Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  This ruling may have seemed clear enough when the king, grateful to have been released, returned home, but it began to unravel in less than a year. There was an inherent paradox in the treatment of the king by the British, which was never really resolved. While the government needed to demonstrate, in India and abroad, that its behaviour towards the ex-monarch was fair, at the same time it wrestled with the problems of a traditional native court now transplanted to British India. Herbert, on his official appointment as agent, was instructed that ‘as concerns the personal dignity of the King, you will assure His Majesty that he will not cease to be respected and protected by the Governor General in Council and that no suitable mark of the honor due to his rank will be wanting’.38 This grandiose but vague statement needed constant redefinition as events occurred concerning the king and his property. The boundaries of the king’s estate were clear—a mile on both sides of Garden Reach and as far south as the Circular Road. There were ‘privileges and rights of private property which the Ex-King has purchased’. There were thirty-six Calcutta policemen stationed on the roads around the estate, although they could not enter it. But if the king could not exercise jurisdiction or administer justice inside his own premises, then who could? Clearly the question of law and order had not been thought through.

  At the heart of Garden Reach a princely court was being developed based on that of Lucknow, which in turn had its roots in Mughal times. There was both a need for privacy for the king and his many wives, but also the need to house a substantial number of dependants and followers. Samuel Wauchope, the first commissioner of Calcutta Police, was told that there were an estimated 5,000 people at Garden Reach (this was in 1862), but Wauchope reckoned it was nearer 7,000 or 8,000—the size of a small town. It was as if a private gentleman had allowed his servants and their relatives to build huts on his premises, he told the government—the king ‘has merely done this on a gigantic scale’. It was not only the king’s immediate followers either, but thieves, prostitutes, gamblers and other disreputable characters. They were annoying the neighbours by ‘the constant discharge of guns and fireworks’ and there was every reason to believe they had committed a series of thefts which had taken place in the neighbourhood. And was anyone paying the chowkidari tax, the municipal tax that funded night watchmen patrolling the streets? Wauchope knew that the king was heavily in debt. Everyone knew, but the commissioner’s fear was that if the king’s credit dried up, and he could no longer support this riff-raff, they would be loosed onto the streets of Calcutta.39 He had already spoken to Major Herbert, who, he said, ‘was in charge of the King’. While agreeing about the noise and nuisances, Herbert pointed out that he was certainly not ‘in charge of the King’ and could only act as advisor, and that his advice went unheeded.

  The Calcutta Police had been established by Lord Canning only a year before the Uprising, but had come through it in commendable fashion, thanks to Wauchope, who was later knighted for his work. He was not therefore prepared to have a large and seemingly lawless enclave that threatened the urban stability of his own patch. He argued that his men should have access to Garden Reach, and its inhabitants should be taxed to pay for the additional police required to look after them. Clearly a forceful man and somewhat lacking in tact, he told Herbert to inform Wajid ‘Ali Shah that the police did have the right to go into Garden Reach in pursuit of thieves. Tell the king, he threatened, that since he has turned his premises into ‘a populous town full of disreputable persons [then] it would be impossible to treat them in any exceptional manner, and the visits of the Police might become so constant as to be very disagreeable and discreditable’. And the governor general could help too, by telling the king to keep better order, and that ‘town laws’ should apply to the grounds of Garden Reach.

  There were many disreputable characters inside Garden Reach. Gambling, drinking, thieving and every kind of debauchery were being carried out within the grounds, ‘but being private, the Police have no power to enter them, and can exercise no control over their inmates as long as they remain inside. In fact the lower part of Garden Reach has become a perfect Alsatia [sanctuary] in which any persons escaping from justice may take refuge and set the Police at defiance.’ 40

  But the governor general had lost the will to carry on, much less to engage the king in what would clearly be a battle royal in all senses of the word. Canning was a sick man. The sudden death of his much-loved wife had shocked him profoundly and he stepped down from office in March 1862; he left immediately for England, only to die there three months later. One of his last acts was to suggest, without much conviction, that perhaps Major Herbert could be appointed as magistrate to try cases arising within Garden Reach. The area could be limited to the three houses bought for the king by government, but exclude those bought by the king with his own money. Herbert’s own suggestion was not much more practical. He thought that Wajid ‘Ali Shah should appoint his own police officer and team to register his own retainers and those of the different family members within Garden Reach. Thereafter only registered followers would be allowed inside; the king’s officer would hand over to Wauchope’s men anyone who looked suspicious and would also assist the Calcutta Police in tracing miscreants. The king could also stop the use of firearms, fireworks and noisy processions on the high road and such other ‘amusements’ declared to be a public nuisance.41 Neither scheme was ever going to work. It was the classic dilemma of an over-cautious government, only four years distant from the Uprising, which, although it grumbled furiously in private, found it easier to meet each fresh crisis with a fresh response rather than tackling the whole question of the exiled king once and for all. If government had thought that the award of the huge pension of £120,000 per annum would solve the embarrassing problem of a deposed ruler, whom it anticipated would shortly die due to his ‘debased life’, it was wrong.

  Exactly twenty years later the same problems were being debated, in almost the same language, showing that little had changed except the personnel. Colonel William Francis Prideaux became agent to the king in 1881. Prideaux is best known today for his study of ancient Arabian inscriptions discovered when he was assistant Political Resident in Aden, and his appointment in Bengal must have been in striking contrast to his previous desert posting. Nevertheless, as a career civil servant he was quickly immersed in the seemingly unchanging problems of Garden Reach. An early report from him advised that births and deaths in the estate should be registered, criminals identified, epidemic or contagious diseases notified and the Port Commissioner put on standby to prevent nuisances. The government of Bengal was on the defensive, claiming that it had been trying ‘for twenty years past’ to induce the ex-king to behave reasonably about his private affairs ‘and for twenty years we have steadily failed. The advice of successive Agents to the Governor General is either rudely rejected or runs off the ex-King’s back like water off a duck’s back, leaving no impression whatsoever.’42 Could he be coaxed into changing his behaviour, even at this late date?

  Prideaux went on to report rather dramatically that ‘debauchery and rioting’ were going on inside Garden Reach, causing a nuisance in the neighbourhood. He added that ‘there is reason to believe that gross oppression is continually exercised by the King’s officers over the ladies residing within the premises’. Was it time for another King of Oude Act? Henry Peacock, the former agent to the king, had now been elevated to the position of Secretary to the Foreign Department, so he was sympathetic and knowledgeable about his successor’s complaints. But Peacock thought the king should be given an ultimatum ‘before we fire a broadside into him from the Legislative Department’.43

  Since the king could not exercise his jurisdiction in British territory, he had to be made amenable, to some extent, to British law. In a sarcastic vein Peacock told Prideaux that it was proposed to locate ‘a new King, represented by a European constable, within the sacred precincts of the King of Oude’s walled residence at Garden Reach’. But he urged caution, fearing that if
the real king, ‘who is isolated within his four walls’, was not warned, there could be trouble from a ‘cohort of political agitators at Home or in India’, who would rake up past promises made to Wajid ‘Ali Shah about protecting his privacy. Clearly passions could still be aroused on behalf of the king nearly thirty years after he had been deposed. At the same time the Bengal Legislative Department was trying to push through the highly controversial Ilbert Bill. Introduced by Sir Courtenay Ilbert in 1883, it proposed an amendment to existing legislation that would allow Indian judges and magistrates to try British offenders in criminal cases. A huge and horrible demonstration of anti-Indian feeling by Britons and Anglo-Indians burst out from all quarters, and the Bill, which was passed on 25 January 1884, was considerably watered down. The last thing the government wanted was further protest over its treatment of a former king, though Peacock did not explain how the ‘political agitators’ opposing the Ilbert Bill might want to support an Indian ex-king.

  There was undoubtedly a need for better policing within Garden Reach, although this could not be properly estimated because of the secretive nature of the establishment. Every entrance into the estate was ‘grimly guarded’, and high walls had been erected defining its limits. Strangely, it was now harder to find out what was going on inside the Court at Garden Reach than when it had been in Qaisarbagh. Then there had been a well-established and acknowledged spy system in Lucknow, operating between the palace and the Residency. Servants were paid for tip-offs by the other side, and letters from the Resident to the king were leaked in advance of receipt. But it did not work in Calcutta. There was a physical distance between Garden Reach and Government House, and a distance of perception too. It was one thing to whisper into the ear of an official in the Lucknow Residency; it was quite another to approach the governor general or even his agent, appointed to liaise with the king. At the same time, it may have been convenient to exaggerate the impenetrability of Garden Reach as a reason for inaction by British officials.

  Only rarely did crimes in the great estate come to light. In the autumn of 1883, the body of a woman was found drowned in a tank a short distance outside the boundary wall. The civil surgeon thought she had been violently killed before being dumped in the tank. The deputy commissioner of police and Major Prideaux investigated and learned that the woman had been employed by one of the king’s wives and had been accused of theft by ‘another inmate of the zenana’. The king’s own police had arrested the woman, locked her up and also beaten her up. Although nothing could be proved conclusively, Prideaux concluded that the death ‘was attributable to the treatment the woman had received at the hands of those officials. If the tank in which the body was found had not been outside the king’s premises, very probably nothing would have been known of the matter, as the police merely report what suits them, and I have no means whatever of exercising supervision over them.’44 New government proposals were made to employ Calcutta Police patrols inside Garden Reach, with their salaries deducted from the king’s pension.

  But would this be fair? The secretary to the Bengal government, William Lee-Warner, argued provocatively that the king ‘does not object to the smells or the dilapidation inside his four walls. It is the sensitive organs of the Calcutta residents that object. It will be a great blow to the King to see his walled-off enclosure invaded by our police, especially if one is a European, and it adds insult to injury to ask him to pay for the intrusion.’45 It was agreed that there were sufficient Calcutta Police for a small detachment, without a cost attached. After all, argued Lee-Warner, ‘the King cannot live for ever, and this can only be a temporary arrangement’.

  The lack of sanitation and general unhealthiness at Garden Reach was almost as worrying as the unreported crimes. Along with the proposal that municipal police should be allowed inside the estate was another that the Sanitary Commission of Bengal should be able to send a qualified medical officer inside to inspect the premises. The junior undersecretary, Henry Durand, thought that ‘We have the moral right to provide for the maintenance and health of his family and establishment if the King fails to apply the stipend to that purpose.’ There had been a number of complaints over the years from the female relatives and the princes about unhygienic conditions, although no major outbreak of disease like cholera had occurred. The question of vaccination against smallpox had been raised in 1870, when the king was asked if he would allow his numerous children to be vaccinated. Wajid ‘Ali Shah replied, ‘Myself and my children have been habituated to the treatment of the Oriental Hakeems, who are in constant attendance with various sorts of medicines required under all circumstances.’ His personal doctor, Hakeem Ta’ib-ud-daulah, an experienced physician, ‘was always prepared with different medicines to afford relief and advice, agreeably to his own system in all kind of diseases whenever they may occur’.46

  Although the king did not go into detail, he was probably referring to the native practice of variolation, widespread and long established, particularly in Bengal, with a success rate estimated as high as 70 per cent. Unlike vaccination, popularised in England, variolation did not call for skin to be punctured with a needle, but relied on dried and powdered smallpox scabs being ingested, which produced a mild, survivable form of the disease. There were considerable debates among medical practitioners in India about the merits of the two preventatives. Vaccination was seen as a superior Western method, while variolation was easy to obtain and sanctioned by centuries of custom. British officials had no doubt about which method was better, and criticised the king for not ordering his wives to allow the children to be vaccinated. It was Amir ‘Ali who took the initiative and persuaded some of the king’s dependants to submit their children to Surgeon Kalidas Bose, the vaccinator. The dependants ‘seemed to have feared mortality from its effect’, he reported in a letter, but ‘when they find their children doing well after the operation the dread with which they appeared to regard vaccination will be removed from their and other’s minds, and doubtless all classes of them will avail themselves of the benefit of it generally’.47

  In spite of this encouraging news, the perception remained among British officials that Garden Reach had become inherently unhealthy ever since the king and his followers settled there. By contrast, the Calcutta municipality was forging ahead with public improvements that disposed of the sewage of a million of its inhabitants, provided them with fresh water, lit their streets with gas, cleaned and improved their bazaars, relocated slaughterhouses to the outskirts, and removed bustees (slums) by driving new roads through them. The Municipal Corporation, set up in 1864, wanted to get its hands on Garden Reach, which it perceived as an anachronism in modern Calcutta.

  We can see the British officials’ wish for cleanliness, law and order in Garden Reach as the manifestation of a wider unease with the whole idea of a deposed king who had set up his own small kingdom just outside the capital of India itself. Political opinion, to which the government of India seemed over-sensitive, meant that the situation had to be tolerated, with legislative measures (the King of Oude Acts) when things got out of hand. They consoled themselves with the mantra, ‘the King cannot live for ever’. Garden Reach had fallen short of British expectations of how a king should live in exile. And although it was not put into so many words, there was a lingering memory in Calcutta that Garden Reach had once been an exclusive British enclave, with houses that had been owned, albeit briefly, by the governor general himself. Its decline, as the British saw it, was all the more poignant compared to its former splendour. Because the houses built by the king and all of the additional structures and gardens have been swept away, it is impossible to say today what the estate looked like after Wajid ‘Ali Shah had resided there for thirty years. Perhaps it really was as splendid as it seemed to be in the Indian memory?

  The writer Abdul Halim Sharar had lived at Garden Reach as a boy for ten years, from the age of nine. His father was employed there by the king, while his maternal grandfather had worked in Qaisarbagh. In his quain
tly titled book on Lucknow,48 Sharar has a short chapter on Matiya Burj, as he called it, which is the fullest account we have. Sharar is seldom less than flattering about the nawabs—Wajid ‘Ali Shah in particular—and his account is distorted, seen as it was through the prism of nostalgia, more than thirty years after he left Garden Reach. None of the domestic squabbles between the king and his wives and children were noted, nor the squalor or restrictions that the princes were to complain about as they grew older. Sharar’s book lists ‘scores’ of buildings all beautifully furnished with carpets, pictures and silver bedsteads. ‘Surrounding them were gardens and lawns set out in geometrical designs.’ The king had established ‘a beautiful town of fine houses’. Even the Royal Botanic Garden across the Hugli was ‘as nothing compared to the earthly paradise of Matiya Burj and the entrancing wonders it contained. There was a high-walled enclosure surrounding all these houses, lawns and markets.’

  Somewhere between these two extremes—of British disappointment and Indian romanticism—lay the real Garden Reach. The area was certainly photographed, but the original images have not been traced and we are left with poorly reproduced copies, which nevertheless hint at the grandeur of its conception. Between Sultan Khana and Garden Reach Road lay a large artificial tank crossed by a double-spanned fancy bridge. Graceful cypress trees lined the edges of the tank. A covered verandah ran behind Sultan Khana, fronting the river, and behind it a staircase led down from the palace roof to the verandah. Small pavilions were dotted around and a substantial building stood to the left of Sultan Khana. In the gardens were cages to house the animals, and these included a large rotunda, ringed from top to bottom with iron bars. Quaint little structures with conical roofs stood in open parkland while flocks of geese gabbled contentedly around. There is no sign here of the wretched thatched huts that the king’s wives were complaining about, but it is unlikely that the anonymous photographer was given the freedom to explore every part of the estate.