In 1641 another Frenchman, the Parisian jeweller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, visited the legendary diamond market at Golconda fort. Tavernier watched as the sons of merchants, some as young as 10, conducted the trade while seated under the large trees in the middle of the marketplace:
Each has his diamond weights in a little pouch hanging at one side, and at the other side a purse attached to his girdle, and containing, in some cases, as many as six hundred gold pagodas. There they sit and wait until someone comes to sell them diamonds, it may be from the vicinity, or from some other mine. When anyone comes with something for them he places it in the hands of the eldest of the boys, who is, as it were, the chief of the band. He looks at it, and hands it to the one next him, and so it passes from hand to hand till it returns to the first, not a word being spoken by any of them; the eldest boy then asks the price, in order to make a bargain, if possible, and if he happens to buy it too dear he has to take it on his own account.8
Tavernier also left vivid accounts of the techniques used to mine the diamonds. Before every new dig at Kollur, the miners would prostrate themselves three times over a statue of a Hindu god, take a ritual bath and partake of a feast prepared by their employer ‘in order to give them courage and induce them to acquit themselves faithfully’. After excavating to a depth of ‘10, 12 or 14 feet’ the earth would be washed two or three times and then left in the sun to dry. After winnowing the fine earth, the coarse matter left behind would be spread out on the ground and then pummelled with huge pestles made of wood. The earth would be winnowed again and then examined for traces of diamonds. Any stone weighing over 10 to 13 carats became the property of the ruler and anyone found stealing a stone would be severely punished.9
Though crude, the techniques produced a steady stream of diamonds and other precious stones that laid the basis for the wealth of the Qutb Shahi and Asaf Jahi dynasties. Augmented by spoils of war and the gifts bestowed on them by the Mughal Emperor, the treasuries handed down from one Nizam to the next grew to become the most valuable depository of jewellery in the world. As the Nizams eclipsed the Mughals in terms of buying power, gem merchants from as far away as Europe swarmed into Hyderabad to offer its rulers South African diamonds, Burmese rubies, Basra pearls and emeralds that were said to have belonged to Czar Nicholas of Russia. The Mughal tradition of expressing loyalty to a ruler by the giving of nazars, which ranged from a few gold coins up to entire palaces, boosted their coffers even further. The practice was perfected by the Sixth Nizam, Mahboob Ali Khan, who merely had to express a liking for a particular woman or piece of property for it to become his. The Falaknuma and King Kothi palaces now in Jah’s possession were ‘gifted’ by their owners to Mahboob Ali Khan without any form of reimbursement.
In the early 1990s the halcyon days of dressing up in silk robes with ropes of pearls and buttons made of diamonds while peasants toiled on feudal estates were long gone. With Murchison House Station running at a loss and Jah flatly refusing every plan put forward by his financial advisors to invest money in such things as shares or bonds, offloading his movable assets was his only source of income. Hyderabad’s heritage was being sold to Saudi sheikhs, Hollywood actresses and Bond Street jewellers, or consigned in lots to Swiss auction houses to pay the wages of his roustabouts in Kalbarri and penthouse suites at the Metropole in Geneva. The old nawabs at the Nizam Club’s teak-lined bar swapped stories of plane-loads of jewellery leaving from Begumpet Airport. Staff at the Falaknuma reported seeing trucks being loaded with antiques in the dead of night. Hundreds of empty silk-lined trays once containing necklaces, bracelets, turban ornaments and rings cluttered the long corridors of Chowmahalla.
By the mid-1990s the only significant collection of Nizam jewellery that Jah had yet to lay his hands on was stored in a safe-deposit box at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Bombay’s Fort district. Thrown haphazardly together in cheap cardboard containers was perhaps the most valuable single collection of jewellery in the world. Acquired over the course of three centuries and seven generations, the collection included 25,000 diamonds, 2000 emeralds and Basra pearls the size of quail eggs. The single most valuable piece was the 184-carat Jacob diamond. The fifth-largest in the world, it had not been seen in public for 80 years after the Sixth Nizam, Mahboob Ali Pasha, stuffed it into a drawer believing it had brought him bad luck. A set of 22 Colombian emeralds weighing in at 413 carats was so flawless and unmatched that no jeweller had the courage to set them. One necklace comprised no fewer than 226 diamonds weighing more than 150 carats. Osman Ali Khan used to handle his baubles as if they were marbles, wrote Karaka. Most of the 173 items in the Bombay bank vault were in a state of disrepair. Before the jewels were finally put on display in 2001 it would take a team of jewellers a week to restring just one pearl necklace.
Acting out of what he said was ‘the natural love and affection which the Settler bears towards his relatives’, Osman Ali Khan had set aside the best pieces in his treasury and divided them among three separate trusts: the H. E. H. The Nizam’s Jewellery Trust, the H. E. H. The Nizam’s Supplemental Jewellery Trust and the H. E. H. Jewellery for Family Trust.10 He also laid down complicated instructions for what could be done with the jewels, setting some aside for ceremonial purposes while others were to be given to Mukarram Jah and his brother Muffakham Jah at the time of their marriages. Mukarram Jah, as ‘the person who shall have last held the title of the Nizam of Hyderabad’ was also entitled to 22 items set aside as state regalia for ‘any special ceremonial or festive occasion’. The remaining pieces of jewellery could only be sold after the death of Azam Jah.11
In attempting to cover any fate that might befall the ‘successor-in-title’, ‘remaining sons’, ‘remaining daughters’, ‘remaining grandchildren’, their ‘issues’ and their ‘remoter issues’, etc., the Trust Deed documents were incredibly detailed. But their complexity and the sheer number of living and potential beneficiaries became the source of a legal nightmare that would take more than 30 years of litigation to sort out, leaving Jah poorer and contributing to the loss of his Australian assets.
The trustees’ biggest mistake was their decision, following Azam Jah’s death in 1970, to give the Government of India the first option to purchase the jewellery left in the trusts. ‘Once the government got into the transaction, the inevitable happened,’ says Hyderabadi historian Omar Khalidi. ‘It did what governments do best: delay and procrastinate.’12
The trustees initially offered the government 89 pieces from the Jewellery Trust, 84 pieces from the Supplemental Jewellery Trust and 161 items from the Jewellery for Family Trust. Committee after government-appointed committee looked into whether or not to buy the pieces. The Archaeological Survey of India was brought in to determine which pieces were considered antiquities and therefore had to remain in India and which could be sold and taken abroad. Eventually, in early 1978, 37 pieces were selected for sale.
The interest was unprecedented. Between 6 and 9 March 1978, representatives of Bulgari of Rome, Jean Rosenthal of Paris, Harry Winston of New York and other leading jewellers from overseas came to Bombay to inspect the collection and make their bids. Referring to the Colombian emeralds, Herbert Rosenthal told India Today magazine: ‘As a judge of precious stones for over 50 years, I have never seen such wonderful emeralds. For their quality and their brightness the ensemble present in the sale is exquisite. Simply out of this world.’13 Bidders were required to make a US$26.3 million deposit before they could participate, making it the most expensive jewellery auction ever held.
Just before the auction was due to start, however, one of the beneficiaries, Moazzam Jah’s daughter, Fatima Fauzia, filed a case in the Hyderabad City Civil Court that the trustees were not in agreement on the sale and there was insufficient publicity to ensure the heirs got the best price. The money was needed, she argued, to raise cash for the heirs of the Nizam and pay off taxes that the government had levied on the Nizam’s wealth. One of the heirs, she told the court, was scraping a livin
g on a few rupees a day in the slums of Old Delhi. The case went to the Andhra Pradesh High Court, which dismissed Fauzia’s petition and in a bizarre decision granted permission to a Bangalore businessman, Peter Fernandez, to purchase the lot for 202 million rupees (A$17.7 million).
The decision caused a furore in India and abroad. Two Indian jewellery firms petitioned the Supreme Court to restrain the sale. A three-judge bench then took the unprecedented decision of directing that the jewellery be sold by open auction to be conducted in the premises of the Supreme Court itself on 20 September 1979. By now only two of the original prospective bidders remained, Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos and Dubai-based banker Abdul Wahab Galahari, who said he was acting for a client described only as a ‘fabulously wealthy sheikh of the United Arab Emirates’.14 Each man had paid a A$23 million deposit as a bid for the jewels, which were to be sold in a single lot. The Government of India gave permission for all 37 pieces to be exported from India.
The auction never took place. The government changed its mind and filed an eleventh-hour application seeking a stay on the auction on the grounds that the jewels were ‘art treasures’ and it was in the national interest that they not be taken out of the country. The Supreme Court rejected the government’s petition, but for Niarchos and Galahari it was the last straw. Demanding their deposits back, both bidders withdrew.
Jah had been watching the developments closely. He stood to gain around three-fifths of the proceeds from the sale of jewellery held in the trusts. His brother Muffakham was entitled to an eighth, with the remainder to be divided among a rapidly increasing number of other beneficiaries claiming to be descendants of the Seventh Nizam. For now, however, the fate of the jewels was placed once again in the hands of a government committee, this time headed by respected art historian Pupul Jayakar. Based on the committee’s recommendation a notification for the ‘compulsory acquisition’ of 173 items from the three jewellery trusts was issued. Muffakham challenged the notification in the Supreme Court and demanded the right to auction them to the highest bidder and export them if the successful bidder wished to do so.
As Muffakham’s petition languished in the courts, the Government of India set up yet another committee comprising eminent historians and jewellers, which recommended that the jewels should be acquired through a process of negotiation with the trustees. The man entrusted with the task of valuing the 173 pieces chosen by the committee was Jayant Chowlera. As a jeweller and valuer, Chowlera had impeccable credentials. His family had been in the business for three generations and he had personally valued the jewellery of the maharajahs of Jaipur, Gwalior, Mysore and Kashmir. ‘I have probably handled more jewellery in terms of value than anyone else in the world,’ Chowlera says with some justification.15
Chowlera valued the 173 pieces at 389 million rupees, but added that once a historical value was assigned to them, their worth would double or even triple. Even allowing for such a margin, however, Chowlera’s valuation was a fraction of the A$250 to A$300 million (6 to 7.7 billion rupees) that Sotheby’s and Christie’s were estimating the jewels would fetch on the open market.
With such a wide gap between what the Government of India might be willing to pay and what the trustees knew the jewels were really worth, the matter went for arbitration. Justice A. N. Sen was chosen as the sole arbitrator and in July 1991 made an award fixing a value of 2.25 billion rupees. The government was given eight weeks to make up its mind whether to purchase the jewels in part or in full. If it failed to do so, the trustees would be free to sell them. The government again procrastinated and filed a petition seeking a review of the award and the value set by Sen. The matter crept through the courts for another two years, during which time it was discovered that a typographical error had caused a 400-million-rupee blow-out in Sen’s original award. Finally, in July 1993, the government agreed to purchase the entire collection for 1.8 billion rupees in six staggered payments.
This time, however, it was the turn of the trustees to raise objections. They took issue with the payment being made in instalments and refused to hand over the jewellery until the money had been paid in full. On 20 October 1994 the Supreme Court instructed the government to pay the amount agreed to as a lump sum with interest calculated from the date of the original award in 1991. The deadline for the payment of the 2.18 billion rupees (A$87 million) was set for 31 December 1994. When the government pleaded that the money would not be available until the new year, an extension was granted until 16 January.
After 23 years of high drama mixed with farce, it appeared the final curtain was about to fall, with everything looking set for a smooth transfer. The tragicomedy of the Nizam’s jewels, however, had several more acts to go. As Chowlera and the government team arrived at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on 10 January, they were met by officers of the Income Tax Department from Hyderabad. The government representatives were told that prohibitory orders had been placed on the lockers housing the jewels and the orders would not be lifted until full payment of the trustees’ tax liabilities had been made. With only six days to go before the deadline expired and the government would lose its right to acquire the jewels, frantic negotiations ensued. An offer to pay the tax arrears as soon as the Government of India handed over its bank draft was rejected. Only when the trustees paid a 300-million-rupee deposit to the Tax Department was the handover allowed to proceed.
An India Today reporter who witnessed the ceremony said that a hush descended on the people crowded around the room of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank as the jewels were taken out of three steel trunks. ‘The unspeakable lustre and exquisite craftsmanship of the Asaf Jahi rubies, emeralds and diamonds commanded awe and admiration. As the item-by-item inspection began, Jayant Chowlera, the Government’s valuer, picked up the sparkling Jacob diamond and touched his forehead with it reverentially.’16
Twenty years later, seated in his small and sparsely decorated 700-rupee-a-month apartment, a block behind Bombay’s Chowpatty Beach, Chowlera remembers the day clearly. ‘Every time I handled the jewels I felt I was becoming one with the Goddess Lakshmi. It was such a beautiful collection.’ The most important thing was not what the government had paid for the collection, but the fact that it now belonged to the people of India. ‘Let it be a treasure, don’t calculate it in terms of what it could be worth.’17
Not all the beneficiaries, however, felt that way. Rather than settling all outstanding disputes over the inheritance of the late Nizam, the settlement reignited them. As the trustees began the cumbersome task of distributing the sale proceeds, hundreds of people claiming to be descendants of the late Nizam’s harem began devising ways of getting their hands on a share of the money. Under the terms of the Trust Deed, Jah was to receive 273 million rupees of the 2.18 billion rupees as the son of Azam Jah. A further 537 million rupees was to be paid to him as the legal heir of his uncle, aunt and paternal uncle. The 537-million-rupee bonus was built into the Trust Deed when it was drawn up in 1951. Still nurturing visions of his dynasty surviving for a few more generations, Osman Ali Khan wanted the money to be used by his ‘eldest male descendant’ to enable him ‘as the Head of the Family of the Settler to maintain the dignity of the House of Asaf Jah to which the Settler belongs and the status and position of various members of his family’.18
While there was no question that Jah was the eldest male descendant, none of his relatives seemed to have any faith in his ability to maintain the dignity of the House of Asaf Jah or protect the status and position of his relatives. In the 18 years that had elapsed since he had been made the Eighth Nizam, Jah had turned his back on Hyderabad, spending less and less time in the city. The legacy of the Asaf Jahi dynasty was in tatters. The palaces had been stripped of their valuables and squatters camped in their courtyards. Family heirlooms were turning up in Bombay antique shops and in the catalogues of Christie’s auctioneers. His relatives had turned against him and Hyderabad’s courts were crammed with cases filed by people claiming their share of h
is inheritance.
Now Jah’s eldest son, Azmat, and his daughter, Shekhyar, joined the queue. Declaring their father to be ‘mentally incompetent’ and incapable of managing his finances, they filed a case in the Supreme Court for a stay on his share of the proceeds from the jewellery sale.
CHAPTER 14
Losing It
AFTER BEING RULED BY Muslims for two and a half centuries, the people of Andhra Pradesh went to the other extreme in 1982, voting in an ex-movie star who had played avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu in Telegu-language movies. N. T. Rama Rao proved to be a better actor than a politician and was tossed out in the next election, but in 1994 he stormed back to power promising to introduce two-rupee-a-kilo rice and prohibition. Andhra Pradesh became known as a ‘dry state’. The number of deaths from illegally produced moonshine soared, as did the size of the black market in smuggled liquor. Meanwhile, the state exchequer went broke subsidising cheap rice while losing out on liquor excise.
Sadruddin Javeri was fond of Johnny Walker Black Label. Like everyone in Hyderabad with money and the right connections, he found ways of keeping the booze cabinet in his Banjara Hills home well stocked. It was August 1998. Javeri was agitated and needed something strong to settle his nerves. It had been another frustrating day trying to nail down the 500,000 rupees compensation the High Court had ordered after a botched police raid on his home in 1996 that he accused Jah’s coterie of instigating. ‘He ruined me in the five years that I worked for him. Now I just want to be left alone.’1 Four years later Javeri would be dead, the victim of a heart attack his wife Scheherazade attributes to the stress of trying to recover the money she claims Jah still owes them.
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