LIKE THE RED FORT, the Moti Masjid inside its premises is among the most painful eyesores in Delhi. Adjoining it is a marble enclosure adjacent to the Dargah of the 13th century Sufi bigot named Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. Within the marble enclosure is the tomb of Ali Gauhar or Shah Alam II.
A more ill-fitting moniker for a marionette monarch can’t be found: Shah Alam, literally means, “emperor of the world.” That a tomb was built and is still preserved in his honour compounds the perversion.
Born twenty-one years after Aurangzeb died, Shah Alam II, in 1760, became the eleventh and the thirteenth Mughal “emperor” after Aurangzeb. He was deposed and re-coronated in the same year: 1788. His subjects honoured his misrule by coining the infamous phrase, Sultanat-e-Shah Alam, Az Dilli ta Palam, meaning, “The empire of Shah Alam extends from Delhi to Palam.” The credit for further constraining this “empire” to just the walls of the Red Fort belongs to Bahadur Shah Zafar.
Shah Alam II also earned another precious distinction of ignominy from one of his own Musalman bhais. Tipu Sultan, the Tyrant of Mysore. In a letter to his official Kutub-ud-din Khan, this is how Tipu characterises Shah Alam:
As to those idiots, who at this time introduce the name of Shâh Allum into the Khûtbah, they act through ignorance; since the real condition of the above-mentioned is this: he is actually enslaved, and a mere cypher; being the servant of Saindeah (Scindia), at the monthly wages of fifteen thousand rupees. Such being the case, to pronounce the name of a dependent of infidels, in reciting the Khûtbah, is a manifest sin, and repugnant to the laws [usages] of the Muselmâny faith.
Indeed, few Mughal “emperors” after Aurangzeb can outclass Shah Alam II in cowardice, degeneracy, double-dealing, servility and unvarnished shamelessness. But these very qualities enabled this tenacious sissy to retain his throne for a record 46 years! The drama of his imbecilic regime was enacted in one of the most history-altering epochs of 18th century India. It was a drama in which each time he was called upon the stage to perform, he stubbornly abdicated the theatre itself.
Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded India and a terrorised Shah Alam promptly fled Delhi and outsourced this historic battle to the Marathas. And after the Maratha defeat, Shah Alam meekly accepted Abdali’s degrading conditions just so that he could continue to be called “Sultan.”
Next, in 1763, Shah Alam II lost whatever remained of Bengal and fled to the safe embrace of the East India Company and was forced to accept the independent suzerainty of Mir Qasim over Bengal. Later, he backstabbed the British by making a backroom deal with the same Mir Qasim.
And then, Shah Alam II lost the decisive Battle of Buxar (1764) and shamelessly signed the Treaty of Allahabad, which forbade him from returning to Delhi. It took the formidable Maratha ruler Mahadji Shinde, who put Shah Alam II back on the throne of Delhi in 1771-72. With that, the Mughal “empire” became a client state of the Maratha Empire.
Shah Alam II’s “regime” also witnessed serial devastations by the powerful Jat rulers of Bharatpur and the fledgling Sikh Empire. At various points, they ravaged significant Mughal territories including Agra, Ballabhgarh, Muzaffargarh, Ghanaur and the Ganga-Jamuna Doab. The 1778 sack of Delhi by the Sikhs was particularly overwhelming. In 1779, Shah Alam’s general, Najaf Khan signed a humiliating treaty with the Sikhs, recognising them as a sovereign power.
By 1783, Shah Alam II was left only with Delhi, thus birthing the aforementioned phrase, Sultanat-e-Shah Alam, Az Dilli ta Palam. Which is when the Sikhs spotted yet another advantage. That year, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Baghel Singh stormed the city and marched into the Red fort. Jassa Singh sat on the Mughal throne, and Baghel Singh conferred the title of Badshah upon him.
Now, Shah Alam’s stay on this earth hung by a thin filament.
Which is when Begum Samru, a skilful diplomat and the Jahgirdar of Sardhana (Meerut), intervened. Born Farzana Zeb-un-Nissa, this shrewd woman measuring four feet eight inches, started life as a nautch girl and was promoted as the concubine of a German mercenary named Walter Reinhardt Sombre. When he died, she inherited his whole estate along with his personal militia. In 1781 — two years before the Sikh sack of Delhi — Samru was converted by a Roman Catholic priest and baptised as Joanna Nobilis Sombre (hence, Begum Samru).
Baghel Singh acceded to her entreaties and spared Shah Alam’s life. In exchange, he imposed the following conditions:
Thirty thousand of his troops would be permanently stationed in Delhi. Shah Alam had to pay for their maintenance. Tis Hazari — the site of the large court complex — derives its name from this episode of Sikh triumph.
Shah Alam had to pay for the construction of seven new Gurudwaras in Delhi and cough up 13.5% annual tax. Prominent among these are the Sis Ganj, Rakabganj, Bangla Sahib, Mata Sundri and Majnu ka Tilla Gurudwaras.
The most significant element of this treaty is quite revealing. Although it was written down and signed by both parties, the Sikhs did not trust the Mughals. They wanted Mahadji Shinde to assume the regency of the Mughal “empire” to ensure that Shah Alam wouldn’t break his word.
By this time, Shah Alam was almost on the verge of bankruptcy but remained undeterred in his delusion that he was still the Mughal Padshah wielding the power and eminence of Akbar.
Five years after being pummelled by the Sikhs, an even more terrible humiliation visited Shah Alam II.
It came in the form of the Afghan warlord named Ghulam Qadir, hailing from Rohilkhand.
In July 1788, he raided the Red Fort, captured Shah Alam and personally blinded him with a deadly Afghani knife. Qadir had none of the benevolence of Baghel Singh; as a co-religionist, he dealt with Shah Alam in the only language he understood — brutality and mercilessness.
From July to October 1788, Ghulam Qadir sat on the Mughal throne and unleashed a reign of terror. His personal target was Shah Alam II and his family.
Ghulam Qadir tortured and killed 21 sons and daughters of Shah Alam. He raided Queen Malika-uz-Zamani’s palace and plundered it wholesale and his men flung her on the banks of the Yamuna as if she were a low-class woman.
But Ghulam Qadir’s vengeance was still unsatisfied.
Over the course of a few weeks, he ordered Shah Alam’s daughters to be stripped naked and forced them to dance before him. Unable to bear the humiliation, they drowned themselves in the Yamuna.
Ghulam Qadir also made it a habit to stroke and yank the blind Shah Alam’s abundant beard in full view of the durbar and to taunt him with filthy abuses. According to Acharya Jadunath Sarkar, it was Qadir’s depredations that singlehandedly “ruined the prestige of the [Mughal] empire beyond recovery.”
Shah Alam’s womenfolk at least had the dignity to give up their lives than live a life of degradation. He had none. He wrote a piteous appeal, once again, to Mahadji Scindia. Long story short, Mahadji marched towards Delhi with a large force, and the moment Ghulam Qadir heard the news, he bolted.
The Maratha army occupied Delhi on October 2, 1788, and Shah Alam was ceremonially re-coronated on February 7, 1789.
Ghulam Qadir was eventually caught and imprisoned by Mahadji Scindia. Even as he was mulling over the warlord’s fate, he received a letter from Shah Alam II a few days after his re-coronation.
It was a plea for vengeance.
The letter is in fact a model of monarchial grovelling. In it, Shah Alam addresses himself as the “emperor” and threatens that he would abdicate the throne and go to Mecca and live like a beggar if Mahadji did not gouge out Ghulam Qadir’s eyes. Accordingly, Mahadji blinded Qadir and put his eyes inside a casket and sent it to Shah Alam II.
The Ibrat (found in Maratha records) narrating this incident says what happened next:
“...the blind old man [Shah Alam], whose revenge was gratified, fumbled the contents of the casket and felt that his wronger had been paid back in his own coin. Islam is a by-product of Judaism. The Mosaic law of an eye for an eye was thus fulfilled.”
For the next two decades, the blind Shah Alam II was a happy slave of the Marathas and a beggar before the British as well. His servility had a singular purpose: it enabled him to indulge nonstop in his innumerable vices of which pomp and depravity were the foremost.
That vomit-inducing story will be narrated in graphic detail in the next episode of this series.
To be continued
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