The remaining ninety years of British rule saw successive overtures to India’s princes, beginning with a new system of honours awarded to them by Queen Victoria. This was followed by three excessively splendid assemblies and durbars of 1877, 1903 and 1911, in which they pledged their loyalty to the British crown. By 1919 the princes were invited as ‘imperial allies’ to attend the Versailles peace conference and later to meetings of the League of Nations in Geneva. Clearly it was better to work with Indian rulers than against them. It was the leaders of the Independence movement who were now seen as troublemakers, and who had to be curbed and imprisoned. Whether Wajid ‘Ali Shah, had he been born a century later, would have taken his place with his peers around the negotiating table, or whether he would have diverted his undoubted talents into the creative arts, we cannot say. But what we are left with is the portrait of a man who lived through eventful times and whose name, despite his undoubted failings, is still synonymous in India today with tehzib—the grace and courtesy of kings.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Alternative spellings, more common in the nineteenth century, were Oudh or Oude. Present-day spelling varies between Awadh and Avadh, although the former is generally preferred.
2. See Mir’s complaint in Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, Three Mughal Poets (1969). ‘The ruins of Jahanabad [Delhi] were ten times better than Lucknow; Oh, that I had stayed there to die—not come to live distracted here.’ Note: publication details of all books quoted are given in the Bibiliography.
3. See the author’s A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow (1985), p.81.
4. See the exhibition catalogue by Stephen Markel et al., India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow (2010).
5. See the author’s A Fatal Friendship, pp.88–9.
6. The full text of this letter is given in the author’s The Great Uprising in India 1857–58: Untold Stories, Indian and British (2007), pp.115–16.
7. The Bengali author Sudipta Mitra is writing a book provisionally entitled Banished: Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s Kingdom of Metiyaburj, and the scholar Richard Williams is researching the king’s musicians at Garden Reach.
8. See Mirza Kaukab Qadr Sajjad ‘Ali, Vajid ‘Ali Shah ki adabi aur saqafati khidmat (Taraqqi-yi-Biyuro, New Delhi 1995) for a comprehensive listing and critique of the king’s books.
1. ‘THAT ENERGETIC OLD LADY’
1. The Times 1 September 1856.
2. Punch, or the London Charivari 30 August 1856.
3. Punch 23 August 1856.
4. The story is told in William Knighton, The Private Life of an Eastern Queen (1865). Long regarded as a fictional account of Janab-i ‘Aliyyah’s life, as told by a fictional maid-servant, Elihu Jan, this is in fact a fairly accurate and useful source of reference. Elihu Jan appears in a government of India list of former royal servants in receipt of a pension in 1860.
5. Knighton, op. cit., p.12.
6. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 22 March 1856, IOR.
7. Known today as Kanpur, the name was changed after Independence in 1947.
8. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 23 March 1856, IOR.
9. Ibid., 3 May 1856, IOR.
10. Foreign Political Consultations, 20 June 1856, No. 438, NAND.
11. Ibid., 20 June 1856, No. 453, NAND.
12. Ibid., 20 June 1856, No. 455, NAND.
13. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 15 June 1856, IOR.
14. Ibid., 23 April 1856, IOR.
15. Michael Fisher, ‘The Multiple Meanings of 1857 for Indians in Britain’, Economic and Political Weekly 12–18 May 2007 vol. 42 no. 19, pp.1703–9.
16. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 3 June 1856, IOR.
17. The Englishman and Military Chronicle 25 June 1856, National Library, Kolkata.
18. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 30 June 1856, IOR.
19. Ibid., 26 June 1857, IOR. Increased activity by Christian missionaries, particularly Evangelicals, was held to be one cause of the Uprising of 1857. Vernon-Smith was not alone in trying to reduce their influence in India, after an earlier charter of 1813 had allowed them to proselytise there for the first time.
20. Ibid.
21. However, he was always referred to as ‘Mr Brandon’ by British officials.
22. See the author’s Engaging Scoundrels—True Tales of Old Lucknow (2000) for a chapter on the Barber of Lucknow, pp.65–85.
23. The Englishman and Military Chronicle 7 June 1856, National Library, Kolkata.
24. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, 30 June 1856, IOR.
25. Outram to Edmonstone, 7 February 1856, Enclosure 13 in Oude Blue Book or Parliamentary Papers: Papers relating to Oude presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, 1856.
26. Private Papers, Mss Eur F231/13, 8 August 1856, IOR.
27. Ibid. f.48, 23 August 1856, IOR.
28. Ibid f.53, 10 November 1856, IOR.
29. Ibid. f.51, 10 September 1856, IOR.
30. The Times 30 August 1856.
31. The Times 28 August 1856.
32. Ibid.
33. The Times 2 September 1856.
34. Foreign Political Consultations, 28 March 1856, No. 165, NAND.
35. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231 f.73, 25 December 1856, IOR.
36. The two men wore ankle-length loose robes with embroidered borders and long sleeves.
37. Sadly we do not have the menu, so cannot know if the lunch met the dietary requirements of the guests. Halal or vegetarian food was always a problem for visitors from abroad, which is why many brought their own cooks with them.
38. Parliamentary Blue Books are official reports on various subjects, containing statistics and information.
39. Illustrated London News 14 March 1857.
40. Queen Victoria gave birth to her ninth and last child, Princess Beatrice, on 14 April 1857.
41. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231 f.101, 26 March 1857, IOR.
42. The king’s imprisonment seems to have been unknown to his family in London at this point, although the Court of Directors had been informed by telegraph.
43. Queen Victoria’s Journals, the Royal Archives, Windsor. The gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen to quote material from the Royal Archives is most gratefully acknowledged.
44. Kamal ud-Din Haider, Qaisar-al Tawarikh, vol. I, pp.413–15.
45. Photograph in the Royal Photograph Collection, Windsor Castle, RCIN 2906233.
46. Hansard vol. 147 cc.1119–21.
47. Warwick Road West later became part of Warwick Avenue.
48. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 30 November to 6 December 1857, No. 622, NAND.
49. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 22 January 1858, No. 638, NAND. Colonel (later General) Sir Orfeur Cavenagh was the Town Major of Calcutta and responsible for its security, including Fort William.
50. Ibid.
51. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 24 October 1857, No. 615, NAND.
52. Queen Victoria’s Journals, 22 October 1857, online at www.queenvictoriasjournals.org.
53. It was reported that a toast had been drunk ‘To the King of Delhi’ at a dinner in Germany, and Irish immigrants in New York expressed ‘sympathy with the sepoy mutiny’. See the author’s The Great Uprising in India 1857–58. Untold Stories, Indian and British (2007), p.20.
54. Le Journal des Débats 25 January 1858. Bibliothèque Nationale de France online digital library Gallica. The baby was either Kaniz-i Husain, an adopted daughter of Janab-i ‘Aliyyah, or princess Rif‘at-ara Begam Sahibah, daughter of Sikandar Hashmat and one of his two Rajput wives.
55. Le Journal des Débats 26 January 1858.
56. Ibid. The sketches were subsequently reproduced in The Narrative of the Indian Revolt from its Outbreak to the Capture of Lucknow (1858), pp. 315–24, published by George Vickers.
57. Foreign Political Consultations, 15 October 1858, Nos. 363–4, NAND. Following the statement in the House of Lords by th
e Earl of Derby that Wajid ‘Ali Shah was to be ‘investigated’, the prince wrote to Lord Canning that any such investigation or trial should be conducted with ‘fairness and impartiality’. No trial did in fact take place.
58. Information from Richard Morgan, author of The Diary of an Indian Cavalry Officer 1843–1863: John Hatfield Brooks (2003).
59. Foreign Consultations Internal A, June 1885, Nos. 43–52, NAND.
2. PAGEANTS AND PANTOMIMES
1. Even so, the painting has probably been slightly cut down, because the lower corners of the square are missing and there is an unexplained white tent (?) in the foreground.
2. Quoted at length in M. Aslam Qureshi, Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s Theatrical Genius (1987).
3. The Asiatic Annual Register for the Year 1804, vol. vi, pp.9–10.
4. Qureshi, op. cit., p.18.
5. These tunes were to drive the defenders of the Lucknow Residency mad during the siege in 1857, as they were tauntingly played by rebel musicians beyond the makeshift barricades.
6. Qureshi, op. cit., pp.9–11. This event took place in the Falak Sair, the monsoon palace.
7. See Chapter Four, ‘The House of Fairies’, for a description of this book.
8. The gist is that Janab-i ‘Aliyyah was told by an astrologer at the time of Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s birth that her son would become a yogi and that this could only be warded off if he dressed as a Hindu holy man on his birthday. However, there are no contemporary references to this story.
9. Qureshi, op. cit., pp.24–5.
10. The second lady may be Sleeman’s niece, Elizabeth Briggs, who visited her aunt and uncle in Lucknow frequently. Information from two of Sir William’s descendants.
11. The author’s 1985 book A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow (1985) was the first to examine critically the nawabi architecture of Lucknow.
12. Ibid., p.234.
13. John Terry, The Charm of Indo-Islamic Architecture (1955), p.60.
14. Edward Hilton, Guide to Lucknow and the Residency (1934), p.70.
15. The author’s edited Lucknow: City of Illusion, photographs from the Alkazi Collection of Photography (2006) reproduced Felice Beato’s great panorama of Qaisarbagh and other images from 1858.
16. Dr Neeta Das, Kaiserbagh: The Garden Palace of Lucknow, UP Tourism Board, (1999).
17. One of the small marble kiosks was dismantled and brought to England as a gift for Queen Victoria to mark the end of the Uprising in 1858. It stands in Home Park at Windsor.
18. The king intended that ‘his tomb will form part of the buildings’ of Qaisarbagh, and wished the Resident to supervise an endowment fund for the palace’s upkeep after his death. This was not agreed to by the British government. The Safed Barahdari, with its prominent central position, may have been the intended site for the tomb. Ref. Political Consultations, 29 July 1853, No. 53, IOR.
19. Satyajit Ray’s 1977 film Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players) is the best example.
20. Quoted by Mirza Ali Azhar in King Wajid ‘Ali Shah of Awadh (1982), p.194 ftn. Imdad Husain Khan had had his own small state of Farrukhabad taken away by the East India Company in 1802, in return for a substantial pension.
21. Foreign Political Consultations, 29 November 1845, No. 186, NAND.
22. This figure was provided by a local historian, Roshan Taqui, using 1856 census details published in an Urdu newspaper, Tilism-i-Laknau, and calculating eight persons to a houshold.
23. There are two lists of departments published in English, one by Ranbir Sinh in Wajid Ali Shah: The Tragic King (2002) and one by G. D. Bhatnagar in Awadh under Wajid Ali Shah (1968). The lists, which are fairly consistent, come from two published Urdu histories, by Ram Sahai Tamanny and Amjad Ali Khan.
24. Bhatnagar, op. cit., p.9.
25. Foreign Political Consultations, 14 August 1847, Nos. 128–9, NAND. A ‘perpetual loan’ got round the problem of the king benefiting from the interest, which is strictly forbidden in Islam. Richmond would have invested the money in Company bonds and arranged payment direct to the imambarah staff.
26. Foreign Political Consultations, 24 March 1847, No. 94, NAND.
27. The jewellers are likely to have been Jains, the most pious of whom wear face-masks so they will not unwittingly breathe in any small insects.
28. Political and Foreign Consultations, 17 April 1847, No. 94, IOR.
29. Political and Foreign Consultations, 11 December 1847, No. 132, IOR.
30. Ibid. The story is also related at length by William Sleeman in A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude (1858), vol. I, pp.3–10.
31. Political and Foreign Consultations, 11 December 1847, No. 122, IOR.
32. Ibid., No. 156.
33. Ibid., No. 202.
34. Ibid, No. 159. The treaty referred to was signed in November 1801 between nawab Sa’adat Ali Khan and the Company, when the nawab was forced to cede half of Awadh to the British, a move for which Lord Wellesley, the governor general of the day, was heavily criticised. A further agreement between the nawab and Wellesley was signed in February 1802. Copies of treaties and agreements were kept in the Residency archives for ready reference.
35. Political and Foreign Consultations, 11 December 1847, No. 162, IOR.
36. Ibid., Nos. 164–9.
37. Ibid., No. 191.
38. Ibid., Nos. 161 and 102.
39. Ibid., No. 199.
40. Ibid.
41. Political and Foreign Consultations, 3 April 1847, No. 35, IOR.
42. Political and Foreign Consultations, 11 December 1847, Nos. 185–8, IOR.
43. States after 1858 which were not under the direct rule of the British government.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., No. 192.
46. Mirza Ali Azhar, King Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh (1982), pp.205–7.
47. Add. Or. 742, India Office Library.
48. Political and Foreign Consultations, 11 December 1847, No. 102, IOR.
49. Ibid., No. 201.
3. THE SORROWS OF AKHTAR
1. Foreign Consultations Political A, August 1870, Nos. 22–4, NAND.
2. This dichotomy has been well explored by Michael Fisher in his article ‘The Imperial Coronation of 1819’, Modern Asian Studies 1985 vol. 19, issue 2, pp.239–77.
3. Almost certainly it was made by Ede & Ravenscroft, English robe-makers since the end of the seventeenth century, although the firm today has no documentation for this specific order.
4. Captain Godfrey Mundy, Pen and Pencil Sketches, being the Journal of a Tour in India (1832), vol. I, p.13.
5. Present-day Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, was known at this period as Turkish or Ottoman Arabia and formed part of the Ottoman Empire. The political agent at Baghdad was Major (later Major General) Sir Henry Rawlinson, who became a noted Assyrian scholar and chairman of the Court of Directors. It was he who welcomed the king’s brother and son to lunch at Leadenhall Street in January 1857.
6. This was the nawab Iqbal-ud-daulah, a grandson of the fifth ruler of Awadh. See the author’s Engaging Scoundrels: True Tales of Old Lucknow (2000), pp.108–11.
7. Nazm-i Namvar, printed at the Matba’e Sultani, the royal press, Calcutta in 1870.
8. See for example G. D. Bhatnagar, Awadh under Wajid Ali Shah (1968), p.40.
9. Palton is the Urdu pronounciation of platoon. For a list of the royal regiments, platoons and arsenals see Roshan Taqui, Lucknow 1857: The Two Wars of Lucknow: the Dusk of an Era (2001), pp.15–16.
10. India Political Consultations, 15 May 1857, No. 136, IOR. Other foreigners in the king’s army were Jacob Johannes (an Armenian who had joined up in 1814), A. C. Dubois, Joseph Delmerick, Captain Felix Rotton, Lieutenant Sinclair, Lieutenant Graham, Lieutenant Joseph Johannes, Lieutenant Jacob Leblond, Lieutenant James Rotton and Captain John Rotton.
11. See the author’s article ‘Africans in the Indian Mutiny’, History Today December 2009, pp.40–7.
12. William Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences
of the Great Mutiny 1857–59 (1910), p.58.
13. Political and Foreign Consultations, 3 April 1847, No. 56, IOR.
14. Political and Foreign Consultations, 9 April 1847, No.13, IOR.
15. Muster rolls compiled in March 1856 India Political Consultations, 4 March 1856, No. 173, IOR.
16. The story of the abortive reforms is told in Samuel Lucas, Dacoitee in Excelsis: or The Spoliation of Oude (1857), pp.102–8.
17. Dr Aloys Sprenger, A Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindustany Manuscripts of the Libraries of the King of Oudh (1854), preface, pp. iii-iv.
18. Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the World (1997), p.13.
19. Elliot’s best known work, The History of India as told by its own Historians, was edited and published posthumously in eight volumes, 1867–77.
20. Foreign Consultations, 8 November 1850, No. 147, NAND.
21. Sprenger, op. cit., p.v.
22. Foreign Consultations 8, November 1850, No. 146, NAND.
23. Kamal-ud-Din Haider, Qaisar-ut-Tawarikh, vol. 2, p.222.
24. India Political Consultations, 2 September 1848, No. 77, IOR.
25. Lucas, Dacoitee in Excelsis, p.109.
Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah Page 31