The terms of the agreement were (i) “one-third of the booty would belong to Murad Bakhsh and two-thirds to Aurangzeb, (ii) after the conquest of the Empire, the Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Sind would belong to Murad, who would set up the standard of kingship there, issue coins and proclaim his own name as king The combined troops of Auangzeb and Murad marched towards the north and reached Dharmat, fourteen miles South-south-west of Ujjain. The Emperor Bent Raja, Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur and Qasim Khan to check their advance. The hostile armies met at Dharmat on the 15th April, 1658, where the imperialists were signally defeated, owing partly “to the evils of divided counsels” and jealousy between the Hindu and Muslim soldiers and partly to the inferior military tactics of Jaswant Singh as compared with those of Aurangzeb, who had aged in war”. The Riithors fought with desperate valour and suffered heavy losses, while Q&sim Kh,n did almost nothing to serve the cause of his maater. When Jaswant Singh fled to Jodhpur his proud wife shut the gates of the castle against him for retreating from the field of battle. The,battle of Dharmit immensely added to Aurangzeb’s resources and prestige. As Sir J. N. Sarkar remarks: “The hero of the Deccan wars and the victor of Dharm,t faced the world not only without loss but with his military reputation rendered absolutely unrivalled in India.”
The victorious princes crossed the Chambal over a neglected ford and reached the plain of Samugarh, eight miles to the east of Agra Fort. Dara Shukoh had also advanced there towards the end of May to meet his opponents with an army of 50,000 soldiers “formidable in appearance only” but “composed of a miscellaneous host of diverse classes and localities, hastily got together and not properly coordinated nor taught to act in concert”. A battle ensued on the 29th May. It was hotly contested and both parties fought bravely, Murad getting three wounds in the face. True to the tradition of their race, the Rajputs under Dara, Shukoh fought gallantly under their brave young leader, R&m Singh, and perished to a man in making a desperate attack upon the division of Prince Murad. Unluckily for Dara Shukoh, his elephant being severely wounded by an arrow, he got down from it and mounted a horse. “That action,” observes Smith, “settled the fate of the battle. Finding the howdah of their master’s elephant empty, the surviving troops thought that be had fallen and dispersed from the field in utter confusion. Filled with despair, Dara Shukoh fled towards Agra, leaving his camp and guns to be captured by his enemies, and reached there “in an unspeakably wretched condition”. The defeat of Dara Shukoh was in fact due to some tactical errors on the part of his generals and to the weaker condition of his artillery, and it was not caused wholly, as some accounts would lead us to believe, by the artful advice of Khalilullah, who was in charge of the right wing of his army.
The battle of Samugarh practically decided the issue in the succession war among the sons of Shah Jahan. The discomfiture of Dara, with the low of many of his soldiers, made it easier for Aurangzeb to realise his ambition. It may very well be said that the capture of the throne of Hindustan by Aurangzeb was almost a logical sequel to his victory at Samuagarh. Soon after this victory he marched to Agra and seized the fort there on the 8th June following, defying all efforts of Shah Jahan for an amicable settlement and baffling the attempts of the imperial defenders of the fort to prevent its capture.
Deprived of his throne, Shah Jahan had to suffer most callous treatments When Aurangzeb, as a sort of offensive measure against the defenders of the Aara fort, stopped the supply of water from the Jumni, the unhappy Emperor had to quench his thirst in the dry summer of June with brackish water from the wells within the fort. He wrote to Aurangzeb in a pathetic tone: “praised be the Hindus in all cases, As they ever offer water to their dead. And thou, my son, art a marvellous Mussalman, As thou causest me in life to lament for (lack of) water.”
Placed under strict confinement as an ordinary prisoner Shah Jahan was denier even the common conveniences. Aurangzeb turned a deaf ear to all requests of the Emperor and Jahanara, for reconciliation; and the unhappy Emperor “at last bowed to the inevitable, and, like a child that cries itself to sleep ceased, to complain”. He found solace in religion, and, in a spirit of resignation, passed his last days in prayer and meditation in the company of his pious daughter, Jahanara, till at last death, at the age of seventy-four, on the 22nd January, 1666, relieved him of all his miseries.
From Agra Aurangzeb started towards Delhi on the 13th June, 1658. But on the way he halted at Rupnagar near Mathura to crush the opposition of his brother, Murad, who had by that time been able to see through the design of his brother and had grown jealous of him. Instead of meeting Murad in the open field, Aurangzeb inveigled him into a trap. The unfortunate Prince was imprisoned first in the fort of Salimgarh, whence he was removed to the fortress of Gwilior in January, 1659, and was executed on the 4th December, 1661, on the charge of murdering Diwan ‘Ali Naqi. Already after Murad’s arrest, Aurangzeb had gone to Delhi, where, on the 21st July, 1658, he crowned himself as Emperor.
Aurangzeb next proceeded to deal with his other rivals. The defeat of Dara Shukoh at Dharmat and Samugarh emboldened Shuja to make a fresh bid for power. But his hopes were shattered when Aurangzeb signally defeated him at Khajwah, near Allahabad, on the 5th January, 1659. He was chesed by Mir Jumla through West Bengal to Dacca and thence to Arakan in May, 1660. Nothing was again heard of Shuja. lie was probably slaughtered with his family by the Arakanese. Aurangzeb’s eldest son, Prince Muhammad, having quarrelled with Mir Jumla, joined Shuja. for a time. But he was punished for this with imprisonment for life and met his death about 1676.
When.fortune went against Dara Shukoh, his son, Sulaiman Shukoh, was also deserted by his generals and soldiers, who thought that there was no gain in following the “losing side any longer”. After fleeing from place to place, Sulaiman Shukoh, with his wife, a few other ladies, his faster-brother, Muhammad Shah, and only seventeen followers, found refuge with a Hindu Raja of the Garhwal Hills, who “was all kindness and attention to his princely guest in distress “. But his host’s son betrayed him into the hands of his enemies on the 27th December, 1660. The captive prince, then in the prime of his youth and singularly handsome, was brought in chains before Aurangzeb and told him that he would prefer immediate death to slow poisoning by means of pousta drink or “infusion of opium-poppy heads”. Aurangzeb promised “that this drink should not be administered, and that his mind might be perfectly easy,”. But the promise was not kept, and the dreadful drink was administered every morning to the unlucky prince until in May, 1662, “he was sent to the next world through the exertions of his keepers”. Dara Shukoh’s younger son, Sipihr Shukoh, and Murad’s son, Izid Bakhah, not being considered serious rivals, were granted their lives and were subsequently Carried to the third and the fifth of Aurangzeb’s daughters respectively.
