Initially, Indian rulers kept menageries for similar reasons to their European counterparts, although the elephant is an ancient symbol of Indian royalty and particularly associated with kings and rulers. These malleable animals, together with horses and camels, were kept in purpose-built stables and used on ceremonial occasions. Inspecting the elephants and horses was a pleasant, often daily, task for their kingly owners. Exotic animals, including giraffes and zebras, were imported into India from Africa. Lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and Himalayan bears, the ‘dangerous carnivores’, were captured in the jungles and the hills and sold to Mughal menageries. The possession of wild animals in the subcontinent came to symbolise the rulers’ universal power over the forces of nature, a significantly different concept from the detached, scientific curiosity of European collectors, which developed from Enlightenment ideas in the eighteenth century. But both European and Indian royalty enjoyed watching animal fights, the latter well into the nineteenth century, as we know from numerous descriptions of fights at the Lucknow court of Nasir ud-Din Haidar.10 An undated report by an eyewitness says that Wajid ‘Ali Shah opened his menagerie to the public once a year, and that on one such day he organised a fight between two rams. ‘Soon the noise of butting could be heard but it was nothing in comparison with the noise made by the Europeans in the “hurrahs” and shouts of acclamation.’11 This was the final flicker of an ‘entertainment’ that dated back for centuries. The place where the animals were kept was called the wahush khana, the ‘wild beasts’ house’, a descriptive word with its hint of the wilderness confined between four walls, although the term ‘menagerie’ was always used in referring to Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s collection. An aviary was a chiriya-khana, the ‘bird-house’.
No pre-annexation description of Lucknow was complete without a detailed report of the royal menageries, shown to favoured visitors, as many Europeans were. The animals had been moved around, as new palaces and gardens were built, and ended up in a ramna or park on the north bank of the Gomti. An English chaplain, the Reverend William Tennant, had visited the menagerie of the fourth nawab, Asaf-ud-daulah, just after the latter’s death in 1797. After describing its inhabitants, which included rhinoceros, porcupines, ‘Cabul sheep’, serpents, leopards, tigers and flamingoes, the chaplain voiced what many Britons thought, and continued to think for almost a century when contemplating the nawabi passion for animals: ‘the food employed in this manner [to feed the menagerie] would remove want from the city, if not from the kingdom of Oude: but the art of government is less understood, or more perverted, by the Indians, than any other science, meanly as we may regard their attainments in them all’.12 It was a curious juxtaposition to make—the costly menagerie and mis-government—but the idea of something wrong, something almost immoral, in keeping so many animals for private pleasure continued to nag at the official British mind.
After annexation, the new British administration in Lucknow had sold off Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s prized menagerie by public auction, with almost indecent haste, even before he had reached Calcutta. There were pragmatic reasons, of course, the chief one being the expense of feeding the birds and beasts, but there was also something spiteful in the action, which not only saw a large number of animal attendants immediately thrown out of work, but a deliberate dismantling of the trappings of kingship. It is easier now to see why the Garden Reach menagerie was so important to the king. Like the ram fight, it was the last reminder of the animals collected by his ancestors, and another confirmation of their status as heirs to the great Mughals. Because the Lucknow auction had been widely advertised, with buyers arriving from as far afield as Delhi and Lahore, it was a public humiliation too. The king had been asked before the auction, in a ‘peremptory’ letter, to select a number of animals from his Lucknow menagerie, but he had declined to do so, saying in a dignified note that since he had never been consulted over any of the arrangements on annexation it was ‘needless for the Chief Commissioner to refer to His Majesty on the present occasion’.13
Even more humiliatingly, shortly after the king’s arrival in Calcutta The Englishman and Military Chronicle had carried the following advertisement:
24 June 1856 ‘We are informed that all the finest animals of the King of Oudh’s menagerie have arrived in Calcutta and will be publicly exhibited as soon as they can be suitably placed for the reception of visitors. Some of the tigers are the very finest specimens of the kind ever caged. We have no doubt it will be a very interesting exhibition.’
And a few days later:
Advertisement: ‘The Great Fighting Tigers of Lucknow. On Exhibition for a few days, from Sunrise to Sunset, at Tiretta Bazaar Godowns, Chitpore Road—these are animals purchased at the late Govt. sale at Lucknow. Entry Rs1 per person.’
Mr Soutter had remarked on the recent increase in the number of animals in the Garden Reach menagerie. When Wajid ‘Ali Shah was released from Fort William prison in 1859, he started a new collection of animals, both as a riposte to the British auction of his Lucknow menagerie and also, by his own admission, from a genuine love of animals. (How he squared this with his enjoyment of watching animal fights is never explained.) In the mid-1870s two events occurred which seem to have accelerated the process. The idea of a Zoological Garden in Calcutta had first been suggested in 1842 by Dr John McCleland, curator of the Asiatic Society of Bengal’s museum. Nothing came of his proposal, but twenty-five years later the idea was mooted again, by the then-president of the Asiatic Society, Dr Joseph Fayrer, the same man who had been attached to the Lucknow Residency before annexation, and who had visited Wajid ‘Ali Shah at Qaisarbagh. By 1867 Dr Fayrer had become a specialist on snakes, snakebites and venom. A zoological garden in Calcutta, richly stocked, would enable him to study numerous specimens in situ. But there were arguments over a suitable site, and it was not until 1875 that the decision was taken to demolish a shanty town near the governor general’s official residence in Alipore. Once started, work progressed quickly on the site and it was opened to the public on 1 May 1876.
The first superintendent of the Zoological Gardens was a Hindu, Ram Brahma Sanyal, who was a protégé of Dr George King, superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, and also a member of the zoo’s managing committee. Although men like King, Fayrer and McCleland had different specialities, each had a common interest in promoting institutions that would further research into India’s rich natural history, as well as providing education and instruction for the citizens of Calcutta. One of those citizens was Wajid ‘Ali Shah, and Ram Sanyal described a meeting with him in the zoo’s gardens:
‘His Majesty the King’, wrote Sanyal, ‘was wont to visit the Gardens as he was deeply and scientifically interested in animals and used to go round the gardens in a sort of a Japanese rickshaw, drawn by eight men. One day he remarked “Babu Sahib—you think I consider myself a king and so allow you to walk by my side while I ride in this carriage.” The Superintendent replied, “Jahanpanah [protector of the world], Your Majesty is certainly a King while as a subject it is most proper for me to walk on foot by your side.” Wajid ‘Ali Shah then said, “You are a sharifzada (gentleman) and I should have walked with you, but am old now and weak and incapable of walking even for a short distance.”’
Sanyal added that he could no longer believe ‘that such a noble soul with such chivalry in his disposition and such kindly and gentlemanly consideration could have ever been guilty of the foul charges brought against him’.14 It is a touching picture of two animal-lovers together, but the new, scientific approach of keeping animals as something other than a status symbol only seemed to have prompted Wajid ‘Ali Shah to increase his collection in a random way.
The Zoological Gardens were formally opened on 1 January 1876 by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) during a winter visit to India. Accompanying him was William Howard Russell, the journalist from The Times whose reports during the recapture of Lucknow in March 1858 had provided one of the first objective accounts of the resistance put up by its
citizens against the British. Now, eighteen years later, Russell was interested to note that: ‘As the Prince [of Wales] was passing the gardens of the residences of the King of Oudh, the retainers of his ex-Majesty lined the bank, and stood in crowds on the tops of the houses within, in the enclosure, and in the verandahs, but they did not make any sign of welcome.’15
The Prince of Wales and his party stayed at Government House in Calcutta, where a large reception was held for the native ‘Chiefs’, but this did not include deposed rulers, so neither Wajid ‘Ali Shah nor the Mysore princes were invited. The British prince was reputedly fonder of shooting animals than conserving them, and tiger-shooting parties were arranged for him, as they had been for royalty in the past. Grand hunting parties were equally popular among Indian rulers and the British, a place where both could meet on (nearly) equal terms. The Prince of Wales was, however, also presented with an embarrassingly large number of live animals and birds as gifts, part of the usual tribute to a ruling monarch. These were shipped back to Portsmouth and donated to the London Zoo. Among them were two elephants, the particular signifier of royalty in the East, who had to walk to their new home along the main road.16 Wajid ‘Ali Shah would have reflected on all of this and the fact that he had to buy his own wild animals now instead of receiving them as gifts. Indeed, after the escape of his two tigers and the leopard in the spring of 1879, he had to purchase ‘a fresh supply of tigers’.
An inspection of the Garden Reach menagerie was arranged for 24 April. The inspection party was made up of Mowbray Thomson, Mr Soutter, Mr Lambert, the deputy police commissioner, and Amir ‘Ali, now manager of the king’s household. On arrival they met the three garden superintendents: Rayhan-ud-daulah, Mansur-ud-daulah and Munshi-us-Sultan. Thomson reported that there were seventeen felines, including lions, leopards and black panthers, housed in eleven dens.17 The dens were constructed of solid masonry with iron railings, and the railings had small doors in them. The doors had previously been padlocked, but since the escape they had been fitted with iron rings, which could only be opened by a blacksmith. Thomson thought that the animals were now reasonably secured against future escapes, but the real question was not so much the custody of the animals as their number.
There was only one old man and three assistants, reporting to the garden superintendents, to look after the animals, and there was no guarantee that the king would not purchase even more tigers or swap them around in the cages. One cage had been constructed on a ‘high elevation’ in the zananah area of the Zard Kothi. Thomson recommended that the animals were not replaced when they died, and that there should be only one pair of each particular species—a Noah’s Ark of two lions, two tigers, two spotted leopards, two black leopards and two pumas. The commissioner of police did not see why Wajid ‘Ali Shah should keep any dangerous animals. There were always risks involved in keeping wild animals, even at Alipore Zoo, ‘which has every conceivable safeguard against danger’ and where there was at least the justification of public advantage counterbalancing the risk involved. Soutter repeated that there was no public advantage, or advantage of any kind, in the king’s menagerie ‘beyond the gratification of a costly individual craze’.
A Menagerie Committee was set up on 1 May 1879 to deal with the question of public safety. Thomson was one of its three members, the others being Colman Macaulay, then undersecretary to the government of Bengal, and Amir ‘Ali. Following the inspection of the previous month, Wajid ‘Ali Shah had appointed eleven men to feed the animals, keep their dens clean and care for them. It was recognised that the menagerie ‘was a constant source of pleasure to the King’, but at the same time, it should contain only harmless animals and ‘animals under control’. Thomson’s proposals for limiting the animals to pairs was accepted. In future the cages were to be ‘solidly constructed and properly guarded’ and regular inspections by Thompson were to take place. Wajid ‘Ali Shah was forced to accept these terms under the government’s threat that if he did not, he would not be allowed to keep any carnivores at all. He grumbled that there had only been one tiger escape in the twenty years since he had started his Garden Reach menagerie, and that was purely accidental. By contrast, there had already been an escape from the new Alipore Zoo, within four years of its establishment. Moreover, he added, one had only to look around to see plenty of wild animals being kept in the dealers’ shops in Calcutta, or even in their houses. Animals were not only sold from cages that were not secure, but were being transported from one country to another by sea, river and rail. No doubt the king had in mind the two boatloads of animals given to the Prince of Wales during his visit, which had followed him home to England.
‘My menagerie is not like the Zoological Gardens’, Wajid ‘Ali Shah continued, because in Garden Reach there were ‘places for my residence, the compound and courtyards of which accommodate the menagerie and the gardens, and which pertain alike to the male and female departments’. Thomson had already noted a tigers’ cage on an artificial mound in the middle of the zananah. This can only have added to the misery of the wives, in their wretched, unsanitary accommodation. The smell and the noise of the beasts would have penetrated their quarters and made them fearful about venturing outside to get some fresh air in the gardens. Descriptions of the menagerie are understandably scarce and the best information we have comes again from Sharar, who lived at Garden Reach as a boy.
In front of one of the newly built palaces, the Nur Manzil, he wrote, was a large, open park-like space fenced by iron railings where spotted deer, buck and ‘other wild quadrupeds’ wandered freely. In the middle of the park was a marble pool which attracted the king’s fine collection of partridges, ostriches, turkeys, cranes, geese, herons, ducks, peacocks, flamingoes and the humble tortoise. The tiger cages were noted, as well as ‘a row of large wooden cages into which scores of different species of monkeys had been collected from far-flung places’. A pair of giraffes wandered around in the company of a two-humped camel from Baghdad and a couple of donkeys, who were let loose in a meadow. Fish pools scattered throughout the gardens were noted, but the most spectacular site was the serpentarium, a long, deep tank in front of the Shahinshah Manzil. In the middle of the tank, or pool, was an artificial hill pierced by pipes, some of which carried water. ‘Thousands of large snakes, six to nine feet long, had been released on this hill and would crawl about it.’ There was a ‘sort of moat’ around the snake hill where the reptiles would come to catch frogs. Apart from the animals there were ‘thousands of shining brass bird-cages in the Sultan Khana itself’. Outside, there were scores of large aviaries enclosed with wire netting, all containing birds of various kinds, including some 24,000 pigeons.18 Sharar was quite precise about the amount of money spent on the menagerie and the financial cost of indulging the king’s fancies. Food for the animals alone was almost 9,000 rupees a month, he reported.
By interrogating Amir ‘Ali, Thomson learnt just how much money was being set aside for new acquisitions. ‘I find one Daroga, Muthur Ali Khan, gets Rs500 per month for purchasing fish. Am I to understand that he gets this sum every month to purchase fish with, and if so, how long has he been getting it?’ The sum was paid monthly, confessed Amir ‘Ali, adding that he did not recollect how long this had been going on for.19 Thomson then established that another superintendent, Hyder Ali Beg, got 1,193 rupees a month to purchase ‘country animals’ from the Indian subcontinent, while Rayhan-ud-daulah was picking up nearly 2,500 rupees a month to buy animals ‘imported from foreign countries, such as England and America’.
Although the king had been forced to agree to the menagerie committee’s recommendations that the number of ‘dangerous animals’ be limited to pairs and kept in secure cages, restrictions had not been put on the acquisition of other animals. In a show of defiance, after the committee had been set up, Wajid ‘Ali Shah arranged with Mr Rutledge of Jaun Bazar Street, Calcutta, to supply him with imported animals to the value of 1 lakh per year.20 The previous supplier of foreign animals (and garden super
intendent), Rayhan-ud-daulah, had not been paid, and he had become another of the king’s many creditors. Under the new arrangement Rutledge was to get 48,000 rupees a year, less than half the value of the animals ordered. ‘No man in his senses would take such a contract’, retorted the Committee when it learned of this. The inference was that by sleight of hand and through corrupt court servants, ‘with or without Rutledge’s connivance’, the Englishman would indeed buy animals to the value of 48,000 rupees, but that the king would be charged 100,000 rupees or 1 lakh a year for them and the difference would be pocketed by the servants—and Rutledge, if he was in on the deal.
Money was spent ‘without restraint’ in acquiring one-off purchases of exotic animals and birds, and anyone bringing a new species for sale to Garden Reach was paid whatever was asked. Wajid ‘Ali Shah is said to have paid 24,000 rupees for a pair of special pigeons and 11,000 rupees for a pair of white peacocks.21 There is something reminiscent here of descriptions from nawab Asaf-ud-daulah’s time, when foreigners were able to sell the gullible ruler any novelty that momentarily attracted his interest. The fact that Wajid ‘Ali Shah thought he was ordering foreign animals from Mr Rutledge worth 1 lakh a year, when in fact they cost less than half that amount, is typical of the regal attitude for things that caught his fancy. The kingly response was not to haggle over the prices asked, but with a wave of the hand to accept what was offered and instruct a clerk to pay the seller. Kings did not concern themselves with rupees, annas and pice—that was the job of the Treasury Department. And this was precisely the point on which Wajid ‘Ali Shah and his British agents were never going to agree, simply because neither could step outside the mindsets and rules that bound them. Wajid ‘Ali Shah would always behave like the king he had once been, ruling his kingdom as, he believed, the successor to the great Mughals. The British agents would always behave like government officials working far from home, but with an undiminished sense of Victorian propriety and financial acumen. Neither party could compromise, so both were condemned to play out their respective roles.
Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah Page 24