Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c55.s4: § 4. Shah Alam's vices
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c55.s4
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§ 4. Shah Alam's vices
v4.c55.s4.1
But even if Shah Nizām-ud-din had possessed the suavity and patience of an angel, it would have been impossible for him to keep Shah Alam satisfied with his management. Sordid avarice and boundless sensuality had disgraced the character of Shah Alam ever since his return to Delhi after leaving British protection at Allahabad in 1771. He kept the swarm of princes and princesses confined in the palace-prison of Delhi fort on starvation allowances, and at the same time constantly added new beauties to his over-crowded harem. This was noticed by Comte de Modave in 1775. And neither age nor blindness had cooled the flames of passion in his blood after Ghulām Qādir's atrocities.
v4.c55.s4.2
This highly cultured French administrator, the Comte de Modave, who visited the imperial Court in 1775, writes of Shah Alam II:
v4.c55.s4.3
"He has been seized with a sordid avarice, which . . . has gone beyond all bounds. This monarch has two qualities which seem hereditary in his house: he is marvellously devout and very much given to women. He passes his life in their midst, having no less than 500 in his seraglio. . . . I have seen him surrounded by *faqirs* and *mullās*. . . These *mullās* leap up, dance, turn on their feet, their arms in the air, with a prodigious rapidity and make a hundred other extravagant acts. . . Sometimes the *mullās* approach his person extending their arms in front of them, their fists pressed one against the other. The Pādishāh rises up, applies his hands to the fists of the *mullās*, and then passes his hands, sanctified by that touch, to his face and to his beard with a seriousness which gives me a great desire to laugh.
v4.c55.s4.4
“The Pādishāh at present has 27 male children, all alive and swarming. . . It is reckoned that today in the fortress of Delhi there are more than 80 Shāhzāda prisoners, who are all provided with wives and most of them with children. . . Some of these Shāhzādas have only one rupee a day as subsistence allowance, others have two, three, four or five. . . All these princes of the blood imperial lead an extremely unhappy life; the money destined for their subsistence is not always regularly paid.”
v4.c55.s4.5
Three years later the gifted Swiss engineer Major Polier, during a long residence in Delhi, noticed the same thing: “Great fondness of flattery and too unreserved confidence in his ministers, . . . together with an inordinate love of women and a strong propensity to ease and indolence, form the less shining parts of Shah Alam’s character. . . The king has a numerous family, above 500 women and nearly 70 children, male and female, besides grand-children.” In 1804, when Lord Wellesley took over the charge of the Emperor from Sindhiā’s hands, he had to make provision for 45 children, male and female, of Shah Alam II then surviving, besides grand children.*
v4.c55.s4.6
∗ Modave, tr. by me in *Islamic Culture*, July 1937. Polier in P. C. Gupta’s *Shah Alam II and His Court*, 69-70. Wellesley, in his despatch dated 2 Jan. 1805. (*Delhi Dist. Gaz.*, p. 22.)