Vicky Khaushal’s recent film, “Chhaava,” which is based on the life of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, the second Maratha emperor, had the largest opening of 2025 and his career to date. The story recounts the Maratha warrior’s bravery as he persisted in following his father, the great Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj and eventually made the ultimate sacrifice for Dharma during his fight against the Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb. The film has a remarkable net collection of Rs. 219.75 crore in India after a successful seven-day run. It also stars Rashmika Mandanna and Akshaye Khanna in pivotal roles.
As anticipated, the project evoked strong feelings in viewers, who were observed crying after seeing Sambhaji’s painful, valiant journey on the silver screen. Some people found it difficult to contain their tears as they left the theaters, while others were in awe of Kaushal’s acting prowess. The film did, however, portrayed a significant chapter of Indian history on the big screen which profoundly affected the people.
Look how people cry after watching cinema on sambhaji maharaj(chaava), how brutally he was tortured by Aurangzeb for not converting to islam🚩🚩 pic.twitter.com/0xzed5gLzc
— பாஜக சந்திரசேகர்(மோடியின் குடும்பம் ) (@ChandrasekarVi1) February 18, 2025
It should come as no surprise that the film’s popularity and the emotional bond it created with the public rattled Islamists and their supporters, who believe in some imagined greatness of the Mughals, whom many of them regard as their ancestors and take pleasure in the violence Sambhaji endured.
One such tweet was shared by “journalist” Kavish Aziz who wrote, “They are content with their victory in the movie because they were unable to win in real life” and uploaded a scene from the movie that showed a wounded Shambhaji and the sadist Aurangzeb as she referred to the former as the art and the latter as the artist, relishing in the violence.
Small time actress and full time propagandist Swara Bhasker infamous for her anti-Hindu and anti-India antics was also unable to conceal her hatred and lashed out at the Hindus for for taking pride in their heritage. She termed Hindus “a brain and soul-dead society” and defined “Chhaava” as “a heavily embellished partly fictionalized filmy torture of Hindus from 500 years ago,” alleging that people are reacting to a movie rather than being outraged about stampedes and poor management.
The actress was soon schooled by a member of her own pseudo-Liberal cabal, Swati Chaturvedi, who highlighted that she had been a history student from Delhi University and asserted that there was “nothing remotely fictional about the torture inflicted by Aurangzeb on Sambhaji Maharaj” and Bhasker should not “play games with our history.”
Another extremist Muslim praised the brutal Mughal emperor and termed “Chhaava” as “fake Bollywood movie.”
While Islamists and their apologists were being slammed for their highly divisive views and lies, a tweet by Dilip Mandal shed light on the reality of the Mughal-Maratha struggle and the current condition of the descendants of the ‘glorious, victorious Mughals’ in the country. He remarked, “Aurangzeb could not even go back to Delhi because all his might was invested in facing the challenges posed by Maraths. He spent 23 years imprisoned in the Deccan, where he eventually perished. The Mughal Sultanate was reduced to the Red Fort of Delhi in less than 40 years. The Mughal descendants now operate tea stalls and a tailoring cart in Kolkata. Justice of history and time.”
मराठा शौर्य से टकराने में औरंगज़ेब इतना थक गया कि दिल्ली भी न लौट सका। 23 साल दक्कन में फँसा रहा और वहीं मर गया। 40 साल के अंदर मुग़ल सल्तनत दिल्ली के लाल क़िले तक सिमट गया।
— Dilip Mandal (@Profdilipmandal) February 20, 2025
मुग़लों का ख़ानदान इन दिनों कोलकाता में चाय की ठेली लगाता है और कपड़े सिलता है।
इतिहास और समय का न्याय। pic.twitter.com/cHbOzGrv4X
Destitute heirs of Mughal empire live a life of misery
Sultana Begum is the widow of Mirza Bedar Bukht, Bahadur Shah Zafar II’s great-grandson, who was born in 1920 in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) and died in 1980 in Kolkata. She married her husband in 1965 when she was just 14 years old and he was older by 32 years. He was a soothsayer and made little money but he was unable to support his family. She had already lived a hard life before becoming a widow and was compelled to relocate to the ghetto where she then resided. “Poverty, fear and lack of resources pushed him to the brink,” she conveyed, according to a 2021 report in Al Jazeera. Her belongings included documents attesting to her marriage to Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht.
Begum lived in a small shack with one of her grandchildren and shared a kitchen with her neighbors and used a community tap down the street to wash clothes. She used to run a little tea store close to her house but it was destroyed to expand a road. She then began to receive a pension of Rs 6,000 a month from the Indian government as a legitimate heir of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, as per reports.
She informed, “We were living in Taltala and subsisted on the pension he received as the legal heir of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, which was a few hundreds of rupees. In 1984, I shifted to Howrah with my children, trying to raise them single-handedly. After he died, I worked from time to time, running a tea stall, making bangles but now age has caught up and I am confined to bed most of the time,” reported “The Indian Express” in 2024.
She claimed that Bukht was the final recognised direct male descendant of Zafar, who was first granted a British pension. According to her petition, he thereafter received a pension from the “central government, the Nizam and the Hazrat Nizamuddin Trust.” Begum, who stayed in a hutment in Howrah near Kolkata claimed to be in desperate need of money. “I have a son and five daughters. The eldest of my daughters died in 2022, delaying the filing of the appeal. My children remained uneducated, none of them could finish school and we continue to live in penury,” she pointed out.
Begum’s claim over Red Fort
In 2021, Begum staked claim on Red Ford that was once occupied by the Mughal rulers and asserted that she is the heir to their dynasty as she spent many years asking with authorities to acknowledge her royal position and provide her with the compensation after his death in 1980. She filed a lawsuit to be recognized as the legitimate owner of the iconic Red Fort that was once the center of Mughal rule in the 17th century. “I hope the government will definitely give me justice. When something belongs to someone, it should be returned,” she claimed.
“Can you imagine that the descendant of the emperors who built the Taj Mahal now lives in desperate poverty,” Begum further asked. Her argument was based on her assertion that the last monarch to rule, Bahadur Shah Zafar was the ancestor of her late husband. The Mughal empire had dwindled to the limits of the capital by the time of Zafar’s coronation in 1837, following the conquest of India by the East India Company, a British trading enterprise.
When colonial authorities ordered the Red Fort to be renovated around the turn of the 20th century, the complex had fallen into disrepair and many of its buildings had been destroyed in the years after the rebellion. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, marked the country’s independence on August 1947 by raising the national flag from the fort’s ramparts. His successors now carry out the tradition every year.
The main argument in Begum’s legal battle was that the property, which she alleged should have been inherited, is occupied illegally by the Indian government. However, the Delhi High Court dismissed her plea as a “gross waste of time” and concluded that her legal team had not provided sufficient evidence to explain why Zafar’s descendants had not filed a case of this nature in the 150 years since his exile.
On 20th December 2021, the petition was refused by Justice Rekha Palli’s as the court pronounced, “Even if the petitioner’s case were to be accepted that late Bahadur Shah Zafar II was illegally deprived of his property by the East India Company, as to how the writ petition would be maintainable after such an inordinate delay of over 164 years when it is an admitted position that the petitioner’s predecessors were always aware of this position.”
Begum’s lawyer Vivek More expressed, “She has decided to file a plea before a higher bench of the court challenging the order,” after the verdict as she voiced, “I hope that today, tomorrow or in 10 years, I will get what I’m entitled to. God willing, I will get it back. I’m certain justice will happen.” The suit was filed “in the hope that the government will take note of her and help her out financially.”
According to her, the British unlawfully took control of the Red Fort on 19th September 1857. She contended that she was legally entitled to compensation for the Union government’s alleged unlawful usage of Red Fort, which she inherited from Bahadur Shah Zafar II.
Begum filed an appeal against the 2021 order in last November, arguing that “the Union government is having illegal possession of the Red Fort, which is the appellant’s ancestral property and the government is not willing to give compensation or possession of such property, which is a direct violation of petitioner’s fundamental right and constitutional right.”
However, her bid to take possession of the struture was again not entertained by the Delhi High Court last year. Her appeal against the December 2021 judgment of a high court single judge was denied by a bench of Acting Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, who noted that the challenge was brought more than two and a half years after the decision was pronounced which could not be justified.
Last nail in the coffin of Mughal dynasty
A massive uprising that took place in May 1857 led by freedom fighter Mangal Pandey and is now regarded as India’s first battle of independence witnessed insurgent soldiers name the now-fragile 82-year-old Zafar who was the emperor from 1836 to 1857 as the rebillion’s leader. He was a reluctant leader who knew the disorganized insurrection was doomed.
Within a month, British troops had encircled Delhi and brutally put an end to the uprising, putting all ten of Zafar’s surviving sons to death even though the royal family had surrendered. After being banished and forced to travel under surveillance on a bullock cart to neighboring Myanmar, an improvished Zafar passed away five years later. His death put an end to the lineage of Mughal rulers in India.
The Mughals whose brutality is aptly depicted in “Chhaava” used the money they took from India to build the Red Fort and Taj Mahal, among other buildings. The fundamentalists might take pleasure in their violence and slaughter, but the fringe, frayed remnants of the Mughal dynasty has actually been condemned to a life of abject poverty, and obscurity. On the other hand, the current generations of Shivaji and Sambhaji are elected to the Parliament and lead a proud and honorable life. Perhaps, Dilip Mandal is correct is stating that justice has indeed been served by history and time.
