Last Nizam (9781742626109)

by Zubrzycki, John

  Mukarram’s parents also appear in photographic souvenirs published after the jubilee darbar, with Azam looking stiff and uncomfortable marshalling the state troops and Durrushehvar in a sari officiating at a Girl Guides ceremony. By now the couple were officially known as the Prince and Princess of Berar. In a bid to draw Hyderabad into the Chamber of Princes, the British conceded the nominal sovereignty of the Nizam over Berar. Under the deal made in 1933, the Nizam could fly his flag along with that of the British from public buildings, confer Hyderabadi titles on the inhabitants of Berar and have his name read in the khutba on Friday in mosques across the district. Essentially, Azam and his wife were vested with titles that had no territory attached to them. It was, as one wit pointed out later, similar to making Mountbatten Earl of Burma after Burma had ceased to be a colony of Britain. ‘It made no difference in the end, but gave a lot of pleasure.’24

  The jubilee celebrations coincided with the provincial elections of 1937. The passing of the Government of India Act two years earlier had paved the way for the provinces of British India to become self-governing and contained a provision for an Indian Federation on the condition that a substantial number of princes agreed to join. The election saw the Indian National Congress win a majority in all Hindu provinces and make inroads into Muslim areas. Although the princely states had stayed out of the elections because of the internal autonomy they enjoyed, the Congress victory filled many rulers with dread. The gradual devolution of power to the provinces by the British and the rise of the increasingly left-wing Congress had the potential to threaten their territorial integrity and their dynastic rights. Before the elections, Congress had paid little attention to the princely states, but now it realised that if it was to rule in its own right it needed popularly elected representatives from those states in the newly created federal legislature. The party’s leadership began branding princely rule as a corrupt anachronism and extended financial and organisational support to provincial offshoots in the states.

  In September 1938, plans were announced to establish a Congress Party in Hyderabad. Two days before its launch, the Nizam’s government banned the party on the grounds that it was ‘constituted with communal and subversive motives and would only retard the pace of legislative reforms in the state’.25 Undeterred, the Congress Provisional Committee dissolved itself and set up a Council of Action, which demanded responsible government under the auspices of the Nizam and fundamental rights for the people. In October 1938 it launched the first of a series of satyagrahas, a form of non-violent protest used so brilliantly by Mahatma Gandhi against the Raj. Again the government responded decisively, placing its leader Ramananda Tirtha in solitary confinement for 111 days and imprisoning dozens of others. The agitation, however, continued until July 1939 when the Nizam announced a comprehensive scheme of constitutional reform providing the creation of a unicameral Legislature composed of 85 members, 43 of whom would be elected. Electorates were based on economic interests, with separate seats for nobles, farmers and other occupations. Half the elected members were to be Hindus and half Muslims. Freedom of assembly was guaranteed and the press controls liberalised. Though the legislature had the power to initiate bills, the government still had the power to veto any measure passed by the Assembly. As for the Nizam, he was still regarded as ‘the source of law and justice’.26

  For the majority of princes a federation dominated by democratic forces that would entail a levelling down of their internal sovereignty was unacceptable. Hyderabad struck a harder bargain than most. The Nizam’s conditions for joining a federation included a ban on federal officials working in his state, the retention of his own currency and postal services and control of the railways. Above all he demanded a written guarantee that Britain would protect the ruling Asaf Jahi dynasty and that any forces used to implement this guarantee would always be composed of races not politically hostile to his government. The best Britain could offer was a vague statement in March 1939 that it would fulfil its treaty obligations ‘if it could’.27

  Britain’s refusal to give Hyderabad a defence guarantee and the Congress agitation killed off any prospect of the Nizam agreeing to federate. And a federation without the premier ranking Indian state appeared unthinkable.

  The outbreak of World War II provided some breathing space for the princes. The British subordinated their long-term visions for India to the necessity of retaining the support of their princely allies in their hour of need. Schemes for a federation were temporarily shelved.

  The war also intervened in the fate of five-year-old Mukarram. In October 1938, Hyderabad’s Director General of Revenue, R. M. Crofton, wrote that the prince’s education demanded special attention. ‘He is said to be a brilliantly clever boy, with a good deal of determination and courage.’28 Durrushehvar was in favour of sending her son to Eton while the Prime Minister Akbar Hydari favoured Winchester, but the Nizam was steadfastly opposed to any education abroad. ‘The question of schooling should be settled during the coming English tour,’ advised Crofton.29 But there was no ‘English tour’. As German troops advanced westwards towards France, Durrushehvar hastily made arrangements to leave Nice and bring Mukarram, his younger brother Muffakham and their governesses to India.

  To Durrushehvar’s despair Mukarram’s education was to follow the same pattern as his father’s, grandfather’s and greatgrandfather’s. A private school known as the Madrassa Aliya was set up within the grounds of the exclusive Jagirdars College. English and Indian tutors were appointed and several sons of Hyderabadi nobles were given places alongside the young prince.

  Unable to travel to Europe, her plans for educating her son thwarted by the war, Durrushehvar found the atmosphere in Hyderabad stifling. For all the cautious steps towards political and administrative reform undertaken in the last 50 years, palace life was still governed by layer upon layer of tradition, at the apex of which, only one step removed from God Himself, was the Nizam.

  ‘A strange pageant passes through his marble halls,’ wrote one visitor to the Nizam’s court. ‘Magistrates, philosophers, rich Marwaris of India who come to display their gorgeous fabrics and jewels, debauchees who fan themselves with peacock feathers, gourmands fattened by high living, the dreamy-eyed users of hashish, the effete, the supercilious, the curious, the coarse, the delicate, the pleasure loving and effeminate.’30

  The Nizam’s court also reverberated with the sound of poetry. Osman Ali Khan was an accomplished poet whose ‘perfumed ghazals’ were often written on scraps of paper at the rate of up to a dozen a day. Despite having a phalanx of wives, Osman Ali Khan portrayed himself as a love-ravaged hero whose ‘tortured heart’ beat against a breast blushing with ‘love’s wounds’. His output included an annual Christmas ode which was rendered into English by one of Hyderabad’s most noted poets, Nizamat Jung. Criticism of the couplets was unheard of. They could only be recited in gatherings officiated over by the President.

  In a nod to modernity, Osman Ali Khan had issued a ban on subjects making an adab (salutation) as he passed through the city. The practice of placing one’s head on the Nizam’s feet had also fallen into disuse. But in the confines of the court little else had changed. On the arrival of the Nizam, noblemen, courtiers and officials would arrange themselves according to rank. They would then bend low and make a dozen or more salutations reaching almost to the ground before saluting with scooping gestures in front of their mouths so as not to defile the air around their ruler as they stood upright. Before approaching the Nizam, a nobleman would place on the upturned palm of their right hand a gold coin on a silk handkerchief, and then, bowing deeply, present it to their ruler. Once this was done, the nobleman would return to his place, still bowing and without turning around because it was forbidden to turn one’s back on the Nizam. It was not unusual for the gold ashrafis to be washed with perfumed soap before a noble would touch them.

  Protocol was strictly observed. If a member of the Paigah nobility wanted to go to Poona for the races, he had to
seek the permission of the Nizam with the following plea in eloquent Persian: ‘After kissing the Threshold of Your Throne, it is humbly submitted to the Great and Holy Protector of the World, Shadow of God, Mighty Holder of Destinies, Full of Light and Most Elevated among Creatures, the Exalted, May God’s Shadow Never Grow Less, May God Protect Your Kingdom and Your Sultanate, Most Respectfully I beg to submit . . .’31

  Palace life was bound up in formality. Mukarram spoke to his grandfather directly on only two occasions. Once he was asked: ‘How is your mother?’, and another time the Nizam asked if he wanted more food. Otherwise his grandfather would ask through a chamberlain questions such as ‘How is my grandson doing at school?’, to which Mukarram would reply, indirectly: ‘My honoured grandfather, I did well in my term exams.’32

  Shortly after Mukarram’s tenth birthday, the Resident, Sir Arthur Lothian, sent a confidential telegram to the Viceroy’s secretary in Delhi warning that:

  . . . the question of his future education has necessarily to be taken up some day soon, as he is getting beyond the control of his mother and governess. The Prince of Berar takes little apparent personal interest in this matter, but the Princess is most anxious to see that her son is given a really good education, which she considers it will be impossible for him to obtain in Hyderabad in view of the atmosphere of adulation that would surround him there.33

  Durrushehvar’s first preference, for her son to be sent to Eton, received a cool reception in Delhi. ‘Even if there had been no war we doubt if it would have been wise to fall in with the Princess of Berar’s idea that the boy should go to Eton,’ the Political Department advised Lothian at the end of 1943. ‘Over-Anglicisation has its dangers too and what we feel here is that the early education of heirs-apparent should be in India with possibly a term at Oxford or Cambridge.’34

  The only options were leaving Mukarram at Madrassa Aliya or sending him to an English-style ‘public school’ outside Hyderabad. The choices were limited. Most Indian potentates sent their sons to one of six so-called ‘chiefs’ colleges’, the most famous of which was Mayo College in Ajmer. Established in the late nineteenth century the charter of the colleges was to provide ‘for the sons of the ruling classes such an education as will fit them for the discharge of their responsibilities to their subjects’.35 For Durrushehvar, however, attending one of these colleges would simply reinforce the princely culture she held in disdain.

  The other choice was the ‘Doon School’. Situated in the foothills of the Himalayas on the outskirts of the town of Dehra Dun, the school was the brainchild of S. R. Das, a Calcutta lawyer. Das attended an English grammar school in the 1890s and qualified as a barrister at the Middle Temple, before returning to India and eventually becoming a legal advisor to the Viceroy. Inspired by the English public-school system, Das was determined to open a school in India that would ‘develop in the course of a generation or two as an institution of incalculable value to the future of the educated classes’.36 What differentiated the school Das proposed from the chiefs’ colleges was his belief that it should promote the ideals of equality and freedom which in 1930s India would give it a decidedly nationalist tinge.

  Doon was indeed a ‘very different kind of place’, as Marjorie Ussher, governess to three wards of the Nizam, wrote in a letter to her family in England in 1943.

  No personal servants are allowed at all and the boys have to make their own beds and do lots of things for themselves. They take boys of all classes and all are treated exactly alike although they have several rulers’ sons there at present . . . The question of religion is not allowed to come between the boys at all – Hindu sleeps with Muslim – they eat at the same table.37

  This appealed to Durrushehvar, but not to the Nizam. When she finally convinced her husband to write to Osman Ali Khan urging him to give permission for Mukarram to be sent to Dehra Dun, the response was decidedly negative. On receiving the letter the Nizam remarked to his new Prime Minister, the Nawab of Chhatari, that ‘the Princess was a Turk and outsider, and did not know the traditions of his house’.38

  Durrushehvar, however, was not deterred. After a decade in Hyderabad, she knew how to get her way in the royal household and the Residency, particularly as far as her son’s upbringing was concerned. She knew that Mukarram was the Nizam’s favourite grandson and for all intents and purposes the heir apparent. Over the next 18 months she patiently chipped away at her father-in-law’s opposition to a western education for her son. In her determination to succeed, Durrushehvar never shied at twisting the arm of the Resident and even the Viceroy to achieve her goals.

  By early 1944 Durrushehvar’s perseverance was beginning to pay off. The Nizam gave way to the proposal to send both Jah and his younger brother to Doon School, but only on the condition that they would be day scholars and their religious training would be looked after in their residence by a special teacher of Islam. But in order not to be seen to be bowing to his daughter-in-law, Osman Ali Khan wrote to Lothian stating that Durrushehvar’s ‘insistence’ was ‘reasonable as the health of the boy is not strong and he has to be kept on a special diet. His physique is not such as to be able to withstand the strain of the very exacting daily routine of the school.’39

  The health issue was a red herring as Jah was extremely strong for his age. He could ride horses as well as any of his instructors, had developed a passion for cars and anything mechanical or that involved using his hands. He was a reasonable shot and had accompanied his father on hunting expeditions. The only thing he was not particularly good at was his schoolwork.

  Having won over the Nizam, Durrushehvar convinced Lothian to send a telegram to Delhi saying that ‘everything should be done to get the Prince of Berar’s eldest son to the Doon School (even as day boy) accompanied by a Muslim co-guardian. We do not think the acceptance of this proposal need create an awkward precedence. Hyderabad is in a class by itself.’40 Hyderabad’s special status, however, cut no ice with the Doon School’s formidable headmaster Arthur Foot. A former student of Winchester College and a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge universities, Foot had been the science master at Eton when he was recruited to become Doon’s first headmaster in 1935. Foot was also a Fabian with strong views on ‘civil society, its aesthetic principles and the rules and ceremonies of its functioning’. As far as he was concerned ‘all boys, once they are in our school, must have similar treatment irrespective of their social position’.41

  Lothian now advised the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, to write directly to the Nizam asking him that the boy be allowed in as an ordinary boarder. On 29 May 1944 Wavell did just that, telling the Nizam that in his opinion, ‘the governors are right in maintaining a strict attitude in this matter, and in insisting that the special character of the Doon School be preserved. If, therefore, Your Exalted Highness’s grandson is to go to the Doon school he must go as a boarder.’42 The Nizam knew he couldn’t defy Wavell but in order to save face he waited almost two months before informing Lothian that he agreed with the Viceroy’s suggestion. The only issue outstanding was the question of a maulvi (religious tutor) accompanying Jah to Dehra Dun. On this issue, Foot refused to compromise, writing to the Viceroy’s office that ‘we do not allow any doctrinal teaching of any particular religion’.43

  Durrushehvar knew the Nizam would oppose a maulvi not accompanying her son. With less than a month to go before the start of school in September she wrote to Lothian begging him not to tell the Nizam that Foot had not allowed a maulvi at his school. ‘Please do your utmost to assist in this matter, as it would be a calamity for Hyderabad if the arrangement to get the boy educated outside the state fell through at this stage owing to a hitch over this minor point.’44

  Finally, in early September, Durrushehvar and her two sons boarded a special train in Hyderabad which took them to Delhi, and then changed for the Dehra Dun service. For a highly pampered prince like Mukarram, Doon School was a boot camp. The daily routine started with a rising bell, and continued with exercises, breakfast,
assembly, classes, lunch, rest period, sports, extracurricular activities, bathing time, evening meal, study time and finally sleeping. It quickly became apparent to the young Jah that his status no longer counted. The list of morning prayers read out at assembly included one beseeching the ‘Lord of all nations’ to grant that ‘in this our nation, there may be none, high or low, whatever his race or caste, who is bound by the shackles of ancient contempt, and barred from his right of free manhood’.45

  Durrushehvar was determined that her son stick to the rules and receive no special treatment, but she also took the precaution of renting a house in Dehra Dun in case he had difficulties settling in. Foot reported that the princess was ‘a great addition to the rather provincial society of Dehra Dun and we all got on very well with her’. But he was not impressed with Jah’s performance in his entrance test which showed that ‘even if he understood a sum, he had always been accustomed to have a tutor to do the tedious business of working it out’.46

  Habeeb Jung, Mukarram’s prefect at Doon School, remembers how he hated the routine. ‘He was too pampered, spoon fed and used to sycophants. I used to call him knock-knees. I allowed him to keep his tuck and his comics, strictly forbidden, under his mattress. He couldn’t stand team games. Anything where he was an individual he excelled at, gym, diving, he was superb at fencing, but when it came hockey he wouldn’t play.’ Foot was a socialist in every sense, Habeeb Jung explains. ‘Boys were not registered according to any titles. Whether you were the son of the Maharajah of Jaipur, or Gwalior, or Kashmir, you were called by your first name. He was preparing us for independence, when we were going to get a boot up the you-know-where. That was good. Nonetheless, the Doon School at the time also produced the biggest snobs in India.’47