Last Nizam (9781742626109) (15 page)

In February 1907 Dulhan Pasha gave birth to their first son, Azam Jah, and 10 months later to a second, Moazzam Jah. The only daughter from the marriage, Shehezadi Pasha, remained unmarried and rarely left her father's side. When taking his afternoon nap, the Nizam would tie the cord of his pyjama pants to hers in case she tried to spirit away some of the priceless jewels that were strewn haphazardly around his bedroom. The Nizams believed that if one of their legitimate daughters married and went out of the family it would cause the death of her father. Another superstition stated that if a child was born to her then the father would also die. Forced to lead a miserable and lonely life of constant servitude, Shehezadi Pasha would take her revenge after her father's death in 1967 by challenging Mukarram Jah's right to inherit the bulk of his grandfather's estate.

Despite British fears that he would be an ineffectual ruler, Osman Ali Khan embarked on a series of far-sighted reforms. One of his first
farmans
was an order restraining Hyderabad's eunuchs from luring fresh recruits into their ranks, to stem an alarming rise in their numbers. He then banned the institution of
devadasis
– a religiously sanctioned form of prostitution where
young girls were ostensibly married to the Gods but were in fact sold into sexual slavery. He also outlawed some of the more indulgent pastimes enjoyed by Hyderabad's nawabs such as cockfighting and bullfights and decreed that smoking in courtrooms was bad for judicial decorum.
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On the fiscal front, the Nizam instituted a number of measures under the guidance of Reginald Glancy, who was the financial advisor to the state. Glancy's priority was to set right ‘the problem of heavy indebtedness of the Hyderabad nobility as a class, owing to their habit of loose living and undue extravagancy'.
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The most extravagant of the nobles were the Paigahs. Ever since the reign of the first Nizam, the Paigahs had enjoyed special privileges as the private troops of the Nizam's household. They had been rewarded with vast estates and used the income to build lavish palaces. When Osman Ali Khan took measures to rein in the Paigahs' expenditure by confiscating their lands, they responded in the time-honoured fashion of plotting against the Nizam by spreading stories that he drank heavily and was involved in all kinds of debauchery.

There was more than a kernel of truth in these allegations. In January 1912, Pinhey, who had taken a close interest in the welfare of the Nizam, advised the young ruler to abstain from wine, women and drugs, to take exercise regularly and not to surround himself with sycophants and spies.
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Outwardly a devout Muslim and traditional Indian ruler, Osman Ali Khan had nevertheless developed in his early years a taste for European pleasures. His preferred beverages were invalid port and Moët & Chandon, of which several thousand cases were ordered from France. He set up a whisky distillery and ordered his suits from the firm of Messrs John Barton & Co. in Secunderabad.

To satisfy his newly acquired taste for ballroom dancing Osman Ali Khan would hold lavish parties in the King Kothi palace where Anglo-Indian jazz bands played his favourite
tunes, ‘I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' and ‘Whisperings'. ‘His guests varied according to each occasion, from the stolid British Resident and his wife to the more cosmopolitan gatherings of local jazz fiends of lesser social value,' wrote Karaka. ‘The Peggys and Maggies of Hyderabad at the time had the honour of being whirled around the improvised ballroom of King Kothi by the enthusiastic young ruler who was anxious to become a polished ballroom dancer.'
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By April, Pinhey reported that his admonitions had brought about an ‘improvement' in the Nizam. In fact, Osman Ali Khan was becoming an assertive ruler. The following June he sacked his Prime Minister, Maharajah Kishen Pershad, ostensibly for plotting to replace him with his half-brother Salabat Jah. In 1914 he took the administration of the state into his own hands. Osman Ali Khan had succeeded in breaking the power of the nobility and strengthening his position to a greater extent than any other ruler of Hyderabad since the First Nizam.

Although earlier attempts by the Nizams to take direct control of Hyderabad's administration had usually been opposed, this time the Resident was happy to indulge the new ruler. When World War I broke out in Europe in July 1914, the Ottoman Turks sided with Germany and the Mufti of Constantinople issued an appeal to Muslims in India, Russia and Algeria to rise against their imperialist masters. Fearing a flare-up of pro-Turkish sentiments among Muslims in India, the British appealed to the Nizam to declare his allegiance to the Crown. As Pinhey admitted, this put the Nizam in somewhat of a dilemma as he owed allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II, who was the Caliph or spiritual head of Islam. ‘To place himself in direct and overt opposition to the call of the Khalifa meant a painful predicament for any Muhammadan ruler.'
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Denouncing the Ottomans could spark a revolt among the large number of Arab soldiers recruited into his army, as well as radical Muslims who had protested when the Caliph's name had
been omitted from Friday prayers. In the end the Nizam sided with the British and issued a strongly worded
farman
. ‘The Mohammedan inhabitants of India, especially the subjects of this state, should, if they care for their own welfare and prosperity, remain firm and wholehearted in their loyalty and devotion to the British government, whose cause I believe is just and right,' it declared. They should keep sacred the tie binding ‘the subjectpeople to their Rulers' and in no case ‘allow themselves to be beguiled by the wiles of any one into a course of open or secret sedition against the British Government'.
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Osman Ali Khan's gamble paid off. In 1917 the British rewarded the Nizam for his declaration of support and considerable contribution to the war effort in both manpower and money amounting to £25 million by conferring on him the title ‘Most Faithful Ally of the British Empire'. A year later he became ‘His Exalted Highness', which placed him heads and shoulders above all other Indian princes if not in physical stature then at least in political terms. The Nizam was ‘the true son of Islam', Pinhey's successor, Stuart Fraser, remarked. ‘With far seeing realisation alike of the true interests of his coreligionists and of his duty to the King-Emperor, [he] was content with no passive role of loyalty, but at once boldly stood forth as a leader and spokesman of Mahomedan India.'
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Osman Ali Khan's elevation by the British to the leader of India's 66 million Muslims, however, proved to be a doubleedged sword. Calls were made for the Nizam to be made the King of Hyderabad in the same way as the British had made the Grand Sherif of Mecca, Haider Ali Pasha, the King of Hejaz (the lands around the holy places of Mecca and Medina). Muslim leaders and even Hindu princes began demanding that the Crown confer on him the title ‘His Majesty'. But Fraser firmly rejected the calls, saying ‘there could be no “His Majesty” among the feudatory Indian Princes'.
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Disputes about titles notwithstanding, Osman Ali Khan's period of direct rule is held up even today as the progressive age of Hyderabad's development. Several commissions were set up to investigate the misappropriation of state funds by high-ranking officials. The revenue department was reorganised, and judicial reforms were introduced, bringing the court system into line with those parts of India under direct British rule. By 1919, just eight years after the state was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, its revenue had grown to a healthy surplus of 50 million rupees. Hyderabad also became a model for religious tolerance in India. To assuage the feelings of Hindus, Osman Ali Khan banned the slaughter of cows and made offerings at their shrines. ‘Muslims and Hindus are my two eyes,' became one of his favourite expressions.

In 1916 the Nizam issued a
farman
ordering the foundation of Osmania University, the first institution of higher education in India to offer courses in a vernacular medium – in this case Urdu, the official language of the state. Elsewhere, dams were built and Hyderabad became one of first cities in India to have a reliable supply of drinking water. Schools were expanded and primary education was made compulsory. Roads were relaid with concrete, railways extended, collieries and power stations were set up, government-sponsored co-operative credit societies and agricultural banks were established. A City Improvement Board redeveloped slums into housing colonies. On the banks of the River Musi, the Indo-saracenic silhouettes of the newly built High Court and Osmania General Hospital rose above the palm trees. Hyderabad's skyline, one visitor commented, was ‘surmounted by “bubbles blown of dreams”, an irresponsible and wholly delightful collection of domes which, like carnival balloons, might be expected at any moment to break loose and float into the sky'.
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Now a sprawling metropolis of seven million people, where
corruption and bureaucratic inaction pervades every layer of society, it is hard to reconcile Hyderabad with the model of urban planning it was once held up to be. Decades of uncontrolled growth have turned the city into an urban nightmare beset by power and water shortages and roads that turn to rivers of sewage every time it rains. The waters of the River Musi are so fetid that the stench can be discerned several blocks away. The road outside the High Court is an open urinal for much of its length and rag pickers sort through rotting piles of waste dumped indiscriminately along the main thoroughfares. Oldtimers vainly hold on to cherished memories of a city of 300,000 people with fastidiously maintained public gardens, streets that were regularly washed by water tankers, traffic that flowed smoothly and trains that were clean and always ran on time.

‘All this was not accomplished by waving a magician's wand,' stated a commemorative booklet written in the early 1950s honouring the Nizam's achievements.

Day in and day out, even in the hottest part of the year, when Governments traditionally flitted to the hills, the Nizam was to be found sitting in a corner of King Kothi palace, plodding patiently through masses of files. To this day he has not taken a real holiday, his only relaxation being a regular drive every evening into the city. Grasping the nettle of corruption and rooting it out ruthlessly, the Nizam plucked away the weeds of peculation that without profit sucked the soil's fertility; lopped away all superfluous branches in the shape of idle sinecures that drained the State's exchequer. Unscrupulous officials, high and low, trembled. The people rejoiced, for here at last was a Ruler who could rule and was determined to do so in real earnest . . . The sceptics were amazed; the sycophants confounded. Honest
men found useful service and the first round of the battle was won.
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The view from the Residency, however, was somewhat different. As far as the British were concerned, the first round of the battle had just started. The honeymoon that followed the bestowing of honours on the Seventh Nizam for his services during World War I was short-lived. In April 1918, intoxicated by his new status, Osman Ali Khan sacked all his British advisors while the Resident was on leave. Among the ‘honest men' that were appointed to replace them were a number of Indians deemed hostile to the interests of the Crown. ‘The Nizam, it seems, has behaved like a naughty child who away from his nurse at a party has had his head turned and gone back home full of foolish ideas determined to assert his independence,' W. G. Neale wrote to the Viceroy's office.
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From being viewed as a progressive and far-sighted ruler, the Nizam had slipped dramatically in Britain's estimation. During a visit to Hyderabad in March 1919, the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, gave Osman Ali Khan a dressing down that would set the tone for relations between the Residency and King Kothi palace for the remainder of his reign:

You have estranged your nobles, you have alienated your officials . . . you have undermined the respect and love of your people. Needless to say you have thereby shaken the confidence of the Government of India in your rule . . . It has always been clearly laid down that we cannot tolerate misrule; and results such as I have indicated are, to my mind, clear evidence of personal misrule.
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But upsetting the status quo, represe nted by the nobility on the one hand and the British on the other, mattered little to Osman
Ali Khan as long as the revenue of the
Sarf-i-Aman
(state treasury) was in surplus. After five years of the Nizam's direct rule, his own personal estate was well on its way to becoming the largest in the world. The
Sarf-i-Khas
(private estate), which comprised 30 per cent of the land in the Nizam's Dominions, was earning 25 million rupees a year. He had also inherited from his father untold amounts of jewellery, bulk pearls, kilograms of cut and uncut diamonds, gold in the form of coinage and bullion measured by the tonne and enough cash for most of it to lie unnoticed in cellars where it was nibbled by rats. Although the state treasury was virtually broke in 1911, the personal wealth of six generations of Asaf Jahis remained intact.

To the wider masses, however, Osman Ali Khan was determined to show a very different side of his character. He publicly abhorred the use of any goods that were not produced in Hyderabad. He would only smoke cheap, locally made filterless Charminars, ‘the most wretched cigarettes in the world'. He was so obsessive about allowing nothing to go to waste that he scrawled instructions and even drafted legally-binding
farmans
on the inside of his empty cigarette packets. ‘When I myself do all I can to purchase and use goods made in my own State, and when I say, for instance, that Golconda Soap, made in Hyderabad, is used in all my palaces and is found good and cheap, I think my action itself will appeal to my subjects to do likewise,' he declared, adding self-assuredly: ‘They love me and the country too well to require further inducements to follow my example in this respect.'
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