India's poet emperor

Bahadur Shah Zafar’s is a story without any glory or heroism. While the rebels suspected him of siding with the British, the British accused him of leading the rebellion against them.However, he was a tremendously gifted person. He was a reputed Persian scholar, a marvelous calligrapher, and a renowned and recognised Urdu poet of his times. Salil Misra throws light on the life and times of the last Mughal emperor of India.

The story of Abu Muzaffar Sirajuddin Mohammad Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862), India’s poet emperor, is not simply his story. It is intimately connected with the end of an era of Indian history, and the beginning of another.

Zafar was India’s last emperor and a passive protagonist who presided over the dissolution of medieval India and the precarious sprouting of modern India. It is an epochal story of one of the major transformations in Indian history. It is also the story of the end of Mughal Empire, one of the largest and grandest the world had ever seen before.

The Mughals were not just any other ruling dynasty. They played an instrumental role in fashioning the idea of India. The military might of the Empire, the colossal revenue fiscal structures, and the administrative machinery were all fashioned around a much-nuanced idea of kingship, which rested in the persona of the Mughal emperor.

Such was the glory of the Mughal Empire that Father Edward Perry, a European priest travelling to India in the 17th century commented: “The Great Mughal, considering his territory, his wealth, and his rich commodities, is the greatest known king of the East, if not of the world.”

For a whole range of reasons, the balance of the military might, the revenue structure and the centralised administrative machinery began to falter soon after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. By the beginning of 19th century, the great Mughal Empire was reduced to a mere shadow of its magnificent past.

Much of the power went into the hands of the British, a newly rising commercial force, and also to regional powers like the Jats, Marathas and the Sikhs. Mughal Empire was emptied of all power and wealth which got dispersed among the British and the regional powers. All that the Mughal Empire was left with was formal sovereignty and symbolic legitimacy. The Mughal ruler was still called the representative of God on earth (Zill-i Ilahi) and the emperor of the universe (Badshah-i Alam) even though his jurisdiction did not extend very much beyond the walls of the Red Fort.

However, at the beginning of the 19th century, even the symbolisms began to gradually disappear. The formal status of the ruler of India was reduced from that of an ‘Emperor’ to a mere ‘king’ in the official British records. The tribute that the Marathas used to pay the Mughal ruler was called peshkash (gift).

The British paid more money to the Mughal ruler, but called it pension instead, much to the disgust of the Mughal emperor. Various other gifts (nazr) that were paid by the Governor General and the princes to the emperor were discontinued by the British.

The emperor was also debarred from the royal privilege of awarding robes of honour and holding durbars. He could not nominate his successor and the British decided to nominate the next ruler of India. The last Mughal rulers were also asked to leave the Red Fort, the real symbol of Mughal grandeur and authority, and live elsewhere.

All these were humiliating conditions and the British were able to impose them because the real power had shifted to their hands. The Mughal Empire was nowhere close to the heights of its glory of the previous three centuries.

It was under these conditions that Bahadur Shah Zafar, the hero of our story, ascended the Mughal throne in 1837, at the age of 62. He had been a witness in his early days, not merely to the dissolution of an empire, but also to the idea of Mughal kingship.

Zafar was probably the most unlikely of Mughal rulers and most unsuited for the task. It was not that he did not possess any important qualities. He was a tremendously gifted person. But these personal qualities were least likely to help him cope with the crisis that he inherited as the formal ruler of Hindustan.

Multi-faceted personality

Zafar was born from a Muslim father and a Rajput mother. He was a reputed Persian scholar and a marvelous calligrapher. He liked discussing books, holding discussions and also visiting the shrines of Sufi saints.

From very early in his life, Zafar had acquired Sufi dispositions. Near the shrine of Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki (in Mehrauli) he built a palace called Zafar Mahal, which he visited every year to watch the famous fair, Phool walon ki sair, which he inaugurated. The fair is still held annually.

But above all, Zafar was a renowned and recognised Urdu poet of his times. Four collections of his poetry were published and are available with us. Quite unsurprisingly, he wrote of love, loss and a longing for the lost world. Reading his poems today, you get a sense of a man in distress and captivity and craving for freedom.

His poetry is full of the traumas of life and the only way out is the freedom into the unknown. Longing for freedom but the inability to break out of one’s captivity is a constant theme in his ghazals. His couplets are full of imageries such as fowler, chain, captive, cage, snare, etc. There is no doubt that his poems reflect his own predicaments and those of the times he lived in. He was also a great patron of poetry and the leading all-time Urdu poets such as Ghalib, Zauq and Momin were patronised by Zafar.

None of these qualities could be of any use and did nothing to prepare him for the tough times ahead. When he sat on the throne in 1837, Zafar inherited a kind of ‘cold war’ that had gone on between the previous ruler Akbar Shah II and the British.

But it was hardly a war between equals. The Mughal ruler had hardly any power and the powerful British were quite determined to put an end to the facade of the grand and the magnificent Mughal Empire. Zafar, however, could not completely break from the past and did nurture an ambition to retrieve the past glory of the Mughals.

Given the circumstances, it was inevitable that the ‘cold war’ would soon turn into a hot and a proper war. That happened in 1857. But the manner in which it happened took everybody by surprise. Zafar had no control over the unfolding of the events, but he found himself at the centre of a huge turmoil that gripped Delhi and most of India.

It all started on May 9, 1857 when an Indian contingent of the British army stationed at Meerut, suddenly revolted and killed their British officers. Then they did something that was most unusual and defied all logic. They captured arms, headed straight for Delhi and called on the 82-year-old Zafar. They implored him to accept their services in the cause of the Mughal rule which they were anxious to restore. They appeared determined to end the rule of the British, throw the British out of India and restore Hindustan back to the Mughals. What was old Zafar to do? The soldiers wanted to fulfil his cherished ambition.

But he knew he was powerless. And he doubted whether the soldiers would be able to stand up to the might of the British. The intentions of the rebel soldiers did not seem to match their abilities. Yet the temptation was too great to turn down. There was a remote possibility that the big confrontation might bring back Mughal power in the short run. But it also carried the prospects of total annihilation in the long run. What was Zafar to do?
Zafar agreed to go along with the rebel soldiers and take on the British. This was to be a final assault, a do-or die-struggle.

From the Red Fort he issued an appeal to the rebels and to the people of Hindustan, but even in his formal appeal, Zafar chose to speak out his helplessness: “I am with you wholeheartedly. But I possess neither a treasury nor an army.” However, all the helplessness notwithstanding, the Meerut rebellion carried a great symbolic significance for the dying and disintegrating Mughal Empire and boosted its sagging morale.

The famous silver throne, that had been languishing in the basement for the last many years, was brought back to the Diwan-i -Khas. Zafar held a durbar with all the glory associated with the Empire. He also released Rs 500 everyday for the daily needs of the rebel army. There was a new vitality in the administration, not seen for many years. Zafar instructed his officials to ensure against any loot and plunder of the city and its people.

Zafar loved his Shahjahanabad and its people. He wanted them to feel secure and protected. But he also knew that the rebel soldiers who came from outside felt no attachment for the city or its people. He also knew that after defeating the British, the rebels might loot and plunder the city. And he did not want it.

Leader in name only

What Zafar had feared happened almost immediately. The rebel soldiers looted and killed and plundered. Zafar was unhappy but helpless. There was no way he could control the soldiers. He was only their symbolic leader. In reality, he was following them.

The situation had got completely out of control. He knew that the only way the situation could be remedied was if the Mughal Empire was restored to its previous glory. That could only happen if the soldiers and the people got united and put up a joint struggle against the British. At that specific conjuncture in 1857, Zafar saw himself as a leader of the people and of the soldiers. He wanted to patronise the soldiers and protect the people.

The trouble was that the soldiers and the people of Delhi were not always together in a joint struggle. Protecting the people meant protecting them not just from the British, but also from the rebel soldiers. But he had control over no one. The situation had acquired its own momentum. The circumstances, in which he had no role, had catapulted him to power and glory, however briefly. The same circumstances shaped up in such a manner that Zafar lost whatever eminence he enjoyed prior to the arrival of the rebels in Delhi.
As was to be expected, Delhi did not remain in the control of the rebels for long.

By September, the British recaptured the imperial city. Knowing that everything was lost, there was only one place to go for Zafar, the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (at present-day Nizamuddin).

Where else could he find peace and solace and comfort? He told his followers at the shrine that he knew that “the lamp of Mughal domination was extinguishing; it will remain but a few hours more... The country belongs to God; he may give it to whomsoever he likes.” From Nizamuddin, Zafar went to Humayun’s tomb, a short distance away. It was there that he was captured by the British and made a prisoner. Two of his sons and a grandson were killed by the British near Delhi Gate. Zafar was imprisoned at the basement in the Red Ford and kept like an ordinary prisoner, where he has ruled for 20 years and his ancestors, for nearly two centuries.

At the Red Fort, Zafar was tried and charged with treason, treachery and rebellion. The trial lasted for 42 days and may well have been the most humiliating thing to happen to Zafar. Interestingly, he was also charged with being the head of an international Muslim conspiracy, involving the kings of Iran and Turkey, and Indian Islamic leaders, to topple the British in India. The British managed to smell a great pan-Islamic conspiracy in the Indian rebellion, where in fact none existed. This ‘Islamophobia’ of the West certainly has a ring of contemporaneity.

At the trial, Zafar disowned any responsibility and completely underplayed his role in the rebellion. Nonetheless, he was declared guilty of murder at the end of the trial and punished with expulsion. He was deposed to Rangoon, where he spent the last four years of his life as prisoner of the British before he died in 1862, far away from his beloved Delhi and India, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

Bird in a storm

Zafar’s is a story without any glory or heroism. He did not seem to carry any initiative with him and was carried away here and there with every current. He was suspected by everybody. The rebels suspected him of siding with the British, and the British accused him of leading the rebellion against them. In reality, he did neither of the two things he was accused of.

Zafar was truly a ‘bird in a storm’, albeit a giant bird. His movements were determined by the direction of the storm. He found himself presiding over a huge rebellion, in whose making he had no role to play. It is true that he needed the rebellion because it could save him from the humiliation inflicted on his rule by the British. But the rebellion also needed him because only Zafar, as the nominal ruler of India, could mobilise regional rulers and princes in the struggle against the British.

And he played this role to perfection. He assumed the mantle of being India’s grand patriarch and reached out to many princes, inviting them to join the struggle to defeat the alien forces. It is important to recognise that he was calling upon all Indians to annihilate the British. He also wanted to organise a confederacy of Indians in whose favour he might have agreed to abdicate. Zafar was ready to delegate his powers to them, provided they joined him in the war. He was truly behaving like a ‘constitutional monarch’ of all India, albeit without a constitution. But in the end, ironically, he had to completely disown the rebellion; and the rebellion finished him.

Zafar was India’s last emperor. The India that emerged after 1857 was very different from the India of pre-1857 days. The Indian society gradually initiated a transition from the stable medieval order to the volatile and fluctuating modern times. The British domination became much more entrenched than before. India still needed a liberation struggle against the British domination, but of a different kind. This struggle did not need a Bahadur Shah Zafar. It needed a Mahatma Gandhi.

(The writer teaches history at the Ambedkar University, Delhi.)