“Words Not Fit for the Writing”: Rumor and Popular Politics in Late-Mughal Delhi, 1700–40

In the spring of 1739, an invading army led by the Iranian Afshārid warlord Nādir Shāh peacefully entered the Mughal capital of Shāhjahānābād – present-day Delhi – seeking to extract tribute from the defeated Mughal ruler and the city’s many inhabitants. Instead, the occupying army found itself under violent assault from the city’s outraged denizens who were inspired by a rumor that Nādir Shāh had been killed within the city’s Red Fort. Such violence was but one instance of urban disorder seemingly precipitated by the circulation of stories and reports through the city in the early eighteenth century. While elite commentators decried such rumor-mongering, they acknowledged the tremendous power of the words uttered by ordinary folk. What, then, was the connection between the “Bazaar Gossip” which percolated the city’s streets and the political mobilization of its common folk? This paper examines the relationship between the space of the city, its networks of communication, and the increasing assertiveness of Delhi’s ordinary folk during the first half of the eighteenth century. By holding surviving depictions of rumors in contrast with authorized media of information exchange (such as court newsletters), this paper argues that unauthorized forms of popular speech, enabled by the very structure of the city, came to constitute a vibrant culture of popular politics during the very decades of the Mughal Empire’s supposed decline.