There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu

The Times of India

Two women forging the idea of India

by Dileep Padgaonkar

11 January 2013

Had we been aware of our history, we would have been able to place the two events that have shaken us down to the roots in the last few weeks - the brutal rape of the 23-year-old woman in Delhi and the anti-Hindu tirades of a leader of a Hyderabad-based Muslim political party - in a more lucid perspective. As a new work of historical fiction (In the City of Gold and Silver) by Kenizé Mourad, a French writer of Indo-Turkish lineage, vividly demonstrates, the events, and the outrageous responses to them, are not what India was a little more than a century and a half ago. It was another country.

Mourad's book is set in Awadh on the eve of its annexation by the East India Company. She evokes the atmosphere prevalent at that time in telling detail. It was the heyday of both high culture and popular culture. Architecture and music, poetry and drama, painting and food reached unsurpassed heights of refinement. In his parikhana - the house of fairies - Wajid Ali Shah held music concerts and poetry readings and staged plays. He was an accomplished poet himself and a good kathak dancer too. One of his favourite pastimes was to play the role of Lord Krishna in a dance-drama.

There was no Owaisi then to rant against the beliefs and practices of Hindus. And there was no Sadhavi Rithambara to deride the beliefs and practices of Muslims. Both communities partook of this composite culture with unabashed zeal. They celebrated each other's festivals, shared their moments of joy and sorrow and, most importantly, were united in their animus against British colonial rule.

The book's focus is on Begum Hazrat Mahal. The author, drawing on exhaustive research, traces her life from her humble beginnings as a child of a family of artisans to her ascent as the Regent of the kingdom after her husband, Wajid Ali Shah, was ousted from his throne and sent into exile to Calcutta on the pretext that in his pursuit of pleasure he had failed to provide good governance to his subjects. The pretext, as it turned out, was spurious, for the Company had long eyed the prosperous kingdom and had resorted to every sordid trick to grab Awadh.

What the British authorities did not reckon with is the Begum's grit and determination to counter their designs. Her hatred of the colonisers knew no bounds. Once the sepoys, Hindu and Muslim alike, turned mutinous over the use of cow and pig fat in the cartridges supplied to them, she reached out to landed elites of both communities to mount a fierce offensive against the Company's troops. That included Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope and Raja Jai Pal who would be her confidante and chief of her army.

The Begum eventually faced defeat. The Company's troops were better equipped and better trained. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, many of her allies struck deals with the colonial power to protect their vested interests. But to the end the Begum refused to compromise. Both she and her son were offered handsome privy purses if they gave up their claim to the throne. She rejected the offer with contempt and died virtually penniless in Nepal. Her grave, unkempt and in disrepair, is somewhere in the concrete jungle of Kathmandu. The Rani of Jhansi has been widely, and justly, hailed for her role in the First War of Independence. But Begum Hazrat Mahal, a great beauty, a poet, a stateswoman, has been all but forgotten. A park in Lucknow named after her is in a shambles. She does not figure in history textbooks. This is odd for these two valiant women were pioneers for Indian independence in their own right.

There was then no Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS or no leader of the Jamaat, no Asaram Bapu and no khap leader to remind women that their divinely-ordained duty is to be only dutiful wives and doting mothers. Mourad's book should encourage a resurgent India to tell the worthies of all communities claiming to uphold 'spiritual', 'religious', 'cultural' and 'secular' values - synonyms for reactionaries and opportunists - that their time is up. We won't allow them to bamboozle us any more.