Last Nizam (9781742626109) (11 page)

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 offered 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.

N
ASIR UD-
D
AULA 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 ‘raised 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

On Friday, 17 July, Salar Jung sent word to Davidson that a
jihad
was to be declared later in the day and that he had ordered a body of Arabs to disperse an angry crowd gathered at the city's main mosque. A 5.45 in the evening another messenger was dispatched from Salar Jung telling Davidson that 500 Rohillas and a large mob of insurgents had broken out of the old city and were making their way to the Residency. The rebels managed to occupy two buildings near the Residency and bring down one of its gates. Despite a night-long siege, the rebels were no match for the soldiers stationed inside the Residency or the contingent of Arab guards that Salar Jung had sent to surround the houses they were occupying. Unable to withstand the sustained cannon and gunfire, the rebels retreated, leaving their dead behind. By dawn it was all over.

Hyderabad had stood the test of loyalty by being the first Indian state to put down the Mutiny. Though the British were in debt to the Nizam, the real hero was Salar Jung. ‘In securing the Nizam to our side he played what might well appear to a native of India to be a most desperate game at very great risk to himself and to his master,' wrote the correspondent of the
Athenaeum.
‘He had to oppose not only the patriotic but religious prejudices of his countrymen. He was denounced as a traitor to the faith, and numerous plots were laid for his overthrow and destruction.'
⁵

The British nevertheless thought it prudent that some recognition of Afzal ud-Daula's valuable service was called for. Lord Stanley, the President of the Board of Control, considered ‘a shipload of truppery – gilded carriages, furniture, arms, horses, etc' was inadequate and that a restoration of the districts ceded in 1853 would ‘show convincingly that we can sometimes relax
our grasp upon the good things that come with it'.
⁶
However, a change of government in Britain in 1859 and the appointment of a new Secretary of State for India augured ill for Hyderabad. The reward for the Nizam was reduced to English manufactured goods valued at 100,000 rupees, a new treaty cancelling a five-million-rupee debt the British claimed the Nizam still owed and the restoration of the districts of Raichur, Doab and Naldurg. But Berar was to remain under British control. ‘Generosity is uppermost in the minds of my British allies, even though their mathematics are a trifle weak,' the Nizam was said to have muttered to a confidant.
⁷

The Nizam was not the only Indian prince who remained loyal to the British. The vast majority of India's 600 or so ruling rajahs, maharajahs and nawabs had put their faith in the British and acted as a bulwark against the mutineers. They too were to be recognised. On 12 August 1858 the Company's empire-building career was cut short by a proclamation of parliament that all rights it had previously enjoyed were being resumed by the British Crown. Victoria became the Queen of England and of India, and her Governor-General became the Viceroy, with much greater authority than his predecessors. The proclamation contained a solemn undertaking that the Crown would ‘respect the rights, dignity and honour of the Native Princes as Our own'.
⁸

The Raj was now responsible for the security of the princes. Insurrection was impossible, but there was a trade-off. The princes were responsible not to their own subjects, but to the Paramount Power. If a prince declared war on another state or indulged in gross misrule he could be unseated by the Raj, which also had the last say in any disputed succession. For all intents and purposes the princely states had ceased being independent. They could no longer have direct dealings with another state or a foreign power. Any attempt to use terms such as ‘royal', ‘king' or ‘kingdom' were
frowned upon as were attempts to use ‘arched crowns' as opposed to ‘open crowns' on their letterheads.
⁹

For the Nizam, this change in policy and the exile of the last Mughal Emperor to Burma meant that he could no longer proclaim his allegiance to the old rulers of India. A new seal was prepared omitting all allusion to any such allegiance and new coins were minted with the words ‘Nizam ul-Mulk Asaf Jah Bahadur' on the back. For the first time the Nizam's name was read out in mosques during the
khutba
.

The rise in power of the Viceroy meant a corresponding rise in the importance of the Resident. Afzal ud-Daula resented the influence of the Resident and that of Salar Jung, whom he called a ‘
Feringhee Bachcha
' (foreign lackey), for his closeness to the British and his independent manner. The two men had little in common in their values or their outlook. Sir Richard Temple, who was the Resident in Hyderabad from 1867, described the Fifth Nizam as a perfect example of what the ‘enervating conditions of India produced in the course of a few generations upon the conquering tribes that came from Central Asia'. Having spent too long living a secluded life in his palace he was:

. . . addicted to superstition, and soothsayers had power over his impressionable mind. If there was any idea in politics on which his thoughts fixed themselves it was this, that whatever the British Resident might suggest should be regarded with circumspection. He desired, if possible, to keep his people aloof from all European notions, social as well as political. Such notions might act upon their minds, he would say, as a whirligig, and cause their thoughts to spin round and round.
¹⁰

Salar Jung, by contrast, was committed to modernising Hyderabad along the lines of British India. According to Temple, ‘as a
man of business, especially in finance, Sir Salar Jung has not been surpassed by any native of India in the nineteenth century'.
¹¹
On the occasion of his visit to Europe in 1876, the correspondent for the
Athenaeum
noted that under his rule Salar Jung ‘has introduced thrift into [Hyderabad's] finances, doing justice and making life and property to be respected within his borders, and withal – which is perhaps not his least arduous achievement – contenting his English masters'.
¹²

Considering that Afzal ud-Daula spent most of his reign trying to remove Salar Jung, his achievements were indeed remarkable. Describing the situation in Hyderabad when Salar Jung was appointed
Diwan
in 1853, Sir George Yule, who replaced Davidson as Resident, wrote: ‘There was a government certainly, but it was a Government of plunder; there was no attempt to do justice or to prevent robbery and injustice, the revenues were farmed out to those who bribed highest.'
¹³
Hyderabad was 24 million rupees in debt, the salaries of government officials had not been paid for months and the system of collecting revenue was in a shambles. Arab, Afghan and Sikh mercenaries owned vast estates and were a law unto themselves. Peasants who were unable to pay their debts were imprisoned and starved to death. If a debtor died in prison, his relatives were unable to take away his body until the debts had been paid off. ‘In Hyderabad arms and politics are the only profession, and in a city of 350,000 inhabitants there is nothing that can be called an industry, except the manufacture of swords and daggers,' the
Pioneer
reported. ‘Every man has his waistbelt full of weapons, with a flashing sabre or a rusty matchlock in his hand or on his shoulder.'
¹⁴
Even the beggars were said to be armed.

Salar Jung's first step was to reduce the state's indebtedness by obtaining loans from bankers with the guarantee of the Nizam. He then cut his own salary by 30 per cent and made similar cuts to the wages of government servants and soldiers, while promising that
payments would be made on time. For the first time regular records were prepared of land under cultivation, listing the nature of the crop, the name of the occupant and the rent payable. The amount of rent was fixed for 10 years and was collected only according to the season and the crops. The claims of moneylenders on the treasury were carefully scrutinised and Arab, Afghan and Sikh landlords were paid off by buying up their land. The telegraph and a postal service were introduced and in 1874 a railway was built connecting Hyderabad State with British India. Commenting on Salar Jung's administration in the late 1860s, Hyderabad's Resident Charles Saunders praised his ‘eminent ability, singular rectitude of purpose and numerous high qualities'. Never had he seen another example ‘of the Asiatic mind where subtlety of intellect blends so happily with honesty of heart and public integrity'.
¹⁵

As Salar Jung's star continued to rise, the Nizam, like his predecessors, sank further into the closeted confines of his palace. ‘A Prince who never stirs from his palace and grounds cannot take an intelligent interest in the bulk of his subjects, whom he never sees, and whose prosperity can only be gauged by that most fallacious of all tests, the amount of revenue they surrender,' commented the
Madras Times
. ‘The Nizam has never turned out of the city, nor does he permit his Minister to quit its precincts except upon the rarest occasions. Before facts can reach him they must be wonderfully distorted, and he is ever surrounded with a great number of very worthless parasites.'
¹⁶