Sawaneh-i Dehli: Biography of Delhi
By Mirza Ahmad Akhtar Gorgani
Translated by Ather Farouqui
Roli Books
ISBN: 978-93-92130-13-7
111pp.

The last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was also a celebrated poet, was dethroned by the British colonisers, following which he spent a miserable life in exile in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). His reign in Delhi lasted from 1837 to 1857, when the British formally took over the Indian Subcontinent.

The Mughal Empire ended in 1857, after the War of Independence. The ruler, his family, and courtiers who survived, all dispersed and escaped to different regions of India and went into hiding. Among them was Mirza Ahmad Akhtar Gorgani (1840-1910), the son of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s eldest son, Crown Prince Mohammad Dara Bakht Miran Shah.

Sawaneh-i Dehli: Biography of Dehli was among the manuscripts left by Gorgani, who also wrote on the subject of Unani [Greek] medicine, which he practised after the collapse of the Mughal Empire. Ather Farouqui traced the original book in Urdu and translated it into English. The author uses the spellings Dilli and Dehli for Delhi interchangeably.

The book is divided into several chapters on Delhi, with timeline charts of those who ruled the capital. The chapters include ‘The Maharajas who Ruled over Dehli’, ‘A Brief Account of Muslim Monarchs’, ‘List of Kings who Sat on the Throne of Dehli’, ‘Story of the Muslim Rule in India from 1192AD to 1759AD’, ‘The Decline and Ruin of the City of Dehli’, ‘An Account of Existing Monuments in Shahjahanabad, Dehli’ and ‘The British at the Helm of India’.

An English translation of a book originally written by the grandson of the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, is well-produced but does not offer any insight in historical or autobiographical terms

Detailed notes by the translator are also included in the book. The ‘Tables of Discrepancies’ about the dates of accessions to the throne, years of deaths and of construction of historical monuments demonstrate the long painstaking labour by Farouqui in compiling this book. Cross-checks are made with reference to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Asar-us-Sanadid.

The original name of Dehli was Indraprastha. It attained great popularity and hence was known as ‘Sohna’, meaning ‘lovely’. Afterwards, Sohna was translated as Dilli, meaning ‘heart-touching’. “Some people say that Dehli was named after the ruler Raja Dalpal while others say that it gets its name from marshlands (dal-dal), but it is situated on a hilly tract,” writes Gorgani.

The common belief is that, after the events of 1857, the author of Sawaneh-i Dehli, Akhtar Gorgani, who was only 17-years-old then, went underground and lived incognito in Kairana, a town near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

The original name of Dehli was Indraprastha. It attained great popularity and hence was known as ‘Sohna’, meaning ‘lovely’. Afterwards, Sohna was translated as Dilli, meaning ‘heart-touching’.

According to the translator, “We have no information about what he and his family did after arriving in Kairana, except for hearsay and oral tradition. This lack of knowledge can largely be attributed to the violent retribution that was mounted against Zafar and the Mughal family by the British. Those who survived the violence, lived in hiding and as far away from Delhi as possible. Therefore, details of the life of this book’s author are hard to come by. After the Uprising, he led a peripatetic life for 20-25 years and practised Unani medicine.”

From the title and the descriptions on the cover of the book, one may assume it would contain a first-person account of the author’s escape, survival, experiences, and the life of that period in general. However, one finds the textbook-like account of Indian history and its rulers that are fairly well known.

Moreover, judging by the long list of errors pointed out by the translator in dates, relationships and other verifiable facts, the sole noteworthy significance of Sawaneh-i Dehli emerges as its author’s genealogical identity: that it is written by a grandson of the last Mughal ruler.

To this reviewer’s best understanding, after going through Sawaneh-i Dehli, the book does not reveal anything new in a historical or autobiographical sense about the author, Bahadur Shah Zafar, or the street life of Delhi.

Gorgani expresses his personal take on the British Raj in these words:

“It is a universal principle that the people in power and their subjects can never enjoy equal status. Hence, we should never expect such equality. However, our [British] authorities are of such nature that they shower kindness and honour on all those [Indians] who visit them [for whatever purpose]. When even this humble self happens to meet the British authorities, they bestow such kindness and sympathy upon this

poor and worthless soul that it is exemplary. We should feel content with whatever is in our hands, as even that is sufficient.”

The book is produced in excellent quality in terms of its cover design, paper and printing. However, the substance of the content leaves the reader rather disenchanted.

The reviewer is a freelance writer and translator.
He can be reached at mehwer@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 10th, 2023