The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  but in connection with the loss of her treasure, a certain person named Azam Oollah Khan appears to have had a hand – at least all the prisoners are very bitter against him, & assert that this individual, who was the King’s hakeem and advisor, was the principal person through whose insidious counsel the destruction of the European prisoners was brought about. This is, I believe, contrary to fact,† but it is not impossible this man may have given some information regarding the secreted treasure & this incurred the enmity of the Queen’s party. However this may be, this hakeem from the account appears to have gained the confidence of the British authorities in Delhi, no doubt with good and sufficient reason, & the spleen displayed by the Begum, & her associates, only adds to confirm this opinion.

  Davies then turned his attention to Shah Zamani Begum, whom he describes – presumably again second-hand through the descriptions provided by his wife – as

  a young and pretty woman, probably not more than 15 years old, although she has already been the mother of two children. She appears to feel the restraint of prison life rather more than the others. This may partially be the result of a delicate state of health consequent on her accouchement, which took place shortly after her arrival here. The child, I understand from Lt Ommaney, was a male one and was still born. Both the old King and his daughter in law are particularly fond of soliciting the services of the doctor upon every trifling occasion, and the young lady is very solicitous of being allowed to go out for an airing occasionally.

  As for Mirzas Jawan Bakht and Shah Abbas,

  The two sons are both healthy and rather promising youths, different somewhat in bearing and manner. The elder, Jawan Bakht, exhibits an appearance and deportment of superiority. This is produced probably more from his present recognised position in the family, rather than from any decided superiority in his character and attainments, he having been born a Prince, whereas his less fortunate half-brother is but the son of a handmaiden. Both are extremely ignorant, the attainments of the elder embracing merely a slight knowledge of reading & writing in the Persian character, & when interrogated on the most ordinary topics, their want of knowledge is very apparent. Even the boundaries of their native country are wholly unknown to them.

  I feel it my duty as the only medium by which their wishes can be heard, to record for the information of the Government the very laudable desire both these lads exhibit to learn. They have frequently expressed a very earnest wish to acquire a knowledge of the English language in particular, & they seem to be fully aware that by so doing they will have adopted the very last course for removing the misfortune if not disgrace attendant on their present state of ignorance, and they state they expressed a wish to the Commissioner of Delhi to be sent to England in preference to any other place. Both the parents of the lads have talked to me on the subject, & all appear anxious that a commencement should be made. The lads are possessed of sufficient intelligence to warrant a hope of speedy progress and have promised me earnestly to apply themselves if the Government permits the scheme to be undertaken. I told them I would communicate their wishes for the consideration of the Government.

  In the covering letter, Davies enlarged on his hopes for the two boys, suggesting that by sending the two princes to England they could create a pair of Anglicised and Anglophile Mughal princes. Davies also added that Zafar and Zinat Mahal had both given their blessing to this plan: ‘I have studiously avoided giving the lads any encouragement to expect Government will interfere on their behalf,’ he wrote. ‘But as the sands of their father’s life are running out apace, some change in the circumstances and position of the two youths may at no very distant period become a possibility.’

  In such a case it will not be denied that the cultivation of their present desire for acquiring European instruction, would afford moral and also political advantages of no slight moment. It opens out the readiness, perhaps the only method of in a measure denationalising them, and thus bringing about a result so eminently advantageous, as an assimilation of the latent, but mutual hopes … between the heirs and the subjects of a dynasty subjected by a foreign power.

  Both the parents of the lads have talked to me on the subject, and all appear anxious that the work should at once commence …

  Such a conclusion on their part seems to offer a favourable opportunity for completing that severance between them and their countrymen before alluded to as a desirable result, and which would be vastly facilitated by entirely removing them from the narrow world of Indian life, with all its prejudices and absurdities. And the benefit of such a change, acting on a useful mind, has always been satisfactorily exemplified in the case of Maharajah Duleep Singh;* and at present these boys are just of an age when good impressions are easily formed and natural talents cultivated, when precepts can with little difficulty be inculcated, and inherent vices uprooted, when a knowledge that morality is indispensable to real happiness might be caused to work in them for good, and the practical application of that morality might be so cultivated as to become habitual.

  It cannot be overlooked that a time is at hand when these imprisoned youths will arrive at maturity, and those who are in authority over them have it in their power to give a definite direction to their future. Is there then no responsibility attached to such a position?

  The first and most essential requisite therefore is to give the lads breathing room and to separate them completely from the baneful atmosphere of bigotry, superstitious ignorance and consequent degradation by which they are at present surrounded, their only companions being menials, to whom the blessings of education and morality are alike unknown – the very scum of a reduced Asiatic haram.

  Davies concluded his letter by writing a little more about Zafar’s attendants who had chosen to stay in exile and imprisonment with him. This quite remarkable display of loyalty cut no ice with Davies.

  With regard to the attendants all I can say is that they are a low set, dirty in their habits, & much inferior to the ordinary class of domestics in an officer’s household. The only exception is perhaps Ahmed Beg. He seems to be a respectable old man, & could have no motive for attending the ex-King other than fidelity. With the Begum’s attendant, Abdool Rahman, the case is somewhat different. He is a low, cunning fellow, & I am not quite satisfied as to what relationship he stands in towards the Queen, whether attendant, or something more.55

  Davies’s idea that the princes could be sent to England was promptly and peremptorily turned down by his superiors in Calcutta, who forbade him in future from ‘introducing into his letters and diaries the mention of trivial matters which it does not concern the Government to know’.56 Davies was also ticked off for using ‘such expressions as “the ex-King” “the ex-Royal Family” “the Begum”. The Governor General in Council requests that Captain Davies may be directed to avoid these expressions in future’. He was directed to refer merely to ‘the Delhi State Prisoners’.57

  Banned from leaving their confinement in Rangoon, and now of no interest to the British government in Calcutta, the two boys now had no choice but to look to Davies for their education. They continued to visit his house ‘pretty regularly’, and were said to be making ‘excellent progress’ in English, though Davies admitted he found ‘it difficult to invent anything to break the monotony of their existence …’

  They occasionally come over and converse with Mrs Davies and communicate their bitter woes … Shah Abbas gives more attention and is consequently ahead. Jawan Bakht’s disposition appears more averse to Europeans than his brother who, in the absence of better opportunities, converses occasionally with the European soldiers of the guard.58

  Other letters also hinted at Jawan Bakht’s growing disaffection. ‘Shah Abbas has the sense to see the necessity of rules,’ wrote Davies,

  and submits to it cheerfully and generally extends his walk every morning to the gardens with a sentry. But Jawan Bakht, perhaps thinking the arrangements somewhat retrograde declines to go out at all, and has taken no exercise in the last
two months. This obstinacy, if persisted in, would not be good for his health. But I have little doubt that he will be in a better mood in time.59

  Zafar, meanwhile, sat silently watching the passing shipping from his Rangoon balcony. He was allowed no pen and paper, so his own reaction to his isolation and exile can only be guessed at. Certainly it now seems as if the famous verses attributed to him in exile, expressing his sadness and bitterness, are not the product of his own hand, though William Howard Russell explicitly described him writing verses on the walls of his prison with a burned stick, and it is not completely impossible that these could somehow have been recorded and preserved.*

  By 1862, Zafar had reached the grand old age of eighty-seven. Even though he was weak and feeble, and although doctors had now been expecting his imminent demise for some two decades, he still showed no signs of succumbing to their predictions, beyond ‘feeling ill with paralysis at the root of the tongue’.60

  In late October 1862, however, at the end of the monsoon, Zafar’s condition became suddenly much worse: he was unable to swallow or keep down his food, and Davies wrote in his diary that the tenure of his life was now ‘very uncertain’. The old man was spoon-fed on broth, but by 3 November found it increasingly difficult to get even that down. On the 5th, Davies wrote that ‘the Civil Surgeon does not think Abu Zafar can survive many days’. The following day, Davies reported that the old man ‘is evidently sinking from pure decrepitude and paralysis in the region of his throat’. In preparation for the death, Davies ordered that bricks and lime be collected, and a secluded spot at the back of Zafar’s enclosure was prepared for the burial.

  After a long night’s struggle, Zafar finally breathed his last at 5 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 7 November 1862. Immediately the machinery of the Empire swung into action to make sure that the passing of the Last Mughal would be as discreet and uneventful as possible. Zafar’s death may have marked the end of a great ruling dynasty 350 years old, but Davies was determined that as few as possible would witness this sad and historic moment. ‘All things being in readiness,’ wrote Davies, ‘he was buried at 4 p.m. on the same day at the rear of the Main Guard in a brick grave, covered over with turf level with the ground.’ Davies noted how his two boys and their father’s manservant attended the burial, but the women, in accordance with Muslim custom, did not.

  ‘A bamboo fence surrounds the grave for some considerable distance,’ he concluded, ‘and by the time the fence is worn out, the grass will again have properly covered the spot, and no vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.’

  The following day, Davies wrote his official report on the demise of his charge. ‘This event made very little impression either on the relatives or on the Mahomedan population of this town,’ Davies noted with satisfaction. ‘Probably about a couple of hundred spectators assembled at the time of the funeral, but this event was occasioned in a great extent by idlers coming from the neighbouring Sudder Bazar to town to see the Races which were going on that afternoon near the prisoners’ quarters.’61

  ‘The death of the ex-King may be said to have had no effect on the Mahomedan part of the populace of Rangoon,’ he added, ‘except perhaps for a few fanatics who watch and pray for the final triumph of Islam.’

  News of Zafar’s death reached Delhi a fortnight later on 20 November. Ghalib read the news in the Avadh Akhbar, the same day that it was announced that the Jama Masjid was finally going to be given back to the Muslims of Delhi. Already numbed by the news of so many other deaths and tragedies, Ghalib’s reaction was resigned and muted: On Friday the 7th November, and the 14th Jamadu ul Awwal, Abu Zafar Siraj ud Din Bahadur Shah was freed from the bonds of the foreigner and the bonds of the flesh. “Verily we are for God, and verily to him we shall return.”’62

  Ghalib’s reaction was typical. No newspaper, British or Indian, carried the news of Zafar’s death in any detail. There had been so much bloodshed, and so many funerals, and to some extent Zafar had already been mourned, and then forgotten: after all, it was now five years since he had been banished from the city and sent into Burmese exile.

  It was only gradually, with the distance of hindsight, that the scale of the vacuum left by the destruction and dispersal of Zafar’s court became apparent. The dramatic way in which both Hindus and Muslims had rallied to the Mughal capital at the outbreak of the Uprising had demonstrated the degree to which the mystique of the dynasty was still very much alive more than a century after the Mughals had ceased to exercise any real political, economic or military power. Contrary to all expectations, the idea of the Mughal Emperor as the divinely ordained axis mundi, the universal sovereign, and Padshah, Lord of the World, still had resonance across Hindustan at this time. Even more surprisingly, and contrary to many modern assumptions, it clearly resonated as strongly for Hindus as it did for Muslims. As Mark Thornhill had written, sitting in Mathura shortly after the sepoys arrived from Meerut, listening to his office staff excitedly discuss the revival of the Mughal throne:

  Their talk was all about the ceremonial of the palace and how it would be revived. They speculated as to who would be Grand Chamberlain, which of the chiefs of Rajpootana would guard the different gates, and who were the fifty-two Rajahs who would assemble to put the Emperor on the throne … As I listened I realised as I never had done before the deep impression that the splendour of the ancient court had made on the popular imagination, how dear to them were the traditions and how faithfully, all unknown to us, they had preserved them.63

  The outbreak revealed the surprising degree to which the Mughal court was still regarded across northern India not as some sort of foreign Muslim imposition – as some, especially on the Hindu right wing, look upon the Mughals today – but instead as the principal source of political legitimacy, and therefore the natural centre of resistance against British colonial rule.*

  Nevertheless, if the outbreak demonstrated the power of the Mughal name, the disastrous course of the Uprising dramatically highlighted the shortcomings and impotence of that Old Mughal feudal order. Zafar may have commanded the nominal loyalty and allegiance of the sepoys and his people, but that loyalty did not stretch to either direct obedience or submission, especially when his treasury was shown to be empty, and the weakness of Zafar’s personal authority became apparent. The crucial failure to get even the hinterland of Delhi to submit to Zafar’s rule, or to organise a proper logistical apparatus to feed the troops gathered within the walls, meant that the massive – and largely Hindu – army that collected so quickly and strikingly at Delhi soon ran out of food, and before long was brought to the edge of starvation. For this reason it was already well on the way to dispersing long before the British entered the Kashmiri Gate to deliver the coup de grâce.

  When Delhi fell in September 1857 it was not just the city and Zafar’s court which were uprooted and destroyed, but the self-confidence and authority of the wider Mughal political and cultural world throughout India. The scale of the devastation and defeat, and the depths of the humiliation heaped on the vanquished Mughals, profoundly diminished not just the prestige of the old aristocratic order, but also – to at least some extent – the composite Hindu-Muslim, Indo-Islamic civilisation of which Zafar’s court had been the flagship, and of whose sophisticated, tolerant and open-minded attitudes Ghalib’s poems still form such a striking testament.

  For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject specimens, such as Irish Catholics or ‘the Wandering Jew’. The depth to which Indian Muslims had sunk in British eyes is visible in an 1868 production called The People of India, which contains photographs of the different castes and tribes of South Asia ranging from Tibetans and Aboriginals (illustrated with a picture of a naked tribal) to the Doms of Bihar. The image of ‘the Mahomedan’ is illustrated by a picture of an Aligarh labourer who is given the following caption: ‘Hi
s features are peculiarly Mahomedan … [and] exemplify in a strong manner the obstinacy, sensuality, ignorance and bigotry of his class. It is hardly possible, perhaps, to conceive features more essentially repulsive.’64

  The profound contempt that the British so openly expressed for Indian Muslim and Mughal culture proved contagious, particularly to the ascendant Hindus, who quickly hardened their attitudes to all things Islamic, but also to many young Muslims, who now believed than their own ancient and much-cherished civilisation had been irretrievably discredited. Some even shared Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s initial conviction that Indian Muslims could never again prosper or ‘receive esteem’. ‘For some time,’ he wrote, ‘I could not even bear to contemplate the miserable state of my people. I wrestled with my grief, and believe me it made an old man of me.’65

  Just as the amateurish Mughal-led armies had proved unable to compete with British generals and British Enfields, and just as Mirza Mughal’s stumbling commissariat proved no match for the Company’s bureaucracy, so in the years that followed the still-living and even thriving Mughal miniature and architectural tradition would soon come to a grinding halt in the face of Tropical Gothic colonial architecture and other Victorian art forms. The elaborate politeness of Mughal etiquette and Indo-Islamic manners came to be regarded merely as anachronistic. The poetic world represented by Zafar’s mushairas would find it increasingly hard to attract young Indian intellectuals seduced by the siren call of Tennyson or the Wordsworthian naturalism now taught in English-medium schools.66 As Maulvi Muhammad Baqar’s son, the poet and critic Azad, wrote: ‘The important thing is that the glory of the winners’ ascendant fortune gives everything of theirs – even their dress, their gait, their conversation – a radiance that makes them desirable. And people do not merely adopt them, but they are proud to adopt them.’67