Last Nizam (9781742626109) Read online

  According to historian Rajendra Prasad, the satisfaction Osman Ali Khan felt in receiving so many honours for his financial contribution to Britain’s war efforts quickly gave way to concerns over how rapidly he was draining his coffers. ‘Until then there has been nothing in his lifestyle to indicate the coming notoriety for miserliness which he was to acquire later in life.’34 The dance parties became less frequent and the champagne was gradually replaced by more traditional relaxants such as opium, which he would continue to consume daily until well into his seventies. He became more introverted. Although he owned a fleet of Packards, Fiats, Rolls-Royces, including a 1911 Silver Ghost which to this day has only 200 miles on the clock, for most of his reign he drove around in a 1934 six-cylinder Ford Tourer. An aide de camp who once pointed out that he needed a new shawl was firmly rebuked: ‘My budget is only 18 rupees and a good one would cost 20 rupees.’35 When the Viceroy Linlithgow suggested to the Nizam that since his walking stick was broken in several places and tied together with string, he would present him with a new one the next time he visited, the Nizam took it as a great compliment. His thriftiness had been noted.

  Stung by the dressing down he had received from Lord Birkenhead and swayed by the tentative start the British had made towards self-government in India, Osman Ali Khan announced on 17 November 1919 that he was handing over the administration of the state to an Executive Council operating under a written constitution. Under the new constitution the Diwan was replaced by a Sadr-i-Azam (President) who would head the Council. The Council’s powers and those of individual ministers were strictly defined. However, the creation of the Council was not the radical departure that it appeared to be. Though the Council had administrative powers, there was no enfranchisement of the population. Council members were appointed by the Nizam, who could overrule any of their decisions by simply issuing one of his own farmans. As Britain’s most senior civil servant in India, Sir Conrad Corfield, later wrote: ‘It was very much personal rule in Hyderabad.’36

  Nevertheless, the British initially welcomed the move and recommended the appointment of Ali Imam, who had been a Law Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council for the post of Sadr-i-Azam, a recommendation the Nizam accepted. A distinguished barrister who had risen to prominence as a result of his work in the High Court of Patna and the Federal Court, Ali Imam quickly made his presence felt. One of his first acts was to separate the executive from the judiciary, making Hyderabad the first Indian state to do so.

  Ali Imam also resurrected on behalf of the Nizam ‘the all-important question of the restoration of Berar’, which the British considered had been settled by the agreement Curzon had obtained from the Sixth Nizam in 1902 to lease the territory in perpetuity. Osman Ali Khan saw it differently. His claim to this ‘integral part of my Dominions’ rested ‘on absolute justice and it is inconceivable that on an impartial examination it cannot be ruled out’. The Nizam was clearly hoping that Ali Imam’s impeccable legal credentials would bring the desired result. Helped by his brother, Hassan Imam, he produced a series of lengthy and detailed claims based in part on the fine print of treaties signed by the Second Nizam as far back as the 1790s. But the presentation was badly handled. Ali Imam marched into the office of the Viceroy, Lord Reading, in March 1925 and threatened to make public the ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of the duress that Curzon had used to obtain the agreement. Reading responded by thumping the table in a rage and terminating the meeting, at which point Ali Imam ‘almost collapsed and the Viceroy had to send for water to revive him’.37

  Not surprisingly, Reading rejected Hyderabad’s claim, but the Nizam refused to let the matter rest. In September 1925 he wrote to Reading requesting the appointment of a Court of Arbitration to examine the Berar controversy on the basis that it was a dispute between two equals. ‘No foreign power or controversy is concerned or involved in its examination, and thus the subject comes to be a controversy between the two Governments that stand on the same plane without any limitations or subordination of one to the other.’38

  Reading saw the letter as challenging the very omnipotence of British power in India. In March 1926 he wrote a strongly worded response to the Nizam, disputing his assertion that the relationship between Hyderabad and Britain was one of equal allies:

  The sovereignty of the British Crown is supreme in India and therefore no ruler of an Indian state can justifiably claim to negotiate with the British on an equal footing . . . I will merely add that the title ‘Faithful Ally’ which your Exalted Highness enjoys has not the effect of putting your government in a category separate from that of other States under the paramountcy of the British Crown.39

  Published simultaneously in the Government Gazette, Reading’s rebuff came as a shock to India’s other ruling princes, most of whom professed at least some pretensions to sovereignty. Counting football-field-sized fiefdoms, the number of princely states totalled 562. The largest were Hyderabad with an area of 82,698 square miles (214,105 square kilometres) and Kashmir, which covered 84,258 square miles. Hyderabad topped the list in terms of population (approximately 14.5 million in the 1930s) and an annual revenue of 85 million rupees or £6.3 million. Together the states comprised two-fifths of the area of India and contained about a quarter of its population.

  In their mania for protocol, the British devised a system whereby the larger states were distinguished from the smaller states by the allotment of gun salutes. A total of 118 states were entitled to receive salutes ranging from nine to 21 guns. Those at the lower end of the scale were called rajahs, while those with 13 guns or more were maharajahs. Only four states were entitled to receive a 21-gun bombardment – Hyderabad, Kashmir, Baroda and Gwalior. At the other end of the scale was a patchwork of mini-states in present-day Gujarat. One of them, Dadan, was so small that in 1906 it disappeared from official sight.

  After World War I, the British instituted the Chamber of Princes with a view to countering the demands for greater democracy by solidifying India’s autocratic states into a common cause. Inaugurated in 1921 by the Duke of Connaught, the Chamber consisted of 120 members, of which 108 were rulers of the largest states and 12 were elected by the next 127 states ranking in importance. To its detractors the Chamber of Princes was nothing more than a ‘glorified debating society’ whose main drawcard was the opportunity for self-indulgent potentates to strut the national stage showing off their diamond-studded jewellery and gold- and silver-plated Rolls-Royces.40 British calls for the Chamber to introduce some form of constitutional government in the princely states fell largely on deaf ears, and it was only in 1928 that its members passed resolutions calling on its members to bring their judicial systems into line with the rest of India and separate the ruler’s privy purse from the public exchequer. Part of the problem was the refusal of several key rulers to participate in its meetings, including the Nizam of Hyderabad. ‘I would not like any questions affecting my State being determined on the advice of other Ruling Princes,’ declared Osman Ali Khan. The fate and policy of the other princes of India were no concern of his, he explained to one visiting official. They were merely ‘noblemen, to whom some courtesies were due’.41

  The Nizam’s arrogance and his mishandling of the Berar question eventually prompted the British to make an example out of him. Between 1919 and 1926 successive Residents had unearthed growing evidence of corruption, nepotism, maladministration and the extraction of money in the form of nazars. ‘His miserliness, amounting almost to mania led him simultaneously to adopt all other possible methods . . . for amassing wealth, and at the same time where his own pocket was affected, especially in regard to the maintenance of his own family, payment of servants etc., to practice dire economy,’ reported one Resident. ‘The Nizam has also during this time been indulging in another form of impropriety, viz., the procurement of women for his harem from the families of his Nobles and gentry by compulsion and the meting out of harsh treatment to those families who thwarted him.’42

  While the giving of
nazars had been adopted by the Nizams from the Mughal court, Osman Ali Khan took the practice to new heights. In October 1920 The Hindu accused the Nizam of using his district tours to squeeze nazars out of every official. ‘The invitation to the people is part of his prerogative and cannot be touched,’ the Residency explained in a telegram to Delhi, noting that the Nizam had ‘brazenly admitted’ taking three million rupees from the Rajah of Dawal and 2.5 million from the Rajah of Wanputri.43

  Despite growing public resentment over nazars, the Resident at the time, Charles Russell, was against admonishing the Nizam, arguing it would lead to estrangement. When cautious reproaches were made, the Nizam angrily defended the practice, saying it was a matter between the people and the ruler and ‘interference therein by a third party was not called for’. ‘The principal and, in fact, only duty of the Ruler in the present circumstances is to see that no abuses creep into the working of an authorised system. I have therefore taken the necessary steps to place the whole system on a well-organised and unimpeachable basis.’44

  The ‘well-organised’ system turned out to be nothing more than a well-oiled extortion racket where the amount of nazar to be given to the Nizam was based on prevailing pay scales. ‘Subordinates drawing from 30 to 60 rupees per mensem pay Rs 15; those drawing from 60 to 100 per mensem to pay Rs 30; officials to give the usual nazars according to their salaries; each ryot to pay two annas per rupee on his annual earnings; each Patel and Patwari to pay half of his annual salary; and each village to supply five goats, ten fowls, two cart loads of grass and tent pegs.’45 Careful not to miss an opportunity, the Nizam even insisted on receiving nazars from anyone unlucky enough to receive ‘gifts’ from the palace such as vegetables, honey, mangoes from the royal gardens and even paan.

  Such attempts at extortion did not impress William Barton, who replaced Russell in August 1925. During the course of his rule, Osman Ali Khan would see ten Residents come and go, all of them chosen for their ability to represent British interests in what was considered a difficult posting. ‘Very few of our officers who are quartered there contrive to leave it with as good a reputation as they had when they went there,’ Lord Hamilton observed. Gossip and intrigue ran so strongly through the body politic of Hyderabad that the best advice a senior official could give to the newcomer was: ‘Keep you mouth shut, and your bowels open.’46 As for the Nizam, opinion ranged from dismissive, on account of his idiosyncrasies, to downright critical. The Viceroy’s political advisor, Francis Wylie, once described the Nizam as ‘the most freakish and disreputable person to be at this date placed in a position of authority over some 16 millions of his fellow human beings’.47

  Of the Residents who served in Hyderabad, none would make a greater impact on the Seventh Nizam’s administration than Barton. A tough, wiry Oxford graduate who had served in the North West Frontier for nearly 20 years, he was a prolific writer, sending detailed weekly reports to the Political Department on everything from the Nizam’s morbid fascination with watching horrible surgical operations while making his family look on, to his ‘utter disregard of his own dignity as exhibited in scrambling in public for unconsidered trifles’. All this, Barton concluded in one cable, amounted to ‘at least an abnormal mentality’.48

  Unlike his predecessor, Barton made it clear from the outset that he would not turn a blind eye to abuses of power. Within four months of arriving in Hyderabad he set out a comprehensive memorandum detailing the internal political situation of Hyderabad that was damning in the extreme. Describing the situation as ‘infinitely worse’ than in 1919, Barton wrote: ‘Distrust and apprehension have deepened; the estrangement between the Nizam and his Nobles and subjects has increased, oppression and corruption are rampant everywhere.’ According to Barton, money could now buy everything:

  The nazar has corrupted every sphere of public life. The judiciary, especially the High Court which five or six years ago had reached a respectable standard of efficiency and integrity, is now corrupt from top to bottom. The Revenue Department is honeycombed with corruption: Customs officials are a byword for rapacity: the police are more concerned to line their pockets than to suppress crime . . . The nazar system is poisoning public life. The Ruler is prepared to interfere in almost any matter on receipt of a nazar and is accessible to anyone for the purpose. Most of the important appointments are filled by men who have paid the highest nazar.

  Concluded Barton: ‘The Nizam is a coward, physically and morally; and if the Government of India insist in this matter he will undoubtedly give way, and the Government of India will earn the undying gratitude of the people of the Hyderabad Dominions.’49

  Barton urged Reading’s successor as Viceroy, Lord Irwin, to write to the Nizam demanding that the exaction of nazars be limited to ‘nobles and high officials, and even from them only at the traditional rates which are little more than nominal’.50 He also called for abolishing the practice of accepting nazars from officials on appointment, which had been carried to such excess by the Nizam that ‘practically all appointments are the prize of the highest bidder’. Irwin obliged and on 8 July 1926 wrote to the Nizam that ‘certain definite measures’ of a remedial nature were needed which would be duly explained by the Resident.

  Armed at last with the Viceroy’s sanction, Barton met with the Nizam and outlined a long list of his misdeeds which he said amounted to such a ‘state of gross misrule’ that the Government of India was enjoined by duty ‘to intervene in order to secure an early improvement in the situation’.51 Aside from curbing nazars, Barton demanded the Nizam respect the powers given to the President and Executive Council and that appointments and removals from the Council be made only after consultation with the Resident. The Nizam was also told to cease interfering with the judiciary, agree to the appointment of British officers as heads of the Revenue and Police Departments and hand back to the Paigahs their confiscated estates.

  Osman Ali Khan’s reaction was to buy time, hoping that a change of government in England might thwart the execution of reforms and that other Muslim princes might rally behind him. He also resorted to the ploy of issuing farmans and then revoking them orally, while at the same time avoiding all contact with the Resident. ‘His tactics resemble those of an octopus: to smother his opponent in a cloud of inky fluid,’ Barton wrote in one of his typically florid telegrams to the Political Department. ‘Interviews are an anathema, for one thing because he is a coward and not sincere; another reason is that he is desperately afraid that he will agree in conversation to proposals that he might afterwards seek to repudiate.’52

  As the Nizam dithered, conceding to some demands and resisting others, the British became increasingly impatient. On 21 December 1926 Osman Ali Khan issued a farman on the acceptance of nazars in accordance with the Resident’s wishes, but he continued to resist the demand to appoint a British official to oversee the functioning of the district and city police. The city was considered the private domain of the ruler and control of its police force was of utmost importance for all the Nizams. Finally the Viceroy was forced to send yet another strongly worded letter to the Nizam, this time threatening to go public with a list of abuses. Having played his last card, the Nizam gave his approval to the cabinet appointments demanded by the Resident and all outstanding reforms, including reining in the extraction of nazars.

  For eight years Osman Ali Khan had tried unsuccessfully to assert Hyderabad’s independence from British rule, believing his status as India’s premier prince would afford him special treatment. His bid to restore Berar had been rebuffed, he had been humiliated into agreeing to curb the giving of nazars, which he had considered his birthright, and to having British officials controlling key administrative posts. Now he realised that he was no stronger than any of the other princely states. ‘In Hyderabad the British were faced with a replica of the Mughal court. They had stamped one out in 1857 and now they were determined to stamp the other out,’ Mukarram Jah would reflect later.53

  As for Barton, he felt vindicated by
the Nizam’s capitulation. For him it was further proof that the British were needed to preserve the Raj in power. ‘There can be no doubt that it [Hyderabad] owes its very existence to the British connection,’ he wrote in 1926 in a cable that the Indian Government would use 22 years later to justify its invasion of Hyderabad.

  The Asafia Family had not taken strong root in the Deccan in 1800; in point of fact, it may be said that it has never ceased to be foreign. Without the British, it must have relied on the handful of Muslims domiciled in the State; a forlorn hope against Maratha resurgence. Left entirely to himself it is doubtful if the present Nizam would be able to maintain himself for any length of time.54

  CHAPTER 6

  Shahs, Sultans, Kings and Caliphs

  EVER SINCE NIZAM UL-MULK asserted his independence, the annals of the Asaf Jahi dynasty had been entirely written in India. Never had a Nizam left the shores of the sub-continent, rarely had he even travelled outside his own Dominions. To preserve the wealth and purity of the dynasty, sons of the royal family would only marry girls from the Paigah nobility. Administrative posts were jealously guarded by the landed gentry. By remaining loyal and subservient to the British, the ruling class remained intact, unlike many other parts of India where they had been uprooted and replaced. Although the British Resident kept a close watch on the affairs of the largest independent state in the empire, life within the palaces and their zenanas conformed to traditions developed over seven generations of introspective and conservative rule. Hyderabad remained the last bastion of the Mughal court in India. But by the 1920s the winds of change were coming, not from the politically charged cities of India, where the march towards independence was gathering pace, but from the laid-back, champagne-soused shores of the French Riviera.