The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  96. See the brilliant essay by Margrit Pernau on class and the radicals, ‘Multiple Identities and Communities: Re-contextualizing Religion’, in Jamal Malik and Helmut Reifeld, Religious Pluralism in South Asia and Europe, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 147–69, especially pp. 160–1. Pernau estimates that a full 10 per cent of Shah Abdul Aziz’s fatwas concern economic matters. The British authorities also noted that it was not the ashraf but ‘the lower orders of the Mahommedans and particularly among the Punjabies’ who subscribed to radical Islam. ‘Hoosain Buksh’ is, however, described as ‘the great Punjabee merchant of this city … generally considered favourable to the Wahabee sect’. PAL Case 70, no. 152, From: A. A. Roberts Esq., Magistrate Dehlee To: T. Metcalfe, Agent Lieut Governor of the government of NWP Dehlee Dated: Dehlee, 1st Sept 1852 Subject: Fanatics.

  97. Nizami, Madrasahs, pp. 224–9; Nizami, Islamization and Social Adjustment, p. 7; Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, p. 62.

  98. PAL, Case 70, no. 152.

  99. Missionary Collections, ‘A Memoir of my Father – the Revd M.J. Jennings, M.A.,’ p. 20.

  3: An Uneasy Equilibrium

  1. Dihli Urdu Akbhar (hereafter DUA), 7 August 1853. See also Margit Pernau, ‘The Dihli Urdu Akbhar: Between Persian Akhbarat and English Newspapers’, Annual of Urdu Studies, 2003, vol. 18, p. 121.

  2. Subae Shamalio Maghribi ke Akhbara aur Matbuat, p. 101., cited in Aslam Parvez, Bahadur Shah Zafar, p. 316.

  3. Pernau, ‘Dihli Urdu Akbhar’, p. 126; DUA, 10 May 1840.

  4. DUA, 12 May 1841.

  5. Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, p. 19.

  6. Pernau, ‘Dihli Urdu Akbhar’, p. 128; Nadir Ali Khan, A History of Urdu Journalism, Delhi 1991, pp. 72–86. Also DUA, 22 and 29 August 1852; for Ramchandra’s conversion see DUA, 25 July 1852; for ‘sexual vice’, 2 May 1841; for the arrest of Ghalib, 15 August 1841.

  7. Pernau, ‘Dihli Urdu Akbhar’, pp. 123–6.

  8. Delhi Gazette (hereafter DG), 19 March 1842 (Moti Masjid) and 2 March 1853 (canal).

  9. DG, 19 February 1853 (locomotive race); 12 January 1855 (cricket); 27 January 1855 (Hansi dacoitee).

  10. Nicholas Shreeve (ed.), From Nawab to Nabob: The Diary of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, Bookwright, Arundel, 2000, pp. 71 and 75, entries for 5, 6 and 23 December 1834.

  11. See Michael Fisher’s essay on Mohan Lal Kashmiri in Margrit Pernau’s forthcoming volume on Delhi College, New Delhi, 2006.

  12. DG, 10 February 1847.

  13. Ibid., 19 January 1853.

  14. Ibid., 8 January 1855.

  15. Ibid., 9 January 1855.

  16. Ibid., 8 January 1855.

  17. Ibid., 12 February 1843. See also Pernau, ‘Dihli Urdu Akbhar’, p. 118.

  18. James Baillie Fraser, Military Memoirs of James Skinner, 2 vols, Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1851, p. 105.

  19. Ibid., pp. 159, 162.

  20. Fanny Eden, Journals, reprinted as Tigers, Durbars and Kings, John Murray, London, 1988, p. 135.

  21. Ram Babu Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets of Urdu & Persian, Newul Kishore, Lucknow, 1941, pp. 96–7.

  22. Tigers, p. 135.

  23. In a letter to Lord Bentinck in the Nottingham University Library, Pw Jf 2047/1–2, Hansee 12 October 1835, Skinner writes as if he is thinking in Urdu and translating it as best he can into English: ‘Regarding my narrative,’ he writes, ‘if your Lordship thinks it is worth your Lordship’s trouble, I am proude to lay it at your feet; do my Lord what you like. I am only sorry that my abilities in the English language was not sufficient as to have given you a better account than what it contains. So my gracious and kind benefactor, consider me as a piece of clay in a potters hand, and you may make me what you like.’

  24. Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company, OUP, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 25–45. In a letter to Lord Bentinck in the Nottingham University Library, Pw Jf 2047/1–2, Hansee 12 October 1835, Skinner refers to a ‘wife’ in the singular who sends her best to the Governor General and Lady Bentinck.

  25. National Army Museum, London, Gardner Papers, Letter 16, p. 41.

  26. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, Theo to Lady Campbell in Ferozepur, undated but probably 1854.

  27. Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 34.

  28. For Gambier, see National Army Musuem 6211/67, Letters of Lieutenant Charles Henry (Harry) F. Gambier, 38th Native Infantry. For Harriet, see Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986.

  29. David Burton, The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India, London, 1993, p. 83.

  30. Cited in Farhan Ahmad Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars and Saints: Muslim Response to the British Presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab 1803–1857, unpublished PhD, Oxford, 1983, p. 18.

  31. Major General Sir W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, Oxford, 1915, pp. 523–4.

  32. Hali, Kulliyat-e Nasir, vol. 1, p. 344, cited in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 14.

  33. Margrit Pernau, ‘Middle Class and Secularisation: The Muslims of Delhi in the 19th Century’, in Intiz Ahmad, Helmut Reifeld (ed.), Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 21–42.

  34. Nizami, Madrasahs, p. 170, on the surprising openness of the ‘ulama at this period to taking on and absorbing the new innovations and discoveries of Western science.

  35. Cited in Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 40.

  36. Cited in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 14.

  37. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Asar us-Sanadid, Delhi, 1990, vol. 2, p. 45.

  38. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 45.

  39. Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires 1803–1931, New Delhi, 1981, p. 4; Pavan K. Verma, Mansions at Dusk: The Havelis of Old Delhi, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 55–63.

  40. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, p. 4.

  41. Johnson diaries, OIOC, Mss Eur A101, entry for 18 July 1850.

  42. Munshi Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir, Yani sehr e-Delhi ke do akhiri badshahon ka tareeq i-maashrat (The Last Convivial Gathering – the Mode of Life of the Last Two Kings of Delhi), Lahore, 1965.

  43. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI) Foreign, Foreign Dept Misc., Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Sunday, 4 April 1852.

  44. Percival Spear, The Twilight of the Moghuls, Cambridge, 1951, p. 74.

  45. Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir.

  46. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 13 March 1851.

  47. Muhammad Husain Azad (trans. and ed. Frances Pritchett and Shamsur Rahim Faruqi), Ab-e Hayat: Shaping the Canon of Urdu Poetry, New Delhi, 2001, p. 343.

  48. Antoine Polier, Shah Alam II and his Court, Calcutta, 1947, p. 72. For Mirza Fakhru’s calligraphy, see the impressive specimens in the OIOC: 3577 and especially 2972/42, a calligraphic lion. See also NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 21 February 1851. For Mirza Fakhru’s History, see NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 10 January 1851. For Mirza Fakhru living in the Shah Burj, see NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 23 September 1852.

  49. Reginald Heber, A Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, 3 vols, London, 1827, vol. 1, pp. 568–9.

  50. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 4. For his more earthy verse in Punjabi and Braj Basha he used a different pen-name; rather than Zafar (‘Victorious’) he chose to write under Shuaq Rang (‘Passionate’).

  51. S. M. Burke and Salim al-Din Quraishi, Bahadur Shah: Last Mogul Emperor of India, Lahore, 1995, pp. 218–19.

  52. Arsh Taimuri, Qila-i Mua’lla ki Jhalkiyan, ed. Aslam Parvez, Urdu Academy, Delhi, 1986. See sections on gunmanship and archery.

  53. Spear, Twilight, p. 73.

  54. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for
Tuesday, 13 January 1852.

  55. Emily Bayley, quoted in M. M. Kaye (ed.), The Golden Calm: An English Lady’s Life in Moghul Delhi, London, 1980, p. 128.

  56. Major Archer, Tours in Upper India, London, 1833, vol. 1, pp. 108–9.

  57. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, e.g. entries for Monday, 28 July 1852, Sunday, 1 August 1852, Tuesday, 18 October 1853 and Wednesday, 21 December 1853. Akhtar Qamber, The Last Mushai’rah of Delhi: A Translation of Farhatullah Baig’s Modern Urdu Classic Dehli ki Akhri Shama, New Delhi, 1979, p. 68.

  58. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 12 May 1851; for his marriage, see entry for 23 April.

  59. Ibid., entry for Monday, 5 September 1853.

  60. Ibid., entry for Tuesday, 26 July 1853.

  61. Ibid., entries for 16 January 1852 and 22 September 1853.

  62. For fishing, see Ibid., entry for 2 February 1852.

  63. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 99.

  64. DG, 10 April 1855.

  65. E.g. DG, 15 March 1855.

  66. Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir.

  67. Quoted in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 14.

  68. Burton, The Raj at Table, p. 18.

  69. Fraser Papers, Inverness, Bundle 366, VJ to Wm Fraser, p. 62, undated but probably February 1831.

  70. Emily Bayley, quoted in M. M. Kaye (ed.), The Golden Calm, pp. 105, 161.

  71. Ibid., p. 213.

  72. Fraser Papers, vol. 33, p. 279, Alec Fraser to his mother, Delhi, 3 August 1811.

  73. Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, Theo to Lady Campbell in Ferozepur, undated but probably 1854.

  74. Ibid., Box 1, GG to EC, Saturday, 23 October 1852.

  75. DG, 24 March 1857.

  76. Emily Bayley, quoted in M. M. Kaye (ed.), The Golden Calm, p. 127.

  77. Azad, Ab-e Hayat, p. 385. Although the story is actually told by a dog, it does seem to reflect the culinary practice of a well-known Delhi figure.

  78. Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir, goes into lengthy detail on all this, and is one of the most startlingly detailed sources for the doings of the Red Fort kitchens. Some of the dishes mentioned can still be sampled at Karims Hotel next to the Jama Masjid, which was founded by cooks from the former royal kitchens after 1857.

  79. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Wednesday, 10 August 1852. For kebabs and stew and oranges, see Taimuri, Qila-i mualla ki Jhalkiyan.

  80. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 26 September 1853.

  81. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 50.

  82. Ibid., p. 183.

  83. Ibid., p. 190.

  84. Khan, Asar us Sanadid, vol.2, p. 230.

  85. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entries for 10 September 1853 and 4 October 1853.

  86. Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir.

  87. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Tuesday, 9 August 1852.

  88. Dargah Quli Khan, The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli, trans. Chander Shekhar, New Delhi, 1989, p. 50.

  89. For Ad Begum, ibid., p. 107; for Nur Bai, ibid., p. no. Both these courtesans were at the height of their fame in 1739, at the time of the invasion of Nadir Shah.

  90. Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets, pp. 73–4.

  91. Qamber, The Last Mushai’rah of Delhi, p. 60.

  4: The Near Approach of the Storm

  1. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Photo Eur 31 1B, Hardcastle Papers, pp. 247–62.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI) Foreign, Foreign Dept, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Thursday, 3 November 1853.

  7. James Thomason, the Lieutenant Governor of the North West Provinces, died in Bareilly on 29 September, while Sir Henry Elliot, the Foreign Secretary, died at the Cape, on his way back to England, on 20 December.

  8. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 143.

  9. OIOC, Fraser Collection, Eur Mss E258, Bundle 8, SF to SJGF, 25 March 1857.

  10. For Annie’s choir, see Bodleian Library of Commonwealth & African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford, Missionary Collections, A Memoir of my Father – the Revd M.J. Jennings, M.A., pp. 13, 38. For Annie’s engagement, see Tytler, An Englishwoman in India. For Fraser joining the choir, see Fraser Collection, Mss Eur E258, Bundle 8, SF to SJGF, Delhi, 25 March 1857.

  11. Fraser Collection, Mss Eur E258, Bundle 8, SF to SJGF, 21 April (?) 1854.

  12. Ibid., SF to SJGF, Mynpoorie, 14 August (no year but possibly 1843).

  13. Ibid., SF to SJGF, 21 April 1854, 25 March 1857.

  14. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence. Fraser’s arrival in Delhi is reported in the entry for Friday, 24 November 1853; a reception at Raushanara Bagh is planned for 1 December, but the Agent does not turn up, although he does pay a sightseeing visit to the Red Fort in the company of some friends when BSZ is away on Thursday the 8th. He waits for another couple of weeks before bothering to come and introduce himself on Thursday, 22 December 1853. BSZ prepares for his reception by organising a frantic bout of spring-cleaning and repairs.

  15. NAI, Foreign Consultations, Item 180–193, 29 August 1856, From S Fraser Esq Agent Lt Gov NWP, Dehlie Dated Dehlie 14th July 1856. For Fraser’s retirement see the Delhi Gazette (DG), 12 July 1856.

  16. NAI, Foreign Consultations, Item 180–193, 29 August 1856, ‘Translation of a Shooqua from His Majesty the King of Dehlie to Simon Fraser Esquire Agent of Honble the Lt Gov,’ dated 12 July 1856. This of course was exactly the humiliating treatment suffered by Zafar himself at the hands of his father Akbar Shah.

  17. Ibid., pp. 319ff.

  18. Michael Maclagan, ‘Clemency’ Canning, London, 1962, pp. 38–44. See also Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, pp. 25–7. Saul David, The Indian Mutiny, London, 2002, pp. 14–15.

  19. NAI, Foreign Consultations, Item 180–193, 29 August 1856, Minute by Canning, the Governor General, 12 August 1856.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titular King of Delhi, before a Military Commission, upon a charge of Rebellion, Treason and Murder, held at Delhi, on the 27th Day of January 1858, and following days, London, 1859 (hereafter Trial), p. 80.

  22. NAI, Siraj ul-Akbhar, 19 March 1857.

  23. See Salim al-Din Quraishi, Cry for Freedom: Proclamations of Muslim Revolutonaries of 1857, Lahore, 1997, for reports in the Delhi press of the different manifestations of unrest in early 1857. The puris were reported in the Nur-i Maghrebi in the issue of 25 February 1857, while news of the mutiny in the Bengal Army appeared in the same paper’s issue of 20 April 1857. See also the evidence of Metcalfe, Trial, pp. 80–81.

  24. Anon, (probably Robert Bird), Dacoitee in Excelsis, or the Spoilation of Oude by the East India Company, London, 1857.

  25. Ibid., iv-v, pp. 202–4.

  26. Ibid., vi.

  27. Quoted in S. M. Burke and Salim al-Din Quraishi, Bahadur Shah: Last Mogul Emperor of India, Lahore, 1995, p. 78.

  28. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Case 1, 71, dated 24 February 1856.

  29. Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 135.

  30. Ibid., p. 113.

  31. Hali, Yadgar-e-Ghalib, pp. 28–9, cited in Ralph Russell and Khurshid Islam, Ghalib: Life and Letters, Oxford, 1969, p. 63.

  32. Ibid., pp. 73–4.

  33. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 89.

  34. Ibid., p. 112

  35. Ibid., p. 112, and Gopi Chand Narang, ‘Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857’, in Narang, Urdu Language and Literature: Critical Perspectives, New Delhi, 1991, p. 16, note 45.

  36. Pavan K. Verma, Ghalib: The Man, the Times, New Delhi, 1989, p. 61.

  37. Ghalib, Dastanbuy p. 48, cited in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, p. 9; also Varma,
Ghalib, pp. 142–3.

  38. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 8 (no date but clearly 1856).

  39. Ibid., Box 8, Theo to GG, 12 August 1856.

  40. Ibid., Box 8, Theo to EC (undated but April 1857).

  41. Ibid., Box 6, EC to GG, datelined Camp Near Mooltan, 27 November 1856.

  42. Ibid., Box 6, EC to GG (undated but probably late 1856 /early 1857).

  43. The best and fullest description of that old Indian historical chestnut, the greased cartridges, can be found in Chapter 6 of David, The Indian Mutiny. There is also a very good chapter in Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s brief but brilliant Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero?, New Delhi, 2005.

  44. The fouling and clogging of the Enfields is also recorded by Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 6.

  45. Mukherjee, Mangal Pandey, p. 35. According to a letter of 7 February 1857, Canning stated that the fears regarding the grease ‘were well founded’.

  46. J. W. Kaye, A History of the Sepoy, War in India 1857–8, London 1877, vol 1, pp. 316–18.

  47. Irfan Habib, ‘The Coming of 1857’, Social Scientist, vol. 26, no. 1, January-April 1998, p. 6.

  48. Sitaram Pandey, From Sepoy to Subedar, London, 1873, pp. 24–5. Some scholars have questioned the authenticity of this book; it may have been written by a Briton under a pseudonym or as the ghostwriter of a sepoy. My personal suspicion is that it is the latter, for the tone reads true to my ears, and it is difficult to believe it is an outright forgery, especially when compared with the sepoy’s letter from the DG, 8 May 1855 (see note below), which is clearly a fake.