I. The Dust of Empires
More than a century before the
skies of India would resound with the shouts of independence, and the world had
heard of Delhi as the vast capital of a free republic, it had heard of the
death of an empire. Not with a bang--but a whimper. At the core of this story
is a boy, an heir that was forgotten, whose name has barely made it to the
footnotes of history: Mirza Jawan Bakht, the son of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the
last emperor of the Mughals. He was born in the splendor of red sandstone, in
the fragrance of ittar and roses, and in a court that had not forgotten the
poetry of Ghalib and sword of Akbar. The world he inherited was already falling
apart. And history, with its merciless effectiveness, never left not even his
reign, but even his existence.
_______________________________________________________________________
II. The Palace without Power
When Mirza Jawan Bakht was born in 1841, the Mughal Empire was no more than a golden cage. British East India Company dominated trade, politics and even the royal allowance. Zafar, who was to have been master of an empire that extended as far as Kabul and Bengal, had turned into a simple figure head--a poet, rather than a king. But the Red Fort of Delhi had still some echo of honour. Urdu couplets were echoed in courtyards. Peacock fans moved in the heat. And here the boy grew,--nursed by a mother with fire in her eyes. Zeenat Mahal, the favorite wife of Zafar and the mother of Jawan Bakht, was hell-bent in ensuring that her child would reign. She disregarded the British wish to have another prince. She started to plant delicate political seedlings, talking in ears, giving dinners to officials and fanning ancient allegiances. To Zeenat, the throne of her son was not a matter of ambition but it was a matter of resistance.
_______________________________________________________________________
III. 1857: Delhi Burning
In May 1857 everything changed. The First War
of Independence, commonly referred to the Sepoy Mutiny, started in Meerut and
swept to Delhi like a summer storm. The rebel soldiers went directly to Bahadur
Shah Zafar and proclaimed him emperor again, of all Hindustan. Old and tired,
Zafar wavered. But the tide had already rushed. Mirza Jawan Bakht was only
sixteen, and he saw soldiers streaming into Delhi, chanting freedom slogans. Instead
of war, he was attired to poetry and calligraphy classes. but the occasion
required greater. He went with his father to court meetings which were turned
to war rooms. He saw his mother burn the letters after reading them. He heard
the mutterings of treason, the British spies in the palace. And when the
cannons started to thunder outside Kashmiri Gate the boy knew: history was no
longer written with ink. It was in blood written.
The British struck back with a vengeance that never had been
seen before. By September 1857, Delhi was a town which was dying hour by hour. Red
Fort was turned into a battlefield. The Yamuna was full of ashes. Stables were
created in mosques. British soldiers ran rampage in Chandni Chowk killing both
rebels and civilians. Bahadur Shah Zafar escaped when the British broke through
the Lahore Gate. His sons were seized and put to death before the Khooni
Darwaza, and their blood stained the road in which their forefathers had
marched with victory centuries before. Mirza Jawan Bakht was not, however,
spared--just. His mother concealed him, disguised him and made a peaceful
surrender. British authorities, either through diplomacy or perhaps to spare
him and Zeenat Mahal any more humiliation, sent him and Zeenat Mahal into exile
with Zafar to Rangoon (modern Yangon, Myanmar). Heir to prisoner--in a few
days.
V. Exile and Dust
Rangoon was not the place of royalties. The palace was a
mold and bamboo house. There were few servants. Food was plain. The emperor was
already in his 80s writing poetry on loss. His tears were like his ink, and his
poems sad. And by him stood Mirza Jawan Bakht helpless. Bahadur Shah Zafar died
in exile in 1862 and he was buried in an unmarked grave. The very man who used
to have millions at his feet was today lamented by not more than ten people. Mirza
Jawan Bakht was weeping like a son, but like an heir too. He not only buried
his father, but the Delhi throne. There was no kingdom in the crown. The prince
had no nation. But Zeenat Mahal never gave up. She demanded rights even in the
exile against the British. She insisted that her son would be given a chance to
go back to Delhi, so that he could spend a part of his life in his own country.
And at last the British gave way--and with difficulty.
VI. Return of the Forgotten Prince
Mirza Jawan Bakht came back to India in 1881, when he had
been forgotten by most people. He could not live in Delhi, or any royal estate.
They gave him a small pension and a small house in Calcutta. No court. No
power. No subjects. He led a life of quiet virtue, of unpolitical, of
unpoetical, of unhistorical life. The people who had seen him wrote of his
majesty, of his courtly conduct, and of the melancholy of his eyes. The boy who
was to become a king, had become a man who was the king of silence. He married
and had children and spent his remaining years to see that they had an
education-maybe hoping that they would inherit, at least, a future, though not
a kingdom. He passed away in 1884, only three years after he came home. No
state funeral. No headlines. No monument. A mere entry in a ledger--and another
page filled in the volume of lost royalty.
VII. Why We Forgot Him
History is strange in
its choice of heroes. We recall the first emperor-Babur who marched across
rivers. We recall Akbar, and his stories of toleration and battle elephants. We
recall the despot Aurangzeb, and the miserable Dara Shikoh. But we forget the
last. Maybe, because there is no glory in the endings. Mirza Jawan Bakht was a
non-soldier. He never led armies and conquered lands. He was not revolutionary.
He was not a poet. He was just... a boy in the fall of worlds. His is the
silent story, which resounds. It makes us understand that history is not only
done by those who win-but also by those who survive.
VIII. A Legacy in Shadows
Now-a-days, tourists would stroll through the Red Fort with
their cameras taking snaps and drinking Coke, without even knowing that in
these walls were once heard the voices of a forgotten prince and his sorrowful
mother. British attempted to obliterate him. Indian historians tended to pass
him over. And the people did not know him. But then, in this silent
recollecting, in this recounting of his story--Mirza Jawan Bakht is placed
after all. Not in a chair, but in the hearts of those that care to hear.
***** THE END *****
***** THE END *****
0 Comments