by Sudhir Kakar
The Jesuits may have been naïve in their hopes, but they were clear-sighted and acute in their observations of the land and its peoples. They were unanimous in their opinion that we who lived in the capital city had no idea of the sufferings of the common people of the Indies, largely the idolaters. The land in its entirety belonged to the emperor and he granted to military officers a certain quantity of its produce in lieu of their wages. Similar grants were made to governors as their salary and for the upkeep of their troops, on condition that a portion of the surplus revenue yielded by the land was given to the king. The remaining royal lands were leased out to contractors on rent. The persons who had possession of the land had absolute authority over the peasants as also over the artisans and merchants of the towns and villages within their domain, and nothing could be more oppressive and cruel than the manner in which this authority was exercised. The cudgel and the kora compelled the people to do incessant labour for the benefit of these tyrants, a tyranny that drove the cultivator of the soil from his wretched home to a neighbouring state in the hope of finding milder treatment or to the army as the servant of some trooper. The Moguls, however, protested that the condition of idolaters could not be compared to the hardier and self-respecting peasants of Turkey or Persia, and that the sympathies of the Jesuits were misplaced; the Indians were a servile race, they said, and called them ‘zulm-parast’, tyranny-adorers. ‘Yet the wish for justice remains alive in the most abject of human beings,’ Father Malpica said. ‘Look at the regard in which the Gentiles hold the emperor even when they know he is not well inclined towards their race.’
More than the crushing of rebellions within the empire and the conquests that considerably extended its frontiers, more than the magnificence of the Taj Mahal he built in the memory of his beloved wife who bore him fourteen children (the number of children and the manner of her death—in childbirth—is regarded by Indians as a proof of his enduring love), it was Emperor Shah Jahan’s passion for justice that the common people talked about when they spoke of him as a great king. This did not stop many of them from irreverently arguing that this passion did not spring from deep belief but was based on eminently practical considerations. They said that a strict enforcement of laws that strikes terror in the hearts of both evildoers and those responsible for their apprehension and chastisement ensures that the emperor can spend more time in his harem. It relieved him of many cares of governance and allowed him the leisure to follow the real dictates of his heart, and his loins. They said this with an indulgent smile, however. A king may not be judged by his character but only by his effectiveness; more than other men, a king is a tree that should be judged by its fruits rather than its roots.
When an Indian acquires wealth, as is sometimes the case, he tends to acquaint himself with ways of appearing indigent—in his dress, lodgings or pleasures of the table—so as to avoid provoking the cupidity of the governor and his officers. If a person is at the receiving end of an injustice, there is no one before whom the oppressed peasant, artisan or trader can pour out his just complaints; the kadis, or magistrates, are not invested with sufficient power to restrain the oppression of the mighty and redress the wrongs of these unhappy people. This abuse of authority may not be felt to the same degree near the capital cities of Delhi and Agra, or in the vicinity of large towns and seaports such as Surat where acts of gross injustice cannot be concealed from the imperial court. Their only hope of protection from oppression being the monarch, his reputation for justice becomes the primary criteria by which he is judged by the people.
The emperor enjoyed quite a reputation for delivering speedy justice and the strict enforcement of laws that did not discriminate between high and low. As M. Gassendi used to say—and I can confirm his observation from my personal experiences—a people may want more from a ruler but they do not expect any less. Each morning, petitions held up by people in the crowd that gathered in the common assembly hall, the Diwan-e-Aam, would be brought to the emperor by the court officials. The petition would be read in his hearing and the monarch would then examine the concerned persons himself, often redressing the wrongs of the aggrieved party on the spot. On another day of the week, he would spend two hours to hear in private the petitions of ten poor subjects, selected and presented to the emperor by one of the Omrah. On yet another fixed weekday, he scrupulously attended the justice chamber attached to the palace where the two principal kadis helped him deal with cases referred to the imperial tribunal by other courts of the empire.
There was indeed discrimination in favour of Mohammedans in the framing of laws, but in his administration of justice, Shah Jahan did not distinguish between his Mohammedan co-religionists and his Gentile subjects. Father Roth remembered a case in Delhi where a Mohammedan soldier kidnapped the slave girl of a heathen clerk. The idolater lodged a complaint with the local court. The soldier insisted the slave girl belonged to him, and the girl, who wanted to live with the soldier, corroborated his version. The clerk persisted in his demand for justice and the case was transferred to the imperial tribunal where the emperor decreed that he would give his judgement after a month, during which time the girl was to live in his seraglio. One day, on the pretext that he wanted to write, the emperor ordered the girl to pour a thimble full of water into the inkwell, which the girl did most dexterously, without spilling a single drop. This proved to the king that the girl belonged to the scribe and not the soldier. The girl was restored to the clerk and the soldier was subjected to whipping before being banished from the empire.
But the monarch’s chastisement of wrongdoers was rarely so indulgent; his passion for justice accompanied a preoccupation with the refinements of punishment. A commander who showed cowardice on the battlefield or somehow failed in his duty was not only severely dealt with but also had to suffer the misfortune of sharing his fate with his wives and daughters. To disgrace the commander and frighten others, the king ordered that rats be placed in the trousers of the women in his household after the trouser cuffs had been tied tightly around the ankles. In the case of a major theft, the punishment was death while a minor one warranted that the thief be sold as a slave to one of the Pathan tribes across the Indus or exchanged for one of their dogs, which, like their masters, are as handsome as they are savage. If a thief was not caught and the stolen goods remained untraced, the officials in whose jurisdiction the theft had taken place, primarily the kotwal, or the chief of police, were forced to compensate the victim for his loss. This, of course, made the kotwal even more of an extortionist while taking bribes.
The emperor’s severest retribution was reserved for officials who failed to administer impartial justice. Father Roth, who had been an eyewitness to the emperor’s punishment of Delhi’s kotwal, notorious for taking bribes, told a fascinating story. The kotwal had apparently been hauled to the emperor’s court and after the chief kadi had pronounced him guilty, the monarch had called to the court official in charge of poisonous snakes to step forward.
‘We do not wish to prolong his agony. Let him be bitten on his left hand by a cobra. Which one would you recommend?’ he asked.
A short discussion followed. The emperor was knowledgeable about snakes, as he was about many other matters—even discounting the flattery of the Omrah, he was universally regarded as the greatest expert on gems in the empire—and the choice finally fell on the cobra capello, one of the most poisonous snakes on earth.
‘How long will he last?’ the emperor inquired.
‘Not more than three quarters of an hour, O Refuge of the World,’ the official replied.
The order was given and the poor kotwal, his face ashen with fright, a mewling sound issuing from his throat, was dragged towards the basket containing cobras. The emperor remained seated for the one hour it took the man to die. The last bubbles of froth were still escaping from the kotwa’s blue lips after his heart had stopped beating when the king ordered the corpse to be thrown out on the open ground in front of the justice chamber. Unprotected from cr
ows, dogs and the rats that came out at night, it lay there for two days, its rotting flesh horribly gouged and gashed, before it was released for burial.
Emperor Shah Jahan was not particularly cruel as eastern potentates go, but like Babur, his great-great-grandfather and the founder of the dynasty, he too delighted in thinking up ever more innovative means of torturing his enemies or simple criminals. This becomes a challenge when your predecessors have already made use of most of the possibilities for maiming the human body. Consider the punishment of flaying. Kings who had come before Babur had flayed men alive, stuffed the skin with straw and hung it out in the public square to strike terror in their subjects and dissuade criminals from even contemplating nefarious activities. Babur refined the cruel act further by having the offender’s skin cut downward from the neck in blade-like strips, which were allowed to droop. A halter was put on the bleeding body of the poor wretch who was then dragged forward so that he stumbled and fell over the strips of his own skin. And what can anyone add to the simple yet highly inventive ‘Kettle of Gruel’ act, a Mogul method of torture favoured by Emperor Shah Jahan, wherein the offender’s skull is cut open and a heated iron ball thrown into it with a pair of tongs, causing the brain to boil? Initiating new means of torture required as much time and ingenuity as novel ways of pursuing refined pleasure, and the emperor is, in fact, said to have expressed regret at his creativity in inflicting pain being limited by past innovations.
Father Roth agreed with me that we were fortunate that we lived in Europe, where sovereigns may often be unjust but never barbaric. Father Buze was the only one among the priests who believed that the quickness with which justice was delivered in India and the wide latitude given to the kadi to determine the quantum of punishment, which resulted in many acts of compassion, were enviable features of the Mogul system.
‘And M. Bernier,’ he insisted, ‘you must admit that when it comes to women, food and buildings, your own sovereign, the illustrious Sun King, has the same powerful lusts as Shah Jahan although he may be fractionally more discreet than the Great Mogul when it comes to sexual dalliances.’
I concede that in order to uphold the honour of our great sovereign, I held forth on the wonders of our Sun King’s reign and attempted to prove how his subjects excel in industry and courage over all other nations of earth. Gargantuan appetites are the birthright of kings, I explained, indeed the glory of a monarch and our Sire surpasses all other princes of the world in this respect, as he does in others. Father Buze listened tolerantly but I could sense a sceptical smile struggling to break through his pursed lips. But, then, in spite of the ten years or more he had spent in the country, the priest had lost little of his initial enthusiasm about the Indies and remained a fervent partisan to all things Indian.
Delhi was no different from Paris or any other capital city in the world where social conversation often tended to gravitate towards a discussion of the characters, doings and escapades of members of the royal family and thus it was not only the emperor but also Dara Shukoh who was an object of our scrutiny. I had observed that Father Roth was not as enthusiastic about Dara as the others; Father Buze, of course, counted himself among the prince’s intimate friends, sharing a rapport with him that was lubricated by their common fondness for a most delicious liquor made from Persian wine and rosewater flavoured with spices and aromatic herbs distilled in the prince’s own household.
One evening, when Father Roth and I were dining alone, I told him about the fruit of my researches into Dara’s writings. I was glad to hear Father Roth confirm my doubts about the prince.
The sincerity of Dara’s writings is not reflected in his life,’ the priest said in his dry Teutonic manner. ‘Although the prince professes to be a Sufi of the Qadiriya order, he ignores the self-discipline and physical renunciation the order prescribes as essential for a novice. He wears dazzling gold and silk robes, eats the tastiest meats and the best dishes the royal kitchen can prepare, drinks the choicest wines from Persia and proceeds to bend Sufi teachings to fit them to his indulgences.’
The priest then drew my attention to a passage in the Risala where Dara writes, ‘Worldliness is the non-remembering of God. It does not consist either in dress, or in having sons and a wife.’ His is the path of grace, he writes, not of exertion: ‘In the discipline of the school to which the author belongs, contrary to the practices of other schools, there is no asceticism. Everything here is love and affection, pleasure and ease.’
‘Little wonder that the young prince Aurangzeb is heard calling his elder brother a hypocrite,’ Father Roth concluded.
When, on his return, I presented Danishmand Khan with my conclusions, he listened to me thoughtfully before complimenting me in lofty words. ‘You have done wonderful work, my friend. You have a gift of seeing people without being dazzled by the outer surface they have spent so much time polishing and which can easily deflect the naïve eye. Soon, I may have a task for you that is even more important.’ He then presented me with two pearl necklaces and a Persian dagger with a gold handle encrusted with sparkling emeralds of superior quality from the mines of Panna in the Deccan.
I would soon realize that the task the Agha had set me—of assessing Dara Shukoh’s character from his writings—was not out of idle curiosity on his part. The emperor had not been keeping well for three weeks and the Omrah had begun to worry about the succession to the Mogul throne upon his death or incapacitation. I am now convinced that my evening conversations with the Jesuit fathers, which were dominated by discussions on the person of Emperor Shah Jahan, his merits and his faults, almost as if we were engaged in writing his obituary, arose from the same unspoken and unacknowledged impulse, an anxiety that had begun to radiate outwards from Delhi towards the far outposts of the empire. By the time the Agha asked me to leave for the Deccan on an urgent and secret mission to Aurangzeb, the people’s worst fears seemed to be coming true.
‘The present ailment was nothing were mysterious than a painful swelling of His Majesty’s private parts’
NICCOLAO MANUCCI
BY EARLY SEPTEMBER, 1657, Delhi was in chaos. All too suddenly the emperor, who had kept indifferent health the whole of summer, fell seriously ill. In the space of but three hours he developed an unusually high fever and for the next four days was unable to pass a drop of urine. The rumour that he lay at death’s door flew out of the ramparts of the fort and spread in all directions through the length and breadth of the empire with the speed of Pegasus.
For the four days and nights that the emperor lay prone and was unable to make a public appearance, the city was in turmoil. Small groups of people engaged in animated discussion at street corners broke up frequently to scatter and then gather again at different corners in new groups, exchanging more rumours. Some claimed the Great Mogul was dead, others that he had been poisoned by one of the princes. There was a ludicrous story going around that the Indian nobles at the court had attempted a coup to overthrow the Persian Omrah and the emperor had been killed in the ensuing fight. Fearing disturbances in the streets, the shopkeepers shut their shops. There were rumours of bands of looters breaking into shops at night. Old men recounted their memories of the utter chaos in which the empire had been plunged for more than a year during the war of succession between Emperor Jehangir’s sons.
This is just the beginning,’ they said, pleased at the attention people were paying to their tales.
My daily presence at Prince Dara’s court gave me privileged knowledge of the events as they occurred and I was glad to reassure the nervous Jesuit fathers that although the situation was serious there was no immediate danger to the emperor’s life.
I believe I am the only European who watched from such close proximity the drama that followed the emperor’s illness and shook the mighty empire by its roots. The fraud Frenchman, M. Bernier, may claim to have been a witness to the events, but his perception is not as much flawed—although there are many errors—as it is superficial. Consider the matter of the e
mperor’s illness, which was not mysterious even if it remains obscure in chronicles of Emperor Shah Jahan’s reign. One can understand when native historians, hoping for rewards or fearing punishment from the emperor (or his descendants), are circumspect when it comes to delicate matters that can affect the sovereign’s reputation. But there is no excuse except ignorance for M. Bernier’s claim that the Great Mogul was seized by a ‘disorder’, the nature of which he finds unbecoming to describe.
M. Bernier is a learned man, far more than I. But it does his reputation, and his scholarship and learning, little good when he hints at the possession of exact knowledge in elegant French without ever revealing it. He may have been correct in his observations on the general nature of the monarch’s illness, but his pronouncements carry a tone of moral condemnation more suitable to a missionary than to someone who professes the noble calling of a physician.
M. Bernier was but a short time at the Mogul court, compared to the years I have spent in the Indies, and it is not like I was attached to Prince Dara’s palace all those years. I travelled constantly, holding honourable and lucrative positions at the courts of native princes. My knowledge of people and events in the Mogul empire is not from books or from passing conversations with the natives who served in my household. It is of an order that can only come from long immersion in the life of a country and its people. Mine is knowledge that is not of the head but of the heart.
