It is usually overlooked while talking about India of the latter half of the eighteenth century that the Mughal court continued to have some political relevance till at least the turn of the century. The reigning badshah, Shah Alam II, who occupied the imperial takht for almost half a century from 1759 to 1806, symbolized the era of transition from the late Mughal period to the ascendancy of the East India Company (EIC). In the wake of the Battle of Plassey,
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Shah Alam successfully redefined Mughal monarchy, gradually delinking the functions of the Court from actual governance, and using his de jure status to sanction, or withhold sanction to, those exercising or claiming to exercise actual control over different portions of what had been the territories of the Mughal empire (with the exclusion of Panjab and the North-West).
Shortly after the Battle of Baksar (1764) in which the combined forces of the Subedar of Awadh (Shuja-ud-daula) and the Subedar of Bengal and Bihar (Mir Qasim) were pitted against the Company, a victorious EIC approached Shah Alam for obtaining the right to collect the revenue of Bengal on behalf of the Emperor. The grant of Diwani in 1765 gave to the Company a formal position in the imperial hierarchy. Further, even after the EIC had conquered most of the subcontinent, coins issued by it were struck in the Emperor’s name till as late as 1835, bearing the ‘frozen’ date of Shah Alam’s nineteenth regnal year. Shah Alam remained Emperor on the coins in the reign of his successor as well. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the memoirs of the Comte de Modave about his travels in India in the 1770s should devote so much space to Shah Alam, the history of the Mughals, conditions in what had been the core areas of the empire, and the imperial capital Delhi. Whereas he speaks disparagingly of the Court throughout the text, highlighting the chaotic state of affairs that prevailed in the subcontinent with the collapse of Mughal authority, he himself was keen to be employed in a military capacity by the Emperor or by some important courtier. These were the years when Najaf Khan, the Paymaster-General, was the most powerful official at the court. He directed the affairs of the imperial government for over a decade, from 1772 when Shah Alam shifted from Allahabad to Delhi, till his (Najaf Khan’s) death in 1782. Modave was in Delhi for a few months from April 1775 onwards, then at Agra and its neighbourhood, and departed from north India in the middle of 1776 travelling in the direction of Hyderabad via Kota and Burhanpur. Modave died a pauper at Masulipatnam in 1777. The diary of the journey is broadly divided into two parts: the expedition from Bengal to Delhi; and the journey from Agra to Hyderabad. Sandwiched between the two is an extensive section containing notes on the Mughal Empire, on Shah Alam and the royal family, and on Hindustan generally.
The Comte de Modave (Louis Laurent de Féderbe) hailed from south-eastern France. He was born in 1725, and adopted a military career, participating in numerous campaigns in Europe as an officer in the French army. Modave was sent out to India in 1757 during the Third Carnatic War (1756-63). He was recalled in 1759, by which time the possibility of a French empire in India was more or less over. Subsequently, in the late 1760s he was associated with French expansionist schemes in the western Indian Ocean, especially in Mauritius and Madagascar, returning to France in 1770. He then embarked on a partly private mission to India in 1773, resided for a short while at Chandernagore, and then proceeded to Faizabad to explore the possibility of being engaged by Shuja-ud-daula. The death of Shuja in 1775, and the attempt by the EIC to tighten its grip over Awadh by insisting on the exclusion of French officers from the army forced Modave to look elsewhere. He then began negotiating with imperial officials and eventually decided to seek an audience with the Emperor. The memoir has a lengthy section on the ceremonial of the darbar on the occasion of his initial attendance.
From the time of his accession Shah Alam had rigidly adhered to established Mughal Court protocol, though of course many elements had been scaled down by the latter half of the eighteenth century. His two successors, Akbar Shah and Bahadur Shah too upheld these conventions. The elaborate ceremonial during Modave’s presentation involved offering of nazr or token tribute to the Emperor, and the bestowal of a khilat or robe of honour by the Emperor (consisting of seven items). In commenting that while accepting the nazr ‘it seemed to me he counted them [the seven gold coins]’, Modave betrays his inability to comprehend the symbolic meanings associated with the gesture of acknowledging the tribute. This was after all the first time he made an appearance at the Court.
Modave’s Delhi sojourn was a fiasco for him due to reasons we need not go into, and he frequently expresses his disappointment while recounting his interactions with some of the leading figures at the Court. He felt very bitter that Najaf Khan should have done nothing for him, and remarks that, ‘The Persians [Najaf Khan’s family was originally from Iran] are the most deceitful people in all Asia and they always speak in the sweetest of words’ (II, p. 508; pagination of the two parts is continuous). From Modave’s narrative it would appear that in the opinion of the Emperor’s principal courtier, extending patronage to him was not likely to be of much use.
We get a portrait of the city in the 1770s which, as might be expected, was obviously quite different from the Delhi of François Bernier, who had given a description of it in the early 1660s when the newly built Shahjahanabad was barely two decades old. Bernier’s account is the point of reference for Modave’s appraisal. In fact, Modave tells us that he went sightseeing ‘with my copy of Bernier’s narratives in my hand’ (I, p. 275). He is unhappy when he finds some of the places, as for instance the Shalimar gardens, in a rundown condition, retaining none of the elegance that Bernier had found so attractive. However, in calling Delhi a city of ruins he ignores the enormous building activity in the century since Bernier had visited it. This had altered the character of the urban settlement: ‘Generally speaking, the houses are double-storeyed and have terraced roofs. The bigger ones usually have a garden as well. There are none that do not have their own well… The houses are usually built of bricks of stone, with lime and sand and mortar’ (I, p. 270). Most of the dwellings had been thatched cottages when Bernier was in Delhi, which gave to Shahjahanabad the appearance of a ‘collection of many villages, or as a military encampment with a few more conveniences than are usually found in such places’.
Modave exhibits many of the common prejudices of contemporary European observers and reproduces several stereotypes. ‘One comes across the typical clichés of the period’, Jean Deloche notes in the introduction, ‘when he speaks of the brave Rajputs, indomitable Marathas, rich Gujaratis and terrible Pathans’ (I, p. 34). Moreover, as the translator, GS Cheema, points out in his preface, ‘He seems to assume the existence of constant strife between the Musulmans and the Gentiles/Hindus’ (p. xii). For all that, this is a text of considerable historical value. Jadunath Sarkar was among the earliest scholars to draw attention to Modave’s journal as a major source for the early reign of Shah Alam. He published a few translated extracts from it, along with a brief introduction, way back in 1937. It was among the sources used by Sarkar for his account of the period, particularly in the third volume of Fall of the Mughal Empire. The complete original text, edited and annotated by Jean Deloche, was published in 1971 nearly two hundred years after Modave wrote it. Soldier of Misfortune is an English translation of the 1971 edition.
Several familiar European ‘adventurers’ of the latter half of the eighteenth century, when in the decades preceding the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1802-1805) they were such a conspicuous feature of military establishments of political entities throughout the subcontinent, make their appearance in the memoir. There is Chevaliar Dudrenec who went on to serve in the Holkar army, and eventually deserted his patron during the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Dudrenec had an ‘attractive personality’, he was ‘big and strong, and always in good humour’, and ‘well-liked by all the Mughal nobles’ (II, p. 546). Then there is Walter Reinhardt Sombre, or Samru. Sombre’s spouse, the famous Begam Samru, is much better known. According to Modave he was in his early sixties when the two of them met, when he was actually about ten years younger and died in 1778 at the age of fifty-five. He was highly impressed with Sombre’s military contingents and the arrangements of his camp.
The route traversed by Modave in his journey from north India to the Deccan took him to the heart of Sindia and Holkar territories on the way. Ujjain was then the capital of Mahadji Sindia. Ujjain itself he liked very much. Trade was thriving and ‘it was a pleasure to walk through it’ (II, p. 605). Neighbouring Indore, seat of the Holkars, was also a ‘lovely town’. However, it was Maheshwar on the banks of the Narmada which enchanted him the most. This was the residence of the celebrated Ahilya Bai. He was struck by the ease with which it was possible to approach her: ‘She granted without difficulty, and with good grace, all that we wanted of her, so that we crossed the Narmada and received our passports the same day … Her passports served us as far as Burhanpur’ (II, pp. 615-617).
There is much else in this eminently readable travelogue, from leisurely accounts of Benares; monuments of Aurangabad; the magnificent Kailash temple at Ellora; to a detailed description of Humayun’s tomb which ‘unlike the Taj Mahal’ (by which he was captivated), ‘does not deserve any special description’ (I, p. 248). He casually mentions that he departed from the compound of the mausoleum ‘after scribbling several good or bad inscriptions in Latin on the walls’ (I, p. 247), perhaps something that he had done at other monuments as well—in which case we might add him to the list of those who in earlier times have left their signatures at these sites in the form of graffiti.
As an example of Modave’s ability to grasp the finer nuances of political equations in contemporary India one might cite a statement which reflects the cordiality that marked the relationship between Shah Alam and Mahadji in their personal interactions. Speaking of Mahadji’s physical disability caused by a wound he received at the Battle of Panipat in 1761, which made it difficult for him to walk without crutches, Modave notes in his memoir that when Sindia ‘comes to Delhi and appears before the Padshah, the monarch does not let him stand on his feet, even for a moment. He has his place behind the throne, a little to the side, so that the Padshah can converse with him, and he does so sitting, a distinction which has not been accorded to anyone else’ (II, p. 607). Colonial historiography of the nineteenth century, and communal narratives about India’s past building on this historiography would deny the possibility of such a relationship, erasing these nuances in history-writing.
Amar Farooqui is former Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi.