Last Nizam (9781742626109) Page 9
For the East India Company, Berar was the jewel in the crown of the Nizam’s Dominions. The size of Switzerland, it contained in Dalhousie’s own words ‘the finest cotton tracts’ in India.50 In the 1850s the United States was supplying the bulk of cotton for the mills of Lancashire. To end this excessive dependency, Britain looked to India to produce raw material for what was then its most important industry. A report prepared by James Mann concluded that ‘Berar represents a larger scope for action as a cotton field than any other part of India, and were it put on the same footing as the seaboard district in respect to means of transport, there is little doubt but that a breadth of land would then become available adequate to supply the full demands of Great Britain’.51
When the latest deadline passed without any of the outstanding debt being cleared, Dalhousie called on the Nizam to ‘make over to the Resident for the British government those portions of his territories which would be specified, together with all the authority necessary for their management’.52 And to rub dirt into old wounds, Dalhousie reminded the Nizam that the Government of India’s power was such that it ‘can make you dust under foot, and leave you neither a name nor a trace’.53
The letter had the desired effect. In June 1851 the Nizam promised to liquidate half of the debt immediately and the remainder by 31 October. On 15 August a first instalment of 3.4 million rupees was paid, leaving a balance owing of just under 3.3 million rupees. But the next deadline passed without any further payment being made, and by November the government was again reported to be bankrupt. ‘It lives by the strength of its Arabs, which enables it to inflict injustice, and by that means to avert disruption by exacting its obligations,’ a resident of Hyderabad wrote in The Englishman on 21 November 1851. ‘The day of reckoning will be the day of revolution.’54
By now panic seems to have gripped Nasir ud-Daula. He gave orders for three million rupees’ worth of his best jewellery, including a 300,000-rupee pair of diamond bracelets from the treasury of Tipu Sultan, to be pawned in the local bazaar. Unfortunately, the market for jewellery was down. After three days of negotiations with local moneylenders and bankers the best offer he could get was 643,000 rupees. Unwilling to part with his jewels for such a low price, Nasir ud-Daula rode up to the Residency on 13 January 1852 with the most valuable single stone in his collection – the legendary Nizam diamond. Weighing 400 carats it was said to be the largest in the world after the Brazil diamond. ‘Amongst the English people here its value is estimated at £600,000,’ commented the Madras Spectator.55
Tracing the origin of the Nizam diamond 25 years later, the explorer, soldier and diplomat Captain Richard Burton wrote that the diamond had been accidentally found near Shamsabad by a local goldsmith, buried in an earthen pot, which suggests that it had been stolen. The ‘wretched finder’ then placed it upon a stone and struck it with another, breaking it into three pieces, the largest of which was about half the size of the original diamond. The find came to the attention of Chandu Lal, who took it from the goldsmith and deposited it among the Nizam’s jewels. ‘It is not unlike a Chinese woman’s foot without the toes, and will easily cut into a splendid brilliant, larger and more valuable than the present Koh-i-noor.’56 Whatever the diamond’s attributes, Fraser refused to accept it and it went back into the state treasury never to be seen again.
In November the Nizam decided to pawn another collection of jewels valued at 10 million rupees. This time, however, it was decided that the jewels would be handed over to a specially formed State Bank in return for an advance of four million rupees. The bank was headed by Henry Dighton, who wanted it to act as a public treasury for the receipt and disbursement of revenue and eventually replace Hyderabad’s antiquated and inefficient financial system. Dighton was ‘a gentleman well known, of good birth, of strict probity and a favourite with all the classes’ who in 1846 had been appointed a district commissioner by Fraser.57 The jewels were duly handed over to the bank and the money was given to the Nizam. But before Nasir ud-Daula could hand the money over to the Resident, Dalhousie stepped in to block the government’s sanction to the bank on the grounds that the lending of money by a British subject to a native prince was prohibited. Any European found involved in the bank, Dalhousie declared, ‘would not be permitted to remain within its territories’.58
Dalhousie’s intervention created ‘alarm and confusion into every corner of the city’.59 Having parted with his jewels, the Nizam refused to hand over the money to the Resident. Fearing they would not get their money back, the city’s moneylenders demanded the jewels as security. Responsible to the Nizam for the safety of his jewels and to the moneylenders who had financed the bank, Dighton extricated himself from the mess in a ‘remarkable and thoroughly Oriental manner’.60
Dighton deposited the jewels in a safe locked with three different keys, each held by one of the interested parties. Announcing that he needed to travel to Madras for a change of air and to transact some business, Dighton asked that the jewels be examined and compared with the list attached to the mortgage deed. A meeting of shareholders was called and after each tray of jewels was checked the contents were secretly poured into a pair of jackboots before the tray was returned to the safe.
Without an escort and with no more protection ‘than a pith helmet’, Dighton then proceeded to Madras, carrying half the jewels in his own palanquin; while the doctor who accompanied him unknowingly transported the other half in a box labelled ‘medical comforts’.61 Once the party had crossed the Kistna River and were in British territory, Dighton sent a letter to the Nizam revealing what had happened. The jewels were shipped to England and then Holland where they were deposited with a banking firm which repaid the moneylenders. It took another 30 years before there was enough money in Hyderabad’s treasury to pay the principal and interest, recover the jewels and restore them to the Nizam’s strongroom.
The banking debacle was the final straw for Fraser. Accusing Dalhousie of meddling and ambitious greed, and declaring ‘all was lost save honour’, he quit his post in January 1853.62 Fraser’s replacement, Major General John Low, was more to Dalhousie’s liking. ‘The most obedient of all functionaries’, Low was the perfect ‘pliant instrument’ for the Governor-General to play his trump card.63 With Hyderabad now owing 4.5 million rupees and payment for the Contingent seven months in arrears, Dalhousie instructed Low to present the Nizam with an all-or-nothing deal. If he leased the district of Berar to the British, all outstanding debts would be cancelled and the British would meet the cost of the 7000-strong Hyderabad Contingent. On the morning of 12 March 1853, Low went to Chowmahalla palace to explain to the Nizam ‘in a most friendly manner’ that if he did not sign over Berar he would regret the decision forever.
When Low entered the audience hall he found Nasir ud-Daula ‘in a state of considerable excitement; his face was flushed and his eyes appeared somewhat inflamed’. Low thought the Nizam had overindulged in opium and wine, but was later told that he had sat up all night fuming at the proposed treaty which meant giving up Berar and other districts. The Nizam made his anger clear by refusing to sign the treaty and telling Low that nothing was more disgraceful for a ruler than to give away territory permanently or disband the ‘brave and faithful’ troops who had served him. ‘I am a sovereign prince born to live and die in this Kingdom, which has belonged to my family for seven generations. You think I could be happy if you were to give up a portion of my Kingdom to your Government in perpetuity; it is totally impossible that I could be happy; I should feel that I was disgraced.’ He then went on to accuse the British of wanting to pension him off and to live out the rest of his life ‘like an old servant, and have nothing to do but to eat, and sleep and say my prayers’.64
Even if Low felt sympathy for the Nizam, he was under strict orders not to show it. When the Nizam pleaded for a four-month extension, promising that the debt would be repaid and payments to the Contingent regularised, Low refused. Asking for a few days to consider the matter, the Nizam offe
red Low rose water and betelnut and called the meeting to a close.
The few days predictably turned into weeks as the Nizam offered one last compromise that would put the ceded territories under the joint management of the British and Hyderabad governments. Frustrated by the delays, Low’s assistant, Captain Cuthbert Davidson, wrote to the Diwan Suraj ul-Mulk on 14 May that the time for negotiations was over and British troops had been ordered to prepare to march on Hyderabad. ‘If you are a friend of His Highness, beg of him to save himself and his dignity by complying at once with what the Governor-General will most assuredly compel him to accede to.’65 On the same day, word came from the palace that the Nizam had agreed to sign.
A century and a half later, the treaty still rankles the Nizam’s descendants, who believe they were cheated by the British. Mukarram Jah’s mother, Durrushehvar, who lived in a grand Georgian terrace in London’s South Kensington until her death in February 2006, always insisted on being addressed as the Princess of Berar, even though she never exercised any sovereignty over the territory. She had coveted the title since 1936, when the British granted the Seventh Nizam nominal sovereignty over Berar. The Nizam could fly his flag in the territory, confer Hyderabadi titles on its inhabitants and have his name read in Friday prayers in mosques throughout the district.
The sense of betrayal felt by Jah’s family was justified. After the final Maratha war in 1819 there had indeed been peace in the Deccan and there was no justification for maintaining such a large force to be paid for out of the Nizam’s treasury. Despite a clause in the treaty stating that any surplus revenue collected once the cost of administering the territories had been deducted would be returned to the Nizam, no amount was paid out until 1874 when the balance in his favour was five million rupees. As historian J. Bruce Norton pithily commented later: ‘Cotton stuffed the ears of justice, and made her deaf as well as blind.’66
That was not how Dalhousie or the East India Company saw things. Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, declared he was ‘very glad’: ‘Nagpore and the frontier of the Nizam’s territories which we now occupy give us I think pretty nearly an uninterrupted line from Calcutta to Bombay.’ Writing to Low to congratulate him, Dalhousie said: ‘I consider the successful completion of this settlement with the Nizam as a feather in my cap.’67
In Hyderabad the mood was one of despondency, made worse by the death just three days after the treaty’s signing of Suraj ul-Mulk. Unable to choose between rival contenders for the vacancy, Nasir ud-Daula toyed with the idea of filling the post of Diwan himself until the British stepped in with their own candidate, the late Diwan’s 24-year-old nephew, Salar Jung. The grandson of Munir ul-Mulk and the great grandson of Mir Alam, the young Salar Jung had impeccable antecedents. He was appointed Diwan on 31 May 1853 and would hold the post for the next 30 years.
Salar Jung would make his mark quickly, but the greatness that Hyderabad was destined to achieve would not occur in Nasir ud-Daula’s lifetime. In early 1857 the Nizam’s health began to fail. When Davidson was promoted to the post of Resident at the beginning of May, he told Salar Jung he would call on the ailing Nizam only if he requested it. Though he was dying, the Nizam invited Davidson to the Purani Haveli palace. There the Resident found the 63-year-old ruler surrounded by the grieving women of the zenana. Supported by pillows, the Nizam tried to enquire as to the Governor-General’s health, but was unable to finish his question. ‘While the khureeta [dispatch] was being read, he lapsed into a state of somnolent insensibility,’ Fraser later recorded. ‘Having latterly indulged in the pleasures of the table, and, neglecting the regimen in regard to diet prescribed by the hakeems, violent diarrhoea came on which resulted in his death.’68
The Fourth Nizam was ‘a humane man, but his prejudices stood in the way of innovation and improvement’,69 said the Madras Spectator on the news of his death. Humanity he had in abundance, for it was said that he could not bring himself to order a sentence of death to be carried out even on a selfconfessed murderer. As for prejudices standing in the way of progress, it could equally be said that the hold the British exerted over his administration was in itself an insurmountable barrier to change.
Within days of Nasir ud-Daula’s death those barriers would start to fall. British India and the Nizam’s Dominions would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 4
Regulators of the Realm
NASIR UD-DAULA DIED a broken and bitter man, but the injustices he felt were not unique. In the first half of 1857 dissatisfaction among Indians at what they saw as British interference in every aspect of their lives was multiplying. The discontent was most acutely felt in north India. The British takeover of Oudh in 1856 had seen the disbandment of its 200,000-strong army. Rumours began circulating that the East India Company wanted to impose Christianity on India. In early 1857 the old Brown Bess was replaced with the more accurate and powerful Enfield rifle, but loading it required biting a cartridge that the sepoys believed was lubricated with a mix of cow and pig fat. To Hindus the cow is sacred; to Muslims the pig is unclean. Nothing could have been more disgusting to either community than if the cartridges had been smeared with excrement. Slowly at first, the sepoys of the Bengal Army refused to accept the new cartridges. As the boycott gathered pace, rumours began swirling around the regimental lines and crowded bazaars that flour was being adulterated with ground-up bones of cows and pigs.
On 10 May 1857 the storm finally broke. Incensed by the court martial of 85 troops for refusing suspect cartridges, the sepoys of Meerut mutinied. Calling on civilians to join them, they rampaged through the cantonments, burning buildings, looting and killing every European man, woman and child they could find. From Meerut the insurgents marched west to Delhi where they sought and received the endorsement of the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, for their revolt. Aged 82, addicted to opium and without an army of his own, the Emperor was an unlikely figurehead. But as the heir to the Mughal dynasty his support gave the revolt the legitimacy it needed to become a broad-based insurrection against two and a half centuries of British presence in India.
The news of the fall of Delhi reached Hyderabad’s Resident, Colonel Cuthbert Davidson, on his return from the installation ceremony of the new Nizam. On his deathbed Nasir ud-Daula had called for Salar Jung and told his Diwan that his son should continue to be faithful to the English. No time was lost in proclaiming Afzal ud-Daula the Fifth Nizam. Though the succession had gone smoothly, the eruption of the Mutiny could not have come at a worse time for Davidson. Strategically and symbolically, Hyderabad was to south India what Delhi was to the north. Its rulers and citizens had legitimate grievances over the way in which Berar had been ceded and at British interference in the internal affairs of the state. Most of the male population was armed and restless. The soldiers of the Subsidiary Force and the Hyderabad Contingent could be counted on for their loyalty, but 30,000 poorly paid irregulars, mostly under the command of Rohillas and Arabs, were considered a menace. Moreover, the Nizams still paid nominal allegiance to the Mughal Emperor. Afzal ud-Daula was just 30 and there was no certainty where his loyalties lay.
‘The Muhammadans of His Highness’s Dominions were in a state of fanatical excitement, while the Hindus were paralysed,’ an official history of Hyderabad later recorded. ‘The slightest sign from the head of the State would have raised their smouldering passions to open revolt, and thus doubled the strength of the mutineers by setting the country south of the Nerbudda on fire, threatening alike Madras and Bombay and crippling the British resources at the most critical moment.’1
Occupying much of the Deccan plateau, Hyderabad was indeed a buffer zone between the north and the south. Many factors ultimately prevented the Mutiny from being a nationwide uprising, including the temporary nature of the coalition of disparate forces involved. The Governor of Bombay’s famous telegram to Davidson that ‘If Hyderabad goes, everything goes’ may have been a slight exaggeration, but there is little doubt that had the Nizam ‘r
aised the standard of the Crescent’, the tide of war would have spilled over into southern India and the history of the British Raj might have been entirely different.2
When news of the Mutiny spread, Davidson strengthened the Residency’s defences, brought in reinforcements and clamped down on mendicants, maulvis and mutinous soldiers. He also kept a close eye on Afzal ud-Daula. ‘I have caused the Nizam to be narrowly watched from quarters and in ways he little suspected, and although emissaries from the mutineers have come to him, he has after listening to their stories refused complicity.’3
Beyond the confines of the palace, however, the news was more worrying. On 11 June the First Cavalry of the Hyderabad Contingent refused to march beyond the borders of Hyderabad state, believing they were being asked to go to Delhi and fight against the Mughal Emperor. But the Mutiny was short-lived. Two of the ringleaders were shot from cannons, seven put before a firing squad, four cut down in charges and several were hanged. On 13 June posters appeared all over Hyderabad urging Muslims to rise up against the British ‘in the name of God and his Prophet’. ‘A Muslim who resolves to kill a kafir and delays will be cut off from the society and called a descendant of the pariah caste, of a pig and of a dog’, one poster read. Others warned the Nizam and Salar Jung that if they did not join the Mutiny they would end up working like labourers on the road and ‘their seven generations would be cursed’.4