A Quaint Autobiography
Zahir Dehlvi, a
resident of Shahjahanabad (one of the old cities of Delhi, comprising the Red
Fort and Chandni Chowk), was 22 years old, and newly married, when the Great
Mutiny broke out in 1857. The book brings to light the life of the Muslim elite
in the decaying Moghul Court of the nineteenth century. This life is touted as
reflective of the high culture, and the even higher literary accomplishment of
the Moghul Court, but is actually, a life of lazy indolence, intellectual stagnation,
and general decadence (for more on this see Andrews, Zaka Ullah of Delhi). This
anachronism was destined to end, and it did, with the outbreak of the Mutiny. Dehlvi
flees Delhi with his family after the Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar (the last
Moghul) leaves the Red Fort, and takes shelter in Humayun’s Tomb. This book is
a narration of the tumult, in Dehlvi’s own words. His record of the Mutiny,
largely coincides with all the major facts that are well known from the history
of the event. His personal experience of the event shines through in the
narration, and makes this book unique. However this book extends in space and
time, beyond the geographic boundaries of Delhi, and well into the early
twentieth century. It is a record of his life, first as an indolent, ornamental
courtier of the (gay?) ruler of Alwar, then as a policeman in the enlightened
state of Jaipur, as a Poet-Courtier in Tonk, and finally in the humourless,
graceless, and utilitarian court of Hyderabad, where he dies penniless, with no
takers for his poetry. An interesting book which gives us a peep into the
quaint life of pre-modern India.
The review of a
translation of an old text, not only requires an examination of the author’s
narration, but also the motivation of the translator to undertake such a task. Post-independence,
History writing began under the patronage of what is today called Nehruvian Secularism.
In simple language, this may be summed up: The Muslim rulers were very benign,
the Hindu rulers were equally bad. The Moghuls were loved by both Hindus and
Muslims alike. The Moghuls brought great architecture to India, and Aurangazeb
was a great botanist, and so on. The picture drawn is a concatenation of
numerous such inane ideas, which is meant to gloss over the cruel realities of
the society under Muslim rule.
Rana Safvi, the
translator of the text under review is a widely read columnist, who writes to
bring to public attention what she calls the ‘syncretic culture of Hindustan’
(her words) with an almost missionary zeal. There is an obvious contradiction
in this whole exercise. If the reality of Muslim rule was really so true to the
ideal, there ought never have been such a divide between the two communities,
and the need to write about the syncretic culture of Hindustan would have been
wholly superfluous.
As other works of
History (most notably, Liddle, The Broken Script) show, some degree of
acceptance of popular Hindu culture in Delhi emerged only after the ascendency
of the British, who consigned the Moghul emperor to oblivion, (or more
accurately confined the writ of the Emperor to the boundaries of the Red Fort) starting
from the time of Akbar Shah II (after 1803). It is only in the period starting
from 1803 that the Hindus and Jains could enjoy some degree of security, and build
their temples in Shahjahanabad. The British periodically banned cow slaughter to
honour the Hindus, in the face of strident Muslim assertion of their religious
rights to slaughter cows. Unwittingly, Safvi’s translation of Dehlvi’s book,
reveals that the Emperor in fact joins the strike call given by the Muslim
butchers who had been banned from committing the slaughter of cows. He secures
for the butchers, their rights to slaughter cows within Delhi (page 46). The Emperor’s
court was clearly more like Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which all citizens were
equal, but some more equal.
Contrast this what
Dehlvi writes about the Hindu state of Jaipur (page 229):
“The most unique aspect of Jaipur is that there are people here of every religion, community and section of society and they all live in perfect harmony. I have never seen any bigotry or communal tension in the city. Hindu, Muslim, Shia, Sunni and the British all get along with each other and are happy. There has never been a discussion on communal tensions.” In contrast, in Delhi there were frequent fights and riots during Holi, Dussehra, Moharram and Ram Lila. People were killed in such riots.
About Tonk, Dehlvi
writes that under the Nawab, the revenue of the kingdom declined from Rs. 22
lakhs to 10 lakhs, while the Nawab’s family grew in size to such proportions,
that the allowances of the princes drained the state treasury. “It [Tonk] is
just a state in name, and has no money” (page 255). Despite this, the Nawab
squandered his meagre resources on honouring poets and sundry versifiers. Hyderabad
was even worse. The affluence and greed of the courtiers stood in remarkable
contrast to the poverty of the citizens and the lack of public amenities. And poets
were not even honoured!
All in all, Safvi
has much hard work ahead of her to convince the discerning public about the supposed
syncretic culture of the Muslim courts in India’s past.
