Last Nizam (9781742626109) (16 page)

While such sentiments may have been understood and indeed appreciated by the local population, they were often derided by outsiders. His tendency to wear simple cotton pyjamas except for official events prompted one British Resident to describe him as resembling a ‘snuffly old clerk too old to be sacked'.
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At state banquets, paid for by the public purse, guests ate from gold
plates and drank wine in gold goblets, but when an invitation came for tea in private, he would carefully count out the number of cookies he served his guests. Osman Ali Khan was fast becoming known as the Howard Hughes of India – a fabulously wealthy but miserly man who had sold his father's women for 30 rupees and haggled over the price of mangoes. Many such stories had no basis in fact and still rankle the retired nawabs who spend their evenings downing pegs of Old Monk and Mansion House brandy at the Nizam Club's bar before retiring for dusk-to-dawn rounds of rummy in the card room. To them the Nizam was a frugal and thrifty man whose self-denial was directed mostly at himself. ‘The fact is that thrift is a part of the Nizam's nature, of his conception of the obligations of his position and of his conviction that he is not here to waste and throw away what the Almighty has endowed him with,' his Parsi financial advisor, Khan Bahadur Cooverji Taraporevala, later wrote.
³³

According to historian Rajendra Prasad, the satisfaction Osman Ali Khan felt in receiving so many honours for his financial contribution to Britain's war efforts quickly gave way to concerns over how rapidly he was draining his coffers. ‘Until then there has been nothing in his lifestyle to indicate the coming notoriety for miserliness which he was to acquire later in life.'
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The dance parties became less frequent and the champagne was gradually replaced by more traditional relaxants such as opium, which he would continue to consume daily until well into his seventies. He became more introverted. Although he owned a fleet of Packards, Fiats, Rolls-Royces, including a 1911 Silver Ghost which to this day has only 200 miles on the clock, for most of his reign he drove around in a 1934 six-cylinder Ford Tourer. An aide de camp who once pointed out that he needed a new shawl was firmly rebuked: ‘My budget is only 18 rupees and a good one
would cost 20 rupees.'
³⁵
When the Viceroy Linlithgow suggested to the Nizam that since his walking stick was broken in several places and tied together with string, he would present him with a new one the next time he visited, the Nizam took it as a great compliment. His thriftiness had been noted.

Stung by the dressing down he had received from Lord Birkenhead and swayed by the tentative start the British had made towards self-government in India, Osman Ali Khan announced on 17 November 1919 that he was handing over the administration of the state to an Executive Council operating under a written constitution. Under the new constitution the
Diwan
was replaced by a
Sadr-i-Azam
(President) who would head the Council. The Council's powers and those of individual ministers were strictly defined. However, the creation of the Council was not the radical departure that it appeared to be. Though the Council had administrative powers, there was no enfranchisement of the population. Council members were appointed by the Nizam, who could overrule any of their decisions by simply issuing one of his own
farmans
. As Britain's most senior civil servant in India, Sir Conrad Corfield, later wrote: ‘It was very much personal rule in Hyderabad.'
³⁶

Nevertheless, the British initially welcomed the move and recommended the appointment of Ali Imam, who had been a Law Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council for the post of
Sadr-i-Azam
, a recommendation the Nizam accepted. A distinguished barrister who had risen to prominence as a result of his work in the High Court of Patna and the Federal Court, Ali Imam quickly made his presence felt. One of his first acts was to separate the executive from the judiciary, making Hyderabad the first Indian state to do so.

Ali Imam also resurrected on behalf of the Nizam ‘the all-important question of the restoration of Berar', which the British considered had been settled by the agreement Curzon had
obtained from the Sixth Nizam in 1902 to lease the territory in perpetuity. Osman Ali Khan saw it differently. His claim to this ‘integral part of my Dominions' rested ‘on absolute justice and it is inconceivable that on an impartial examination it cannot be ruled out'. The Nizam was clearly hoping that Ali Imam's impeccable legal credentials would bring the desired result. Helped by his brother, Hassan Imam, he produced a series of lengthy and detailed claims based in part on the fine print of treaties signed by the Second Nizam as far back as the 1790s. But the presentation was badly handled. Ali Imam marched into the office of the Viceroy, Lord Reading, in March 1925 and threatened to make public the ‘incontrovertible evidence' of the duress that Curzon had used to obtain the agreement. Reading responded by thumping the table in a rage and terminating the meeting, at which point Ali Imam ‘almost collapsed and the Viceroy had to send for water to revive him'.
³⁷

Not surprisingly, Reading rejected Hyderabad's claim, but the Nizam refused to let the matter rest. In September 1925 he wrote to Reading requesting the appointment of a Court of Arbitration to examine the Berar controversy on the basis that it was a dispute between two equals. ‘No foreign power or controversy is concerned or involved in its examination, and thus the subject comes to be a controversy between the two Governments that stand on the same plane without any limitations or subordination of one to the other.'
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Reading saw the letter as challenging the very omnipotence of British power in India. In March 1926 he wrote a strongly worded response to the Nizam, disputing his assertion that the relationship between Hyderabad and Britain was one of equal allies:

The sovereignty of the British Crown is supreme in India and therefore no ruler of an Indian state can justifiably
claim to negotiate with the British on an equal footing . . . I will merely add that the title ‘Faithful Ally' which your Exalted Highness enjoys has not the effect of putting your government in a category separate from that of other States under the paramountcy of the British Crown.
³⁹

Published simultaneously in the
Government Gazette
, Reading's rebuff came as a shock to India's other ruling princes, most of whom professed at least some pretensions to sovereignty. Counting football-field-sized fiefdoms, the number of princely states totalled 562. The largest were Hyderabad with an area of 82,698 square miles (214,105 square kilometres) and Kashmir, which covered 84,258 square miles. Hyderabad topped the list in terms of population (approximately 14.5 million in the 1930s) and an annual revenue of 85 million rupees or £6.3 million. Together the states comprised two-fifths of the area of India and contained about a quarter of its population.

In their mania for protocol, the British devised a system whereby the larger states were distinguished from the smaller states by the allotment of gun salutes. A total of 118 states were entitled to receive salutes ranging from nine to 21 guns. Those at the lower end of the scale were called rajahs, while those with 13 guns or more were maharajahs. Only four states were entitled to receive a 21-gun bombardment – Hyderabad, Kashmir, Baroda and Gwalior. At the other end of the scale was a patchwork of mini-states in present-day Gujarat. One of them, Dadan, was so small that in 1906 it disappeared from official sight.

After World War I, the British instituted the Chamber of Princes with a view to countering the demands for greater democracy by solidifying India's autocratic states into a common cause. Inaugurated in 1921 by the Duke of Connaught, the Chamber consisted of 120 members, of which 108 were rulers of the largest states and 12 were elected by the next 127 states ranking in importance.
To its detractors the Chamber of Princes was nothing more than a ‘glorified debating society' whose main drawcard was the opportunity for self-indulgent potentates to strut the national stage showing off their diamond-studded jewellery and gold- and silver-plated Rolls-Royces.
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British calls for the Chamber to introduce some form of constitutional government in the princely states fell largely on deaf ears, and it was only in 1928 that its members passed resolutions calling on its members to bring their judicial systems into line with the rest of India and separate the ruler's privy purse from the public exchequer. Part of the problem was the refusal of several key rulers to participate in its meetings, including the Nizam of Hyderabad. ‘I would not like any questions affecting my State being determined on the advice of other Ruling Princes,' declared Osman Ali Khan. The fate and policy of the other princes of India were no concern of his, he explained to one visiting official. They were merely ‘noblemen, to whom some courtesies were due'.
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The Nizam's arrogance and his mishandling of the Berar question eventually prompted the British to make an example out of him. Between 1919 and 1926 successive Residents had unearthed growing evidence of corruption, nepotism, maladministration and the extraction of money in the form of
nazars
. ‘His miserliness, amounting almost to mania led him simultaneously to adopt all other possible methods . . . for amassing wealth, and at the same time where his own pocket was affected, especially in regard to the maintenance of his own family, payment of servants etc., to practice dire economy,' reported one Resident. ‘The Nizam has also during this time been indulging in another form of impropriety, viz., the procurement of women for his harem from the families of his Nobles and gentry by compulsion and the meting out of harsh treatment to those families who thwarted him.'
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While the giving of
nazars
had been adopted by the Nizams
from the Mughal court, Osman Ali Khan took the practice to new heights. In October 1920
The Hindu
accused the Nizam of using his district tours to squeeze
nazars
out of every official. ‘The invitation to the people is part of his prerogative and cannot be touched,' the Residency explained in a telegram to Delhi, noting that the Nizam had ‘brazenly admitted' taking three million rupees from the Rajah of Dawal and 2.5 million from the Rajah of Wanputri.
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Despite growing public resentment over
nazars
, the Resident at the time, Charles Russell, was against admonishing the Nizam, arguing it would lead to estrangement. When cautious reproaches were made, the Nizam angrily defended the practice, saying it was a matter between the people and the ruler and ‘interference therein by a third party was not called for'. ‘The principal and, in fact, only duty of the Ruler in the present circumstances is to see that no abuses creep into the working of an authorised system. I have therefore taken the necessary steps to place the whole system on a well-organised and unimpeachable basis.'
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The ‘well-organised' system turned out to be nothing more than a well-oiled extortion racket where the amount of
nazar
to be given to the Nizam was based on prevailing pay scales. ‘Subordinates drawing from 30 to 60 rupees per mensem pay Rs 15; those drawing from 60 to 100 per mensem to pay Rs 30; officials to give the usual
nazars
according to their salaries; each
ryot
to pay two annas per rupee on his annual earnings; each Patel and Patwari to pay half of his annual salary; and each village to supply five goats, ten fowls, two cart loads of grass and tent pegs.'
⁴⁵
Careful not to miss an opportunity, the Nizam even insisted on receiving
nazars
from anyone unlucky enough to receive ‘gifts' from the palace such as vegetables, honey, mangoes from the royal gardens and even
paan
.

Such attempts at extortion did not impress William Barton, who replaced Russell in August 1925. During the course of his rule,
Osman Ali Khan would see ten Residents come and go, all of them chosen for their ability to represent British interests in what was considered a difficult posting. ‘Very few of our officers who are quartered there contrive to leave it with as good a reputation as they had when they went there,' Lord Hamilton observed. Gossip and intrigue ran so strongly through the body politic of Hyderabad that the best advice a senior official could give to the newcomer was: ‘Keep you mouth shut, and your bowels open.'
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As for the Nizam, opinion ranged from dismissive, on account of his idiosyncrasies, to downright critical. The Viceroy's political advisor, Francis Wylie, once described the Nizam as ‘the most freakish and disreputable person to be at this date placed in a position of authority over some 16 millions of his fellow human beings'.
⁴⁷

Of the Residents who served in Hyderabad, none would make a greater impact on the Seventh Nizam's administration than Barton. A tough, wiry Oxford graduate who had served in the North West Frontier for nearly 20 years, he was a prolific writer, sending detailed weekly reports to the Political Department on everything from the Nizam's morbid fascination with watching horrible surgical operations while making his family look on, to his ‘utter disregard of his own dignity as exhibited in scrambling in public for unconsidered trifles'. All this, Barton concluded in one cable, amounted to ‘at least an abnormal mentality'.
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