The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  He added, ‘We have found one of the old carved chairs [from Metcalfe House]. I am afraid poor Theo thinks he is entitled to these, and he will be awfully disquieted when he finds that he will have to buy them as of course [along with everything else found in Delhi], they are reckoned as prize property. This is no pleasure for me as one of the prize agents.’ He then wrote something that he hoped GG would not take amiss: ‘I fear Theo is not taking the part he might, but is using his knowledge of the city to his own profit, and I cannot tell you how painful it is for me.’

  What he seems to have meant, as later charges would make more explicit, was that Theo was suspected of hanging prominent Delhiwallahs if they refused to hand their fortunes over to him. There were also rumours that he was performing private looting operations and accepting protection money from bankers who wished to retain their property and were prepared to buy themselves immunity. Theo was certainly desperate enough to act in this way. He had lost everything in the outbreak – his house, his inheritance and his money, which had been invested in the Delhi Bank. Moreover, as a civilian official, he had no claims on the prize money, which was supposed only to go to the army.

  This at least, Edward Campbell acknowledged, was unjust: ‘I say he ought to have his share of the prize money as a military man as he was made to act like a soldier in leading one of the parties after Delhi up to the Jumma Musjid, and I hope to get this arranged. Otherwise we, as Prize Agents, must interfere with him.’

  Edward concluded: ‘I get so tempted to give up this Prize Agency, GG, but it may turn out a good thing and it would be wrong for me to sacrifice so much money on so short a trial … I hope they will bring us home [to England] soon, for we are such a small body now that it would take ever so long recruiting up to our former strength. Our killed and wounded since the 30th June [when Campbell arrived in Delhi] is around 400, nearly half the regiment.113

  By the end of January 1858, when all the noblemen of his durbar had been tried and hanged, it was the turn of Zafar himself to face trial.

  Throughout the autumn and the early part of the winter of 1857, while the battle for Lucknow still raged in the eastern half of Hindustan, much of the effort of British administration in Delhi went into preparing for the historic trial of the man who was now clearly going to be the last of the Mughals. Translators were sent down from Lahore to help plough through the great stash of paperwork that had been retrieved from both the Palace chancellery and the rebels’ camp; the legality and binding nature of the guarantee of his life that Hodson had given Zafar was examined in great detail; and the nature of the Emperor’s trial, and the charges that would be brought, were discussed. In the end it was agreed that the guarantee was legally binding, although it had been given contrary to the repeated written instructions of Lord Canning; and it was settled that Zafar would be charged with ‘rebellion, treason and murder’ and ‘not regarding his allegiance’ as a British subject by a Military Commission. This would sit to hear the charges at the end of January 1858. Major Harriott, who had successfully prosecuted and hanged most of Zafar’s court and family, was now to prosecute the man he made clear he regarded as ‘the leading chief of the rebels’.

  What was never discussed was whether the Company was legally empowered to try Zafar at all. For though the government took the position that Zafar received a pension from the Company, and was therefore the Company’s pensioner and thus subject, the actual legal position was considerably more ambiguous. While the Company’s 1599 charter to trade in the East derived from Parliament and the Crown, its authority to govern in India actually legally flowed from the person of the Mughal Emperor, who had officially taken on the Company as his tax collector in Bengal in the years following the battle of Plassey, on 2 August 1765.

  As recently as 1832, when Zafar was fully fifty-eight years old, the Company had acknowledged itself to be the Mughal Emperor’s vassal on its coins and even on its great seal, which was covered with the inscription ‘Fidvi Shah Alam’ (Shah Alam’s devoted dependant); this was removed only under the influence of Sir Charles Metcalfe in 1833. Since then, nothing had happened to change the legal relationship of the two parties, for although the Company had unilaterally ceased to offer nazrs and no longer proclaimed its vassalage on its coins or seal, neither Shah Alam, nor Akbar Shah, nor Zafar himself had ever renounced their sovereignty over the Company. From this point of view, Zafar could certainly be tried as a defeated enemy king; but he had never been a subject, and so could not possibly be called a rebel guilty of treason. Instead, from a legal point of view, a good case could be made that it was the East India Company which was the real rebel, guilty of revolt against a feudal superior to whom it had sworn allegiance for nearly a century.114

  The absurdity of the Company’s charge against Zafar was wonderfully articulated by the Times correspondent William Howard Russell – the father of war journalism – who arrived in the ruins of Delhi around this time. Skeletons still littered the streets, and the domes and minars of the city were riddled with shell holes; but the walls of the Red Fort still looked magnificent: ‘I have seldom seen a nobler mural aspect,’ wrote Russell in his Indian memoirs, ‘and the great space of bright red walls put me in mind of the finest part of Windsor Castle.’ Russell was also very taken with the comforts of Ludlow Castle, Simon Fraser’s old residence, which Saunders, the Civil Commissioner, had recently had repaired and refurbished. ‘The gharry drove up under the pillared portico,’ wrote Russell. ‘In a moment out came a ruddy, comely English gentleman, and before I knew where I was, I was ushered into the presence of a fair Englishwoman, who sat at a well furnished board, doing the honours of her table to a circle of guests.’

  I had not seen the face of an Englishwoman since I left Calcutta. I came in dusty – I am afraid, dirty – a hot unpleasant-looking stranger. I found myself at once back in civilized life, amid luxuries long unknown. The comfort and luxury of the house itself were a positive gratification of the senses. Large lofty rooms – soft carpets, sofas, easy chairs, books, pictures, rest and repose, within. Outside, kuskus-tatties* and punkah-wallahs. The family were at their first breakfast when we went in. I found there were two breakfasts, one at 8, the other at 3 o’clock.

  Russell’s ultimate destination was, however, rather less welcoming. Along ‘a dark dingy back passage’ of the Red Fort, he was later led to the cell of the man whom he had been told now stood accused of being the mastermind of the Uprising: ‘That dim, wandering eyed, dreamy old man with a feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums – was he, indeed, one who had conceived that vast plan of restoring a great empire, who had fomented the most gigantic mutiny in the history of the world, and who from the walls of his ancient palace had hurled defiance and shot ridicule upon the race that held every throne in India in the hollow of their palms?’ asked a surprised Russell. Zafar was being sick when Russell walked in, his ‘bent body nearly prostrate over a brass basin, into which he was retching violently …’

  Crouched on his haunches [was] a diminutive, attenuated old man, dressed in an ordinary and rather dirty muslin tunic, his small lean feet bare, his head covered by a small thin cambric skull-cap … Not a word came from his lips; in silence he sat day and night with his eyes cast on the ground, and as though utterly oblivious of the conditions in which he was placed … His eyes had the dull, filmy look of very old age … which seems as if it were to guide us to the great darkness … Some heard him quoting verses of his own composition, writing poetry on a wall with a burned stick …115

  Aware of his history, and stirred by the ruined magnificence of the Mughal’s great palace, Russell was properly sceptical about the legality of the Company’s charges against Zafar.

  Here is the place from which came the haughty ukases [decrees] that gave to a few trembling traders the right to hold lands in India on the tenure of service and submission … Even in the extreme of his decrepitude, the descendant of Akbar had fenced himself round with such remnants of dignities that the Governor Gener
al of India could not approach him as an equal, and the British officers at Delhi were obliged to observe in their intercourse with him all the outward marks of respect which a sovereign had the right to demand from his servants …

  [The King] was called ungrateful for rising against his benefactors. He was no doubt a weak and cruel old man; but to talk of ingratitude on the part of one who saw that all the dominions of his ancestors had been gradually taken from him until he was left with an empty title, and more empty exchequer, and a palace full of penniless princesses, is perfectly preposterous. Was he to be grateful to the Company for the condition he found himself?

  We, it is true, have now the same right and the same charter for our dominions that the Mahomedan founders of the house of Delhi had for the sovereignty they claimed over Hindustan [i.e. the right of conquest] but we did not come into India, as they did, at the head of great armies, with the avowed intention of subjugating the country. We crept in as humble barterers, whose existence depended on the bounty and favour of the lieutenants of the kings of Delhi; and the ‘generosity’ we have shown was but a small acknowledgement of the favours his ancestors had conferred to our race.116

  Russell concluded by pointing out that if the King was to be tried by a proper court of law, rather than by a Military Commission, the charges against Zafar would be almost impossible to prove: ‘An English lawyer in an English court of justice might show that it would be very difficult for our Government to draw an indictment against the King of Delhi for treason, for the levying of war against us as lords paramount …’

  Russell also wrote that he believed that Zafar could hardly be blamed for wanting to throw off his bondage. ‘I could not help thinking, as I looked at the old man,’ he wrote, ‘that our rulers were somewhat to blame for the crimes he had committed …’

  To my mind, the position of the King was one of the most intolerable misery long ere the revolt broke out. His palace was in reality a house of bondage; he knew that the few wretched prerogatives which were left to him, as if in mockery of the departed power they represented, would be taken away from his successors; that they would be deprived of even the right to live in their own palace, and would be exiled to some place outside the walls. We denied permission for his royal relatives to enter our service; we condemned them to a degrading existence, in poverty and debt, inside the purlieus of their palace, and then we reproached them with their laziness, meanness, and sensuality. We shut the gates of military preferment upon them – we took from them every object of honourable ambition – and then our papers and our mess rooms teemed with invective against the lazy, slothful and sensuous princes.

  Better die a thousand deaths than drag on such a contemptible, degrading existence. Had the old man and his sons refrained from shedding innocent blood – had they died with harness on their backs – I for one should have felt sympathy for their fate.117

  Zafar was still very ill on the day finally set for his trial, 27 January 1858. It dawned a cold, wet and cloudy winter’s day and Edward Ommaney confided in his diary that he was glad of the fire in his bedroom.118 ‘The old man appears very much broken this morning,’ Ommaney reported to Saunders. ‘[He is] very weak, can scarcely speak. I do not think he can go on much longer this way.119 Since Zafar could not walk, Ommaney had to help him out of his palanquin; he was supported on one side by Mirza Jawan Bakht, and on the other by a servant. They led him into the Diwan i-Khas, his old hall of private audience, where he was now to be tried for treason by those he had reason still to regard as his vassals.

  To remind him of his subject state, Zafar was not allowed either his fly whisk or his hookah. Among the spectators already in their seats were both Charles and Matilda Saunders, and Edward Vibart, as well as George Wagentrieber, representing the Delhi Gazette, and Harriet Tytler, who had been given rooms in the Fort after her husband Robert moved his regimental treasure chest within its walls on the evening of its capture.120

  The trial got off to a suitably chaotic start. Although the proceedings were to be held partly in Hindustani, none of the five judges – all army officers of relatively junior rank – proved to be fluent in that tongue. Edward Vibart wrote that the ‘President alone was familiar with the Hindoostani language’.121 Although proceedings were scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., the president of the court martial, Brigadier Showers, failed to turn up until noon, and then appeared only briefly to announce that he had been ordered to Agra to take command there. All this time, Zafar was left waiting outside ‘under a strong guard of the rifles’.122

  When proceedings finally got going later in the afternoon, under the presidency of Colonel Dawes, the charges were read out, and Zafar – now parked on a bed of cushions between Dawes and the prosecutor, Major Harriott – was asked whether he pleaded guilty or not. But it soon became clear that the old man could not understand what was going on, and there was a further ‘considerable delay’ before he could be persuaded to plead not guilty.

  Over the days that followed, an impressive body of evidence was presented. Witnesses were called to give eyewitness accounts of the outbreak and the principal events of the Uprising, while the key passages from the manuscripts seized from the Palace chancellery, the office of Mirza Mughal, the kotwal and the army camp were read out in full. ‘Each paper, as it was read, was shown to the prisoner’s vakil [Zafar’s lawyer, Ghulam Abbas] and identified by him,’ wrote one witness, Charles Ball, ‘although the King himself professed utter ignorance of the existence of such documents – denied his signature, and endeavoured, by gestures of dissent, to impress the court with the idea of his entire innocence.’ Soon, however, Zafar’s attention began to wander: ‘The royal prisoner appeared to consider the proceedings perfectly unimportant, and merely tiresome,’ wrote Ball, ‘and he found relief from ennui by dozing …’

  Occasionally, however, when some particular passage was read, the dull eyes would light up, and the bowed head would be raised in marked attention for a few moments – only to relapse into a state of listless indifference … His son appeared more animated, and laughed and chatted with his father’s attendant without appearing at all embarrassed.123

  Before long, Mirza Jawan Bakht, who was deemed by Ommaney to be looking ‘very impertinent, indecorous and disrespectful’, was banned by his jailer from attending further sessions.124 Without his beloved young son to keep him company, Zafar showed less and less interest in the proceedings. Often he was too unwell to appear at all, and the court was frequently adjourned on the grounds of the prisoner’s ill health. When the court did sit, according to Ball,

  The King displayed a singular line of conduct, not at all in keeping with the serious position he occupied. Occasionally, while the evidence was progressing, he would coil himself up in his shawls, and reclining upon the cushions placed for his convenience, would appear perfectly indifferent to the proceedings around him; at other times he would suddenly rouse up, as if from a dream, and loudly deny some statement of a witness under examination; then again relapsing into a state of real or assumed insensibility, he would carelessly ask a question, or laughingly offer an explanation of some phrase used in evidence.

  Upon one occasion, he affected such utter ignorance of a question before the court, in reference to his alleged intrigues with Persia, as to inquire ‘whether the Persians and the Russians were the same people.’ He several times declared himself perfectly innocent of everything he was charged with, and varied the weariness of his constrained attendance by amusing himself with a scarf, which he would twist and untwist around his head like a playful child.125

  In response to the various charges, Zafar offered only a single, short but strikingly coherent written defence in Urdu, denying that he had any connection with the Uprising and maintaining that he had all along been the helpless prisoner of the sepoys. ‘I had no intelligence on the subject previous to the day of the outbreak,’ read Zafar’s statement.

  I begged them to go away … I swear by God, who is my witness, that I did not give o
rders for the death of Mr Fraser or of any other European … As regards the orders given under my seal, and under my signature, the real state of the case is that from the day the soldiery came and killed the European officers and made me a prisoner, I remained in their power. All the papers they thought fit, they caused to be prepared, and bringing them to me, compelled me to fix my seal … Frequently they had the seal impressed on the outside of empty unaddressed envelopes. There is no knowing what papers they sent in these or to whom they sent them.

  They used to accuse my servants of sending letters to and keeping in league with the English … They even declared they would depose me and make Mirza Mughal king. It is a matter for patient and just consideration then, what power did I in any way possess? The officers of the army went even so far as to require that I should make over the Queen Zinat Mahal to them, that they might keep her a prisoner, saying she maintained friendly relations with the English …

  All that has been done was done by that rebellious army. I was in their power, what could I do? I was helpless, and constrained by my fears, I did whatever they required, otherwise they would have immediately killed me. This is universally known. I found myself in such a predicament that I was weary of my life. In this state of things I resolved to accept poverty, and adopted the garb, coloured with red earth, of the religious mendicant, intending to go first to the shrine of Qutb Sahib, thence to Ajmer, and from Ajmer eventually to Mecca.

  If I had been in league with them, how would these things have occurred? As regards the behaviour of that rebellious army, it may be stated that they never saluted me even, nor showed me any other mark of respect. They used to walk into the hall of special audience and the hall of devotion with their shoes on … What confidence could I place in troops who had murdered their own masters? In the same way that they murdered them, so they made me a prisoner, and tyrannised over me, keeping me on in order to make use of my name as a sanction for their acts. Seeing that these troops killed their own masters, men of high authority and power, how was I without an army, without treasure, to have resisted them …? God knows, and is my witness, that I have written only what is strictly true.126