Who was the last Mughal emperor of India?

Bahadur Shah II (1775-1862), the son of Akbar II, became the 20th and last Mughal emperor in 1837. By then, the Mughal Empire had shrunk to Delhi and its surroundings, and the emperor was largely a pensioner of the East India Company, with only a ceremonial title.

Bahadur Shah was a talented Urdu poet who wrote under the pen name "Zafar" (meaning "victory"). Great poets such as Mirza Ghalib and Zauq were part of his court.

During the Revolt of 1857, rebel sepoys from Meerut reached Delhi on 11 May 1857 and proclaimed the elderly Bahadur Shah Zafar, then 82 years old, as the Emperor of Hindustan and the symbolic leader of the revolt. His son Mirza Mughal and the commander Bakht Khan led the rebel forces in Delhi. When the British recaptured Delhi in September 1857, Bahadur Shah took refuge in Humayun's Tomb, where he surrendered to Captain William Hodson. Hodson later shot dead his sons and a grandson near the Khooni Darwaza.

Bahadur Shah was tried by a British military commission in 1858 for treason and was exiled to Rangoon (Yangon) in Burma (Myanmar), with his wife Zeenat Mahal and some family members. He died there on 7 November 1862 and was buried in an unmarked grave. With his exile, the Mughal dynasty, founded by Babur in 1526, came to an end. His grave was rediscovered in 1991, and a dargah now stands there. Indian leaders, including Prime Ministers, have visited it.

One of his famous verses laments that he could not get even "two yards of land" (do gaz zameen) in his beloved homeland for his burial.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Aurangzeb (died 1707) was the last of the "Great Mughals".
• ✗Shah Alam II granted the Diwani of Bengal to the Company in 1765.
• ✗Akbar II was the father of Bahadur Shah II; he sent Raja Ram Mohan Roy to England.