The Last Mughal
Page 67
85. Ibid., p. 20.
86. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 132.
87. Ibid., p. 135.
88. Ibid., pp. 140–42.
89. Ibid., pp. 163–7.
90. Ibid., p. 252.
91. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entries for 12 and 13 October 1857.
92. Ibid., entry for 13 October 1857. For the firing squad and their poor aim see Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 214.
93. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, p. 280.
94. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 18.
95. Arsh Taimuri, Qila-i Mua ‘lia ki Jhalkiyan, ed. Aslam Parvez, Urdu Academy, Delhi, 1986.
96. The Mutiny Papers in the DCO seem to be almost completely unused by historians. As far as I can ascertain, only two historians – Narayani Gupta and Anisha Shekhar Mukherji – have to date published material from this astonishingly rich collection.
97. DCO, Mutiny Papers, Box no. 2, File no. 49, letter no. 110, Saunders to Sec. to the Gov. of the Punjab, 21 April 1859.
98. Ibid. See, for example, Box 2, File no. 73, Davies to Saunders, 13 June 1859, Davies to Beadon, 26 April 1859, and Davies to Beadon, 27 May 1859. For the lost prisoners and their eventual exile in Karachi, see Box 2, File no. 83, 29 June 1859; File 85, 1 July 1859; File 86, 2 July 1859; and File 87, 5 July 1859. For the absconding salatin from Karachi, see File no. 127, Order passed by the Govt regarding the settlement of the Sulateens, 10 October 1860.
99. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 151. There is a fine portrait of the Nawab in Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Wonder: Indian Paintings during the British Period 1760–1880, New York, 1978, pp. 120–21.
100. DCO, Mutiny Papers, File no. 10, letter no. 54, Saunders to Lawrence, 1 December 1857.
101. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 9 November 1857.
102. Ibid., entry for 20 October 1857.
103. Ibid., entry for 23 December 1857.
104. Muter, My Recollections, pp. 145–6.
105. Delhi Gazetteer, 1883–4, p. 30.
106. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, pt 6, entry for 5 November 1857.
107. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 151.
108. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape, p. 212.
109. OIOC, Lawrence Papers, Eur Mss F 90, Camp near Goordaspur, 25 April 1858. Also C. B. Saunders Papers, Eur Mss E 187, correspondence pt IV, private letters 1857–60, K&J 716, 1–79, no. 24, Lawrence to Saunders (extract), Lahore, 15 December 1857; see also no. 24, Enclosure – William Muir to Lawrence, Agra, 12 December 1857.
110. OIOC, Lawrence Papers, Eur Mss F 90, JL to Saunders, Lahore, 6 October 1857; also JL to Saunders, letter datelined Camp Delhi, 2 March 1858.
111. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 6, EC to GG, Delhie (undated but obviously September 1857).
112. Ibid., Box 10, EC to GG, Delhie, 30 September 1857.
113. Ibid.
114. This important point was well argued by F. W. Buckler (1891–1960) in his rightly celebrated essay ‘The Political Theory of the Indian Mutiny’, Trans, of the Royal Historical Soc, 4(5), 1922, pp. 71–100 (also reprinted in Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian writings of F. W. Buckler, ed. M. N. Pearson, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, c. 1985.
115. W. H. Russell, My Diary in India, London, 1860, vol. 2, pp. 58, 60–61.
116. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 48–9.
117. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 50–51.
118. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 27 January 1858.
119. OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 212, EO to CS, 27 January 1858.
120. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 27 January. Also Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 167.
121. Edward Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny as Seen by a Subaltern from Delhi to Lucknow, London, 1858, p. 148.
122. Charles Ball, The History of the Indian Mutiny, 2 vols, 1858–9, vol. 2, p. 171.
123. Ibid., p. 172.
124. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 27 January. See also Ball, History, vol. 2, p. 172.
125. Ball, History, p. 177.
126. 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), pp. 131—3.
127. Ibid., pp. 151—3.
128. Ibid., pp. 72, 151–2.
129. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A. entry for 27 March 1858.
130. Muter, My Recollections, pp. 149–151.
131. Ibid., p. 149.
132. Trial, p. 153.
133. Ibid., p. 153.
134. Ball, History, p. 178.
135. OIOC, Political Consultations, Range 203, 67, vol. 14, P/203/67, Fort William, 10 December 1858, no. 535A, Saunders to Ommaney, 4 October 1858.
136. OIOC, Saunders Papers, Eur Mss E187, correspondence pt IV, private letters 1857–60, 1–79, no. 66, Matilda Saunders to her mother-in-law, Ludlow Castle, Dehlie, 13 October 1858.
12: The Last of the Great Mughals
1. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 278, EO to CS, 13 October 1858, Camp Soomha.
2. Delhi Commissioner’s Office (hereafter DCO) Archive, Delhi, File 65A, 7 December 1858, Report on the Character and Conduct of the Attendants of the ex royal King.
3. Delhi Gazette (hereafter DG), 13 October 1858.
4. OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 282, EO to CS, 5 November 1858.
5. Ibid., no. 280, EO to CS, 23 October 1858.
6. Ibid., no. 279, EO to CS, 19 October 1858 from Camp Etah.
7. DG, 13 October 1858.
8. OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 230, EO to CS, 30 March 1858.
9. Ibid., no. 272, EO to CS, 1 October 1858.
10. OIOC, India Proceedings, Political Consultations, Range 203, vol. 14, Fort William, 10 December 1858, no. 77, From G. F. Edmonstone, Secr, to Govt of India, to C. Beadon, Off. Secr., Foreign Dept Calcutta, Allahabad, 16 November 1858. For Ommaney’s meeting with Canning see OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 283, EO to CS, 17 November 1858, Camp Wuhda Nugger.
11. OIOC, India Proceedings, Political Consultations, Range 203, vol. 14, Fort William, 10 December 1858, no. 66, Proceedings of a committee of Medical Officers, assembled by the order of the Rt. Hon, the Governor General of India for the purpose of examining and reporting upon the physical condition of Mahomed Bahadoor Shah, lately King of Delhie. President, G. M. Had-away, Dy. Inspector General of Queens Hospitals. Members: Superintending Surgeon Cawnpore Circle, Surgeon J. Leckie M.D., surgeon to the Governor-General.
12. OIOC, India Proceedings, Political Consultations, Range 203, vol. 14, Fort William, 10 December 1858, no. 4546, from Sec. to Gov. Gen. to Commissioner of Pegu, 13 November 1858.
13. OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 284, EO to CS, 23 November 1858.
14. Ibid.
15. OIOC, Eur Mss E 186, Saunders Papers, Letters of Lt Edward Ommaney to Charles Saunders, no. 285, EO to CS, 14 December 1858.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. The Calcutta Englishman, 1852, cited in Noel F. Singer, Old Rangoon, Gartmore, 1995, p. 69.
19. Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 182.
20. Cited by Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian
Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly, Oxford, 1986, p. 92, note 42.
21. OIOC, Lawrence Papers, Eur Mss F 90, Folio 12, Muree, June 1858.
22. Ibid., John Lawrence to Charles Trevelyan, Camp near Baree Doab Canal, 23 April 1858.
23. Cited in Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge, 2005, p. 41.
24. DCO Archive, Delhi, Foreign/General, January 1864, no. 16, Copy of a Letter from the Commr Delhi Division, to the Sec, Govt of Punjab (no. 185 dated the znd Sept. 1863), points 3 and 10.
25. OIOC, Lawrence Papers, Eur Mss F 90, Folio 12, John Lawrence to Charles Trevelyan, Camp Multan Road, 16 December 1857.
26. NAI, Foreign Secret, 25 January 1858, 11–15, p. 51, Chief of Staff to Commanding Officer Meerut Division, 27 January 1858.
27. DCO Archive, Delhi, Foreign/General, January 1864, Copy of a letter from the Offcg Commr, to the Commissioner Delhi Div. no. 256–209 dated 21st Aug. 1863. Here the Dariba was said to have been saved ‘by the strong representations of the Dep. Commr (Mr Philip Egerton) and Commr (Mr Brandreth)’.
28. Cited in in ‘The Sack of Delhi as Witnessed by Ghalib’, Bengal Past & Present, no. 12, January-December 1955, p. 110.
29. Ibid., p. 111.
30. Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Empires, New Delhi, 1991, p. 27.
31. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986 p. 165.
32. James Fergusson, History of Indian & Eastern Architecture, London, 1876, p. 594.
33. Ibid., p. 311n.
34. Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, New Delhi, 2003, has much the best account of the destruction and Anglicisation of the Mughal palace – see pp. 203–7.
35. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, pp. 60–61.
36. Cited in Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p. 23. Gupta’s remarkable book is much the best souce for Delhi’s transition from Mughal to colonial city.
37. NAI, Foreign Political Dept, Consultation 31, 31 December 1959, no. 2269, Abstract Translation of a Petition from the Musulmans of Delhi trans, by I. B. Outram, asst sec. to Govt.
38. Mofussilite, June 1860, cited in Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p. 25.
39. Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p. 24.
40. Ibid., p. 27.
41. Cited in ibid., p. 41.
42. C. F. Andrews, Zakaullah of Delhi, Cambridge, 1929, pp. 67, 75.
43. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 200.
44. For the Saunders inquiry into the rape of British women at the outbreak, see OIOC, Eur Mss E 185, Saunders Papers, no. 104, Muir to Saunders, Agra, 2 December 1857, and no. 111, Muir to Saunders, Agra, 14 December 1857. See also Muir’s letter reproduced in S. M. Burke and Salim al-Din Quraishi, Bahadur Shah: Last Mogul Emperor of India, Lahore, 1995, pp. 178–9. For the mass rape of women of the royal house, see DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, Box 2, File no. 109, 31 October 1859, Report on the Surviving Members of the Taimur House who are assigned a maintenance, no. 303 from Brandreth, Commr of Delhi to the Secr., Gov. of Punjab, dated 31 October 1859.
45. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 188.
46. Farhan Ahmad Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars and Saints: Muslim Response to the British Presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab 1803–1857, unpublished DPhil, Oxford, 1983, p. 19.
47. Cited in Gupta, Delhi between Empires, p. 41.
48. Cited in Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, p. 22. The great Urdu scholar S. R. Farooqi believes Ghalib may well have exaggerated the amount of poetry he lost in 1857.
49. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 187.
50. Ibid., p. 165.
51. Ibid., pp. 154, 157.
52. Ibid., p. 214.
53. Cited in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 29. There is a school of thought, championed by C. M. Naim, which argues that Zafar and the court had only a nominal influence on the Delhi renaissance, and that it flourished most successfully in centres of intellectual endeavour removed from the court, such as Delhi College and the madrasas. Yet the same elite – men like Sahbai, Fazl-i Haq and Azurda – moved between mushairas, madrasas, lecture halls and Zafar’s durbar, and it seems – at least in the eyes of this writer – difficult to separate one from the other. Certainly with the fall of the city, all disappeared at the same time in the same cataclysm.
54. Myanmar National Archives (hereafter MNA), Series 1/1 (A), Acc. No. 983, File no. 85, 1859, Confinement of Delhi state prisoners in Rangoon; also OIOC, Foreign Political Proceedings, Z/P/203/50, Phayre to Beadon, 2 May 1859.
55. NAI, Foreign Consultations, 11 November 1859, pp. 124–5, from Capt. H. N. Davies in Charge of the State Prisoners, to C. Beadon, Secr, to Gov. of India, Foreign Dept, Fort William, dated Rangoon, 3 August 1859.
56. MNA, no. 5922, from Sec. to GG to Lt Col. Phayre, 27 September 1859.
57. Ibid., no. 5470 from Sec. to GG to Lt Col. Phayre, 6 September 1859.
58. Ibid., Series 1/1A, Acc. no. 555, 1860, File no. 58, 1860, Confinement of Delhi State Prisoners at Rangoon.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., Acc. no. 702, 1863, File no. 151, 1863.
62. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 207.
63. Mark Thornhill, Personal Adventures and Experiences of a Magistrate, during the Rise, Progress and Suppression of the Indian Mutiny, London, 1884, p. 7.
64. Cited in David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India, Princeton, NJ, 1978, p. 6.
65. Cited in Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 30.
66. Ibid. This wonderful book is a beautifully written account of ‘how the ghazal, for centuries the pride and joy of Indo-Muslim culture, was abruptly dethroned and devalued within its own milieu and by its own theorists’. It contains the best account yet written of the loss of Indo-Muslim cultural confidence following 1857, and has been a central influence on me in the course of writing this book.
67. Cited in ibid., p.xvi.
68. MNA, Series 1/1A, Acc. no.702, 1863, File no. 151, p. 59.
69. Ibid., Acc. no. 832, 1867, File no. 41, Delhi State Prisoners.
70. Ibid., Acc. no. 1434, 1872, File no.63, dated Rangoon, 29 August 1872.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., p. 33, letter from Secr, to Gov. of India, Foreign Dept, to CC British Burma, no. 28 C.P., dated on board Outram, 28 October 1872.
74. Burke and Quraishi, Bahadur Shah, p. 205.
75. MNA, Series 1/1A, Acc. no. 3656, 1905, File no. C, 4, Bahadur Shah (ex-King of Delhi) Preservation of Grave.
76. Ibid., Acc no. 3657, 1906–7, File no. 55/56, Bahadur Shah (ex-King of Delhi) Preservation of Grave.
77. Ibid.
78. Burke and Quraishi, Bahadur Shah, p. 205.
79. This information is contained in a map – Third Edition, 1944, HIND/SEA/1036, overprinted by Survey Dte Main HQ ALFSEA, April 1945 – apparently produced by British military intelligence during the Second World War, and showing Japanese positions in the town, including INA billets and ‘The Jap officers’ dance hall and brothel’. As the area was the former British cantonment it is unclear whether the placement was accidental or deliberate: it could have been either. I would like to thank the British ambassador, Vicky Bowman, for showing the map to me.
80. See, for example, Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation.
81. The Deobandis have received an excellent study in Barbara Metcalfe’s magnum opus, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860–1900, Princeton, NJ, 1982. For more modern developments, see also Jamal Malik, Colonisation of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan, Manohar, 1988.
82. The provenance of this quotation is disputed: some attribute it to George Santayana.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He is the author of six book
s of history and travel, including the highly acclaimed bestseller City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His previous book, White Mughals, garnered a range of prizes, including the prestigious Wolfson Prize for History 2003 and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize. It was also shortlisted for the PEN History Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A stage version by Christopher Hampton has been co-commissioned by the National Theatre and the Tamasha Theatre Company.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dalrymple was awarded the 2002 Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’ and the Sykes Medal of the Royal
Society of Asian Affairs in 2005 for his contribution to the understanding of contemporary Islam. He wrote and presented three television series, Stones of the Raj, Sufi Soul and Indian Journeys, the last of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary
Series at BAFTA in 2002. In December 2005 his article on the madrasas of Pakistan was awarded the prize for Print Article of the Year at the 2005 FPA Media Awards.
He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have three children. They divide their time between London, Scotland and Delhi.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Nine Lives
White Mughals
The Age of Kali
From the Holy Mountain
City of Djinns
In Xanadu
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Coronation Portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, by Ghulam Ali Khan, c.1837. Collection of Stuart Cary Welch.
The Mughal Emperor Akbar Shah II in procession with his sons and the British Resident, Delhi, c.1811-19. Photograph courtesy of Simon Ray, London.
The great Friday mosque of Shahjahanabad, Jama Masjid, c.1840. Collection of William Dalrymple.
The Red Fort, c.1770. Add.Or.948, © British Library Board.
The ‘Kootub House’, from Sir Thomas Metcalfe’s ‘Dehlie Book’. Add.Or.5475 82, © British Library Board.
Metcalfe House, from Sir Thomas Metcalfe’s ‘Dehlie Book’. Add.Or.5475 84V-85V, © British Library Board.