Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  On 22 September, the day following the king’s death and funeral, a council meeting was held at Viceregal Lodge in Shimla. Its purpose was to ratify the final Act relating to Wajid ‘Ali Shah, Act XIX, which was ‘to provide for the Administration of the Estate of His late Majesty the King of Oudh’.38 The Act was to have significant consequences for the late king’s family and the Garden Reach estate. Its terms had been proposed more than a year earlier, in July 1886, when Colonel Prideaux had the foresight to write a long, detailed memorandum, anticipating the king’s death and suggesting what should be done when it occurred. The government, he urged, needed to consider the ‘proper devolution of the King’s property on his death’ in order to reduce the financial allowances to the numerous members of the family. When Prideaux drew up the memorandum there were twenty-one sons and twenty-six daughters surviving. Of the daughters, twenty were already married, which meant that the need for further dowries and marriage expenses, part-funded by the government, was reduced. But there were numerous grandchildren, the two nikah wives, Khas Mahal and Akhtar Mahal, and of course all the mut‘ah wives.

  Under Muslim law the two official wives and the forty-seven children were entitled to a share in the proceeds of the king’s property, which included both moveable goods and the houses themselves. Very little in the way of jewels or valuables belonging to the king remained, as far as Prideaux knew. He thought that jewellery brought from Lucknow more than thirty years earlier had been ‘probably distributed among [the king’s] favourite wives’, although this turned out subsequently not to be entirely true. In spite of his possessions and his numerous children, Wajid ‘Ali Shah died intestate. He had not made a will up to the time of Prideaux’s 1886 report, because of a ‘superstitious dread of the consequence of such an act’, and the agent thought it unlikely he would make one in the future. So government needed to act to avoid ‘various interested parties’ from losing out if there was a free-for-all, as well as to sidestep ‘a goodly crop of litigation’.39 Even if a Will had been made, there was no guarantee that litigation would not take place, so numerous and vociferous were the claimants.

  The terms of Act XIX were uncompromising. They gave the governor general exclusive authority to act in the administration of property ‘of whatever nature’ left by the king. Dufferin was to settle all claims on the estate and to distribute the remaining property or proceeds among the king’s family and dependants as he saw fit. Whatever the governor general decided could not be challenged in any Court of Law. In addition, Prideaux, as agent, could not be held liable for any actions he may have carried out since the day preceding the king’s death, and no legal action could be brought against him. Anyone attempting to collect debts owed to them by the late king had to justify their actions to Prideaux first. The Act also specified ‘that the winding up of the estate will include the closing of the large establishment at Garden Reach’, and in view of the late king’s ‘peculiar legal position’ steps were to be taken immediately to ‘secure his property and to provide for its distribution without exposing it to the risk of robbery or the delays and costs of litigation’.40 This is why Prideaux had rushed down to Garden Reach by midday on 21 September, in order to try to prevent any further looting of the palaces by servants and dependants.

  There were an estimated four to five thousand people at Garden Reach, the majority of whom had been dependent on the king in one form or another, and who would now lose their livelihoods and living quarters. His wives, children and their servants accounted for nearly another thousand souls. A few weeks before the king’s death his seals of office had been stolen from the palace, and it was suspected by Council members that these had already been used to ‘authenticate’ a number of false documents and to make fraudulent claims.41 The ‘enormous household’ of the late king still had to be provided for. The more that was pilfered in the hours immediately after his death, the less there would be for his relatives, many of whom had no independent income at all.

  This pre-emptive move by the governor general could be seen as the final act of spite against the king and all that he had represented. Certainly the Garden Reach estate was parcelled up and sold off fairly promptly, as we shall see. But harsh as it may seem, it did avoid the years and expense of claims that would have been made on the estate and the pathetic scenario of the king’s widows living and dying penniless in the crumbling palaces. Sir Andrew Scoble, the legal representative on the Governor General’s Council, helpfully pointed out that because the late king had benefited from previous Acts which had secured him special immunities and privileges, ‘exceptional legislation’ was now justified on his demise.42

  Less than a month after the king’s death a confidential letter was passed to Colonel Prideaux, who had been deputed to wind up the estate. ‘In the event of the property at Garden Reach being sold’, it began, it was possible that Messrs Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Company ‘may be in a position to make an offer for a portion of it, and requesting that the matter be kept secret’.43 Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co., still a flourishing firm in Kolkata today, was established in the 1830s as an import and export business. Some of its exports at this period were Indian labourers, shipped overseas to work on plantations in British Guiana under a scheme which stopped just short of slavery. Robert Mitchell, the ‘Emigration Agent for British Guiana’, followed up the secret offer six months later. Mitchell was anxious to get his hands on the Badami Kothi at 24 Garden Reach Road, because he had heard from another trading company that the government’s Agricultural Department had their eye on it.44

  In winding up the Garden Reach estate, there were a huge number of things that Prideaux had to organise, and it all had to be done quickly, but also tactfully. The Secretary of State for India, Viscount Cross, wrote to him personally on behalf of the British government. ‘We wished the late King’s premises and establishment at Garden Reach to be broken up as soon as possible. We were particularly anxious that any attempt to maintain the semblance of a court under the King’s sons should be firmly repressed. At the same time it was our object to avoid as far as possible hurting the susceptibility of either the King’s family or the Mohammedan community.’45 The Colonel was advised to take the Shi‘a Muhammedan law as a general guide.

  There was a delicate balance to be struck in selling the late king’s possessions and houses while his family were still in residence. Prideaux was adamant that the way forward was by auction sales held in the Garden Reach houses themselves, and he reported at the beginning of January 1888 that the auctions ‘have so far caused no discontent’. All those things on which Wajid ‘Ali Shah had lavished money—the silver-plated beds, the glassware, the chandeliers, the rich furnishings and much more—were knocked down to eager buyers. Everything went except those books, pictures and effects that Prideaux considered ‘may possess historical interest’. He put these to one side as he prepared a ‘special report’ which was ready in May that year, when the auction sales of moveable property had been completed. The late king’s library was transferred to the office of the Board of Examiners, a quasi-academic body whose duties including vetting candidates in Indian languages and approving suitable textbooks. Colonel Jarratt, secretary to the Board and a Persian scholar, offered to examine the collection, with the assistance of Maulawi Kabir-ud-din Ahmad. ‘The more curious and valuable manuscripts will be priced at a fair and reasonable rate’, reported Prideaux, who suggested they should be offered to the Lucknow Museum and similar institutions ‘before they are thrown on the market’.46 How many manuscripts there were we do not know, but the bulk of the collection formed works of a ‘polemical character’ which Prideaux suggested could go to the Sibtainabad Imambarah ‘after due precautions have been taken that they should not fall into the hands of the Sunnis’.

  ‘The King possessed no pictures of historical interest’, continued Prideaux, ‘but I have reserved a few portraits of himself and his family, of which one, an oil painting taken by a native artist shortly after his accession to the thron
e of Oudh, might be presented to the Lucknow Museum, if the authorities of that institution desire to have it.47 The others, which are of no value whatever might be distributed among the senior members of the family.’ Having disposed of a lifetime’s collection, Prideaux went on to examine the tosha-khanah, or wardrobe of Wajid ‘Ali Shah. Not surprisingly, it was ‘of large extent’ and the agent gave it his close personal attention. Clothes which had actually been worn by the king were handed over to his eldest son, Prince Qamar Qadr, for distribution among old and deserving servants, as had been the custom at Lucknow on the ruler’s death. A large quantity of Kashmir shawls were found, all perfectly new and never used, so these were auctioned. Six ‘swords of State’ and a few articles of jewellery went off to Messrs Hamilton & Co., also for auction. The only personal belongings that went to the prince were an illuminated Qur‘an, to be retained as an heirloom in the family, one sword, and a ring, as suggested in the book Mohammedan Law by Sir William Macnaughton. Prideaux had conscientiously consulted this, on the advice of the Secretary of State for India; and just to make sure, he recorded the page number of the book, and the edition.

  What Prideaux did not concern himself with were the papers in the daftar, the king’s office, which held correspondence going back over thirty years. No archive of Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s personal papers has ever been discovered, nor even a rumour of one. Unless clerks took away the ledgers and files for sentimental reasons when the offices were being cleared, the most likely scenario is that they were sold as waste paper. Before the plastic bag appeared in India there was always a market for good quality used paper, which was folded and glued into sturdy bags for sweets, fruit and small items. Paper from printed books was usually too soft, or too small, to recycle as bags, but large documents on good paper, as these would have been, were in demand. The royal daftar clearly had an efficient copying and filing system, because the king would sometimes quote from letters he had sent, or received, years earlier. But all the office copies of the mohubutnamahs, the purcha pyams, the taziatnamahs and the petitions have disappeared. Their Persian originals are occasionally found, beautifully written, gold-flecked with painted borders, but carelessly folded and bound into British government records. Because the title of king, and by implication his Garden Reach kingdom, died with Wajid ‘Ali Shah, there must have seemed little point in retaining papers from his office. His heir, Prince Qamar Qadr, would never have the authority to write to the governor general and the Queen Empress, Victoria, as his father had done. The British government had demanded that everything was to be cleared out in a rush. Clerks, messengers, calligraphers and gold-leaf specialists all lost their jobs on the king’s death. What was simpler than calling in the kabariwala, the scrap dealer, to cart away so much useless paper and to receive a few rupees in return?

  A problem that could not be so easily disposed of was the menagerie. Even though Wajid ‘Ali Shah was devoted to his animals, he had made no provision for them after his death. Prideaux was informed in October 1887 that the animals and birds were rapidly dying off because none of their erstwhile keepers were looking after them or feeding them. Before the king’s death, the agent had estimated that the most valuable items of his personal property were probably the menagerie and ‘the machinery belonging to his water and gas works’. Now the first of these assets was in danger and William Rutledge, Calcutta’s leading animal dealer, was called in. This was the same man who had been paid by the king to provide beasts and birds for the menagerie some years earlier, and who had a reputation as ‘a keen practical naturalist’ and a specialist in wild animals.

  Auction sales were arranged for the inhabitants of the menagerie, the serpentarium and the aviary, and these took place in the winter of 1887–8. Rutledge was to receive 10 per cent of the sale price, and Prideaux said this was well deserved and that Rutledge had done a great deal of work in preparation for the auctions. He first had to catalogue the menagerie, then catch the large number of birds, many of which were ‘loose about the premises’. About 18,000 pigeons were brought down from the terraces of the houses in Garden Reach, sorted and caged in pairs, or by the dozen. It was thought that the birds would achieve better prices caged than sold by the flock. The deer in the park were rounded up, and about a hundred peacocks that were ‘flying about wild from the houses’ were caught.48 The animals and birds had to be fed while they were waiting to be sold off, and because Rutledge and his assistants had to remain on the premises to supervise this, Prideaux soon found extra tasks for the naturalist. He was put in charge of the late king’s stable, his carriages and the cattle, as well as looking after the gas lights. Rutledge was also asked to keep an eye on the 4,000 servants still left at Garden Reach and make sure they did not tamper with articles in the houses while sales were taking place and inventories being made by Messrs Mackenzie Lyall & Co.’s men. It may have seemed an unlikely alliance between the colonel and the naturalist, but Prideaux was clearly hard-pressed and needed all the help he could get.

  A few private sales were made before the animal auctions took place. The nawab of Bhawalpore bought some animals and birds, as did the ‘Envoy of Cabul’, the Afghan ambassador. Ram Brahma Sanyal, the king’s old friend and director of the Alipore Zoological Gardens, bought two rhinoceros at 1,000 rupees each and a giant rat for 60 rupees. By February 1888 everything was gone—the cows, buffalo, sheep, goats and dogs, as well as the more exotic animals. Milton & Co. were the auctioneers, and Prideaux thought they had ‘done rather well in the business’. The total sum raised was nearly £3,000, a respectable amount, but of course only a fraction of what Wajid ‘Ali Shah had lavished on his lifelong hobby.49

  The king’s family, who by his own admission had taken second place in his heart to the menagerie, would have been left entirely unprovided for if the governor general had not assumed control of the estate through Act XIX. It was well known that relations between the king and his wives and children were very strained before his death. ‘If the King had his own way, not one of them probably would benefit by any testamentary disposition of his estate’, reported the Bengal government.50 But under Shi‘a law, which was being strictly applied by Prideaux, the two nikah widows, Khas Mahal and Akhtar Mahal, were the chief beneficiaries, followed by the sons and daughters, the latter receiving half that given to their brothers. The mut‘ah wives were not entitled to anything.

  The final count of close dependants who had relied solely on pensions from the king was made in December 1887, as follows:

  2 nikah wives

  33 mahals

  176 begams

  14 khilawatis

  27 new begams (married since the date of the Committee’s report in 1880)

  22 sons

  17 daughters

  10 grandsons and nephews

  7 granddaughters

  6 daughters-in-law

  Pensions for a single month totalled about £1,310.51 The value of the silver rupee had fallen in real terms in the 1870s after the adoption by European countries of the gold standard. Although this did not affect the king’s pension, and the amounts he paid to his dependants, it did mean that in relative terms pensions bought less than they had in the 1860s and imported goods became more expensive, leading to frequent royal complaints about not having enough money. Prideaux’s immediate concern during the autumn of 1887 was how to fund the dependants before the estate and its contents had been sold and the final settlements made. There was the worry of the servants too, and their wages of £1,000 per month. This was partially solved by dismissing two-thirds of them at the end of October, including the menagerie staff. Former employees received a month’s pay in lieu of notice, and Prideaux noted that ‘the majority are taking advantages of the liberality of the Government to return to their own country’, which sounds as if most of the staff did not come from British India. At any rate, the month’s pay was useful, because it meant that they did not spend time hanging about in Calcutta and possibly causing trouble.52

  By the end of January
1888, four months after the king’s death, the establishment had been reduced to the following numbers:

  1 general manager

  6 departmental officers

  7 clerks and mohurirs

  7 men in the wages department

  42 at the Sibtainabad Imambarah

  26 police establishment

  95 guards and pyadas

  5 orderly sowars

  3 boat establishment

  9 chapprassis and hurkurras

  2 engineers

  15 stable establishment

  150 bearers and other indoor servants

  17 water carriers

  159 gardeners

  54 sweepers

  Only sufficient staff would be retained ‘to prevent the buildings and gardens from falling into disrepair and a defective sanitary state’ before they were sold off.53

  Prideaux’s most difficult task, however, came when he tried to separate the king’s ladies from their jewellery, in order to add it to the estate. The system of loaning jewellery to the wives for special occasions has already been mentioned, and when Bhikan Khan, keeper of the royal jewels, was called on to surrender what he had, he replied he had nothing in his possession. Prideaux said that he did not believe him, but because the register of loans in the peshkari office had not been kept up to date, he had really no evidence to challenge Bhikan Khan.54 Jewellery to the value of about £1,500 had gone missing among the mut‘ah wives, and a list was circulated among them detailing what they had borrowed and requesting the return of the jewels. Not surprisingly no notice at all was taken of the list. On the contrary, some of the wives said they considered the jewellery to be their personal property, while others, rather bolder, said that they had sold their jewels and that the peshkari register was wrong. ‘Not one has shown any inclination to return the jewellery’, noted Prideaux dryly. He also learned that when Wajid ‘Ali Shah gave favoured women large presents of jewellery which he intended them to keep as gifts, it was always confirmed by a firman or written order. By May 1888 it was clear that there was no point in pursuing the matter further, particularly because government officials thought ‘it might have some appearance of harshness if we insisted on its [the jewellery’s] restoration or the deduction of its estimated value from the ladies’ shares and allowances’. It was agreed to give the mut‘ah wives the benefit of the doubt.