Delhi 14: Historic walks by Swapna Liddle

Author:Swapna Liddle [Liddle, Swapna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mobilism
Publisher: Westland Publishing
Published: 2012-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

The glory days of the fort did not last very long. In 1658 Shahjahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb, and lived the rest of his life as a prisoner in Agra. Aurangzeb, busy with campaigns in his extensive and increasingly hard-to-manage empire, did not spend much time in Delhi. In temperament too he was, very unlike his father and most of his ancestors, not in favour of much opulence and ostentation. Over the years there were signs of increasing austerity in court ceremonials. Music in court was discontinued, and so was the practice of celebrating the emperor’s birthday by weighing him against gold and silver and distributing the proceeds to charity. The fort must have been a fairly sombre place during his reign.

Aurangzeb’s successors were not all like him. In fact Mohammad Shah ‘Rangila’, the ‘colourful’ (1718-48), was very fond of poetry, music and dance. However, after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the Mughal Empire was very much in decline. Through the eighteenth century there were many changes in succession, with many of the emperors being mere puppets of more powerful ministers. Territories and resources too were shrinking. Regional powers were carving up parts of the erstwhile empire between them. To top it all there were at least two important occasions when the city or the fort was sacked. The first was in 1739, when the Persian ruler Nadir Shah invaded Mughal territories right up to Delhi and went back with a huge tribute. Then in 1788, the Afghan, Rohilla Ghulam Qadir sacked the fort and blinded the emperor Shah Alam II.

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