Dara Shukoh

Sultan Muhammad Dara Shukoh (1615 – 1659) was the eldest son and heir apparent to Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name in Persian means ''Darius the Magnificent''. A Sufi at heart Dara Shukoh is known to be an advocate of the heterodox traditions in the Mughal Empire. An erudite scholar he had studied all faiths translated fifty-two Upanishads and many other texts from different religions into Persian. He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb in a bitter struggle for the imperial throne. The course of the history of the Indian subcontinent had Dara prevailed over Aurangzeb has been a matter of great conjecture among historians. Navin Pant''s well-researched and lucid biography of the royal prince is one of the very few books written on his life and it reveals to us some lesser-known facts about Dara Shukoh.