PROBABLY the saddest figure in Mughal history is Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last of the proud dynasty that ruled India for over three centuries. Perhaps ‘ruled’ is the wrong word, given the precipitous decline in the last hundred years of its sway, when British power filled the vacuum created by its waning strength.

While Zafar occupied the throne for 20 years, until the end of the Mughal empire in 1857, he was contemptuously called the ‘chessboard king’, in reference to the game’s powerless monarch. Zafar was also called the ‘King of Delhi’, although in reality, it was the British resident who called the shots in the capital of Mughal India.

When the uprising broke out in May 1857, Zafar was virtually forced by mutinying sepoys to accept a nominal position of leadership, although he was just as powerless over them as he had been over his shrunken empire. Zafar’s life and death, as well as the days before and during the uprising in his beloved Delhi, are the subjects of a marvellous new book by William Darlrymple. Called The Last Mughal, it takes up the story of the Mughal empire where White Mughals, Dalrymple’s previous book, ended.

Both books are meticulously researched, sympathetically argued, and written with exemplary clarity. The author’s fascination with the high degree of syncretism achieved between Muslim and Hindu religion and culture by the Mughals is evident in this labour of love. What is particularly fascinating in The Last Mughal is the extraordinary range of sources Dalrymple has tapped: many of the documents he cites from the National Archives in New Delhi and the Punjab Archives in Lahore have never been seen by any scholar before him. This is a sad comment on the interest we take in our own history.

Over the years, I must have received literally thousands of emails from Indian readers, usually after I have commented on events on the subcontinent. While many readers have supported me in my repeated calls for warmer ties between India and Pakistan, others have expressed their anger over the long Muslim rule, and satisfaction over the partition of 1947. Their views reflect the sentiment that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together.

But for most of the long Mughal rule, this prejudiced view was proved wrong. Indeed, Sufi beliefs permeated the religious and cultural fabric, with both Hindus and Muslims flocking to imbibe the teachings of venerated Sufi masters. Zafar himself was acknowledged as one, and his expansive worldview admitted all faiths.

But it was as a poet that the last Mughal is best remembered. His political power might have been non-existent, but his poetic prowess was widely applauded. Shortly after his imprisonment, he wrote:

“Delhi was once a paradise,/Where Love held sway and reigned;/But its charm lies in ruins now/And only ruins remain....

“The heart distressed, the wounded flesh,/The mind ablaze, the rising sigh;/The drop of blood, the broken heart,/Tears on the lashes of the eye.”

Nearly two years ago, I spent a few enjoyable days in Mumbai. But when I visited the museum there, I was saddened to note that the huge Muslim contribution to Indian civilisation had virtually been airbrushed out of the exhibits. A casual visitor could be excused for believing that the Muslim presence had been a fleeting one, leaving no trace. This rewriting of history was official policy under the BJP government, and was reflected in the textbooks published in those days. Mercifully, the Congress government has reversed this trend.

In Pakistan, state schools have taught a perverted version of history and current affairs in which Hindus are demonised. This repudiation of reality reveals the lack of confidence on both sides of the border. Self-assured nations accept the past, learn from it, internalise its positive aspects, and build on it. People unsure of their identity stretch and varnish the truth to try and make it fit their self-image.

For both Hindus and Muslims, their joint past is something to recall and treasure. Of course, there were many incidents that we would rather forget: no synthesis takes place without a clash of arms, cultures, personalities and beliefs. And Hindus have every right to resent the long series of Muslim incursions into their country. But history is ultimately an account of conquests and migrations, and is all too often written in blood.

In the case of Mughal India, Babar and his descendants created an inclusive empire that, by and large, was extremely tolerant for the age. To deny this truth is to deny ourselves a model of civilisation we should all be proud of.

In the anarchic days of the uprising in Delhi, there was an element of Wahabism that sought to lend a fanatical edge to the struggle. Dalrymple mentions a maulvi who, before the Mughal emperor, accused the Hindus of siding with the British, and demanded a jihad against them. A delegation of Hindus angrily rejected the charge. According to Dalrymple:

“...Zafar declared that in his eyes Hindus and Muslims were equal and that ‘such a jihad is quite impossible, and such an act an act of extreme folly, for the majority of Purbia soldiers were Hindus... The Holy War is against the English. I have forbidden it against the Hindus’.”

Zafar’s attitude mirrored the many precedents established by his Mughal forefathers over three centuries. Intermarriage was common, and by the time Zafar ascended the throne, the original Central Asian bloodline had been mixed with many other strains. Hindu and Muslim culture had created a rich hybrid that dazzled the world. Orthodox Muslims ascribe the eclipse of the empire to the relaxation of religious ritual at the court. But this is a simplistic view of history. The causes of the downfall of the Mughal empire are many and complex. In the end, though, it ran out of momentum, just as all empires have, before and since.

Although many Indians may not regret the passing of the Mughals, they can admire the supreme culture they had ushered in, albeit briefly. Dalrymple quotes from a famous ghazal attributed to Zafar:

“But things cannot remain, O Zafar,/Thus for who can tell?/ Through God’s great mercy and the Prophet/All may yet be well.”