On my last day in Yangon, I went back to the Schwedagon Pagoda and sat in contemplation of all the history it has stood witness to one last time. I then gathered myself and wheeled around exiting from its South Entrance. I headed down the hill and followed some general directions I had found on the internet that would lead me to the site I was looking for: the tomb of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II.
The Red Fort – Delhi, India (2009)
I had learned about Bahadur Shah a few years earlier during a trip to India. It was a story that gripped me– this was the 17th Emperor of the Mughal Dynasty. The end of the line of 3 centuries of a Dynasty that had begun with Babur the Great who was a descendant of Tamerlane and claimed ancestry with Genghis Khan. The dynastic lineage he spawned would include Humayon, Akbar the Great, and Shah Jahan — who built the Taj Mahal. Babur was laid to rest in what today is Kabul in Afghanistan. Nearly all the other Mughal kings were buried in magnificent mausoleums sprinkled around Delhi, Agra, Fatehpour Sikri, and other areas of North India. Yet, the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, had died in 1862 in Rangoon and was virtually forgotten until 1991. The British had removed him from his palace in the Red Fort in Delhi because of his part in the Indian rebellion or “mutiny” of 1857. At the time, the British East India Company had already begun what was to be their long-term occupation of India which initially began as a trading outpost and then morphed into a military colonizing force stretching from Calcutta down to Madras, across to Bombay, and up to Delhi. A band of Indians who could see the handwriting on the wall if these British forces continued their entrenchment in the region attempted to overthrow the British provisional government and troops who were in Delhi. The leaders of this group approached and enlisted the help of Bahadur Shah and although he had extremely diminished power and extended little influence outside of the walls of the Red Fort, he still wielded a symbolic appeal that could be used to rally the people under the banner of getting rid of a foreign occupier. The results of the uprising were catastrophic. The British crushed the rebellion and killed two of Bahadur Shah’s sons who had participated in the skirmishes. The British general presented Bahadur Shah with each of his son’s heads afterwards. After a 40-day trial in which the British “proved” Bahadur Shah’s role in the mutiny, he was convicted of various conspiratorial charges and treason and sentenced to exile in Rangoon where the British had set up another outpost. In 1858, Bahadur Shah and his wife marched with what was left of the royal court east from Delhi to Rangoon.
Stone Marker found near Bahadur Shah’s tomb
He died in Rangoon 4 years later at the age of 87. He was buried on the same day of his death by the British. His grave was lost until 1991 when during excavation of a road just below the Schwedagon, Burmese construction workers hit a brick-lined structure that upon further investigation turned out to hold Bahadur Shah’s coffin. They also found a stone marker written in English, Urdu, and Burmese that made reference to the “Ex-King of Delhi” being buried near this spot. In his years of exile, Bahadur Shah wrote poetry, created beautiful calligraphy, translated Sufi texts, and reflected on his long life. He was acutely aware of what it would mean to die in exile as the last Mughal Emperor. In one of his final poems, he wrote the following (as has been translated into English), “Poor Zafar! Not even two yards of land were to be had, in the land of his beloved”.
Mausoleum of Humayon – Delhi, India (2009)
While his ancestors such as Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, and others are still remembered and their mortal remains lay in some of the most incredible monuments ever built, Bahadur Shah was hastily buried in a shallow grave in a foreign land. The pages of history quickly swept by him. His descendants would fade into obscurity [a news article some years ago wrote of the existence of some of his descendants who are now apparently paupers in Kolkata – begging for money in train stations]. Yet, something interesting happened after Bahadur Shah’s grave was rediscovered in Yangon.
Taj Mahal (Shah Jahan’s Mausoleum) – Agra, India (2009)
The Indian government assisted the Burmese in creating a shrine for the king, and this compound also includes the tombs of his wife and daughter whose graves were found nearby. As renewed interest in Bahadur Shah and his life caught on, people began to pay attention to his writings and commentaries were published about his poems, his translations of important Sufi texts, and other works.
Mausoleum of Akbar – Fatehpour Sikri, India (2009)
Shrine of Bahadur Shah II – Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) (2011)
When I arrived at his shrine, I was amazed by how many people were there. I thought maybe there would be just a few caretakers and I would be the only visitor. But, there were many people of all ages streaming in and out of the shrine. Some were having picnic lunches in the prayer hall, and others were sitting around the tombs of Bahadur Shah and his wife praying and socializing. These people were all also Muslims. I saw an immediate parallel between their devoutness at Bahadur Shah’s shrine and the Buddhist centrifugal pull of the Schwedagon Pagoda just up the road.
Tomb of Bahadur Shah
In watching the people at his shrine, it struck me that these people did not come here to pay tribute to Bahadur Shah because he happened to simply be the titular “last Mughal”, but rather because they held a saint-like esteem for him and his accomplishments as a poet and dervish.
His shrine emanated its own sacred energy within the shadow of the Schwedagon Pagoda.
Two and half a years after my trip to Myanmar, the country has definitely changed. Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer under house arrest, and instead, is a member of the Burmese parliament. The country has begun to open itself the world community, all political prisoners have allegedly been set free, and the tourist sector in the country is experiencing a boom. This could all be for the best as long as the government and people balance this growth with their traditions and preserve the incredibly legacy and monuments of their country. However, there are concerns about what appear on the surface to be ethnic or religious intolerance and violence — especially in Rakhine state where the Rohingya people (an ethnic group originally from what is now Bangladesh and who are Muslims) are being persecuted by the Buddhist majority there. But, what I saw at the shrine of Bahadur Shah shows that the Burmese people can certainly embrace different religious practice in the face of coming socio-economic change. While his small shrine has none of the grandeur or awe-inspiring design of the mausoleums of his ancestors, it also lacks the museum-like austerity of those shrines. Instead, Bahadur Shah’s shrine is alive and provides a peaceful site of contemplation and community for a Burmese religious minority. It is a refuge — and that’s perhaps more of an enduring legacy than that of any other Mughal Emperor.
