If George Washington had children they would not be pulling rickshaws

GEORGE Washington had no children. However, George and Martha Washington raised two children from her first marriage. By all accounts, George Washington was a very loving father to his stepchildren. Whatever has happened to America’s first First Family and how they may have evolved are matters of conjecture.

But one thing is certain: George Washington’s heirs would not be starving or pulling rickshaws in Kolkata’s hot and humid bylanes to eke out a living as the heirs of Tipu Sultan were recently seen doing.

The link between George Washington and Tipu Sultan is too palpable to be ignored. George Washington became a hero of the American Revolution by defeating Britain’s Lord Cornwallis at the battle of Yorktown on Oct 19, 1781.

In contrast, Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore, was treacherously defeated in 1799 by the same British general who was forced to abjectly surrender before George Washington. There’s a difference here, however. While the American hero enjoyed the unflinching support of his fellow revolutionaries, Tipu Sultan was completely betrayed by the Marathas and by the ruler of Hyderabad, who both joined the assault by Cornwallis on the Fort of Srirangapatnam.

To a lot of historians Tipu represents one of the finest spirits among Indian warriors who gave the East India Company a run for their money. As a matter of record, such was his total sway over the region that he ruled and his defiance of British authority that the East India Company’s shares dropped by almost 60 per cent during the protracted Mysore campaign.

Prasanta Paul is among the few journalists who have tracked the tragedy that subsequently visited Tipu’s family. He says he was shocked by the plight of the great grand descendants of Tipu Sultan, who were as recently as two years ago lugging rickshaws in the mean streets of Kolkata.

For example, Anwar 38, is just another faceless rickshaw-puller, among the thousand others lugging their three or two-wheeled vehicles in Kolkata and its neighbourhood.

“Yet the thin, lanky Anwar is not really a nobody; he is one of the sixth generation descendants of Tipu Sultan, the great freedom fighter from South India who laid down his life in a bloody fight against the British, in the battle of Srirangapatnam, in 1799,” says Paul.

As luck and irony would have it, Anwar and his brothers have been pulling rickshaws on the very road named after one of their ancestors, Prince Ghulam Mohammad Anwar Shah, one of Tipu Sultan’s 12 sons!

Never mind if Anwar or the members of his family pine for what is not, as their brush with history is a distant memory now, a tale almost forgotten. It was from their grandmother that they came to know about the historical connection, or rather, about the link with Srirangapatnam and, subsequently, Prince Anwar Shah.

“We are ashamed to speak of our past; that we are descendants of the great man makes us shrink further, because it won’t help to restore our fortune or mitigate our poverty,” says Anwar Shah, as his eyes search for a passenger in the scorching, humid day.

Says Paul about his assignment: “The sad reality is that talking to the correspondent here about their plight is less important than earning his daily wages, to fend for himself and the family.”

In La Martiniere College, where I went to school in Lucknow, of the four “houses” within which the boys were split into competing teams, the green one is named after Lord Cornwallis. The red one, to which I belonged, is called Hodson House, named after Captain Hodson of the colonial army.

Yes, the same Capt Hodson who captured the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar after the vanquished ruler had escaped from the Red Fort to seek shelter at Humayun’s tomb near what is today known as Mizuamuddin East. Hodson had also captured the grandsons of the Mughal ruler who were blinded and executed by him at the Khuni Darwaza, an old sandstone relic that today overlooks the Indian Express building in Delhi.

Recently, completely out of the blue, I was brought face to face with a Muslim family from the southern city of Hyderabad. They were introduced as the surviving heirs of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Arijeet Gupta, an independent filmmaker, stumbled onto this family, safely secluded from the public eye, by accident. “The Living Moghuls” is the first-ever film on the Hyderabad-based family of 80-year-old Begum Laila Umahani, the 4th generation, of the family of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the “Last Great Moghul” and his first wife Ashraf Mahal.

This remarkable family-history reveals the story of four lost generations of descendants after Bahadur Shah Zafar’s exile following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as India’s first struggle for freedom. This brought to an end 332 years of Mughal rule of India, started by the great adventurer and romantic hero Babur in 1526.

The film shows the Umahani family living in a crowded part of Hyderabad in a dilapidated flat. Meeting them during the premier, I discovered that one of the sons has now become a kind of a chef, advising the Sheraton Hotel on whatever recipes he can remember from oral tradition. So the scion of the great Mughal dynasty turns into a khansama.
As an ardent follower of Laddan Mian’s philosophy, I would have accepted the turn of events in the lives of the children of Tipu Sultan and Bahadur Shah Zafar with good grace. Laddan Mian the late taluqedar of Mustafabad had declared once, after he had given away his assets at throwaway prices, and some even free to a few chosen friends: Jab Sultanat-i-Roma na rahi to meri kya haqeeqat. (When the mighty Roman Empire could vanish without trace, who am I a mere mortal to command these vast assets to my care?”

Mir Taqi Mir had observed this phenomenon thus: Jis sar ko ghuroor aaj hai yaan tajwari ka, kal uspe yaheen shor hai, phir noha gari ka. But there is a rub.

How come the children of those former rulers of India who fought the British colonialists with valour are out on the streets, leading a difficult life that is the lot of a majority of Indians, but those who served the British with servitude and obsequiousness are sitting as members of parliament?

Whether it is the late Rajmata of Gwalior or the late Nawab of Rampur and several others. They were all elected to the Lok Sabha, the house of the people, by a popular verdict. Fine. But to allow them to carry their titles in a republican state? And with the titles that would not have been theirs had they not betrayed people like Tipu Sultan and Bahadur Shah Zafar.

This kind of liberty usurped by many a prince who was loyal to the “Company Bahadur” looks even more absurd and undeserving, since the same feudal values that gave them the power remain at the heart of their prowess even today. This is where it all looks like such a sham. While a lot many of these houses of valour have gone along with the Jana Sangh, for such was the appeal for the rightwing Hindu party, the fact that they claim to be the crux of democracy, the very substance of nationalism, can only make you laugh if not angry.

The late Madhavrao Scindia, the Maharaja of Gwalior, was probably a good, even outstanding parliamentarian. He was first elected as a candidate for the rightwing Hindu Jana Sangh in 1972. Fine. He later switched his loyalty to the more progressive Congress Party. Fine. At least there was this progress.

I am not sure what kind of ideological commitment the self-professed pro-poor Congress party looks for among its candidates, but the former rulers are very much part of the scheme, just as is the case with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In fact, there may be no difference between the two main political parties where their attitude to the scions of the princely states is concerned. No wonder that the young Jyotiraditya, the son of the late Madhavrao Scindia, says he was approached by the BJP to be their candidate in the election that he won from his late father’s seat in Gwalior last year as Congress candidate.

Speaking about his father, after his tragic death in an air crash, Jyotriaditya Scindia said: “My family has a long tradition of serving people. Entering politics was just a means of furthering that goal. He strived throughout his life to get maximum benefits for the people in his constituency. I don’t think that he had entered politics with the aim of becoming the prime minister. He did his best in his own capacity to serve the nation. His work and the appreciation that he received for it was the driving force for him.”

Was there any attempt by the BJP to woo him in its fold just after his father’s death?

“Yes, there was an offer by the BJP to join the party. But as far as I am concerned it was never an issue.”

Had George Washington not routed Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, the British governor-general would never have been sent to India on a punishment posting. And who knows the history of our subcontinent might have been different.