Last Nizam (9781742626109) Read online

  Russell’s reforms were never implemented. He resigned as Resident in 1820 after getting word that he was about to be sacked for his blatant involvement in corruption and bribetaking. Despite enjoying an annual salary of £3400, he managed to ship home a fortune of £85,000.

  Russell’s replacement, Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, was of a much different calibre. The pimply-faced ex-Etonian had been Wellesley’s star pupil at his new college for civil servants at Madras. When he travelled he preferred elephants to horses because a pachyderm’s more deliberate motion made it easier to read. At 17, Metcalfe served as an assistant to Colonel John Collins at the court of Sindia in Ujjain. In 1805, at the age of just 21, he became Assistant to the Resident in Delhi. He also shared the distinction, according to Lord Minto, of being ‘the ugliest and most agreeable clever person – except Lady Glenbevrie – in Europe or in Asia’.29 After his experience at Ujjain, where King Collins, as he was nicknamed, moved around with a zenana full of women and batteries of artillery, Metcalfe developed a strong distaste for native courts and a dislike for their princes.

  When Metcalfe took over as Resident in 1820, Hyderabad personified the worst of these excesses. He described the Residency as ‘a magnificent and uncomfortable pile, on which immense sums have been unconscionably spent by my predecessors at the expense of the Nizam’s government . . . I wish that I could introduce a nest of white ants secretly . . . and cause it to disappear.’30 Within a few months of his posting, Metcalfe accused Palmer of helping to plunder Hyderabad in league with Chandu Lal:

  I do not object to merchants making good bargains for themselves. But when the resources of the State are sacrificed by a profligate servant, without any regard to the interests of his master, as the purchase of support of the Governor General through the influence of an individual, it is bribery in the most horrible degree and misery of it will be long felt by this suffering country.31

  But his initial attempts to close the bank were unsuccessful. When Metcalfe demanded a detailed account of various transactions with the Nizam’s government, Palmer responded by saying that it would be ‘inconsistent with the confidence reposed in them by their customers’. Metcalfe wanted the government to repay the loans taken by the Nizam from the banking firm, and recover the amount in stages from the Nizam. He was supported by the Home Government in England but not by Hastings in Calcutta. ‘Any ill will on your part towards the House of William Palmer & Co. must necessarily be idle imagination,’ Hastings warned him.32

  But by the end of November 1920, the evidence Metcalfe had collected was too overwhelming to ignore and the Court of Directors declared that the original sanction given to Palmer & Co. was illegal. ‘We can by no means approve of the indulgence which you have extended to Messrs Palmer and Co.,’ the Board wrote to Hastings. ‘We positively direct that the instrument by which that indulgence was conveyed may be immediately upon receipt of this dispatch, revoked and cancelled.’33

  Having removed one scourge, Metcalfe then undertook a tour of the Nizam’s Dominions to see for himself the conditions of the peasantry. In some areas the mood bordered on insurrection; lawlessness was so rampant that many farmers were fleeing into neighbouring states. Arab and Persian mercenaries had occupied districts, murder and violence were rife. There was practically no civil or judicial administration and justice could be obtained only for money.

  Metcalfe proposed a series of reforms, including the appointment of European officers in districts to collect revenue, receive complaints from cultivators and put down robberies and other crimes. The system restored confidence among the peasants and many villages that had been deserted were reoccupied. Though the reforms were a success in terms of increasing revenue, they caused friction between local authorities and the British. As Chandu Lal pointed out to Metcalfe ‘there was not room for two swords in one scabbard’.34

  The fate of Metcalfe’s reforms was sealed with the death of Sikander Jah in May 1829. Apart from the women in the zenana who faced being thrown out on the streets, few in Hyderabad mourned the Nizam’s passing. His court had been totally devoid of the ‘splendour, frankness, spirit, resolution and liberality’ that would have ordinarily earned him a modicum of respect among his subjects. Had the British not rescued it from the French and the Marathas and subsidised it with territory and money, on the condition that it place its resources at the disposal of the British in time of war, Hyderabad would have ceased to exist. ‘No state’, wrote Edward Thompson, ‘can ever have combined such material importance with so undistinguished a record and so fictitious an independence.’35 Even Russell conceded that over-reliance on the crutches of the Company ‘deprived the Nizam of the use of his own limbs’.36

  Sikander Jah was succeeded by Nasir ud-Daula, one of nine sons he fathered during his long nights in the zenana. Although Nasir ud-Daula was illegitimate, he was nevertheless the eldest and therefore the most favoured by the British to become the next Nizam. Historian Henry George Briggs described him as a ‘large, powerful man, and very corpulent; he had a clear bright, blue Afghan eye, and his features were very pleasing, especially when he smiled.’ Although illiterate like his father, the Fourth Nizam gained enough knowledge from his courtiers and servants to become a better ruler than his predecessor and was liked by his subjects. By the standards of the day he ‘was considered a good eastern sovereign’.37

  In many ways Nasir ud-Daula’s reign was a dress rehearsal for what would happen almost 150 years later when Mukarram Jah became the Eighth Nizam. Like Jah, Nasir ud-Daula did everything he could to keep the government of the day off his back while leaving the administration of the state to his own handpicked lieutenants, who were either untrustworthy or incompetent. His hands-off approach encouraged corruption, the siphoning of assets to corrupt officials and a general unwillingness to rein in extravagant expenditure and address basic cash-flow problems. Jah’s coterie would echo his predecessor’s with dozens of Chandu Lals who over the years would do their best to hide the real financial position of the estate from the Nizam, the prying eyes of bankers and insatiable tax officials. These sycophants kept their rulers in the dark, knowing that their interests were best served by pretending that everything was in order. The tragedy of Nasir ud-Daula’s reign was that he squandered an opportunity to prove that Hyderabad had the means both in terms of capable administrators and money-generating resources to be on an equal footing with the British. The tragedy of Jah’s lifetime was that he didn’t learn the lessons.

  On his appointment as Nizam in 1829, Nasir ud-Daula found himself facing a very similar financial crisis to the one that had nearly broken the state just a decade previously. Prodded along by Chandu Lal, who wanted to get the Resident off his back, the Nizam asked the new Governor-General, Lord Bentinck, to end British interference in the administration of the state. Bentinck agreed. British superintendents were removed from districts where they had managed to introduce a semblance of order and fairness in the collection of revenue from farmers. The Nizam was allowed to exercise full power in appointing and dismissing his ministers, administering justice, setting fiscal policy and all other matters, as long as he continued to pay for British troops stationed in Hyderabad.

  The sudden withdrawal of the British from the affairs of state proved disastrous. Within months, maladministration became the norm. The peasantry once again found itself at the mercy of unscrupulous zamindars, who looted entire villages and fled into the Company’s territories knowing that the Nizam’s troops could not pursue them there. Travelling through the Nizam’s Dominions in the late 1820s, the British administrator Sir John Malcolm found that:

  . . . the different quotas to be paid by each inhabitant had been fixed and every species of torture was then being inflicted to enforce them. Men and women, poor and rich, were suffering promiscuously. Some had heavy muskets fastened to their ears; some had large stones upon their breasts; whilst others had their fingers pinched with hot pincers. Their cries of agony and declaration of inability to pay appeared
only to whet the appetite of their tormentors.38

  Metcalfe, now a member of the Governor-General’s Council, wanted the British to intervene. To ignore such intolerable oppression, he argued in August 1830, would make the British ‘tools of the most iniquitous tyranny’.39 The Board of Directors, however, continued to turn a blind eye to the state of affairs and Chandu Lal’s role in perpetuating it.

  But in September 1835 the directors finally ordered the Resident to issue the Nizam with an ultimatum. The Company, it stated, ‘could not remain indifferent spectators to the disorder and misrule which had so long prevailed’. If Chandu Lal ‘would not provide for the proper and efficient administration of the country, it would be the duty of the British Government to urge upon His Highness the necessity of changing his Minister as well as adopting such other arrangements as might appear to be advisable for the purpose of securing good government’.40

  The warning had little effect. By the mid-1830s Hyderabad’s credit rating plunged so low that local bankers refused to grant it loans. Chandu Lal pretended he was ready to accept any proposal the British might put forward, including reverting to the old system of supervision of districts by British officers or the appointment of reliable Indians who would report directly to the Nizam. But for all the powers invested in him, Chandu Lal did little or nothing to improve Hyderabad’s financial position. He did not demand a reduction in the upkeep of the Hyderabad Contingent, as the Russell Brigade was now known, or the Subsidiary Force, and he did not rein in corruption in the revenue department. Instead he continued to make land grants so recklessly during the 1830s that sanads on their own were not accepted as proof of ownership. People offered him huge nazars for the privilege of farming out one or more districts. The same district would then be offered to several people.

  With the arrival of Captain James Stuart Fraser as Resident in 1838, Chandu Lal’s days were numbered. Fraser’s distinguished career included postings as Private Secretary to the Governor of Madras, Commandant of Pondicherry, Secretary to the Government in the Military Department and Resident at the Courts of Mysore and Travancore. Meticulous and assertive, Fraser was also a man who stood on principle, a trait which later brought him into direct conflict with the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie.

  Fraser was at first impressed by Chandu Lal’s ‘mild and clement disposition which prevents him from ever committing a harsh or cruel act, his generosity and lavish disbursement of money, which secure him many friends and partisans’. But he was quick to grasp the dangers of the Diwan’s autocratic style of government. ‘As long as Chandoo Lal lives, I apprehend little or nothing can be done,’ he wrote to Calcutta.

  He has played the game of government long and skilfully, a word which I use rather than ably, for I cannot ascribe to him genuine capacity nor, still less, great talent. We have been tools in his hand. Adroitly opposing the Nizam to us, or us at other times to his sovereign, as might suit the aim and object of the moment, he has contrived to keep the government – or rather the dictatorship – of the country for thirty years.41

  By the early 1840s the Hyderabad Contingent was costing four million rupees annually or nearly one-third of the total revenue of the state. Shortly after his arrival in Hyderabad, Fraser proposed that the Nizam’s government be given a loan of one million pounds to clear the arrears due to the irregular troops and reduce their numbers. He also proposed putting districts temporarily under control of Indians approved by him to arrest the maladministration. In both cases the Company refused. As long as it did not plunge into anarchy, it suited British interests to see Hyderabad slide further into debt, and therefore greater dependency. By 1843, however, the situation was becoming acute. ‘The Nizam’s government is on the brink of open bankruptcy, which as you know in India means mutiny of troops for their pay,’ the Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, warned.42

  With the payments to the Hyderabad Contingent and Subsidiary Force falling further into arrears, Chandu Lal had to act. In February 1843 he offered to cede the territories of Berar, Raichur and Bhir to the British, which generated 450,000 rupees a year against a loan of 7.5 million rupees. The offer was turned down. He then added more territories generating a combined revenue of 1.75 million rupees, but again the British refused. He then proposed raising a loan of 10 million rupees (£1 million). This time Ellenborough said he was willing to advance the loan but only on condition that the administration of the state be handed back to the British, an allowance be made for the maintenance of the Nizam and any excess revenue be handed over to the government. The proposals were never even put to the Nizam. Realising that he had no more cards to play, and blaming Fraser for being ‘bent on his ruin’, Chandu Lal granted himself a generous pension of 1000 rupees per day and tendered his letter of resignation on 6 September 1843.

  With Chandu Lal out of the way, Nasir ud-Daula set to work to discharge his state’s liabilities. For the first time since the establishment of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, a ruler was forced to fall back on his personal treasury to avert the bankruptcy of his kingdom. From a strongroom in Golconda he withdrew 10 million rupees in cash. Another 800,000 rupees in gold was taken from his palace in Hyderabad.

  The raid on the treasury brought only a temporary reprieve. In April 1845, Ellenborough’s replacement Lord Hardinge sent a strongly worded letter to the Nizam regarding the arrears that were again mounting for the payment of the Hyderabad Contingent and the general maladministration of the state:

  In the event of this state of things leading to serious and unhappy consequences, the British Government will not consent to put down by force of arms, troubles and opposition to your Highness’s authority, manifestly caused by the oppression under which the people suffer in consequence of the maladministration of your Highness’s Dominions.43

  The immediate effect of the letter was another withdrawal of 12 million rupees from the Nizam’s own treasury. But within a year the debt again began mounting and by September 1846 stood at 3.8 million rupees. After another dressing down from the Governor, the Nizam caved in and appointed Suraj ul-Mulk as Prime Minister. Suraj ul-Mulk was ‘the only man in the Nizam’s country whose mind had been a little enlarged by intercourse with European gentlemen’, Fraser later wrote. ‘He alone seemed to be sensible to the necessity of reform with a view to the prosperity of the country.’44 Though Suraj ul-Mulk had Fraser’s backing, he did not have the support of the Nizam and, therefore, could do little to improve the overall situation of the state. In 1848, Fraser’s deputy, Colonel John Low, wrote to the Governor-General that the financial affairs of the Nizam’s government were in a worse condition than they had ever been since the Treaty of 1800. ‘The Nizam in those days had large private treasures, and the amount of his debt was trifling. His Highness’s treasures have been since almost entirely exhausted.’ Low reported that the state debt stood at 35 million rupees, ‘a large proportion of which consists of arrears to pay troops and public servants’.45 Another large portion of the debts was owed to sowcars (local bankers) who were charging ruinous rates of interest.

  It was obvious to Fraser and Low that the cause of the Nizam’s continued difficulties was the upkeep of a body of troops that he had no use for. By now the Hyderabad Contingent consisted of five regiments of cavalry, eight regiments of infantry and five companies of artillery. Whereas the presence of the Subsidiary Force could be justified as necessary to protect the Nizam from internal disturbances, there were no external threats to Hyderabad that could justify the continued presence of the Contingent. As Low pointed out in a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sir James Law Lushington, in 1848: ‘We have been guilty towards the Nizam’s government in keeping up for so many years the continued drain upon the revenues of this country of then less than forty lakhs of rupees per annum for the pay of the Contingent, in other words, for the purposes of our own, not of the Nizam.’ Since the restoration of peace in the Deccan in 1819, ‘we have no right by treaty to demand a single rupee for the Contingent during the wh
ole of that period, upwards of 28 years. In the course of that time, however, we have withdrawn from the Nizam’s treasury the enormous sum of 11 crores and 20 lakhs of rupees, a large proportion of which has gone out of the Nizam’s territory for ever.’46

  Instead of alleviating the problem, the British watched as the Nizam blundered his way towards financial oblivion while continuing to hold out the threat of direct intervention in the administration of the state. Meanwhile, the Nizam continued to blame his Prime Minister for his problems. Suraj ul-Mulk, for his part, complained of ‘the uncontrolled extravagance of the Nizam and of the baneful influence of female and other favourites in the palace’.47

  The appointment of Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General in 1847 only worsened the situation. Dalhousie was a reformist under whose rule Hindu widows won the right to remarry. He also had little time for the princely states or ‘those petty intervening principalities’ as he called them. One of his most controversial legacies was the doctrine of lapse, which held that the Paramount Power, i.e. Britain, had the right to assume the sovereignty of a state whose ruler was either incompetent or left no direct heir. Between 1847 and 1856 (when he left India), Dalhousie had acquired by this method the states of Satara, Sambalpur, the Punjab, Jhansi and Nagpur. Just weeks before his departure he annexed Lucknow and the kingdom of Oudh, whose nawabs ‘fulfilled to the bejewelled hilt their role as the dissipated Oriental despots of European imagining’.48

  For the same reason as he despised Lucknow’s lecherous nawabs, Dalhousie had little sympathy for Hyderabad’s inept Nizam. Nor did he have much time for Fraser’s entreaty that nothing less than a decisive British administration conducted by the Resident in communication with the Nizam’s minister could save the country. Insisting that Britain had no moral or political obligation for ‘unwanted and officious meddling’ in Hyderabad merely because of the Nizam’s mismanagement, Dalhousie set a deadline of 31 December 1850 for the discharge of the Nizam’s entire debt. ‘If the Governor-General’s expectations were disappointed,’ the ultimatum read, ‘his Lordship would feel it his duty to take such decided steps as the interests of the British Government demanded.’49 Although those steps were not spelled out it was understood that they would involve the extraction of territorial security for the payment of principal and interest. The territory in question was Berar.