The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  As Sarmad mounted the scaffold, I heard his voice, powerful yet honey-sweet, sing out to the executioner’s sword:

  ‘I see the Spirit shine in your steel,

  Come and possess this body.

  I do not despise you,

  I adore the Spirit in your sharp edge.

  You are my friend, my saviour,

  Come.’

  He knelt on the wooden platform and laid his head on the block as though it were a feather-soft pillow that he was settling on for a long sleep. The next moment, I saw his severed head roiling on the ground, the neck spurting blood into the dust.

  I decided in that instant to leave the empire that was now ruled by a monster.

  For a year now, I have been living in Goa, in my old teacher Vaidraj’s village. He is an old man and is insistent that before he leaves this life he wants to teach me all he knows. I am like his son, he says. I accompany him to homes of the sick in other villages where I watch him closely as he practises his healing arts. In the evening, we discuss the patients we have visited during the day and he teaches me the secrets of the medicine the Hindus call Ayurveda, the science of long life.

  I often sit in the shade of the banyan tree in the courtyard where I have begun to write an account of my travels. Living among these simple, kind people, sharing the undemanding rhythm of their lives, discovering a guardian I never had, I find myself becoming more tolerant. I have even discovered a hidden vein of pity for my father. I now understand that his violent nature was born out of hopelessness. I can understand his need to drink himself into the only element where he felt at home, brutal oblivion. Sometimes, as I lie alone at night under the banyan tree, drifting in the realm between wakefulness and sleep, images of Mala or Maria come unbidden to my mind. I know that an expedition to the capital city for the purpose of meeting them will be futile. Mala must be old now, not in years but in her soul, for her profession ages a woman as no passage of time ever can. The sultry fragrance of her bosom which I had breathed is lost forever. As for Maria, what will be the point of trying to meet her? Even if she is still in Goa and has not returned to Portugal? She will have children, and a husband she perhaps cherishes. Like many women who have found a new love she would not like to be reminded of one she had abandoned. Embers of old love cannot be blown into a fire. At best, they will only glow for a moment before they scatter ash on the blower.

  I know I will soon begin my travels again. My wish is to visit the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda and move further south to the newly established British fort of Madras. One day, I will return to Venice. My dream is still intact, though more out of habit and for want of a replacement; its original allure is lost, its colours have become dull. India has entered my blood. I love its myriad, various landscapes and lean cattle. I love this land even as I pity the wretched Hindus, whose religion is being so ruthlessly persecuted by the monstrous being who sits on the throne of Hindustan. A mosque stands at the place of their holiest temple in Benares. Another mosque has been erected on the site of the great temple of Mathura that was of such a height that its gilded pinnacle could be seen from Agra, eighteen leagues away. Hindu festivals have been outlawed. Special taxes, such as the jazia, the poll tax on unbelievers, have been imposed on them. The sale of Hindu girls to foreign traders is encouraged, ‘to rid the country of the abomination of heathenism,’ he says. Hindu children are allowed to be castrated for employment as eunuchs in the palaces of the Omrah. Many Hindu seats of learning, such as the one that was headed by Kavindracharya, have been shut down. The persecution of Sikh gurus has never been as vengeful. Christian and Parsi places of worship have been turned into stables for imperial cavalry. In the meantime, reviled by Hindus and revered by most Muslims of Sunni persuasion, Aurangzeb continues to rule as the undisputed ruler of Hindustan. In the Bible, God says, ‘By me the kings reign.’ Only He knows why He raises a man to the throne to be either a scourge or a solace to his subjects. Before I left Delhi, I heard a song in its bazaars that demonstrated to me that the inhabitants of the capital were becoming reconciled to the new regime. The song was a lament about the fickleness of fortune, which ‘changes a fakir’s cowl, while it beheads a prince in passing’. The ‘fakir’ refers, naturally, to Aurangzeb. I do not remember the remaining lines. The song is still popular in Hindustan although Aurangzeb has forbidden its singing under penalty of the singer losing his tongue.

  ‘If you would be king, never leave a wounded prince alive’.

  FRANCOIS BERNIER

  BACK IN FRANCE AND objectively reflecting on my experiences in the Mogul empire from a distance, unfettered by the inevitable distortions that come from being a participant, I find I have no cause to revise my opinions of Aurangzeb’s character. Indeed, my first impressions have now changed into firm convictions.

  Aurangzeb, or Alamgir, as he is now named as emperor, is a remarkable sovereign whose policies have remained consistent with the twin pillars of his vision of himself as a monarch: the welfare of the empire and the spread of Islam. The apparent contradictions in his intent and actions resolve themselves if one comprehends the two forces that drove his life’s mission.

  As an illustration, I shall take the example of his second coronation on the twelfth day of May, 1659, which I was privileged to attend as secretary to Danishmand Khan (who had then been reappointed as foreign minister), an occasion which has been rightly described by court historians as more splendid than any held in the history of Islam in India. Indeed, it was a spectacle the likes of which I had not witnessed in my ten years of association with the Mogul court.

  Seven hundred master decorators worked day and night for two weeks to embellish the pillars, walls and ceiling of the Hall of Public Audience in the grand fort in Delhi with gold and pearls in singular designs and unmatched craftsmanship. The splendour of the coronation parade, too, was beyond any comparison. Twelve brass bands led four contingents of war elephants, a brigade of cavalry and five hundred infantry men clad in brilliantly coloured uniforms. Aurangzeb was seated in a howdah resembling the black marble throne in the fort at Agra. He wore a turban studded with diamonds, rubies and sapphires in alternate rows, which sparked off a new fashion in turbans among the Omrah. The ceremony lasted for three hours and reached its climax when, after taking his seat on the Peacock Throne, the monarch placed a gilded copy of the Quran on his head and pledged to ‘live and rule by the directives inscribed in this most sacred of all books in the universe’. A fanfare of trumpets sounded from four corners of the Red Fort and hundreds of pigeons were released from their cages, signifying the beginning of a new era. In the city, people gathered to pray en masse and the poor were fed in droves, and celebratory dance and music performances by professional troupes drawn from all quarters of the empire livened the main squares.

  How could this unmatched glamour and pageantry be reconciled with Aurangzeb’s professed principle of promoting Islamic simplicity? The people who serve him do not doubt the simplicity, nay, the austerity of his personal life. The monarch darns his own socks, stitches his own clothes, sleeps on a board of unpolished wood, eats the simplest fare and drinks no wine. He would rather walk than be carried in a litter on the shoulders of palanquin bearers. But he knows well that the way to the heart of the people of Hindustan, even or especially the idolaters whose religion he despises, lies in an unending display of public grandeur combined with an ascetic private life. The former, the pomp of power, they expect from his station as a sovereign, whereas the latter is a sign of his humanity they can identify with as their own lot.

  The quality that sets Aurangzeb apart from most monarchs and one he shares with a few other rulers in history—I speak here of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, Henry VII of England, Shah Abbas of Persia—is his single-mindedness in the pursuit of his goals that does not leave the slightest room for sentiment in his means of achieving them. No confusion has ever waited on his banners. He is strong because his will is implacable and his actions are dictated purely by reasons of state
, recognizing no ties of love, affection or loyalty. He imprisoned his father, the erstwhile emperor, in the fort at Agra where the latter died under mysterious circumstances after twelve years of captivity, not because Aurangzeb wished to avenge the favours his father had showered on Dara while neglecting him, but because he recognized the potential threat posed by the scheming old man to his reign in Hindustan. He knew well the machinations that were at play, whether it was of his father’s command to his guard of three thousand Tartar women to capture the prince when he entered the fort after his victory at Samugarh, or the old emperor’s attempt to win over his jailer, Sultan Muhammad, Aurangzeb’s son, and the similar overtures made by him to Murad.

  Murad, whom Aurangzeb seized immediately after their triumph over the imperial forces led by Prince Dara and later ordered to be killed by post, his preferred slow-acting poison, could not be left alive to claim the throne he believed had been promised to him by his brother. It is a harsh but essential requirement for securing peace and stability in an empire that all competitors for the throne must be expeditiously eliminated. ‘If you would be king, never leave a wounded prince alive,’ seemed to be the principle ruling his actions, a principle that was not only personal but enshrined in the annals of the dynasty. This imperative also applied to Prince Dara’s son Sulaiman Shukoh, who was captured after defeat in battle. Many have maligned the emperor for refusing to grant Sulaiman’s wish to be executed immediately and for prolonging his suffering by the administration of repeated doses of post, but the emperor’s actions were driven by the assertion that his nephew had to be kept alive for a few months to reveal the existence of other devious piots that could have been afoot.

  Some have expressed shock that Aurangzeb had his eldest son, Sultan Muhammad, poisoned, as also his sister Roshanara Begum, both of whom had rendered him invaluable support during the events leading to the war of succession. The executions, for I refuse to call them murders, were necessary for the two reasons I have stated above. Sultan Muhammad had begun to boast that it was to him that Aurangzeb should feel indebted for his crown, a precursor to the belief that it was he rather than his father who deserved to wear it. By a fortuitous coincidence, after he had sent Sultan Muhammad to the state prison in Gwalior, I was summoned by the emperor for a consultation on his insomnia that had again taken hold of his nights, and was witness to Aurangzeb advising his second son, Sultan Muazzam, who stood before him with his head bowed and his shoulders sagging in a posture of utter submission: ‘Be wise, or a fate similar to that which has befallen your brother awaits you. Do not indulge in the fatal delusion that Aurangzeb may be treated by his children as was his grandfather by his son Shah Jahan, or that, like the latter, he will permit the sceptre to fall from his hands.’

  Roshanara Begum, too, believing that her brother’s ascension to the throne gave her license to indulge in sexual excesses that became the scandal of Delhi, did not realize that her brother neither acknowledged any debts of gratitude nor expected any thankfulness for favours he granted. When the emperor discovered that his sister kept eight young men in her palace for her pleasure—this was after he had announced the appointment of a Protector of Public Morals in all cities with a population of more than ten thousand to enforce bans on gambling, drinking and prostitution and the playing of music and had introduced the Sharia punishment of stoning to death a woman caught indulging in illicit carnal relations—he did her a favour by poisoning her and thus sparing her the ignomity of a public lynching.

  The only occasion when the emperor’s feelings overcame his reason was in his treatment of Prince Dara after the latter’s capture by the imperial forces led by Raja Jai Singh and Bahadur Khan. All those who had the greatest admiration for the emperor’s ability to remain calm under grave provocation, were shocked by the intensity of his hatred, which came pouring out like sulphurous lava. But does this outburst of emotion not belie the accusation that he was cold and often appeared devoid of all human emotion? I can personally vouch for the falsity of the canard that he ordered the severed head of Dara to be wrapped as a gift parcel and sent to their father imprisoned in the Agra fort and that the old emperor, at first overjoyed that his son was finally rediscovering a filial sentiment, swooned when he opened the parcel and beheld its gory contents. It is true that the inhabitants of Delhi, chiefly the idolaters and Mohammedans of a lower order, almost rose in revolt at Aurangzeb’s treatment of his elder brother when he was brought to Delhi as a prisoner. I must point out, however, that such gratuitous cruelty is not the province of an individual but a general feature of the oriental character. I am convinced that after this particular episode of loss of control, the monarch’s rare displays of rage in public were just calculated shows designed to intimidate rather than spontaneous outbursts.

  For Aurangzeb, the spread of Islam and guarding it from contamination by infidels, as also the undermining of Quranic precepts by liberal interpretations of heretics within its own fold, were higher missions than securing the Mogul empire; one can say that the latter was a necessary precondition for the former. The harsh steps he took to weaken, if not destroy, the religion of the idolaters had been constrained by the necessity of preserving the empire which, in turn, made these steps possible. Indeed, he has been freer in stamping out heresy within Islam, executing many Shia, Bohra and Sufi saints who were unwilling to follow the orthodox Sunni faith. No one can doubt that a personal commitment to a religion, which we in Europe rightly regard as theologically naïve and morally primitive, is the guiding force of his life. His first act after the coronation, the prohibition of stamping on coins the kalimah, ‘La ‘ilaha illallah mohammedur-rasulallah (There is no God but Allah, Mohammed is Allah’s messenger)’—lest the words of God become polluted by the touch of unworthy hands, is proof of the omnipresence of Islam in his life and its status as the prime mover of his actions. No one who knows India and has observed the emperor from close quarters can doubt that he has immeasurably strengthened the roots of both the empire and Islam and that for centuries to come European nations will have to take both these facts into account in their commerce with that land.

  Epilogue

  ‘I AM CONTENT, TRULY,’ I say to Khwaja Chisti, responding more to the pity in his voice than his expressed regret that all he can offer his old friend is a lowly position in Danishmand Khan’s household. ‘That I will serve out the rest of my days here, and will never be a Nazir in the emperor’s harem, is not even a minor misfortune in the larger scheme of things. Emperor Shah Jahan—ruler of universe—spent the last twelve years of his life as a prisoner in a palace he had built for his pleasure, but which the wheel of destiny sought fit to turn into his gaol. No, my friend, in these dark days it would be blasphemy to complain about my lot.’

  We are sitting in the pavilion in Danishmand Khan’s garden. Chisti’s Agha is away, accompanying Emperor Alamgir on an expedition to Kashmir.

  Dusk is approaching. A roseate light, darkening in hue from one moment to the next, spreads above us. For a brief instant I am disoriented as the sky takes on a colour I have seen only at the break of dawn, but the illusion soon vanishes. As the sun dips below the horizon, Chisti says, ‘Niamat, the sun has set.’

  Chisti is an old friend, but sometimes his penchant for stating the obvious makes me want to tear my hair out.

  Author‘s Note

  IT IS IMPORTANT TO note that for all their differences in origin, upbringing and temperament, Francois Bernier and Niccolao Manucci were Europeans of their place and era who viewed Mughal India and Shah Jahan’s court through the lens of a sensibihty crafted by European prejudices, preoccupations and concerns of the time. Thus, for instance, the attention they devote to Hindu-Muslim and Sunni-Shia differences may well be due to a sharpened European vision for sectarian rifts. As my friend Professor Muzaffar Alain of the University of Chicago, a recognized authority on Mughal India, remarks, this particular sensibility was the heritage of a European polity that had not only purged itself of Jews and Muslims, who
had long inhabited their lands, but even of Protestants or Catholics, depending on the religious orientation of the king of the realm. Mughal tolerance for the ways of infidels, at least pre Aurangzeb, was certainly greater than what we encounter in these travellers’ accounts. Even in the case of a ‘celebrated’ bigot like Aurangzeb, of his seven chief ministers four were Shia.

  Written from the perspectives of two seventeenth-century European travellers, the novel may not do the Mughals complete justice. This, however, is the fate, and the fascination, of historical fiction, which seeks to give imaginative life to historical events and must find a balance between the emotional truth of its characters and the often ambiguous evidence of history, between the needs of fiction and the demands of historiography. Actually, the liberties I have taken with historical facts are minimal: Danishmand Khan, an exalted noble in Shah Jahan’s court, a Mir Bakshi in-charge of giving rank to the nobles and checking their contingents, was a valued adviser on foreign affairs but not the foreign minister; the authorship of Dabistan-i-Mazahib is generally attributed to Mobad rather than Dara’s drinking companion, Halim.

  As always, I would like to acknowledge the inputs of my wife Katha, who is the first—and sometimes the only—reader of my texts before they go to the publishers. The manuscript of this novel, however, had other readers, too: Ravi Singh, who has been editing my work in Penguin for a long time now and has not lost any of his initial zest; Kala Ramesh, who commented on the first draft of the novel; the historians Muzaffar Alam and Farhat Hasan, who were kind enough to point out errors of fact. I am grateful to all of them for their inputs. I also wish to thank Dr Manasi Kumar for her help in procuring library materials related to the period and main characters of this novel and for constantly asking when I was going to finish writing the novel. My gratitude to Poulomi Chatterjee, editor extraordinaire, who adopted this fictional child as her own. Her involvement in and contributions to the book are so vital that no expression of thanks can ever be enough.