Married into the royal family that ruled India for three centuries, Sultana Begum lives in penury in a cramped two-room hut in a slum on the outskirts of Kolkata. She shares a kitchen with neighbours and washes at a communal roadside tap. The daily struggle for survival is worlds removed from the opulent palaces her husband’s ancestors once inhabited.
“Can you imagine that the descendant of the emperors who built the Taj Mahal now lives in desperate poverty?” she asks.
Royal by marriage
Sultana Begum is the widow of Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht, the great-grandson of India’s last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Their marriage — when she was just 14 and he was 46 — tied her to one of history’s most powerful dynasties, so rich their name became synonymous with riches. Even today, a very rich, important or powerful person is called a “mogul”.
Her royal connection is scant consolation for Sultana Begum, however, who has been living in abject poverty since her husband’s death in the 1980s.
“What is the use of the Mughal name if we can’t get enough to eat?” she laments, a poignant question in the dingy slum at Howrah she now calls home.
The last Mughal emperor
The story of Sultana’s royal connection begins with Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor to reign in India. When he ascended the throne in 1837 at the age of 62, the once-mighty empire had already shrunk to the boundaries of Delhi, with the British East India Company controlling much of India’s territory.
Twenty years into his reign, the Indian Rebellion of 1857—now hailed as India’s first war of independence—erupted. The 82-year-old emperor, also a renowned Urdu poet, became the reluctant symbolic leader of the uprising.
The rebellion was doomed from the start. British forces surrounded Delhi within a month and ruthlessly crushed the revolt. The last Mughal emperor was exiled to Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar), travelling under guard in a bullock cart. Once the ruler of a magnificent empire, Zafar died penniless in captivity five years later.
He was buried in Rangoon by his son, Mirza Jawan Bakht, who also died there in 1884. Jawan Bakht’s son, Jamshed Bakht, received an English education in Rangoon and a pension of 450 rupees, a considerable sum in those days.
When he died in Rangoon in 1921, however, the British discontinued the pension, giving his son, Bedar Bakht, a paltry 16 rupees a month.
The Begum’s husband
Bedar—who would later marry Sultana Begum—was paid more only after he came to India and travelled to Delhi two years later with his uncle. But his uncle, who pleaded on his behalf, was arrested and released only on the condition that he would not disclose Bedar’s identity.
Perhaps that is why Bedar remained incognito when he began living with his uncle in Kolkata. His school friend, Azmi, recalled his classmates discovered he was a Mughal only when they followed him to the Imperial Bank and learnt that he received a pension.
“None of us knew that Bedar was the descendant of the Mughals,” recalled Azmi. “The only thing that intrigued us was the fact that on the first of every month, he would dress up like a king and spend money liberally,” he told India Today when the magazine reported the plight of the family in December 1986.
Bedar was granted a pension by the Indian government after Indian independence in 1947. However, the monthly pension of 400 rupees was hardly enough to support his family as the cost of living increased over the years. Even with the additional money he earned as a soothsayer, life was a constant struggle.
Bedar lived a life marked by depression, spending most of his time reading holy books and composing poetry. Occasionally, he would go out dressed in splendid sherwanis, twirling a majestic cane, and holding a rose in a pathetic attempt to imitate the princes and nobles of the Mughal era.
“Poverty, fear and lack of resources pushed him to the brink,” recalled Sultana Begum.
Sultana Begum’s life
She ran a tea stall and made women’s garments for a living but hardly made any money.
Now, she survives on a pension of 6,000 rupees ($69) per month—barely enough to support herself and her unmarried daughter, Madhu Begum, who lives with her.
Domestic workers in Kolkata can earn more than that.
Though living on next to nothing in a slum, she pursued big dreams.
She wanted the Red Fort
She went to court, seeking possession of the Red Fort. Built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who also created the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort is now a World Heritage Site owned by the Indian government. But she claimed its ownership as it had once belonged to Bahadur Shah, her husband’s great-grandfather.
The Delhi High Court rejected Sultana’s petition as a “gross waste of time”, reported Al Jazeera in March 2021. The court questioned why Bahadur Shah’s descendants had not brought a similar case in the 150 years since his exile.
But Sultana Begum did not abandon hope. “I hope that today, tomorrow or in 10 years, I will get what I’m entitled to,” she said. “God willing, I will get it back … I’m certain justice will happen,” reported Al Jazeera.
Four years later, Sultana Begum still languishes in poverty.
“I don’t know how we get by,” she was quoted as saying by India.com in a report on March 13. “My other daughters and their families are struggling too, so they can’t help us,” said the mother of six living with her unmarried daughter, Madhu Begum.
Her plight is sometimes reported by the media in search of a story and noted by human rights advocates wanting to help others, but that has not lifted her from poverty. The Mughal’s widow still lives on less than a domestic worker can earn in Kolkata. It’s hard, irrefutable proof that former princely families can be paupers in modern, democratic India.