Ranis and the Raj by Queeny Pradhan

Author:Queeny Pradhan [Pradhan, Queeny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354927324
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Mughal Empire lay in ruins.

Whether Begum Zeenat Mahal was complicit with the British or negotiating with both sides is difficult to say, with accounts supporting both arguments. What limited sources are available on her convey a conflicting image of her in 1857. She was regarded with suspicion by the sepoys and the English. The accounts mostly project her as playing both sides to ensure the succession of her son. The nationalist and the imperialist historiography also look at her through the same lens.

Mainodin, a police officer at the time of the revolt of 1857 in Delhi kept a ‘roznamcha’ or diary of ‘daily occurrences.’112 He wrote in his diary that the English were regarded as ‘trespassers’ by the Indians.113 Mainodin recollected that after the entrance of the sepoys from Meerut and the killing of the English, he reached the palace, and on meeting the emperor, asked him to stop the killing. The emperor responded; ‘I am helpless; all my attendants have lost their heads or fled. I remain here alone. I have no force to obey my orders: what can I do?’114 Mainodin interestingly mentioned Abdulla Beg as one of the most active mutineers in Delhi. He was a European—a discharged soldier of the 17th Foot—who resided at Meerut. He converted to Islam and became a leader and advisor of the king in the early days.115 Mainodin narrated how the king was completely under the control of the mutineers and, on Abdullah Beg’s advice, issued a Perwanahs (notice) asking regiments to join him. He did not mention Begum Zeenat Mahal. Bahadur Shah Zafar was surprised when the sepoys from Meerut marched to Delhi on 11 May 1857, requesting him to take up the leadership, but he was reluctant and sent for Captain Douglas, the commandant of the Palace guards.116

The imperial accounts projected Begum Zeenat Mahal as a woman responsible for ‘murdering those wretched survivors of the first day’s massacre who had been imprisoned in the palace’.117 She was accused of driving ‘her reluctant husband into supporting the mutineers’ to ‘have the chance to revenge herself’ on the British.118 In Nigam’s nationalist perspective, she played a role in the Mughal emperor not agreeing to General Bakht Khan’s request to leave Delhi with him.119 The queen, it seems, was negotiating with Hodson, whom she contacted ‘on 18th September 1857, through Elahi Baksh and Hakim Ahsan Ullah for the King’s surrender provided he, she, her son Jawan Bakht and her father Ahmad Kuli Khan were guaranteed their lives. This guarantee had been given by Hodson’.120 According to Nigam, ‘The queen played the most important part’ in preventing the Mughal Emperor from leaving Delhi and ‘eventually Bakht Khan retired with his troops towards Agra and thense to Lucknow.’121 Another postcolonial representation of Begum Zeenat Mahal is in the novel on Delhi by Khushwant Singh. Singh reinforced the complicity of the begum with the English authorities. He also underlined the difference between the Mughals as the representative of the ‘Orient’. He described her, looking

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