The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  Although Delhi appears very pleasant from afar—the expanses of greenery make it look from a distance more like a thick wood than a city—one only needs to walk a few hundred metres from the Royal Square and away from the main bazaar in any direction to see that the city is an unplanned, chaotic jumble of narrow, overcrowded streets teeming with men and cattle. Clusters of scabrous slums with their mean mud houses thatched with straw are home to common troopers and the vast multitude of servants and camp followers who trail in the wake of the imperial army. These wretched huts, indiscriminately scattered throughout the city, easily catch fire and prove to be death traps, especially during the summer months when dry, hot winds blow from the desert of Rajputana as from the furnace of hell; I was told that more than sixty thousand roofs had burnt down in three large fires the year before I arrived.

  If Delhi, which has a population of about half a million, equalling that of Paris, seems provincial and shabby in comparison to the French capital, it has to do with three glaringly obvious features. Paris is a city whereas Delhi is little more than a cantonment, deriving its chief support from the presence of the court and the army. Almost three quarters of its population is transient and follows the monarch in his travels, shrinking the city to a provincial town with less than seventy thousand inhabitants whenever he undertakes a long campaign to subdue the many rebellions that constantly flare up in far-flung parts of his empire.

  Then there is the appearance of the people. In Paris, at least seven out of ten people seen on the street are tolerably well clad and have a certain air of respectability. Walking down a Parisian street you will be among swarms of merchants, respectable women out shopping accompanied by tolerably well-clad servants laden with baskets, gentlemen in their powdered wigs being carried on sedan chairs by trotting bearers and, on occasion, even a noble in a great black coach with gold trimming and high wheels scattering urchins in its path. In Delhi, for every two passers-by wearing decent apparel, well mounted and properly attended, there will be eight ragged wretches. In the capital city of the Indies, a man can either belong to the highest rank or live miserably; there is no middle ground. Oriental splendour and the fabled riches are confined to the royal court and those who provide it with luxuries.

  Although it is the seat of a mighty empire and home to a splendid court that is a natural magnet for a vast quantity of costly goods from all over the world, Delhi has no streets like St Denis in Paris. The expensive merchandise is generally kept in warehouses and for every shop that displays fine cloth and silks, brocades and turbans embroidered with gold, there are at least twenty-five that stock only the basic necessities required to sustain life: pots of oil, baskets filled with rice, barley, chickpeas, wheat flour and a variety of other grains and pulses.

  It is not that the bazaars of Delhi are uniformly dismal. The fruit market, for instance, tries to make some show with dry fruits, such as almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, prunes and apricots imported from Persia, Balkh, Bokhara and Samarkand in summer and fresh black and green grapes of excellent quality brought by Afghan traders in round wooden boxes from the same countries in winter. The main bazaar on the Lahore road and the Royal Square remain perhaps the most captivating spots in the city. Besides the procession of nobles at certain hours of the day, the Royal Square is also the site for a bazaar, held on two days of the week, when shops offering an endless variety of goods are set up for a few hours. Like the Pont-Neuf in Paris, this bazaar is also a rendezvous for beggars, mountebanks, jugglers, as well as fortune-tellers and astrologers to whom the people of the Indies, both Mohammedans and idolaters are extremely partial. Perhaps the difference between the Royal Square of Delhi and Pont-Neuf best captures the difference between the Indies and Europe. The Royal Square derives its glory from ceremonials of the court and short periods of bustling commerce when common people can feel a temporary sense of belonging, if not of ownership. At night, the once-bustling square is deserted, scattered pools of dim light from the guard posts barely outlining the few shadows scurrying across its vast expanse. Contrast this to the view from Pont-Neuf, which is thronged by people and carriages at all hours of the day and night. From the bridge on the Seine, you can see rows of subdued lights spilling out of innumerable windows of lofty houses until well past midnight. On the streets, lit by long lines of lamps burning with equal constancy in foul and fair weather in every direction, citizens perambulate with their wives and daughters. In the Indies, respectable women, especially those belonging to the nobility, rarely venture out of the seraglios and are never seen unveiled or with their husbands in public.

  To be fair, where Delhi scores over Paris is in the relative cleanliness of its main streets, which are swept every day by an army of cleaners. Although their brooms, made from a bunch of thin twigs bound at one end by a length of twine, raise a good deal of dust, it is undeniable that they keep Delhi free of boue, the stinking sewage that is spread over the streets of Paris. Unlike Paris, in the capital of the Mogul empire one will not see a well-off citizen walking on the street holding a posy of flowers before his face or a perfumed handkerchief over his nose to keep out the disgusting odour.

  I spent the most part of the summer of 1657 reading histories of the Mogul emperors and the books written by Dara Shukoh. The latter was not a diversion I chose but a task the Agha had entrusted to me before he left to join the emperor’s retinue.

  ‘You have read many philosophical tracts, Bernier,’ he said. ‘I want to hear your impressions of the Wali Ahad’s writings, not of their content but of the impressions they give of the writer. I would be interested to know the conclusions you arrive at about him from his writings alone.’

  The task was challenging and I threw myself into it with energy and resolve, or at least as much energy as I could muster through the unremitting assault of Delhi’s summer heat. I was glad to spend the days in my study, its windows covered by mats of moistened, sweet-smelling khus grass that cooled the air to a tolerable level. Habshi wandered in and out of the room quietly, taking care not to disturb my studies, sometimes laying his head in my lap for a little while so I could stroke his woolly hair and the butter-smooth skin of his neck.

  My mentor M. Gassendi used to say that the writings of a man, whether poet or scholar, are part of his continuing autobiography; to the right kind of reader a piece of prose or verse is a mirror reflecting the author’s life and character. Going by this, I am afraid I may not have been the right kind of reader for Dara Shukoh’s literary works. I take pride in my rationality and am a great admirer of Descartes whereas the prince is clearly influenced by the mystical strains of Neo-Platonism. My knowledgeable readers will doubtless be acquainted with the doctrine of a universal Life Principle of which each one of us is a part. This is a doctrine the idolaters in the Indies share with the Sufi sect of Islam and the learned men and poets of Persia. It is similar to beliefs which led the alchemists of Europe hopelessly astray and which have been ably refuted by M. Gassendi.

  The basic tenor of the prince’s writings conforms to this doctrine: Oneness of God and Man, the immanence of the Divine and the consequent assertion that there is no difference between various religions; they are but different vessels carrying water from the same ocean. He writes in one of his tracts:

  ‘Thou art in Kaaba as well as

  in the Somnath temple,

  In the convent and

  in the tavern.

  Thou art at the same time,

  the light and the moth,

  the wine, the cup, the sage and the fool,

  the friend and the stranger.’

  Having carefully studied the writings, including such minor works like the Hasanat-ul-Arifin in which the prince ventures beyond his Sufi beliefs to openly embrace Gentile influences I can now confidently claim that Dara was no scholar. ‘Careful scholarship should not only form the basis of your opinions but must inform even your speculations,’ had been M. Gassendi’s advice. ‘Speculation is the basis of discovery, of progress, but mu
st rest on the secure base of scholarship.’ The first three books he wrote are the works of a seeker on the Sufi path: two are on the lives of Sufi saints while the third, Risala-i-Haqnuma or ‘Compass of Truth’, is a set of instructions for novices on the road to wisdom the prince claims to have himself travelled. I cannot judge its content but it is written as though by a devotee, sorely lacking in critical acumen and scientific spirit, seeking not insight but intoxication in ornamental, exalted flights of language which I find distasteful.

  Whether one chooses to believe (which I do not) or doubt (which I emphatically do) Dara’s assertion that the book was inspired by divine revelation is a matter of personal conviction. In the Hasanat-ul-Arifin, the prince popularizes the teachings of the Gentile mystic Baba Lal and reports in detail a long conversation they had had. He approvingly quotes passages from another mystic, Kabir, who believed that the distinctions the Believers draw between kufr, unbelief, and Islam, were frivolous. I can quite comprehend the consternation with which pious Muslims received these views and the tage such statements must have aroused in the Mullahs.

  In the last book the prince wrote, Majma-ul-Baharain or ‘Mingling of Two Oceans’, in which he seeks to demonstrate that the cosmogony of the idolaters is similar to that of Islam, his scholarship leaves much to be desired; the analogies are farfetched and the parallelisms are superficial. Passages in these books seem to be penned by a religious versifier rather than by a philosopher of religions. Writers of religious verse, I do not hesitate to offer my opinion, are the worst kind of poets, impelled to sing a song that almost never sounds better than a croak.

  It was well known among the court circles that the prince was presently busy translating the most important religious book of the idolaters into Persian. In recent years he had been a patron of many such translations and, from my knowledge of Islam, was moving dangerously close to heresy. In his introduction to a book about an idolater god, Rama, composed by a mythical sage, Vashishtha, Prince Dara writes: ‘When I had gone through the Persian translation of this book…I saw in a dream two dignified figures of calm appearance, one of them standing on a higher level than the other… Vashishtha, with great affection and graciousness, placed his hand on my back and told Ramachandra, “Rama, here is an earnest seeker of knowledge and a brother of yours in true search of Reality; embrace him.” Ramachandra held me in his embrace with great warmth and love. Then Vashishtha gave some sweets to Ramachandra which I ate out of his hand. After seeing this dream my desire to have this book translated became greater than ever …’ I could not imagine the mullahs, guardians of the pure faith, countenance the prince’s consorting on such friendly terms with heathen gods, even if it be in a dream.

  To be fair, as I reported to the Agha, Dara’s writings are sincere, especially in his first book and in passages of Risala, where the pain and suffering of a young man who embarks on a spiritual quest in search of the meaning of life, an affliction common although not limited to youth, are touchingly apparent. I am more sceptical of Dara’s claims about the fruits of his quest than of its sincerity. The prince’s religious practice, which he learnt from his teacher Mullah Shah, consisted of two activities. The first was reciting very slowly the name ‘Allah’ in his mind, without any movement of the tongue; the second, sitting in meditation, controlling the mind by regulating his breathing, using a method similar to that used by the holy men among idolaters. His gift was so unique, he claimed, that he began to see the light of the soul and hear cosmic sounds within six months of beginning his practice—mystical accomplishments, which, I am informed, normally take an aspirant a lifetime of rigorous observance.

  On some evenings, when I wished for intellectually stimulating company as a relief from my solitary labours, I would invite one or more of the Jesuit fathers for dinner. They made interesting companions, especially Father Roth, who shared my interest in philosophy. I had visited the house of the Jesuits once, but after a disagreeable encounter with that Italian quack Manucci, who was their neighbour and had dropped in on the same evening but rudely turned his back and left the house as I entered, without addressing a word to me, I preferred to extend my hospitality to the Jesuits and not presume on theirs.

  In the manner of all exiles we conjured up our favourite bits and pieces of Europe while we sipped on indifferent Shiraz wine: crossing the Pont-Neuf in Paris on a summer evening, a long walk in the forest near Baden when the leaves are turning shades of yellow and brown, a dinner at a farmhouse in Tuscany which Father Malpica remembered as the best meal he had had in his life. Warmed by the wine, we were of one mind: that there were more stars in our European sky, more flowers in our European gardens than in this country of abundance.

  The evenings were not solely devoted to nostalgia; we spoke also about the state of the country in which we found ourselves visitors. Since the fathers had lived in the Indies for many years and travelled deep into its interiors on missionary work, they were a storehouse of information on the country and the condition of its people.

  There are, indeed, some excellent missionaries in this part of the world, especially the Jesuits who meekly impart religious instruction to all without mixing it with an indiscreet and bigoted zeal. But I have had too much intercourse with Indians, both Mohammedan and Gentile, and am too well acquainted with the blindness of the human soul to believe that the conversions the Jesuits seek can be in any large numbers. In the beginning, more than a hundred years ago, the Jesuit fathers who came to Goa in the wake of the Portuguese conquerors and tried to convert the idolaters to the Christian faith were ignorant of the contempt the high-born Gentiles had for Europeans, whom they called farangis. They were unaware that a Gentile attaches more importance to the purity of his caste than to matters of belief.

  For the idolaters, Europeans were like pariahs, their lowest caste. These commit the gravest sin of eating cow’s flesh. The idolaters believe that to convert to Christianity is to adopt the habits of the farangis and thus lose your caste. That is a fate infinitely worse than of a European gentleman who is degraded and loses his nobility. The European, if he is wealthy, can still form alliances with respectable members of his society, such as a rich merchant. An idolater who is deprived of his caste can no longer be received in a respectable home or find a husband for his daughter. He will have to either renounce marriage alliances for his children or take for them pariah spouses.

  Once the reverend fathers became aware of the Gentile aversion towards the farangi, they tried to persuade them that they were not farangis but Roman Brahmins, Romapuris. Even today, when they are sent to distant missions in the interior, the Jesuits dress and live after the manner of Brahmins. A Jesuit demonstrates more repugnance on being called a farangi than even a fair-skinned Gentile who is mistakenly presumed to be one. In their mission of conversion, they pander to Gentile caste prejudices and Gentile notions of who is highborn and who is low-born. Father Malpica narrated that once, when he was attending a service at a newly built church in the interior of Goa, he was surprised to hear the priest extolling the noble birth of our Saviour thus, Jesus was the king of all kings. His father’s treasury overflowed with so much gold that even the god Kuber was envious of his wealth. The magnificence of his palace, the splendour of his court, have never been matched, not even by the emperor Shah jahan.’

  When at the end of the service, Father Malpica confronted him with falsifying the basic tenets of our faith, he was frank in his reply. ‘Senor, do you think any Gentile would ever become a Christian if he thought that the founder of our faith was so low-born as to grow up in the household of a carpenter?’

  The missionary efforts in the case of Mohammedans were even less successful. I speak the language of experience when I say that whatever progress may have been made by the missionaries among the idolaters, by promises and alms as much as by preaching, they would be disappointed if they supposed that in ten years even one Mohammedan would agree to be converted to Christianity. It is true that Mohammedans respect the religion
of the New Testament: they never speak of Jesus Christ but with great veneration, or pronounce the name Isa, referring to Jesus, without adding the prefix ‘Hasrat’, Majesty. Like us, they even believe that Jesus was miraculously begotten and born of a virgin mother, and speak of him as ‘Kalam-Allah’ and ‘Ruh Allah’—the word of God and spirit of God. To hope, however, that they will renounce the religion wherein they were born, or be persuaded that Mohammed was a false prophet, is a mistake.