60-year-old Sulatana Begum.
Credit: X/@AskAnshul
A lot of royal families in India still bask in the respect and wealth that their ancestors enjoyed at the time of their reign, but the story of Sultana, the great granddaughter-in-law of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar is starkly different.
Sixty-year-old Sulatana Begum, who lives in a tiny hut in Kolkata's Howrah, is living a life that her ancestors in royal palaces would not have imagined back in the day.
As per a report in The Times of India, she shares a tiny two-room hut with her family and uses the street taps for washing, and has a common kitchen shared with her neighbours.
As per the publication, after the demise of Sultana's husband, Prince Mirza Bedar Bukht, in the 1980s, she has struggled to survive and support her six children, with a pension of merely Rs 6,000 per month.
She currently lives with her unmarried daughter Madhu Begum, while her other daughters, who are also struggling financially are of no help to her.
Despite writing several petitions seeking financial support, Sultana has not received any assistance from the government of India yet. However, human rights activists have been helping Sultana and others like her. While she holds immense pride in her family's royal lineage, it has not been of much use for her.
Her great grandfather-in-law Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughal emperor who was exiled after the failure of the Revolt of 1957.
He breathed his last in Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar). Like his descendants, many belonging to aristocratic families have had to fend for themselves after the fall of the Mughal dynasty and British colonial rule.