The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  It was just as well for the prosecution that Zafar did not attempt to mount a more serious and concerted legal defence, or choose to cross-examine any of the witnesses. For as the trial wore on, despite the density of witnesses and evidence produced, the absurdity of the principal thrust of the prosecution case became more and more apparent. Quite apart from the higher question of whether the court had the authority to try Zafar, Major Harriott, the prosecutor, chose to build a highly speculative case of such obvious flimsiness and lack of understanding of what the Uprising had been about that none of the British observers who kept accounts of the trial could be persuaded even to begin to believe his argument.

  Harriott maintained that Zafar was the evil genius and linchpin behind an international Muslim conspiracy stretching from Constantinople, Mecca and Iran to the walls of the Red Fort. His intent, declared Harriott, was to subvert the British Empire and put the Mughals in its place. Contrary to all the evidence that the Uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, and that it was high-caste Hindu sepoys who all along formed the bulk of the fighting force; and ignoring all the evident distinctions between the sepoys, the jihadis, the Shia Muslims of Persia and the Sunni court of Delhi, Major Harriott argued that the Mutiny was the product of the convergence of all these conspiring forces around the fanatical Islamic dynastic ambitions of Zafar: ‘To Musalman intrigues and Mahommedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of the year 1857,’ argued Major Harriott. ‘The Mutineers [were] in immediate connexion with the prisoner at your bar.’

  The conspiracy, from the very commencement, was not confined to the sepoys, and did not even originate with them, but had its ramifications throughout the palace and city … [Zafar was the] leading chief of the rebels in Delhi … Dead to every feeling that falls honourably on the heart of man, this shrivelled impersonation of malignity must have formed no inapt centrepiece to the group of ruffians that surrounded him … We see how early and how deeply the [Muslim] priesthood interested and engaged themselves in this matter, and how completely and exclusively Mahommedan in character was this conspiracy …

  [Was Zafar] the original mover, the head and front of the undertaking, or but the consenting tool … the forward, unscrupulous, but still pliant puppet, tutored by priestly craft for the advancement of religious bigotry? Many persons, I believe, will incline to the latter. The known restless spirit of Mahommedan fanaticism has been the first aggressor, the vindictive intolerance of that peculiar faith has been struggling for mastery, seditious conspiracy has been its means, the prisoner its active accomplice, and every possible crime the frightful result … The bitter zeal of Mahommedanism meets us everywhere … perfectly demonic in its actions …127

  The Uprising in fact showed every sign of being initiated by uppercaste Hindu sepoys reacting against specifically military grievances perceived as a threat to their faith and dharma; it then spread rapidly through the country, attracting a fractured and diffuse collection of other groups alienated by aggressively insensitive and brutal British policies. Among these were the Mughal court and the many Muslim individuals who made their way to Delhi and fought as civilian jihadis united against the kafir enemy. Yet Harriott’s bigoted and Islamophobic argument oversimplified this complex picture down to an easily comprehensible, if quite fictional, global Muslim conspiracy with an appealingly visible and captive hate figure at its centre, towards whom righteous vengeance could now be directed.

  While the simplicity of this picture certainly appealed to ignorant and jingoistic newspaper readers in Britain, to anyone in Delhi the argument was clearly flawed, not least because of the demonstrable fact that the hated ‘Pandies’ had been at least 65 per cent upper-caste Hindu. During the hearing of 3 February, in an attempt to try to prove pre-existing links between the sepoys and Zafar, Harriott had pounced upon a reference to a dozen sepoys who had come before Zafar in 1853 asking whether they could become his murids or spiritual disciples. In reality this showed nothing more than the fact that Zafar was treated by some of the faithful as a holy Sufi pir possessed of miraculous spiritual powers; but for Harriott this was vital evidence that Zafar had been busy trying to subvert the army for at least three and a half years before the outbreak.128

  Ommaney for one was quite clear that what the prosecution was alleging was nonsense, and that it showed a complete lack of understanding either of the complexities of Indian society or the various grievances which had led to the Uprising: ‘In my opinion,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘the Musalman origin of the outbreak is a fallacy. The state of feeling in the company’s native army is not in anyway alluded to [in Harriott’s theory]. The [sepoys in the] army saw they had the power, and determined to try and conquer the country. That the Musalmen joined the army does not in anyway prove that the rebellion was of Musalman origin …’129

  Indeed, as witness after witness appeared in the box it became increasingly clear that Zafar was wholly ignorant of any plans that may have existed for a co-ordinated uprising, and had all along been innocent of doing anything other than trying to protect his subjects in Delhi. ‘It appeared from what I gathered’, wrote one spectator at the trial, Mrs Muter, ‘that he [Zafar] had condemned the [massacre carried out by] the Nana at Cawnpore; and there was abundant proof that he had striven hard to protect the citizens of Delhi from violence of the soldiery and outrages of the nobles, and the people of the country from the plunder by Gujars.’

  It was clear how wretched the old man had been when eddied about in the whirlwind of the Mutiny with no energy to control, and no force of will to rule the cruel natures around. Numerous petitions from the people were translated, with the King’s remarks. Much of what he said was sound and good, and his complaints were bitter of the insolence of the sepoys … How keenly he felt the thorns in the bed which had been prepared for him. He was a mere puppet …

  I cannot think that in the treatment of the last of the House of Timour our country showed her usual liberality. We must keep the fact ever before us, that it was our army that set the country in a blaze – that it was our timidity that led to the catastrophe; and that we did not even have the excuse that the Mutiny was an unforeseen event.

  Amid all the poverty and contempt thrown on the King, I was gratified to observe the demeanour of many of the witnesses when called to give evidence. Bowing to the ground with hands clasped before the miserable figure on the bed, addressed by them as ‘Ruler of the Universe’ though by the committee as tum (a mode of address only used to inferiors and servants), they observed to the powerless old man a degree of respect denied to the court, who had only to nod the signal for their execution.130

  The trial dragged on for two months. Often it had to be adjourned owing to Zafar’s ill health. On one occasion the Emperor was carried groaning from court. During the early stages of the trial his face had shown signs of anxiety and alarm, but as the weeks went on ‘by degrees it became more vacant, and he assumed or felt indifference, remaining apparently in a state of lethargy, with his eyes closed during the greater part of the proceedings’.131

  The court martial sat for the last time on 9 March, and at 11 a.m., in front of a crowded courtroom, Harriott made his closing speech. For two and a half hours, he again elaborated his theory of the Uprising being an international Islamic conspiracy. ‘I have endeavoured to point out’, he declaimed, ‘how intimately the prisoner, as the head of the Mahommedan faith in India, has been connected with the organisation of that conspiracy, either as its leader or its unscrupulous accomplice …’

  After what has been proved in regard to Mahomedan treachery, is there anyone who hears me that can believe that a deep-planned and well-concerted conspiracy had nothing to do with it … If we now take a retrospective view of the various circumstances which we have been able to elicit during our extended inquiries, we shall see how exclusively Mahommedan are all the prominent points that attach to it. A Mahommedan priest, with pretended visions, and assumed miraculous powers – a Mahommedan
King, his dupe and his accomplice – a Mahommedan clandestine embassy to the Mahommedan powers of Persia and Turkey – Mahommedan prophecies as to the downfall of our power – Mahommedan rule as the successor to our own – the most cold blooded murders by Mahommedan assassins – a religious war for Mahommedan ascendancy – a Mahommedan press unscrupulously abetting – and Mahommedan sepoys initiating the mutiny. Hinduism, I may say, is nowhere either reflected or represented …132

  Harriott then added a concluding passage, criticising the idea that the Uprising could be in any way connected with the activity of Christian missionaries, as some were already suggesting: ‘A candid undisguised endeavour to gain followers to Christ’, he said, ‘has never, that I am aware of, been viewed with the slightest sign of disapprobation by any portion of the natives … Christianity, when seen in its own pure light, has no terrors for the natives …’133

  Just before 3 p.m., the judges retired to consider their verdict. A few minutes later, they returned to unanimously declare Zafar guilty ‘of all and every part of the charges preferred against him’.

  Normally, noted the president, such a verdict would have resulted ‘in the penalty of death as a traitor and a felon’. Thanks, however, to Hodson’s guarantee of his life, such a sentence was impossible. Instead, Zafar was sentenced ‘to be transported for the remainder of his days, either to one of the Andaman Islands or to such other place as may be selected by the Governor General in council’.134

  There followed a seven-month delay, while letters went back and forth between Delhi, Calcutta, Rangoon, the Andamans and even the Cape Colony, as the British tried to find a suitable place to exile Zafar. There were also anxieties that a rescue attempt might be mounted if Zafar was to be sent downcountry before fighting had completely ceased in some of the more unsettled parts of eastern Hindustan.

  Finally, towards the end of September 1858, it was decided that it was now safe for Zafar to be sent away from Delhi, even though his final destination had yet to be settled. Lieutenant Ommaney was to accompany him into exile, and was to make sure that the State Prisoner (as Zafar was now referred to) should hold no communication with anyone en route.135

  At 4 a.m. on 7 October, 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 thirty-one in all, who were escorted by the 9th Lancers, a squadron of horse artillery, two palanquins and three palanquin carriages. The journey had been kept secret, even from Zafar himself, and the old man knew nothing of his departure before being woken up by Ommaney at 3 a.m. one day and told to get ready.

  ‘He was removed as quickly as possible,’ wrote Matilda Saunders to her mother-in-law the following week. ‘Everything was kept quite secret, though of course C[harles Saunders] knew it long before, and had been buying up conveyances for them to travel in covered carriages and palanquins &c and bullock carts and tent equipage &c.’

  There was nothing wanting in the forethought and arrangements and at 3 in the morning the dear fellow [Saunders] left his bed in the fort and assisted his able co-adjuter, Mr Ommaney, in packing them up. At 4 he made them over to a guard of the Lancers and saw them safely over the Bridge of Boats on their way down country. The King is a blessed riddance to Dehli. His two Queens accompany him, and his two younger sons, and the wife of the elder one, besides collateral branches that had the option of staying but preferred to share the fate of the royal party.

  She added: ‘No one crowded to see them go; it was completely still and quiet at that early hour.”136

  12

  THE LAST OF THE GREAT MUGHALS

  ‘The ex-King and the other prisoners stand the travelling wonderfully well,’ reported Lieutenant Ommaney on 13 October. ‘They are all in very good spirits. I have the prisoners comfortably settled in their tents by 8 a.m. every morning, and other than getting them up every day at 1 a.m. [for the day’s march] have very little bother.1

  Zafar had always enjoyed outings, processions and expeditions, and in his youth setting out hunting in the country around Delhi had been one of his principal forms of amusement; 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 he had never in his life travelled farther than a day or two from his capital, and his passage into exile was the longest journey he had ever taken. Now, after the intense stress of the Uprising and siege, and the humiliation of his imprisonment and trial, the journey into exile was, if not exactly a holiday, then at least a relative relief from the horrors he had undergone during the previous eighteen months.

  The party travelled in convoy. A squadron of the Lancers cavalry trotted ahead as an advance guard. Then came the canopied palanquin carriage carrying Zafar and his two sons, surrounded on all four sides by groups of Lancers. Next came the closed purdah carriage of Zinat Mahal, who travelled with Mirza Jawan Bakht’s young wife, Nawab Shah Zamani Begum, and her mother, Mubarak un-Nissa. The third carriage carried the queen Taj Mahal and her attendants, including her eunuch, ‘a quiet inoffensive youth’ called Khwajah Balish (which meant cushion).2 Behind trailed five ‘magazine store carts with tilted tops, drawn by bullocks’, containing the male and female attendants and Zafar’s harem women, four in every cart, each escorted by a party of Lancers.

  Other than a near-accident on the Bridge of Boats, when one of the store carts almost tipped Zafar’s concubines into the Yamuna, there were no upsets and no complaints, and the family particularly approved of the arrangements Ommaney had made for their camp: a ‘hill tent’ shared by Zafar and his sons, and a ‘soldier’s tent, with kunnat [canvas zenana screening] enclosure’ for the ladies.3 The weather was perfect – the mornings and nights cool, the days bright and warm – and on arrival at Kanpur, the Mughals in the party were amazed by the sight of their first steam train ‘receiving its passengers, and shortly afterwards away it went with its regular puffs and peculiar whistle’, while a band played ‘The Englishman’ on the platform.4 The King even confided to Ommaney that he was looking forward to seeing the sea and travelling on a ship, saying he had never been on anything larger than a riverboat before.

  Only the constant evidence of recent fighting around them – the ruined and fire-blackened bungalows, and the burned-out police stations – acted as a reminder to the party of the grim cause of their journey. Very occasionally, they came across actual fighting: at one point Zafar came within sight of the rebel-held fort of Suniah, which British troops were in the process of storming, and for much of the last stage of the journey to Allahabad they passed along the edge of rebel-held territory.5 There was also a single fatal accident: ‘some of the Lancers taking their horses to water, one got into deep water, lost his seat and the horse kept him under for some seconds. His body was not recovered for three quarters of an hour’.6

  The novelty of the journey also delighted Zafar’s companions, who were said to be in high spirits: ‘By all accounts the prisoners are cheerful,’ reported George Wagentrieber in the Delhi Gazette, ‘and the females may be heard talking and laughing behind their screens as if they did not much regret their departure from Delhi.’7

  This was a striking contrast to their mood towards the end of their Delhi imprisonment when, in addition to the humiliations heaped on them by the British, the imperial family added to their miseries by feuding among themselves. According to Ommaney, prior to their departure Zinat Mahal had been squabbling loudly with Jawan Bakht after the latter had fallen in love with one of his father’s harem women. He also began using the family’s now scarce financial resources to bribe the guards to bring him bottles of porter: ‘What an instance of the state of morals and domestic economy of Ex-Royalty,’ wrote a disapproving Ommaney to Saunders. ‘Mother and son at enmity, the son trying to form a connection with his father’s concubine, and setting at nought the precepts of his religion, buying from, and drinking, the liquor of an infidel.’8r />
  Before setting off, Zinat Mahal had also had a loud series of arguments with her old rival and enemy Taj Mahal, who had been imprisoned for three years prior to the Mutiny on the grounds that she was having an affair with Zafar’s nephew, Mirza Kamran. Taj Mahal was therefore one of the very few people in Delhi whose lot had demonstrably improved because of the outbreak. But following the argument, Taj promptly announced she wanted nothing to do with either Zinat Mahal or Zafar, and moved down to the far end of the corridor from them: ‘I have nothing to do with the King,’ she told Ommaney. ‘I have no son by him, and I don’t intend to budge.’ ‘Very well, Mrs Taj Mahal,’ replied Ommaney. ‘Go you must to the ex-King’s Quarters, and if you don’t go of your own accord I must take you there forcibly.’ Taj replied, ‘You may kill me, but I’ll not go.’9 As Ommaney wrote to Saunders, ‘The Ex-King’s party dislike her, so altogether she’ll be a great nuisance.’

  For the first few weeks of the journey, the pleasures of travelling and the joy of freedom from incarceration in a squalid corridor at the back of their own palace seem to have lulled the various feuds in the royal family. But as the party neared Allahabad, the tensions again became apparent, and on arrival at the old Mughal fort there,* now held by the British, half the party – led by Taj Begum, and including Zafar’s concubines and Mirza Jawan Bakht’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law – decided to return to Delhi rather than continue on into exile. Only fifteen out of the original party of thirty-one chose to carry on with Zafar.

  While waiting to resolve this issue Canning, who also happened to be in Allahabad, met with Ommaney (though significantly, not with Zafar) and told him that he had firmly decided that Burma, rather than the Cape, should be the ex-Emperor’s place of exile. He was, however, still undecided whether the deposed monarch should remain at Rangoon, or should be sent up the country to Tounghoo in the Karen hill territories, ‘which offers the advantage of being isolated, and so far removed from the usual line of travellers and traffic that no stranger, least of all a native of Hindoostan, can enter it without attracting the immediate attention of the authorities’.10