Last Nizam (9781742626109) (19 page)

A clearly exacerbated Keyes urged the British Government to inform the ex-Caliph ‘that unless he and his daughter are prepared for her to throw in her lot unreservedly with her husband's State, he should give up all idea of the match'.
⁴⁰
Azam Jah should be reminded ‘that to marry a Turkish Princess whose heart and interests lie outside India would be fatal to his future career and happiness'. As for the Nizam, he was ‘disgustingly above himself at having got the better of the bargain and at being treated like an equal by the Khalifa'.
⁴¹

Keyes was also outraged at being told that ‘two mean little
zenana
quarters' had been built in the grounds of Eden Gardens to house the ‘two poor little creatures' after their marriage. Moreover, the quarters were to be next door to their mother-in-law ‘who hates the Turkish alliances and who is hated by her sons'. ‘I foresee that I am going to have a difficult time seeing that these two Turkish princesses are suitably treated and in preserving the peace between the Nizam and his sons,' Keyes predicted at the end of October 1931. ‘I hear that they have got very badly above themselves and never cease to blackguard their father.'
⁴²

When the negotiations were eventually finalised, largely in Hyderabad's favour, wire services flashed the news that the Nizam had sealed the contract with gifts of US$200,000 in cash and jewels worth US$1 million. Durrushehvar was described as ‘the epitome of Oriental beauty', fluent in six languages and a ‘thoroughly modern woman', while Azam was billed as ‘the heir to more wealth than that held by all the Fords, Rockefellers and Morgans'.
⁴³
The event was described as the merger of ‘the mightiest houses of Islam'.
⁴⁴

The civil service was set for 12 November 1931, the Nizam's birthday, but Osman Ali Khan was content to send emissaries to
Nice rather than attend himself. Durrushehvar was 17 and her cousin Niloufer had not yet turned 16. The signing of the marriage contract was held at the ‘down-at-the-heels' Palais Carabacel in the suburb of Cimiez. Six officers of the royal bodyguards wearing rose-coloured tulip-shaped turbans accompanied the two princes, bejewelled and covered with garlands of flowers, into the marriage hall. For half an hour the princes prayed, kneeling before full-length portraits of their brides-to-be who remained in a room upstairs. The British Consul Wiseman Kehoe then legalised the wedding and asked the couples and their entourage to assemble in the drawing room where 30 photographers were waiting.

Wedding photographs published in Nice's
L'Eclaireur du Dimanche Illustré
show two unsmiling brides in day dresses with hands clasped and feet crossed while their grooms stand behind them wearing traditional Hyderabadi
sherwanis
, their faces almost concealed by their elaborate head-dresses.
⁴⁵
According to
The Washington Post
's reporter, the ex-Caliph, having served the guests ‘temperance drinks', retired to his library. ‘His snowwhite beard clutched in both his hands, he meditated over the business just completed.'
⁴⁶

A week later a much more lavish religious ceremony took place, officiated by the ex-Caliph before ‘beturbaned Oriental dignitaries arrayed in white and wearing scimitars of gold studded with diamonds'.
⁴⁷
The Nizam sent Mejid a message extolling a ‘most happy and auspicious day for the Asaf Jah dynasty because it is the day when alliances by marriage have strengthened the bonds of friendship and cordiality between the House of Asaf Jah and the House of Osman . . . Thus an alliance has been established between the two ancient and historic Dynasties which, it is hoped, has prospects of a bright future.'
⁴⁸

The Muslim press in India took a different angle. It reported that the alliances foreshadowed a restoration of the Caliphate
and gave front-page coverage to Shaukat Ali's calls to give the royal couples an enthusiastic reception when they landed in Bombay. From Bombay the couples travelled by train to Hyderabad, where Osman Ali Khan broke with protocol and greeted his sons' new wives by kissing them on the cheek and presenting ‘them to their chief mother-in-law, of whom they will have several'. Press reports said the princesses appeared nervous as they rode to the harem ‘in a closed car with black robes or
charshafs
covering their faces'.
⁴⁹

The British Resident, meanwhile, had other pressing matters to attend to. Without elaborating, Keyes wrote to the political secretary in Delhi on 7 December regarding Azam, that there had been ‘some unpleasantness in Nice over the ceremony of consummation of marriage and I am afraid we should be prepared for Khalifa trying to insist on his wife accompanying her daughter'. Of more immediate concern was Moazzam, whom Keyes described as being ten times smarter than his brother but nevertheless ‘sulky, malevolent and the most amusing and convincing liar'. Keyes was particularly outraged that Moazzam had already neglected Niloufer by indulging in what he called ‘night life' during their stopover in Bombay and then by ignoring her in Hyderabad.
⁵⁰

Keyes put his concerns to one side at a state banquet held at the Chowmahalla palace on 4 January 1932 to welcome the newlyweds. Proposing a toast, the Resident said that it was the first time since the Mughal conquest of India that the heir of the ruling prince had sought a bride ‘from a royal house beyond the seas'.
⁵¹
In his speech he also discounted suggestions of any ‘deep-seated plan' behind the alliance.

Celebrations, however, soon gave way to more sinister designs. Within weeks of Durrushehvar and Niloufer's arrival the ex-Caliph's private secretary Hussein Nakib Bay began hearing rumours that Dulhan Pasha wanted to poison the young brides
and immediately alerted Keyes. The absence of stray cats at the King Kothi palace, Moazzam boasted, was the result of his mother's experiments with various deadly potions. Her aim, he started joking to his friends, was to poison himself and his brother and take over the throne after the Nizam died.
⁵²

Poisoning had always been a Hyderabadi pastime and a preferred way of eliminating one's opponents. Keyes took the stories seriously enough to place spies in the kitchens of Bella Vista palace where the royal couples were residing, but the Resident had a different theory. ‘I am more inclined to think that if there were any poisoning the greater danger would be from Moazzam Jah,' he cabled Delhi. ‘The bitterness of the enmity between these two brothers, who used to be such good friends, is most distressing. It has reached such a pitch that the elder firmly believes that his brother is trying to poison him.'
⁵³
Moazzam Jah was:

. . . entirely without scruple; the temptation to clear his way to such wealth and position must be enormous, and, apparently, his mind runs on poisoning. The friendship between these two brothers was always remarkable for an Oriental family, but it has not stood the test of their travels in Europe. Azam Jah is now disgusted with his brother and ashamed of his conduct in Europe and here. He would like him pensioned off and persuaded to live out of India.
⁵⁴

But far from meeting the same fate as the cats of King Kothi or falling victim to other evil schemes conjured up by a mad mother-in-law or capricious brother-in-law, Durrushehvar and Niloufer adapted remarkably well during their first year in Hyderabad. The Ottoman culture they had grown up in prepared them for the routines of palace life and the duties expected of them as princesses. Instead of going into
purdah
as their father
had feared, they exchanged their French chiffon for expensive silk saris and plunged into the hectic social life of Hyderabad.

A little over a year after marrying Azam, Durrushehvar became pregnant and returned to Nice for her confinement. On 7 October 1933
L'Eclaireur du Dimanche Illustré
carried a public notice announcing the birth one day earlier of a son to the heir apparent of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Overnight the number of potential kings and Caliphs residing on the French Riviera rose modestly in size, but monumentally in stature.

I
N EARLY
M
ARCH 1934
, a motorcade carrying Aza m Jah and Durrushehvar wound its way from Bella Vista to the Purdah Gate of King Kothi palace. The Nizam's own Arab guard, dressed in baggy red trousers, heavy blue jackets covered in gold braid and striped headdresses, stood at attention as the heavy canvas curtain hiding the carved wooden doors from the street swung open. Osman Ali Khan had been eagerly awaiting this moment. Swaddled in fine muslin cloth in the crib that Durrushehvar was carrying was the future heir to the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Although the birth had taken place in far-off France, the event had been marked in Hyderabad by the firing of cannons from the Chowmahalla palace, the lighting of fireworks and the distribution of sweets to the population. A notice was published in the local press and government employees were given the day off. A telegram was sent immediately to the Viceroy informing him of the birth and a congratulatory telegram signed by Lord Willingdon on behalf of the Crown was dispatched in return.

Now six months old, Barkat Mukarram Jah, whose name meant ‘Bounty of God, Blessed by Allah', had the piercing eyes
of his grandfather and the determined expression of a ruler-in-waiting. Osman Ali Khan was thrilled. It had been ten years since one of the women in the
zenana
had borne a child. Now he was holding his first legitimate grandson. As he had always done regardless of whether it was the child of an official wife or one of his dozens of concubines, he bent down and kissed the infant reverentially on the forehead.

There had been no public pronouncement, but in the inner circle of the King Kothi palace and in the Viceroy's office it was known that the Seventh Nizam had already decided that this grandson would become the next ruler of Hyderabad. Azam's amorous and pecuniary indiscretions were nothing out of the ordinary, but this eldest son was already walking in the shadow of an infant who could barely crawl. It didn't matter that Mukarram had yet to learn his ABCs, what counted was his lineage. On his Turkish grandfather's side he could trace his descent to the first Caliph Abu Bakar, and on his Indian grandmother's side the family tree went directly to the Prophet Muhammad himself. Osman Ali Khan believed that as the first offspring of the union of the two greatest Muslim dynasties of their time, Prince Mukarram could be groomed to become not only the spiritual leader of Islam but also the ruler of India's largest Muslim state. The Caliphate would be there for his taking. No other man had a stronger claim. And besides, Azam Jah had already told the Nizam that he had no interest in the role.

Secretly the British had given the Nizam's decision their tacit approval. It gave them breathing space because it signalled that the Nizam had dropped the idea of having himself appointed Caliph in the case of Abdul Mejid's death. In May 1933 the Resident, Terence Keyes, had written to the Viceroy expressing his fears about an ‘an open revival of the scheme' to restore the Caliphate in India through the marriages of Azam and Moazzam. ‘There can be no doubt that it would introduce into
Hyderabad affairs such a communal impetus as would result in the extinction of the Asafiya dynasty.'
¹
Hyderabad's Hindus, who provided up to 98 per cent of the state's revenues, were ‘beginning to resent with increasing bitterness the large expenditure on purely Moslem institutions and Moslem personages of so large a proportion of the revenue'.
²

As it turned out the British had no need to worry. Mejid's death would be overshadowed by World War II. When the moment came for Jah to make his claim for the Caliphate if he so desired, the British Raj had long ceased to exist. And in any case the newly crowned Eighth Nizam would be so preoccupied with protecting his inheritance from capricious relatives that the idea would never cross his mind.

After spending several weeks in Bella Vista palace, Durrushehvar and Azam travelled to Delhi on the Nizam's richly appointed private train. Lakshmi Raj, whose father was Azam Jah's personal physician, remembers the huge blocks of ice that were placed on the floors of the compartments and covered with hessian to keep the passengers cool. Fresh ice was provided at Nagpur, the halfway point of the journey. From Delhi the train proceeded to Rawalpindi in present-day Pakistan, where cars were waiting to take the royal entourage, some 60 people strong, to Srinagar, the capital of the princely state of Kashmir.
³
Along with nurses, governesses and Azam's aide de camp was Durrushehvar's Urdu teacher, Professor Aga Haider Hasan Mirza. Durrushehvar was an excellent student and became fluent in Urdu in less than a year. She wore saris as elegantly as any Indian begum, but in other aspects was thoroughly Westernised, especially when it came to bringing up her son. She knew enough about palace life in India to know what happened to the spoilt children of Indian princes. ‘When my father saw Mukarram crying in his cradle at a garden party, he went to pick him up,' recalls Mirza's daughter Begum Meherunissa. ‘But Princess
Durrushehvar stopped him and said: “Let him cry, he should know that he will not always get what he wants. He should know what other people want as well.”'
⁴

After their visit to Kashmir, Durrushehvar returned to Nice with the young Mukarram for the remainder of the summer, a routine that she would follow annually to avoid the torrid heat of Hyderabad. French, British and Turkish nannies were brought to Nice to bring up the infant, freeing Durrushehvar to pursue her writing and musical interests and look after her parents. Jah remembers little of those early years apart from the ‘always stern expression' of his maternal grandfather. His days were spent playing hide and seek in the nearby Roman ruins. His favourite walks were through the rose gardens of the Franciscan monastery that looked down on the terracotta-tiled villas of Cimiez and the grand avenues of Nice pointing like spears towards the Mediterranean.
⁵

Life in Hyderabad was never as harmonious. Durrushehvar's marriage to Azam was a disaster. She towered above him in physique and in social status. She had grown up being called ‘Serene Highness', while he was a mere prince and not nearly as well educated or sophisticated. An official history of Hyderabad published in 1934 described Azam as being ‘a Prince among gentlemen and a gentleman among Princes'. The heir apparent, as he was referred to, was: ‘Quiet, unostentatious with any assertion of self, of authority or position, he submits himself to command and authority and customs and exemplifies in himself the principle
that he who wishes to command must himself first learn to obey.
What does the greatest credit to the heir apparent is that from childhood he learnt to obey his august father thereby fulfilling not only a filial duty but also an Islamic injunction.'
⁶
In reality, Azam was no gentleman. He enjoyed flaunting his wealth and paid only lip service to his father's orders.

In October 1935 the new Resident, Duncan Mackenzie, sent a
confidential cable to Delhi that Azam had ‘imported a dancing girl from Saugor'. He kept the girl in a private house in the suburbs of Hyderabad and visited her ‘from time to time'. The Nizam, through his network of spies, had also learned of the affair and wrote to Mackenzie on 6 November expressing his fears that the girl might become pregnant, which would entail ‘additional expenses' and might damage the prince's reputation. There was no mention of how Durrushehvar, who had also found out about the affair and was deeply upset, might feel about Azam taking a second wife or the effect that marital disharmony might have on two-year-old Mukarram. In fact, the Nizam saw nothing strange in the fact that ‘the natural desires of the prince . . . could not adequately be met by one woman' apart from the dangers of being infected with a ‘bad disease' or an unwanted pregnancy which could lead to the girl's parents establishing a hold over the heir apparent, ‘which might be embarrassing in many ways'. The Nizam was more concerned that Azam had broken with palace tradition. ‘Instead of keeping a dancing girl privately she should come to Hyderabad in the same way as other dancing girls,' he concluded in his letter to Mackenzie, the contents of which were immediately telexed to the Viceroy.
⁷

A clearly peeved Mackenzie, who had expected a posting at the Residency to involve arbitrating on much weightier tasks such as the devolution of power under the Government of India Act, was unimpressed. The Nizam ‘has made a mountain out of what in Hyderabad would be considered a very small molehill', he wrote in the accompanying confidential cable. He also had little time for Azam, whom he described as ‘weak and self-indulgent'. ‘His early upbringing was what you know it to have been, and ever since he was emancipated he has been surrounded by pimps and parasites,' he reminded the Viceroy's secretary, Reginald Glancy.

He has before him the example of his own father who has at his complete disposal some two or three hundred women, from whom he still continues to procreate children, and who at Azam Jah's own age was the subject of far more public talk on these grounds than Azam Jah has been; and he has also the very lax standard of conduct of other personages in Hyderabad and elsewhere. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that he should ‘stand astounded at his own moderation' or that he should scoff at his father's admonitions on this score being due to any wish for his welfare or to a feeling of sexual restraint.
⁸

What Azam needed, concluded Mackenzie, was a good controller to keep him from ‘a far more debauched course of life'.

After a flurry of cable traffic between the Residency and the Political Department in Delhi, Mackenzie sided with Azam. It was better that the dancing girl be kept under his supervision as there would be ‘no chance of her being able to father somebody else's child on to him', he wrote to the Nizam. There was also less likelihood of him contracting another bout of venereal disease:

The proposal made by Your Exalted Highness to have a dancing girl or girls from the bazaar when the occasion arose is open to even graver objection. The girl herself would talk, the general public would know, and the Heir Apparent himself would inevitably contract fresh disease. It was in fact in precisely this way that he got his last attack in April, and presumably all the others previously.

Added Mackenzie: ‘In view of the fact that the Heir-Apparent is now suffering from gonorrhoea for certainly the third and possibly the fourth time since he grew up this is an important consideration.'
⁹

Azam had also insisted that the relationship was not entirely sexual. ‘He was fond of good singing and dancing, and this woman was able to gratify these tastes without his having recourse to public professionals from the bazaar.' Finally, argued Mackenzie, a second marriage would rule out any hope of reconciliation with Durrushehvar and would ‘impair public esteem for the Heir-Apparent, as his present marriage and the resultant grandson have been and still are very popular'.
¹⁰

Having finished playing marriage broker, Mackenzie now found himself burdened with the problem of what to do about the debts that Azam and his brother were accumulating in India and while on shopping and gambling sprees on the Continent. A commission appointed in 1933 found that Azam and Moazzam owed 320,000 and 287,000 rupees respectively in unpaid bills. Mackenzie noted that Azam was spending more time abroad than in Hyderabad and recommended that ‘further touring should be discouraged'. ‘Neither of the Nizam's sons have taken up the social positions which it was hoped they would fill after their marriage with educated wives,' he complained to Glancy. ‘For this they are not entirely to blame, as the Nizam knows very little about this himself and is inclined to consider any form of social entertainment extravagant and unnecessary. He is also jealous of their attaining more popularity and influence than himself.'
¹¹

Mackenzie's solution was to make Azam commander-in-chief of Hyderabad's army, a post that would curb his ‘idleness', keep him away from Europe and its ‘charms', rein in his expenses and prevent him from incurring further debts. The plan failed. Realising that he had little chance of becoming the next Nizam after Mukarram's birth, Azam lost all motivation for adhering to any moral or pecuniary norms.

As Mackenzie was learning quickly, the role of the British Resident went far beyond officiating at public functions and
representing the interests of the Crown. In the case of Hyderabad the Resident was also regularly called upon to act as a counsellor and confidant. When it came to dealing with the concerns of his dysfunctional dynasty, Osman Ali Khan had no one else to turn to whether he liked it or not. ‘He intensely hated the manner in which the British Residents and the Crown representatives had undermined his authority and disgraced him openly, but silently put up with it,' Hyderabad's future Prime Minister Mir Laik Ali would recall later. ‘He had a remarkable capacity for endurance and of marking time and of adjusting himself to calmly face some of the severest trials of life.'
¹²

A good Resident also had to be adept at sharpening the claws of his administration. More than anything else that involved obtaining timely intelligence on matters of state and the personal lives of important personalities. The Resident would have a network of spies in King Kothi and other key palaces, while the Nizam would have his informants in the Residency. In fact very little of what went on in Hyderabad remained a secret for more than a few hours.

Osman Ali Khan's daily routine consisted of rising at 6 a.m., drinking a demi-tasse of black coffee, eating salt biscuits, reading the local papers, which then lay in a pile on the porch outside his bedroom for months, before receiving a daily briefing from the chief of police. Hyderabad had a very good intelligence network, which partly relied on the old Mughal system of using beggars because they had access to every place. This ‘Beggar's Opera' would report to the police chief every morning, who would then pass on the relevant information to the Nizam. ‘These reports would be meticulous. What happened between so-and-so and so-and-so. Who got married last night. Did he consummate the wedding or not. How many times does a certain nobleman sleep with his mistress. What operations were carried out at the hospital, who had been fitted with dentures and so on and so on.'
¹³