Supriya Gandhi

Shah Jahan, the emperor of Mughal India, had appointed his eldest son, Dara Shukoh, as his successor, but tussles after his death resulted in his third son, Aurangzeb, succeeding to the throne. With Dara Shukoh dead, Aurangzeb imprisoned his father and took over reign. In his cell, Shah Jahan, the story goes, gazed across the river Yamuna at the Taj Mahal, the white tomb he constructed for his beloved wife Noor Jahan, until his death. Aurangzeb currently occupies public imagination in India as a villainous monster: Hindu nationalists direct their ire particularly at him, and often suggest that the spiritually inclined, scholarly Dara Shukoh might have made a better ruler had he not died young. Aurangzeb was the subject of a recent biography that debunked a lot of myths about him, while giving us a fair perspective of his work and life (Audrey Truschke's [Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King]) and this account of Dara Shukoh now lets us into the life of his brother and rival.

There is a very good H-Net essay on the book which covers all I had to say about it, so I won't add much more. I'll only say that the writing style is extremely accessible, even to non-historians or those unfamiliar with the background, and that the most interesting point she makes is that given her account of Dara Shukoh's life, it is not by any means certain that he would have been very different from Aurangzeb as an emperor.… (mehr)