Anyone who is affected by this family’s cruelty should read the history of how these tyrants have treated your elders and your queen! Ah, the slave mentality.
She was a queen like Elizabeth. The most beautiful queen of her time. Widow of the last Mughal Tajdar Mirza Abu Zafar Bahadur Shah. Zeenat Mahal was still 34 years old when the Shah of India was exiled. His son, Jawan Bakht Mirza, was killed by the British when he was young. Her little grandson survived with a servant girl.
The queen was advised that it was better to stay here than to go to Rangoon (Kala Pani) with the old king. The wish was “To live and die with the King”. No royal family in the world suffered the same treatment given to the Mughal royal family in the Rangoon prison.
She spent 10 years in a cramped and dark garage. She saw her grandson dying in front of her. The British Commissioner Davis did not let the medicine reach for them. She continued to beg the brutal police to allow fresh air for her king.
At the age of 87, on Friday, November 7, 1862, at five o’clock in the morning, the King of India was buried in an unmarked grave. Alone, the queen was sitting beside the corpse, shedding tears. The British soldiers pushed the queen and lifted the body and quickly buried it and added limestone to the grave. According to the British Commissioner, the last vestige of Mohammedan rule was erased.
It was decreed that no relative of the king would claim to be the heir, even though the heirs were alive. The Mughal emperor had twenty sons out of which two princes were able to save their lives. Some princes were also put in jail. Those who escaped from being killed in Delhi went into hiding in Burma and other parts of India.
The people of the Mughal royal family, who migrated to Rangoon to pay allegiance to the king, took their suffering queen to them. Whatever simple food they had they would serve the queen first, and treat her with respect and honor. The widowed queen used to cry whenever she thought of the late king’s health, and other female members of the royal family did as well. She experienced grief and passed away at age 63. The queen was cremated by Burmese Muslims next to the king. Later, a shrine was constructed using donations.
It is said that Quran is recited at this shrine all the time. Duas are made for the forgiveness of King and Queen Zeenat Mahal. This treatment of the Mughal Queen took place during the reign of British Queen Victoria.
Both the British Queen and the Mughal Queen were married in 1840. Along with the imperial crown, Queen Victoria used to wear the jewels that the King had given to Queen Zeenat Mahal upon her marriage, which were snatched from Queen Zeenat Mahal by British soldiers during the looting of Red Fort in 1857.
Queen Elizabeth II also used to wear these rare gold jewels. She used to adorn the Koh Noor diamond in her crown. The queen’s possessions were also included in the looted wealth from the Mughal dynasty. Queen Elizabeth will be remembered officially, but Queen Zeenat Mahal will live on in the hearts of millions without any royal protocol.
(This article was translated from the facebook post of Fatima Qamar, President of Pakistan Qaumi Zaban Tehreek.)
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