Last Nizam (9781742626109)

by Zubrzycki, John

  On 15 June 1948, just six days before Mountbatten was to leave India for good, the Nehru Government presented the Nizam with its final offer. The question of accession would be determined by a plebiscite and a responsible government would be introduced following the establishment of a Constituent Assembly elected on a 60 per cent non-Muslim basis with cabinet in the same ratio. India would have the power to override legislation passed by Assembly and Indian troops could be stationed within the state if India constitutionally declared a state of emergency.

  The Nizam rejected the deal. He wanted to determine the composition of the Constituent Assembly himself to give Muslims a greater role, and would not agree to India unilaterally sending in its own troops or overriding legislation. Realising there was now no turning back, Monckton sent a telegram to Mountbatten with the single word ‘Lost’. Referring to Monckton’s role in trying against all odds to save Hyderabad from the inevitable, Mountbatten would write later, ‘I often wonder whether that silly old Nizam had any idea what a superlative genius was conducting his business.’38

  By now it was clear that the Standstill Agreement would not last its full 12 months. Both sides were reporting increasing numbers of atrocities. Delhi claimed that Muslims were repressing Hindus while Hyderabad complained that India was fomenting trouble and waging an economic war. Churchill likened Nehru’s tone to ‘the sort of language which might have been used by Hitler before the devouring of Austria’.39 As for the Nizam, he was becoming putty in the hands of Razvi and his storm troops. Razakars were roaming through the cities terrorising Hindus and bringing Muslim refugees dislocated by Partition into the state in the hope of altering the demographics sufficiently to make Muslims a majority. Rumours spread that millions of Indian Muslims would rise up and Pakistan would declare war if India invaded Hyderabad. Mir Laik Ali made similar wild-sounding claims. ‘If the Union government takes any action against Hyderabad, 100,000 men are ready to join our army. We also have 100,000 bombers in South Arabia ready to bomb Bombay.’40

  Events moved quickly. By the end of August the Indian Army had almost surrounded Hyderabad and was ready to move once the order was given. Patel was demanding that the Nizam ‘accede or die’. Even the peace-loving Nehru warned: ‘If and when it is considered necessary we shall have military operations against Hyderabad.’41

  The trigger for the invasion, dubbed the Police Action to make it sound like a law and order operation, was the appeal to the United Nations on 21 August by Hyderabad’s external affairs representative, Zahir Ahmed, for the Security Council to mediate in the dispute. Ahmed’s letter referred in detail to India’s campaign of intimidation, threats of invasion and other breaches of the Standstill Agreement. The matter was included in the Security Council’s agenda for 16 September, but by then it was too late.

  After a final warning to Hyderabad that the government would take ‘whatever action they consider necessary’ to put down disorder in the state,42 Indian troops poured across the border at 4 a.m. on 13 September. India’s new governor, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, declared a state of emergency, saying that the country’s security was threatened by internal disturbance. Although the three-pronged attack by troops under the command of Lieutenant General Maharaj Rajendrasinghji had been expected for weeks, Hyderabad’s 25,000-strong army appeared to be totally unprepared. Its maps were outdated, and little if any of the arms and ammunition Cotton had transported were ever deployed. Thousands of Razakars using spears and stones tried to attack Indian Army tanks. In Karachi the invasion touched off demonstrations demanding that Pakistan declare war on India, but the death two days earlier of Jinnah rendered any kind of intervention impossible.

  A highly critical editorial in The Times denounced India’s ‘use of force against a weaker neighbour which resists its claims’.43 The New York Times said it was understandable that India viewed the existence of an ‘ancient hereditary monarchy within the limits of a new nation that is struggling hard for democracy’ as an anachronism, but it also believed that Hyderabad’s leaders had a good case for believing that ‘they can promote the welfare of their people more successfully outside the Dominion than within it’.44

  There would be little time to hammer out such arguments in editorials or world forums. On 17 September at 4.18 p.m., Laik Ali announced the Nizam’s capitulation in a radio address: ‘Early this morning the Cabinet felt that there was no point in sacrificing human blood against heavy odds.’ He urged that the change in the situation be accepted by Hyderabad’s 16 million inhabitants ‘with courage and tolerance’.45

  One of Cotton’s biographers, R. V. Jones, maintains that the Nizam was planning to flee to Egypt where arrangements had been made to accommodate him in one of King Farouk’s palaces in return for a 25 per cent cut of the £100 million he was bringing out of Hyderabad. According to Jones, the Nizam was saying a last prayer when the Indian Army took over his palace, preventing him from reaching the airport where one of Cotton’s planes, loaded with boxes crammed full of 100-rupee notes, was waiting to take off.46 Few Hyderabadis believe the Nizam would have fled, but several witnesses have vouched for the existence of the money boxes. What happened to the cash remains a mystery. As for Cotton, he would be charged with breaching air navigation regulations, fined £200 in London’s Bow Street Court and have his pilot’s licence cancelled for two years. The light sentence was said to have been a result of Churchill’s intervention.

  Though the Indian Government would later claim the Police Action had been almost bloodless, independent reports put the number of Muslims killed at anywhere between 20,000 and 200,000. Many died in the settling of old scores at the hands of Hindus, but the Indian Army was also accused of committing atrocities such as firing on unarmed civilians, rape, looting, and looking the other way while civilian reprisals took place. Months after the invasion, train travellers going from Hyderabad to Aurangabad reported seeing vultures feeding on corpses scattered in the fields.47

  Even if the number killed was at the lower end of the scale, the Police Action still ranks as the single largest bloodbath in India since Partition. At first Nehru denied any disorder, stating on All India Radio that ‘not a single communal incident occurred in the whole length and breadth of this country’. Privately he was alarmed by reports of the killing of Muslims so large in number ‘as to stagger the imagination’, and looting of property belonging to Muslims ‘on a tremendous scale’.48

  In the days following the formal surrender of Hyderabad’s forces, Razvi was imprisoned and Laik Ali put under house arrest. A reshuffle of the entire administration of the state was undertaken, resulting in Muslims losing their near monopoly of government jobs. Many members of Hyderabad’s intelligentsia moved to Pakistan. There were reports of forced conversion of Muslims and of mosques being turned into Hindu temples.

  But the Nizam and his family were left alone. His dreams of an independent Hyderabad shattered, his kingdom now occupied by Indian troops, his once proud army dissolved, Osman Ali Khan retired to his palace to contemplate his next move. Although he remained the nominal Head of State, real power now rested in the hands of the military governor, Major General J. N. Chaudhuri. On 6 December 1948 the Nizam issued a farman ordering the dissolution of the Hyderabad Legislative Assembly and called upon all officers and subjects of the state to assist in the preparation of electoral rolls for a new Constituent Assembly. Just under a year later he issued another farman declaring and directing that the Constitution of India should be the Constitution of the State of Hyderabad. For all intents and purposes Hyderabad became the 562nd princely state to accede to India. The Nizam’s Dominions were now a part of democratic India.

  More than half a century on, it is difficult to find a member of Hyderabad’s Muslim nobility who does not feel a sense of betrayal about the Police Action and the loss of independence. Mukarram Jah keeps a framed letter from King George VI written on 29 July 1948, in which he declares ‘that it is my earnest hope and prayer that a peaceful solution of the diffic
ulties which have arisen may be found’ as a reminder of British perfidy. He also keeps on his coffee table a copy of Lord Birkenhead’s biography of Walter Monckton, whom he considers to be one of the few people who remained loyal to Hyderabad’s cause to the very end.

  In the mid-1950s, while he was attending Cambridge, Jah remembers Monckton patting him on the shoulder at a party and saying: ‘We should never have done it, my boy.’ Around the same time he ran into Mountbatten at a function he was attending with his mother. With Durrushehvar’s steely gaze fixed upon him, the only words the mighty earl could find to mutter were: ‘Sorry, ma’am.’49

  CHAPTER 9

  The Faqir’s Curse

  JAH WAS NOT IN HYDERABAD to witness its humiliating defeat or to hear stories about the massacres that occurred in its aftermath. Just days before the Indian invasion, Durrushehvar with her two sons, their guardian and a medical advisor boarded a private Dakota, flew to Karachi and then boarded a commercial flight to London. ‘I felt like a Hungarian refugee,’ Jah later recalled.1

  In the autumn of 1948, Britain was still feeling the after-effects of war. Butter, eggs, cheese, meat and sugar were rationed. Durrushehvar and her sons, however, were hardly aware of the hardships the average Londoner was experiencing. The family moved into a suite at the exclusive Savoy Hotel, where they would live for the next two years. Acting on her own initiative, Durrushehvar enrolled Mukarram at Harrow and Muffakham at a prep school nearby. As far as she was concerned, returning to Hyderabad was out of the question and the education of the boys became her top priority. Osman Ali Khan did not see it that way and sent Durrushehvar a telegram demanding the return of his grandsons to India. Philip Mason described what happened next. ‘She was furious. She strode to and fro, flashing with emeralds. She looked magnificent.’ Showing the telegram to Mason, she cried: ‘Imagine the vulgarity of my in-laws. He says he will pay my bill at the Savoy if I bring the children back!’ As always, Durrushehvar refused to give in. She flew to Delhi, where she met with Nehru before confronting the Nizam. ‘She had her way,’ Mason wrote. ‘She was a gallant woman and I wish she had been an Empress before democracy became the fashion.’2

  Located on London’s outskirts, Harrow on the Hill was founded in 1572 under a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I granted to local farmer John Lyon. Over the centuries it grew to become the second most famous school in the English-speaking world. Carved on the wall of the Fourth Form Room, the original classroom, are the names of Lord Byron, Robert Peel and Winston Churchill. Other Old Harrovians whose names are etched into the tops of desks, the backs of chairs and on the wooden panelling of boarding houses include some of Britain’s most eminent statesmen, soldiers, writers, scientists and civic leaders. Harrow had been closely associated with empire-building, producing a steady stream of administrators, planters, merchants, soldiers, proconsuls, clergymen and lawyers who became the bedrock of British imperialism.3

  Durrushehvar chose Harrow over other public schools such as Eton because it had a stronger tradition of taking in students from Britain’s colonies. According to the school’s biographer Christopher Tyerman, Harrow had attracted the ‘numerous sons of African or Indian potentates striving to associate themselves with this nursery of upper-class Englishness, from relations of the Khedive of Egypt, the Sultan of Zanzibar, the King of Siam or Indian maharajahs to the clever, ambitious conformist son of the very rich Indian lawyer, Motilal Nehru’.4

  By far the largest number of Oriental potentates sending their sons to Harrow were Indian. Between 1890 and 1947 more than a dozen rajahs and maharajahs enrolled their heirs at Harrow, including three princes from the state of Kapurthala. The roll call of Indian royals contained such eminent personages as Rajah Maharajah Singh, who went on to become the Prime Minister of Kashmir, Prince Ajit Singhji of Morvi, Prince Jaishinghrao of Baroda and Prince Jagadipendra Narayan, whose father was the Maharajah of Cochin. When Jah arrived at Harrow, he was in the company of Prince Kumar Bhawani Singh and his brother Prince Kumar Jai Singh, the sons of the Maharajah of Jaipur, but Jah felt more at home with King Faisal of Iraq and his cousin King Hussein of Jordan. Jah formed long-lasting friendships with Faisal and Hussein, spending summers sailing and water-skiing with the two men on the Bosphorus after he graduated from Sandhurst.

  Jah’s name is carved on the wood-panelled wall of West Acre, one of the school’s 12 boarding houses, even though he never spent a night there. Durrushehvar was able to convince the Principal, Ralph Moore, to bend the rules and allow her son to be a day student, since his guardian, Hamid Beg, would be looking after him out of school hours. Moore had been only too happy to oblige. The school had been bombed during the war and enrolments had fallen to their lowest level in decades.

  As Jah sat down in the speech room for the first time, the portraits of Byron, Churchill, Jawaharlal Nehru and a score of other notables stared down at him. Harrow pupils were expected to conform to its upper-class, Anglocentric culture. The school was known for racism and its excessive snobbery, but what Jah disliked was the strict discipline, the emphasis on drama and singing and above all being forced to participate in organised sports. ‘They told me I had to stop any player coming through, but they didn’t say that the player had to be carrying a ball,’ Jah says of learning how to play Harrow Football, a cross between rugby and football played with a large leather ball. ‘So I tackled the first guy I saw running towards me and broke two of his ribs.’5

  Academically, Jah had a lot of catching up to do. No longer could he rely on a palace tutor completing a maths equation. He also had a tough guardian to contend with. Hamid Beg was a slightly stooping ex-colonel of the Hyderabad Army with a receding chin and a reputation for being a champion horse-rider. ‘My guardian was absolutely Edwardian in his attitude to life,’ says Jah. ‘It was this aspect that most influenced my upbringing.’ A bachelor, Beg took orders from no one except Durrushehvar and occasionally even overrode the Nizam. ‘He was the only man who stood up to grandfather,’ says Jah. ‘He was sacked twice on the same day and brought back twice.’ Durrushehvar instructed Beg to be tough on her son and he willingly implemented her brief. ‘If you don’t do this you’ll be walking the pavements of Hyderabad one day,’ he warned the young prince whenever he slipped in his estimation. ‘Up to the age of 21 you’ll do what I say, after that I’ll do what you say.’6

  As Jah adjusted to school at Harrow, India’s princes were struggling to come to terms with their new status. In independent and democratic India, the personal extravagances of the princely rulers could no longer be charged to the state, but had to be paid for out of their privy purses. As royal households scrambled to sell off unwanted assets, the price of a ceremonial elephant fell to 200 rupees. Dancing girls and court musicians who once entertained the royal darbars were suddenly unemployed. Palaces and guest houses were being turned over to state governments and converted into hotels or guest houses for visiting officials.

  Hyderabad was no exception. Towards the end of 1949, the city’s bazaars were suddenly flooded with antique furniture, chandeliers, old paintings and bric-a-brac.7 In the absence of savings, investments or cash, a nawab needing a bottle of scotch for the night would pawn off his belongings at throwaway prices to an Arab middleman known as a chaush. The trigger for the bear market had been the announcement in August 1949 that all jagirs in Hyderabad were to be taken over by the state. Nawabs and lesser nobles who had relied on the income of their vast estates, which covered almost a third of Hyderabad, were suddenly deprived of their main and often only source of wealth.

  Jah’s grandfather was also coming to terms with the harsh reality that after almost 230 years the Asaf Jahi dynasty’s independence had been forever extinguished. Nehru had wisely opted for a policy of magnanimity rather than oppression when considering how to treat the Nizam. A ‘farseeing and generous approach’ to Hyderabad, India’s first Prime Minister argued, could strengthen the country by reducing communal tension and giving greater security to minorities. ‘It woul
d undermine the policy which Pakistan continues to pursue against us and I think that it would improve our position in Kashmir. Abroad it would be a feather in our cap.’ As for the Nizam, he ‘continues to be the ruler of Hyderabad with all his old powers, but he cannot exercise these powers in view of the military situation that has arisen. Though in law and theory he is still the fountain of authority, in fact he is powerless and can only function within the limits we lay down.’8

  Those limits, laid out in a letter written on 1 February 1949 by the military governor of Hyderabad, Major General J. N. Chaudhuri, would have a crucial bearing not only on the status of the Nizam but also on the life of Mukarram Jah. The affairs of Hyderabad state, its ruler and the Asaf Jahi dynasty, Chaudhuri’s letter declared, would henceforth be determined by the people through a democratically elected Constituent Assembly. While promising to give every assistance to ‘His Exalted Highness’ in matters concerning his privy purse, status and titles, privileges and dignities, Chaudhuri stated that ‘as regards his successor, the Government of India will enter into fresh and fair agreements with him’.9 Midway through his first dreary English winter, Jah was blissfully ignorant of the agreements his grandfather was about to enter into that would change his life forever. All that concerned him was how to avoid being selected into Harrow’s football team.

  The full text of the agreement that Osman Ali Khan signed with the Government of India on 25 January 1950 has never been made public, but key elements were published by the Nizam’s financial advisor, Khan Bahadur Cooverji Taraporevala, in an official booklet titled Ruler to Rajpramukh (Ruler to Governor) a few years later. Under Article One the Nizam was to hand over his own feudal estates worth 25–30 million rupees in lieu of an annual compensation of 2.5 million rupees. The agreement also provided for an annual privy purse of 5 million rupees from 1 April 1950, free of all taxes for the rest of his life. Article Two guaranteed to the Nizam ‘the full ownership, use and enjoyment of all jewels, jewellery and ornaments, shares, securities and other private properties, movable as well as immovable belonging to him on the date of this agreement’.10