43. For example, NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entries for 21 February 1851, 25 September 1852 and 4 October 1852.
44. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entries for 27 January and 6 February 1852. Other references to scandals, and accusations of impropriety, in the imperial harem can be found in the entries for 13 January 1851, 6 August 1852 and 30 August 1853.
45. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 274. Not all the salatin were poor. The court diary contains the bequests of several of them and it was not unusual for them to leave estates of up to Rs5 lakh. See, e.g., NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 29 December 1851.
46. Major George Cunningham, quoted in T. G. P. Spear, ‘The Mogul Family and the Court in 19th Century Delhi’, Journal of Indian History, vol. XX, 1941, p. 40.
47. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entries for 29 January 1851,19 February 1851 and 11 April 1852.
48. Ibid., entry for Monday, 8 July 1853.
49. PAL, Case 1D, item 8, November 1847.
50. PAL, Case 94 (wrongly indexed as Case 84), Delhi, 5 February 1848.
51. Mirza Fakhru’s full name was Mirza Ghulam Fakhruddin.
52. PAL, Case 1, 45, BSZ to James Thomason, 19 January 1849.
53. PAL, Case 1, pt VII, 67, letter from Sir Thomas Metcalfe (TTM) to Thornton, 24 January 1852.
54. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 9 March 1852.
55. Ibid., entries for 14 February, 27 February and 3 March 1852.
56. PAL, Case 1, 63, 4 December 1851. Sending disgraced courtiers to Mecca was an old Mughal custom.
57. PAL, Case 1, 63, 4 December 1851, letter from TTM to Thornton.
58. For the link between the scale of the wedding and Zinat Mahal’s ambitions for Jawan Bakht, see Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 19. For MJB referred to as heir apparent, see DG (OIOC microfilms), 31 March 1852.
59. Sadly this much-repeated and thoroughly delightful story may well be apocryphal: certainly I have been unable to trace it back farther than Edward Thompson’s The Life of Charles Lord Metcalfe (Faber, London, 1937, p. 101), where it is described as ‘local tradition … this sounds like folklore’. It may well have been inspired by the famous miniature of Ochterlony in the India Office Library. In his will, OIOC L/AG/34/29/37, Ochterlony mentions only one bibi, ‘Mahruttun, entitled Moobaruck ul-Nissa Begum and often called Begum Ochterlony’, who was the mother of his two daughters, although his son Roderick Peregrine Ochterlony was clearly born of a different bibi. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that the story could be true: I frequently found Old Delhi traditions about such matters confirmed by research, and several Company servants of the period kept harems of this size. Judging by Bishop Heber’s description of him, Ochterlony was clearly Indianised enough to have done so.
60. Emily Bayley quoted in Kaye, The Golden Calm, pp. 124–8.
61. Ibid., pp. 125–6.
62. For example, PAL, Case 1, item 45, January 1849, letter from TTM to BSZ, dated 27 May 1849.
63. Emily Bayley quoted in Kaye, The Golden Calm, p. 35.
64. Ibid., Sir Thomas Metcalfe’s reflection on Humayun’s Tomb.
65. Both are now in OIOC.
66. See, for example, South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, From TTM to Daughters, datelined Camp Sudder Sarai, 27th (no month, no year).
67. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, From TTM to Georgina, datelined Kootub, 22nd (no month, no year given but clearly April 1851).
68. The nature of this illegal act is sadly not specified here, but there is reference elsewhere in TTM’s correspondence to Theo wrongly imprisoning an influential moneylender, which may be the misdemeanour referred to here.
69. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 1, GG to EC, Saturday, 23 October 1852.
70. Ibid.
71. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, TTM to GG datelined Kootub, 15th (no month, no year given but clearly October 1852).
2: Believers and Infidels
1. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth & African Studies at Rhodes House Missionary Collections, Oxford, Jennings Papers, Proposed Mission at Delhi.
2. Jennings Papers, Copies of Letters by the Revd Midgeley Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi 1851–57, JMJ to Hawkins, 4 May 1852.
3. Jennings Papers, Proposed Mission at Delhi.
4. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth & African Studies at Rhodes House Missionary Collections, Oxford, A Memoir of my Father – the Revd M.J. Jennings, M.A., p. 24.
5. Ibid., pp. 13, pp. 21. For Douglas, see also SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospels) Annual Report for 1857, pxciii.
6. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, TTM to his children, Letter from Camp before Hissar, 7 February (no year); TTM to his daughters, Delhi, 6 April (no year); Theo to Lady Campbell in Ferozepur, undated but probably 1854.
7. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 12 July 1857.
8. Delhi Gazette, 8 April 1855.
9. Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box VIII, TTM to his daughters, Delhi, 6 April (no year).
10. Derrick Hughes, The Mutiny Chaplains, Salisbury, 1991, p. 28.
11. Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, London, 1850, reprinted London, 1992, as Begums, Thugs and White Mughals, ed. William Dalrymple, p. xvi.
12. Hughes, The Mutiny Chaplains, p. 20.
13. Quoted by Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the NorthWest Frontier, London, 2000, p. 340.
14. Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 52.
15. Ibid., p. 52.
16. Olive Anderson, ‘The Growth of Christian Militarism in Mid Victorian Britain’, English Historical Review, vol. 86, 1971, pp. 46–72. For quote see p.
17. Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, pp. 51–2. Also Saul David, The Indian Mutiny 1857, London, 2002, pp. 72–3.
18. P. J. Marshall (ed.), The British Discovery of Hinduism, Cambridge, 1970, p. 42.
19. Quoted by A. N. Wilson, The Victorians, London, 2002, p. 202, and Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London, 2003, pp. 136, 137.
20. Jennings Papers, Copies of Letters by the Revd Midgeley Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi 1851–57, JMJ to Hawkins, 22 November 1855.
21. Farhan Ahmad Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars and Saints: Muslim Response to the British Presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab 1803–1857, unpublished PhD, Oxford, 1983, pp. 166–92.
22. Farhan Nizami discusses the case of Maulawi Abdul Ali and Muhammad Ismail Londoni, both of whom married British women. See Farhan Nizami., ‘Islamization and Social Adjustment: the Muslim Religious Elite in British North India 1803–57’, in Ninth European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, 9–12 July 1986, South Asian Institute of Heidelberg University, p. 5.
23. Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars and Saints, p. 196.
24. Averil Ann Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre Mutiny India, Curzon Press, London, 1993, pp. 52–3.
25. Victor Jacquemont, Letters from India (1829–32), 2 vols, trans. Catherine Phillips, Macmillan, London, 1936, p. 354.
26. Khalid Masud, The World of Shah Abdul Aziz, 1746–1824, p. 304, in Jamal Malik (ed.), Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, 1760–1860, Leiden, 2000. The ultimate source for Shah Abdul Aziz’s relationship with Fraser is the Malfazat of Aziz where the information is given in the context of showing how the British were overcome with Aziz’s learning and miraculous powers.
27. Fraser Papers, vol. 29 (private collection, Inverness, as listed by the National Register of Archives, Scotland). Letter from WF to his father, 8 February 1806.
28. Ralph Russell and Khurshid Islam, Ghalib: Life and Letters, OUP, Delhi, 1994) p. 53.
29. Jacquemont, Letters from India, VJ to his father, Delhi, 10 January 1831, pp. 344–5.
30. Ibid., pp. 150–1, 354.
31. Fraser Papers, v
ol. 29, letter from WF to his father, 8 February 1806.
32. Reginald Heber, A Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, 3 vols, London, 1827, vol. 2, pp. 362, 392.
33. Bengal Wills 1825, OIOC, L/AG/34/29/37, pp. 185–205.
34. For Mubarak Begum’s background see the Mubarak Bagh papers in the archives of the Delhi Commisoner’s Office: DCO F5/1861. Here it is recorded that ‘Mubarik ul Nissa was originally a girl of Brahmin parentage, who was brought from Poona in the Deckan by one Mosst. Chumpa, and presented or sold by the said Chumpa to Genl. Ochterlony when 12 years of age. Mosst. Mubarik ul Nissa from that time resided in Genl. Ochterlony’s house, and Mosst. Chumpa resided with her there, being known by the name of Banbahi’.
35. National Army Museum, London, Gardner Papers, Letter 90, 16 August 1821.
36. Gardner Papers, Letter 16, p. 42.
37. For Ochterlony wondering whether to bring up his children as Muslims, see Sutherland Papers, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss. D. 547, pp. 133–4. The letter is written to Major Hugh Sutherland, a Scottish mercenary commanding a regiment of Mahratta’s troops, who, like Ochterlony, had married a Muslim begum – and who had opted to bring up his children as Muslims. Ochterlony writes that he doesn’t know what to do with his two daughters by Mubarak Begum, and asks for advice. If they are brought up as Christians, he fears they will suffer from the racism of the British: ‘My children dear Major,’ writes Ochterlony, ‘are uncommonly fair, but if educated in the European manner they will in spite of complexion labour under all the disadvantages of being known as the NATURAL DAUGHTERS OF OCHTERLONY BY A NATIVE WOMAN – In that one sentence is compressed all that ill nature inaction and illiberality can convey of which you must have seen numerous instances during your Residence in this country.’ Yet for all this, Ochterlony says he still hesitates to bring them up as Muslims, with a view to them marrying into the Mughal aristocracy, as ‘I own I could not bear that my child should be one of a numerous haram even were I certain that no other Disadvantages attended this mode of disposal & were I proof against the observations of the world who tho’ unjust to the children, would not fail to comment on the Conduct of a father who educated his offspring in Tenets of the Prophet’. The letter ends rather movingly, ‘In short my dear M[ajor] I have spent all the time since we were parted in revolving this matter in my mind but I have not yet been able to come to a positive Decision.’ The letter is undated but is probably c. 1801–02, and it must immediately pre-date the Anglo-Mahratta war of 1803.
38. Private family papers in the haveli of the late Mirza Farid Beg, Old Delhi.
39. Ram Babu Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets of Urdu & Persian, Lucknow, 1941, pp. 100–17.
40. Gardner Papers, NAM 6305–56, Letter 14, Delhi, 6 June 1820.
41. Ibid., Letter 16, p. 41.
42. Nicholas Shreeve, The Indian Heir, Bookwright, Arundel, 2001, p. 7.
43. Missionary Collections, A Memoir of my Father – the Revd M.J. Jennings, M.A., typescript mss by ‘Miss Jennings, Chenolton, Wimbourne, Dorset’.
44. Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 52. The Superintendent of Jails in Agra was C. Thornlute.
45. For Shah Abdul Aziz, see Nizami, Madrasahs, p. 157.
46. Ibid., pp. 43–54. Nizami provides evidence that nearly 2 million acres of ma’afi land was confiscated by the British between 1828 and 1840. For missionaries living in mosques see Jacquemont, Letters from India, VJ to his father, Panipat, 17 March 1830, p. 80.
47. See the proclamation of Begum Hazrat Mahal; the translation of the original is in the NAI, Foreign Department, Political Consultation 17 December 1858, from J. D. Forstythe Sec. to Chief Commr Oudh, to G. J. Edmonstone, Sec. GOI, For. Dept, Dt Lucknow, 4 December 1858.
48. Nizami, Madrasahs, pp. 203–4; Powell, Muslims and Missionaries, ch. 7, esp. pp. 193–6, 202 and 222.
49. Delhi Committee to the General Committee of Public Instruction, in J. F. Hilliker, ‘Charles Edward Trevelyan as an Educational Reformer’, Canadian Journal of History, 9, 1974, pp. 275–91. Also Michael H. Fisher, ‘An Initial Student of Delhi English College: Mohan Lal Kashmiri (1812–77)’, in Margrit Pernau, Delhi College, New Delhi, 2006.
50. OIOC, Home Miscellaneous 725, pp. 389–422, Letter Written by Munshi Mohun Lal to Brigadier Chamberlain dated November 8th 1857 at Dehlie.
51. Gardner Papers, Letter 100, Babel, 27 September 1821.
52. Fraser Papers, Bundle 350, letter from DO to WF, Delhi, 31 July 1820.
53. Parkes, Begums, p. 313.
54. Christopher Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of the Eurasian Community in British India 1773–1833, London, 1996, pp. 4–5.
55. Delhi Gazette, 5 January 1856.
56. Jennings Papers, Copies of Letters by the Revd Midgeley Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi 1851–57, JMJ to Hawkins, 26 December 1856. Also in the same archive, Calcutta Letters Received, vol. 3 (CLR 14), JMJ to Hawkins, Hissar, 17 March 1854: ‘Nor have we been disappointed of our hope of forming a class from the Government College. I have seven boys who read the Bible in English and Bacon’s essays on alternate evenings. These lads are with one exception Hindoo. The Musalmans are too bigoted to allow their boys to read English. They have read some of the Christian books in the Govt College library and seem well disposed towards Christianity. They propose some of the most obvious infidels to our own Holy Religion, but apparently without attaching much weight to them: they generally admit the force of my answers. I am very favourably impressed by the intelligence of these young men. I foresee that in their station they will be valuable allies to us.’
57. Jennings Papers, Copies of Letters by the Revd Midgeley Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi 1851–57, JMJ to Hawkins, 15 July 1852.
58. General Report on Public Instruction 1852–3, quoted in Powell, Muslims and Missionaries.
59. See the essay on Azurda by Swapna Liddle Sahbai in Pernau, Delhi College.
60. Nizami, Madrasahs, p. 173.
61. Leupolt, Recollections, p. 33, cited in Nizami, Madrasahs, p. 207.
62. Aziz Ahmed, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, Oxford, 1964, pp. 201, 210.
63. Nizami, Islamization and Social Adjustment, p. 11.
64. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, 1860–1900, Princeton, NJ, 1982, p. 48.
65. Nizami, Madrasahs, pp. 144–5.
66. Shah Waliullah was in fact a Sufi himself, but of the hard-line Naqshbandiya silsilah (lit. chain – line of sheiks leading a Sufi Brotherhood) which opposed most of the devotional practices of the Chishtias, such as the veneration of saints and the playing of devotional music or qawwalis at Sufi shrines. Just to add to the complexity, it seems Shah Abdul Aziz was actually rather fond of music.
67. NAI, Foreign, Foreign Dept Misc., Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 17 April 1852.
68. Percival Spear, The Twilight of the Moghuls, Cambridge, 1951 p. 74. Also Aslam Parvez, Bahadur Shah Zafar, p. 242.
69. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 14 June 1857.
70. Major Archer, Tours in Upper India, London, 1833, vol. 1, p. 113.
71. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Sunday, 1 August 1852.
72. Parvez, Bahadur Shah Zafar, p. 242.
73. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Tuesday, 16 August 1853.
74. Ibid., entries for 12 January 1851, 29 July 1853 and 1 August 1853.
75. Ibid., entries for 24 April 1851, 4 September 1852, 23 August 1853 and 31 December 1853.
76. Harbans Mukhia, ‘Celebration of Failure as Dissent in Urdu Ghazal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1999, pp. 861–81.
77. Ibid., p. 879.
78. Ralph Russell, Hidden in the Lute: An Anthology of Two Centuries of Urdu Literature, New Delhi, 1995, p. 150.
79. Ralph Russell (ed.), Ghalib: The Poet and His Age, London, 1975, p. 81.
80. Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Gha
zals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 202.
81. Pavan K. Varma, Ghalib: The Man, the Times, New Delhi, 1989, p. 51.
82. This is well argued in Nizami, Madrasahs, p. 163.
83. C. F. Andrews, Zakaullah of Delhi, Cambridge, 1929, pp. 13–18; David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India, Princeton, NJ, 1978, p. 51. See also Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India, New Delhi, 2005.
84. Parvez, Bahadur Shah Zafar, p. 50.
85. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence. For astrologers, see, for example, entry for Tuesday, 23 August 1853 when BSZ gives a cow to the poor on the advice of his astrologers.
86. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Saturday, 6 March 1852.
87. Ibid., entries for 9, 11, 17, 18 October 1853. On the 18th ‘HM sat himself on the silver chair in the DIK and inspected the Royal Stud which had been coloured for the Dusserah festival. The darogah of the King’s falconry placed a hawk on HM’s hand and the hunters let loose some birds over HM’s head. The King bestowed on them the usual khilluts and accepted the nuzzers presented by his Hindu officers – in all Rs 43.’
88. Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires 1803–1931, New Delhi, 1981, p. 10.
89. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Tuesday, 1 November 1853.
90. Ibid., entry for Friday, 28 October 1853.
91. Farhatullah Baig, Phulwalon ki Sair. I would like to thank Azra Kidwai for bringing this text to my attention and providing me with her translation of it.
92. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 20 September 1852.
93. Ibid., entry for 21 September 1852.
94. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, reprint edition introduced by Francis Robinson, Karachi, 2000, p. 9.
95. Zafar personally helped carry the taziyas in procession; he also sent donations and alam standards to Shia imambaras across India. For Zafar attending marsiyas, see NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Wednesday, 5 October 1853. For sending of offering to imambaras elsewhere, see entry for Friday, 7 October 1853: ‘HM sent for Mirza Noorooddeen and having fastened up in a case several standards of silver and copper, entrusted them to him with orders for his immediate departure for Lucknow by dak to place the said standards as offerings from HM at the shrine of Shah Abbas.’ There is a long description of Muharram celebrations in the Red Fort in Munshi Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir, Yani sehr e-Delhi ke do akhiri badshahon ka tareeq i-maashrat (The Last Convivial Gathering – the Mode of Life of the Last Two Kings of Delhi), Lahore, 1965, ch. 7. Zafar asked Ghalib to defend him from this charge. For irate ‘ulama see Ralph Russell, Ghalib – Life and Letters, Oxford, 1964, p. 99.
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