Last Nizam (9781742626109) Page 10
On Friday, 17 July, Salar Jung sent word to Davidson that a jihad was to be declared later in the day and that he had ordered a body of Arabs to disperse an angry crowd gathered at the city’s main mosque. A 5.45 in the evening another messenger was dispatched from Salar Jung telling Davidson that 500 Rohillas and a large mob of insurgents had broken out of the old city and were making their way to the Residency. The rebels managed to occupy two buildings near the Residency and bring down one of its gates. Despite a night-long siege, the rebels were no match for the soldiers stationed inside the Residency or the contingent of Arab guards that Salar Jung had sent to surround the houses they were occupying. Unable to withstand the sustained cannon and gunfire, the rebels retreated, leaving their dead behind. By dawn it was all over.
Hyderabad had stood the test of loyalty by being the first Indian state to put down the Mutiny. Though the British were in debt to the Nizam, the real hero was Salar Jung. ‘In securing the Nizam to our side he played what might well appear to a native of India to be a most desperate game at very great risk to himself and to his master,’ wrote the correspondent of the Athenaeum. ‘He had to oppose not only the patriotic but religious prejudices of his countrymen. He was denounced as a traitor to the faith, and numerous plots were laid for his overthrow and destruction.’5
The British nevertheless thought it prudent that some recognition of Afzal ud-Daula’s valuable service was called for. Lord Stanley, the President of the Board of Control, considered ‘a shipload of truppery – gilded carriages, furniture, arms, horses, etc’ was inadequate and that a restoration of the districts ceded in 1853 would ‘show convincingly that we can sometimes relax our grasp upon the good things that come with it’.6 However, a change of government in Britain in 1859 and the appointment of a new Secretary of State for India augured ill for Hyderabad. The reward for the Nizam was reduced to English manufactured goods valued at 100,000 rupees, a new treaty cancelling a five-million-rupee debt the British claimed the Nizam still owed and the restoration of the districts of Raichur, Doab and Naldurg. But Berar was to remain under British control. ‘Generosity is uppermost in the minds of my British allies, even though their mathematics are a trifle weak,’ the Nizam was said to have muttered to a confidant.7
The Nizam was not the only Indian prince who remained loyal to the British. The vast majority of India’s 600 or so ruling rajahs, maharajahs and nawabs had put their faith in the British and acted as a bulwark against the mutineers. They too were to be recognised. On 12 August 1858 the Company’s empire-building career was cut short by a proclamation of parliament that all rights it had previously enjoyed were being resumed by the British Crown. Victoria became the Queen of England and of India, and her Governor-General became the Viceroy, with much greater authority than his predecessors. The proclamation contained a solemn undertaking that the Crown would ‘respect the rights, dignity and honour of the Native Princes as Our own’.8
The Raj was now responsible for the security of the princes. Insurrection was impossible, but there was a trade-off. The princes were responsible not to their own subjects, but to the Paramount Power. If a prince declared war on another state or indulged in gross misrule he could be unseated by the Raj, which also had the last say in any disputed succession. For all intents and purposes the princely states had ceased being independent. They could no longer have direct dealings with another state or a foreign power. Any attempt to use terms such as ‘royal’, ‘king’ or ‘kingdom’ were frowned upon as were attempts to use ‘arched crowns’ as opposed to ‘open crowns’ on their letterheads.9
For the Nizam, this change in policy and the exile of the last Mughal Emperor to Burma meant that he could no longer proclaim his allegiance to the old rulers of India. A new seal was prepared omitting all allusion to any such allegiance and new coins were minted with the words ‘Nizam ul-Mulk Asaf Jah Bahadur’ on the back. For the first time the Nizam’s name was read out in mosques during the khutba.
The rise in power of the Viceroy meant a corresponding rise in the importance of the Resident. Afzal ud-Daula resented the influence of the Resident and that of Salar Jung, whom he called a ‘Feringhee Bachcha’ (foreign lackey), for his closeness to the British and his independent manner. The two men had little in common in their values or their outlook. Sir Richard Temple, who was the Resident in Hyderabad from 1867, described the Fifth Nizam as a perfect example of what the ‘enervating conditions of India produced in the course of a few generations upon the conquering tribes that came from Central Asia’. Having spent too long living a secluded life in his palace he was:
. . . addicted to superstition, and soothsayers had power over his impressionable mind. If there was any idea in politics on which his thoughts fixed themselves it was this, that whatever the British Resident might suggest should be regarded with circumspection. He desired, if possible, to keep his people aloof from all European notions, social as well as political. Such notions might act upon their minds, he would say, as a whirligig, and cause their thoughts to spin round and round.10
Salar Jung, by contrast, was committed to modernising Hyderabad along the lines of British India. According to Temple, ‘as a man of business, especially in finance, Sir Salar Jung has not been surpassed by any native of India in the nineteenth century’.11 On the occasion of his visit to Europe in 1876, the correspondent for the Athenaeum noted that under his rule Salar Jung ‘has introduced thrift into [Hyderabad’s] finances, doing justice and making life and property to be respected within his borders, and withal – which is perhaps not his least arduous achievement – contenting his English masters’.12
Considering that Afzal ud-Daula spent most of his reign trying to remove Salar Jung, his achievements were indeed remarkable. Describing the situation in Hyderabad when Salar Jung was appointed Diwan in 1853, Sir George Yule, who replaced Davidson as Resident, wrote: ‘There was a government certainly, but it was a Government of plunder; there was no attempt to do justice or to prevent robbery and injustice, the revenues were farmed out to those who bribed highest.’13 Hyderabad was 24 million rupees in debt, the salaries of government officials had not been paid for months and the system of collecting revenue was in a shambles. Arab, Afghan and Sikh mercenaries owned vast estates and were a law unto themselves. Peasants who were unable to pay their debts were imprisoned and starved to death. If a debtor died in prison, his relatives were unable to take away his body until the debts had been paid off. ‘In Hyderabad arms and politics are the only profession, and in a city of 350,000 inhabitants there is nothing that can be called an industry, except the manufacture of swords and daggers,’ the Pioneer reported. ‘Every man has his waistbelt full of weapons, with a flashing sabre or a rusty matchlock in his hand or on his shoulder.’14 Even the beggars were said to be armed.
Salar Jung’s first step was to reduce the state’s indebtedness by obtaining loans from bankers with the guarantee of the Nizam. He then cut his own salary by 30 per cent and made similar cuts to the wages of government servants and soldiers, while promising that payments would be made on time. For the first time regular records were prepared of land under cultivation, listing the nature of the crop, the name of the occupant and the rent payable. The amount of rent was fixed for 10 years and was collected only according to the season and the crops. The claims of moneylenders on the treasury were carefully scrutinised and Arab, Afghan and Sikh landlords were paid off by buying up their land. The telegraph and a postal service were introduced and in 1874 a railway was built connecting Hyderabad State with British India. Commenting on Salar Jung’s administration in the late 1860s, Hyderabad’s Resident Charles Saunders praised his ‘eminent ability, singular rectitude of purpose and numerous high qualities’. Never had he seen another example ‘of the Asiatic mind where subtlety of intellect blends so happily with honesty of heart and public integrity’.15
As Salar Jung’s star continued to rise, the Nizam, like his predecessors, sank further into the closeted confines of his palace. ‘A Prince
who never stirs from his palace and grounds cannot take an intelligent interest in the bulk of his subjects, whom he never sees, and whose prosperity can only be gauged by that most fallacious of all tests, the amount of revenue they surrender,’ commented the Madras Times. ‘The Nizam has never turned out of the city, nor does he permit his Minister to quit its precincts except upon the rarest occasions. Before facts can reach him they must be wonderfully distorted, and he is ever surrounded with a great number of very worthless parasites.’16
But Salar Jung’s honeymoon with the British would soon be over. In 1869 Afzal ud-Daula died suddenly, leaving as his successor his only son, Mahboob Ali Khan, who was just two years and eight months old. Seeing an opportunity for asserting their rights of paramountcy, the British insisted on assuming the guardianship of the infant and taking over the administration of the country. Salar Jung, however, pressed that the infant be proclaimed the Nizam and that a co-regent be appointed until Mahboob Ali Khan turned 18. Under an agreement worked out with Saunders, Salar Jung and Paigah nobleman Khursheed Jah became joint co-regents with the power to manage the Crown estates. Salar Jung would remain the Diwan and the Resident would be consulted on all important matters. As far as the young Nizam’s upbringing was concerned, it was proposed that his mother, Begum Sahiba, would be given domestic charge while his education would be conducted under the supervision of the co-regents.
The Viceroy, Lord Mayo, had other ideas. Despairing at the incompetence of India’s rulers, Mayo wanted Mahboob to receive a sound liberal education under the guidance of an English tutor. Mayo also insisted that the principle of the Resident’s right to offer advice on all important policy matters must be asserted. The upshot was that real power lay in the hands of the British and no new measures could ever be initiated without the Resident’s approval. Hyderabad was also about to become India’s first laboratory for testing Mayo’s vision of westernising the native princes.
With the infant Nizam now on the musnud and Khursheed Jah playing only a minor role as co-regent, Salar Jung became the most powerful man in the court of Hyderabad. As his status grew, so did his questioning of the treaties that the British had imposed on Hyderabad, especially those concerning Berar. Between 1866 and 1878, Salar Jung made a dozen official requests for the restoration of the territory, including personal entreaties to Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. He looked into every legal loophole in every treaty the British had ever signed with the Nizams, searching for a precedent. He offered to buy back Berar by taking out a loan of six million pounds, and when rebuffed threatened to leak the entire proceedings of the negotiations to the press. He even tried to have the issue raised in British Parliament, again without success.
Meanwhile, the ‘Regulator of the Realm’, to give him just one of his many titles, was a precocious seven-year-old whose favourite pastimes were riding around on his little grey Pegu pony and annoying his guardians by escaping into the zenana at every opportunity. ‘The Nizam is delicately made, as most Indian lads are who have been born and bred in the air of palaces; but he is as agile as a kitten and as wiry as a little animal,’ the Pall Mall Gazette reported. ‘He is certainly not a tame lad; he has many of the faults of a spoilt child; he is, no doubt, only next to Allah and the Prophet in his own eyes . . . His Royal Highness dislikes castor-oil and likes pilau, and once expressed his mature conviction that all English doctors were humbugs.’17
In the interests of ‘taming’ the young Nizam, Saunders was instructed to appoint on the recommendations of the co-regents an ‘English gentleman of learning and ability’ to oversee the Nizam’s education and select other tutors.18 Salar Jung, however, was against the arrangement, fearing that a European tutor would bring him under British influence and interfere with his religious observances. An ultimatum from the new Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, settled the matter. Realising it was better to have his own choice of Englishman rather than the government’s, Salar Jung asked friends in England to form a selection committee to pick a suitable candidate. The choice fell ultimately on Captain Claude Clerk, who was appointed with Northbrook’s approval.
If Salar Jung was piqued about losing the battle over the Nizam’s education, he soon got his revenge. The Prince of Wales was to visit India in early 1876 and Northbrook wanted all India’s princes, including the eight-year-old Nizam, to form a grand reception committee in Bombay. Salar Jung turned down the invitation, claiming that Mahboob was not well enough to make the journey. A tendency to be ‘nervous and scrofulous’ topped the list of his supposed maladies. ‘His brain is liable to suffer from slight causes. He cannot keep awake for a long time, or if obliged to do so becomes ill. Even the exertion of the darbar affects him physically, and after every trip to the country some complaint follows. Thus to take him out any distance would be “like walking on the parapet of a bridge”.’19 Salar Jung suggested a deputation be sent instead.
Northbrook rejected the excuse as ‘insufficient’ and instructed Saunders to warn Salar Jung that unless he retreated from his position he would be following a ‘course of policy which might prove . . . detrimental to the interests of His Highness the young Nizam’.20 Unfortunately the correspondence between Salar Jung and the Resident was leaked to the Pall Mall Gazette, which on 27 October 1875 ran copious extracts under the headline: ‘A Storm in an Indian Tea Cup’. ‘A wider, a mysterious, and an overwhelming influence prevails in the Court of the Nizam, something akin to that which controls imperial movements and policy in China,’ the paper surmised. ‘Sir Salar Jung, though an influential Minister, is no more autocrat at Hyderabad than is Prince Kung at Pekin. So strong runs the current of official and popular feeling against the Prince of Wales for not visiting its capital that the Nizam dare not, if he would, go to Bombay.’21
According to the leaked letters the visit also posed potential psychological danger. ‘His Highness’s attachment to his mother is so great that nothing but actual force would compel him to go without her,’ the paper reported Salar Jung as telling Saunders. ‘Any such force would cause the greatest excitement in his palace and outside, accompanied by great crying in the zenana; and this would make His Highness himself cry as he is much given to crying when anything puts him out or his feelings are hurt, which might prove injurious, beside the after-effect of separation from his mother.’22
The English-language press was not buying Salar Jung’s excuses either. Smarting at what it saw as an insult delivered to the Prince of Wales, the Deccanensis hit back by calling Hyderabad India’s ‘filthiest city’, ‘a sink of iniquity’ and a refuge for all the cut-throats in the country. ‘The Feringhee cannot unto this day walk in its streets, even by daylight, without being openly insulted by lawless armed ruffians who threaten them.’ The paper went on to accuse ‘the nobles of Hyderabad’ of being ‘petty kings within their own walls. They can hang, shoot, torture or flog at their own sweet will, and give protection to any ruffians who may fly to them for refuge against vengeance or justice. They are without education or worldly knowledge, spending their lives in debauchery.’23
Salar Jung eventually agreed that the Nizam would go, provided the Residency doctor gave him a clean bill of health. In the end the storm in the teacup proved to be just that. As preparations were being made for the Nizam’s journey to Bombay, he suddenly became genuinely ill and the doctor advised against the trip.
The rift between the Diwan and the Resident was now developing into a chasm. The chances of reconciliation were not helped by Salar Jung’s visit to Britain in 1876 to press Hyderabad’s case for the restoration of Berar and to receive a number of honours. The ease with which Salar Jung mixed with Britain’s high society, his aristocratic appearance and manners, won him praise wherever he went. One columnist described the Diwan as the quintessential Oriental enigma: ‘Noble, thoughtful, calm and deep’, Salar Jung had a face ‘which in repose would baffle the most acute physiognomist, but which lights up wonderfully when it smiles . . . As he talks with you, you feel that he is learning about y
ou, and that he is reading your thoughts, while you are learning nothing whatever about his.’24
Within a few months of his return to Hyderabad, however, Salar Jung went from being princely India’s poster-boy to public enemy number one. Irked by Salar Jung’s ‘impudent utterances’ on Berar and convinced that he wanted to set up a strong independent Muslim power in the heart of India, Northbrook’s replacement as Viceroy, Lord Lytton, began looking for ways to unseat him. Lytton considered Salar Jung ‘the most dangerous man in all India; and like a horse or a woman that had once turned vicious, thoroughly irreclaimable’. His removal was ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’.25
Richard Meade, who replaced Saunders as Resident in 1876, turned his attention to the progress of the young Nizam. Mayo’s experiment in making proper men out of India’s pampered young princes was having mixed success. ‘His Highness appears to have a fair ability to learn where the subject interests him, but where this is not the case, he is undoubtedly slow and his progress is backward,’ Meade reported to his superiors in Calcutta. ‘He is gradually acquiring a colloquial knowledge of English and his pronunciation is unusually good.’ The main impediment to Mahboob’s progress, his tutor complained, was an excess of female company. ‘After twelve the Azure retires to the zenana, and tyrannises over 400 women, who spoil and pet him as a matter of course. Zenana influence is the principal thing against which the tutor of one of these boys has to contend.’ 26 His progress had improved, Meade explained, after the 12-year-old was removed from the zenana to a separate quarter of the palace where he had only male attendants and companions. ‘The measure was rendered very desirable by circumstances into which I need not enter, and was certainly attended with benefit to the young Nizam.’27