Author of “The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India”

Join Shireen Ahmad, co-founder of South Asia Institute, as she hosts a conversation with Dr. Supriya Gandhi and Dr. Rajeev Kinra about Dr. Gandhi’s new book The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India.

A poet and Sufi mystic, Mughal Prince Dara Shukoh (1615-59) was the heir-apparent to the throne. The eldest son of Shah Jahan, he was inevitably murdered by his brother Prince Aurangzeb in a battle for the crown. In this extensive biography, Dr. Supriya Gandhi reconstructs the historical timeline that was Dara Shukoh’s life and considers how the history of the subcontinent may have taken a different turn had he become Emperor.

Watch the full conversation below.

Supriya Gandhi holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research examines the interface of Islam and Indic religions in South Asia. Her interests include the religious and cultural history of the Mughal empire, Islamic mysticism, the early modern and modern translation of Indic texts into Persian, and modern Hindu thought. She grew up in India and studied there as well as in Iran and Syria before earning her doctorate. Supriya Gandhi is currently an Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at Yale University, CT, USA.

Rajeev Kinra holds a Ph.D. from University of Chicago and is a cultural historian of early modern South Asia, with a special emphasis on the literary, intellectual, religious, and political cultures of the Mughal and early British Empires in India. His research draws on several linguistic traditions (especially Persian, but also Hindi-Urdu and Sanskrit), to examine diverse modes of civility, tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and cultural modernity across the Indo-Persian and Indian Ocean worlds. Kinra currently serves as the Director of Northwestern's Asian Studies Program, and co-director of Northwestern's Global Humanities Initiative (GHI).