Bahadur Shah II

Title & tenure

Last Mughal Emperor (1837–1857)

In office: 1837 – 1857

Predecessor:

Akbar Shah II

Successor:

none (British Raj abolished the Mughal throne)

Biography

By the time Bahadur Shah II, also known by his pen name Zafar, inherited the Mughal throne in 1837, the empire had shrunk to little more than the city of Delhi, with real power long since passed to the British East India Company; he was himself a noted Urdu poet.

Achievements

• Maintained Delhi as a centre of Urdu literary and cultural life even as Mughal political power had all but vanished
• Became, reluctantly, the symbolic figurehead and rallying point for the 1857 uprising against British rule across much of northern India

Key events

• Indian Rebellion of 1857: mutinying sepoys and rebels proclaimed him emperor of India at Delhi, giving the uprising a unifying symbol even though he had not planned or led it
• British forces recaptured Delhi later in 1857, ending the rebellion and his nominal rule

Legacy

Bahadur Shah II's fall marked the formal end of the nearly 332-year-old Mughal Empire and the direct transfer of British India from East India Company rule to the British Crown (the British Raj) in 1858.

How it ended

Captured by the British after the fall of Delhi in 1857, tried for treason, and exiled to Rangoon (Burma), where he died in 1862; no successor was named, as the British formally abolished the Mughal throne.