On the third Diya, Badshah is weighed in Gold and Silver …. The Qila is illuminated on all sides. Puffed rice, candy, toys made from the candy, lemon and small clay houses are distributed to everyone by maidservants. At night, mud houses made by the royal children are filled with puffed rice and batashe and lamps lit in front of them.’
There is also a fascinating list of dishes served at an average meal for the emperor.  It describes 26 types of rotis, 24 types of rice dishes and an equal number of curries, kebabs, vegetable dishes and pickles. And this, in a time when the emperor was short of money!
— Read on www.livehistoryindia.com/cover-story/2018/12/05/glimpses-of-a-lost-delhi

30 November 2018

Twilight Diaries

Swapna Liddle

A rare look into the everyday life of the last Mughals

City of My Heart: Accounts of Love, Loss and Betrayal in Nineteenth-Century Delhi | Rana Safvi | Hachette | 288 Pages | Rs 499

THOSE WHO SEEK to know the history of Delhi in the 19th century must overcome what is a major obstacle for most Indians today—an unfamiliarity with Urdu. Since this was the language of the city in the 19th century, this lack of familiarity leads one to rely almost exclusively on sources authored by the British who ruled Delhi. It goes without saying that this leaves us with a very skewed perspective of the history of the city. Apart from the generally complex colonial relationship, there were points at which the Indian people and the colonial state faced each other in sharp conflict—such as the Revolt of 1857— and contradiction. Necessarily, one can expect accounts from opposing sides of the divide to tell different stories. Our understanding is bound to be woefully incomplete, unless we take the trouble to read both versions, the British and the Indian.

The fact, however, remains that Urdu, particularly its script, is understood by a small minority today, which puts these important sources of history out of the reach of most. It is therefore heartening to see an effort being made to make Urdu texts accessible through translations. The selection in City of My Heart by Rana Safvi focuses particularly on the Mughal royal family during the reigns of the dynasty’s last two emperors, Akbar II and Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’. This volume features four separate works translated into English, three in their entirety and the fourth as a large extract.

The result is a fascinating look into little known aspects of Delhi’s history: the customs, traditions, language, and beliefs of the Mughal royal court and family, and even the personal histories of some of its less known members. These texts are important cultural documents, recording for posterity the details of an institution that disappeared forever in 1857 with the exile of Bahadur Shah to Burma, and the deaths or exile of the extended royal family, which, till September 1857, had lived in the Red Fort.

The texts offer a rare look into the details of the everyday life of the extended household of that period’s Mughals. We are told of the food, clothes, ornaments, furniture and vehicles used by different groups of individuals at particular times. We learn of the formality and etiquette associated with the durbar—when the emperor held court, either within a larger assembly or even within the seclusion of his own household. The daily and seasonal routines of the family, particularly the emperor, are described. The reader will enjoy detailed descriptions of varied festivals and other socio-religious observances within the Red Fort, such as the two Eids, Moharram, Diwali, Dussehra, Holi, Raksha Bandhan, the Persian New Year or Nauroz, and the little known Akhri chahar Shanbeh—literally, ‘the last Wednesday in the month of Safar’. The sheer variety confirms the impression that the Mughals subscribed to a very eclectic mix of beliefs and practices.

There is no denying the value of these texts, and hence their translation, to those interested in the history of Delhi. Yet, it is wise to stay alert to their limitations. The first two texts in the volume have a considerable similarity in content—a detailed documentation of the Mughal court, culture and household. The older of the two, Bazm e Aakhir, was published in 1885 and was written by Faizuddin, who had seen the Mughal court at close quarters. The later one, Dilli ka Akhri Deedar, was published in 1934, and according to its author, Wazir Hasan Dehlvi, was based on older books and the oral testimonies of those who remembered those times. One suspects, however, that few of these would have been first-hand. There would have been very few people alive in 1934 with memories from before 1857.

These texts record the exile of Bahadur Shah and the deaths of exile of the extended royal family resident in the Red Fort

What both share is a curious silence about the British presence in Delhi and indeed within the Red Fort itself during the period they talk about. Daily interactions of the emperor and royal family with representatives of the British East India Company are attested to by sources such as original court diaries and newsletters of the time. This silence in the older work is probably explained by the fact that it was written less than three decades after the Revolt and its harsh suppression by the British. People were still too fearful to even speak on a subject that may be controversial: that is, Mughal-British relations. At the same time there was a desire to document an institution, Mughal royalty, which had disappeared forever, and whose culture had to be documented especially for the benefit of a younger generation that was born or came of age only after 1857.

As for Dilli ka Akhri Deedar, its motivations were very different. It was written at a time when India’s Freedom Movement was at its zenith, and the author used his account of the Mughal court mainly as a medium to critique British rule. Critical comments are sprinkled through the text, ostensibly through the voice of a certain old lady, Aghai Begum. One strongly suspects, though, that this was a literary device used by the author to express his own opinions. For instance, the old lady complains, ‘Everyone is struggling to earn a livelihood and to live a decent life in these expensive times… we produce the grains, and others enjoy it…. Earlier whatever was produced here was consumed here.’

If this is supposed to serve as a comparison betweenAghai Begum’s memories of the last two Mughal emperors’ reigns and life in Delhi of the 1930s, there is a definite weakness in the argument. The era of Akbar II and Bahadur Shah was not that of the Mughal Empire, but of East India Company’s rule. The pertinent part of the lady’s remarks is not her comment on the peace and prosperity of Mughal times, but her criticism—which is actually the author’s—of British rule.

The other two works in the volume are ‘Arsh’ Taimuri’s Qila-e-Mu’alla ki Jhalkiya’n, published in 1937, and part of Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Begamat ke Aansu, circa 1920. These give many more details about individual members of the royal family, and in the latter case, particularly their fate after the Revolt of 1857 was put down. They provide specifics that may not be found in other sources. Nevertheless, we must allow for a fair degree of romanticisation in their writing, though there appears to be less of a political intent than in the account of Wazir Hasan.

Arsh Taimuri and Hasan Nizami, like Wazir Hasan, relied on the memories of an older generation for their accounts. For people who had lived through 1857, the view of the period before it was always refracted through the prism of the traumatic events of the Revolt. Those who survived often lost loved ones, property, and livelihoods. To them, the world before 1857 was an idyllic one populated by all that they had now lost. It should not surprise us that to some extent at least, they describe an overly rosy, idealised scenario.

There is no doubt that these texts give us valuable insights into the cultural milieu of the Mughal world just before 1957, incorporating a wealth of description that cannot be found in other sources. At the same time, we should be aware of the political and social contexts in which they were written, and how these circumstances may have affected the picture they drew of the past. In that sense, they provide an insight into their own times as much as they do into royal life in the last days of the Mughal Empire.

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/twilight-diaries

Accounts of Love, Loss and Betrayal in Nineteenth-Century Delhi

Translator: Rana Safvi (from Urdu)

Hachette India

247 pages; Rs 399

Early in Dilli ka Aakhri Deedar (translated as The Last Glimpse of Dilli), Syed Wazir Hasan Dehlvi writes: “Delli was never a city of just bricks and stones.” He adds that though the monuments of the city, such as Jama Masjid and the Red Fort, remained standing, its soul was dead. Written soon after the troubles of 1857-58, this narrative indulges in exquisite nostalgia for a lost city, its once-rich culture and society laid waste by the ravages of time. “Now, only a glimpse of that culture is to be found either in books, or on the lips of elders,” Dehlvi explains. “I want to hear these stories from them and laugh and weep with them.”

Readers will have enough opportunities to laugh and cry at the delectable recollections in the four short prose narratives included in this book. These are: 1. Dehlvi’s narrative I have mentioned earlier; 2. Bazm-e-Aakhir (The Last Assembly) by Munshi Faizuddin; 3. Qila-e-Mu’alla ki Jhalkiya’n (Glimpses of the Exalted Fort) by Arsh Taimuri; and 4. Begamat ke Aansu (Tears of the Begums), collected by Hasan Nizami. Ms Safvi is no stranger to the mid-19th century or the chequered history of this city. The books she has translated already include Dastan-e-Ghadar by Zahir Dehlvi (an eye-witness account of the 1857 war), and Asar-us-Sanadid, an account of the monuments of Delhi written by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and published right before the troubles.

“Life in Delhi had an élan of its own and every day was a celebration,” she writes in the translator’s note at the beginning of the book. “The Emperor (Bahadur Shah) would participate in Hindu and Muslim festivals. There were literary and cultural soirées in the mansions of the noblemen, while dastangos sat on the steps of the Jama Masjid and enthralled audiences.” Explaining the reason for translating this book, Ms Safvi writes: “Almost every story or record of events in this volume has been written independent of the other. But each story corroborates and reinforces the common thread of syncretism that runs through its companions, indicating that it was the norm and not an exception.”

This claim is corroborated by all the narratives. “Hindus and Muslims lived as brothers,” writes Dehlvi. Faizuddin describes the life in the fort in great detail, listing Islamic festivals such as Eid, Ramzan, and the birth of the Prophet, as well as Hindu ones such as Saloni (Rakhi), Dusshera and Diwali, and Navroz, the Parsi new year. One of the most interesting festivals in the Mughal calendar, described in this volume is Phoolwaalo’n ki Sair, when the Mughal Emperor would leave the Red Fort and travel to Mehrauli across the city. (It has been revived recently and is held in November.) In the translator’s note at the beginning of the book, Ms Safvi writes: “The palace and the city had a syncretic culture — the Ganga-Jamuni — in which the quotidian life of the two different communities co-mingled and created an amalgam of …[a] pluralistic way of life.” In our undoubtedly divisive times, this is as much a political endeavour as a literary one, and there is much need for the wide circulation of such stories.

The four books are also populated with a list of interesting characters. Of course there is Bahadur Shah II, the emperor and his family, many of whom were killed by the British after the war, and others reduced to penury. One daughter of the exiled emperor, Gauhar Begum, became a beggar and then was hired as a cook at a household in the city; a son, Zafar Sultan, became a cart driver. There are numerous other characters as well — musicians Shah Nasir Wazir, Mirza Kale, Mirza Gauhar as well as calligraphers, Mir Panjakash Saiyyed Khush Navez Mohd Jaan Aga Saheb, Ahmed Jan, Imamuddin and Badruddin. “Who is Badruddin?” asks a listener to the story. The same one, replies the narrator, who was asked to the Queen of England to make a seal. We also meet Tanras Khan, the musician who established the Hindustani gharana.

The many different professions reflect the hurly-burly of a busy town. The descriptions of festivities and feasts, music and mushairahs, are, however, tinged with a note of sorrow. For a reader, the experience is that of travelling in a time machine or being pitch-forked into a different era, the colours of which are slowly fading. The characters in these books, lost in their mirth, their loves and their heartbreaks, are unaware of the fate that awaits them. The reader, however, does not have any such claims to innocence. All the four translated writers in this volume write that they hope to preserve a bit of the lost city. The pre-1857 Delhi might be an Atlantis lost in the ocean of obscurity and forgetfulness, but these narratives make it immortal. Ms Safvi performs the essential task of a translator — of finding a larger audience for these.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/lost-city-118110700003_1.html

Sent from my iPhone

The City of my Heart is a translation of 4 very important accounts of life under the last two Mughals and the changes pist the Uprising of 1857. They showcase a poignant and pluralistic society: a culturally rich society and a tottering monarchy. The last account has some stories that describes the fate of the Mughals after the fall of the Mughal Empire.
— Read on platform-mag.com/literature/rana-safvi.html