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Nets of Awareness

University of California Press

By the late eighteenth century, the once-mighty Mughal Empire was in rapid political decline. The magnificent Red Fort itself had been sacked over and over by a series of plunderers: first by Nadir Shah and his Persians (1739), who carried off the famous Peacock Throne; then by Ahmad Shah Abdali and his Afghans (1757); and finally by Ghulam Qadir and his Rohillas (1788), who not only despoiled the library but even dug up the palace floors looking for concealed valuables. Toward the end of this period the unfortunate emperor Shah ‘alam II (r. 1759-1806), Aurangzeb’s great-great-grandson, had much to endure. He was crowned while a fugitive in Bihar, and did not even manage to return to Delhi until 1772. His political impotence became proverbial; as the saying went, “The realm of Shah ‘alam—from Delhi to Palam.”1 The emperor knew humiliation, helplessness, and actual poverty. He was “only a chessboard king” (253).

At length he accepted the Marathas as his protectors, and from 1785 to 1803 they were the real power behind his throne. Even then, though, his tribulations were not over. For when the brutal Ghulam Qadir seized the city in 1788, he was outraged at finding so small an amount of loot—and had Shah ‘alam blinded. The Marathas later came to the rescue, retook the city, and restored the blind emperor to his nominal throne. But gradually, amidst the military and political turbulence of the period, the British gained the upper hand over the Marathas; finally, in 1803, Lord Lake took Delhi. For the first time in decades, stability returned to the city. The new conquerors, like the old, valued the Mughal dynasty for its time-honored legitimating power, its continuing hold on the Indian imagination. The British kept Shah ‘alam II on the throne until his death three years later, at the age of seventy-nine.2

Despite Shah ‘alam’s legal sovereignty, his throne rested uncertainly on layers of nostalgia and remembered glory. He himself as an “emperor” was hopelessly vulnerable. But he had another calling as well: he was a serious poet, as well as a notable connoisseur and patron of poetry. Toward the end of his life, poetry became his chief pursuit. And as a poet, he could feel an unchallengeable pride and confidence. He came from a tradition that knew itself as the center of its cultural world—and knew that its cultural world was the only one that counted. For he wrote in the beautiful court language, Persian, and took full advantage of its rich classical literature and its sophisticated, highly developed array of genres. As Persian poets had done for centuries, he often composed in the brief, intense lyric genre of ghazal (Ghazal), with its endless romantic and mystical possibilities. And as Persian poets had also done for centuries, he chose a personal pen name (takhallus), which he incorporated into the last verse of each ghazal: he called himself “aftab” (Sun).

Moreover, as North Indian poets had been doing since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century, he composed ghazals not only in Persian, but also in Urdu. Urdu, while still resting firmly on its Indic grammatical and lexical base, was steadily enlarging its repertoire of Persian genres and imagery. As a literary language, Urdu was absorbing almost everything that Indians loved in Persian—so that it was in fact gradually supplanting Persian. Thus it is not surprising that when Shah ‘alam II wrote in Urdu, he, like most poets, used the same pen name as he did for his Persian verse. When he composed poetry in the Indic literary language of Braj Bhasha, however, he used a different pen name: his own title “Shah ‘alam” (Ruler of the World). He was also fluent in Panjabi, and is said to have known Arabic, Sanskrit, and Turkish. During his reign “the Red Fort once again became a center of literary enthusiasm.”3 It was the scene of frequent mushairahs (musha‘irah), or poetry recitation sessions.

Shah ‘alam’s eldest son, Javan Bakht, shared his love for poetry. “This exalted prince was so inclined toward poetry that he arranged for mushairahs to be held twice a month in his apartments; he used to send his own mace-bearer to escort the distinguished poets on the day of the mushairah, and encouraged everyone by showing the greatest kindness and favor.”4 Javan Bakht, however, died young. When Shah ‘alam himself died, the British installed his second son on the throne as Akbar Shah II (r. 1806-1837). Akbar Shah composed poetry only casually, because it was the thing to do; playing on his father’s pen name, he called himself “Shu‘a” (Ray). But the new heir apparent, Akbar Shah’s son Bahadur Shah (1775-1862), vigorously sustained the family poetic tradition: he brought poets into the Red Fort, held mushairahs, and pursued his own strong literary interests.5

Bahadur Shah was a very serious poet. The famous pen name he chose for himself, “Zafar” (Victory), was actually part of his given name, Abu Zafar Siraj ud-Din Muhammad Bahadur Shah. His mother, Lal Ba’i, was a Hindu. Bahadur Shah had been educated entirely within the Red Fort, under his grandfather’s supervision, and had mastered not only Urdu and Persian but Braj Bhasha and Panjabi as well; he composed a volume (divan) of poetry in each of these four languages. Like his grandfather, he used two separate pen names: “Zafar” for poetry in Urdu and Persian, “Shauq Rang” (Passionate) for the rest of his verse.6

When Akbar Shah II died, Bahadur Shah, who was sixty-two years old at the time, duly replaced him on the throne—a throne behind which the British were definitely the real power. The new emperor Bahadur Shah II (r. 1837-1857) was a man of parts: he studied not only poetry but mystical philosophy as well, and practiced calligraphy, pigeon flying, swordsmanship, horse breeding, riding, and other aristocratic arts. While his dress and most of his tastes were simple and dignified, he enjoyed the company of women: he was much influenced by his favorite wives, and continued to marry an occasional new one even into his sixties and seventies. Living on a fixed British pension, he nevertheless had royal traditions of largesse to uphold, as well as many relatives and dependents to support, so that he was hard-pressed for funds; he used every possible means to increase his income, and his financial affairs were always in disarray.7 He certainly felt the difficulty of his position—and sometimes wittily used it as a source of poetic imagery. As he wrote in one of his poems, “Whoever enters this gloomy palace/Is a prisoner for life in European captivity.”8

Bahadur Shah was a man of “cultured and upright character,” who as a “philosophic prince” could have “adorned any court,” and whose “interests and tastes were primarily literary and aesthetic.” The British certainly viewed him with less and less respect over time; yet, as Percival Spear argues, a large part of their disdain was a function of their own increasingly limited, utilitarian outlook on life. The emperor was “a poet, and so could expect no more consideration than the same men gave to...