Sleeman pursued the idea of a Board of Management and claimed backing for it from the royal family itself.48 In a series of long, well-argued letters to the Court of Directors, he said he believed that a treaty of 1837 between the Company and the present king’s grandfather, Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, ‘gives our Government ample authority to take the whole administration on ourselves, in order to secure what we have often pledged to ourselves to secure to the people; but if we do this we must, in order to stand well with the rest of India, honestly and distinctly disclaim all interested motives, and appropriate the whole of the revenues for the benefit of the people and royal family of Oude’.49 He imagined the time when ‘Oude would be covered with a network of fine macadamised roads, over [which] the produce of Oude and our own districts would pass freely to the benefit of the people of both’. Rivers would be made navigable for steamers, a railway would be laid down between Faizabad and Cawnpore via Lucknow, and ‘useful public works’ would be constructed. The revenue monies that had stuck to the fingers of corrupt officials and Court favourites would become available to fund these improvements. Sleeman correctly identified the dis-juncture between the urban and the rural population, describing Lucknow as ‘an overgrown city, surrounding an overgrown Court’ which had so alienated the great body of people that the king and his officers regarded each other as irreconcilable enemies. ‘Between the city, the pampered Court and its functionaries and the people of the country beyond, there is not the slightest feeling of sympathy…’50
It is worth examining the Resident’s writings in depth because they were to form an important part of the Court of Directors’ decision to annex the kingdom in 1856, even though Sleeman himself was against annexation. If the Court had followed his advice and established a Board of Management, while retaining Wajid ‘Ali Shah as a nominal, but powerless, king, it is just possible that the Great Revolt of 1857 could have been avoided. There were many other grievances throughout India at the time,51 but it was the seizure of the kingdom that provided the spark that fired the Uprising. What Sleeman, Dalhousie and the Court of Directors all failed to realise was that the people of Awadh preferred to be ruled by their own king, whatever his failings, rather than by foreigners, however well-intentioned the latter may have been.
Personal hostility between the Residency and the Court of Lucknow did not however deter Wajid ‘Ali Shah from carrying out at least some of his kingly duties in a gracious manner. He responded to a plea from Sleeman for a contribution to a fund in memory of the Duke of Wellington, who had died in September 1852. Dalhousie had proposed the building of a college as a testimonial to the old soldier, who had served in India half a century earlier. The king sent 3,000 rupees and ‘Ali Naqi Khan another 2,000 rupees, not a huge amount in the scale of things, but nevertheless an altruistic gesture for which they did not expect, nor receive, any thanks.52 When news of the victory over Russian troops by the allied forces on the banks of the river Alma in Crimea was received in Lucknow, the king remarked that ‘This intelligence has afforded me great pleasure and I ordered a salute of 21 guns to be fired immediately on receiving the first official Note. Pray communicate to the Most Noble the Governor General of India my congratulations on this victory.’53 It was a moment of light relief in the ongoing struggle for possession of Awadh.
Because the government of India did not make good on its threat of action in 1849 promised by Viscount Hardinge, it was gradually assumed that nothing would happen. ‘Our Government has cried “wolf” so often that no one now listens to it’, Sleeman said, reporting that Captain Bird ‘had been trying hard to persuade the King and his minister that our Government could not interfere and that all the threats of the Governor General might be disregarded’.54 Dalhousie rejected a number of opportunities to meet Wajid ‘Ali Shah face to face. In April 1850, on his way to the summer capital of Shimla, he was too busy to meet either the king or the new heir apparent at Cawnpore. A year later he decided against visiting Lucknow and refused to meet anyone from the Court. ‘I feel it to be my duty to withhold those usual manifestations of respect and goodwill, which the public conduct and measures of the King have rendered it impossible for the Government of India any longer to entertain.’55 Wajid ‘Ali Shah was deeply hurt by this public snub and responded by saying that he wanted Dalhousie to see how much the administration of Awadh had been improved. But the governor general had stubbornly set his face against any contact, and in 1853 he rudely turned away an envoy sent from the king to Calcutta, declaring pompously that he would only receive communications through ‘the proper channel, the Resident at Lucknow’. Since Sleeman continued to report negatively, complaining that Wajid ‘Ali Shah devoted his time entirely to the pursuit of ‘personal gratifications; he associates with none but those who can contribute to such gratification, women, singers and Eunuchs, and he never, I believe, reads or hears a report of complaint or public document of any kind’,56 the view from Lucknow was distinctly one-sided.
Dr Joseph Fayrer, who took the place of ill-fated Residency surgeon Adam Bell, backed up Sleeman’s reports, describing the king as ‘apathetic’, as well as ‘very fat and short-winded’ and absorbed in his musicians, harem, nautch girls and other amusements. It was Dr Fayrer’s job to précis the news of the Court for Sleeman’s weekly reports to Calcutta. On a typical day the king would watch animal fights, recite a new poem, watch a wrestling match and enjoy flying kites, a favourite sport at which he excelled. There were further clashes with the Resident when the king appointed a favourite singer, Musahib ‘Ali, to investigate delays in the judicial court that dealt with registering house sales and purchases. Another singer, so Sleeman believed, was put in charge of the newly created department for settling loan disputes. This man, Asad Beg, was described inaccurately by the Resident as a dom, or Hindu untouchable (despite his Muslim surname). Wajid ‘Ali Shah indignantly rejected this slur and pointed out sharply that Asad Beg was in fact of Mughal descent and had been employed by the British government in various supervisory roles with a certificate of good conduct from the government too. Sleeman had to back down, but huffed that it would not be prudent to entrust such unlimited power ‘to any individual however high in character’ and claimed that Asad Beg must owe his appointment to the ‘influence of some friend at Court’. Another long complaint went to Dalhousie.57
It became clear to the governor general that the hoped-for reforms which Sleeman had been charged with making in Awadh were not going to happen. There was by now far too much antipathy between king and Resident for the two men ever to work together. Sleeman’s constant complaints against everyone, including his own staff, had a negative effect, and Wajid ‘Ali Shah reacted by simply withdrawing from public affairs, sensing that whatever he did would be condemned and reported to Dalhousie. By the summer of 1854 Sleeman was talking about retiring. His health was not good, he could make no headway in Awadh, his grand plan of heading a Board of Management or a regency had not been taken up, and he suspected that the chief minister, ‘Ali Naqi Khan, wanted to get him out of the way. He was delighted with Dalhousie’s choice of successor, Colonel James Outram, but added disparagingly that as none of his own assistants at the Residency knew anything whatever about Awadh, Outram would therefore be at a great disadvantage. He also forecast that ‘as soon as I go, some of the most atrocious villains whom I have kept out of office will try to purchase their way back…’ It was a grim picture painted as Sleeman left Lucknow early in October.
James Outram arrived to take up his new position early in December, entering the city in a formal procession with elephants and a camel-train, accompanied by cavalry and infantry units. He was met by the heir apparent, Prince Hamid ‘Ali, because the king was ill again, a strange echo of the illness on the former Resident’s arrival. Outram was allowed a short interview with the invalid in the palace and was struck by how seriously ill he appeared. Daily bulletins on the king’s health were ‘far from satisfactory’, but his own doctors thought there was no immediate danger. Dr
Fayrer, who was present at the first interview, said that Wajid ‘Ali Shah looked worse than he had done a couple of weeks earlier, although he thought it was ‘very possible’ that the king ‘may temporarily recover from his present illness’.58 Annoyingly, the cause of the illness is not given. Almost immediately, Outram was sucked into Lucknow politics when he learned that ‘certain persons’ employed by the British government were boasting that they possessed influence with the new Resident and could, for a financial consideration, get specific benefits bestowed on individuals. Outram stamped on this immediately by saying that if he found anyone defrauding the king or trying to bribe the Residency staff, as had happened in the past, they would be severely punished.
In his briefing from the governor general, Outram was instructed to set up his own enquiry into the state of the kingdom of Awadh and to see if things had improved since Sleeman’s journey through it four years earlier. Outram’s report was ready by 15 March 1855, and his covering letter to Dalhousie reiterated that ‘the condition of Oude is, as I have shown, most deplorable … caused by the very culpable apathy and gross misrule of the Sovereign and his Durbar’.59 So there was to be no change in attitude or outlook towards the king. Outram’s detailed report looked impressive at first glance, divided into seven sections covering ‘The Sovereign and his Minister’, revenue and finance, judicial courts and police, the ‘Army of Oudh’, roads and public works, statistics on crime and outrage, and ‘Oppression and Cruelties’. But in fact this report was based largely on Sleeman’s own observations, and Outram admitted as much: ‘In the absence of any personal experience in this country [Awadh], I am of course entirely dependent for my information on what I find in the Residency records and can ascertain through the channels which supplied my predecessor.’60 Not surprisingly, the conclusion was that things had not improved, and Dalhousie was being drawn, despite his reservations, towards the idea of intervention before his term of office expired in March 1856. ‘I should not mind doing it as a parting coup’, he admitted privately, but doubted whether the people ‘at home [the Court of Directors] have the pluck to sanction it, and I can’t find a pretext for doing it without sanction. The King won’t offend or quarrel with us, and will take any amount of kicking without being rebellious.’61
While the king was recovering from his unspecified illness, he received a letter from Outram written on 8 February warning him that a Sunni troublemaker, Shah Ghulam Husain, had assembled a ‘large force’ of Muslims near Faizabad, and was ‘determined to destroy and ruin the Hunuman Ghurrie which is inhabited by Hindoos and is peculiarly sacred in their estimation, his lieutenant (or assistant) called the Moulavee Saheb is even still more diabolically inclined and ready for strife…’ To defend themselves, and their temple, large groups of armed Hindus had gathered. The Resident foresaw bloodshed and urged the king to send a ‘very swift Camel Messenger with all possible speed’ to have Shah Ghulam Husain immediately arrested in order to defuse the situation.62 The Hanumangarhi, a temple built on the conjectured site of the birth of the Hindu god Rama, was at Ayodhya and near a mosque built during the reign of the Mughal emperor, Babur. The mosque, which only became known as Babri Masjid (Babur’s mosque) at the beginning of the twentieth century, was built over a Hindu temple, part of a much larger complex that was quite possibly of Buddhist origin.63 A site with so much history behind it unfortunately attracted fervent supporters from both the Sunni and the Hindu communities. As a Shi‘a, Wajid ‘Ali Shah could afford to stand aside from the theological disputes; but as a ruler, he had to do his best to prevent loss of life among all his subjects, regardless of their faith.
For some unknown reason the king did not act on Outram’s urgent request and the clash predicted by the Resident duly took place. It was followed five months later by a much more serious encounter, which left about 70 Muslims dead, overwhelmed by a force of some 8,000 Hindus, who lost about the same number of men. A detachment of 150 men from the Awadh Army under Captains Weston, Orr and Hearsay was present, but was too small in numbers to act. Outram was summoned, unusually, to an emergency meeting with Wajid ‘Ali Shah at the beginning of August. The king told him that ‘no occurrence had ever given him more intense pain or had caused deeper anxiety; that he grieved to find that so much blood has been thus unnecessarily shed and declared with much emphasis, that the whole of this lamentable loss of life was solely to be ascribed to that arch villain the Shah Gholam Hussain who had for a long period led a very vagabond life with a company of disreputable followers, still more vile, if possible, than Gholam Hussain himself’.64 Outram reminded the king, as if he needed reminding, that two-thirds of his subjects were Hindus, and that there were influential chieftains at Faizabad who would not remain neutral if there was another clash. At the Resident’s suggestion, a three-man commission was set up to enquire into the disturbances, consisting of a Muslim, Agha ‘Ali Khan; a Hindu, Raja Man Singh; and, as Outram put it, ‘a Christian umpire’, Captain Alexander Orr—but this only seemed to make things worse. It was not, after all, a game of cricket. The chief mujtahid, Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi—the man who had placed the crown on the first king’s head—got involved but, while seeming to condemn mob violence, did nothing to calm the situation.
A new and more dangerous leader emerged, a charismatic Sunni maulawi called Amir ‘Ali, who collected around him a number of working men, labourers and small shopkeepers, who had given up their businesses in order to follow him. The conflict took on wider dimensions, upper class against lower class, Sunni against Shi‘a, Muslim against Hindu. Wajid ‘Ali Shah was actively involved, calling Amir ‘Ali to the palace for peace talks and proposing that a small mosque could be attached to the temple, a suggestion that was immediately rejected by the Hindus. A truce took place during Muharram, which fell in September that year, but as soon as it was over hostilities recommenced, not least between the Resident and the king. The latter was warned that he would be held personally responsible if a new mosque was erected, or if violence broke out. Amir ‘Ali called for an armed protest and Hindu leaders outside Awadh started to ferry in financial aid for their co-religionists. Outram exacerbated the situation by threatening to withdraw British troops from the kingdom, which he anticipated would lead to the collapse of the Awadh government and thus open the way for annexation. But Wajid ‘Ali Shah stood firm. By the middle of October Amir ‘Ali was losing support, the Awadh Army was in a position to deflect the jihadists in their planned march to Faizabad, and powerful Shi‘a landholders like Raja Mahmudabad sent their own forces as back-up for the king. As the maulawi’s marchers neared Faizabad they were shot down by the king’s troops, and an estimated three to four hundred men were killed.65 It was the end of the conflict during nawabi times, but not of course the end of the dispute, which erupted in 1992 with far greater loss of life, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid.
The king got no credit for the way he had dealt with the disturbance. On the contrary, Dalhousie said that the Resident’s reports only gave further proof, ‘if further proof were necessary, of the unfitness of the King of Oude and of his Durbar to hold the powers of government in that country and fortify the opinion which I lately submitted to the Honorable Court [of Directors] that the administration should be entirely taken out of their hands’.66 A groundswell of opinion in Britain in favour of annexation was now strengthened by the publication of a racy new book by William Knighton called The Private Life of an Eastern King. Published in May 1855, it was an immediate success, going into a second edition in the same month, and being quoted in Parliament during debates on Awadh. It told the story of King Nasir ud-Din Haider’s reign and was based on eyewitness accounts supplied by the king’s ex-librarian, Edward Cropley. Two of the leading characters in the book were George Harris Derusett, the ‘Barber of Lucknow’, and his companion John Rose Brandon, the latter now a supporter and confidante of Wajid ‘Ali Shah. Nothing could have been more timely (indeed, almost suspiciously timely) for those who believed it was the duty of the Brit
ish government to rescue Awadh and its suffering people from the present king’s regime. While Sleeman’s indictment (which was not published in book form until 1858) dealt with the miseries of the countryside, Knighton’s book detailed corruption and debauchery in the capital. The fact that the ‘eastern king’ was Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s uncle, and had been dead for nearly twenty years, hardly mattered to the majority of Knighton’s readers. For those who knew something of Awadh, it simply confirmed their belief that little had changed during the last two decades. For others it was an indictment of their own government, which had allowed the situation to continue for so long. The Court of Directors’ approval for annexation was sent to Dalhousie in November 1855. In the same month Wajid ‘Ali Shah sent a letter to the governor general congratulating him on the allies’ victory at Sebastopol. He commented that the friendship between the government of Awadh and the British government was ‘manifest and evident’ and ordered another 21-gun salute to be fired in celebration.67
Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah Page 13