‘Prosecutor: How can Islam, a mono-theistic, single pointed religion, mingle with a religion which worships cattle and has endless number of Gods? "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is its Prophet".

Dara: Look beneath. Beyond the glaring separation, you will discover the same desire to know God, the same attempt to live better lives, to help us reach meaning. Examine the impulse behind the systems, Prosecutor, the religions share utterly an understanding of what it is to be human.

Prosecutor: A human Muslim, a human Hindu or a human Sikh?’¹

 

BEING in the field of legal study for about a decade, world peace now sounds like an evasive buzzword, an enigma in itself, in whose pursuit even the most violent endeavour is forgiven. Quite heavily prioritized for global humanity, peace fuels a lot of national and international legal regulations, which brings us to our question: Can peace really be ‘regulated’?² Experiences in the recent past don’t seem to carry an affirmative answer to that question. In the current political state, strongly driven by ‘security concerns’, peace consists of any state devoid of confrontation. The idea is seductive as it becomes easy to trap the evasive dove of peace in this context by keeping away from conflict, and by extension, keeping away from differences coming together.

It is stunning to see governments harping on the modernity agenda of globalization, come to such conclusions. On the one hand, the transnational and transcultural context is sought for the noble cause of ‘development’, while on the other, the attempts at peace strive to reinforce the comfortable isolated pockets of existence, trying to avoid the difficult questions rather than engaging with them. As such, it is hardly surprising that enforcing ‘peace regulations’ further feeds on to insecurities of the people, leading to further conflicts and violence.

 

Religion and culture being the central characters in this narrative, are often the most popular indices of division. Amongst the regulatory processes, there are a lot of attempts to reconcile the differences between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ as conflicting parts. There are two polarities we struggle with in the process. The first one being a doctrinaire comparison of religious tenets, highlighting the differences: whether you burn or bury the dead, whether you cover your head with a turban or a skull cap, whether you light an oil lamp or a candle; and the second polarity is of finding a common denominator in the different religions to make an argument for a common humanity, a common value of ‘secularism’, so to speak. In this struggle, the definition of peace is negotiated to a bare tolerance, a mere absence of riots and violence because humans should not be killing each other. However, that essence of difference, that feeling of them and us, still remains.

It is difficult to talk about a state of peace in its true sense while faced with this grim context. The impasse reached by the different characters of the story demand an innovation, so the plot can move forward towards a better ending. As such, the attempt to find a common ground of humanity needs a new creation myth, a new fertile patch of soil that can be conducive to inter-religious dialogue and engagement. What we need is a new sense of possibilities where differences can come together and understand each other, without the fear of the sole result being violence and conflict. In this attempt, characters like Dara Shikoh have the potential of reinventing the social narratives and stimulating the conversation of ideas.

 

I think it is imperative here to discuss the story of Dara briefly. The eldest son of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Prince Dara Shikoh was the heir apparent of the kingdom. The apple of his father’s eye, Dara is regarded as a great scholar of languages, religions and cultures. His inclinations towards a Cosmotheandric³ understanding of faith and religions, drew him towards Sufism and mystical interpretations of Islam as well as various other Indic faiths. He is often regarded as a disciple of the Sufi master Mian Mir and Sarmad, an Armenian Sufi mystic of Jewish origins. Owing to his inter- religious leanings, the conservative ulemas, the Islamic nobles of the court, were not pleased, and supported Aurangzeb’s claim to the throne, which was more in tandem with their orthodox interpretations. Dara was hence captured, tried for apostasy in a court set up by Aurangzeb, and eventually convicted and executed in the political play for power.

In this context, talking about a character like Dara Shikoh can take a number of turns. It can be a historical battle, comparing him to Akbar, and contemplating whether his Sufi leanings could have changed the course of the history of India. It can be a religious debate, debunking his works of comparative religion. It can end in him being a hero for tolerating the other, or it can even conclude with him being a romanticized figure who would have made no difference to the future at all. This is an attempt to add another dimension to how we look at the forgotten Mughal prince: as a myth, as an instrument of stimulating the difference to engage and understand each other, and as a character ripe with possibilities of religious dialogue and peace. And here we mean a peace which, while acknowledging the differences in the other, doctrinaire or otherwise, also instills a sense of respect. A state of peace where you don’t just tolerate the other, but you need your mutual difference to understand yourself better. It is not a mere absence of violence, but a state of engagement and reflection.

 

In a traditional historical tradition, Dara comes off as just another cog in the fight for power and the creation of a new badshah. Most history curriculums in India treat him that way. In a tragic turn, his death becomes the most relevant part about him. But the many aspects of his life, about Dara the mystic, Dara the poet, Dara the painter, Dara the religious scholar of a syncretic ethos, remain completely unknown to most in South Asia itself, let alone the West. As aforementioned, a few attempts have been made to revive Dara as a historical figure and broaden the narrative. However, the potential of Dara as a myth to illustrate the possibilities of religious confluence and instigate a conversation, have been few.

It is important here to clarify what I mean by the term ‘myth’. Popular interpretations can critique the term for being an antithesis to facts and historical truth, but the term does not mean a cooked up story for the naive to believe in. Myth here follows the definition accorded to it by Raimon Panikkar in his work⁴ – it cannot be reduced to historical facts, timelines and accuracy; rather, it is understood as an expression of consciousness. To use Panikkar’s analogy, one cannot look directly at the source of light; one turns one’s back so one may see, not the light, but the illuminated things. Thus, myth, in this context, signifies the source of light and the possibilities it might create through its illumination.

The potential of a myth does not lie in the factual scrutiny of its narrative, but in living it out to push one’s sense of awareness to different realms of consciousness and meaning. In this respect, Dara as a myth is neither reduced to a tipping point in the debate about alternate histories, nor does he become an ideal to follow blindly, but a facilitator of a common ground, where our incompatibilities can come together and tolerate each other enough, to begin to engage and understand.

 

Dara holds relevance due to the possibilities of engagement that he lived out. One of the most popular works that he authored was the Majma-ul-Bahrain, the confluence of two oceans, which was a treatise in comparative religious literature devoted to revelation of pluralistic affinities between Muslim and Hindu mysticism. A lot can be inferred about his spiritual and intellectual legacy from the mere title of the treatise. His propagation of ‘confluence’ embodies a sense of faith which does not fear a pilgrimage to the other. The approach to comparative literature that he illustrates does not require an objective and a religious view of different faiths, rather it advocates recognizing the relevance of a different narrative while remaining firmly rooted in one’s own. It does not limit the seeker but expands the kind of answers he might find. As such, Dara emerges as a creation myth of a different kind, stepping beyond the polarizing discourse on religion and rationality.

 

Dara’s understanding of religious discourse as oceans brings forth the limits of reducing them to bullet point doctrines derived from static texts. Dara understands the limitlessness of religions, and the complexities of the multiple truths it embodies. He acknowledges the frailty of the human condition that cannot know anything for certain, and offers the different religious oceans as different means to go a little further in understanding the cosmology. He acknowledges the difference without discrimination, and still finds a unity in the diverse manifestations of religious discourse. The dialogue that emanates from such a creation myth has a capability of creating a sense of tolerance beyond the power equation of dominance and subversion. In this understanding, one truth does not suppress the other in course of coexistence, but acknowledges and celebrates the difference.

It is beautifully illustrated in one of Rumi’s poems, ‘Moses and the Shephard’.⁵ A shephard is praying innocently to God, offering to comb God’s hair and wash his clothes and pick off the lice. Moses hears and scolds him, telling him the ‘appropriate’ words and manner to pray. God intervenes, revealing to Moses: ‘What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to you is honey to someone else… Forget phraseology. I want burning.’ This is the sense of plurality the dialogue aims at. The discussion then does not focus upon religion as a historical tradition of establishing one truth, or as a competition of validity. It does not progress with the objective of declaring a victor that can subsume dominance and tolerate the others as inferior narratives. Such usages of history as well as religion have already rendered it as a political resource of creating conflict, rendering confrontation as a chief known mode of encounter of religions.

 

Fresh examples of this approach of further ‘regulating’ peace are manifest in the right wing political agenda in India, where, in a strange paradox, the alleged tolerance of a religion is used to claim superiority, while claiming that interaction with the ‘other’, Islam in this case, will distort their tolerance. The result is creation of further insecurities on both sides, leading to strong fundamentalist tendencies while tolerance lies suffocated in a corner. Dara seeks to go beyond this conflict by facilitating a dialogue to create a myth of pluralism that opens up new imaginations to the masses. It identifies not only the existence of multiple truths in their own relevance, but also acknowledges the necessity of the other.

It is important to note here that the nature of the dialogue so espoused would not be closed door stipulations on philosophical underpinning of religions by a handful of ‘representative’ scholars. As such, conferences and seminars in the ivory towers of academia would not help. The dialogue in this case needs to be in the roots of the social, be it in a restaurant debunking the sacred cow or in a wedding comparing notes on rituals. It is this sense of engagement that has a potential of fostering a new sense of comparative religious studies, which does not compare the characters sans the context of their stories. Dara, in this narrative, has a potential to set the stage for this initiation.

 

The attempts that have been made in this direction display an interesting potential. One notable example is of Shahid Nadeem, a playwright from Ajoka Theatre of Lahore, Pakistan. Exiled for his activist work, he made a comeback with a play on the forgotten prince. The play has been staged in Pakistan as well as India, and was adapted by the National Theatre in London for the western audiences as well.

The same historical narrative of Dara Shikoh in different contexts through the play, sought to act as a stimulant for very different conversations on religious dialogue.⁶ To the western audience, it presented alternative interpretations of Islam, generating a common ground to take the conversation beyond the popular extremist image. It displayed an Islam beyond the media images of mullahs and fatwas. It displayed the complexity of the royal family, and the characters within, with the conflict between the insecure doctrinaire and the liberated Sufi personified in the two brothers and justified in their contrasting childhood.

The blasphemy trial of Dara put forth a beautiful argument for plurality while holding on to the relevance of one’s own religion. To the Pakistani audience, it challenged Aurangzeb’s claim to heroism and brings forth an argument for bringing out Islam from its doctrinaire isolation. To the Indian audience, it reinvented the Mughal narrative, and challenged the identity of Muslims as the descendants of invading outsiders. It goes beyond the conflict of a good Muslim versus bad Muslim, while bringing forth the multiple truths hidden in the stories Islam has to tell, without limiting it in an ideology. Amongst the diverse inferences drawn from the story, Dara as a myth sets the stage for conversation among conflicts of polarities in each of the contexts, albeit with different characters.

 

The potential of the myth of Dara, therefore, lies in plural dimensions his story can uncover, while reinventing how we understand tolerance and peace. Dara as a creation myth for a religious dialogue strives to create a prologue for acknowledgment and reconciliation of difference, rather than its regulated suppression. One should of course be wary of understanding it as a naïve sense of idealism.

The process of dialogue in this sense is inevitably impregnated with a sense of discomfort, as it aims to stir the certainties that one claims to know. However, the sheer possibilities of the myth, and the emotion of openness and mutual respect that it instills can be vital in carrying this discomfort to a sense of meaning. This is why we need a myth to step beyond the limits of ideology. It is not an exhaustive process, as the understanding of the other does not have an endpoint. As Rabisankar Bal says in his persona of Mirza Ghalib, ‘you can never fully know the other, but you still need to try to find meaning.’⁷ And ‘to know, one must burn. Otherwise all the knowledge is ineffective.’⁸ Dara as a myth, in this endeavour, has a potential of igniting the initial spark. I end, as I began, with Dara’s words:

‘Prosecutor: You call it stillness to sample the gamut of religions like a bee in spring?

Dara: Prosecutor, at the centre of every blossom is honey, the rest is frankly ritual.’⁹

 

Footnotes:

1. Shahid Nadeem and Tanya Ronder, DARA National Theatre Adaptation. Nick Hern Books, London, 2015.

2. To understand the context and meaning of regulation, See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Towards a New Legal Common Sense. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.

3. The term is derived from Raimon Panikkar’s work of the same name, ‘The Cosmotheandric Experience’, which understands the cosmology as a whole, with each of its elements inter connected to create a unity.

4. Raimon Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics. Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ, 1980.

5. Coleman Barks (trans.), Rumi: Selected Poems. Penguin Books, London, 1995, p. 165.

6. Hannah Harris Green, ‘Past Concerns’, The Caravan, March 2015.

7. Rabisankar Bal, Dozakhnama. Translated by Arunava Sinha. Ramdom House India, Delhi, 2012.

8. Roberto Calasso, Ardor, discussing the vedic character of Yajnavalkaya.

9. Supra note 1.