Ruminating after reading 'The Last Mughal' by William Darylymple, I need to highlight his closing line in the book where he quotes Edmund Burke - "those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it." While the book started as an account of the revolt of 1857, by tracing through clear historical accounts of that time, it portrays the complex and intricate happenings in a very lucid manner by capturing the essence of the times through the words of the people caught up in the revolt.
The things that stand out in the book are:
i. the clear efforts of Bahadur Shah Zafar to maintain peace between Hindus and Muslims - with the incident of banning cow meat on Id, during the revolt, standing out as a clear sign of his sagacity and wisdom in such troubled times,
ii. the brazen lack of coordination among the sepoys, despite a one point agenda of overthrowing the British from Delhi, despite the fact that these sepoys converged on Delhi through all parts of the country,
iii. the symbolic nature of the Mughal Empire as the last legitimate symbol of authority, bestowed upon them by the Gods themselves!,
iv. the misjudgement of the situation, as religious war by the Mohemedans, by the British, who after capturing the city razed it almost to the ground, thereby destroying forever a huge part of the historic legacy of the Mughals as seen in the destruction of the Red Fort, and
v. the strategic means by which the British in exiling the King to Burma sought to erase the image of the Last Mughal from the memories of the people and deny a rallying point for a short while.
to be cntd....
This blog will be a rumination on the political processes in India, with a special emphasis placed on the processes involved in current political affairs in India.
