On My Mind

Bahadur Shah Zafar  was the last Mughal Emperor. Accompanied by his wife Zinat Mahal and 2 sons Mirza Jawan Bhakt and Mirza Shah Abbas and daughter-in-law Shah Zamani Begum (wife of Jawan Bhakt), he was sent to Rangoon after the revolt of 1857 had been crushed and that his where he died. Bahadur Shah died on Nov. 7, 1862, at the ripe old age of 87. By 1872 Shah Zamani Begum became completely blind. Mirza Shah Abbas married a girl from Rangoon, a daughter of a local Muslim merchant. His descendants  still live in Rangoon  today. Zinat Mahal lived on alone, comforting her loneliness with opium. She died in 1886. Her body was buried near her husband’s grave. A few years later Mirza Jawan Bakht died of stroke. He was 42. Here in India,  Sultana Begum  lives in a slum area of Kolkata off a pension of around INR 6,000 per month. She is the  wife of Prince Mirza Bedar Bukht, the great-grandson of Bahadur Shah Zafar  who was secretly broug...

Often these days, there is a war cry to save Indian Culture, to diss "foreign" rulers, to purify the culture. On one of the unfortunate days, I gave it a thought and was left wondering about what Indian culture is! Is it today's culture which is apparently influenced by western culture and has lead to movements to pursue equality among different sections or when it has lead to affect the customs like respecting elders, taking care of old parents? Nah, this doesn't make sense. This includes adulterations. This isn't the Indian culture we talk about.  Then is it what we had when British left? The social traditions of untouchability, child marriage, limitations on women, a rigid caste system? But this system had the traditions of taking care of old parents intact. Nah, this doesn't sound like the golden India either. There are so many social evils in this period. Let's backdate again. It must be the era when Mughal power was declining and ...