An Insider's View of the Appalling World Within Bahadur Shah Zafar’s Red Fort

A highly interesting compilation titled "Precis of Palace Intelligence" gives us an insider's picture of Bahadur Shah Zafar's Red Fort inhabited by 2000 people.

Preface

SEVEN YEARS PRIOR to the first war of Indian Independence, Bahadur Shah Zafar was eking out a living with the pension that the British supplied him. The phrase “eking out a living” can be interpreted in two ways in his context. The first: here was a Mughal who had inverted the relationship between monarch and supplicant. His ancestor Jahangir had…