Zain had heard of Babur’s homesickness and so he sent his envoys with this message: ‘I, too, am from the Timurid family, and there are many still in Samarkand and Bukhara who tremble in awe at the name of my ancestor, Nur-ul-Jahan, founder of Dard-e-Dil, a prince of Transoxania by birth. We are brothers, you and I, and brothers must help brothers. My armies are at your disposal to recapture Samarkand, land of fabled beauty and honey-sweet melons, where the power of the Uzbek is weaker than it outwardly seems. In return, I ask only that I may administer your lands in Hindustan, and rely upon you to help me defeat the infidel forces of Rana Sanga.’ (I blush, of course, to know my ancestor used the religion card to claim an alliance.)
The throne of Samarkand in return for his portion of India? Babur did not hesitate to say, ‘Let us meet, my brother, to talk of this.’ Zain’s envoys galloped home to find Zain assassinated, and Ibrahim on the throne. By the time Ibrahim had consolidated his position and cooled his rage towards his brother sufficiently to realize what a brilliant offer Zain had made the Mughal, Babur had decided that a mango in the hand was worth two melons in his dreams. I did not intend for that to sound vulgar.
Dard-e-Dil was absorbed into Mughal territory soon after, with little fuss or fanfare, and spent most of the next two centuries reduced to an administrative unit of the Mughal empire.
‘Those Johnny-come-latelies,’ my relatives are wont to say when the Mughals are mentioned. ‘You know, their empire could have been ours. Those not-quites!’
(And here, again, we must pause to account for the history books which show that the Mughals were certainly not willing to allow powerful rulers to remain powerful once the Mughal Empire was established. And Dard-e-Dil was a northern state, not one of the Deccan kingdoms out of Mughal reach. So why don’t we hear of any marriage alliances — except fairly minor ones — between the Mughals and the Dard-e-Dils? Why don’t we hear of Mughal plans to cut the Dard-e-Dils down to size? Before answering those questions, consider this one: Why don’t we see the kingdom of Dard-e-Dil on maps of pre-Mughal India? The truth, according to the history books, is this: the founder of Dard-e-Dil, Nur-ul-Jahan, was indeed from the royal Timurid line, but after his victory in the Battle of Surkh Khait he failed to consolidate his power, and the Dard-e-Dils remained minor figures in the power game, so minor you wonder if Babur could have taken Zain’s proposal seriously, so minor it’s no surprise the Mughals allowed the Dard-e-Dils (on an on-again, off-again basis) to administer the land which Nur-ul-Jahan and his descendants sometimes held and sometimes didn’t in the years between Surkh Khait and Paniput. The sad truth is that Nur-ul-Jahan’s so-called kingdom was little more than a patch of land and it was only after the fall of the Mughals that his descendants gained control of enough of the surrounding areas to claim real power (and to confer upon their ancestors the posthumous title of ‘Sultan’ which those early Dard-e-Dils never really held in their lifetimes — and later, when the British invented the term ‘Nawab’, the Dard-e-Dils decided they preferred that title, and airily replaced ‘Sultan’). That’s what the history books say, but they also acknowledge that the Dard-e-Dils were among the first northern kingdoms to throw off Mughal rule, soon after the eighteenth century had dawned and Aurangzeb, the last Great Mughal, had died, which is not explicable if they really were as insignificant as the historians make them out to be. Who says it’s true just because it’s in print?)
Still, given our family’s belief that it was the not-quites alone who prevented us from replacing the Mughals, Rehana Apa was kind to point out the obvious: those sad, sad eyes of an emperor deposed could have been Dard-e-Dil eyes. So perhaps, in the case of Ibrahim and Zain, the not-quites indirectly brought about a blessing. That’s what Rehana Apa was trying to say; but, of course, taking the throne of the Mughals would not have meant replicating the actions — and the downfall — of the Mughals. I know what prevented us from being deposed, and worse, after the débâcle of 1857. It was not the fact that we didn’t sit on the throne of Delhi. It was all down to Taj’s mother. Yes, the woman whom Dadi had compared to Leda.
All right, let me clarify. Skipping ahead over three hundred years from the days of Babur, let’s consider what happened to the Dard-e-Dils during the Revolt or Mutiny or War of Independence, or whatever your preferred name for the events of 1857. Near the start of the fighting, when Bahadur Shah Zafar, last Emperor of the Mughals, found himself whisked away from his poetry and music to become the figurehead around which the Rebels banded, the then Nawab of Dard-e-Dil sent his heir apparent to meet the Emperor’s representatives and assure them of Dard-e-Dil support. The heir apparent dawdled. Not because he thought joining the Revolt was a bad idea, but because he was lazy, dedicated to pleasure, and saw no reason to be galloping around the country like an ordinary messenger. He feared if he proved too efficient his father would make a habit of sending him off on such expeditions. He couldn’t dawdle around the palace, of course, because his father’s spies were everywhere. So he rode into the fields around Dard-e-Dil instead, where he saw Taj’s mother who looked him in the eye.
Why do we know this and nothing else, except what we can naturally assume given Taj’s birth, nine months later? Her elbows were not tantalizing, but she looked him in the eye. That’s the one line the family devotes to Taj’s mother, the woman without name. Did she look him in the eye to let him know she thought him worth looking at? Or to show she was no bowing and scraping royalist? Or to clarify that he was not worth a bow or a scrape? Did he find her gaze attractive? Offensive? Diverting?
She died in childbirth, so even her daughter could do nothing more than speculate. But the Dard-e-Dils don’t speculate, because motives and emotions aren’t pertinent. What is pertinent is that Taj’s mother delayed the prince, giving the Nawab’s chief messenger those few extra seconds needed to intercept him just before he extended a hand of support to the Revolt. The Nawab had dithered after his son rode away. Unable to decide whether to back Bahadur Shah or the British, he told his messenger, ‘Leave now. If you reach my son before he delivers a promise of assistance, then tell him to return at once. If he has made the promise, tell him we will stand by it.’ Taj’s mother looked straight at the prince, slowed his progress by … minutes … seconds, and thus we were spared the hangings, the stripping away of titles and possessions, the sad, sad eyes.
I know the prince’s name, but I will not mention it. This gesture is meaningless in the grand scale of things, but sometimes we need to be less than grand.
We were all too grand in the most petty of ways towards Taj. Her mother saved our family, in a manner of speaking, and even if she hadn’t … even if she hadn’t …
Taj’s mother gave birth near the entrance to the palace ground. Then died. It must have been those days of standing in the sun, waiting for the prince or the Nawab to allow her an audience, that sapped from her all energy except that needed to give her daughter life. Her family took Taj away, raised her, and kept her far, far away from the palace.
Such tales are common amongst royal families. But not ours. Taj’s mother is an exception and that’s what makes me think that Dadi was probably right when she said that Taj’s mother, and later Taj, came to symbolize that fateful decision to turn away from the Revolt. It was a decision that saved the Dard-e-Dil family, but we were too ashamed to rejoice. From the roof of the Dard-e-Dil palace you could see trees in neighbouring states from which the Rebels were hanged. And not just the Rebels. What was the name of that Englishman who, in the wake of 1857, said he wanted to see a Muslim hanging from every tree in India? Better he remain nameless, too.