New Delhi. Sept. 1: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit a memorial to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, during a day trip to Yangon on Thursday, the foreign office said today.

Zafar, who was the titular head of the 1857 revolt against the East India Company, was exiled to British Burma, where he died. After years of controversy over the location of the spot where he died, a memorial to Zafar was built in 1994.

Since then, the memorial has served as a key element of the Yangon itinerary of visiting Indian leaders - President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and foreign ministers Jaswant Singh and Salman Khurshid have all paid tributes at the shrine.

Modi, and the RSS - with which he served as a pracharak - view the Mughal period as a chapter in the millennium-long foreign occupation of India.

But in May 2014, in the final stages of campaigning during the Lok Sabha polls, Modi referred to Zafar favourably - if only to drive home a political allegation.

Modi referred to Zafar's exile, and the old emperor's famous sorrow over not being allowed a final resting place in India, his homeland. Then, Modi accused the Nehru-Gandhi family of doing the same to former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

Rao's family had sought a memorial to the former Prime Minister during the UPA's rule.

Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, who was leader of Opposition at the time, had in 2013 also backed a proposal to bring Zafar's remains back to India.

The British had barred the return of Zafar's remains, worried they may serve as a rallying point for a fresh rebellion.