Majestic Mughals

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It’s heartbreaking to be introduced to the lonely old poet, almost in rags, lying on a charpoy in a corner, in the company of a sole flickering candle. He is the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, just before his death, in Rangoon.

Lagta nahi hai dil mera ugday dayar mein, Kiski bani hai aalme na pai daar main... This verse aptly sums up the last chapter of the mighty Mughal empire.
The 92-year-old was sent into exile by the British colonialists after the 1857 mutiny when he was unanimously proclaimed the emperor of Hindustan by the rebel sepoys. The last Mughal comes alive in the play Sons of Babur.
But more then the rise and fall of the Mughal empire, the play is about establishing how Indian Muslims, often pejoratively referred to as Babur ki aulad, are not any less Indian. After all, most of the Mughal emperors were born to Rajput mothers, and followed the tradition of marriying Hindu girls.
The play, staged in the capital’s FICCI Auditorium recently, has been written in English by the Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid. It hits out at the communal forces that question the presence of Muslims in India. The heart-wrenching chorus of Babur ki auladon wapas javo sounds the first hint about the theme of the play.
It’s his obsession about visiting Bahadur Shah Zafar’s grave in Rangoon that makes young Rudranshu Sengupta, a history student, time travel, thus unfolding various generations of the Mughal dynasty to us.
The meeting and exchange between the 92-year-old Farsi-Urdu speaking Emperor, and ripped-off jeans-clad college student is interesting and holds the attention.
The play manages to get across its message, while keeping the humour intact. Thus, the audience was moved when the frustrated zille illahi, Bahadur Shah marvels at the glory of his ancestors and craves for his homeland, and they were in splits at the Bengalified-Urdu of Rudra, a pakka Bengali. Poor Rudra is also the butt of jokes in college as no one understands his obsession to research for his his play, “A Search For India”.
While Sons of Babur tries to make a point about the contribution of Mughals to India, be it endorsing Din-e-Illahi, world’s most shortlived faith founded by Akbar, as “good religions don’t survive” or talking of Aurangzeb as the “least understood Mughal”, the informative play asks why Mughals never married off their daughters to Hindus. Also, the great emperors who called themselves “Zille Illahi, Shadows of God”, never performed the Haj.
“Without glorifying the Mughals, we are trying to highlight their contribution. Our national language, Hindi, is their gift. At the same time, we are bringing forth the bloodshed they caused for the throne and the ploy of religion they used for politics,” said director, M. Sayeed Alam, who plays Babur, in the play.
Theater veteran Tom Alter is perhaps the only one who could have done such justice to the role of the last Mughal.
The curtains fall with an applause at Bahadur Shah’s:
Umre daraz se mange thay chaar din,
do aarzu main kat gai do intizaar mein;
Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar dafan kay liye,
do gaz zameen bhi na mili kuoye yaar mein.