Delhi (8 page)

The downpour continues. Not a break anywhere in the leaden sky. We continue strolling in the cellars examining dark corners by matchlight. I find a stone lying on the ground with some writing on it. I pick it up and bring it to the light. It has a swastika on top, two lotus flowers on either side with ‘Allah’ inscribed on it in Arabic. Beneath it is a legend in Persian:

‘Musaddi Lal Kayasth, son of Chagan Lal Kayasth, disciple and slave of Peer Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin, Beloved of God by whose blessing he received the gift of a son, Kamal Kayasth. In the reign of Sultan Ghiasuddin Balban, King of Kings, Shah-in-Shah of Hindustan.’

4

I Musaddi Lal, son of Lala Chagan Lal, Hindu Kayastha of Mehrauli in the city of Delhi, having lost the light in one eye due to the formation of a pearl and fearing the same fate befalling the other, herewith record some events of my days upon this earth. May Ishwar who is also Allah, and Rama who is also Rahim, bear witness that what I have written is true, that nothing has been concealed or omitted.

I was born in 633 Hijri corresponding to the year 1265 of the Christian calendar. It was the beginning of the reign of Sultan Ghiasuddin Balban. My ancestors had been scribes in the service of the rulers of Delhi. They had served Raja Anangpal, the Tomara Rajput, who built Lal Kot and planted the sacred iron pillar of Vishnu Bhagwan in the middle of the city. They had also served Raja Prithvi Raj Chauhan who renamed the city Qila Rai Pithora. When Mohammed Ghori defeated and slew Raja Prithvi Raj and became ruler of Delhi my ancestors acquired knowledge of Turki, Arabic and Persian and continued in the service of the new ruler. My great-grandfather served under Sultan Qutubuddin Aibak and with his own eyes saw the destruction of Hindu and Jain temples, the building of the Jamia Masjid later called Quwwat-ul-Islam on their ruins and the beginnings of the tower of victory, the Qutub Minar. My grandfather served under Qutubuddin’s son-in-law and successor Sultan Altamash. Like a common labourer he dug the earth for the Shamsi Talab at the site where the Sultan had seen the footprints of the Holy Prophet’s horse, Buraq, and carried stones on his head to build the mausoleum of the Saint Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki. He saw the Qutub Minar completed in
AD
1220. It was my grandfather who built the stone house along the Shamsi Talab where I was born and spent most of my life. He also served under Sultan Altamash’s daughter Razia Sultana who ruled over Hindustan for three-and-a-half years. My father, Lala Chagan Lal was a clerk in the
kotwali
(police station) of Mehrauli under the mighty Sultan Ghiasuddin Balban and served him for fifteen of the twenty years of his reign which lasted from
AD
1265 to
AD
1287. (My father died in the year
AD
1280).

Like my Kayastha forefathers, I was trained to be a scribe. A
pandit
taught me Sanskrit and Hindi. Through my father’s influence I was admitted to a
madrasa
to learn Arabic, Turki and Persian. At first I was treated roughly by the Turkish boys and the sons of Hindu converts to Islam. But when I learnt to speak Turki and dress like a Turk, they stopped bullying me. To save me being harassed, the
Maulvi
Sahib gave me a Muslim name, Abdul. The boys called me Abdullah.

I was the only child of my parents. I had been betrothed to a girl, one of a family of seven who lived in Mathura. We were married when I was nine and my wife, Ram Dulari, only seven. Four years later, when I was old enough to cohabit, my parents sent the barber who had arranged my marriage to fetch my wife from Mathura. For reasons I will explain later, her parents refused to comply with our wishes. Then tragedy struck our home. My father died and a few days later my mother joined him. At thirteen I was left alone in the world.

The
Kotwal
Sahib was very kind to me. When he came to offer his condolence, he also offered my father’s post to me.

It was at that time that my Muslim friends suggested that if I accepted conversion to Islam my prospects would be brighter; I could even aspire to become
Kotwal
of Mehrauli. And I would have no trouble in finding a wife from amongst the new converts. If I was lucky I might even get a widow or a divorcee of pure Turkish, Persian or Afghan stock. ‘If you are Muslim,’ said one fellow who was full of witticisms, ‘you can have any woman you like. If you are up to it, you can have four at a time.’

A Turk for toughness, for hands that never tire;

An Indian for her rounded bosom bursting with milk;

A Persian for her tight crotch and her coquetry;

An Uzbeg to thrash as a lesson for the three.

There was something, I do not know what, which held me back from being converted to Islam. I suspected that the reason why my wife’s parents had refused to send her to me was the rumour that my parents had adopted the ways of the Mussalmans. If I became a Muslim, they would say, ‘Didn’t we tell you? How could we give our daughter to an unclean
maleecha
?’

On the last day of the obsequial ceremony for my mother, my wife’s uncle came from Mathura to condole with me. His real object was to find out what I was like and whether I observed Hindu customs. With his own eyes he saw that I had my head shaved, wore the sacred thread and fed Brahmins. I asked the barber to speak to him about sending my wife to me. The uncle did not say anything and returned to Mathura.

After waiting for some days I approached the
Kotwal
Sahib. At that time people felt that fate had dealt harshly with me and were inclined to be sympathetic. The
Kotwal
Sahib made me write out a complaint against my wife’s parents for interfering with my conjugal rights. He forwarded it to the
Kotwal
of Mathura with a recommendation for immediate execution. If the family raised any objection, they were to be arrested and sent to Mehrauli.

A week later my wife escorted by her younger sister and uncle arrived at my doorstep. After a few days her uncle and sister returned to Mathura.

Ram Dulari behaved in a manner becoming a Hindu wife. She touched my feet every morning and wore vermilion powder in the parting of her hair. But she cried all the time. And if I as much as put my arm on her shoulder to comfort her she shrank away from me. One night when I went to her bed she started to scream. Our neighbour woke up and shouted across the roof to ask if all was well. I felt very foolish.

Even after one month I did not know what she looked like because she kept her face veiled with the end of her
dupatta
. It was only from her neck and hands that I made out that she was fair. I also noticed that her bosom was full and her buttocks nicely rounded.

It took me several weeks to realize that my wife did not intend to cohabit with me. She cooked her food on a separate hearth and ate out of utensils she had brought with her. For her I was an unclean, Muslim
maleecha
. I tried to take her by force. I beat her. It was no use. I asked her whether she would like to return to her parents. She said that she would only go if I threw her out or when she was taken away on her bier. What was I to do? Could I go to the
Kotwal
Sahib and ask him to order my wife to spread her legs for me! Gradually, I reconciled myself to my fate. We slept under the same roof but never on the same
charpoy
.

One morning I took Ram Dulari to see the Qutub Minar. We climbed up to the first storey and I pointed out the mausoleum of the Saint Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, the Auliya Masjid alongside the Shamsi Talab, our own little home on the other side. And right below us the tomb of Sultan Altamash. I showed her the slab on which a Hindu stonemason had inscribed
Sri Visvakarme Prasade Rachita
and stuck it into this Muslim tower of victory. We came down and I took her towards the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque. I explained to her how the Turks had demolished twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples and buried the idols of Vishnu and Lakshmi beneath the entrance gate so that Muslims going in to pray could trample on them. She refused to enter the mosque. As we were retracing our steps, she noticed that the figures of Hindu gods and goddesses on the pillars of what had once been a Hindu temple had been mutilated: noses sliced off, arms broken, breasts chopped off. She put her head against a pillar and began to cry. A small crowd collected. I pretended she was not feeling well and pushed her along. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was dressed like a Mussalman and my wife wore a
burqa
(all Hindu women of rank wore
burqas
) it could have been very awkward. When we got home I reprimanded her very severely.

The Hindus hatred of the Mussalmans did not make sense to me. The Muslims had conquered Hindustan. Why hadn’t our gods saved us from them? There was that Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni who had invaded Hindustan seventeen, times—not once or twice but seventeen times. He had destroyed the temple of Chakraswamy at Thanesar and nothing happened to him. Then Somnath. They said that even the sea prostrated itself twice every twenty-four hours to touch the feet of Somnath. But even the sea did not rise to save Somnathji from Mahmud. They said that Mahmud used to chop off the fingers of the Hindu rajas he defeated in battle; his treasury was full of Hindu fingers. He styled himself as Yaminuddaulah–the right hand of God and Zill-e-Ilahi the Shadow of God on earth.

The Muslims had become masters of Hindustan. They were quite willing to let us Hindus live our lives as we wanted to provided we recognized them as our rulers. But the Hindus were full of foolish pride. ‘This is our country!’ they said. ‘We will drive out these cow-killers and destroyers of our temples.’ They were especially contemptuous towards Hindus who had embraced Islam and treated them worse than untouchables.

The Hindus lived on the stale diet of past glory. At every gathering they talked of the great days of the Tomaras and the Chauhans.

‘Arre bhai
! Who can deny our ancients were great!’ I told my Hindu friends a hundred times. ‘But let us think of today. We cannot fight the Mussalmans; they are too big, too strong and too warlike for us. Let us be sensible and learn to live in peace with them.’ But reason never entered the skull of the Hindu. Everyone in the world knows that if you put the four
Vedas
on one side of the scale and commonsense on the other commonsense will be heavier. But not so with the Hindus. They would look contemptuously at me and call me a pimp of the Mussalmans. Their great hero was Prithvi Raj Chauhan who had defeated Ghori once at Tarain in AD 1191. But the very next year, on the same battlefield, he had been defeated and slain by the same Ghori. They had an answer to that too. ‘Prithvi Raj’s only mistake was to spare the life of the
maleecha
when he had first defeated him,’ they would reply. Nobody really knows the truth about this Prithvi Raj. A poet fellow named Chand Bardai had made a big song-and-dance about him. This great hero Prithvi Raj married lots of women and even abducted the daughter of a neighbouring raja. But you could not say a word against him to the Hindus. Next to Sri Ramchandraji, it was Samrat Prithvi Raj Chauhan who they worshipped.

I realized that I belonged neither to the Hindus nor to the Mussalmans. How could I explain to my wife that while the Brahmins lived on offerings made to their gods, the Rajputs and the Jats had their lands, Aheers and the Gujars their cattle, the Banias their shops, all that the poor Kayasthas had were their brains and their reed pens! And the only people who could pay for their brains and their pens were the rulers who were Muslims!

I was disowned by the Hindus and shunned by my own wife. I was exploited by the Muslims who disdained my company. Indeed I was like a
hijda
who was neither one thing nor another but could be misused by everyone.

Then I heard of Nizamuddin. ‘Go to the
dervish
of Ghiaspur on the bank of the river Jamna and all your troubles will be over,’ people said. They called him
auliya
(prophet) and also Khwaja Sahib. But there were many learned Mussalmans who called him an imposter who would soon meet the fate he deserved. As becomes a good Kayastha I did not express any opinion and waited to see which way the wind was blowing.

In due course this Nizamuddin was summoned by the sultan to answer charges of heresy levelled against him. On the day of the trial I took leave from my job and went to the palace.

The very name of Ghiasuddin Balban made people urinate with fear. He had a terrible temper and was known to execute anyone who as much as raised his eyes to look at him. He kept two huge Negroes beside him to hack off the heads of people he sentenced to death.

What a sight it was! The great sultan on his couch flanked by his Abyssinian bodyguards: black djinns with drawn swords! Hundreds of bearded Turkish generals! On one side of the throne-couch stood five
ulema
dressed in fine silks. Facing them on the other side was a young man not much older than I. He wore a long shirt of coarse black wool and had a green scarf tied round his head. With him were three of his followers dressed as poorly as he. This was Nizamuddin, the Sufi
dervish
of Ghiaspur.

The sultan first addressed Nizamuddin.
‘Dervish,
the
ulema
have complained that you make no distinction between Mussalmans and infidels; that you pose as an intermediary between God and man; that you use words which obliterate the difference between man and his Maker; that your followers indulge in music and dancing in the precincts of the mosque and thus contravene the holy law of the
shariat
. What do you have to say in your defence?’

Nizamuddin smiled and replied: ‘O mighty Sultan, it is true that I do not make any distinction between Mussalmans and Hindus as I consider both to be the children of God. The
ulema
exhort Your Majesty in the name of the Holy Messenger (upon Whom be peace) to destroy temples and slay infidels to gain merit in the eyes of Allah. I interpret the sacred law differently. I believe that the best way to serve God is through love of his creatures. As for the charge of posing as an intermediary between man and his Maker, I plead guilty. God’s Messenger (on Whom be peace) said: “Whoever dies without an Imam dies the death of a pagan.” We Sufis follow this precept and believe that he who has no Shaikh is without religion. The
ulema
know not that God often manifests himself in His creatures. They also do not know that Allah cannot be understood through knowledge of books or through logic. His Messenger (peace upon Him) when asked whether even he did not know God replied “No, not even I. God is an experience.”‘