Kolkata, December 08: She could well have become the empress of India. But history chose to traverse a different course and Begum Sultana, married in the great family of Mughals, now lives in a slum in Forshore Road in Howrah with a monthly pension of Rs 400.
The British arrested Bahadur Shah Zafar and packed him off to Rangoon following the great uprising of 1857. It was in Rangoon that Bahadur Shah’s great grandson Bedar Bakht was born in 1920. Soon after, Bedar was brought to Kolkata by his parents. He continued to evade British sleuths till India gained Independence.
After independence, the government allotted Bedar a pension of Rs 250 per month, which was raised in 1967 to Rs 400 a month. In 1965 Bedar married Sultana and to make ends meet, he found work in a leather factory.
After her husband’s death in 1980 Sultana’s life was a hard battle for survival.
She opened a roadside tea stall and sold bangles and was forced to forget that she had been married in a family, which had once ruled India. It is useless to indulge in such thoughts, she says now.
Sultana has repeatedly appealed to the government for an increase in the pension she still receives. The NDA government had given her a one time assistance of Rs 50,000 in 2004. A desperate Sultana met president Pratibha Patil last September and was assured help. She was told that her pension would be increased, but she is still not aware by how much.
Courtesy: Mail Today