White Mughals

by William Dalrymple

  In the early months of 1798 Raymond persuaded the Nizam again to increase the size of his force, this time to over fourteen thousand men, with a complete train of cannon and its own bespoke gun foundry, all drawn by five thousand of its own bullocks. The force also manufactured its own swords, muskets and pistols besides its excellent artillery; there was even a small cavalry group numbering six hundred. To make matters worse, Raymond was personally very popular in the durbar. One of the most senior of the princes, Sikander Jah, who since the rebellion and subsequent suicide of his brother Ali Jah was now one of the two possible heirs apparent, was so enamoured of the Frenchman that he went as far as swearing ‘by the head of Raymond’.48

  Moreover there were worrying signs that Raymond was planning some sort of pre-emptive strike on the two British battalions in Hyderabad. As James reported to his brother: ‘Three nights ago Raymond sent between the hours of eleven and twelve a Moheer (answering to a havildar major) with six sepoys to reconnoitre the English camp, which he did accordingly and returned with his report to his chief. R has a spy in our lines. I hope he will soon be apprehended.’49

  James had good reason to believe that Raymond’s loyalty to France far outweighed his loyalty to the Nizam. After all, the French corps fought under the Revolutionary tricolore rather than the insignia of the Nizam, and Raymond himself made no secret of the fact that he regarded his troops not as Hyderabadi but instead ‘a French body of troops employed and subsidised by the Nizam’. Raymond personally owned all the guns and military equipage used by his force, and could in principle walk away with both the arms and the men at any time he wished. It would, James feared, be very easy for him to use his force to attempt some sort of coup d’état against the Nizam.

  The news that Raymond was scouting out the English camp and clearly considering an attack on the English in Hyderabad confirmed all Lord Wellesley’s suspicions. He was quick to see a wider French conspiracy behind the moves, writing to James that ‘the junction between the French officers with their several corps in the respective services of the Nizam, of Scindiah, and of Tippoo might establish the power of France in India upon the ruin of the states of Poonah [the Marathas] and of the Deccan [Hyderabad]’.50

  Although many of Wellesley’s writings at this period have an air of Francophobe paranoia to them, the new Governor General was in fact quite correct about the threat posed by Raymond. As a recently discovered cache of papers has shown, Raymond was indeed in correspondence both with the French officers of de Boigne’s corps in Scindia’s service and with those working for Tipu at Seringapatam, where Raymond had himself been employed before entering the Nizam’s service fourteen years earlier.

  The scale of Raymond’s ambitions is revealed in a series of passionately patriotic letters he wrote in the early 1790s to the Compagnie des Indes Orientales headquarters at Pondicherry, pledging his loyalty to France and the Revolution: ‘I am ready to sacrifice all,’ he wrote to the Count de Conway, the Governor of Pondicherry, ‘if I am so fortunate that circumstances may ever put it in my power to prove the zeal for my country which animates me.’ A later letter was even more explicit about his hopes that the different French corps in India might one day be able to act in concert: ‘My troops are the only ones in the capital … I pray that my fellow citizens may place at your disposal in India the means for acting on the first necessity. Then, my General, the modest strength of the machine which I have put together may display itself.’

  To the Chevalier de Fresne, Governor of the important French base on the Île de France (modern Mauritius), Raymond was even more explicit about his aims and intentions: ‘As for me, my General, I shall always follow as my first duty whatever [orders] you wish to give me … If ever I can still be useful to France I am ready to pour my blood once more for her. I labour only to discharge this duty and gain your good opinion.’51

  In the late summer of 1797, just as things seemed to be spinning out of James’s control, the increasingly fragile position of the British in Hyderabad was suddenly steadied when Aristu Jah, the former Prime Minister who had been imprisoned in Pune for over two years, sent some extraordinary news to the Nizam: not only had he succeeded in negotiating his own release, he had managed to get the Marathas to agree to return almost all the land and fortresses that had been ceded to them after the Battle of Kharlda. They had even waived the enormous indemnity owed to them by the Nizam.

  So astounding was the news, and so remarkable was Aristu Jah’s achievement in negotiating it from confinement, that many of his contemporaries assumed that he could only have achieved this major diplomatic coup with the aid of sorcery. Even Abdul Lateef Shushtari, one of the most intelligent and least credulous Muslim observers of the period, believed that Aristu Jah was a master of the dark arts, and that ‘the balance of his mind was overthrown by his obsession with alchemy to make gold and magic to have power over angels’.52 The historian Ghulam Husain Khan was more explicit. In the Gulzar-i-Asafiya he wrote how for two years Aristu Jah was imprisoned in his garden outside Pune, forgotten by the Nizam’s durbar and ignored by the Marathas, until eventually he decided that his only hope of escape was by using his occult arts:He began the litanies of the Prayer of the Sword breathing on a bowl of water, which he then threw over a desiccated wood apple tree in the hope that, if after 20 days the tree started sprouting green shoots, then after completing the 40 days of the litanies, this obstinate misfortune would turn out according to his wishes. So he began reciting and indeed after twenty days, the desiccated wood apple, whose branches were withered as if they had not had any rain for many years, suddenly put out green shoots and fresh leaves—a miraculous demonstration of the power of the Almighty! Those who knew of Aristu Jah’s vow praised God and grew hopeful that his prayers would be granted. Then Aristu Jah, his heart fortified with hope in God’s merciful grace, stopped eating meat and in a constant state of purification, recited his litanies with devout sincerity and brought his 40 days’ devotions to completion.

  It is said that on the very day the 40 days were completed, in the first watch of the day, a messenger suddenly brought the news that [the young Maratha Peshwa] Madhu Rao had fallen off the roof and was dead. While flying a kite, he had slipped from the parapet and toppled onto the fountain below, whose spout had pierced him to the liver. Aristu Jah was astonished, for the secret intention of his reciting the litanies had been that there should be a revolution in the leadership in Pune so that he could be freed. For without a change of ruler and the ensuing squabbles among the nobles, it was uncertain how he could be released. God most Holy, who has power over all things, realised his desires and manifested a miracle according to his prayers. 53

  British observers in Pune took a different view. They believed that the young Peshwa’s death was neither an accident nor an act of black magic, but a very deliberate suicide brought on by Madhu Rao’s frustration at the restrictions imposed on him by his guardian, the Maratha Minister Nana Phadnavis. Though Madhu Rao was now twenty-one and old enough to rule in his own name, the Minister had kept him from all real power and left him to play impotently in the gilded cage of his palace, his every move watched by Nana’s spies. Madhu Rao’s suicide was his ultimate revenge on his jailer, for without his ward, Nana instantly lost his authority to govern.

  From his garden prison, Aristu Jah realised his chance had come and expertly exploited the confusion, playing the different factions in Pune against each other with a talent for intrigue and manipulation that came close to genius. The day after Madhu Rao’s death he managed to lure Nana’s young rival, Daulat Rao Scindia, to come and visit him by offering him as a gift a celebrated stallion which Scindia had once expressed an admiration for. Alerted by his spies, as Aristu Jah knew he would be, Nana soon paid a visit to Aristu Jah’s garden prison to try to discover the purpose of Scindia’s visit. He suspected that Scindia had been trying to get the backing of Hyderabad in the coming succession struggle. According to Ghulam Husain Khan:Nana asked Aristu Jah: ‘What was a
ll this? Why did Daulat Rau come to see you?’

  Aristu Jah replied, ‘Your spies were present, no doubt they heard my peerless stallion mentioned. He came to fetch it, nothing more!’

  Nana refused to believe this. ‘For God’s sake, tell me the essence of the matter, and so calm my worries!’

  However much Aristu Jah denied, Nana didn’t stop insisting. Finally Aristu Jah hinted that Scindia was plotting Nana’s ruin. Nana was aghast: ‘As your Excellency is my friend and the wisest of this generation, ’ he said, ‘tell me whatever you think is advisable for me to do at this time, and don’t hold back.’54

  Aristu Jah duly advised Nana to flee to a remote fort for his own safety. Terrified, Nana left Pune that night, taking the Arab troops which guarded Aristu Jah as his escort. By the following morning, Aristu Jah found himself left unguarded and in a perfect position to escape. But rather than fleeing back to Hyderabad, he chose to stay in Pune, continuing to play faction off against faction, promising each the support of the Nizam. By the time the succession dispute was finally resolved in the summer of 1797, and Nana reinstated as Minister at Aristu Jah’s express request, the latter had managed to persuade all the different parties in the Maratha court to annul the humiliating Treaty of Khardla and release the Nizam from nearly all his obligations. Aristu Jah left Pune with full honours and headed off towards Hyderabad, where he was received as a national hero. The Nizam reinstated him as Prime Minister and showered him with titles, estates and jewels.

  Aristu Jah’s release came just in time for Kirkpatrick. A week earlier, the Nizam had finally given way to pressure from the pro-French and pro-Tipu parties at court, and announced that he was going to dismiss the English troops from Hyderabad. Aristu Jah heard the news midway between Pune and Hyderabad, and sent an urgent message for the Nizam to rescind the order, which the indecisive Nizam duly did. The Company sepoys who were already on their way to the coast marched back to their old camp and the British presence in Hyderabad was saved; but Aristu Jah made it immediately apparent to James that there was a price to pay for this. The Company would have to decide whether or not it was a full ally of the Nizam, and whether in future it would be prepared to defend Hyderabad against the Marathas. Only then would Aristu Jah be able to persuade the Nizam to jettison Raymond and disband the French corps. James was able to reply to the Minister’s ‘very earnest proposal’ that he had already been given the authority to begin negotiations by the Governor General, and lost no time in presenting a draft treaty to the Minister.

  For others in Hyderabad, Aristu Jah’s release was less good news. Raymond had secretly conspired with the pro-French nobles at the Hyderabad durbar to bribe the Maratha court to prolong Aristu Jah’s captivity in Pune.55 There was also evidence that Aristu Jah’s former protégé Mir Alam was involved: after all, he had been one of the principal beneficiaries of the Minister’s absence, and had assumed many of his administrative functions. Aristu Jah had learned about their treachery from Nana, and returned to Hyderabad determined to exact revenge on all his enemies.

  The Minister was particularly angered by Mir Alam’s behaviour: though he owed his position at court entirely to Aristu Jah’s patronage, throughout the latter’s entire captivity, Mir Alam had not once written to him. From now on, Aristu Jah’s considerable talent for intrigue would be dedicated single-mindedly to revenging himself on Mir Alam. James could have little inkling how far he himself would be caught in the trap Aristu Jah began to lay to accomplish this aim.

  From the moment Aristu Jah arrived back in Hyderabad, events began to move quickly. Only the tortuous weeks it took to get letters and drafts of the new treaty to and from Calcutta, and the need for extreme secrecy, slowed the frenetic pace of negotiations, as James worked to replace Raymond as the centre of influence in the Hyderabad durbar.

  Lord Wellesley, by May 1798 installed in Calcutta and anxious to get on with what he saw as his principal task of reducing French influence in the subcontinent, sent James a series of lengthy despatches minutely laying down the exact boundaries within which James was to work. He did not approve when James allowed himself the slightest discretion to verge even marginally from these guidelines, and at one point wrote to General William Palmer, the new Resident at Pune: ‘I find that Captain Kirkpatrick has departed very widely both from the spirit and letter of my instructions to him.’56 But as the treaty neared the moment of signing, and as the Nizam agreed one by one to almost all of Wellesley’s terms, James gradually returned to favour with his irascible new master. By the end, the Nizam was holding out on only one of Calcutta’s demands: that the French corps be immediately dismissed. Raymond was personally well liked by the old man, and he was determined not to lose him, despite the urgings of his Minister. He seemed oblivious to the fact that destroying Raymond was the Company’s principal aim.

  As the negotiations gathered pace, both Wellesley and James remained worried that events on the ground might overtake their schemes. The main worry remained a French coup, possibly combined with an attempt to assassinate the elderly Nizam and replace him with one of his more pliable sons. One son, Ali Jah, had revolted in October 1795; another senior family member, Dara Jah, had come out in rebellion the following March, raising the flag of revolt from the reputedly impregnable hill fort of Raichur until dislodged and captured by Lieutenant Colonel James Dalrymple on 20 April.57

  Then in September a plot was uncovered in the palace aiming to do away with the Nizam with the aid of black magic. This was taken every bit as seriously as the two rebellions. To the great alarm of the Minister and the Nizam’s zenana, it was found that (as James reported to Calcutta)

  malignant sorcery was being practised against the Nizam … inquiries are still being prosecuted to get to the bottom of the necromantic practices being used against His Highness. Images of paste have been dug up [in the palace] with powdered glass in their bodies & dogs hair.

  Since they have been discovered His Highness says he feels better, eats better and sleeps better. But they have not yet found the promoter of the sorcery.58

  However much the British might dismiss the sorcery as hocus pocus, it added to the growing perception in Hyderabad that the Nizam’s days might well be numbered.

  Hyderabad in 1798 had something of the feel of post-war Berlin or Vienna: a city alive with intrigue and conspiracy, where no one could trust anyone else. At the centre of the city, like the spider at the heart of his web, lay the Nizam himself, assisted by a very efficient intelligence network.bm Nizam Ali Khan kept a secret ‘intelligencer’ known as a khufia navis in every fort, village and city in his dominions, as well as in the palaces of the more important nobles; like his father he probably also received information from the pirs (holy men) of the Sufi shrines across his territory. 59 From outside his lands, from the Mughal capital of Delhi and the Maratha court in Pune, he was sent a daily newsletter from a professional Hyderabadi akhbar navis, or ‘newswriter’.60 This intelligence department had a considerable budget. One of Aristu Jah’s successors as Prime Minister, Rajah Chandu Lal, was to spend at least ‘seven lakhs of rupees annually’ getting sensitive information from Calcutta alone.61

  Nor was it just a question of information: abductions, assassinations and poisonings were regularly used by the spies of Indian rulers at this period to accomplish their aims. Poisoning in particular has a long history in India, being recommended as a vital instrument of statecraft by ancient India’s Machiavelli, the great political philosopher Chanakyabn (c.300 BC), who in his Artha Shastra suggested that courtesans were particularly useful for administering slow-acting toxins to selected clients when they were asleep.62 Certainly there is evidence that Aristu Jah was prepared to consider more dramatic forms of intelligence work than simply spying. At one point two prominent figures from Hyderabad escaped from the Nizam’s territories to Pune, from where Aristu Jah discovered that they were plotting to have him assassinated. He responded by proposing the sort of operation more usually associated with modern intellig
ence agencies, ordering that ‘the motions of both these intriguers [should be] most strictly watched for the purpose of having them carried off if a fair opportunity should offer, and conducted on horses or camels with all expedition to Hyderabad’.63

  The Nizam was not the only one who employed informers in Hyderabad: several different groups kept networks of spies at work. Raymond, for example, had successfully placed a spy in the English military camp, who had yet to be apprehended although the fact of his existence was acknowledged—through Kirkpatrick’s own agents in the French camp. Moreover, quite unknown to James, Tipu Sultan had succeeded in placing a paid informer within the Residency staff who throughout this period was busily copying sensitive documents from the Residency daftar or chancellery, and despatching them to Seringapatam via ‘the Fakir’, a nephew of the Nizam named Imtiaz ul-Omrah who was the head of the pro-Tipu faction at court.bo In his more facetious moments, James referred to ‘the Fakir’ as ‘the Doctor of Divinity’,64 but he did not underestimate Imtiaz, recognising him as his most formidable enemy within the durbar.65