Help bring back Zafar's remains, president urged

President Pranab Mukherjee has been urged by three prominent citizens to help bring back the mortal remains of Bahadur Shah Zafar, who led the 1857 revolt, from Myanmar.

Members of the "Citizens' Group to Commemorate 1857" have told the president that this would be the best to way to remember India's first war of independence.

Justice Rajinder Sachar, writer and former diplomat Kuldip Nayar and journalist-writer Saeed Naqvi said Bahadur Shah had chosen his own resting place -- at Mehrauli in south Delhi.

Bahadur Shah's resting place "was to be at the shrine of a saint he was devoted to - Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki. The shrine is in Mehrauli", they said in a communication Monday.

Bakhtiar Kaki was the principal disciple of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer and the guru of Baba Farid. Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia was Baba Farid's disciple.

Poet-king Bahadur Shah, the last emperor of Mughal India, became a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity after leading the great war of independence.

On May 11, 1857, soldiers of the British Indian Army, after seizing Meerut Cantonment, reached Delhi and proclaimed him the emperor of India.

He died in colonial captivity in Myanmar longing for two yards of land for his burial in his beloved country.

The communication pointed out that the revolt of 1857 was a classic example of secularism because of the Hindu-Muslim unity and Bahadur Shah Zafar's remains must be brought back to India.

Bahadur Shah was transported to Yangon to be lodged in a junior British officer's garage where he died.