A tale of two empire builders

The British empire paid for its hubris in India 150 years ago. Has America drawn any lessons from its own empire?

India is getting nostalgic all over again. The ever inward-looking nation has started celebrating the 150th anniversary of 1857, the First War of Independence against the British. So it's only fit that travelling inside India, I have William Dalrymple's Last Mughal to accompany me.

Having discovered the British author almost accidentally nearly a decade ago, I have stayed on with Dalrymple, or rather he's stayed on with me, ever since. The affair began with his first travelogue, In Xanadu, a spellbinding first person account of his historical quest from Jerusalem to Xanadu in China. And it has progressed with book after book: From the Holy Mountain to City of Djinns and from The Age of Kali to White Mughals.

What a pleasure it is to discover a good book! And what an incredible joy it is to return to your roots and to a writer who has long been your favourite! And this at a time when the sun-baked subcontinent plays hide-and-seek with the monsoon. It's great fun to see the parched Deccan Plateau and what is known as the country's rice bowl rise breathlessly to welcome the rain-laden clouds. The temperature is mercifully down in Hyderabad, thanks to the endless curtain of rain that stretches from the earth to heavens, as far as you can see.

Boy, is there a greater experience than watching the dried and sunken earth transform itself into a dazzlingly green beauty — slowly and sensuously! The weather must have been coquettish like this 150 years ago, when the soldiers of the 130,000-strong British Indian Army decided to rise against their masters and restore power to Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, the legitimate ruler of the vast empire that once his forefathers commanded.

Last Mughal is Dalrymple's most touching and evocative tribute to those heroes and their reluctant leader, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Coming from a British (Scottish, to be precise) writer, this sympathetic account of India's first brush with freedom is indeed rare. Most European accounts look at the event and subsequent history through their tinted blinkers. If the sun finally set on the empire that ruled the world from one end of the earth to the other – America at one end, Australia on the other and Indian subcontinent in the middle – the 1857 developments played a decisive role in it.

Not surprisingly, 1857 is remembered by the British as the Mutiny — Gadar in Urdu and Hindi — in what was the most prized dominion of the Empire. The jewel in the crown indeed! For the colonial power, Gadar was an act of betrayal, nay sheer sacrilege, by the ungrateful natives who did not appreciate the civilising and harmonising influence of white rule. For Indians, though, 1857 was the first valiant attempt to throw out the yoke of colonial rule. The landmark event is rightly celebrated as the First War of Independence.

In May this year, Indian leaders and lawmakers gathered in parliament to flag off the yearlong celebrations of the historic anniversary. Similar celebrations are taking place on the other side of the divide in Pakistan. Since Hindus and Muslims in the undivided India fought side by side in 1857, just as they have in all subsequent struggles against colonial rule, Pakistanis' keenness not to be left behind is understandable. The perfunctory ceremonies though that pass for official celebrations do not let you comprehend the truly epoch-making character of the 1857 struggle. The speeches made by Indian leaders Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and others, dripping with patriotic fervour as they were, might have made Indians feel good about their heroic past and proud of the courageous men and women who sacrificed themselves to win freedom and dignity for their country. However, few in South Asia today seem to be aware of the epic proportions of the battle that their forefathers fought. As far as the people of my generations — or generations before and after it — are concerned, this is just another anniversary. Another date in history!

This is sad given the fact that 1857 not only shaped our past but it has also built our present and may yet form our future. The heroes who paid with their lives for the cause of liberty and dignity might not have succeeded in their struggle to drive the colonial forces out then. But their sacrifices ensured that the people who came after them enjoyed the fruits of freedom. The Year 1857 remains relevant to the people of South Asia and the rest of the world for two reasons.

First, it tells us that freedom and dignity come first for any people. Simple as that! You cannot suppress and control a people for long at gunpoint or by offering them lollipops. Carrots and sticks both do not work, if a self-respecting people decide to restore to themselves the freedom and dignity with which they were born.

In their arrogance that comes naturally to people with infinite power, the British forgot that there are limits to tolerance of even those who may appear all submissive and obedient. You cannot keep human beings in chains for long by challenging their freedom and sense of self-respect.

It was this haughty indifference of the East India Company merchants that brought wave after wave of Company soldiers, the largest force in Asia at the time, out of their barracks and out onto the streets.

Within hours, the spark of freedom that had originated in the cantonments of Meerut and Kanpur had developed into a wildfire raging across the length and breadth of the vast country. And thousands of Hindu and Muslim soldiers and fighters marched in unison to Delhi to reaffirm their loyalty to the old poet-emperor in the Red Fort.

Regardless of the final and tragic outcome of the 1857 struggle, I believe it had been one of the finest hours in undivided India's history. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, men and women and young and old joined hands in this noble struggle to rediscover a lost country and their collective freedom and dignity.

The ruthless crackdown and manipulation by the British to take back the power is part of history now. The bloodshed in Delhi went on for several weeks with the old Muslim quarters of the city being worst hit. Zafar's own sons were killed in cold blood with their heads being presented to the 84-year old emperor on a platter. And the frail, old man was banished to Burma where he died in total seclusion and obscurity, pinning for his homeland. His magical poetry, full of pathos and pain, remains the only link with the country he madly loved. How could anyone forget the immortal lines:

Kitnaa hai badnaseeb zafar dafan ke liye Do gaz zamiin bhii naa milii kue-yaar mein (How unlucky Zafar is! Couldn't even find himself two yards of land for burial in his beloved's country.)

The 1857 Revolution might have failed in its original mission. But the spirit of bonhomie and unity that the movement generated was successfully harnessed nearly a century later. The freedom movement, pioneered by Ali brothers (does anyone remember Mohammed Ali Jawhar and Shaukat Ali today?) Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Azad and others, later in 20th century succeeded by emulating the example of Hindu-Muslim unity during the 1857 struggle. So isn't it a shame that in India today as it revisits the spirit of 1857, there's little or no mention of the crucial role Muslims played in the country's liberation?

Secondly, in their import and far-reaching impact, the events of May 1857 can only be compared to September 11, 2001 landmark in the US history.

The British refusal to draw necessary lessons from what was in their view a Mutiny culminated in the empire's dismemberment in less than a century. What began with India's independence did not stop there. The Raj was soon forced to withdraw from the whole of Asia, Middle East and Africa. Britain finally paid dearly for its hubris.

Watching Bush's America blunder from Afghanistan to Iraq and fight what it calls the war on terror in rest of the world, you wonder if the US has drawn its lessons from its own empire. For what is going on in Iraq today is little different from what happened in India 150 years ago. And as George Santayana warned, if you do not learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it.

(Aijaz Zaka Syed is Deputy Editor of Dubai-based Khaleej Times. Write to him at aijazsyed@khaleejtimes.com)