Remembering and Re-telling 1857 and late Mughal rule in early 20th century Urdu literature

1857 remains a central watershed in the North Indian history, marking an end to the Mughal rule and permanently altering the material and social landscape of North India. This research analyzes the accounts of 1857 and the late Mughal rule by North Indian Urdu authors written in the early 20th century. These texts revisit and reimagine the pre-1857 Mughal rule in explicit contestation with the British hegemonic accounts dominating the narratives around 1857. The authors use highly politically coded pre-modern Indo-Persian literary forms to challenge British narratives and stereotypes associated with the Mughal rule. The metaphor and ornate prose of pre-modern forms emerge as important modes of political critique that employ the subversive charge of emotions, an impulse much censured by both British and Indian reformists. The texts under study perform a vindication of the last Mughal king and retrospectively venerate him as a Sufi-king and patron of intercommunal peace, called the ‘ganga-yamuni tehzeeb’ in the texts. Rich myth-making around his figure takes place whilst employing Karbala allegory, historically used for its revolutionary symbolism- affirming divine support for the late Mughal king and reversing the narrative of the British material victory. The marsiya genre lends itself to the lament and nostalgia for the lost Mughal rule. Spatial memorialization of places associated with the Mughal rule resonates with the Indo-Persian shahr ashob genre, implying the upending of a just rule. This memorialization commemorates the Mughal discourse of sovereignty and its place in the North Indian social imagination, refuting British attempts at its mimicking through colonial re-enactments. This ‘counter-memory’ constitutes a rich yet neglected archive of re-visiting 1857, important in its exploration of intergenerational lore, social memory, and contestations with institutionalized history