The Hindu : Front Page : Ansari prays at Bahadur Shah Zafar’s Yangon tomb

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 08, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

Ansari prays at Bahadur Shah Zafar’s Yangon tomb

— PHOTO: PTI

TRIBUTES TO AN EMPEROR: Vice President Hamid Ansari, with his wife Salma Ansari, offering fateha at the mausoleum of Bahadur Shah Zafar in Yongon on Saturday.

Yangon: The tragic fate of the respective last kings of India and Myanmar has left the history of the two nations “intertwined,” Vice President Hamid Ansari indicated on Saturday as he paid homage to the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar here.

He summed up his feelings with the Urdu couplet, Marne waley marte hain lekin fanaa nahin hotey/Wo humsey kabhi juda nahin hotey. Loosely translated, it means: those who die do not vanish into thin air and never separate from us.

Penning the couplet in the visitors’ book after offering a prayer (fateha) at the tomb, he described the Mughal emperor as a “saintly figure who became a symbol of resistance to foreign rule.” He died here in 1862 five years after he was toppled and banished by the British colonial rulers.

“The people of India cherish the memory of that moment in the First War of Independence whose rallying point was Bahadur Shah Zafar,” Mr. Ansari said at the mausoleum on Ziwaka Road.

The Vice-President recalled how the last king of Myanmar Thebaw met a similar end in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, after he was taken there by the British — who completed their conquest of the subcontinent in 1885.

Mr. Ansari termed this “a tragic example of the intertwining of the history of India and Myanmar.” He added: “These shrines are part of our shared historical and cultural legacy.”

Till recently, there was no authentic information on where the tomb of the last Mughal emperor lay. In 1991 the caretakers of the tomb stumbled upon a red brick structure 3.5 feet below the earth during digging to lay the foundation for a building at the mausoleum.

Going by the large size of the bricks and the mortar used in the tomb, they concluded that this was the final resting place of Bahadur Shah Zafar. He was brought to Yangon a year after the British quelled what they dubbed the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857.

The tombs of his queen Zeenat Mahal, who died in 1886, and his grandchild are next to that of the Mughal ruler.

New light was thrown on the location of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s grave in 1935 when the British acknowledged that he was buried at a spot wooded with ber trees, near the present mausoleum. A wall to the right of the tomb contains a quotation from historian G.D. Khosla’s book The Last Mughal. It says: “Captain Davies drew up a report describing the important event. Abu Zafar, he wrote, expired at five o’ clock on Friday... He was buried at 4 p.m. the same day in the rear of the main yard... in a brick grave covered with turf and level with the ground. A bamboo fence surrounded the grave for a considerable distance. By the time the fence is worn out, the grass will have again covered the spot and no vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the great Mughal rests.”

The Vice President said it was a matter of regret that the emperor had to die in a foreign land. — PTI

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page