal of time on my hands and spent my evenings sharing wine with a group of European artillerymen in the emperor’s service. For some reason, the Moguls believe that Europeans are naturally gifted in this branch of war which holds little interest for them. To the Moguls, the epitome of real soldiering is a cavalry charge, not a barrage of artillery fire. A true Mogul would any day breathe in the dust from horses’ hooves than inhale the smoke of gunfire. When I expressed my enthusiasm in learning the art of firing a gun, they promised to make an artilleryman out of me within a couple of weeks. All I had to do was learn how to aim. All the rest, the raising, lowering, loading and firing of the gun would be done by Indian labourers employed for
the purpose.

  The Wali Ahad was assembling a vast army and the need had arisen to source all kinds of battlefield skills. Encouraged by my new friends, who said I had made spectacular progress in just over a week, I offered my services to Barqandaz Khan, head of Prince Dara’s artillery. Barqandaz had won the prince’s favour after he had killed an owl that had taken up its abode in an alcove in the prince’s bedroom. The portly general welcomed my proposal since he knew I enjoyed the Wali Ahad’s favour and, more so, as I did not ask to be paid anything extra beyond my existing salary. And so it came to be that, as part of the imperial artillery, I was to witness from the closest quarters the battle at Samugarh, fought between the imperial army and the combined forces of Aurangzeb and Murad.

  It would not be long before I was to learn that stars can be cruel, too, especially those whose fires have begun to die out, and that fate can betray hopes as easily as it raises them.