The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  Within the city, even the most loyal British servants who had opted to stay in their havelis now found their life impossible. Teams of looters, official and unofficial, went from house to house, past the litter of broken furniture and the smashed contents of shops that lay scattered across the streets, seizing what they could, and forcing any inhabitants they found still sheltering in cellars to show them where they had hidden their valuables.63 ‘To all of us [soldiers], the loot of the city was to be a fitting recompense for the toils and privations we had undergone,’ wrote Charles Griffiths. ‘Nor did the questionable nature of the transaction weigh for one moment with us under the recognized military law – “that a city taken by assault belonged as prize to the conquerors …”

  It would have been contrary to human nature, and utterly at variance with the predatory instinct, had the soldiers failed to take advantage of the facilities for plunder which surrounded them on every side; nor could it be expected that a man, after possessing himself of valuables, would … deliver up all his booty to the authorities … Often, when wandering through the city in search of plunder, I, in the company of others, came across officers engaged in the same quest as ourselves …64

  Meanwhile the prize agents got to work. Mrs Muter described her husband setting off after breakfast

  with a troop of coolies, armed with picks, crowbars and measuring lines. A house said to contain treasure would be allotted for a day’s proceedings, and the business would commence by a careful survey of the premises … By careful measurement of the roofs above and of the rooms below, any concealed space could be detected. Then the walls were broken through, and if there was a secret room or a built-up niche or recess it would be discovered, and some large prizes rewarded their search. On one occasion … he came back with thirteen wagons loaded with spoil, and among other valuables, eighty thousand rupees – in English money £8000. On another occasion, silver vessels and gold ornaments, and … a bag of a thousand rupees.65

  ‘In a very short time,’ wrote Charles Griffiths,

  the rooms of the Prize Agents were filled with treasures of every kind – jewellery and precious stones, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and pearls without number, from those as large as hen’s eggs to the small species used for necklaces; gold ornaments, chains of the most beautiful workmanship, bracelets and bangles all of solid metal … I visited one room, the long table of which literally groaned with riches – a dazzling sight to the eye.66

  Many spies and collaborators had written evidence that they had assisted the British, but General Wilson had ordered that ‘no protection tickets should be recognised as valid unless countersigned by him, and the consequence was that but few obtained anything like protection for their property’, stated a report of the Company’s Intelligence Department. ‘Before two or three days had elapsed there was not a house which had not been ransacked and plundered of its contents, friends and foes of the government suffering to an equal extent.’67 Munshi Jiwan Lai, who had been a key intelligence official throughout the siege, and only just survived successive rebel attempts to capture and execute him, had his house comprehensively looted by Sikh soldiers on 21 September.68 A similar fate awaited even the arch-collaborator Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh, who, despite betraying his cousin, Zafar, and even his own grandson, Mirza Abu Bakr, still had his house ransacked and all his goods taken from him by the Prize Agents.69

  The most poignant letter expressing the feelings of betrayal experienced by all pro-British loyalists was written by the former Delhi College mathematics lecturer and Christian convert, Master Ramchandra. Ramchandra had escaped from Delhi on 11 May, the same day that his fellow convert, Dr Chaman Lal, was killed on the first morning of the Uprising. Returning to Delhi after the fall of the city, he expected to be welcomed home by his fellow Christians, but instead found himself living in fear of his life just as he done during the Uprising – but while before he had been targeted on account of his faith, now he suffered merely because of his skin colour. Finally he decided to put his experiences on record in a letter to Colonel Burn, who had recently been appointed the Military Governor of Delhi. In the letter he described how he had happily worked as an assistant to the prize agents and as a translator of documents for the trials of the rebels, but even so had found his life constantly threatened. ‘More than a month ago’, he wrote, ‘I was directed to go to Mr Murphy’s house near the Church there to translate some papers from Persian into English.’

  As I was passing on the road, I saw some English officers standing on Hamid Ali Khan’s mosque throwing clay balls by means of a bow or ghulail at all native passers-by. All my explanations of being a Govt Servant and a Christian &c could not be of any use; on the contrary they were more exasperated by this; they abused me and threw their clay balls with greater force … [Later, going again] to the said mosque in search of some books which I was employed to collect by the Prize Agent, I was attacked again as before, though I had two Prize Agency Chuprassees [orderlies] with me and though I cried to inform the officers that I had a ticket [i.e. pass] of the Prize Agent.

  After that I found to my great grief that I was not only in danger in deserted streets but in my very house also. About 12 days ago, at about 9 o’clock at night, I and two of my friends were conversing with each other … when we were suddenly confounded by the cracking of stones against the doors and walls of my house and one stone falling on my bed with great violence …

  Ramchandra described how the English officers billeted opposite his house turned out to be responsible, and that they continued to attack him and his house at regular intervals in the days and nights that followed. One day, returning from Edward Campbell’s house in the Fort,

  I received a heavy blow on the head from an English officer passing with another gentleman also on horseback and after inflicting this blow with his stick the officer turned around and required me to make a salaam.* I made many salaams instead of one and cried I was a Christian sir, and employed by the Prize Agency, and after this he proceeded towards the Diwan i-Khas abusing me and saying I was as black as jet. Being much hurt and almost stunned and grieved, I stopped a little at the place where I had received the blow, seeing which the gentleman who struck me returned towards me galloping and alighting from his horse inflicted many severe blows on my left arm and back …

  Ramchandra then described the sufferings he had undergone in the course of the Uprising, on account of his conversion, ‘but then I was comforted in my greatest distress by reflecting that what I had gone through was nothing compared with what the English Officers, civil and military, and the missionaries had suffered’.

  Besides I thought that if the Mutineers find and kill me they will do so on account of my having abjured the creed of my forefathers and embraced Christianity, and that I will die a witness to the faith of the blessed saviour, like the martyrs of old, the Apostles and early Christians. Herein was a great comfort to me under all my trials and dangers. But there is hardly any comfort remaining, when a native Christian is in danger from Christian officers themselves, merely because he was not born in England and has not a white skin. This was not the case even among the rebels in Delhie who were professors of false religion. A Mohomedan or Hindoo was received as a brother among them. They hated only Christians, and those who were known to be friendly to them.

  ‘This my appeal’, wrote the disillusioned Ramchandra, ‘is not only for native Christians, for there are very few [left] in Dehlie, but for Hindoos and some Mohomedans also who are allowed to live in the City, but are exposed to danger from the English soldiers, and particularly the English officers.’70

  Ghalib was among those very few Muslims left in the city. A stroke of luck had protected the poet when so many of his friends and patrons were killed or driven out. For his muhalla, Ballimaran, contained the hakim and several senior courtiers of the loyalist Maharaja of Patiala, who had sent troops and supplies to the British on the Ridge, and who now arranged for guards to make sure that looters did not attack the street. Th
anks to the Maharaja’s guards, Ghalib was one of the only citizens of Delhi to remain unmolested in his house, and almost the only member of the courtly elite to survive the fall of Delhi with his property, such as it was, intact.

  Even so, it was a desperate time. Ghalib wrote in Dastanbuy of how he and his neighbours had shut the gate of the muhalla and piled stones against it so as to barricade themselves in as all around them ‘mass arrests, assassinations and slaughter’ imprisoned or killed scores of his friends. Meanwhile, within the barricades, Ghalib’s neighbours waited nervously, hoping their meagre stocks of food and water would last until peace returned. In his diary, the poet scribbled down his worries as to how he could survive when his city had been utterly destroyed around him:

  There is neither merchant nor buyer; there is no seller of wheat from whom we can buy flour, nor is there a washerman to whom we can give our soiled garments; there is no barber to trim hair, or sweeper to clean our floors. It was impossible for us to leave the lane for water or to get flour. Gradually, whatever provisions we had in our houses were consumed. Although we used the water with great care, not a single drop remained in cup or jar and we were hungry and thirsty throughout the days and nights. Beyond, mass slaughter was rampant, and the streets were filled with horrors … We are like prisoners: nobody comes to visit us and we receive no news. We cannot leave the lane so we are unable to see what is happening with our own eyes. Then one day clouds appeared and it rained. We tied up a sheet in our courtyard and placed our jars beneath it and in this way we collected water … Still the two [adopted] children whom I have raised with such indulgence ask me to give them fruit, milk and sweets, and I cannot satisfy their wishes …71

  Ghalib’s other worry was his mentally ill brother. Unable to reach him, he heard first that his brother’s house had been looted. Worse news followed: his brother had run out into the street and been shot dead by trigger-happy British soldiers. To crown this, it was impossible to get out of the city to bury him, and it was difficult even finding the water to wash the body or a proper shroud in which to lay him to rest. Finally, on 5 October, three weeks after the British entered through Kashmiri Gate, British troops climbed into the muhalla and hauled Ghalib off to Colonel Burn to be interrogated. Always a dapper man, Ghalib made sure he was wearing his best Turkish-style headdress for the interview.

  The Colonel looked at this strange fashion and asked in broken Urdu, ‘Well? You Muslim?’ ‘Half,’ said Ghalib. ‘What does that mean?’ asked the Colonel. ‘I drink wine,’ said Ghalib, ‘but I don’t eat pork.’ The Colonel laughed, and Ghalib then showed him the letter which he had received from the Minister for India [sic] in acknowledgement of the ode to Her Majesty the Queen which Ghalib has sent. The Colonel said, ‘After the victory of government forces why did you not present yourself at the Ridge?’ Ghalib replied, ‘My rank required that I should have four palanquin bearers, but all four of them ran away and left me, so I could not come.’72

  According to Ghalib’s own account of the meeting, he also added, ‘I am old and crippled and deaf, and as unfit to confer with as I am to fight. I do pray for your success, and have done all along; but I could do that from here.’73 Colonel Burn let him go.

  Almost alone of his class, Ghalib had, without leaving the city, survived the cataclysm that destroyed Delhi. But now he had to face the intense loneliness of the sole survivor – a life without anyone left with whom he could share his tastes or arts or memories. By his own estimate, there were barely a thousand Muslims left in the city; many of his best friends and rivals were dead; while the others were scattered ‘in ditches and mud huts’ in the surrounding countryside. Meanwhile, he kept his head low in the occupied city, ‘a swimmer in this ocean of blood’. As he wrote in a verse contained in a letter to a friend in Rampur:

  Every armed British soldier

  Can do whatever he wants.

  Just going from home to market

  Makes one’s heart turn to water.

  The Chowk is a slaughter ground

  And homes are prisons.

  Every grain of dust in Delhi

  Thirsts for Muslims’ blood.

  Even if we were together

  We could only weep over our lives.74

  ‘The light has gone out of India,’ he wrote in one letter. ‘The land is lampless. Lakhs have died and among the survivors hundreds are in jail.’75 ‘People go mad from great sorrow,’ he wrote in another. ‘Would it be surprising if I should lose my mind from this onslaught of grief?’

  What grief haven’t I suffered: grief in death, in separation, in loss of income, and in honour? Besides the tragic events in the Red Fort, so many of my Delhi friends have been killed … How can I forget them? How can I ever bring them back … relatives, friends, students, lovers. Now every one of them is gone. It is so terribly difficult to mourn for a single relative or friend. Think of me who has to mourn for so many. My God! So many of my friends and relatives have died that if now I were to die, not a single soul would be left to mourn for me.76

  Ghalib concluded Dastanbuy with a similar cry of despair: ‘My sorrows are incurable and my wounds will never heal,’ he wrote. ‘I feel as if I am already dead.’77

  If life was difficult for those who had shown sympathies for the British, it was much more so for those who had rejoiced at their downfall, and who now starved and scavenged outside the city: ‘Are the British officers not aware that many innocent and noble minded women, both young and old, with small children are roaming the forests outside Delhi?’ wrote Ghalib to one correspondent, still hoping, contrary to all the evidence around him, that the British had not lost all sense of humanity. ‘They have got neither meals to eat nor clothes to wear. They have got neither the place to sleep at night nor a place to take shelter from the burning rays of the sun. One can only weep over the fate of this city.’78

  Even the implacable George Wagentrieber was shocked by what he saw of the environs of Delhi. Around the town was ‘a continuous line of dead carcasses – of camels, horses, and bullocks with their skins dried into parchment over the mouldering bones and still polluting the air around’.

  Every tree has either been lopped off or levelled to the ground with our shot. The Garden houses of the Nawabs and other wealthy natives of Delhi present a mass of ruins; most of them are only four walls, full of holes while in front, and indeed all around, lie bleaching remains of man and beast. Close to the road on the left, I saw the perfect skeleton of a human being, the bones all connected and snowy-white, to all appearence uninjured with the exception of a hole in the skull.

  Approaching the once dense forest of trees in the subzee mundee [the vegetable market] I was struck with the change six short months had wrought. Instead of the long line of lofty peepul, mango and other trees, the view was clear for miles, the bare trunks alone remaining of what was an impenetrable jungle. Many of these trees, in fact most of them, have been stripped of their foliage to feed the cattle, but there is no mistaking the bruised, ragged appearance of those levelled by round shot … Not a house here has escaped, the walls left standing are very few, and those are well pitted with grape shot and musket balls.79

  It was amid such ruins that the Delhiwallahs, rich and poor both, struggled to find cover and food to eat. As Ghalib put it, ‘the inhabitants of this huge place, seven miles around, are dying daily of starvation and want of shelter’.80 Miserable sheds had sprung up by the side of the road, inhabited by ‘perhaps rich baniyas, merchants and shopkeepers’, until in November an edict was issued by the British authorities forbidding the construction of such shanties, which they ordered to be torn down immediately, so exposing the refugees to the full force of the elements.81

  Sickness soon broke out among many of the wasted refugees, especially around Zafar’s old summer palace in Mehrauli and the shrine of Nizamuddin.82 ‘Hundreds of the feeble perished through want and misery,’ wrote Major Ireland. ‘It was not till the end of November that the Hindoo portion of the population was allowed
to return. Still no Mahomedan could get in at the gates without a special order. A mark was set upon their houses, and they were required to prove their loyalty before getting back again.’83

  Sarvar ul-Mulk’s aristocratic family still had their servants, but hiding in a tomb and fearful of arrest, they found themselves living the lives of rag pickers. ‘Our two servants would go out every day,’ he wrote, ‘and joining the other looters bring back various eatables such as rice, mutton, jaggery and wheatflour, all mixed together, and these were thrown indiscriminately into a pot which, full of water, was kept balanced on three stones. Then whoever felt hungry would cautiously approach this pot, satisfy himself or herself and that done crawl away under the shelter of the wall and hide.’84 In his old age, Sarvar ul-Mulk remembered climbing a tamarind tree so as to throw down the fruit to his friends and his terror on seeing a column of khaki-clad troops heading in his direction; he also remembered his relief when they changed course and went elsewhere.85

  Even worse was the fate of anyone who had been associated with the court, however tangentially, for death was the usual punishment meted out to courtiers if they were caught. Zahir Dehlavi was aware of this and kept moving on as fast as he could to avoid capture. His story was not untypical. After a night in the dargah in Mehrauli he headed on towards Jhajjar with many other refugees – the same road that Theo had travelled in May – and was put up by his cousin, who was the Nawab’s prime minister. Here he ate his first proper meal for many days. For a week he stayed there, recovering from his ordeal, but on the eighth night he was woken by his cousin and told that the English soldiers had arrived. They were mass-arresting Delhi refugees, and Zahir was told he had to leave immediately if he wished to save his life.86