On this day the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II breathed his last, in a nondescript wooden house in Rangoon (now Yangon), where he had been exiled. The obscurity of his last years received final shape when the British, his captors, buried him in an unmarked grave.
Bahadur Shah Zafar II did not compare as a ruler with his illustrious forefathers, but he is remembered as a talented poet, calligrapher, musician and a devout Sufi.
A British puppet, he was later forced by the Indian soldiers into becoming the leader of the 1857 Indian Uprising, a role he did not seek, and for which he paid a heavy price to the British East India Company with the death of his sons and grandsons at the hands of the British and his own exile.
On being exiled, he and a few members of his family were taken away on palkis and put on a steamer down the Ganges. The river trip continued east, till they entered Bengal and went past Calcutta, anchored at Diamond Harbour, and finally left towards Rangoon.