The Hindu Business Line : An empire's heartbreak

At 4 a.m. on October 7, 332 years after Babur first conquered the city, the last Mughal Emperor left Delhi on a bullock cart. Along with him went his wives, his two remaining children, concubines and servants — a party of 31 in all... the journey had been kept secret, even from Zafar himself, and the old man knew nothing of his departure before being woken up at 3 a.m., and told to get ready."

It is difficult to read some sections of William Dalrymple's exhaustive account of the life of the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar (The Last Mughal, Penguin) with dry eyes. Dalrymple recaptures the dying moments of Mughal glory with the sensitivity and scholarly flair of a master storyteller.

The author tells us Zafar had always enjoyed outings, processions and hunting expeditions of his younger days were legendary. "Even in his old age, his monsoon breaks at his summer palace in Mehrauli had often been excuses for extended shooting trips in the jungle to the south." But his "passage into exile was the longest journey he had ever taken", and was almost a relief after the immense stress of the uprising and sieges, and the humiliation and drama of what the author certifies an illegal trial.

Zafar was tried in January 1858 by the East India Company for the crime of leading the Uprising of 1857, and Dalrymple questions the Company's legal status to try him. The premise was that Zafar received a pension from the Company and so was its subject, but the actual legal position was ambiguous, he argues. "The Company's authority to govern in India actually legally flowed from the Mughal Emperor, who had officially taken on the Company as his tax collector in Bengal" after the battle of Plassey in August 1765. Even in 1832, the Company's coins and seals acknowledged that it was the vassal of the Mughal Emperor, and hence he could have been tried as "a defeated enemy king" " but not a rebel guilty of treason.

But legal niceties apart, the British Dalrymple treats the "Hindoostan King" with a sensitivity and sympathy that will endear him to readers in India, but, as he himself has pointed out in his interview to The Hindu, not the British media.

William Dalrymple: For the love of Delhi and its history. - S.S. KUMAR

What sets The Last Mughal apart from other accounts of Mughal history, particularly Mughal Delhi, is a sketch of a colourful, vibrant city seen from the eyes of the trader, the hakim, the dancing girl, Ghalib, and of course the British administrators.

Over four years Dalrymple and his associates pored over a treasure trove of about 20,000 virtually unused Persian and Urdu documents — known as the Mutiny Papers — relating to the Delhi of 1857, that he found on the shelves of the National Archives of India. "These allow 1857 in Delhi to be seen for the first time from a properly Indian perspective, and not just from the British sources through which to date it has usually been viewed," says the author in the introductory chapter.

Glorious Delhi

Delhi comes alive in the book's pages through Dalrymple's racy, evocative prose, even as he pays tribute to its language: "If there was one thing in which the town was most confident, it was in the beauty and elegance of its language. After all, Urdu was born in Delhi. It was a language the poet and literary historian Azad described as an `orphan found wandering in the bazaars of Shahjahanabad...' In Delhi, poetry `was discussed in every house', for `the Emperor himself was a poet and a connoisseur of poetry'."

Indians living outside Delhi, who are sometimes amused, sometimes irritated by the supercilious attitude of most Dilliwallahs of today, will surely chuckle at this observation of Dalrymple, himself a great lover of Delhi, spending half his time here. "Rather like modern New Yorkers, Delhiwallahs of the early nineteenth century blithely took as little interest as possible in the world beyond their own familiar and beloved streets, and had to struggle to imagine anyone ever wishing to live anywhere else: as the poet Zauq put it: `Kaun jaye Zauq par Dilli ki galiya chhor kay' (How could anyone, O Zauq, forsake Delhi and its lanes?)" Even though this was hyperbole, "behind such writing lay a real and palpable pride in a great and civilised city whose reputation as a centre of learning, culture and spirituality had rarely been higher, even as its political fortunes had wanted."

Zafar's character is sketched with honesty, without making him out to be demon or the saint some accounts attempt to do. Yes, he was a great poet, a great patron of the arts, and extremely secular in his outlook, keeping the Muslim maulvis and mullahs in control. But he was no great king either, not a patch on the lineage of a Babur, Akbar or Jehangir, and meekly accepted the whittled down powers of his position; "Zafar did not control even as far as Palam; instead his real authority existed only within the walls of the Red Fort, as if he were an Indian Pope within his own Vatican City". And yet, adds Dalrymple, "he remains, like his ancestor the Emperor Akbar, an attractive symbol of Islamic civilisation at its most tolerant and pluralistic."

Authentic history

But ultimately it is the creation of another authentic source on Mughal history for which Dalrymple deserves the utmost praise. Whether it is description of palace life with all the intrigues and counter-intrigues between Zafar's wives, the clash of Muslim ideology with the new Christian values, or the massacre of the British men, women and children, the looting and violence that took place in Delhi during the mutiny, all these events come alive in Dalrymple's narrative, which draws from documents from varied sources — the self-righteous and outraged British, the Dihli Urdu Akhbar of Maulvi Muhammad Baqar, the proclamations of Pastor Rotton, and the innumerable letters exchanged by the British in Delhi with their families/friends back home.

Even during the Uprising, the role of a leader was thrust upon Zafar and at defining moments when the rebellious sepoys could have prevented the recapture of Delhi by the British under a more effective and forceful leadership, he "dithered and swithered". During the later stages of the uprising, Zafar tried in vain to mend fences with the British; and by the end of July as there were clear signs that the British would be back in the saddle in Delhi, revenge was planned; "The mass murder of the people of Delhi was openly and enthusiastically discussed, as was the levelling of the city", the vengefulness being stoked by the British press following the gory killing of British civilians in the Uprising — "the massacre of 73 women and 124 children in Kanpur. There were hysterical calls for the complete destruction of Delhi, and dreams of the British General sitting in the "Mogul's Palace, and a hempen necklace around the King's throat as a substitute for his crown." The British forces kept up their "spirits by dreaming of the riches of Delhi... hoping to pick up `a nice little diamond or two' from the `rich old niggers'."

Brutal vengeance

When the mutiny was crushed, retribution and revenge were total with the "British convincing themselves that the atrocities committed by the sepoys — called snakes, reptiles, niggers, etc — against their women and children absolved them of any need to treat the rebels as human beings".

Inside the palace the mood plunged, the troops could not be fed, and the maulvis and jihadis made a desperate plea to Zafar to personally lead the counterattack against the British, urging him: "Why die a shameful, dishonest death?" But once again he dithered, and was finally captured alive from Humayun's Tomb.

Zafar is no Shakespearean hero and yet there is immense pathos in his capture and humiliation; his guard Kendal Coghil revels in calling the `King of Hindoostan' a pig and swears he would love to shoot him.

One of the most poignant passages in the book pertains to the ransacking of the Red Fort and the Diwan i-Am and Diwan i-Khas, and other exclusive chambers of the palace "where never before had English feet trodden". But Dalrymple makes the darker moments a bit lighter with a touch of humour. As the marauders search for jewels, "some tried the sweetmeats and sherbets, other, less lucky, took long steep draughts of what seemed some right royal drink" only to discover that they were medicines; "the old King had a passion for pharmacy, and kept large supplies close to the royal elbow."

The British victory was complete with British soldiers dancing "jigs inside the Jama masjid and as the Sikhs lit victory fires next to the mosque's holy mihrab, General Wilson and his headquarters staff moved in from St James's Church to the Fort's Diwan i-Khas, where a dinner of eggs and ham was eaten. The general proposed a toast to Queen Victoria." In the thanksgiving held by Padre Rotton in the Diwan i-Khas, "peaceful prayers of a Christian people" were offered.

After Zafar's capture, the British go after the three princes — two sons and one grandson of Zafar — who had commanded the rebel forces during the Uprising. After their surrender they are marched to an archway, stripped naked and shot dead with a Colt revolver "in cold blood and at point blank range, one after another." The officer then strips the corpses of their signet rings, gem-studded armlets, which he pockets, grabs the jewelled swords, leaving the bodies naked in front of the kotwali for the viewing pleasure of British soldiers. This is the brutal extent of the British revenge.

What is also brought out skilfully by Dalrymple is the pettiness of the `victors'; breaking the women's purdah, denying Zafar access to his hakim, barber or dhobi, calling Zafar `the old Pig of a king', or `a beast in a cage' and pulling his beard.

A lone voice of indignation at Zafar's ill treatment comes from a former MP Henry Layard... "I saw the broken-down old man — not in a room but in a miserable hole of his palace — lying on a bedstead, with nothing to cover him but a miserable tattered coverlet. He rose with difficulty from his couch; showed me his arms which were eaten into by disease and flies and he said, in a lamentable voice, that he had not enough to eat. Is that the way, as Christians, we ought to treat a King?"

The devastation of Delhi that follows breaks your heart. Four major palaces are destroyed, beautiful mosques are pulled down and a major part of Chandni chowk flattened, as described so beautifully by the poet Ghalib in his letters to a friend.

Dalrymple also pooh-poohs the prosecution claim that Zafar was the evil genius and linchpin behind an international Muslim conspiracy stretching from Constantinople, Mecca and Iran to the wall of the red fort, and intended to replace the British empire with Mughal rule. The Uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, and "the high class Hindu sepoys all along formed the bulk of the fighting force", so it was hardly a Muslim conspiracy as the British argued.

But the lasting image The Last Mughal leaves is that of the sunset of a great empire, whose last monarch's fall was so abysmal that "on a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure". The British commissioner in charge ordered that "no vestige should remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests."

The aged Zafar's misery and helplessness in exile are best captured by his own couplets (more of his best poetry should have found place in the book in Urdu, rather than translation).

Here he asks his aspirations to find another home rather than his broken heart, lamenting at his misfortune that he was not able to get even two yards of space in his beloved country for his burial.

"In hasraton se keh do, kahin aur ja basain

Itni jaga kahan hai dil-e-daaghdar mein

Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar dafn ke liye

Dau gaz zameen bhi na mili koo-e-yaar main.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in