Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  It was unfortunate, and indeed strange, that Wajid ‘Ali Shah was not more interested in the collections made by his ancestors. It was the librarians’ job to make sure that the number of books remained constant, and so they were counted at intervals, but not catalogued. Sprenger found that many valuable books had been extracted and replaced by worthless ones. He learned of a librarian who had stolen books worth 1,100 rupees and sold them to pay for his daughter’s wedding.21 Elliot urged Sprenger to work as quickly as possible, because the Court of Directors is ‘anxious to see the result of your labors’.22 By March 1851 the first volume of what was to be a five-volume catalogue was ready for publication, listing about 10,000 volumes. (The expense of publication, which Sprenger had grossly underestimated, meant that the Court of Directors would not pay for the remaining four volumes.) Today Sprenger’s catalogue is all that remains of the nawabi libraries. A contemporary report from 1857 describes ‘thousands’ of volumes from the royal library that were either burned or thrown into the river during looting by rebel Indian soldiers, long before the British started their own looting in 1858.23

  Quite apart from Elliot’s personal desire to see what the royal libraries contained, there is the calculated assumption, indeed the certainty, that before too long their contents would be added to the treasures of the East India Company. Sprenger told Elliot in September 1848 that he saw his role as preserving ‘a sketch of the literature, libraries, learning and educational systems of the Rulers of India to whom the British government has succeeded’.24 This episode, minor in the scale of tragedy that would overwhelm Wajid ‘Ali Shah, but nonetheless significant, demonstrates that the king’s fate was written from the moment he took the throne, if not before. Not only had he been damned by the Company when still heir apparent, he had been threatened and lectured at by the Resident and governor general before he had completed a year’s reign. His attempts at reforming the collection of land revenue, the very basis on which Awadh functioned, were scornfully dismissed. It was almost as if the Company willed him to fail. No wonder he took comfort in those areas that he could still control: the grand theatrical extravaganzas, the fairy palaces, the endless supply of young women and the melancholy delight of poetry.

  On 11 January 1849 Major General Sir William Sleeman took over the post of Resident at the Court of Lucknow. Although he had wished to retire from the Company’s service, being sixty-one at the time of his appointment and not in good health, Sleeman was considered too valuable a political officer to let go. Lucknow was to be his last posting: a well-paid, prestigious end to his remarkable career. Unlike his predecessor, Sleeman had a number of advantages: he was fluent in Urdu and Persian and so able to converse directly with the king and, just as importantly, able to pick up information from palace staff, courtiers and the man in the street. He had a formidable literary reputation. His first published work was an examination of tax collecting in India, published in 1829, and this had been followed by a number of books, including the popular Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (1844). His work in suppressing thuggee in Upper and Central India in the 1830s led not only to his accounts detailing how this was achieved, and the peculiar, coded language of the murderers, but had also given him the nickname of Thuggee Sleeman. His article in 1843 for the new natural history journal The Zoologist explored the stories of so-called wolf-children, raised in the dens of wolves.

  Sleeman had joined the Bengal Army as an ensign in 1809 and arrived in Calcutta that year as a young man of twenty. He had been stationed in Awadh in 1818 and 1819, and claimed to have seen much of the correspondence between the then Resident, Colonel Baillie, and the Army commandant. He moved from military to civil service and had been Resident at Gwalior for six years before the Lucknow appointment. During the short interregnum after Richmond left Lucknow and before Sleeman took over, Captain Robert Bird was acting Resident. He was already Assistant Resident and was sufficiently trusted by Wajid ‘Ali Shah to act as emissary on various missions. He was referred to at one point as the nawab’s wakil, or agent. After Sleeman’s arrival Bird reverted to assistant again and the two men worked together until the fatal falling out which saw Bird banished to Ajmer. After this there was clearly no love lost between the two, so Bird’s statements on Sleeman have to be read with this in mind. Nevertheless, something rings true about his comments on the latter’s mission to Awadh. ‘Colonel Sleeman was appointed Resident in 1849, and his appointment sealed the doom of Oude and of its dynasty. Colonel Sleeman was the emissary of a foregone conclusion. He affected to inspect and make a report, but the character of his report was determined for him before he entered Oude. He professed to examine, but he was under orders to sentence; he pretended to try, but he was instructed simply to condemn.’25

  In appointing Sleeman to Awadh, Dalhousie told him that the king had been given a specific deadline by which to improve his administration, and if his government was not ‘very materially amended before two years had expired’, the British government would take over and rule on his behalf. He added, ‘There seems little reason to expect or to hope that in October 1849 any amendment whatever will have been effected. The reconstruction of the internal administration of a great, rich and oppressed country, is a noble as well as an arduous task for the officer to whom the duty is intrusted, and the Government have recourse to one of the best of its servants for that purpose.’ There was more flattery to this effect, and Dalhousie referred ‘to the great changes which, in all probability, will take place’.26

  William Sleeman was too intelligent a man to act as a mere stooge in carrying out Dalhousie’s intentions. What he envisaged was that he would shortly be in charge of the complex but rewarding job of bringing Awadh into the Company’s fold, of introducing an ‘English system’ of land reform throughout the entire kingdom, of curbing corruption, supporting the peasants and mollifying Wajid ‘Ali Shah, who would become a mere nominal ruler. After all, Gwalior, Sleeman’s former posting, had been successfully subsumed into British India, while maintaining the ruling Shinde (Scindia) dynasty. But the threatened deadline of October 1849 passed without any action being taken. Dalhousie had hesitated. After the successful annexation by the Company of the Punjab six months earlier, it might seem a little greedy to add Awadh in the same year. A new, provisional deadline of December 1851 was promised.27 But as the months passed, Dalhousie felt there was no necessity for immediate action. ‘Before very long’, he confided to his diary in January 1852, ‘it seems certain that the King himself must solicit our interposition, in which case we shall act more authoritatively, and with less caviling than if we should take the initiative.’28 He thought that Sir Frederick Currie, then a member of the governing council at Calcutta, would oppose the move. Later the Second Anglo-Burmese War would become a further excuse for postponing any solution to the problem. Sleeman thus found himself in the uncomfortable position of Resident to the Court of Awadh, when he might have expected to be running the kingdom by the end of 1849.

  On his arrival in Lucknow Sleeman learned that the king was indisposed, and by the end of January he reported to Henry Elliot that Wajid ‘Ali Shah ‘continues very ill, but no danger seems to be apprehended. The disease is accompanied by very untoward secondary symptoms, which are likely ultimately to destroy him, and render his life miserable while it lasts. How much of these symptoms he derives from his birth, and how much from his own excesses, is uncertain.’29 From the Resident’s guarded comments it seems that the king was suffering from gonorrhoea, which he had admitted catching from Qaisar Begam, one of his wives.30 This illness could produce secondary symptoms, including pelvic inflammation and pain in the joints. It was treated at the time by silver nitrate, which has disinfective properties. By March Wajid ‘Ali Shah was still unwell, although Sleeman reported that ‘under skilful treatment he might soon get well; but the prescriptions of his best native physicians are little attended to, and he has not yet consented to consult an European doctor’.

  Unable to leave th
e palace for some months, Wajid ‘Ali Shah spent his convalescence writing a manual of government for ‘Ali Naqi Khan, to whom he had deputed the running of the kingdom during his illness. This document, entitled Dastur-i-Wajidi (or the Regulations of Wajid), was not printed until a quarter of a century later,31 and Sleeman was clearly not aware of it when he complained that ‘the King … is utterly unfit to have anything to do with the administration, since he has never taken, or shown any disposition to take any heed of what is done or suffered in the country’.32 The Regulations, sixty-six in number, show that, contrary to Sleeman’s statement, Wajid ‘Ali Shah had a very clear idea of what was going on in his kingdom.33 He knew that his soldiers stole livestock and goods from peasants in the countryside, and ordered them to stop on pain of punishment. Regular soldiers were to be disciplined for their bad behaviour during Holi, particularly the singing of lewd songs and the molestation of women. The king wanted an investigation into the prison population, with details of prisoners confined under his predecessors. He knew that illegal tolls were being levied on travellers, and ordered that ‘every effort should be made to secure public peace on the highways’. Sati, widow-burning, which had been outlawed in Company territories in 1832, was to be forbidden in Awadh too. The Rajput practice of female infanticide was to cease and notices be posted to this effect on public highways. Private houses in Lucknow were not to remain empty, and if they were rented out, the owner was to take a deposit in advance. There was much sensible advice in this wish list, covering every aspect of urban and rural administration, and had these regulations been put into practice Awadh would have become a model kingdom and attracted praise, not condemnation, from the Company.

  Sleeman spent his first year in office drawing up a plan of action, compiling tables of revenue and expenditure and wading ‘through vast volumes of correspondence to ascertain what has been said and done … and to become acquainted with the people in my new field, European and native’.34 By 20 March 1849, with Wajid ‘Ali Shah still on his sickbed, Sleeman was already suggesting that a new treaty should be drawn up ‘in case of the King’s decease’. He suggested a regency until the heir apparent came of age, which would consist of two or three honest nobles, answerable to the Resident. Janab-i ‘Aliyyah was to be consulted on nominating members, though no women were allowed to serve on it.35 The idea of a regency was to be the theme that ran through all of Sleeman’s correspondence as Resident. There were variations as time progressed. The king stubbornly refused to die, indeed, ‘he is said to be better’, Sleeman noted, adding hopefully ‘but the hot season may be too much for him’.36 An early check to these plans came with the sad news of the death from smallpox of the heir apparent, the ten-year-old Prince Falak Qadr. ‘I have seldom seen a more pleasing or promising youth, and certainly never one in whom after so short an acquaintance I felt a warmer interest’, Sleeman reported. ‘I tried all in my power to prevail upon his mother and father to allow the young Prince to be treated by the Residency Surgeon, but in vain.’37 The Resident did get permission for the two Residency doctors, Leckie and Bell, to visit the prince, but they were not allowed to treat him.

  By the beginning of May the king was well enough to meet the two British doctors and Robert Bird at the palace. ‘They found him much better in bodily health than they expected, and in the course of conversation found no signs of any confusion of ideas, and are of opinion that in the hands of a skilful European physician he would soon be quite well. His Majesty is hypochondriac, and frequently under the influence of the absurd delusions common to such persons; but he is quite sane during long intervals, and on all subjects not connected with such delusions.’38 The idea of a regency was dropped and Sleeman now suggested ‘the formation of a Board, consisting of president and three members nominated by the King, subject to the conformation of the Governor General’. One board member would deal with land revenue and the police, the second would have the judicial courts and control of the royal household, while the third would be in charge of the army. Sikandar Hashmat was suggested as a possible candidate—‘a most worthy and respectable, though not able man’, was Sleeman’s judgement. He added blithely, ‘The King will probably object to members of his family forming the Board, but I dare say I shall be able to persuade him of the advantage of it.’ 39

  Sleeman has been criticised by a modern historian for his obsessional behaviour, verging in his last years on paranoia.40 Certainly he exhibited symptoms that indicate things were not right during the Lucknow period. Irrational dislikes of Britons living there, particularly the ‘three Bs’ as he called them—John Rose Brandon, Dr Adam Bell and Captain Robert Bird—took up a large amount of his time and correspondence. While Brandon did have an almost unlimited capacity for annoying British Residents, the doctor and the captain did not. Sleeman thought the three had ganged up on him, and all of them left Lucknow during his tenure. He believed, with little evidence, that he had been the victim of an attempted assassination at the Residency. But the idea that his constant complaints about Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s behaviour were also irrational has not previously been explored, because so many other people were there to snipe at the king too. When Wajid ‘Ali Shah sent some items from Awadh to be shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Dalhousie commented outrageously that ‘the wretch at Lucknow, who sent his crown to the exhibition, would have done his people and us a good service if he had sent his head in it, and he never would have missed it’.41 The fact that this was a private letter, and that Dalhousie put a fifty-year restriction on the publication of his letters, does not detract from the venom behind this remark.

  With Wajid ‘Ali Shah being damned even before he became king, and damned afterwards, it was thus assumed that Sleeman had got it right when he described him as ‘a crazy imbecile’,42 ‘utterly unfit to have anything to do with the administration’,43 ‘no longer in a sound state of mind’44 and a man who spent all his time with singers, eunuchs and women. But Sleeman constantly misinterpreted the information he was getting from his spies at Court, who were euphemistically described as newswrit-ers. A palace mush‘aira (a gathering of poets) was described in sarcastic tones, with the remark that it did not finish until the early hours of the morning, which is of course entirely normal for this kind of event. Then the king was criticised for taking part in a Muharram procession, which most rational people, certainly in India, would have seen as an act of faith. There was a gulf of misunderstanding between Sleeman and the king, which could not be solved by inviting the Resident to further events, like the Basant celebrations. Soon after his arrival in Lucknow Sleeman had the misfortune to break a bone in his thigh, in a fall from his horse, and the subsequent pain and medication, which would have been opiate-based, cannot have improved his outlook or his judgement.

  An early public rift between Resident and king came with the news that Wajid ‘Ali Shah had abruptly closed down the Taronwali Kothi, or Star House, the local name given to the Lucknow Observatory. It had been sanctioned in 1832 and building had begun that year, but it was not functional until 1841, when Colonel Richard Wilcox was appointed as astronomer. The project had been strongly supported by the Company as one of a number of meteorological observatories established in India. The fact that the nawabs bore all the expenditure, including the importation of valuable astronomical equipment from England and the staff’s wages, made it even more attractive. Colonel Wilcox, who had accompanied the king to Cawnpore in 1847, had died there the following year, and it became clear to Sleeman that the king was disinclined to appoint a successor. Work had continued at the Observatory under Wilcox’s two principal assistants, Kala Churn and Ganga Persaud, but when Sleeman raised the question of pensions for the two men, the establishment was closed down on 8 August 1849 and everyone working there was sacked. Cost was cited as the reason for its closure, an excuse which was scornfully dismissed by Sleeman in a letter to Henry Elliot: ‘He [the king] has lavished every month more than enough to support a dozen such observatories among persons who
had no claim whatever upon his bounty … there is strong desire on the part of the court generally to exclude European Gentlemen of respectability from employment under the King.’45 It was also learned that ‘Ali Naqi Khan had his eye on the building and its gardens which ‘are among the best, and best situated at Lucknow’. After Sleeman applied pressure and told Dalhousie what had happened, the king changed his mind and the staff received their pensions.

  At the same time as the Observatory was shut, the king ordered the closure of all private and lithographic presses in Lucknow, because Kamal-ud-Din Haider, who had been employed by Colonel Wilcox, had written an amusing biography of Wajid ‘Ali Shah called Qaisar-ut-Tawarikh. The author had unwisely presented a copy to the king ‘to flatter his own vanity’, but had ‘forgot to flatter the King’.46 He had also related the story of the patent leather shoes, which the king had been told to wear on meeting the governor general, an indication both of how seemingly private matters quickly got into public circulation, and Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s own sensitivities on the subject.

  On 1 December 1849 Sleeman set off on a long-planned tour of Awadh. Having familiarised himself with the urban milieu, he needed to visit the rural areas in order to present a complete picture of the kingdom to Dalhousie. Not surprisingly he did not have much positive to say about life outside Lucknow. His diary, written up daily, was published posthumously in 1858 as A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude 1849–1850; it is a readable book, but one that owes more to Urdu or Persian histories of India than Sleeman would have cared to admit. It is discursive, breaking off into long, rambling stories about the people he met and places he visited. Correspondence that he had found in the Residency archives is quoted at length, as well as extracts from books by visitors to Lucknow, like Fanny Parks. All this considerably slows down the narrative, so that it becomes less of a diary and more of a scrapbook. On his return to Lucknow at the beginning of March 1850, Sleeman bought a small printing press which he set up in the Residency and printed off a few copies of A Journey, one of which went to Dalhousie and one to the Court of Directors in London. Sleeman admitted to the deputy chairman of the Court, Sir James Hogg, that ‘the untoward war with Burmah prevents our present Governor-General from doing what he and I believe the Honorable Court both wish’.47