Last Nizam (9781742626109) Read online

  In 1925 The New York Times reported that the Riviera around Nice had a Shah ‘bound heart and soul to a charming French actress’; a ‘very-ex Khedive’ who was deposed at the outset of the war and therefore ‘has almost ceased to be of interest’; the maharajahs of Kapurthala and Pudukkottai, ‘the latter married to an Australian girl’; as well as a ‘whole troop of Egyptian and Siamese Royals’. The most pleasure-bent bunch in the whole of Europe assembled on this coast to purr in the sun, the paper observed, ‘and these Orientals love to laze in the middle of it’. Occupying the highest rung in this cacophony of uprooted royalty were the Ottoman Turks. In a cactus-sheltered villa just across the Italian border in Bordighera the last Sultan of Turkey, Mehmed VI, could usually be found in a ‘lounge suit and spats’ with a small retinue of wives and attendants. Reported The Times: ‘He exists plentifully on an income derived from money invested long ago by a predecessor known as The Damned and never enters the social whirl.’1

  Just two years earlier Mehmed VI had fled Turkey on a British battleship with only the clothes he was wearing after Mustafa Kemal ordered the National Assembly to abolish the Ottoman Empire and to ‘put a stop to these usurpers’ who had ruled by force for six centuries.2 Kemal had become the first President of the Turkish Republic after leading a successful nationalist uprising against the foreign powers that had annexed Turkey following its defeat in World War I. The Ottoman monarchy, which had ruled Turkey since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror, was an obvious target for Kemal, who despised its autocratic power.

  At its height the Ottoman Empire encompassed much of northern Africa, the Middle East and could have included most of Europe had the Turks not been turned back at the gates of Vienna in 1529. The Topkapi and Dolmabahce palaces in Istanbul, with their huge harems, ornate audience halls, throne rooms, pleasure gardens and treasuries are testimony to the empire’s influence and wealth. But by the outbreak of World War I, the Ottomans were losing their grip even over Turkishspeaking areas of their domain. The decision of Sultan Abdulhamid II to proclaim a jihad against the British and ally with the Germans was to prove disastrous. Apart from the successful defence of Gallipoli, led by Kemal against a combined force of Australian, New Zealand and British troops, the Turks were no match for the Allies.

  In August 1920, three emissaries from the Sultan attended a ceremony at the Paris suburb of Sevres where they signed a pact drawn up by the Allies that reduced the Turkish state to a virtual nonentity. The Greeks were given the coastal lands of Asia Minor, the British controlled the zone around Istanbul, while the French and the Italians carved up most of the south between them. The Turks were left with an inhospitable tract of land in central Anatolia. ‘Turkey is no more,’ the British Prime Minister Lloyd George announced triumphantly.3

  The harsh terms of the treaty, and the willingness of the Sultan to acquiesce so readily, spurred Kemal and his followers to rebel against the occupying powers and the old order. Seized with revolutionary fervour they poured out of their mountain fastness at Angora, driving the Greeks into the sea. The French capitulated without a fight, followed by the British. By 1922 Kemal had succeeded in seizing back the lands that had been taken from them and had effectively torn the Sevres Treaty to shreds. In November 1922, still savouring the fruits of victory, Kemal took the unprecedented step of ordering his rubberstamp National Assembly to abolish the Sultanate. Mehmed went into exile and almost 460 years of Ottoman rule came to an inglorious end. The Allies were delighted. Kemal had done what they never dared to do.

  Kemal, however, was not prepared to abolish the Caliphate. Ever since the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, Sunni Muslims had regarded the Sultan of Turkey as the spiritual and temporal leader of Islam and paid him the same homage Roman Catholics accorded the Pope in Rome. The Caliphs were revered by Muslims as successors of the Prophet and upholders of the Holy Law. They were given the titles ‘Shadow of God on Earth’ and ‘Commander of the Faithful’. Whoever served as Caliph was a governor and a leader in battle as well as in prayer. The Mughal Emperors of Delhi and the Nizams of Hyderabad styled their courts on those of the Caliphs and aspired to recreate their spiritual and political influence. To Westerners brought up on tales of the Arabian Nights, the Caliphs became synonymous with scheming viziers, harems, nautch girls, palace intrigues and blood-soaked successions.

  The rise of the nationalist movement in Turkey eroded the Caliphate’s political influence, but the office retained its importance as a symbol of spiritual unity. On 1 November 1922 the Grand National Assembly passed legislation separating the Sultanate from the Caliphate, and appointed Mehmed’s cousin, Abdul Mejid Efendi, to the post. Fluent in Turkish, Arabic, French and German, Abdul Mejid had kept a low profile. He preferred painting in Parisian style, composing music and writing poetry to engaging in politics or spiritual pursuits. He was also suspicious of Kemal’s motives and agreed to accept the post only after being assured that he would have a proper inauguration with full Islamic rites. For his part Kemal gambled that Mejid would give his new independent national government – the first in the Muslim world – a veneer of legitimacy as it struggled to establish itself.

  Mejid took up residence in the Dolmabahce palace on the shores of the Bosphorus, but his reign would be short-lived. Citing foreign intervention and attempts by Turkish monarchists to use Mejid to revive the Sultanate, Kemal, in the words of the British ambassador in Istanbul, ‘completed the revolution’. On 3 March 1924, just 15 months after Mejid’s appointment, the National Assembly voted to abolish the Caliphate. Britain’s Daily Telegraph called it ‘one of the most astonishing acts of suicidal recklessness in the history of modern and ancient times’ and predicted, correctly, ‘the inevitable stirring of the Muslim world’.4

  That night troops surrounded Dolmabahce Palace and the chief of Istanbul police told Mejid to have his bags packed by 5.30 a.m. the next day. At the appointed hour, several cars drove up to the palace to collect Mejid’s immediate family and servants. He was handed £2000 in cash, driven to Chatalja and then put on the Orient Express to Switzerland.

  Despite rumours that the eunuchs accompanying Mejid and his family into exile had concealed several kilograms of gold, diamonds and precious stones beneath their cloaks as they left Istanbul, the ex-Caliph struggled to make ends meet. A Swiss businessman with interests in Turkey found lodging for the family at the Grand Hotel des Alpes at Territet on the shore of Lake Geneva. But just one month after arriving in Switzerland the financial position of the ex-Caliph ‘and half a dozen other Princes and Princesses of the ancient House of Osman, has become most serious’, The Daily Mail reported. ‘The ex-Caliph spends his days in prayer, painting and composing music. Partly for reasons of economy and partly because of their timidity and strange surroundings, the ex-Imperial wives all sleep in the same “dormitory”. They never show themselves to anybody.’5

  The Red Crescent Society found that the family was living in ‘absolute penury’. In a letter to King George V asking for help, it drew attention to the ex-Caliph’s wives and daughters who through no fault of their own found ‘themselves faced with beggary in a strange country’ and appealed for the king to intervene. ‘If these exiles are left without means of support they will starve or die; such a consummation would justify the insolent boast of Trotsky, the head of communist Russia, that “Islam is a rotten fabric ready to disappear at the first puff as was already demonstrated by the easy abolition of the Caliphate”.’6

  Today ‘His Imperial Majesty the Caliph Abdul Mejid II’, as he styled himself, barely rates more than a footnote in histories of the Ottoman Empire. But Mejid never gave up his belief that he was robbed of the Caliphate and that he alone had the right to appoint the successor to the Prophet himself. After his death in war-torn Paris in 1944, British officials were shocked to find when they read his will that he had nominated his grandson Mukarram Jah, at the time a shy schoolboy in India, as the next Caliph.7

  In 1924 news of the ex-Cali
ph’s precarious condition made it to Hyderabad, where Ali Imam, the President of the Executive Council, discreetly suggested to the Nizam that bailing out Mejid might enhance his standing among Muslims and fortify his claim for Berar. As well as spiritual concerns, Osman Ali Khan was motivated by a sense of guilt. Just ten years earlier he had been persuaded by the Resident to issue an appeal supporting the British against Turkey even though it meant abandoning the Caliphate. But with the war over, supporting the last in line of the Ottoman monarchy carried none of the geopolitical complications it had a decade ago. Accepting Imam’s advice, the Nizam proposed paying a monthly allowance of £300 towards the upkeep of Mejid and his family and asked the British Resident to seek the Viceroy’s approval.

  Although approval was forthcoming, the Government of India suspected more than just charity was involved in the Nizam’s desire to bail out a fellow Muslim leader. The question of who among the rulers of the Muslim world would succeed Mejid as Caliph and therefore command the allegiance of millions of Muslims had far-reaching geopolitical implications. After the outbreak of War World I, Indian Muslims under the leadership of Shaukat Ali, whom the British branded a Syrian ‘adventurer’, started the Khilafat Movement, which objected to the use of Muslim troops against their ‘spiritual leader’. When the Treaty of Sevres effectively erased Turkey from the map and with it the control of the Caliph over the holy places of Islam, the movement gathered strength. Realising the importance of the issue as means of bringing Muslims into his movement for selfrule, Mahatma Gandhi organised a program of non-cooperation that saw schools and government institutions boycotted. Kemal’s abolition of the Caliphate raised fears among Indian Muslims that the office of Caliph would be given to a ruler under British influence and used to further its imperial aims. Britain’s favoured candidates for the post were believed to include King Abdullah of Transjordania, King Faisal of Iraq and Ali Haider Pasha, the former Sherif of Mecca.

  Following the abolition of the Caliphate, Shaukat Ali together with Marmaduke Pickthall, a British national who had been employed by the Nizam to translate the Koran into English, began working behind the scenes for Osman Ali Khan to be made Caliph and be given the title of King. With the fall of the Ottoman monarchy and the additional honours accorded to him by the British, the Nizam now considered himself to be head of the largest and most influential Muslim state in the world, even though his subjects were overwhelmingly Hindu. Inevitably, some Muslim leaders began urging him to assume the office of the Caliph. Although he rejected their calls, he did not abandon the idea outright.

  The Nizam’s generosity meant that Mejid and his family could move from their cramped hotel room on the damp shores of Lake Geneva to the more conducive climate of the French Riviera. Comfortable in his nineteenth-century villa in the fashionable suburb of Cimiez overlooking Nice and the Côte d’ Azur, the monocled Mejid devoted himself once more to the arts. Surrounded by a high stone wall, the villa afforded the family much-needed privacy. While Mejid could be regularly spotted on the beach ‘attired in swimming trunks only and carrying a large parasol’, the women of the house were kept in strict seclusion. There was a ‘tedious absence of feminine laughter and chatter’, remarked one visitor to the double-storey villa surrounded by cypress pines and cedars. ‘They just sit around all day on cushions and divans and read poetry and eat sweetmeats. Sometimes they play the piano or violin. They smoke and sip coffee. That is all. They never go out.’8

  Mejid’s only child, Durrushehvar, was only 11 years old when the family was sent into exile. It had been a traumatic time for the young princess whose name means ‘great pearl’. When the prefect of Istanbul’s police told the family that life in the West would offer them freedom, a tearful Durrushehvar said: ‘I don’t want that kind of freedom.’9 Durrushehvar would later confide to one of her Indian companions, Kumudini Ramdev Rao, that when her mother finally removed the scarf she had worn during her flight from Turkey her hair had turned from auburn brown to white.10

  But even greater changes were imminent for the now tall and slender teenager. In the summer of 1931, the reservations clerk at the Negresco, Nice’s most fashionable and expensive hotel, received a booking from Hyderabad for two entire floors in the names of Azam and Moazzam Jah and their entourages. Durrushehvar had never been to the Negresco and had never met the Nizam’s sons, but within six months she and her 15-year-old cousin Niloufer would be boarding a steamer from Marseilles to Bombay with their new Indian husbands.

  It was not the first time Azam and Moazzam had been to Europe. The British had always taken a close, almost intimate, interest in the upbringing of the heir apparent and his brother and considered visits to the West an essential part of their training. With their father’s encouragement an Englishman named Hugh Gough had been given the job of guardian. From then on the boys had very little contact with their father and were housed in separate palace complexes. Gough’s duties included teaching them ‘table manners, how to dress, how to hold a knife and fork, how to enjoy their whiskey and how to pee’.11 One Resident thought Gough was ‘utterly senile and refused to admit that his geese were anything but swans’.12 W. G. Prendergast, the Australian-born, ex-British-Army drill sergeant appointed as their senior tutor, was not held in high regard either. In a report submitted to the Nizam when they turned 16, Prendergast wrote that they were well-versed in literature, English and Indian history. He praised their ‘lofty principles of reverence, self respect, truthfulness, clean living and clear thinking’. The princes possessed ‘a well informed and well trained intellect, a keen and alert mentality, a healthy and well developed body; in a word mens sana in corpore sano, and the simple manly and moral character which constitute the finished product of a liberal education’.13

  Unfortunately, much of Prendergast’s pompous report was imagined or greatly exaggerated. It was more intended to impress the Nizam and the Viceroy, Lord Reading, who read it with interest, than to provide an accurate picture of the boys’ development. The Acting Resident, Stuart Knox, was not fooled by Prendergast’s account of the princelings, or sahibzadas as they were known. ‘They are very seldom seen at any function, except the few palace dinners, and get little opportunity of acquiring any polish or courtesy whatsoever,’ he reported to the Viceroy’s secretary J. P. Thompson. ‘Their manners are not good, and one can hardly expect them to be when their tutor is an ex-Sergeant – a very worthy fellow indeed but who cannot by any stretch of courtesy be called a gentleman.’14

  In March 1925 Azam wrote an extraordinary letter to the Resident Charles Russell, in which he called on the British to depose his own father. ‘Here I am more than eighteen years old and allowed no money, no motor car and no liberty; I am never allowed to go the Residency; it is all so different from the way Father was treated by Grandfather,’ he complained to the Resident. ‘I am old enough to be installed as Nizam; but I am having no experience of State business. Father tyrannises over me as he is tyrannising over everybody else . . . Surely the Government of India will either check my Father or depose him.’ And in case the Resident did not get the hint, he added:

  I see that the Viceroy is going to England and I believe that he will then discuss this question with the Secretary of State. Lord Reading has already deposed many Ruling Princes. The way Father behaves towards the British Government is disgraceful. Every morning he abuses them. He seems to forget that our ancestors fought side by side and that but for the British Hyderabad would not exist.15

  Russell’s response was to ignore Azam’s complaints and instead put the onus on the heir apparent to alter his behaviour. ‘If the Sahibzada learnt self-control and self-reliance he would no doubt in due course be able to do a great work in the State.’16

  Russell’s replacement, William Barton, was similarly unimpressed by Azam and Moazzam. In the absence of a proper education, he feared the boys were developing the Nizam’s money-grabbing habits. ‘The son need not be as the father if given a chance, although people feared it would be so,’ Bart
on concluded gloomily.17

  Barton believed the Nizam was largely to blame for his sons’ behaviour by keeping them in virtual captivity and giving them a meagre allowance of just 500 rupees a month. Barton’s solution was to pay the sons directly from the state’s funds rather than the Nizam’s personal estate. But the Nizam at first rejected the idea, pointing out that his personal estate, or Sarf-i-Khas, was the traditional source of payment for heirs to the throne. In the end, however, the Nizam caved in and agreed to increase their allowances to Rs 20,000 for Azam and Rs 15,000 a month for his younger brother. He also agreed that the money would come from the state’s coffers rather than his own pocket.

  In 1928, when they were reaching adulthood, the princes were packed off to Europe to provide them with what was officially termed ‘training in administrative work on the friendly advice of the Government of India’.18 ‘The Nizam was very serious in cultivating his boys to take on the responsibility of marrying highly educated ladies and cut out for themselves an international platform,’ recalls Habeeb Jung. ‘Unfortunately they squandered the opportunity.’19