H.L.O. Garrett
Roli Books
Pages 450
Rs 395
THE Taj Mahal and the Red Fort even today take us back into the grandeur and greatness of the Mughal dynasty established by Babur. With political acumen and a just administrative code, Humayun and Akbar built a prosperous empire that was said to be stable enough to survive great odds. But two decades of internal strife and decadence of the Mughal descendants brought irreparable ruin. Shah Alam and Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the lineage, became beggars requesting the British for increase in their stipends. For a short span, it seemed that the Mutiny of 1857 would bring back the splendor of the Timurids. But in the absence of resources and proper leadership, the mutiny degenerated into anarchy that helped the British to re-establish control and exile the last dynast.
The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar is a detailed and authentic account of the trial of the last Mughal that opened on January 27, 1858, and ended with the defendant’s testimony on March 9, 1858. A day-to-day account of the proceedings, an examination of the various witnesses and a reproduction of the relevant correspondence to examine the ‘treason’ of Bahadur Shah Zafar bring the trial to pulsating life. At another level, the accounts of eyewitnesses bring to life the essence of a bloody mutiny that became one with brutal chaos. The perspective of the mutiny is of course one-sided, being pro-British, largely on account of the fact that the evidences collated are focused on indicting the king for crimes of ‘mutiny and rebellion’.
At yet another level, the account of the trial also highlights the irony of a king charged with inciting ‘the subjects of the British government to rebel’ and proclaim himself as ‘sovereign of India’. But more than that, the trial shows the last Timurid in an unflattering light. It shows him first as a puppet in the hands of the mutineers and then as a shrinking coward who shrugs off blame for the mutiny to save his 82-year-old skin. Zafar unashamedly submitted that he was made a prisoner by the mutineers and his sons Mirza Moghal and Mirza Khair Sultan had ‘leagued with the revolted soldiery’. This indignity of the ‘scion of the House of Babur’ was rewarded by Major General Wilson who barred the Military Commission, set up to bring Bahadur Shah to trial, from passing a sentence even in case of a conviction.
At first glance the book appears to be a dry and boring resurrection of one of several imperial trials. The Prefatory Note by Garrett, Keeper of the Records of the Government of Panjab, describing the book as a ‘summary of principal evidence produced by the prosecution’ does not encourage interest. And yet as one wades through the various documents and testimonies, the king’s ‘farmans’ and court diary, one gets a glimpse of a living breathing of beleaguered Delhi under Zafar. The Trial thus becomes much more than a historical document chronicling dry facts. A rare treat indeed for the discerning reader.
The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar
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