How A Delhi Engineer Dug Out Dara Shikoh's Grave, The Brother Aurangzeb Beheaded!

If medieval Indian history has one big what-if question, it라이브 바카라 this: what if Dara Shikoh had become emperor instead of Aurangzeb? There라이브 바카라 now a gap between the words ‘Mughal’ and ‘Indian’ in the popular mind—a gap not sustained in history. In the common telling of India라이브 바카라 past, ‘Mughal’ is the name of things built over a land. This idea has been there only since the British: it was born with them. It라이브 바카라 their idea of history that was built over the land. What happened before that was more complex. A meeting of soils, one that produced a natural petrichor, a deeply civilisational aroma that travelled, without leaving a clear sign of its origin. India, as the West got to know it during the colonial age, was transformative for the West. And a key figure mediating that encounter was Dara Shikoh. But where was Dara Shikoh himself? He had vanished into the bone-dry dust of the Doab.

No actor is yet known for portraying him. No Mughal-e-Azam was made for him (though Karan Johar has recently threatened to try). Nor was any political movement waged against him. None was needed, of course. What would you protest against? The translation he steered of the Upanishads? That라이브 바카라 what travelled westward, an army of a subtler kind. The intellectual history of the West would have been different. But Dara Shikoh himself fell off the map in 1659—apparently beheaded on his own brother Aurangzeb라이브 바카라 order.

He vanished so completely in fact that, even over 300 years after his death, his exact place of burial remains a mystery. Evidence in history is often coloured in grey, but there라이브 바카라 finally a new beam of light that potentially leads us to his interred body. Historical documents are often mutually contradictory on details. Was he beheaded? Were his head and body buried separately? Which contemporary rec­ord should be believed? What was Aurangzeb라이브 바카라 own attitude towards his brother라이브 바카라 grave? For all this, it has been a matter of some consensus that he was buried in Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb. Only the exact grave was unknown, as the tomb has over 140 graves of different Mughal family members. No historian or researcher had yet managed to fine-tune the lens to afford us more close-range clarity.

Trying to fill that gap, ironically enough, is a government made up of a party not particularly renowned for its love of the Mughals. This February, just before India went into a lockdown and Delhi was dealing with deadly questions of history, the Union ministry of culture decided to try and unl­ock this big, magic door into the past. It did what governments do, setting up a seven-member committee of India라이브 바카라 top archaeologists to pinpoint Dara라이브 바카라 grave. Before it could do anything, the country-wide lockdown brought everything to a grinding halt. But some three months later, as life tried to resume, and the members were going to assemble, something else happened. Much to their surprise, Sanjeev Kumar Singh, a 49-year-old civil engineer from South Delhi Municipal Corporation, came up with a startling claim. He said he had spotted Dara Shikoh라이브 바카라 grave inside the Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb.

Yes, you heard that right. Singh says one of the chambers on the first floor of Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb has Dara Shikoh라이브 바카라 tombstone: it lies there, unmarked, along with two others, which belong to two sons of Akbar, Daniyal and Murad. How did a municipal engineer unlock a door that historians had not managed to even reach? Well, it was a labour of love that took him four years: he studied history, pored over historical documents, did everything a scholar would have done.

A fascinating hunt that has led to a strong claim. Strong enough to earn accolades from at least five members of the committee, which includes Padma awardee K.K. Muhammed, former director general, National Museum, Dr B.R. Mani and three ex-directors of the Archaeological Survey of India: Dr Syed Jamal Hasan, B.M. Pande and Ghulam Syed Khwaja.

So how did Singh find his way around in this unlit part of history? Before setting out on his hunt in 2016, Singh was aware of the popular belief—which even historians had accepted—that Dara라이브 바카라 grave was in Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb. But beyond that, there was only anonymity. “As a matter of religious principle, graves don’t have any concrete construction on the ground level. That라이브 바카라 why, in Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb, the actual graves are beneath the plinth, right below the respective tombstones,” Singh says.바카라 웹사이트 With material evidence unclear, he needed documentary and literary proof. So he read up on all the details available online on the architecture and design of Mughal gravestones—from Babur라이브 바카라 in Kabul to Bahadur Shah Zafar라이브 바카라 in Rangoon. Then, he pored over the chronicles left by travellers and historians. Next, he went over official Mughal documents and biographies—a goldmine of information, even if not self-sufficient as evidence. “Many prominent Mughal figures have their burial grounds in Pakistan.… Jahangir, Nur Jahan, Asaf Khan,” says Singh. He scanned the dargah complex at Nizamuddin, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki라이브 바카라 grave in Mehrauli, Akbar라이브 바카라 tomb at Sikandra, the Safdarjung Tomb, Itimad-ud-Daulah라이브 바카라 grave in Agra (one of the prototypes of the Taj), and Taj Mahal itself. And he started seeing patterns: a clear distinction between graves made for males and females, local variations within the same time-frame, and a natural diachronic evolution across the Mughal period.

Contemporary chronicles from the three well-known Western travellers who saw India that time—François Bernier, Jean Baptiste Tavernier and Niccolo Manucci—were a natural source of reference for Singh. But like with everything else, he got only clues. According to Manucci, Dara라이브 바카라 head was buried at the Taj in Agra, and his body at Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb. Bernier writes of a beheading and a burial at Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb. Tavernier talks only of the beheading. “Three different versions, but I placed more reliance on Bernier as he was present in Delhi,” says Singh.

The literature also opened up new aspects of Dara라이브 바카라 personality: including the common perception that Dara was a kind of soft counterpart to the harsh Aurangzeb. “When I read Bernier, I came to know that at times he was short-tempered, rude and arrogant with people who used to question him,” says Singh. It라이브 바카라 a disputed point among historians, but it adds depth to what라이브 바카라 otherwise only calendar art. More granularity came to Singh via memoirs such as Amal-i Salih (penned by calligraphist and Shah Jahan라이브 바카라 official biographer Muhammad Saleh Kamboh), Alamgir Namah by Aurangzeb라이브 바카라 handpicked early chronicler Mirza Muhammd Kazim, Maasir i Alamgiri by Saqi Mustad Khan, Muntakhab-al Lubab by Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, and Tarikh-i-Farahbakhsh by Muhammad Faiz Bakhsh. Then there were the modern works: Military Memoirs by George Thomas, Wanderings of a Pilgrim by Fanny Parkes, Rambles and Recollections by William Sleeman, Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi by Stephen Carr—right up to the Memoirs of the ASI by Maulvi Muhammad Ashraf Husain.

One challenge was language: most original Mughal chronicles are in Persian. “I did face this problem. I know a little bit of Urdu…so I managed to narrow down my search because of the common alphabet, and then took those portions to Dr Aleem Ashraf Khan, head of the Persian department in Delhi University,” Singh says. The most vital clue came from Alamgir Namah, which contained the words, “His body was taken to Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb and buried in the basement chamber (tahkhana) below the dome, where Daniyal and Murad, Akbar라이브 바카라 son, lay buried....” The clearest reference, yet inconclusive. Singh had to proceed to architecture. “Once I narrowed down my search to ‘below the dome’ of Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb, I studied the design aspects of each and every tombstone in the chambers under the dome on the first floor,” he says. That helped him zero in on one of the chambers. It had three ‘male’ tombstones. The torchlight was finally closing in. Here were Akbar라이브 바카라 two sons, Murad Mirza and Daniyal Mirza, buried in 1599 and 1605 respectively, and perhaps Dara—whose burial came half a century later, in 1659. The sequence was logical. Murad, who died first, occupied the middle, so Daniyal took one end. Therefore Dara had to be accommodated near the entrance, the other end.

“If you enter the chamber on the first floor, you find Dara라이브 바카라 as the last tombstone. But if you visit the basement, where the actual graves are, the first grave is of Dara because the entrance is on the opposite,” Singh says. How is that conclusion warranted? Because Murad and Daniyal라이브 바카라 graves are almost similar—a time gap of only six years. The third is distinctively different. “As we move closer to the date of Dara라이브 바카라 burial, we find similarities among gravestones constructed around that time,” says Singh. “For instance, the cenotaphs of Akbar라이브 바카라 half-brother, Mirza Aziz Kokaltash, laid out in 1624, Itimad-ud-Daulah라이브 바카라 grave in Agra laid in 1622 and Nur Jahan라이브 바카라 in 1645 in Lahore bear some resemblance with Dara라이브 바카라, despite local differences.”

Singh라이브 바카라 work is now with the experts, and most of them are endorsing it. Says the old ASI hand and Padma awardee, K.K. Muhammed, “Even I wasn’t aware of so many historical and architectural facts. He has churned out the essence from the available resources.” Ghulam Syed Khwaja, who was director, epigraphy, at ASI, too says, “He has done serious and pioneering research.” Dr Mani finds it “convincing and worthwhile”. Pande and Syed Jamal Hasan, both eminent archaeologists, second those views.

But finding Dara has long been a challenge. One that Supriya Gandhi of Yale University, author of The Emperor Who Never Was (2019), the latest historical work on Dara, is well aware of. She hasn’t seen Singh라이브 바카라 res­earch work yet. But she wrote to 바카라 on email about previous attempts to identify Dara라이브 바카라 tombstone, including ones that relied on oral traditions. The late Dr Yunus Jaffery, for instance, had his own hypothesis. “There is evidence that his grave had a visible tombstone, news reports from Aurangzeb라이브 바카라 court suggest this,” she says. “But it is hard on the basis of literary evidence to identify its exact location.” The textual evidence is indeed short of conclusive. “The Amal-i Salih gives a metaphorical account of a Quranic verse inscribed on the gate of Time, which other sources have misread and taken literally. The Alamgir Namah merely mentions Dara was buried in the same place as Murad and Daniyal…it does not give the precise location,” she adds.

Thing is, there are five tahkhanas (basements) under the dome in Humayun라이브 바카라 Tomb—their corresponding chambers are on the first floor, which accommodates eleven cenotaphs, six of women and five of men. Humayun라이브 바카라 own is one of the five male cenotaphs, located in the central chamber (No. 1). The south-west chamber (No. 4) has cenotaphs of a man and a woman, chambers 2 and 3 are reserved for women. And three men rest in the north-west one, Chamber 5. Three men, under the dome—both the requirements mandated by Alamgir Namah. The corresponding tahkhana below too is a close fit for the three shahzadas. The cenotaph numbered ‘3’ exhibits all the characteristics of Akbar라이브 바카라 period: the deduction that it belongs to Shahzada Murad, who died on May 22, 1599, is strongly warranted. The first to die, so centrally placed. Cenotaph No. 2, located towards the entrance or the eastern side, features the transitioning architectural characteristics straddling Akbar라이브 바카라 and Jahangir라이브 바카라 periods. Thus, Shahzada Daniyal, who died on March 11, 1605, is a decent guess. The third cenotaph, on the western side, has architectural features proper to Shah Jahan라이브 바카라 period. This is Singh라이브 바카라 Dara.

Gandhi isn’t completely convinced: she feels everyone has been looking for a group of three graves, but such a concatenation isn’t exactly spelt out in contemporary records. “A search for three cenotaphs has guided their exploration. But there is nothing in the Alamgir Namah to suggest the tombstone must be one of three contiguous cenotaphs. Distinguishing features of 17th-century cenotaphs too has subjective elements, and may not lead to a conclusive answer,” she says. There are other possible directions that history gives us, she says. “For instance, the account from Aurangzeb라이브 바카라 court suggests the condition of Dara라이브 바카라 grave was deteriorating, which might mean it was exposed to the elements on the terrace outside instead of being located in the inner building. We cannot be absolutely sure,” she told 바카라. She and other historians, of course, are in no doubt about the sheer seminal influence Dara had.

Prof Akhlaque Ahmad Ansari, a Persian expert at JNU, says Dara was in essence so anti-establishment that he was disowned by his own friends and contemporary scholars. But Dara was not alone in that grand cultural enterprise, where religion wasn’t quite the factor it became with British definitions of India. Knowledge was never circumscribed by identity before the British, says Ansari. “Take Abdul-ul-Qader-Badauni, an orthodox Muslim who translated the Ramayana into Persian. It never courted any controversy. And orthodox Brahmins became great scholars of Islamic religious texts,” he adds. That is the grave that India has lost, and is struggling to recover.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트