Last Nizam (9781742626109) Page 13
Though he was brought up in virtual seclusion, Osman Ali Khan was aware of how the conspicuous spending habits of his father and the nobility had bankrupted the state. He developed a strong dislike of the ostentation and indolence of the court and recognised early on the damaging effect of the Sixth Nizam’s hands-off approach to government. He would prove to be a very different ruler from his father both in style and substance. Instead of appearing on a jewel-bedecked elephant at his wedding in 1906, he threw the assembled dignitaries and soldiers off-guard by entering in a battered old car. Every time Mahboob Ali Khan passed through the gate of Purani Haveli he would be showered with artificial flowers made of gold and silver, which were released from a specially constructed box. The entrance to Osman Ali Khan’s palace King Kothi, by contrast, was known as the ‘Purdah Gate’ because it was hidden by a heavy canvas curtain. The curtain still hangs there, mouldy and forlorn. The gate rusted shut decades ago.
Like all previous Nizams, Osman Ali Khan quickly established a sizeable zenana. Behind Nazari Bagh, the residential wing of King Kothi, stand two buildings, both of which are now sealed. The largest, a two-storeyed structure with more than 30 rooms on each floor radiating from a central communal bathroom, was for his concubines. The smaller one was better appointed and meant for his favourite wives. It was linked to the first floor of the main palace by what was dubbed the ‘Bridge of Sighs’. Mukarram Jah remembers how his grandfather would inform the woman he wanted to spend the night with by entering the garden outside the zenana quarters where the wives would gather in the late afternoon and placing a white handkerchief on the chosen one’s shoulder. ‘That way she would know she had to report to his bedroom at nine o’clock.’16
Surrounded by weeds, blackened by mould, their balconies in danger of collapsing, the zenana quarters today resemble a disused barracks rather than some kind of pleasure garden where soft breezes would bring scents of mimosa and jasmine through latticed windows. A somewhat romanticised account written in the mid-1920s describes Osman Ali Khan’s wives and concubines living in luxurious quarters protected by beefy amazon guards. ‘The women lie on couches of brocade and silk, eating sweetmeats and drinking perfumed coffee. Some of them play musical instruments, some of them sing, all of them gossip. A few of them read poems . . . their eyes holding longing or resignation.’17
Osman Ali Khan’s first wife, Dulhan Pasha Begum, was the daughter of a nawab from a side branch of the Nizam’s family. The Nizam had three other official wives, including the niece of the Aga Khan (who spent much of the twenties cooling his heels in Nice on the French Riviera). The number of his wives varied from around 200 in the 1920s to 42 at the time of his death in 1967. By then the number of children and grandchildren had swelled to nearly a hundred. In 2005 the number of direct descendants of Osman Ali Khan had crossed the 500 mark, with almost all of them involved in some form of litigation against Mukarram Jah for a share of the late Nizam’s wealth.
Once described by one British aide de camp as resembling a rat, Dulhan Pasha was given her own quarters across the road from King Kothi in a separate palace complex known as Eden Gardens. In her early years she was an accomplished poet and grower of roses, but in her later years she became infamous for wandering around the city half-naked and watching her servants copulate. ‘She would beat up the Nizam when she saw him, throw her slippers at him she was that mad,’ recalls Habeeb Jung, a Paigah noble who was a close confidant of both the Seventh Nizam and Mukarram Jah. ‘She used to call him a chaush – a highly offensive term which means Bedouin Arab.’18
In February 1907 Dulhan Pasha gave birth to their first son, Azam Jah, and 10 months later to a second, Moazzam Jah. The only daughter from the marriage, Shehezadi Pasha, remained unmarried and rarely left her father’s side. When taking his afternoon nap, the Nizam would tie the cord of his pyjama pants to hers in case she tried to spirit away some of the priceless jewels that were strewn haphazardly around his bedroom. The Nizams believed that if one of their legitimate daughters married and went out of the family it would cause the death of her father. Another superstition stated that if a child was born to her then the father would also die. Forced to lead a miserable and lonely life of constant servitude, Shehezadi Pasha would take her revenge after her father’s death in 1967 by challenging Mukarram Jah’s right to inherit the bulk of his grandfather’s estate.
Despite British fears that he would be an ineffectual ruler, Osman Ali Khan embarked on a series of far-sighted reforms. One of his first farmans was an order restraining Hyderabad’s eunuchs from luring fresh recruits into their ranks, to stem an alarming rise in their numbers. He then banned the institution of devadasis – a religiously sanctioned form of prostitution where young girls were ostensibly married to the Gods but were in fact sold into sexual slavery. He also outlawed some of the more indulgent pastimes enjoyed by Hyderabad’s nawabs such as cockfighting and bullfights and decreed that smoking in courtrooms was bad for judicial decorum.19
On the fiscal front, the Nizam instituted a number of measures under the guidance of Reginald Glancy, who was the financial advisor to the state. Glancy’s priority was to set right ‘the problem of heavy indebtedness of the Hyderabad nobility as a class, owing to their habit of loose living and undue extravagancy’.20 The most extravagant of the nobles were the Paigahs. Ever since the reign of the first Nizam, the Paigahs had enjoyed special privileges as the private troops of the Nizam’s household. They had been rewarded with vast estates and used the income to build lavish palaces. When Osman Ali Khan took measures to rein in the Paigahs’ expenditure by confiscating their lands, they responded in the time-honoured fashion of plotting against the Nizam by spreading stories that he drank heavily and was involved in all kinds of debauchery.
There was more than a kernel of truth in these allegations. In January 1912, Pinhey, who had taken a close interest in the welfare of the Nizam, advised the young ruler to abstain from wine, women and drugs, to take exercise regularly and not to surround himself with sycophants and spies.21 Outwardly a devout Muslim and traditional Indian ruler, Osman Ali Khan had nevertheless developed in his early years a taste for European pleasures. His preferred beverages were invalid port and Moët & Chandon, of which several thousand cases were ordered from France. He set up a whisky distillery and ordered his suits from the firm of Messrs John Barton & Co. in Secunderabad.
To satisfy his newly acquired taste for ballroom dancing Osman Ali Khan would hold lavish parties in the King Kothi palace where Anglo-Indian jazz bands played his favourite tunes, ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ and ‘Whisperings’. ‘His guests varied according to each occasion, from the stolid British Resident and his wife to the more cosmopolitan gatherings of local jazz fiends of lesser social value,’ wrote Karaka. ‘The Peggys and Maggies of Hyderabad at the time had the honour of being whirled around the improvised ballroom of King Kothi by the enthusiastic young ruler who was anxious to become a polished ballroom dancer.’22
By April, Pinhey reported that his admonitions had brought about an ‘improvement’ in the Nizam. In fact, Osman Ali Khan was becoming an assertive ruler. The following June he sacked his Prime Minister, Maharajah Kishen Pershad, ostensibly for plotting to replace him with his half-brother Salabat Jah. In 1914 he took the administration of the state into his own hands. Osman Ali Khan had succeeded in breaking the power of the nobility and strengthening his position to a greater extent than any other ruler of Hyderabad since the First Nizam.
Although earlier attempts by the Nizams to take direct control of Hyderabad’s administration had usually been opposed, this time the Resident was happy to indulge the new ruler. When World War I broke out in Europe in July 1914, the Ottoman Turks sided with Germany and the Mufti of Constantinople issued an appeal to Muslims in India, Russia and Algeria to rise against their imperialist masters. Fearing a flare-up of pro-Turkish sentiments among Muslims in India, the British appealed to the Nizam to declare his allegiance to the Crown. As Pinhey admitted, this put the
Nizam in somewhat of a dilemma as he owed allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II, who was the Caliph or spiritual head of Islam. ‘To place himself in direct and overt opposition to the call of the Khalifa meant a painful predicament for any Muhammadan ruler.’23 Denouncing the Ottomans could spark a revolt among the large number of Arab soldiers recruited into his army, as well as radical Muslims who had protested when the Caliph’s name had been omitted from Friday prayers. In the end the Nizam sided with the British and issued a strongly worded farman. ‘The Mohammedan inhabitants of India, especially the subjects of this state, should, if they care for their own welfare and prosperity, remain firm and wholehearted in their loyalty and devotion to the British government, whose cause I believe is just and right,’ it declared. They should keep sacred the tie binding ‘the subjectpeople to their Rulers’ and in no case ‘allow themselves to be beguiled by the wiles of any one into a course of open or secret sedition against the British Government’.24
Osman Ali Khan’s gamble paid off. In 1917 the British rewarded the Nizam for his declaration of support and considerable contribution to the war effort in both manpower and money amounting to £25 million by conferring on him the title ‘Most Faithful Ally of the British Empire’. A year later he became ‘His Exalted Highness’, which placed him heads and shoulders above all other Indian princes if not in physical stature then at least in political terms. The Nizam was ‘the true son of Islam’, Pinhey’s successor, Stuart Fraser, remarked. ‘With far seeing realisation alike of the true interests of his coreligionists and of his duty to the King-Emperor, [he] was content with no passive role of loyalty, but at once boldly stood forth as a leader and spokesman of Mahomedan India.’25
Osman Ali Khan’s elevation by the British to the leader of India’s 66 million Muslims, however, proved to be a doubleedged sword. Calls were made for the Nizam to be made the King of Hyderabad in the same way as the British had made the Grand Sherif of Mecca, Haider Ali Pasha, the King of Hejaz (the lands around the holy places of Mecca and Medina). Muslim leaders and even Hindu princes began demanding that the Crown confer on him the title ‘His Majesty’. But Fraser firmly rejected the calls, saying ‘there could be no “His Majesty” among the feudatory Indian Princes’.26
Disputes about titles notwithstanding, Osman Ali Khan’s period of direct rule is held up even today as the progressive age of Hyderabad’s development. Several commissions were set up to investigate the misappropriation of state funds by high-ranking officials. The revenue department was reorganised, and judicial reforms were introduced, bringing the court system into line with those parts of India under direct British rule. By 1919, just eight years after the state was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, its revenue had grown to a healthy surplus of 50 million rupees. Hyderabad also became a model for religious tolerance in India. To assuage the feelings of Hindus, Osman Ali Khan banned the slaughter of cows and made offerings at their shrines. ‘Muslims and Hindus are my two eyes,’ became one of his favourite expressions.
In 1916 the Nizam issued a farman ordering the foundation of Osmania University, the first institution of higher education in India to offer courses in a vernacular medium – in this case Urdu, the official language of the state. Elsewhere, dams were built and Hyderabad became one of first cities in India to have a reliable supply of drinking water. Schools were expanded and primary education was made compulsory. Roads were relaid with concrete, railways extended, collieries and power stations were set up, government-sponsored co-operative credit societies and agricultural banks were established. A City Improvement Board redeveloped slums into housing colonies. On the banks of the River Musi, the Indo-saracenic silhouettes of the newly built High Court and Osmania General Hospital rose above the palm trees. Hyderabad’s skyline, one visitor commented, was ‘surmounted by “bubbles blown of dreams”, an irresponsible and wholly delightful collection of domes which, like carnival balloons, might be expected at any moment to break loose and float into the sky’.27
Now a sprawling metropolis of seven million people, where corruption and bureaucratic inaction pervades every layer of society, it is hard to reconcile Hyderabad with the model of urban planning it was once held up to be. Decades of uncontrolled growth have turned the city into an urban nightmare beset by power and water shortages and roads that turn to rivers of sewage every time it rains. The waters of the River Musi are so fetid that the stench can be discerned several blocks away. The road outside the High Court is an open urinal for much of its length and rag pickers sort through rotting piles of waste dumped indiscriminately along the main thoroughfares. Oldtimers vainly hold on to cherished memories of a city of 300,000 people with fastidiously maintained public gardens, streets that were regularly washed by water tankers, traffic that flowed smoothly and trains that were clean and always ran on time.
‘All this was not accomplished by waving a magician’s wand,’ stated a commemorative booklet written in the early 1950s honouring the Nizam’s achievements.
Day in and day out, even in the hottest part of the year, when Governments traditionally flitted to the hills, the Nizam was to be found sitting in a corner of King Kothi palace, plodding patiently through masses of files. To this day he has not taken a real holiday, his only relaxation being a regular drive every evening into the city. Grasping the nettle of corruption and rooting it out ruthlessly, the Nizam plucked away the weeds of peculation that without profit sucked the soil’s fertility; lopped away all superfluous branches in the shape of idle sinecures that drained the State’s exchequer. Unscrupulous officials, high and low, trembled. The people rejoiced, for here at last was a Ruler who could rule and was determined to do so in real earnest . . . The sceptics were amazed; the sycophants confounded. Honest men found useful service and the first round of the battle was won.28
The view from the Residency, however, was somewhat different. As far as the British were concerned, the first round of the battle had just started. The honeymoon that followed the bestowing of honours on the Seventh Nizam for his services during World War I was short-lived. In April 1918, intoxicated by his new status, Osman Ali Khan sacked all his British advisors while the Resident was on leave. Among the ‘honest men’ that were appointed to replace them were a number of Indians deemed hostile to the interests of the Crown. ‘The Nizam, it seems, has behaved like a naughty child who away from his nurse at a party has had his head turned and gone back home full of foolish ideas determined to assert his independence,’ W. G. Neale wrote to the Viceroy’s office.29
From being viewed as a progressive and far-sighted ruler, the Nizam had slipped dramatically in Britain’s estimation. During a visit to Hyderabad in March 1919, the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, gave Osman Ali Khan a dressing down that would set the tone for relations between the Residency and King Kothi palace for the remainder of his reign:
You have estranged your nobles, you have alienated your officials . . . you have undermined the respect and love of your people. Needless to say you have thereby shaken the confidence of the Government of India in your rule . . . It has always been clearly laid down that we cannot tolerate misrule; and results such as I have indicated are, to my mind, clear evidence of personal misrule.30
But upsetting the status quo, represe nted by the nobility on the one hand and the British on the other, mattered little to Osman Ali Khan as long as the revenue of the Sarf-i-Aman (state treasury) was in surplus. After five years of the Nizam’s direct rule, his own personal estate was well on its way to becoming the largest in the world. The Sarf-i-Khas (private estate), which comprised 30 per cent of the land in the Nizam’s Dominions, was earning 25 million rupees a year. He had also inherited from his father untold amounts of jewellery, bulk pearls, kilograms of cut and uncut diamonds, gold in the form of coinage and bullion measured by the tonne and enough cash for most of it to lie unnoticed in cellars where it was nibbled by rats. Although the state treasury was virtually broke in 1911, the personal wealth of six generations of Asaf Jahis remained intac
t.
To the wider masses, however, Osman Ali Khan was determined to show a very different side of his character. He publicly abhorred the use of any goods that were not produced in Hyderabad. He would only smoke cheap, locally made filterless Charminars, ‘the most wretched cigarettes in the world’. He was so obsessive about allowing nothing to go to waste that he scrawled instructions and even drafted legally-binding farmans on the inside of his empty cigarette packets. ‘When I myself do all I can to purchase and use goods made in my own State, and when I say, for instance, that Golconda Soap, made in Hyderabad, is used in all my palaces and is found good and cheap, I think my action itself will appeal to my subjects to do likewise,’ he declared, adding self-assuredly: ‘They love me and the country too well to require further inducements to follow my example in this respect.’31
While such sentiments may have been understood and indeed appreciated by the local population, they were often derided by outsiders. His tendency to wear simple cotton pyjamas except for official events prompted one British Resident to describe him as resembling a ‘snuffly old clerk too old to be sacked’.32 At state banquets, paid for by the public purse, guests ate from gold plates and drank wine in gold goblets, but when an invitation came for tea in private, he would carefully count out the number of cookies he served his guests. Osman Ali Khan was fast becoming known as the Howard Hughes of India – a fabulously wealthy but miserly man who had sold his father’s women for 30 rupees and haggled over the price of mangoes. Many such stories had no basis in fact and still rankle the retired nawabs who spend their evenings downing pegs of Old Monk and Mansion House brandy at the Nizam Club’s bar before retiring for dusk-to-dawn rounds of rummy in the card room. To them the Nizam was a frugal and thrifty man whose self-denial was directed mostly at himself. ‘The fact is that thrift is a part of the Nizam’s nature, of his conception of the obligations of his position and of his conviction that he is not here to waste and throw away what the Almighty has endowed him with,’ his Parsi financial advisor, Khan Bahadur Cooverji Taraporevala, later wrote.33