The Death of Hope

 

 

Of late, there has been a lot of interest in events around the great Indian mutiny of 1857. After William Dalrymple’s fascinating account of the last days of the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Roli publishers have come up with a new edition of The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar, first published in 1932, and documented by HLO Garrett, the then keeper of records of the government of Punjab.

The documents presented in this book are a fascinating portrait not only of the three-week trail, with details of arguments for the prosecution, evidence placed before the military court and the defence of the Last Mughal. They also describe Delhi at a crucial juncture in its high-voltage history, the leap of national expectations, the mismanagement by a ruling elite that had forgotten how to rule, the extraordinary Hindu-Muslim unity at street and sepoy level, and the tragic somersault of events that ended in silence, despair and resignation.

The narrative is laced with a wealth of detail: the instigation of the Muslim citizenry of Delhi, the King’s apparent belief that a Persian invasion in support of the Mughal throne was imminent, his faith in the Urdu tabloid press, soothsayers and charlatans and the compelling role of rumour and bazaar gossip in rousing people.

During the trial, as Garrett comments, “The King displayed a singular line of conduct. Occasionally, while the evidence was progressing, he would coil himself up in his shawls, and, reclining upon the cushions placed for his convenience would appear perfectly indifferent to the proceedings around him; at other times he would suddenly rouse up, as if from a dream.” The actual trail, as Garrett notes, opened on January 27, 1858, and lasted, with intervals, for 21 days. The trail was to commence at 11 AM; but owing to delays, it finally began at 12.30 PM during which the “prisoner” was kept waiting in attendance under a strong guard of the Rifles. In October 1858, Bahadur Shah Zafar was finally sent into exile to Rangoon, where he died four years later at the age of 87.

“Seven years after Bahadur Shah Zafar died”, M J Akbar writes in his introduction, “having destroyed the hopes of his age, on 2nd October 1869, in the city of Porbandar, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born.” Webspace

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