Akbar II

• 1. Introduction

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  Akbar II reigned as the nineteenth Mughal emperor from 1806 to 1837, at a moment when holding that ancient title guaranteed increasingly little. He was the second son of Shah Alam II. He would become the father of Bahadur Shah II, the man remembered as the last Mughal emperor. What forced a young Mughal prince to entertain a captor rather than rule as one? And what does it mean to sit on an empire's throne while foreign clerks quietly erase your name? They erased it from the money passing through your own subjects' hands. Akbar II's life traces that shrinking distance between the appearance of power and its reality.

• 2. Dancing For A Captor

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  Prince Mirza Akbar was born on the 22nd of April 1760 to Emperor Shah Alam II at Mukundpur, in Satna, while his father was living in exile. On the 2nd of May 1781, at the Red Fort, he was made crown prince and given the title Wali Ahd Bahadur, following the death of his elder brother. The next year he became viceroy of Delhi, a post he held until 1799.

  In 1788 the Rohilla leader Ghulam Qadir seized Delhi and forced the young prince to perform a nautch dance alongside other Mughal princes. Mirza Akbar watched members of his own imperial family humiliated and left to starve under Ghulam Qadir's control. When Emperor Shah Jahan IV fled the city, Mirza Akbar became titular emperor under the name Akbar Shah II. He kept that role even after his father Shah Alam II returned to the throne, continuing as acting emperor until January 1789.

• 3. A Fort, Not An Empire

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  Lord Hastings represented the East India Company at a sensitive moment. Akbar II still insisted on old formalities, and he would receive Hastings only as one sovereign meets another. He refused to be treated as a subject receiving a superior. That stance was, by his own standards, honourable. The British, though, increasingly saw him as merely their pensioner, and his refusal only deepened their frustration. In practice his authority already reached no further than the Red Fort in Delhi, even as Delhi's cultural life went on flourishing around him.

  In 1835 the British cut Akbar II's titular authority down to a single label, 'King of Delhi'. That same year ended the arrangement under which the company had acted as the Mughal Empire's lieutenant, a role held since 1803. At the same time, the company replaced the Persian text on its coins with English, and the emperor's name disappeared from the currency entirely. The British also pushed the Nawab of Oudh and the Nizam of Hyderabad to claim royal titles of their own. The goal was to erode Akbar II's standing further. Out of deference, the Nizam declined, but the Nawab of Awadh accepted the honor. Akbar II, in turn, granted the title of Nawab to the rulers of Tonk and Jaora.

• 4. An Envoy To England

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  Ram Mohan Roy, a Bengali reformer, received an unusual assignment from Akbar II. The emperor asked him to appeal directly to the East India Company over his own mistreatment. Akbar II conferred on him the title of Raja before he set out.

  At the Court of St James's, Ram Mohan Roy presented himself as the Mughal Empire's envoy. He submitted a well-argued memorial, defending Akbar II's treatment at the company's hands. The appeal succeeded in nothing. The British made no change, and Akbar II's protest went unanswered.

• 5. After Akbar II

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  Akbar II died on the 28th of September 1837. During his reign he was credited with starting Phool Walon Ki Sair, a festival that brought Hindu and Muslim residents of Delhi together. His grave sits within a marble enclosure adjoined to the Moti Masjid, close to the dargah of the 13th century Sufi saint Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki at Mehrauli in Delhi. Two other Mughal emperors, Bahadur Shah I, also known as Shah Alam I, and Shah Alam II, are buried in the same ground.

  Mirza Mughal, a grandson of Akbar II, was heir apparent when the mutiny broke out, and the British captured and executed him near Delhi gate. His cousins fled to neighbouring areas, afraid of the same fate. Many surviving princes resettled across India's provinces, while others reached Burma, Bengal, and the Deccan. A large group of the imperial family, including Emperor Bahadur Shah II, were exiled to Rangoon, in Burma.