Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  There was, though, ‘a matter of some delicacy’ over the king’s eldest, unmarried, daughter, Padshah Ara Kaniz ul-Hadi, known as Shahzadi Sahibah, who was about eighteen years old and had ‘enjoyed a more than common share of her father’s affections’.55 As a result the princess had apartments in one of the newest and most richly furnished houses, as well as an additional allowance of 480 rupees a month, and she was also put in charge of many ‘very valuable articles of jewellery’. When the princess was asked by Prideaux’s assistant to produce her jewellery so that it could be properly assessed and catalogued, there were sulks and refusals. Eventually, after some disinclination, a succession of jewels were handed through the purdah screen, one by one, to be catalogued, but they had to be handed back to the young woman. In subsequent interviews, the independent-minded princess said that not only was she going to keep the jewels, but that she was entitled to choose her own residence and her own husband too—in that order. Shahzadi Sahibah wanted to marry one of her father’s darogas, or superintendents, who had risen from a very humble background to a position of great influence. Henry Durand dealt personally with the situation. ‘A most unsuitable marriage’, he minuted, that would involve ‘a flagrant violation of the feelings of the family and of Muhammadan susceptibilities in general’.56 The couple were told that they would not get the usual marriage grant of 10,000 rupees if they defied Durand, and the princess was packed off to stay with her brother and sister-in-law, taking with her the jewellery and two of the gifts presented to her late father by Lord Mayo.

  Lady Dufferin took her husband, the governor general, for a drive around the estate at the end of 1887 and noted in her diary how Prideaux was dealing with king’s widows:

  ‘His ladies were nearly as numerous as his animals, and they are now being despatched to their own homes as quickly as possible. They go at the rate of seven or eight a day, but there are still a great number left; and when [Dufferin] approached their habitation they collected behind some venetian shutters, and set to work to howl and weep with all their might. The effect was most extraordinary, but did not excite the pity it was intended to evoke. I am sure they will be much happier with their own little income, guaranteed by the British Government than they ever would have been shut up together, the slaves of an hardhearted old man who cared more for his cobras and his wild beasts than he did for them.’57

  As the houses were emptied, they were put up for sale. There was resistance from tenants and squatters living in huts at Bechali Ghat, one of the riverside jetties of Garden Reach, who refused to leave or to take on the monthly tenancy offered them by the government. In the end a suit had to be filed for possession of the site so that it could be put up to auction. The king’s sons and heirs were consulted on the reserve prices for the houses, and the auctions were due to begin on 18 March 1888 when Prince Jehan Qadr asked that the Sultan Khana and the Goshai Sultani houses be excluded from the sale because they contained small mosques and imambarahs within their premises. The prince had already put potential buyers off purchasing Bengali Bazar, saying it contained a mosque and burial places. The superintendent of the twenty-four Parganas, Mr Upton, thought that the prince’s request was ‘frivolous’ and merely an attempt to retain the palaces as a residence for himself and his brothers. Nevertheless, the government was still hypersensitive to Muslim opinion, particularly when a petition was presented from the community reiterating the prince’s request. It would be ‘a pity to rush a matter in which feelings run pretty high and damage may be done’.58 There was also the worry that if two important lots were withdrawn from the auction, offers for the other properties would be lower.

  The matter could have escalated into an unpleasant dispute. Senior Muslim clerics were consulted, who maintained that the Sultan Khana mosque continued to be a place of worship and was considered as waqf property—that is, land which could not be sold. Reluctantly, the government agreed to postpone the auction, but made it clear that the postponement was not because ‘holy places’ had been discovered, but because the questions raised by their alleged existence could not be settled before 18 March. Interesting arguments were employed by the government to resolve the case. An inspection had shown that the mosque in question had a flat roof, with no domes or minarets, and it was described as an imitation of the tomb of Imam Hussain at Karbala. It was found that there had been a similar dispute at Bhagalpore, where Muslims had required access to a mosque in a property which had been sold. In the end it was decided to ‘fence off’ the small, free-standing mosque. ‘We can leave that alone, and sell the remainder’, advised the government solicitor. ‘Once the Sultan Khana is gone, I fancy the opposition will cease.’59 The auction went ahead on 4 June, with a total reserve price on the properties of 9 lakhs, equivalent to some £60,000. Most of the existing properties bought by the king had appreciated in value over the years, and only in a few cases, like the Tafrih Bakhsh house at No. 26 Garden Reach Road, was the reserve price lower than that paid by Wajid ‘Ali Shah on its initial purchase.

  Much of the Garden Reach estate was bought by Messrs James Robinson and Morrison, two separate agents acting on behalf of a syndicate, whose main interests lay in shipping. The Port Commissioners were allocated part of the riverside from the Matiya Burj jetty to the Sultan Khana premises, and by the mid-1890s the headquarters of the Bengal Nagpur Railway (BNR) was established in the former garden houses. The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (today’s P&O) bought property here, and houses No. 12 and 13 became the immigration offices for Fiji and Trinidad respectively. Railway lines and tidal docks have carved up the area, although the Sultan Khana itself survives, minus its southern portico, as the private residence of the railway’s general manager. A little mosque also remains, thanks to the princes’ insistence that it should not be sold, as well as two small imambarahs. The Shahi burial ground has not been so lucky and is a miserable, disputed area surrounded by factories, with only a few remaining tombs. The most visible reminder of Garden Reach is the Sibtainabad Imambarah, the king’s burial place, on the newly renamed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah Road. His tomb lies to the left of the main hall, in a small room enclosed by a glass and metal grill. Within the room are a red velvet throne-like chair with gilt arms and lion mask legs and a number of china jardinières which give an informal, almost homely, air. The tomb itself is marked by a ta’ziyah, and above it stand a silver dome or umbrella and fly whisks, the ancient symbols of royalty. Matiya Burj is classed today as a poor urban area, predominantly Muslim, with a substantial number of tailors, sweet-makers and small shopkeepers, many of whom claim descent from those who served the Garden Reach court.

  As for the king’s own descendants, not surprisingly there are a substantial number, including descendants of Birjis Qadr, the boy prince who was briefly the nominal head of Awadh during the Uprising. Understandably there are rifts between different branches of the family, just as there were during Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s time. Some are to do with property, or lawsuits, but others concern ‘izzat, that subtle word for honour and status, which is jealously guarded. Interviews with a few of the descendants uncovered charming, upper-class Indians engaged in business enterprises, education, medicine and good government jobs. Disappointingly they have virtually no family stories to tell about their revered ancestor. If the king seemed a distant figure to his many children, then he is even further removed from his descendants, although his memory remains a matter of pride: a king born out of his time.

  Wajid ‘Ali Shah remained aloof from entertainments in Calcutta, preferring to arrange his own musical performances at Garden Reach to entertain his courtiers and staff. The ‘little kingdom’ he built around him, although satisfying, prevented him from integrating into British India as other exiled princes had done. He continued to seek recognition of his royal status and wrote to Queen Victoria on friendly terms. On his death the government was anxious to dispose of Garden Reach and its inhabitants, both human and animal, as quickly as possible. All the king’s possessi
ons, including the palace archives, are dispersed or lost.

  CONCLUSION

  ‘There was a time when showers of pearls were trodden underfoot. Now I feel the cruel sun above and pebbles underfoot.’

  Attributed to Wajid ‘Ali Shah

  As the Bengal Legislative Council gathered to meet early in December 1940 for the day’s business, they were requested to stand for a minute to honour the memory of ‘Prince Akram Hossain’, who had died nearly two months earlier on 15 October. The Council had much on its mind. Although the outbreak of war in Europe was not to affect Calcutta directly, for the moment, there were unsettling events afoot.1 The British would, eventually, leave India, and had been making arrangements to do so by devolving power from the centre to the provinces. This was to be welcomed, although there would be no move until the war was over, and in 1940 its outcome was far from certain, even with the support of Indian troops. The idea of India divided along religious lines, at first unthinkable, was slowly becoming a possibility. The Muslim League, founded at the start of the twentieth century, had started to speak of a new country to be called Pakistan. Nearer home, the trauma of Calcutta’s loss of status when the capital was transferred to New Delhi had subsided, although the Bengal Chamber of Commerce was unforgiving.2 Calcutta never regained its political nor its commercial former pre-eminence.

  Who was the prince who had caused the honourable members to pause ‘as a mark of respect to the memory of the illustrious deceased’, as the Extract from Proceedings described him? He was in fact Prince Afsar-ul Mulk Mirza Mohamed Akram Hossain Bahadur, the only surviving son of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, who had been a pupil in the king’s madrassa (see Chapter Six). ‘The Prince was a bachelor’, continued the extract, ‘and so his death has removed the last direct link of this province with the ancient Ruling dynasty of Oudh.’ The prince had been born at Garden Reach in 1881, his mother being Mumtaz Mahal Sahibah, whom the king had married about 1873. As we have seen, the government of India, at the time of the prince’s birth, had recommended that the king’s children were no longer to be formally recognised, because the king was understood to be impotent. But this recommendation was tactfully ignored by the Legislative Council now. Prince Afsar-ul Mulk had been a model prince, exactly the kind of person that the British might have wished his father to become.

  ‘He was a well-known social figure and took to public life at an early age, serving as the Sheriff of Calcutta,3 Commissioner of the Calcutta Corporation, member of the Central Assembly and of the Council of State. In 1931 the prince acted for a time as a Member of the Executive Council of the Governor of Bengal. He was also connected with various associations, being a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Bengal Flying Club.

  ‘He was popular with both the Hindu and Muslim communities because of his sincere efforts at establishing communal harmony. In 1936, he was elected President of the All-India Shia Political Conference held at Lucknow, the capital of his forefathers. He had been in poor health for some time… May his soul rest in peace!’4

  Afsar-ul Mulk would only have been a child at the time of his father’s death, and given Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s declared aversion to most of his family as he grew older, it is unlikely that there was much rapport between son and father. The young prince would have seen the king as a fat old man, almost unable to walk, lumbering around his menagerie and being rude to his wives. But perhaps something intangible had passed between the two that inspired the prince to strive for communal harmony, as his father had done in very different circumstances, almost a century earlier.

  Wajid ‘Ali Shah was the victim of a complicated set of British interests, but also a victim of poor timing, about which he could do nothing. He was damned from the start simply by his ancestors, whom the British considered dissolute and extravagant (with some justification, it has to be said). Geographically, the kingdom of Awadh was at first a useful buffer state in the lawless days of the late eighteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century it had became an irritant as the East India Company remorselessly extended its territorial remit and saw Awadh as a large and inconvenient obstruction between Bengal and Delhi. It was ‘ripe’ for annexation at the peak of Company expansion in the 1850s, just as the king inherited the throne. Politically, public and official opinion at home in Britain, fuelled by lurid reports on rural Awadh and its sophisticated capital, demanded that something be done. The days when a rich Indian monarch in his own kingdom was an object of wonder and admiration to visitors from the West were long gone, although Wajid ‘Ali Shah was slow to recognise this, and perhaps having done so, never admitted it to himself. The king’s efforts at land reform and civil administration, which the Company appeared to demand in return for lifting the threat of annexation, were negated and sabotaged by Company officials themselves.

  If the king failed to appreciate that times were changing, then the British were equally culpable of misreading the situation in Awadh. They sneered at the rich cultural life in the capital, unlike their predecessors in the 1770s and 1780s who had participated in musha’iras, musical concerts, feasting and festivals.5 They completely ignored the religious importance of the king to his Shi‘a followers and the wider community, as well as his support for pilgrims to Mecca and his links with Iraq. They believed that the fertile kingdom of Awadh would flourish under British administration, but failed to realise that its inhabitants preferred to be ruled by their own king, whatever his faults, than by exemplary foreigners. The fashionable idea among Company officials that Britain had a duty to ‘rescue’ Awadh, for its own good, was simply unacceptable to the kingdom’s inhabitants, both rural and urban.

  Thus having failed to anticipate both the consequences of annexation in 1856 and the Uprising the following year, the Company, and subsequently the British government, wildly overreacted in their treatment of the king. He was to be punished by incarceration in Fort William, for no discernable crime, but at the same time deferred to with exquisite politeness. As a political prisoner, his jailers were scrupulous in monitoring his health. Had he died in prison, it would have given impetus to the disaffected sepoys in the Bengal Army, many of whom came from Awadh. Although the king had made it clear that he did not support the rebels, even offering to lead his own men against them, he had become, unwittingly, a figurehead of the revolt. On his release, he was settled outside Calcutta with a gift of houses and a very large pension. For the rest of his life, British officials vacillated between trying to protect the king from unscrupulous tricksters and threatening to leave him to the consequences of his own extravagance. Their approach was that of an inconsistent parent faced with a wilful child (‘a spoilt child’, as he was actually called), who finds that neither promises nor threats can alter its behaviour.

  In the matter of the king’s treatment of his wives and children, British officials were to take a sterner line. There was surprisingly little criticism of the number of wives (about 375) whom the king married, and it was not until the appointment of Mowbray Thomson as agent to the king in 1874 that the implications of so many mut‘ah marriages and divorces began to trouble the authorities. To their credit, government officials seemed genuinely concerned with the plight of the discarded wives, particularly those who had been with the king from youth and who had grown old in his service. Officials were prepared to over-ride the king’s religious objections in providing for the divorced women and their children, and they deducted money from his pension for his dependants. There was sympathy too for some of the adult princes who wanted to make a life for themselves away from their father’s ancien régime.

  What can we conclude from the king’s lifelong struggles against British officialdom? What often seemed like perverse behaviour on Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s part can also be interpreted as the actions of a man who is resigned to his fate but is not going to go down quietly. The more he was criticised for his extravagance, the more he spent. The humiliation of becoming financially dependent on the British undoubtedly drove many of his actions, particula
rly when threats that he would not be bailed out over his debts were never implemented. Government censure of the way he treated his wives and children led to him severing almost all relations with them. Stripping him of his Awadh kingdom resulted in the creation of a new, smaller kingdom at Garden Reach.

  As for his sons, clearly many of them realised that they would have to make their own way in the world. Not only would there be no more government stipends, but their father’s extravagance meant that there was nothing to inherit either. There was no landed property left, not even their childhood homes. Prince Afsar-ul Mulk had made the best of an unpromising start and had been rewarded with the appointment as Sheriff of Calcutta, followed by executive posts in which he could influence, however slightly, political events. He preferred to work within the system of British India rather than remaining stubbornly outside it, as his father had done.

  Because Awadh was the last kingdom to be annexed by the British, the question of deposing further Indian rulers did not arise again, at least not in such dramatic circumstances. After 1858 an estimated 600 states ruled by hereditary princes existed in British India, including Hyderabad, which had broken away from the Mughal Empire around the same time as Awadh. While the Rajput states were allowed to coast along with minimal interference from the central government, others were closely monitored by British political agents or Residents. In some cases these government officials even acted as marriage brokers, or at least suggested suitable brides for the young princes. An English education was considered desirable for future rulers, an opinion that had been voiced after the failures of the king’s madrassas. When some of these princes outgrew their English governesses, there were princely establishments like Mayo College and Rajkumar College to attend.6 It was too late for the Awadh princes, of course, since there was no kingdom left for them to rule. But we can fruitfully speculate that the distinct post-Uprising move to ‘Westernise’ potential leaders in those states that had escaped direct rule must draw some lessons from what had happened in Awadh. There would be no further direct confrontations between government and ruling princes or their heirs. The welfare of their subjects was encouraged, and the advantages of a contented population under the broad British umbrella of Empire were pointed out. The new inclusive policy would see no more little kingdoms established in British India after the demise of Garden Reach.7