Dara Shikoh, the heir apparent to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, epitomised indecisiveness and inept leadership, giving rise to a political failure of enormous proportions which paved the way for his bigoted sibling Aurangzeb’s usurpation of the empire’s throne. Dara has been described by his contemporaries as one who “seemed doomed never to succeed in any enterprise” (Bernier), and from several contemporaneous accounts he appears to have displayed surprising naivete for an heir apparent in judging people at key moments in his life. Historians of a later, more modern era have upheld this view of the Crown Prince of the Mughal Empire. Jadunath Sarkar, for example, remarks: “[A]s a ruler of men in troubled times, he [Dara Shikoh] must have been a failure.”
Such was Dara’s inexperience in the ways of the world that he went on to commit one blunder after another in quick succession during a period that saw the unfolding of a bloody war of succession between the children of Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh was well-read, knew several languages, and had a philosophical bent of mind, which are added advantages for any aspiring public leader. But he lacked in some of the crucial skills which were absolutely essential for an administrator of his era and circumstances. He was out of his depth in the art of warfare and strategies. He was a little too idealistic, so much so that his idealism would often cloud his otherwise clear-headed and analytical thinking that comes only naturally to a scholar, which he definitely was. But the philosopher prince was not a practical creature, and he utterly lacked the shrewdness of the politician. He took his decisions based on his idealism-driven faculty of judgment, disregarding the warnings and well-meaning counsels of those close to him. The inevitable result of this combination of peculiar dispositions was a series of personal and political debacles. Frenchman Bernier provides us with a particularly vivid account of one such debacle committed by Dara at the height of the conflict for succession; an almost comical scene wherein the Crown Prince, the legitimate heir of the Mughal throne, displays a scandalously silly penchant for misjudging human nature and an equally disastrous disregard for good counsel by his friends and well-wishers. At a critical hour, Dara decided to seek cooperation from a notorious Pathan robber named Jawan Khan, who had a history of rebelling against the Crown on various occasions, even despite several instances of royal pardon being bestowed upon his convicted head by none other than Dara himself. Bernier describes the episode in the following words:
But Dara’s family, agitated by dismal forebodings, employed every entreaty to prevent him from venturing in Javan [Jawan] Khan’s presence. His wife, daughter, and his young son Sipah Shikoh fell at his feet, endeavouring, with tears in their eyes, to turn him aside from his design. The Pathan, they observed, was notoriously a robber and a rebel, and to place confidence in such a character was at once to rush headlong into destruction. There was no sufficient reason, they added, why he should be so pertinaciously bent upon raising the siege of Tata-Bakar; the road to Kaboul might be safely pursued without that operation, for Mir-Baba would scarcely abandon the siege for the sake of interrupting his march.
Dara, as if hurried away by his evil genius, could not perceive the force of these arguments; remarking…that he did not believe it possible he should be betrayed by a man bound to him by such strong ties of gratitude. He departed, notwithstanding every solicitation; and soon afforded an additional and melancholy proof that the wicked feel not the weight of obligations when their interests demand the sacrifice of their benefactors.
One can almost sense Bernier coldly mocking Dara’s headstrong impulsiveness and the prince’s unsophisticated blind faith in the bona fides of his past beneficiaries – qualities quite unbecoming of an aspiring administrator – with a scornfully sarcastic tone disguised in apparently sympathetic words.
Bernier is equally unforgiving in his deployment of sardonic language while recording the tragic consequences of the prince’s foolish decision; and with a dramatic touch he records the scenes of Dara’s fall and humiliation at the hand of his detractors:
This robber, who imagined that Dara was attended by a large body of soldiers, received the Prince with apparent respect and cordiality, quartering his men upon the inhabitants, with particular injunctions to supply all their wants and treat them as friends and brethren. But when Javan Khan ascertained that Dara’s followers did not exceed two or three hundred men, he threw off all disguise. It is still doubtful whether he had been tampered with by Aureng-Zebe [Aurangzeb], or whether he were suddenly tempted to the commission of this monstrous crime. The sight of a few mules laden with the gold, which Dara had saved from the hands of the robbers, by whom he had been constantly harassed, very probably excited his cupidity. Be this as it may, the Patan [Pathan] having assembled, during the night, a considerable number of armed men, seized this gold, together with the women’s jewels, and fell upon Dara and Sipah Shikoh, killed the persons who attempted to defend them, and tied the Prince on the back of an elephant. The public executioner was ordered to sit behind, for the purpose of cutting off his head, upon the first appearance of resistance, either on his own part, or on that of any of his adherents; and in this degrading posture, Dara was carried to the army before Tata-Bakar and delivered into the hands of General Mir-Baba. This officer then commanded the Traitor, Javan Khan, to proceed with his prisoner, first to Lahor and afterwards to Dehli.