Last Nizam (9781742626109) Read online

  At the end of 1879, Mahboob’s report card showed he was doing well in Geography, Arithmetic and Urdu. In English he had finished reading all of Little Facts for Little People, all but the last 18 pages of Odd Stories about Animals, and was up to the chapter on verbs in his Grammatical Primer. ‘His Highness can read and translate these books pretty fairly with a little help. Besides these His Highness had learnt by heart Wordsworth’s We are Seven,’ Clerk’s assistant tutor J. F. Dowding noted. The main problem area was History, which was of little interest to Mahboob, ‘not even when in connection with events that have affected the fortunes of his own country’.28

  In order to give the young Nizam a semblance of an English schoolboy’s education, a few classmates were selected from among the sons of nobles to attend the special palace school. As it was unthinkable to lay a hand on the Shadow of God, a few lesser noblemen’s sons attended as whipping boys to take the blows due to Mahboob according to the Victorian educational philosophy that knowledge entered a boy’s brain through the seat of his pants.29

  Mahboob’s progress started to stall when he turned 14. The Government of India’s Political Secretary wrote to Meade in December 1880 expressing concern that once again the young Nizam ‘has been indulging in dissipation, which has altered his appearance. Although you have urged upon the Minister the imperative necessity of taking steps to protect him from the influences and temptations which are so prejudicial to His Highness, you have little confidence in Sir Salar Jung’s ability to assert his authority in the matter.’30 Meade responded by declaring he would urge Mahboob’s ‘instant removal from the zenana and to his entire separation from it’.31

  With less than three years to go before Mahboob turned 18, Salar Jung also began taking steps to prepare him for the administrative responsibilities that he would shoulder. For the first time Mahboob was taken on a procession through the city seated on the howdah of a richly caparisoned elephant and accompanied by the entire army. Early in 1883, Salar Jung and Clerk accompanied him on his first official tour of his Dominions and plans were discussed for a visit to England.

  The plans never materialised. After picnicking on canned oysters, Salar Jung was taken ill on 8 February 1883 and died the same day. Officially the cause of death was cholera, but as no one else who had eaten the oysters had died, a rumour quickly spread that he had been poisoned. There were many people in Hyderabad and Calcutta who would have been glad to see him go. For nearly a third of a century he had guided Hyderabad along its slow transformation from a Mughal-style fiefdom into a modern state, but in the process had alienated large sections of the nobility and the British establishment. Whatever his faults, finding someone of similar stature, experience and, above all, honesty to carry on his work would be difficult. Unlike Chandu Lal, who corruptly amassed a huge fortune during his three decades in office, Salar Jung died a pauper, leaving behind a debt of 2.4 million rupees.

  Salar Jung’s untimely death also left a dangerous power vacuum. To head off a potential power struggle the new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, decided to bring the official date of Mahboob’s investiture forward by about a year. Ripon also announced he would personally attend the ceremony, becoming the first Viceroy to visit Hyderabad.

  The city that Ripon entered on 2 February 1884 had changed little since the days of the First Nizam. Hyderabad was the largest city outside British India and the most diverse. Accompanying the Viceroy on his triumphal procession through the walled city, the Pioneer’s correspondent declared that ‘never since the days of Babel has there been such a confused sound of many voices’.

  In passing through any of the twelve narrow gateways in its tall walls, one seems to enter a medieval world, half oriental, half chivalresque. To the Nizam’s Palace, processions must have been converging all day long from every street leading to the Charminar, and such processions as could not have been seen everywhere. Painted elephants in their gayest saddlecloths; trains of specially equipped red horses, caracoling whenever the long files of camels tried to pass them, soldiers and retainers, Arabs and Rohillas, Afghans and Seedie boys, all armed to the teeth; bullock carts whose curtains scarcely conceal the bright eyes of Mahomedan dancing girls anxious to criticise the first Governor-General Saheb who had ever entered these walls – the crowds in the streets, the mosques, the minarets, the palaces and the long bazaars hung with banners and ablaze with light must all have formed a curious jumble of Froissart’s Chronicles and the Arabian Nights.32

  Impressive as the procession was, Ripon’s purpose for going to Hyderabad was not merely to witness the show of pomp and pageantry. He was there to remind the Nizam that he owed his office to the grace of the Queen-Empress Victoria and the British would always be there to protect him. He was also determined to impress on the teenage ruler his duties as the head of India’s most important princely state. After a succession of incompetent Nizams, the British were resolute that Mahboob Ali Khan should steer Hyderabad down a path of prosperity and stability. Turning to the sixth in line of the Asaf Jahi dynasty after his investiture ceremony in the Chowmahalla palace, Ripon declared: ‘Pure justice is the brightest jewel that can adorn a coronet. Let it ever shine in yours.’ Ripon then reminded the Nizam of the ‘great and arduous’ task ahead. ‘You are the ruler of some ten millions of men. Their welfare will henceforth greatly depend upon you, your wisdom, your industry and your self-denial.’33

  Ripon’s words appear to have made an impression on Mahboob Ali Khan. In his first public proclamation he affirmed that: ‘Nothing will afford me greater pleasure than to see my people living in peace and prosperity, engaged in the development of their wealth, in the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of arts and sciences, so that by their efforts the country may rise to a high state of enlightenment and they derive support and benefit from their knowledge and intelligence.’34 Implementing these noble aims was another matter. Mahboob Ali Khan was still coming to grips with the duties of a ruler. Orders were often written on scraps of stationery left over from his childhood bearing pictures of Little Red Riding Hood.35 Decision-making was impulsive and orders often not followed through. He was also extravagant to the point of recklessness.

  When a short, plump, black-haired man arrived at the gate of the Chowmahalla palace in a horse-drawn hansom on a hot summer afternoon in 1891, the guards did not hesitate let him in. Alexander Jacob was a regular visitor at the palace, but only the Nizam’s trusted Armenian valet, Albert Abid, knew why. Jacob claimed to be a Turk born near Constantinople. According to an obituary published in The Times on 21 January 1921 he was sold as a slave at the age of ten ‘to a rich pasha who . . . made a student of him . . . He acquired wide knowledge of Eastern life, language, art, literature, philosophy and occultism.’ After his master’s death, he sailed for India, but was shipwrecked off the Muscat coast and arrived penniless in Bombay. According to one account he then travelled to Hyderabad ‘in company with a merchant who was conveying a shipment of ladies to the Nizam’s zenana’, before moving to Calcutta where he worked for a British jewellery firm. Having served as a jeweller in the princely courts of Rampur and Dholpur, he set up a flourishing business in Simla, dealing in gems, jewellery and curios. He was suspected, at different times, of being a spy for the Russians and the British at the height of the Great Game. His notoriety inspired Rudyard Kipling to recast him as Lurgan Sahib, the owner of the Curiosity Shop and the maker of spies in his classic Kim. He was also Mahboob Ali Khan’s most trusted diamond dealer.36

  In the inside pocket of Jacob’s coat was a replica of the Imperial, the fifth-largest diamond in the world. His asking price for the oval-shaped, lime-sized 184-carat gem from the mines of Orange Free State was a mere 4.6 million rupees. Mahboob Ali Khan agreed to buy the stone on the condition that the real diamond be brought from England for approval. Jacob’s condition was that half the amount be deposited in a bank and the balance paid after the diamond had been approved by the Nizam. Unfortunately for Jacob, the Resident, Denis Fitzpatrick, heard abo
ut the deal and resolved to stop it on the grounds that Hyderabad was nearly broke and there was no need for the Nizam to be buying more baubles when he already possessed one of the greatest and probably the largest collection of jewellery in the world. Jacob arrived in Hyderabad with the precious gem in early September, but when he showed it to the Nizam, Mahoob Ali Khan refused to take it on the grounds that it differed from the replica. The words of caution that the Resident had whispered in the Nizam’s ear about his inability to afford the stone probably also played a role.

  Distraught, Jacob was left with the diamond, having already paid a jewellery firm in London 2.3 million rupees and owing the Nizam the same amount. Jacob begged for time to repay the Nizam’s deposit, but on 11 September 1891 he was arrested, charged with misappropriation and criminal breach of trust and served with a summons to produce the diamond, which was placed in a safe in the Bank of Bengal pending the outcome of proceedings. The Calcutta High Court also demanded that the Nizam should be present as a witness in the case.

  The Nizam of Hyderabad, as India’s premier prince, could not be summoned to appear as a witness in an ordinary court, so Fitzpatrick requested Mahboob Ali Khan to appear at the Residency to give his evidence to a special commission formed to investigate what became known as ‘The Imperial Diamond Case’. In the end a compromise was reached and the hearings were held at the Saifabad palace, where the Nizam was cross-examined for several days on his entire business dealings with Jacob. The case then moved to Calcutta where several witnesses were called including Abid, who revealed under cross-examination that his commission on the sale of the diamond was to be half a million rupees.

  Jacob was also cross-examined on his role in the affair. His defence counsel claimed that he had acted in a thoroughly bona fide manner throughout and since he was a very wealthy man there was no motive to swindle the Nizam. Like other native princes, his counsel asserted, the Nizam was a ‘person of vain and ostentatious disposition, and would certainly jump at the prospect of having possession of the finest brilliant in the world’. Jacob was finally acquitted on 23 December 1891. Crucial to his acquittal was the judge’s ruling that the Nizam’s evidence taken by the special commission in Hyderabad was inadmissible. The judge rejected the Nizam’s excuses for not being able to travel to Calcutta on account of the huge expense that would have been incurred transporting his ‘zenana and a thousand people’.37

  Jacob may have been exonerated, but he never saw the diamond again. After an out-of-court settlement in a subsequent civil case, ownership of the diamond was awarded to the Nizam. Jacob was reimbursed only for his legal costs. The affair left him a broken man. He closed his business in Simla and died in obscurity in Bombay in 1921, aged 72. As for the diamond, Mahboob Ali Khan was convinced it was cursed, wrapped it in a dirty rag and tucked it away in the drawer of his writing table. The diamond was reportedly later found in the toe of an old slipper during the reign of the Seventh Nizam, who had it mounted on a gold filigree base. Mahboob Ali Khan may have been right. In 1972, the diamond became the centrepiece of a legal battle that would last for 30 years and help contribute to the downfall of its last owner, Mahboob Ali Khan’s great grandson, Mukarram Jah.

  The Imperial diamond affair did not lessen the Nizam’s proclivity for purchasing at huge expense to the state exchequer vast quantities of imported furniture from England and Europe. Following a trend started by the late Salar Jung, he filled his palaces with Belgian chandeliers, Bohemian crystal, Louis XIV armchairs, leather wallpaper, heavy silk curtains, marble statues, oil paintings, mostly from lesser artists, and other novelties, which were shipped from England and the Continent along with the state’s first motor car. According to a late nineteenth-century guidebook, the Nizam’s palaces were ‘full of wonderful curiosities such as chairs which if anyone sits down on them break forth into song; figures of soldiers who suddenly present arms, and a wonderful grenadier who keeps swallowing fish after fish’.38 He also adopted European dress and posed for the state photographer, Raja Deen Dayal, wearing specially tailored European suits with glossy gold buttons, riding boots and imported French silk socks which he would discard after using only once. He soon amassed such a large collection of clothes that he ordered a wardrobe 176 feet long to be built in the Purani Haveli palace.

  Not everything was paid for. On a high hill overlooking the old city was the Falaknuma palace, the most opulent of all the buildings in Hyderabad. The ‘Palace Below the Heavens’ had been the property of Paigah nobleman Vicar ul-Umra until he was forced to ‘gift’ it to Mahboob Ali Khan in 1895 after the Sixth Nizam said how much he liked it. Today security guards prevent anyone without an appropriate pass from driving up the winding approach road. The horse stables that once dwarfed most palaces built by Hyderabad’s nobility stand empty and melancholy. Squalid-looking huts that have spilled over from the surrounding slums have breached the perimeter fence in places and creep up the arid hillside that was once covered in lush vegetation. Like most of Hyderabad’s monuments, the Falaknuma is a brooding reminder of a past that decay and corruption have virtually obliterated.

  Architecturally, Falaknuma is difficult to categorise, being an amalgam of nineteenth-century European styles with an emphasis on ostentation rather than taste. Its large semicircular veranda opens onto a reception hall. A study, library and bedrooms occupy the first floor. Much of the paintwork is solid gold, the wallpaper is made of gold-embossed camel leather. In old sepiatoned photographs the rooms are crammed full of antique ornaments ‘from almost every country in the world and of almost every period’.39 Most have now disappeared. A dining table for 102 guests still dominates the second-floor dining room. The plumbing was designed to give guests showers of scented perfume. It was said that no visitor below the rank of Viceroy was ever allowed to stay there.

  But with a floor plan in the shape of a scorpion, many Hyderabadis believe the palace is cursed. Mahboob Ali Khan would stand on one of its verandas and drink himself to death. The Seventh Nizam, who used it exclusively as a guest house, lost his kingdom. His grandson, Mukarram Jah, who inherited the palace and then tried to turn it into a hotel, lost the family fortune.

  The tail in the scorpion layout of the Falaknuma comprised a vast zenana opening onto a long rectangular courtyard. Mahboob Ali Khan had been initiated into the pleasures of the flesh at a young age and estimates of the number of concubines he kept in the specially partitioned quarters of his main palaces ranged from a conservative 100 to what one prudish Resident put at a ‘shocking’ 10,000. The women included dancing girls and the daughters of nobles, Muslims as well as Hindus and even an Anglo-Indian. Not all were the fleeting objects of his attention; some were presented by fathers wanting the honour of having a daughter at the palace. After spending a night with the Nizam, most girls were sent to the crowded quarters of the zenana and never called again. The reward for any woman who bore a son was an increase in her allowance, a staff of servants and a special apartment.40

  The hot months of April and May, when the jungles of his vast estates were dry and game was more easily spotted, were considered the best time for shikar expeditions.41 The royal saloon would be shunted to Platform One of Mahboob Ali Khan’s private railway station, food for the entire party would be loaded on the train and attendants at the hunting camp alerted. Rifles, cartridges and all accessories, including gold-topped walking sticks for the Nizam and goats for the kill, would be sent ahead and beaters dispatched to the hunting ground and shooting boxes. At this point even the tigers would be readied. After failing to bag any game in his first few shikars, a pair of tigers was bought from a dealer in Bombay, sent out on the same train as the Nizam and tied to trees at the camp. Laudanum was then rubbed into the kill, making them easier to track and shoot.

  The Nizam’s liking for shikars had little to do with the thrill of bagging a doped-up tiger. ‘It was whispered about that their shooting trips were mere pretexts for dissipation and indulgence in the fermented juices forbidden by the Prophet,�
�� the Pioneer revealed in early 1884. ‘It was pointed out that all the pious Mussulmans were left behind, their places being taken by wine-bibing freethinkers, or godless Nazarenes. The precise number of bottles of champagne taken out and brought back was given and the exact time it took to put each of the party hors de combat accurately stated. The story of there being any attempt at shooting tigers or anything else was universally scouted.’42

  The Nizam’s fondness for the bottle soon became more than a whisper and would eventually kill him, but this and his other indiscretions failed to dent his popularity. Mahboob Ali Khan’s generosity was legendary, even if it contributed to sending the state bankrupt for the third time in a century. When word came to him that a well-known Parsi merchant in the city had fallen on hard times he visited the man’s shop, said he liked his merchandise and, waving his cane around the shelves, commanded his attendants to buy the entire contents. He forgave a palace servant for stealing his jewels, secretly filled the bowls of beggars with gold coins and invited an old man who had lost everything in the flood of 1908 to his home, saying, ‘How can you say you are homeless when your slave has homes that are waiting for you to come?’43 Like Harun al Rashid, the Abbasid Caliph whose fabulous court was immortalised in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, the Nizam wandered the streets at night in disguise to see how people lived and to find out what they thought of him. Local folklore was swamped with stories of his frequent trances and long periods of silence, his mystic power for curing snake bite and his astonishing feats of physical endurance. Among Mahboob Ali Khan’s favourite pursuits were shooting 12-foot alligators on an artificial lake from a specially imported steam yacht and releasing panthers on the maidan and then hunting them on horseback with his spear. He was also one of the finest shots in India, a reputation he once proved to the doomed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria by repeatedly hitting a silver rupee coin spinning in the air.44