During the second half of 1871, Jacob found himself in Dholpur, a second-tier Princely state that was entitled to a 15-gun salute. Located only half an hour’s drive south of Agra, the city rarely makes it on to the itinerary of tourists. While Agra has its marbled monuments, Dholpur is an ugly, dusty town that announces itself with mile upon mile of road-side plots selling slabs of red sandstone. Akbar’s capital Fathehpur Sikri, Agra’s Red Fort and the Lutyens-designed Presidential Palace in New Delhi owe their crimson hue to its nearby quarries.
The city and its surroundings are also famous for sex workers and dacoits. Its location on the main highway that links New Delhi and Nagpur makes it a favourite stop for truck-drivers negotiating their overloaded TATA trucks down India’s overcrowded roads. In Jacob’s day, the sex trade catered to the Imperial forces who marched down this route to keep peace in central India. The region was home to numerous criminal tribes who supplemented the income they earned from robbing innocent travellers by kidnapping girls who were then kept as sex slaves. The maze of ravines on either bank of the Chambal River which once formed the border of Dholpur State provided perfect cover for some of India’s best known outlaws, including the Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi.
Dholpur’s ruler, Rana Bhagwant Singh, was a Jat, an ancient Hindu martial race that held sway over large parts of what is now Rajasthan. The Rana, who had come to the throne in 1836, lived in a palace built of pink stone, surrounded by a moat and a vast garden populated with deer. A photograph taken in the late 1860s shows him wearing a four-strand necklace of quail’s-egg-sized precious stones, a diamond-encrusted dustoor and a brooch that appears to be made of pearls. With his waxed moustache, frizzy beard, wild-eyed stare, and a pair of damascened swords resting on his lap, he looks ferocious. Jacob, however, described him as the kindest and ‘most honest old Native Chief’13 he had ever met.
The Rana was also highly regarded by the British who considered him a ‘true friend and well-wisher’14 for remaining loyal during the Mutiny. Colonel J.C. Brooke, the officiating Agent for the Eastern States of Rajputana, wrote that among his subjects ‘he was universally loved, and with a warmth that natives seldom feel towards their rulers’. The ‘kindness of his temper’, however, was also his undoing as it ‘led him too often to be the victim of designing people; and for the last four or five months owing to his illness, these unprincipled courtiers have had but too much opportunity to speculate’.15
The unprincipled courtiers to whom Brooke was referring were a prostitute named Maharajee and her sister Gurja. Bhagwant Singh had fallen in love with Maharajee and brought her to his palace where he ‘kept himself constantly employed in pleasing her.’ When she died, the Rana was so heartbroken he ‘used to roll often over her grave and weep’. The sweeper attached to her tomb suggested that Gurja would be the perfect substitute for Maharajee. ‘After a few days, he, as before, became a slave to her love. This prostitute used to lead the Rana in the same manner as a bull is done with a string in the nostrils, and made him do whatever she wanted,’ noted Brooke. 16
Gurja was also a sex trafficker. Her modus operandi would be familiar to pimps and madams in Dholpur today except that her customers were Muslim nobles. ‘She is in the habit of sending go-betweens, both male and female, to the houses of brahmins, chetrees, as well as other respected persons, carrying away girls by enticement or by force and making them profess the Mohammedan religion,’ an anonymous petition, probably written by Bhagwant Singh’s supporters stated. ‘Dholepore is a notorious state and it is now being ruined without any cause.’17
Realizing that the Rana did not have long to live, Gurja tried to get her own son, a lowly grass-cutter, put on the throne by poisoning the legitimate heir, Raja Bahadoor. She then attempted to poison Raja Bahadoor’s widow, Dhoolya Sahibah, and her son, while proclaiming her own offspring the Ruler.
The death of Bhagwant Singh in February 1873 put the British in a bind. They could not back ‘a common Mahommedan prostitute’ but weren’t keen on Dhoolya Sahibah, either, as she was the sister of the ruler of Patiala and, therefore, open to manipulation. ‘The rule of a woman behind a purdah with whom communication can only be held through the medium of a slave girl is unsuited to the requirements of the State, in which there are many lawless classes, unruly individuals and intriguing officials. It would, too, give the Puttiala party a preponderance,’ wrote Brooke.18
In the end, the British sanctioned Bhagwant Singh’s orphaned grandson Pearee Raja to ascend the throne when he came of age, and handed the day-to-day running of the state to the most senior nobleman Dinkur Rao.
Precisely where Jacob fitted into this sordid, complex web of intrigue and scheming was presumably covered in the file dealing with his ‘dismissal from the service of the Raja of Dholepore’ that had so inconveniently disappeared. According to one source, he was a member of the State Council, but he could equally well have been an interpreter, clerk or adviser. That a file existed at all suggests some kind of falling out with either Bhagwant Singh or one of his ministers. Adding to the mystery was Jacob’s later admission that his stay at Dholpur ‘was not a bed of roses’. Jealous officials had made a ‘false and groundless complaint’ against him. ‘They tried to get me dismissed, but they failed.’ Jacob petitioned Lord Mayo the Viceroy ‘and was left alone in peace afterwards’. It was not until ‘the death of the old chief’ that he left Dholpur.19
At the time of the Rana’s death in February 1873 Dholpur was considered too insignificant to have a Political Agent stationed there. That changed in 1874 with the appointment of Major Thomas Dennehy, ostensibly to assist in the transition from Bhagwant Singh’s rule to that of his grandson. Dennehy and Jacob would soon cross paths.
Whatever the basis of Jacob’s dispute with British officialdom in Dholpur, it did not seem to affect his career. Two years later, in February 1875, he was travelling to Baroda by train in the specially appointed carriage of the Maharaja of Jaipur. He was aide-de-camp to Sawai Ram Singh II, one of India’s most progressive Princes and a keen amateur photographer. The Maharaja was also one of two native chiefs (the other being the ruler of Gwalior) whom the British had appointed to sit on a commission hearing the charges against the Gaekwar of Baroda for attempting to poison the British Resident, Colonel Robert Phayre. Jacob was travelling as the Maharaja’s adviser.
A former ADC to the Queen and a veteran of the First Afghan War, Phayre was openly despised by the Gaekwar, Mulhar Rao. He was widely seen even by his superiors as a tactless, overbearing and meddlesome administrator who invariably sided with the faction opposing the ruler. On November 9, 1874, he was in his washroom, drinking his customary glass of sherbet after his early morning horse ride, when he noticed a strange taste in his mouth. He threw out the remaining contents but after half an hour began to feel nauseous. When he went to examine the glass again he noticed some unusual brown sediment. Realizing an attempt had been made to poison him, he sent the remains for analysis. Phayre immediately suspected that Mulhar Rao had bribed his servants to poison his drink using a mixture of arsenic and finely ground diamonds. The Gaekwar was arrested and charged with bribery and with instigating and bribing servants at the British Residency to spy on Phayre and poison him. A special judicial commission of inquiry, the first of its kind in British India, was set up to hear the case.
The charging of the Gaekwar was a godsend to the British who had long been looking for an excuse to get rid of one of India’s most tyrannical rulers. Baroda’s royal family had become a byword for cruelty and despotism. Khande Rao, the Gaekwar from 1856 to 1870, had had two of his brothers poisoned to prevent them from challenging him for the throne. When he failed to kill his third brother, Mulhar Rao, he consulted a brahmin who told him that sorcery might do the trick but only if human sacrifices were performed. He ordered thirty-five prisoners to be put to death, but had to stop at twenty-five after the intervention of his prime minister. Instead, he kept Mulhar Rao behind bars for seven years.
The gore didn’t sto
p there. Khande Rao enjoyed watching wrestling matches where men fought to the death using claws of sharpened horns tied to their fists. Drugged with opium and hashish, they felt no pain as they tore each other to pieces. He had conspirators hanged, trampled by elephants, beheaded and blown from the mouths of cannons.
Inside Laxmi Vilas, which was three times the size of Buckingham Palace, the Gaekwar’s writ ran supreme. ‘Court manners directed that his belches and farts be greeted with enthusiastic applause, but no one might sneeze in his presence, for that was so evil an augury that all business must be suspended for the day,’ the historian John Lord wrote. ‘When the Maharaja yawned, all present must snap their fingers to discourage flies.’20
On the death of Khande Rao in 1870, Mulhar Rao was finally released from prison and placed on the throne. Described by the outgoing British Resident as being ‘intellectually feeble and apparently irresponsible for his actions’,21 he made up for it by a reign of cruelty that exceeded that of his dead brother.
In 1873, a commission established to look into the administration of the state found evidence of gross mismanagement that included mistreatment of bankers and traders, rampant corruption, torture of prisoners and abduction of women for forced labour in the palace. The alleged attempted poisoning took place shortly after the commission had published its findings.
Jacob broke the train journey in Agra and checked into Lauries Hotel. As he waited for dinner at the table d’hôte, he started up a conversation with a man who introduced himself as a commercial agent. The conversation invariably turned to the poisoning case, with the latter condemning the Gaekwar and Jacob insisting that he was not guilty. ‘There was also at the table a gentleman whom I did not know, who, after dinner, asked me to accompany him to his room, which gave me the impression that he was a detective,’ Jacob later recalled. ‘I followed him and as soon as we were seated, he asked me what my reason was for the opinion I had expressed so definitely that the Gaekwar was innocent.’22
The inquisitive stranger was Colonel Charles Napier Sturt, Military Secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook. Sturt explained that he was Northbrook’s brother-in-law and that he was in India to see his niece, Emma Baring.
The next day, Sturt left for Delhi where Northbrook was holding a durbar for the Princes of the Punjab. Jacob received a telegram asking him to travel to Delhi and that his expenses would be met with. On his arrival, he was taken to Captain Evelyn Baring, the Viceroy’s Private Secretary, and asked to repeat what he had told Sturt. He was then summoned to the Viceroy’s office where Northbrook questioned him more closely about his dealings with the Princely states.
‘On my return to Agra, the next day I received a letter from Colonel Sturt, which stated amongst other things, that if, at any time, I became aware of any case of oppression on the part of British Officers towards Native Rulers, I was to bring the facts to the notice of His Excellency the Viceroy through the Private Secretary, provided they were brief and genuine.’23 For his services, he would be placed on a retainer.
The offer was a recognition of Jacob’s knowledge of and contacts in the Princely states, built up over the previous five years. He would later be vindicated regarding the Gaekwar’s innocence with the commission issuing an open verdict after the defence lawyer had successfully proved the absence of any motive and also proved that evidence supporting the prosecution’s case had been obtained illegally. Eventually, Mulhar Rao was removed from power, not for the attempted poisoning, but for ‘gross misrule’.
The first case of malpractice Jacob took up was to represent Gurja Begum, the mistress of the late Rana of Dholpur. After blocking her bid to get her son on the throne, Dennehy, the Political Agent, had confiscated her properties. Jacob, who would have known of Gurja when he was employed by the Rana, believed that the properties were confiscated unlawfully and appealed to the Viceroy. ‘My representation was found to be correct and I had the gratification of having her property restored to her.’ He then successfully pursued several other cases. ‘My position with the Government of India was, under all these circumstances, one of considerable trust and responsibility,’ he wrote.24
Jacob would later boast that he knew ‘more of the native than any living man’. The Indian does not ‘think on the same plane’, he said. ‘There are no words in your English to express him.’25
But his hubris was also his major failing. Somehow—and the circumstances are vague even in Jacob’s own rendering of the incident—he was accused of bribery in one of the larger Princely states. The charges, which were brought shortly after Lord Lytton became Viceroy in April 1876, led to the cutting off of his retainer. ‘I was informed that no more petitions would be received from me.’26
Jacob appealed to Lytton’s Private Secretary, Colonel Owen Burne. A distinguished military officer who had fought in the Crimean War and at the siege of Lucknow during the Mutiny, Burne had accompanied Lytton to India as his Private Secretary, having served in the same capacity for Lord Mayo a decade earlier. His experience in India had earned him a reputation for being a fair and persuasive administrator.
If Jacob wanted a sympathetic hearing, then, he could not have found a better person than Burne. He had ‘the rare power of conciliating grumblers and pleasing all those who came in contact with him,’ wrote a correspondent for the Calcutta newspaper, the Friend of India.27 ‘If he were compelled to personally deprive an unfortunate Prince of his mismanaged territory, the latter would leave his presence with the idea that “it was all right” and that the Government never did a juster thing than take away his patrimony.’
It is likely the two men met in Simla. Burne would have recognized the importance of the services Jacob rendered and possibly even sided with him in the bribery case.
Astute judge of character that he was, Burne listened closely to his story, of how he had served under the Emir ul-Kabir in Hyderabad, worked for a firm of jewellers in Calcutta, learnt to mimic the tricks of conjurors and to delve into the affairs of the native states. But the advice that he gave was unusual. ‘You told me once that you understood precious stones,’ Burne said to Jacob after they had discussed his predicament. ‘So, why don’t you start dealing in them?’28
Alexander Jacob, amateur magician, part-time astrologer and occasional spy, was about to become India’s most famous jeweller.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE JEWELLER OF SIMLA
‘A LUCKY venture, a lucky venture! Plenty of rubies, plenty of emeralds! You should thank God for having brought you to such a rich country!’1 The words that greeted Vasco da Gama when he reached Calicut in 1498, might well have applied to Jacob as he took up Burne’s advice and threw himself into the gem trade. For someone pursuing a career built on buying and selling precious stones there was no better place to start than India.
The stories and legends of India’s wealth are as old as the great Hindu epics. The Mahabharata referred to northern tribes who sent lumps of gold to Yudhishtira collected by ferocious giant ants who attacked anyone who dared to enter their territory. The Ramayana described the holy city of Ayodhya as being ‘filled with merchants and artificers of all kinds; gold, precious stones, and jewels were there found in abundance; everyone wore costly garments, bracelets, and necklaces’.2
In da Gama’s day, India’s mines were still producing vast quantities of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, hyacinths and amethysts that were being traded at major centres along the Malabar Coast. With the establishment of the Mughal Empire in 1526 by Babur, the demand for ‘all things that are most beautiful, precious and rare’ grew exponentially. Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the court of Jehangir recommended that the Crown use the jewels lying in the Tower of London as currency to obtain trading concessions. He called India and the court of the Mughals ‘one of the greatest theatres in the world’.
Envoys from Portugal, France and Britain vied with one another to ingratiate themselves with local Princes and Mughal Emperors by offering exorbitant gifts of gems and jewellery.
William Hawkins’s list of unmounted stones in Jehangir’s treasuries included 37.5 kg or 187,500 carats of diamonds, 300 kg of pearls, 50 kg of rubies and 125 kg of emeralds.
Diamonds were discovered in the mines of Golconda near Hyderabad around 800 B.C. Indians were the first to trade stones for other commodities. The Venetian adventurer, Marco Polo, in his Book of Wonders, wrote that diamonds were found in deep gorges infested with ‘serpents of great girth and size’.3 Pieces of meat were thrown down from the tops of mountains into inaccessible valleys. The diamonds lying on the ground would stick to the meat which would be picked up by white eagles and carried off. Miners would search eagle droppings and the intestines of carcasses for the diamonds which they had swallowed with the meat.
By the time Jacob entered the jewellery business, the mines of Golconda had been exhausted of their treasures, but the market in precious stones was as vibrant as ever. Gem trading in India, noted the scholar George Winius, ‘must have surely constituted one of the greatest semi visible, half-clandestine economic activities of the early modern period’.4
The British public had been in awe of Indian gemstones ever since the fabled Kohinoor diamond was presented to Queen Victoria in 1849 as part of the booty from the British annexation of the Punjab. Indian jewellery, including pieces from the courts of Delhi, Gwalior and Jaipur, had first featured prominently at the International Exhibition in South Kensington in 1871. The riches of the subcontinent received another boost when Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India in 1876. By the late 1880s, Indian jewellery, with its spontaneous variety, curves and convulsions, was the flavour of the era.
The Mysterious Mr Jacob: Diamond Merchant, Magician and Spy Page 5