In any event, it is preferable that he not meet him, so he may continue to idealise him and imagine him a hero, a martyr to his convictions . . . If he were to see him in his palace in Calcutta, surrounded by his dancers, busy with music and poetry, a thousand miles from his people’s struggle, his world would collapse. It is better he continue to admire his father from a distance, even if he is to hold it against me . . .
Ambika has finally returned. She brings a letter from Rana Beni Madho, who blesses the Queen Mother for her help and informs her he has finally found a way to return to Awadh, where he intends to rouse the population in the king’s name.
Hazrat Mahal no longer has enough gold to help him, so she decides to sell two sets of jewellery—marvels made of rubies and diamonds. A servant of hers had earlier been employed by one of the king’s wives. Can she contact her? The royal family despises Nepal’s new master; their discretion is assured. But what of her retinue? The begum knows she is taking risks, but are the fighters in the Terai not risking far more?
Chance works in her favour. The jewellery sets are bought immediately and the gold handed over to Ambika, who, this time, is to leave to supposedly bury her grandmother.
She will return very soon, as the begum fears her repeated absences will appear suspect, but she has been able to entrust the gold to a cousin, overjoyed at being able to do the maharajah a bad turn. They have agreed upon a signal to confirm the success of the mission.
Two weeks later, Ambika and her mistress have still received no news.
“You are playing a dangerous game, Huzoor!”
Jung Bahadur enters without even having himself announced. His face is contorted with rage. In his hand, he holds a letter from General Grant, which he waves in front of the begum.
“The general writes to me that his soldiers stopped a young peasant carrying two purses full of gold. They worked him over thoroughly, but he died without speaking. As the arrest took place not far from Beni Madho’s camp, Sir Grant concluded that the gold was destined for this terrorist. Who was sending it to him? Would you have any idea?”
He stands threateningly before Hazrat Mahal, who feigns surprise:
“How would I know? I have been a prisoner here for months. You do not even allow me outside the garden!”
Beside himself, Jung Bahadur cannot repress a curse.
“Do you know I can have you placed in solitary confinement, both you and your son, and forget you there . . . forever?”
The green eyes flash, contemptuously.
“Then do it! Thus history will remember you forever!”
She senses he is about to strike her, but he just stares at her with hatred and leaves without a word. The next day the surveillance is reinforced and all the servants replaced. Fortunately, Ambika is not under suspicion.
From now on, Hazrat Mahal has no means of communicating with the rebels.
Convinced that the Indians will revolt again and eventually drive out the occupiers, she devotes herself entirely to her son’s education. One day Birjis Qadar will reclaim the throne; she must prepare him for it.
The adolescent is lively and intelligent. The ordeals have matured him, but he is often prone to bouts of sadness that worry his mother, as they remind her of Wajid Ali Shah’s melancholic tendencies. However, is it necessary to search that far? Although the young boy has finally found some kind of security, he is paying the price for the long months of fear and deprivation, and most of all now, at an age when all adolescents are discovering life and freedom, he is under house arrest and paces like a caged lion.
With her extraordinary powers of persuasion, Hazrat Mahal works at convincing her son that he can transform his current situation into a great asset for the future. Instead of wasting his time in hunting, riding and futile parties, surrounded by hypocritical courtiers, he has the leisure to learn his profession as a ruler. She is there to help him. Has she not held the office of head of state and, to a certain extent, that of military leader, for almost two years? And beforehand, close to the seat of power for over ten years, she had been able to carefully observe court tactics, learn to foil intrigues; in short, she had been initiated into the art of politics.
She will not have to insist for long: Birjis Qadar needs to believe he has a destiny as a last resort to save himself from despair.
Henceforth, the only visitor to the bungalow is Jung Bahadur. Hazrat Mahal tolerates his appearances despite her scorn for him, as it is the only opportunity to learn what is happening, even if he takes pleasure in sharing nothing but bad news with her.
Thus at the end of August, she learns that Jai Lal’s trial is still in progress . . . For over a year now! The witnesses continue to testify: former servants or ex-allies like Rajah Man Singh. She understands only too well why the judges prolong this masquerade. They have no intention of pardoning one of the main leaders of the insurrection, but the rajah is admired throughout the country. His execution would be seen by all as the assassination of a hero of the independence movement. They must find a way to sully him, and until now, the witnesses have been too contradictory to be convincing.
My jani . . . I hope these monsters have not tortured you . . .
She cannot bear to imagine the marks on this body she so often caressed, on the handsome face she loved so passionately . . . She remembers that one day he had brought up the subject of torture:
“More than betraying anyone else, to give in is to betray oneself,” he had said. “It is to forsake everything one has lived for. It is not surprising that traitors kill themselves or become like the living dead. It is the price to be paid for renouncing oneself in the misguided belief that one is saving oneself.”
Jai Lal . . . Whatever his jailers do, she knows he will never submit. Oh, how she would love to avenge him!
Unexpectedly her son’s words ring in her ears.
“The British have done us so much harm, I would like to kill them all!” he had once exclaimed. She had reprimanded him for this simplistic reaction, unworthy of an intelligent person. And here she is reacting just like him!
Violence that breeds violence, she is too well aware of this dangerous cycle, where the right to be cruel in turn is invoked because of cruelty suffered. People consider they have the right to crush others, just as they themselves have been crushed.
The Indian population is caught in this spiral of violence. Once one conquers the blinding, paralysing fear, docility is often replaced by hatred, reinforced by the fact that it is also hatred for oneself, for having been a coward. Hazrat Mahal has never been placed in such a situation, but in her youth, she had seen so many people humiliated that she can understand their feelings.
By killing the other, we kill the vision that locks us into our insignificance and denies us our human dignity.
Yet, when violence breaks out the whole world is indignant:
“Why did you not speak up earlier? Why did you not explain yourself?”
These crushed men have long tried to make themselves understood. When they asked for a little justice, they found themselves beating their heads against a wall. And if no door in this wall ever opens, there comes a day when they will have to break it down.
This is the basis of all uprisings, of all violence: the impossibility of making oneself heard, however hard one tries.
Hazrat Mahal is certain that if the British government does not learn from this popular fury that has almost swept it away, India will rise up again sooner or later.
In the following months, Jung Bahadur returns regularly with news and a smile that grows more sardonic with every passing day.
At the beginning of September, he announces he has received a letter from Nana Sahib and Mammoo, who are both sick and begging for asylum. He seems to hesitate, but the begum knows he is waiting for her to plead their cause, just to have the pleasure of refusing. She nods her head, making no comment. He ret
ires, disappointed.
Three weeks later, he informs her that the Nana has died of a severe jungle fever.
“I could have taken him in if I had thought it was important to you, but you seemed so indifferent to his fate,” he whispers, looking sorrowful.
Hazrat Mahal looks him up and down with such a grimace of disgust that he falls silent, petrified.
“Amma Huzoor, so who was this Nana Sahib?” her son asks her.
She does not know what to reply . . . Had anyone ever known who Nana Sahib really was? It is difficult to define this ambiguous and contradictory character . . . a coward driven by vanity to surpass himself, a weak man sometimes capable of courage, an arrogant personality riddled with complexes, a man who was often attentive but capable of allowing the perpetration of terrible massacres, asking his musicians to play louder to cover the cries that distressed him . . .
One day, the news Hazrat Mahal has feared for a long time arrives: Rajah Jai Lal Singh has been executed.
This time Jung Bahadur adopts a devastated expression:
“When I think of how he was killed . . . They did not shoot him, as they would a soldier. They hung him like a vulgar bandit!”
His snakelike eyes stare at her. He has a doubt; he would like it to be a certainty: if he could topple the irreproachable begum from her pedestal, it might be useful to the British.
Gathering all her strength, Hazrat Mahal manages to reply:
“Rajah Jai Lal was a hero. At least he did not betray his people by allying himself with the occupier.”
Then she turns her back on him.
Having barely reached her room, the young woman collapses. Against all reason she had clung to the hope that Jai Lal would only be condemned to captivity, that he would manage to escape, or that a popular uprising would open his prison doors. She cannot believe that she will never see him again . . . Maybe Jung Bahadur had lied to her . . . Jai Lal, my jani . . . She presses her hand to her chest; she is suffocating . . . When she regains consciousness, her distraught servants surround her, but she sends them away. She wants to be alone . . . with him.
Opening her gold medallion, she contemplates her lover’s portrait. They hung him at Kaisarbagh—the very place where they had fought their last battles together, where they had loved each other, where they had made so many plans for the future . . . maybe this thought gave him strength when they were trying to break him, not considering it sufficient to kill him . . .
In November, Rana Beni Madho and the Rajah of Gonda are killed in the Terai during a series of confrontations with the Gurkhas.
December 1859 is to see most of the other rebels in the Terai jungles captured one after the other. Bahadur Khan, the grandson of the last king of Rohilkhand, and Amar Singh, the “old tiger” Kunwar Singh’s brother, and . . . Mammoo!
Taken prisoner by Jung Bahadur’s men, they are to be sent to Lucknow and handed over to the authorities.
Maybe the begum would like to bid her former servant goodbye, suggests the maharajah sweetly.
Hazrat Mahal hesitates, fearing that Mammoo would be humiliated. She thinks of the eunuch who served her for so long. Despite the differences that arose later, she is overcome by emotion, remembering the time when he was her only support. Yes, she will see him one last time to express her gratitude.
Their meeting is heartrending.
Mammoo sobs while he kisses her hands, begging her to speak to the maharajah: can he not remain with her? Hazrat Mahal knows there is no hope of saving him, but to calm him she promises to try, and he leaves slightly comforted. Later she reproaches herself for her own faintheartedness, but is it weak-heartedness to give hope to those who are not ready to die?
A few days later, she learns that Mammoo has been hanged.111
Winter in Nepal is harsh and Hazrat Mahal’s health begins to deteriorate. But, above all, it is the condition of exile that saps her. In 1863, the British government yet again offers her the possibility of returning to India, on the condition that her son sign a document renouncing the throne. Yet again, she does not bother to reply.
Birjis Qadar has grown into a thoughtful and determined young man. He has inherited his mother’s moral strength. He prepares himself, knowing that he will return to his country one day.
The British have re-established their authority; however, India is changing.
Whatever they do, the insurrection has sown seeds, and Hazrat Mahal will have the joy of seeing them flourish before she dies.
In Bengal, during the 1870s, the intelligentsia is fighting for the peasants oppressed by the British planters. This is the “Indigo revolt.” The elites also launch movements against the censorship of the vernacular press and against racial discrimination before the courts.
These elites who had not joined the 1857 insurrection, trusting in the capacity of the British to modernise the country, realise that, as Hazrat Mahal had predicted, Queen Victoria’s promises were only a smokescreen and the British ideals of democracy and equality do not apply to Indians.
From Kathmandu, Hazrat Mahal follows all these events closely. Although she is alone and impoverished, she remains a highly respected queen. Despite her lack of funds, she never refuses charity to anyone who asks for it.
On April 7th, 1879, the woman the British described as “the soul of the revolt” passes away at the age of forty-eight, after having made her son promise her to continue the struggle.
The little Muhammadi, the poetess of the Chowk, Wajid Ali Shah’s captivating wife, the young regent, the passionate lover, the enlightened sovereign, the intrepid war leader, Hazrat Mahal, was like a dazzling meteor in Indian history.
She has shown the way towards India’s freedom.
EPILOGUE
In 1887, at the age of sixty-eight, King Wajid Ali Shah dies in his Matiaburj Palace near Calcutta. There are rumours circulating that the deceased was poisoned, as his nails are blue.
In 1891, the viceroy, representative of the British government, allows Birjis Qadar to return to India after thirty-two years in exile. He is not to enjoy his freedom for long. One year later, on August 14th, 1892, the heir to the throne of Awadh dies—also a victim of poisoning—along with his oldest son and daughter, during a banquet given by his half-brother.
Disputes regarding the inheritance but also political motives are evoked—Birjis Qadar shared his mother’s convictions and did not hide the fact that he saw the British as usurpers.
Contemporary historians agree that the sepoy rebellion was neither a mutiny nor a revolution, but the dawn of India’s march towards independence.
The Awadh insurrection in particular—the longest and fiercest fight—was a true national struggle, inasmuch as the whole population joined in under Begum Hazrat Mahal’s leadership.
A few years after the bloody suppression, the battle was to start again, no longer led by the princes who had rallied to the British side, but by an educated bourgeoisie, who demanded a role in governing their own country.
This was to be the aim of the Indian National Congress, which held its first session in December 1885 in Bombay. It was followed by the All India Muslim League, a moderate party led by the Aga Khan, created in 1906.
During the same period, violent attacks were carried out. Following the division of Bengal by the British, a group of young upper-caste Hindus founded a movement which condoned terrorism as an instrument of divine power. These young people considered themselves the heirs to the Hindu tradition of resistance to foreign tyranny, which was violating the “motherland.”
In 1916, in Lucknow—the emblematic town of the revolt and a symbol of unity between the different communities—the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League signed a cooperation agreement in order to obtain autonomy from the British, along the same lines as that granted to Canada and Australia. However, London would hear nothing of it.
Finally, in 1919, Gandhi launched Satyagraha, a non-violent civil disobedience movement, supported by both Hindus and Muslims.
It was to be a long and difficult struggle.
Ninety years after the beginning of the uprising against the British and the struggle led by Hazrat Mahal, in 1947, India was to obtain its independence.
Today, few remember the warrior queen, except in Lucknow, where old families take pride in having participated in this extraordinary saga. In 1957, to mark the centenary of the insurrection, Nehru came with all pomp and circumstance to rename Queen Victoria Park the Begum Hazrat Mahal Park.
In lieu of the bust of the former empress of India, Nehru had a memorial erected there, in honour of the heroic begum, the “soul of the revolt.”
INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANWER ABBAS (SAIYED), Lost Monuments of Lucknow, Lucknow, 2009.
AFAQ QURESHI (HAMID), The Mughals, the English and the Rulers of Awadh, New Royal Book Company, Lucknow, 2003.
ALI AZHAR (MIZRA), King Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh, 2 volumes, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 1982.
ATHAR ABBAS RIZVI (SAIYID), BHARGAVA (M.L.), BHARGAVA (MOTI LAL), Freedom Struggle in Uttar Pradesh: Awadh: 1857-1859, Publications Bureau, Information Dept., Uttar Pradesh, 1957.
BALL (CHARLES), The History of the Indian Mutiny, The London Printing & Publishing Company, London, 1860.
CHANDA (S. N.), 1857: Some Untold Stories, Sterling Press, New Delhi, 1976.
CHANDRA MAJUMDAR (RAMESH), The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857, Calcutta, 1957.
DALRYMPLE (WILLIAM), The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Bloomsbury, London, 2006.
DAVID (SAUL), The Indian Mutiny: 1857, Penguin Books, London, 2002.
HERBERT FISHER (MICHAEL), The Politics of the British Annexation of India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993.
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