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Death in exile, demolished from memory
THERE ARE some whom misfortune dogs even after death. Bahadur Shah Zafar is one of them. His last wish to be buried in India remained unfulfilled and he was laid to rest in Rangoon by the British late at night by lantern light, wrapped in a dirty piece of cloth. Zafar seems to have had a foreboding of this or he would not have written his famous elegy, lamenting the fact that he had been denied even two yards of land in his native place. Now 141 years after his death - for it was in November 1862 that he breathed his last (when Tagore was a few months old) - fate has thought it fit to strike again at the ill-starred Moghul. His tehsil in Delhi, which had been confiscated by the British after the Revolt of 1857, is facing demolition at the hands of colonisers. The tehsil had been sold to Lala Chunamal but now it has changed hands once again with a large part of the baradari already demolished.
The tehsil lies north of Hauz Shamshi, the focus of the annual Phool-Walon-ki-Sair. It was given to Zafar by his father at a time when he was the heir apparent, but facing stiff opposition from his step-mother, who wanted her own son to ascend the throne after Akbar Shah-II. But as subsequent events proved, Queen Mumtaz Mahal-II's wish could not be realised, because Bahadur Shah was destined to be the last of the line of Babar.
Why did Zafar need the tehsil? One of the reasons is that he felt suffocated within the confines of the Red Fort, with all its intrigues and counter-intrigues in the zenana. He was a man of open spaces in his younger days, hunting deer across the Yamuna or spending time in Mehrauli with his friends and acquaintances. He was fond of mangoes, and in summer there was enough of the fruit to tempt him to stay there. Another reason was his attachment to Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, the saint whose shrine he loved to visit, not only on Thursdays when the qawalis were sung, but on other weekdays too. Zafar had great faith in the miraculous powers of the saint, something he shared in common with his stepmother, for she too was a great devotee of Qutb Sahib.
After he ascended the throne Zafar did not stop his visits to Mehrauli. As a matter of fact, he went there with his court for long periods, specially during the rainy season. It was in the gardens of Mehrauli that his youthful queen Zeenat Mahal played hide-and-seek with her maids and Zafar composed his soulful ghazals. Most of the buildings in the tehsil were built by him after the death of Akbar Shah. The baradari was the result of his distaste for the structure earlier erected by him in the Sawan Bhadon pleasure pavilion in the Red Fort, and which is now in a sorry state of disrepair, threatening to collapse any day.
The new baradari was a far better architectural achievement and more in keeping with Moghul heritage. Its imposing gateway and some other buildings are still there and in urgent need of being saved from colonisers. The Conservation Society of Delhi had approached the Lieutenant-Governor and other authorities on this issue and it is in the fitness of things that Bahadur Shah's constructions are preserved for posterity.
The demand to bring back the remains of Bahadur Shah Zafar has been raised from time to time, the latest one being the plea by Syed Shahabuddin. Reports from Rangoon say that the graves of Zafar, his wife, Zeenat Mahal, and son, Jawan Bakht, are now being looked after properly, with the last emperor being revered as a pir.
Zafar had intended his last resting place to be in the vicinity of the shrine of Hazrat Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. His `sardgah' or empty grave can still be seen in the small cemetery there.
After his trial and conviction by the British, the deposed Emperor left Delhi in October 1859 along with close members of his family. The poet in Zafar grieved in silence at the verdict of the firangis who had paradoxically charged him with waging war on the State, which meant against himself, for wasn't he the rightful ruler of Hindustan?
How many ghazals Zafar composed mentally on the way to exile can only be imagined, for poetry was his very life breath. But the other members of the royal party grumbled all the way, particularly Zeenat Mahal, and his other wife, Taj Begum. As a matter of fact, Taj Begum returned half way from the journey. The others were not so lucky.
On his arrival in Calcutta, Zafar was reminded of another poet and ruler who was forced to spend his last years in exile, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh. But at least Calcutta - now Kolkata - was part of India, while Rangoon - Yangun - was not. So even that consolation was denied to him.
During his trial Zafar had asked that he be sent away to Mecca to spend the last few years of his life. But the plea was rejected. However, some members of his family did manage to escape there. But Mirza Nasirul Mulk was not one of them. A cripple, he died in penury in the Jama Masjid area after the Coronation Durbar of 1911.
Zeenat Mahal and Jawan Bakht submitted several petitions to the British, seeking permission to return to India. But they were all rejected. The once beautiful begum died an old toothless hag and then Jawan Bakht. But the heir apparent's descendants perhaps still live in Myanmar.
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