A story of the mughal dynasty in its last days or a story or a few soldiers sparking off a revolt?
The Last Mughal is a very well researched and written book about hte last few months and days of the mughal court and of ADelhi as was known then The Delhi we know of today is vastly different infact totally rebuilt so to say.
The book is a collectioon of notings and diary entries by a lot of people on both sides of history - British and Indian.
For the first time we get to have a peek into the Delhi of the day - the grandeur of a culture at its zenith and a revolution waiting to happen. The backdrop of a marriage and coronation of a pre-adolescent prince by his aging father who is goaded by his scheming wife.
What started off as a revolt by soldiers against using the greased catridges because of the violation of their faith quickly snowballs into the greatest armed response by any militray force in the last few centuries!
All rally to the solely akcnowledged seat of power - Delhi and hte Mughal court expecting an old man to take a stance in history and he ends up doing his bit too.
Mangal Pandey is exposed as one of te few soldiers who did revolt but he did so against the new rifle catridges not against the British or for freedom.
We come to face to face with a real hard fact recognised thru the ages in our history- traitors
At all times in history we have had traitors who sold their souls, here to we see them - Lala Jiwan lal, Hakim, Zeenat Mahal, the warlord chieftains who come to do battle in Zafar’s name - so many examples. Not to mention hte barbarity unleashed by the soldiers on the British families for which they in turn let loose a bloodbath and almost destroyed the great city brick by brick.
A war so close ot victory that we bumbled in the end. One swift move on the ridge would have wiped out hte British for good and maybe we would have probably read a very different history of India in the last 150 years.
Maybe the Mughal court would have existed, maybe we would have A Zauq and a Ghalib in the court may be we would have been celebrating our 150th Independence day this year on May 11th
May be.
However dear reader please buy the book and read it and keep it for your book collection. I have done it This book is a collector item.