Poor Bahadur Shah Zafar. He was woefully sidelined in life. In death,
things have only gotten worse. Not only has he been woefully sidelined
in the book purportedly devoted to him, but his only claim to fame, his
literary output has been challenged, even as he is vilified as a
good-for-nothing weakling.
The
Last Mughal, by William Dalyrmple has undoubtedly made very much thicker
by pages of compliments, but what about its rendering of the story of
1857 and the Last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar?
Of the 486 page story, how much is actually about Bahadur Shah Zafar and
his environs? The bias would be obvious with a simple page count in each
chapter which reveals that against 223 pages which tell the Indian
story; almost 263 give the British viewpoint.
There is an amazing amount of detail about life for the British in 1857,
with elaborate flourishes of verbal embroidery; comparatively very
little of the Indian overall picture. Yes, all the possible negatives of
the Mughal court are lovingly delineated. But it is difficult to digest
that amongst all those thousands of princelings, nawabs and adventurers
etc who descended on Delhi in 1857, there was not one single person of
any military or other type of leadership or vision? Was that actually
so?
Despite the loud claims of exhaustive research from new sources, the
only new references to the ordinary people of Delhi are one sentences
references to the horse seller, the prostitute, the dhobi and other
Delhi locals.
The records of the Mughal court itself, which would be an obvious
reference point, seem to be absent. When did the Mughal courts do away
with records and daily diaries, which are endemic in any Indian court?
The book is totally Delhi centric. The other 1857 developments are
barely mentioned in passing, whether the greased cartridge flashpoints,
the mass upsurges in central India and elsewhere. Even Kanpur and
Lucknow get short shrift in the telling of the Delhi story. When has
India been so rift as to be totally unaware of what is happening
elsewhere?
There is much use of verbal embroidery, beautiful or gruesome as the
case may be. For the Indian viewpoint, heavy reliance on Ghalib, Zahir
Dehlavi, Hakim Assunullah Khan primarily. Poor Ghalib has been so
vilified as a luxury loving traitor, a self-serving dodder. Was he
really? One wonders about his reputation and the reactions of the legion
of admirers of his works. How much of this is true?
And what about the central figure of the book, the Last Mughal, Bahadur
Shah Zafar? Where is the word picture of the man who, by the author’s
own admission, instigated a cultural Renaissance in his court, to
counter the steady erosion of his powers? How did he grow up? What were
the influences that shaped him? Within and without his immediate family?
His Hindu mother? Others? His various wives, sweethearts and concubines
etc? Others in his circle and harem?
His schooling? Mughal princes are not brought up in a vacuum. There is a
definite system of schooling in the classical and military tradition etc
which shapes the mind. Princely upbringing and scholarship which could
produce a poet and an inspiration for Renaissance would obviously
generate character, which is not visible in Dalyrmple’s Zafar.
This poor creature is seen as a shifty, lazy dodger of the worst order.
Worse, his only claim to note, for which he is still remembered today,
his poetry is contested. With the literary prowess of both Zafar and
Ghalib denigrated, the book seems to challenge accept known history.
Will some historian please enlighten us on the charge of the British
author/historian?
There is no information of Zafar’s long life before he came to the
throne. Was the Mughal court that devoid of any developments of any sort
for those sixty years before its crown prince finally came to the
throne?
Coming to the final chapters of the trial and the Burma years, is one to
infer that Davies wrote only one letter during those ix years in Burma,
hence the paucity of any material on the Burma exile. The trial has been
well recorded, but little comes through in the book. Was it because
exhaustive coverage would have been totally damning of the British?
Forgive the journalistic bent, one wonders why this book was written at
all, if facts were not be presented ?
February 17, 2008
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