Dara Shikoh, whose death anniversary fell last year on August 30, was more than a Sufi-prince, scholar and translator. He was also a hands-on editor-publisher of translations. Every Indian who has ever translated a text into English owes something to a Mughal prince who lies buried in the compound of Humayun’s tomb in Delhi. The anniversary of his death, August 30, is a date we should remember with national melancholy. The school-room facts are well known: in the struggle for the Mughal throne 350 years ago, Shah Jahan’s eldest son Prince Dara Shikoh was defeated, and brought to Delhi where he was led through the city in a disgrace-parade on an old and unwashed elephant… In the 17th century, Prince Dara Shikoh went wholeheartedly into the spiritual movements in India, studied in translation Hebrew, Christian and Brahmanical scriptures, learnt the yogic practices and Sufi methods of meditation, the doctrine of bhakti and the mystical philosophy of Islam, and produced the immortal work Majmua-ul-Bahrain (mingling of two oceans) and several other books. If the political and religious conspiracies had not succeeded in defeating and murdering him, Indian history would have taken a different turn.
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