March 21, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 1, 1428

NEW DELHI: India has decided not to pursue a half-century-old request for Myanmar to return the remains of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, the government said on Tuesday.

The government had received a request from the Bahadur Shah Zafar Memorial Society in 1949 to bring the “mortal remains of the last Mughal king from Yangon to New Delhi,” the government said.

“It was decided that the proposal need not be pursued,” Culture Minister Ambika Soni told parliament in a written statement, without elaborating.

In 1857 at the age of 82, Zafar became leader of an uprising against British colonial rule despite preferring penning poetry to waging war.

The revolt was the largest the British Empire had ever faced and transformed Delhi, the seat of the great Mughal capital, into a battleground.

Though the royal family surrendered, most of the emperor's 16 sons were hung and Zafar, a name meaning paradoxically “victory,” was humbled from “divine highness” to state prisoner.

Zafar was exiled to Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, and died in captivity five years later, the last of the emperors of the once sprawling Mughal empire.—AFP