Doesn’t mean I agree or disagree with the rest of your postings

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As a frequent visitor to the walled city I knew for long that ‘Tilanga’ has a pejorative connotation. Its connection with Tilangana is understandable too but how it got into the lingo of the city was always a mystery to me. Dalrymple’s Last Mughal not only helped me solved this riddle but its live and sensitive narrative without compromising the rigor of the discipline broke many stereotypes that have crept into the corpus of histories written for the period.

John Company recruited its soldiers for the Carnatic wars from Tilangana and the native recruits were addressed as Tilangas. Later Avadh supplied majority of Company soldiers but the appellation continued in currency and it was interchangeably used with Purbias-the Easterners (read foreigners). The unbecoming behavior of sepoys, who came to Delhi in search of a leader to head the rebellion, got embedded in the memory of its inhabitants.

Syncretism being the hallmark of Indian history and culture and White Mughals were the living testimony to this assertion. No one is as good as Dalrymple in recreating the life and times of these pliant whites who showed no qualms in mixing with the natives. Author should have explored the social background of these early company recruits to explain their friendly attitude towards natives. It is of interest to note that most of them were from Scotland –an underdeveloped part of then England. Life in the cantonment, Delhi’s bazaars and even the food habits of Indian and British find authentic mention in the book. The most amusing is the account of innumerable gastronomical gourmet laid on the dinner table of family of English Sahib and religiously sticking to the routine of consuming six meals a day.

Life in the fort, daily routine of emperor and especially evening Mushairas were described to their last detail. The affairs of concubines with courtiers were very embarrassing for the aging and ailing emperor indicated that the sunset of Mughal royalty was just round the corner. The thefts committed by salatins highlighted their impecunious life and with their sizable number they were considered a kind of shame for the palace. . Money arranged from the money lenders of city by the chief Eunuch and the confidant of Zinat Mahal for the marriage of her only son Jawan Bakth gives us only the glimpse of the grandeur and scale of the weddings of Mughal Royalty and author has recaptured it with matching nuance and detail.

One is charmed to read the graphic accounts of the life of Delhi’s leading family of white Mughals –the Skinners. The famous editor of pro British Delhi Gazette Mr.Wagentrieber was the son-in-law of James Skinner whose English according to Fanny Eden was stilted and ungrammatical. The interesting parallels in the lives of Zafar and Thomas Metcalf could convince you that their fate was under the spell of same celestial configuration. Death of his daughter-in-law, Theo’s wife under mysterious circumstances gives us the feel of Spooky stories of Raj by Ruskin Bond.

The legendary rivalry of Zauq and Ghalib must have given an extra sting to MirzaÂ’s poetry who could not hide his jealousy and annoyance for Emperor being partisan in favour of less versatile Ustad-Zauq. MirzaÂ’s meager annual income of Rs750/- his share of the family pension- was insufficient to sustain and maintain even a semblance of the life style expected of Mughal nobility The death of Mirza Fakhru-the heir apparent who was GhalibÂ’s disciple and annexation of Avadh from where he was getting Rs 500/- annual stipend – augmented his financial difficulties. Life of Mirza was a reflection of the life of Mughal elite of the period. His sharp observations of his sojourn at Calcutta in AD1828, his pride preventing him to take up teaching job in Delhi College, his disgust with Tilangas and brutalities of British were weaved into the narrative to convey the first hand account by one of the most agile minds of the times marked by chaos and mayhem.

It is understandable that ailing Zafar was disinterested in his trial but what is baffling that ZafarÂ’s ignorance to differentiate between Persians & Russians when asked about his intrigue with the former. Jawan Bakht the most adorable son of Zafar trading secrets about his motherÂ’s treasure and giving incriminating evidences against emperor for 100 cheroots. There is little doubt that the royal scion showed no ability and dignity to inherit the empire. The termite of decay had completely engulfed the mighty Mughal Empire once the envy of its contemporaries.

After the capture of Zafar from Humayun Tomb by Col. Hudson, fond of Urdu poetry, shot a couplet- dam dame me dam nahi khair maango jahan ki / ab ho chuki talwar hindustan ki. Zafar retorted back with an immortal verse – jab talaq rahegi hindiyon mein boo imaan ki / tab talaq chalegi tage British pe talwar Hindustan ki.( As long as there is a drop of conscience left among Indians they continue to fight British). Except the chance omission of this small but important incident the book is the most authentic account of life and times of Zafar.

Dalrymple has earned the birth in the exclusive club of historians who can write history with an absorbing narrative and spare the reader being subjected to dull and dry narrative. Going by authorÂ’s own admission that he could explore only 10 percent of the material at his disposal, including hither to little used mutiny papers, we can expect that the next edition will be more richer in terms of empirical data and analysis. Publisher should have considered realizing paper back edition for Indian readers too as they have done oversees.
Vikram Kumar

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Editor Outlook By email: letters@outlookindia.com

Sir

DalrympleÂ’s The Last Mughal will interest students of Mughal arrogance, complacency and decadence, but his research of the period may well force a drastic review of perceptions about 1857.

Anyone who has done a wee bit more reading than others about the event knows that, apparently, conditional ban on cow-slaughter was the main sop in enlisting majority support for the uprising. Proclamations like ‘Fateh Allah’ had been drafted by mullahs. Leaders of the majority faction (notably Nanasaheb Peshwa, Tatya Tope, Laxmibai, Kunwar Singh and Beni Madhav) had never concealed their subordination to Mughal imperialism after the successful culmination of the event. In regions where the uprising succeeded, the rebels constituted governments which were mainly run by erstwhile Muslim royalty or nobility and participation of Hindus was minimal, if at all.

As the author writes, “The Great Mutiny has usually been told by the Marxist historians of the 1960s and 1970s primarily as a rising against British economic policies”. That simplistic – if not motivated – picture will be considerably altered, especially since the author claims to have used hitherto untapped sources.

One feels the book may well be an eye-opener.

• Bhalchandrarao C. Patwardhan

I do not have the heart to say this but I have to – it doesn’t seem as if Al Mujahid has been reading much lately.

My purpose in questioning you was not to goad you on to writing premature obituaries of postmodernism, post-structuralism or even a nearly dead literary criticism – you seem to have had a rather troubled sojourn at the university – but to engage you in an enlightening move whereby you could tell us with some exactitude as to how you would define the preachings of Srimadbhagwadgita as philosophy! How, for instance, would you like to play with the following paradoxes:

dehanAshabhayAditi dvitIyapaxaM nirAha –

That it (the fear) is on account of bodily destruction, thus a second objection is refuted thus:

dehino.asmin.h yathA dehe kaumAraM yauvanaM jarA | tathA dehAntaraprAptirdhIrastatra na muhyati || 13 ||

Just as the embodied experiences the infancy, the youth, and the old age of the body; so also the obtaining of another body, and in this matter the intelligent one is not deluded.

Point no 1: Body or deha is transient nashwar and spirit or aatmAN is eternal. The idea of spiritual decay is negated in Srimadbhagwadgita. How one wishes Lord Krishna was around today to see in disbelief that spirit is the most easily corruptible commodity and is, as such, prone to decay much before the body. Point no 2: Which is the real Krishna? The one that existed in narcissistic euphoria before the Mahabharata? The one that craftily and amorally monitored the war during the Mahabharata? Or, the one who in utter despondence in the post war scenarion left to embrace his mortal destiny that hit him in the form of a stray arrow shot by a tribal after the Mahabharata? These three are different Krishnas and their worldviews (not philosophies) are invariably functioning at cross purposes.