Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  The king wanted to make it clear that his animals were intimately connected with his own royal status, and he batted away criticism. ‘As regards the expenditure on the menagerie, the world knows that I am very fond of the collection, inasmuch as it almost can be said that I am born with it! I am therefore attached to it with a degree of fondness which far exceeds that [which] I entertain towards my sons, daughters, etc.’22 This outrageous statement naturally infuriated Thomson, who commented that it showed ‘pretty plainly what little regard His Majesty has for the welfare of his children’. It was the welfare of these children, and their mothers, to which the government of Bengal now turned its attention.

  In March 1879, the government of India formally transferred ‘the charge of the Oude and Mysore Princes’ from central authority to the lieutenant governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, who had taken up his post two years earlier. As we have seen, the lieutenant governor had initially seemed supportive of the king, probably regarding him as an eccentric old man living some way outside Calcutta. Eden’s credentials for his own powerful position were impeccable. He was a nephew of Lord Auckland, who had formerly been governor general of India for six years. Eden’s own career had included the invasion of Sikkim (as political agent) and governor of Burma. ‘With these natural advantages’, wrote a perceptive journalist, Eden ‘was able to champion lost causes and advocate unpopular beliefs without inflicting injury upon his prospects or erecting an obstacle to his advancement’.23 But support for Wajid ‘Ali Shah was a lost cause too far, as Eden found out after a briefing from Thomson on the king’s refusal to support his vast family.

  Central government had been bothered during the previous year by ‘various matters connected with the proceedings of the ex-King of Oude’, matters which ‘chiefly concern the arrangements to be made for the maintenance of the ex-King’s wives and children, the marriage of his daughters’24 and his personal expenditure (or extravagance, to put it less politely). There was also the problem of the menagerie, which throughout this period seems curiously bound in with the king’s own household arrangements. Indeed, one domestic account scrutinised was for the ‘rhinocerous enclosure, repairs of the Sultan Kothi and articles of dress for His Majesty’s wardrobe’, which totalled one and a half lakhs, with no breakdown or explanation.

  The governor general thought that a better settlement of the king’s affairs, ‘which frequently involve local interests’, would be if Thomson and future agents submitted correspondence and reports about Wajid ‘Ali Shah to the lieutenant governor of Bengal, who would act as a filter, before sending selected material on to central Government. Apart from Thomson’s role as agent to the ex-king, he was also appointed agent to the Mysore princes, the descendants of Tipu Sultan. The Mysore princes were a trouble-free family in Calcutta, who might almost have been placed there solely as an exemplar of how deposed royalty ought to behave in exile.

  Ashley Eden was charged with setting up a three-man committee to report on the ‘arrangements necessary for proper superintendence’ of the king’s affairs. Naturally, Thomson was one of its members, together with Amir ‘Ali and Henry Peacock (a former agent), who was appointed president. The committee was formed on 1 May 1879, and by March 1880 its report was ready.25 Its brief had been to determine the nature and extent of the provision to be made for the family of the ex-king, that is, how much it was going to cost, and who should be included in the payment of pensions and allowances.

  Wajid ‘Ali Shah was consulted by the committee during its investigations, and it was reported that a ‘large number’ of the committee’s recommendations came from the king himself. It was an adroit move to work with Wajid ‘Ali Shah rather than simply telling him what he should do, as had been done so many times in the past, with so little result.

  Payment for the wives was tackled first. Both the nikah wives, Khas Mahal and Akhtar Mahal, got small increases, bringing their monthly pensions to 600 rupees and 500 rupees respectively. These were not large sums, commented the committee, but both queens had independent incomes and neither had any surviving children. In fact Khas Mahal, the first wife, who had suffered much at her husband’s hands, had left Garden Reach altogether, and ‘has been for sometime living entirely separate from His Majesty outside his premises. Indeed’, the report continued, ‘she is supposed to be living in adultery with one Hakeem Mahomed Munshee and Peary Sahib, a relation of hers’.26 This was a tricky one. The ‘Special or Exceptional Queen’, niece of the former chief minister ‘Ali Naqi Khan, the poetess after whom the Alam Bagh in Lucknow had been named and who flew into rages when things went wrong had, like the tigress, escaped the palace. But she was still queen.

  Verbal discussions with Wajid ‘Ali Shah about her pension are not recorded, only the end result. The king proposed to continue payments ‘conditionally’ on her ‘continuing to be faithful to His Majesty and dismissing those persons from her service who have been proved disloyal to His Majesty’. As we have seen, Khas Mahal had her own household around her, which she maintained until the end of her life. Akhtar Mahal, the second living nikah wife, was also ordered to continue being ‘faithful to His Majesty’, as were the mut‘ah wives. Even the khilawati wives, who did not get an increased pension ‘as they are in reality little more than domestic servants’, were told that they should remain faithful too.27 The king had lost control over his household. His spiteful gesture in divorcing twenty-seven mut‘ah wives had backfired. The committee agreed with Thomson that Wajid ‘Ali Shah had a moral obligation to support them, even if he was no longer married to them. Their treatment had been ‘both ungenerous and unjust’.

  By May 1879, Thomson reported that ‘His Majesty has consented of his own accord to continue their previous allowances and to renew the Motah contract with them.’ Most of the mut‘ah wives were quietly remarried to the king later that year. But having tasted freedom, three of the divorced women refused to be remarried ‘without some guarantee against future ill-treatment and some compensation for the injury to which they have already been subjected’. One begam even divorced the king ‘of her own accord’ and another left his protection and was subsequently dismissed. The committee could not order the women to be remarried, and it remained non-committal about the condition of faithfulness.

  While the committee was in session, the death of Mashuq Mahal, the king’s first mut‘ah wife, was reported on 19 November 1879. After thirty years of loyal and loving service, she had been divorced when the couple’s eldest son, Prince Farid-ud-din Qadr, had asked his father for more money. On her deathbed, Mashuq Mahal had asked her ex-husband ‘to pardon all her faults and have her buried in Mecca’. Farid-ud-din then sent a petition to his father asking to be reinstated in his favour. He got no reply. When Thomson re-submitted the prince’s petition, Wajid ‘Ali Shah falsely claimed he had had nothing to do with Mashuq Mahal during her lifetime (in spite of their four children and grandsons), and that he had nothing to say in answer to her dying wish.

  After an agreement on the wives’ allowances had been reached, and the remarriages had taken place, attention turned to the king’s sons and daughters. On the day the committee started work, there were twenty-five princes and twenty-seven princesses alive. The princesses presented less of a problem, because they would be married with dowries which were subsidised by the British government. But the princes had to be considered separately. Following the death in 1874 of Prince Hamid ‘Ali, the heir apparent, the title passed to Farid-ud-din Qadr. He was now the eldest surviving son of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, born to Mashuq Mahal in about 1846. He had been first married when he was about six years old, to a daughter of the chief minister, ‘Ali Naqi Khan, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of female relatives as brides for the Awadh family. These complicated family intermarriages meant that the king’s second nikah wife, Akhtar Mahal, was also the sister-in-law of Farid-ud-din Qadr. But once again, Wajid ‘Ali Shah had got himself into an impossible situation. He had named Farid-ud-din Qadr as his heir apparent, but at t
he same time had stopped the boy’s meagre monthly allowance of 90 rupees and had divorced his mother. Thomson was not unsympathetic to the young heir’s case. Although the British government did not recognise the title of heir apparent, because there was no longer a kingdom to inherit, Thomson said that Farid-ud-in Qadr should get a decent allowance from his father. ‘He would undoubtedly succeed to the guddee [throne] if the ex-King had one to leave’, but in reality he would only get a son’s share equally with his twenty-four brothers and half-brothers on their father’s death.

  Trying once again to wriggle out of his financial obligations, Wajid ‘Ali Shah first claimed that Farid-ud-din Qadr had ‘no superior rank’ and then, because of the number of his children, said he could only afford to pay each son 90 rupees a month. He argued that if he gave the heir more than the others, ‘it would only result in upsetting my household arrangements by making my children disobedient and turning them away from their present state of contentment to aspire after higher allowances’. He added that Farid-ud-din Qadr and his mother had been well provided for with valuable jewellery, government bonds and gifts of land (jagirs). But not surprisingly, given his inadequate monthly allowance, Farid-ud-din Qadr had fallen into debt and owed money to the manager of his jagir. In order to pay off this debt, he had mortgaged the estate to Hakeem Muhammad Munshi, the same man who was now supposedly in a relationship with the king’s first wife, Khas Mahal. Apart from his financial problems, Farid-ud-din Qadr claimed ‘there is talk at Garden Reach to set up a younger brother of mine by name of Mirza Khosh Bukht as my rival’. He added that whatever ‘His Majesty might be induced by interested parties’ to write to the agent, he, the prince, would like to be kept informed ‘in order that I may also have my say before it goes to the Government for final orders’.28

  Farid-ud-din Qadr is also likely to have been the author of an anonymous letter sent to Captain Durand, who was Thomson’s predecessor as agent with the king. The letter, dated 10 October 1877, came from ‘a son of the King (who fears the disclosure of his name before actual enquiry)’. It gave a vivid insider picture of the fear and frustration among Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s relatives at Garden Reach, who saw their money being squandered away while they themselves lived in poverty.

  ‘His Majesty’, the writer began, ‘owing to our misfortune, never associates with persons bold enough to hold independent opinions of their own on any subject. He is surrounded by sycophants and courtiers who always mind their own interests and entirely disregard ours.’29 The late Safdar ‘Ali was described as ‘impoverishing’ the royal treasury and he was blamed for much of the current financial deficit. ‘When he entered the King’s service he was a poor man—when he died the King owed him Rs 40 lakhs.’ It was Safdar ‘Ali who had instigated the sale, by auction, of the crown jewels rescued by Sir Henry Lawrence, even though the munshi himself ‘had spent 84 lakhs of the King’s pension over seven years!’

  The present estates manager, Amir ‘Ali, was proving to be just as bad, the letter continued. The British government had recently given him an advance of 3 lakhs ‘to repair our building [at Garden Reach] but, Kind Sir, our residences and those of our mothers are wretched hovels still and would not bear comparison to even the kitchens of European gentlemen. They are low and ill-ventilated godowns [sheds] with no flooring or efficient drainage… Pay our hovels a visit though for once, and see with your own eyes also the accommodation of, and the waste of money that is being lavishly spent for, the tigers, monkeys, beasts and birds. I can assure you Sir, that in comparing these you will see, as it were, heaven and hell side by side.’ The king was spending about 10,000 rupees monthly on ‘beasts and birds which his officers supply and get cash down for it’. The writer concluded chillingly, ‘I warn you, Sir, against the color-de-rose reports and the oily words of the Manager, which have hitherto been the cause of blinding people interested in my father’s affairs.’ Whether this letter was from Farid-ud-din Qadr or not, it led to the governor general ordering that the prince was to receive 2,500 rupees a month, which would be deducted at source from the king’s stipend and paid directly to him. It would also be backdated to 1 January 1878.

  Although the committee’s remit had been primarily to make recommendations to the government of Bengal about the cost of providing for the king’s family, other matters were considered too, particularly where there were financial implications. The king’s pension of 12 lakhs a year, equivalent to £10,000 every month, was not going to be increased, and it would cease on the king’s death. It could be decreased by allowances made directly to his relatives, where the king refused to do so voluntarily, but in the end it was a finite sum. The obvious answer was to persuade the king to cut back on his monthly expenditure, including the huge monthly outgoing on the menagerie. A table of allowances was worked out for the king’s descendants, based on their age. Daughters-in-law also had to be considered, particularly where their husbands, the king’s sons, had died. The late Prince Hamid ‘Ali had left five wives, all ill-provided for. His second wife, Kaukab Mahal, had been forced to sell her jewellery for a meagre sum in order to feed herself and the king’s grandson. ‘His Majesty cares nothing for us’, she complained, ‘being entirely engrossed with his affection in his birds and beasts.’30

  The king seemed remarkably compliant to the committee’s recommendations, once he realised that the government could, and would, deduct allowances for his relatives from his stipend. ‘So far from appearing to resent the enquiries the Committee thought necessary to make, or to assume an hostile or antagonistic attitude towards them, His Majesty has rendered them all the assistance in his power’, which the committee recommended. It seemed almost too good to be true. The king had even agreed to an inspection of the Garden Reach premises by the Sanitary Commissioner of Bengal, or the local Civil Surgeon, accompanied by Thomson. There was still some quibbling over the allowances to his widowed daughters-in-law. The fifth wife of Prince Hamid ‘Ali had moved in to live with her mother-in-law, Khas Mahal, ‘who is the possessor of thousands and thousands’, claimed the king. He maintained that his daughters-in-law were not close relatives. The ranking, according to him, was firstly children, followed by wives, grandsons, granddaughters, daughters-in-law whose husbands were alive, and lastly daughters-in-law whose husbands were dead. Nevertheless, there was general agreement on future provision for the family of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, and this had been the committee’s brief.

  In its close scrutiny of the king’s relatives, the committee had found a number of young princes at Garden Reach who were the sons, and in some cases grandsons, of Wajid ‘Ali Shah. Little attention had previously been paid to the younger male members of the vast Awadh family. The heirs apparent, Prince Hamid ‘Ali and, after his death, Prince Farid-ud-din Qadr, had, on the whole, been treated sympathetically by the British government, particularly as both princes were articulate, intelligent and, to a certain degree, anglicised. Both had spoken out vigorously against their father’s extravagance, and his meanness in not allocating them a decent income. This was a useful stick for the British government to wield over the king’s head, but there were other less articulate princes hanging idly around the Garden Reach estate. In allocating a scale of allowances for the children, the committee recommended that as the younger princes reached the age of eight, they should be enrolled as boarders in a new school to be established at Garden Reach. A sum of 100 rupees a month would be deducted from their allowances and paid to the school as fees.

  The idea of schools under royal patronage in Awadh was not a new one. The Lucknow Observatory had been set up by nawab Nasir ud-din Haidar not only to scan the heavens, but ‘more particularly as a school for the young courtiers in which some knowledge of Astronomy and Physics might be taught’.31 Long before Wajid ‘Ali Shah had the Observatory closed down in 1849, the school had been abandoned because of the lack of interest and application by the ‘young courtiers’. The king’s own father, nawab Amjad ‘Ali Shah, had set up a Shi‘a college in the Great Imamba
rah which, although running at a loss, had over two hundred fee-paying scholars. The college was closed down after annexation on economic and ideological grounds, because the British authorities did not want to be seen supporting ‘an educational establishment which teaches and fosters an exclusive creed, and religious tenets to which the Government cannot subscribe’.32

  But there was nothing to stop Wajid ‘Ali Shah from setting up his own school in Garden Reach for his own sons. The first attempt was made in 1869, but failed, apparently because it had too few rules. Two years later a prospectus was sent to the central government entitled ‘Rules and Regulations of the Madrissa of the King of Oude at Garden Reach … issued agreeably to the instructions of His Majesty on 23 January 1871’.33 (Although a madrassa is today usually associated with teaching Islamic theology, the word simply means ‘school’ in Arabic.) It is clear that Wajid ‘Ali Shah, with his usual love of detail, had involved himself closely in formulating the rules.

  All princes aged five and above were to attend school from 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m., and they would be picked up by carriage from their various houses in Garden Reach. ‘The madrassa is a place of education’, explained the king, ‘and not for showing their rank or dignity.’ The princes should consider themselves as students and not bring with them their attendants or friends, although they were allowed one khitmatgar (servant) each ‘to attend upon them in case of necessity’. Because many of the young princes were of ‘tender age’ and would be at school all day, their mothers were allowed to send them ‘something in the shape of refreshments’ at a given time.

  After morning lessons there was to be an hour for recreation, then writing practice ‘upon wooden boards and metallic paper’. At 3.00 p.m. English and Bengali were to be studied, and at 4.00 p.m. there were physical activities including ‘wrestling with daggers’, riding, and what sounds like cricket. Staff would be drawn from the king’s own establishment to teach Arabic, Persian, English and Bengali, so there was no need to appoint any ‘new hands’. A monthly examination would test the boys’ attainments and proficiency, and at the end of three months there would be a special examination by His Majesty himself and staff members. The princes who did well would be entitled to prizes. The examination in English would be carried out by the maulawi Deen Mahummad, assisted by another person proficient in the English language. (Wajid ‘Ali Shah could not speak English himself.) Once the boys had a grasp of the Arabic alphabet they would begin studying the Qur‘an and Persian grammar. The Gulistan and Bostan by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa’adi were set books, together with an English spelling book. The boys were to be ‘well grounded in the principle of the Sheeah sect, and made capable of keeping up the fasting and other ceremonies and prayers as prescribed by their religion’. At the same time they would receive instruction in the ‘principles of morality and the art of letter-writing’.