Last Nizam (9781742626109) (22 page)

The most vivid example that I can give you is that I happened to sit next to him at lunch on the eve of a whole holiday when all the rest of the school were busy
discussing what they were going to do, but he still had not realised that there was to be a holiday. It would be a pity if he left because the society of other boys is more likely than anything else to bring him down to earth, and he has of recent months been much more friendly with other boys.
⁵¹

The Nizam, however, felt vindicated. ‘Public opinion here is that if proper arrangements had been made here in Hyderabad for his education as was done in the case of his ancestors in the past, it would have been very much better as it would be more in accordance with the old customs and traditions of the family,' he intimated to Lothian in a letter, before adding some homespun advice:

The people in the East differ from those in the West in many respects. Being born and brought up in oriental fashion and surroundings, their education and training should be such as to harmonise with their surroundings and atmosphere so that they may share in the common civilisation and culture of their fellow-citizens or coreligionists and learn to love and respect them. At the same time they should acquire feelings of patriotism so that their countrymen may understand them and be of assistance to them both in good and in bad times. The absence of any such harmony and understanding may lead to future dangers and difficulties. The necessity for this is all the greater in the case of the young Princes who are the direct line of succession to their forefathers as the future Rulers of their states.
⁵²

H
AZIQ &
M
OHI IS A
Hyderabadi institution, which is why the small and grimy signboard at the end of Mahboob Chowk is hardly noticeable. Locals know that any Westerner wandering this far from the Charminar will be looking for what is probably India's most extraordinary book store and are happy to give directions. Surrounded by noisy workshops, where gaudylooking copper-plated copies of Greco-Roman statues are hammered into shape over charcoal braziers, Haziq & Mohi seems distinctly out of place. Entered by a small door, it consists of three dark and not very large rooms stacked tightly from floor to ceiling with books. There is no possibility of browsing. Retrieving a title is a delicate operation that can be undertaken only by the shop's singlet-wearing owner Abid, while he sends a street urchin to buy the thirsty customer a tepid bottle of Pepsi or 7UP. There are books in English, Urdu and Persian, tomes with titles like
The Castes and Tribes of the Nizam's Dominions
and
Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India
. But not every book is for sale.
Tragedy of Hyderabad
by Mir Laik Ali is not particularly rare. The book's author was the last Prime Minister of Hyderabad and his description of the final months of Hyderabad
independence and India's invasion does not paint the Indian Government in a favourable light. To add insult to injury, Laik Ali later escaped from house arrest dressed in a
burqa
and boarded a flight from Bombay to Karachi undetected. For 1000 rupees, Abid will make a bound Xerox copy, but parting with the original is out of the question.

When Jah returned from Dehra Dun in 1945, Laik Ali was a wealthy Hyderabadi industrialist and one of the main financial backers of the Majlis Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen or Movement for Muslim Unity. The MIM was formed in 1927 with the aim of bringing together Muslims of different sects. Its leader, Bahadur Yar Jung, believed that Hyderabad should be declared a sovereign Muslim state. He elevated the Nizam above all other Indian princes, demanded that the British address him as ‘His Majesty' and began referring to him as the ‘King of the Dekkan'. Osman Ali Khan was easily swayed by such arguments. Unlike his predecessors, he saw himself as a ruler in his own right and believed that he was entitled to be given the title of King and treated as an equal by the British.

When Bahadur Yar Jung died suddenly in 1944, the apparent victim of a poisoned
hookah
, he was succeeded by an ex-lawyer from Uttar Pradesh, Kasim Razvi. India's senior-most civil servant V. P. Menon would later describe Razvi as a man ‘with gleaming eyes, beard and a fez, worn at a rakish angle' and a ‘fanaticism bordering on frenzy'.
¹
Despite his small stature, others in the Indian Government referred to him as ‘the Nizam's Frankenstein monster'. What he lacked in physique he made up for as a speaker. In his speeches he railed against submission to Indian rule in any form. ‘Death with the sword in hand is always preferable to extinction by a mere stroke of the pen,' he told his followers. The waters of the Bay of Bengal, he promised, would wash the feet of the Nizam. ‘We are the grandsons of Mahmood Ghaznavi and the sons of Babur. When determined, we shall fly the Asaf Jahi Flag on the Red fort.'
²

Razvi's rhetoric attracted thousands of supporters. He created a paramilitary wing of the MIM known as the Razakars or Volunteer Squad. Their military training was modelled on Hitler's brownshirts and they pledged to sacrifice their lives for their leader and fight to the last man or woman to maintain Muslim power in the state. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan 50 years later, the Razakars recruited young students into self-defence units. It sent them into outlying areas of the state to protect Muslims against attacks by Hindus, which were increasing in the lead-up to India's independence. Their firearms consisted mainly of old muzzle-loaders. ‘Not even half could fire a shot,' observed Laik Ali. ‘Quite a few of the rest were as much a source of danger to the user as to the target.'
³

The British initially led the Nizam to believe that Hyderabad would be entitled to declare its independence once they left India. But when the British Labour Party MP, Stafford Cripps, was sent to India in 1942 to enlist the support of Congress and the Muslim League for the war effort, pressure from the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, made him change his position on the right of the princely states to claim independence in case of a transfer of power to a new Indian government. Cripps made it clear that any claims to independence would be a matter for negotiation between the princes and Indian political leaders.

The victory of the Labour Party in 1945 left the princes even worse off. Attlee's government had no intention of supporting the independence of the princely states or guaranteeing their independence by granting them Dominion status. All treaties would lapse. In theory, however, the government still supported the notion that after independence the princely states could enter into a federal relationship with either India or Pakistan or join a ‘Federation of States'. They would also be allowed to reach ‘particular political arrangements' with the successor government, which was interpreted as giving them the right to opt for independence.

The change of heart left Osman Ali Khan in a quandary. Since 1914 the Seventh Nizam had given the British decisive support in their battles with Muslims in the Middle East and had supplied men and equipment to fight wars that had nothing directly to do with Hyderabad's destiny. By accepting the principle of Paramountcy, he had expected British guarantees of his frontiers, the internal security of his Dominions and a continuation of the dynasty. Now the British were stating that the principle of Paramountcy was about to lapse and were advising their ‘Faithful Ally' to make his own arrangements with a new Indian Government. Hyderabad and London were about to throw their faithfulness to the wind.

On 12 May 1946 the Nizam declared in a telegram to the Viceroy that Hyderabad would not join any federation. While he was willing to settle outstanding issues with the successor government, he would not give up the ‘historical connection with the British Crown'. The time had come, he said, for Britain to ‘boldly protect the interests and integrity of the Faithful Ally's Dynasty and State'.
⁴

Until now Hyderabad had been largely insulated from the turmoil engulfing the rest of India. The Congress Party had failed to make much headway in the state despite the fact that a mainly Muslim feudal aristocracy reigned over a Hindu majority. But the status quo would not last. Whether it would become independent or not, Hyderabad was completely surrounded by territory that in a few months would be ruled by Congress. Whereas Congress espoused the cause of democracy and egalitarianism, Hyderabad was a throwback to a feudal Mughal past where a Muslim minority ruled over a Hindu majority. ‘The feudal lords rule over a population that is nearly 90 per cent Hindu, which means there cannot be a representative government without a revolution,'
The New York Times
correspondent Herbert L. Mathews wrote in 1943 after being granted a rare
interview with the Nizam. The Congress Party, he noted, had sent thousands of agitators into the state in the late 1930s and financed a Hindu communal organisation. Instead of achieving Hindu rule, it only succeeded in opening up a few administrative posts to non-Muslims. But it did convince the Nizam that anything was better than being part of a Hindustan under Congress. ‘Most of all he would like to see a union of all States under what he described to me as “Princely India”.' The Nizam was pessimistic about the future, Mathews concluded, ‘seeing grave danger and chaos and civil war'.
⁵

The Nizam's pessimism did not fluster Hyderabad's nobility, which carried on as if nothing was about to change. His personal 60-piece string orchestra, conducted by an Anglo-Indian named Henry Luschwitz, played waltzes and foxtrots at garden parties. Attending one such gathering in late 1946, Philip Mason watched children play ‘Oranges and Lemons' with their uncles and aunts. ‘It was like the spring of 1789 at Versailles,' Mason later wrote. ‘At the buffet suppers that the grandees of Hyderabad enjoyed so much, the men were elegant in black
sherwanis
or gorgeous in gold brocade, the ladies wore saris of sapphire or flame-colour or starlit blue . . . Everyone seemed to be happy and witty and amused; the plates were covered with Persian pilaus, Mughal kebabs, Indian curries, French salads – dishes to suit every taste.'
⁶

After a long and illustrious career in the Indian Civil Service, Mason was hoping to retire to a life of writing novels and taking walks through the English countryside when he met Hyderabad's Prime Minister, Sir Mirza Ismail. Over dinner at Hyderabad House in Delhi, Ismail reminisced about the ‘wise old gentleman of the Indian Civil Service' who had been appointed as tutor and governor to the young Prince of Mysore State. The man was like a father to the prince and the half a dozen handpicked boys, of which Mirza was one, who attended
a special palace school. The Englishman had seen to it that the boys ‘were educated like Renaissance princes – with a touch of Eton and a rather lesser touch of Rugby'. It had been an outstanding success. The prince went on to become the Maharajah of Mysore and the state earned a reputation for being one of the best administered in India. Might Mason consider a similar stint as tutor and governor to the two young sons of Princess Durrushehvar, now aged 13 and eight? Mirza asked.
⁷

Yearning to once again ‘live through a year of English seasons', Mason refused to commit himself. But when he met Durrushehvar he quickly changed his mind. ‘No one could ignore the sight of her,' he recalled in his autobiography
A Shaft of Sunlight
. ‘She was always, essentially and indefinably, royal, and it seems to me that if fate had so willed she might have been one of the great queens of the world.' Mason also sympathised with her predicament. She was thoroughly cosmopolitan. Her husband, Azam, knew little of the world outside Hyderabad. ‘He had been brought up haphazardly, as was too often the way with Indian Princes; he had learnt more from servants and toadies than tutors.'
⁸
Durrushehvar and Azam had little in common, Mason noticed, particularly when it came to bringing up Mukarram and Muffakham. She wanted them preserved from the corruption that grew from continual flattery and from wealth without responsibility. There was no one in the whole state who would say no to them except their mother, who was not always around, and their grandfather, whom they rarely saw. ‘I have given up my life, I will not give up my children,' she later confided in Mason.

Despite seeing eye-to-eye on the upbringing of the young princes, Mason and Durrushehvar were still reluctant to embrace Mirza's plan. Durrushehvar wanted to send the boys to Switzerland, but once again the Nizam intervened. For his part Mason doubted that the boys would ever face any real competition or
gain self-confidence by being exposed only to companions and schoolmasters from Hyderabad. With no real alternative, Mason offered to take on the job of tutor and governor for a maximum of two years and prepare a report after a few months, making suggestions for their future education. Durrushehvar agreed, telling Mason: ‘I would rather have you than some old colonel who would make a job of this and want to stay for ever.'
⁹

When Mason first met Mukarram in the summer of 1946, he was no ordinary 13-year-old. ‘He spoke English, French, Turkish and Urdu fluently but did not write any of them correctly; he could ride any horse with confidence, could dive from any height, had shot a tiger, could drive a Jeep and take an engine to pieces but could not catch a ball, and if you asked him the simplest question in arithmetic he had recourse to counting his fingers.'
¹⁰

Mason set up a school for the princes and six handpicked companions at Ootacamund. Nestled in the tea-scented Nilgiri Hills of southern India, Ooty, as it was affectionately known, was the favourite summer retreat for south Indian royalty. All the maharajahs had their palaces here, including the Nizam. Between them the boys had five masters, a drill sergeant and a boxing instructor. Mason was determined that schooling should involve ‘some plain hard drudgery' and was pleasantly surprised to overhear Mukarram ‘exulting to others about the energetic life they lived; friends in Hyderabad, he said, could not even imagine so tough a life as his – and he was clearly proud of it'.
¹¹
There was plenty of time for horse riding. Mason organised English-style hunts complete with bugles and hounds. Mukarram learned to ride bareback and was described by friends as fearless on a horse. Socially, however, Mason found Mukarram far more withdrawn than ‘plump and witty' Muffakham. ‘There was a deep inner reserve to Barkat,' he later wrote, referring to him by his formal name.
¹²

Though Mukarram was enjoying Ooty far more than the Doon School, Mason recommended that the arrangement should be discontinued:

There was not enough competition; it was much too narrow a circle; there were only four boys of each age group. And the assistant masters, excellent though they had been, belonged to the Hyderabad educational system and it was impossible for them not to show some deference to the Princes. If the boys were really to be educated for the modern world, I felt they should go to a school abroad. But I did not think it would be right for the elder Prince to be pitch-forked at once into the rough-and-tumble of a conventional English school.
¹³

Mason concluded his report by suggesting that he act as Mukarram's guardian in England while he boarded for a while at a school such as Bryanston. The alternative would be attending a larger school at Hyderabad with around 50 boys instead of eight.