Dalrymple and an early biography of Bahadur Shah Zafar
GEOFFREY Moorhouse, while reviewing William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 for The Guardian, wrote: “Dalrymple has here written an account of the Indian mutiny such as we have never had before”.
Well, maybe. Dalrymple’s book on Bahadur Shah Zafar is considered an account to reckon with and both he and his books are now looked at with awe. But how much Dalrymple knows about our history and culture can be judged by the fact that he has made many silly mistakes in City of Djinns, another book by him. In her review of City of Djinns, Tayyaba Tehseen has pointed out a number of such errors. A peculiar western bias and quoting from some barely reliable historians notwithstanding, what Dalrymple says needs to be rechecked as his knowledge about some basic cultural and religious phenomenon of the subcontinent may be hilariously incorrect. Dalrymple, for example, she wrote, has given a false definition of ‘mehr’, the amount of money paid at the time of ‘nikah’ ceremony (page 207). Dalrymple knows little or nothing about what Muslims say during prostration (sajda) in ‘namaz’. But this does not discourage him from giving ‘expert opinion’ on what is recited in Eid prayers. He wrote that on Eidul Fitr he was at Delhi’s historic mosque when “the faithful knelt down and placed their heads on the ground [and recited]”, and then he goes on to quote the ‘kalima-i-tayyaba’. Not only that in no ‘namaz’ is kalima recited in prostration, but he has also incorrectly transliterated the words of kalima (page 252). Also, he thinks the sweet dish “made with minced carrots” and offered on the Eid is called ‘pheni’ (page 253), though ‘pheni’ is something in fact eaten during Ramazan at ‘sehri’ and which is not made of minced carrots, of course (he was referring to ‘gaajar ka halwa’). But most interesting is ‘Ballimaran’, the name of a famous street in Delhi, which Dalrymple mentions as ‘Billimaran’ and blatantly goes on to translate it as “the street of cat killers” (page 270).
The question is: those who do not know the basic facts about our culture and cannot tell ‘billi’ (cat) from ‘balli’ (pole or bamboo), how great would their knowledge be about our history and culture?
What I want to emphasise here is that we erroneously tend to think that those ‘goras’ know everything better, even about our own culture, history and religion. And when it comes to the history of 1857 ‘war of freedom’ (and not “Indian mutiny”, as those ‘goras’ love to refer it to as) not everything that westerners tell us is correct. The accounts of our own historians are no less important and much more authentic.
Dr Aslam Parvez’s book Bahadur Shah Zafar was published in 1986 by Amjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu Hind, Delhi. It used some rare documents and referred to some old newspapers of Delhi, which were hardly referred to ever before. The book captured not only the biographical details and the essence of the personality of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, who had taken ‘Zafar’ as takhallus, or pen name, but also took into account the 1857 war of freedom and the aftermath of this struggle by Hindus and Muslims against a foreign, occupying force. Aslam Parvez had neither left the literary side of the last Mughal king who was a fine poet of Urdu in his own right. He also discussed the false impression that Zauq used to compose poetry for Zafar and proved that Zafar’s poetry was result of his own creativity and efforts.
Aslam Parvez’s book has now been translated into English and published by Hay House India. Translated by Ather Farouqui, the secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu Hind, the English translation is aptly titled The life and poetry of Bahadur Shah Zafar. Mr Farouqui is a well-known scholar and academic and has to his credit several books in English and Urdu. The translation makes a reading as absorbing as the original Urdu version. In his intro to the book Farouqui says that “while a rich collection of documents — mutiny papers and documents pertaining to the arrest of Bahadur Shah Zafar and his subsequent banishment
to Rangoon in 1858 — was preserved in the safe custody of the National Archives, no one bothered to actually study the documents”.
He adds that “the Urdu work of Aslam Parvez titled Bahadur Shah Zafar is of particular value against this backdrop. The book represents a first-of-its-kind effort to shed light on this rare treasure-trove”. Mr Farouqui informs the readers that Aslam Parvez had finished the work on this book in 1964 for his doctorate but continued research on the topic for further 20 years before getting it published in 1986.
One can only say that had the book been published in English earlier, perhaps Dalrymple’s work would have not been as popular as it is today.
Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2017