Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

  26. William Sleeman, A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude 1849–1850 (1858), p.xviii.

  27. Minute from Dalhousie, 18 June 1853, quoted in Foreign Consultations, 28 December 1855, No. 319, NAND.

  28. Sir William Lee-Warner, Life of the Marquess of Dalhousie (1904), vol. 2, p.317.

  29. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. I, p.xlvi.

  30. See Chapter Four, The House of Fairies.

  31. Wazirnama, a book compiled by Amir ‘Ali Khan Bahadur, the king’s agent at Garden Reach.

  32. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 1, p.lx.

  33. The regulations are reproduced in Mirza Ali Azhar, King Wajid ‘Ali Shah of Awadh (1982), pp.252–62.

  34. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 1, p.xlvii.

  35. Ibid., vol. 1, pp.l-li.

  36. Ibid., vol. 1, p.lii.

  37. Foreign Political Consultations, 23 June 1849, No. 68, NAND.

  38. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.liii-iv.

  39. Ibid., vol. 1, p.lxxv.

  40. John Pemble, The Raj, the Indian Mutiny, and the Kingdom of Oudh 1801–1859 (1977), pp.97–103.

  41. J. G. A. Baird, ed., Private Letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie (1910), p.169.

  42. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 2, p.369.

  43. Ibid., vol. 1, p.lx.

  44. Ibid., vol. 1, p.lxxix.

  45. India Political Consultations, 6 October 1849, No. 130, IOR.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 2, p.356.

  48. Ibid., vol. 2, p.369.

  49. Ibid., vol. 2, p.377.

  50. Ibid., vol. 2, p.382.

  51. See the author’s The Great Uprising in India 1857–58 (2007), pp.5–7.

  52. Foreign Political Consultations, 12 August 1853, Nos. 105–6, NAND.

  53. Foreign Political Consultations, 19 January 1855, Nos. 107–8, NAND.

  54. Sleeman, op. cit., vol. 2, p.355.

  55. Foreign Consultations, 2 January 1852, Nos. 90–4, NAND.

  56. India Political Consultations, 29 August 1851, No. 123, IOR.

  57. India Political Consultations, 19 September 1851, Nos. 156–7, IOR.

  58. Foreign Political Consultations, 5 January 1855 No. 113, NAND.

  59. Foreign Political Consultations, 28 December 1855, No. 319, NAND.

  60. Azhar, op. cit., vol. 1, p.363.

  61. Ibid., p.389.

  62. Foreign Political Consultations, 28 December 1855, Nos. 339–46, NAND.

  63. Charles Allen, Ashoka, the Search for India’s Lost Emperor (2012), p.xiii.

  64. Foreign Consultations, op. cit. Nos. 339–42. Notes on a meeting on 1 August 1855. NAND.

  65. The conflict is explored in greater depth in two books: J. R. I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi’ism in Iran and Iraq (1988), pp.244–9; and Michael Fisher, A Clash of Cultures, Awadh, the British and the Mughals (1987), pp.227–34.

  66. Foreign Political Consultations, 28 December 1855, No. 349, NAND.

  67. Foreign Political Consultations, 14 December 1855, No. 51/2, NAND.

  68. Foreign Political Consultations, 6 June 1856, Nos. 186–219, NAND.

  69. Dalhousie’s minute of instructions to Outram, the proposed treaty and draft proclamations all appear in the Oude Blue Book, and are also given in full in Mirza Ali Azhar, King Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh (1982), pp.529–43.

  70. Oude Blue Book, Part 4, pp.287–9.

  71. Enclosures to Secret Letters from India, 1857, f.461, IOR.

  72. Ibid.

  73. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231/5, p.171, IOR.

  74. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 18 December 1857, No. 577, NAND.

  75. Bishop Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay 1824–1825 (1849), vol. 1, pp.19–20.

  76. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 29 January 1858, No. 613, NAND.

  77. Op. cit., 25 June 1858, Nos. 419–20. Letter dated 25 January 1858, NAND.

  78. Amjad Ali Khan, ed., Masnavi Huzn-i-Akhtar (1981).

  79. Zulfiqar ud-Daulah’s sister was Afsar un-nisa, nawab Nishat Mahal Sahibah, who was married to the king in 1830. Zulfiqar ud-Daulah was later implicated in cheating the king by overcharging him for goods and services provided at Garden Reach.

  80. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 26 March 1858, Nos. 233–5, NAND.

  81. Foreign Political Consultations, 24 December 1858, Nos. 80–1, NAND.

  82. Prince Hamid ‘Ali eventually returned to Calcutta in September 1859.

  83. The terms viceroy and governor general are not interchangeable. A viceroy is the representative of the king (or queen), while a governor general is an administrative post.

  84. See the author’s The Great Uprising, pp.118–25, for Begam Hazrat Mahal’s part in the Uprising and the installation of Birjis Qadr on the Awadh throne.

  85. Foreign Political Consultations, 15 July 1859, Nos. 380–94, NAND.

  86. Once he was released from prison, the king wrote to Canning using venomous tones to describe his former wife, Begam Hazrat Mahal, calling her an ‘ill-disposed enemy’, an evil-doer, an ‘imbecile’ and much else. Foreign Political Consultations, 9 September 1859, Nos. 204–8, NAND.

  87. Foreign Political Consultations, 15 July 1959, Nos. 380–94, NAND.

  4. THE HOUSE OF FAIRIES

  1. Foreign Consultations, 26 June 1865, No. 48, NAND.

  2. This photograph has a curious history. It appears in William Low, Lieutenant-Colonel Gould Hunter-Weston of Hunterston … one of the defenders of Lucknow … 1857–8. A biographical Sketch (1914); in this book, Colonel Hunter-Weston relates how he looted two boxes of glass negatives from the house of Ahmad ‘Ali Khan during the recapture of Lucknow in 1858, and took them home with him to Ayrshire. In spite of intensive enquiries by the author, the whereabouts of the remaining priceless negatives are still unknown.

  3. This might be the book subsequently described as ‘most disgusting and obscene’ by British officers, when it was printed on the king’s antique press in 1879 in Calcutta. It would have circulated in manuscript form before being lithographed for the press.

  4. Tahsin Sarvani, Pari khana: rangile piya, jan-i ‘alam Vajid Ali Shah Akhtar ke khudnavisht dastan-i mu’ashqah (1965), p.19.

  5. See the author’s biography A Very Ingenious Man: Claude Martin in Early Colonial India (1992).

  6. Dr Joseph Fayrer, whose summarised reports from the palace described how during a typical day ‘His Majesty recited to Khas Mahal his new poem on the loves of the bulbuls [songbirds]’. Recollections of my Life (1900), p.92.

  7. Christians and Jews are considered by Muslims to be ahl-i-kitab, ‘people of the book’, that is, the Bible and the Torah.

  8. Pari Khana, p.96.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid., p.97.

  11. Ibid., p.171. Nawab Jalal-ud-daulah, son of an earlier ruler, had died in 1848. His house was on the Sitapur Road, north of the Gomti.

  12. Although a few contemporary paintings of Wajid ‘Ali Shah are known, and there is an album of fragile pencil drawings of the king with some of his wives, now in the State Museum, Banarsi Bagh, Lucknow.

  13. William Sleeman relates the story in A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude 1849–1850 (1858) vol. 1, pp.46–7. The ‘other person’ was Razi-ud-daulah, one of the singers at Court, but Safaraz Mahal was found to be cohabiting with another singer too, Ghulam Raza.

  14. Pronounced Ambar, the word means ambergris, but is also a complimentary term for dark-skinned people, particularly African male slaves, e.g. Malik Anbar of Ahmadnagar. Claude Martin owned an African slave called Amber. See Nusrat Naheed, Jane Alam aur Mehakpari (2005), p.63.

  15. Hijras are normally males who adopt a feminine identity and would be invited to dance at special events, e.g. childbirth celebrations.

  16. Emily Eden, Up the Country: Letters from India (1983 edition), p.233.

  17. Foreign Consultations, 26 June 1865, No. 48, NAND.

  18. Foreign Consultations Internal A, May 1888, No
s. 177–82, NAND.

  19. Foreign Consultations Political A, January 1862, No. 194, NAND.

  20. Pari Khana, p.170.

  21. Abdul Halim ‘Sharar’, Lucknow: the Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (1975).

  22. A courtesy title, not necessarily denoting the holder of any particular office. Noblemen would be addressed as ‘nawab sahib’.

  23. Foreign Political Consultations, 7 July 1849, Nos. 82–6, NAND.

  24. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 30 July 1858, No. 236, NAND.

  25. Foreign Political Consultations, 2 September 1859, No. 172, NAND.

  26. Foreign Consultations, 16 March 1860, Nos. 120–34, Major Herbert’s letter of 26 December 1859, NAND.

  27. Ibid., Major Herbert’s letter of 5 January 1860, NAND.

  28. See the author’s The Great Uprising in India 1857–58 (2007), p.152.

  29. Foreign Consultations, 16 March 1860, No.125, NAND.

  30. Reported in the newspaper The Friend of India 2 August 1860 and 20 September 1860.

  31. Foreign Consultations Political A, 16 April 1860, No. 295, NAND.

  32. Ibid. This long account comes in a report from Major Herbert to the Secretary to the Foreign Department. Herbert was told it was not his business to interfere in the king’s private affairs.

  33. Foreign Consultations Political A, October 1861, Nos. 82–4, NAND.

  34. Foreign Consultations, 21 October 1859, No. 79, NAND.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Foreign Consultations, 26 June 1865, No. 48, NAND.

  37. Ibid.

  38. John Kaye and George Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (1864), vol. 1, pp.95–6. There are many editions of this work: John Kaye died in 1876 after producing the first two volumes, which were published under the title The History of the Sepoy War in India 1858–58; Malleson added a further four volumes and edited the whole publication.

  39. P. J. O. Taylor, A Companion to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 (1996), p.329.

  40. Foreign Consultations Internal A, July 1886, Nos. 51–67, mohubutnamah dated 5 July 1884, NAND.

  41. Ibid., mohubutnamah dated 31 December 1884.

  42. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Political Department, Calcutta, May 1879, File 98, pp.137–258, IOR.

  43. Prince Hamid ‘Ali, who had been so reluctant to return home to India, had died of cholera in July 1874.

  44. Ibid., pp.197–9.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Foreign Consultations Internal A, July 1886, Nos. 51–67, mohubutnamah dated 5 July 1884, NAND.

  47. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Political Department, Calcutta, May 1879, File 98, p.212, IOR.

  48. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, File 98, 1 August 1878, p.212, IOR.

  49. Ibid., p.194.

  50. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, File 98, 1 August 1878, p.231, IOR.

  5. AT GARDEN REACH

  1. Alfred Spencer, ed., Memoirs of William Hickey (c.1925), vol. 4, pp.26–7.

  2. Saibal Bose, Garden Reach: A Railway Story (2007).

  3. Private Papers, Eur Mss F231, Lord Canning to Robert Vernon-Smith, 3 June 1856, IOR.

  4. Foreign Consultations Internal B, June 1890, NAND.

  5. Foreign Consultations Internal B, April 1888, Nos. 390–5, NAND.

  6. Foreign Political Consultations, 5 August 1859, Nos. 212–13, NAND.

  7. Foreign Political Consultations, November 1861, Nos. 57–68, NAND.

  8. Ibid., 19 December 1859.

  9. Foreign Consultations, 16 March 1860, Nos. 120/134, Letter from Lord Canning, 5 January 1860, commenting on Major Herbert’s diary entry of 17 December 1859, NAND.

  10. Foreign Consultations Internal A, 5 July 1884, NAND.

  11. Foreign Department Secret Consultations, 29 January 1858, Nos. 619–36, NAND.

  12. Foreign Political Consultations, November 1861, Nos. 57–68, NAND.

  13. Foreign Consultations Political A, January 1862, No. 194, NAND.

  14. Foreign Consultations Political A, September 1864, Nos. 166–8, NAND.

  15. Foreign Political Consultations A, September 1864, Nos. 166–8, NAND.

  16. Ibid., No. 167.

  17. Ibid., No. 167.

  18. Ibid., No. 166, Major Herbert’s Diary, 24 August 1864.

  19. Foreign Political Consultations, 8 October 1868, No. 44, NAND.

  20. Foreign Consultations General A, January 1866, No. 3, NAND.

  21. Ibid., No. 13.

  22. Quoted in The Friend of India 24 (1867) as an article from ‘the Native Press’. National Library Kolkata.

  23. Foreign Consultations General B, 13 October 1868, ‘Claims against the King of Oude’, NAND.

  24. P. J. O. Taylor, A Companion to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 (1996), p.264.

  25. Allen’s Indian Mail & Oriental Gazette 30 September 1867, p.767.

  26. India Political Department Collections, 28 February 1867, Coll. 119/1, IOR.

  27. India Political Department Collections, 23 March 1867, Coll. 119/2, IOR.

  28. Ibid.

  29. India Political Department Collections, 26 August 1867, Coll. 95, IOR.

  30. Ibid., 9 November 1867, Coll. 95, IOR.

  31. Captain Hayes was cut down by a rebellious sepoy officer in May 1857 on the Grand Trunk Road.

  32. Foreign Consultations Political A, July 1867, Nos. 44–6, NAND.

  33. Foreign Consultations Political A, 8 October 1868, No. 43, NAND.

  34. Foreign Consultations Political A, 8 October 1868, No. 52, NAND.

  35. Foreign Consultations Political A, 8 October 1868, Nos. 236–47, NAND.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Foreign Political Consultations, 9 September 1859, Nos. 100–1, NAND.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Foreign Consultations Political A, February 1862, Nos. 71–6, NAND.

  40. ‘Alsatia’ was an area in North London that preserved the right to sanctuary to the end of the seventeenth century. As a result it attracted criminals and became a synonymous term for a rowdy area where the law could not be applied.

  41. Foreign Consultations Political A, February 1862, Nos. 71–6, NAND.

  42. Foreign Consultations Political I, May 1883, Nos. 61–70, NAND.

  43. Foreign Consultations Political I, April 1884, Nos. 108–12, NAND.

  44. Foreign Consultations Political I, 23 October 1883, NAND.

  45. Foreign Consultations Political I, April 1884, Nos. 108–12, NAND.

  46. Foreign Consultations General A, March 1870, Nos. 43–5, NAND.

  47. Foreign Consultations General A, June 1870, No. 6, NAND.

  48. Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (1975), pp.65–76.

  49. Foreign Consultations Internal B, February 1888, Nos. 504–5, NAND.

  50. Foreign Consultations Political A, March 1875, Nos. 365–75, NAND.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Bengal Political Proceedings, 1881. Committee Report dated 7 February 1880, pp.17–90, IOR.

  6. A TIGRESS ESCAPES FROM THE MENAGERIE

  1. The title ‘Royal’ was awarded in the 1860s, and unlike Kew, its name was always in the singular. Today it is the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, named after Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, botanist and archaeologist.

  2. Bengal Proceedings, Judicial, March 1879, Nos. 35–36. IOR. All of the information on the tigress’s escape and subsequent actions comes from this long report, which covers the period from 11 January 1879 to 8 December of the same year.

  3. Bengal Proceedings, Judicial, March 1879, Nos. 35–6, p.108, IOR.

  4. Ibid., p.109.

  5. Plate XVI of Oriental Field Sports by Thomas Williamson and Samuel Howitt (1807) is captioned ‘Chasing a tiger across a river’.

  6. Bengal Proceedings, Judicial, March 1879, Nos. 35–6, p.111, IOR.

  7. Ibid., p.114.

  8. Bengal Proceedings, Judicial, March 1879, Nos. 35–6, p.116, IO
R.

  9. See Malcolm Brown, ‘A “Complimentary Mission” from Nawab Nasir-ud-din Haider to King William IV’, Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, November 2001 vol. 32 No. 3 pp.279–86.

  10. William Knighton, The Private Life of an Eastern King (1856), pp.123–41.

  11. Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (1975), p.121.

  12. Revd William Tennant, Indian Recreations (1803), vol. 2, p.415.

  13. See the author’s Engaging Scoundrels: True Tales of Old Lucknow (2000), pp.137–8.

  14. A. C. Bose, Hazrat Wajid Ali Shah King of Oudh (1962), p.61.

  15. William Howard Russell, The Prince of Wales Tour: A Diary in India (1877). In spite of a number of stories in India about the Prince of Wales having met Wajid ‘Ali Shah in Calcutta, and being presented with a jewelled sword, I have found no mention of this in any of the official diaries of the tour, nor is it listed among gifts presented to the Prince of Wales.

  16. Today’s A3 highway.

  17. Thompson’s report, dated 17 June 1879, is contained as a separate item within the Bengal Proceedings Judicial for 1879, IOR.

  18. Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (1975), pp.72–3.

  19. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Political Department, 1879, IOR Report from Thomson dated 2 June 1878, p.190.

  20. Bengal Political Proceedings for 1881, Report of the Committee, dated 7 February, p.28, IOR.

  21. Sharar, op. cit., p.73.

  22. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal Political Department, 1879, IOR. A ‘purcha payam’ (message) from the king dated 28 April 1878, with Thomson’s comments in the margin, p.181.

  23. H. E. A. Cotton, Calcutta Old and New (revised edition 1980), p.336.

  24. Proceedings for the Government of Bengal, Political Department Nos. 5–6, p.63, 7 March 1879, Alfred Lyall, secretary to [central] government to the government of Bengal, IOR.

  25. Bengal Proceedings for March 1881, pp.17–90, IOR. The committee does not seem to have been given a specific name.

  26. Ibid., p.18.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal Political Department, 1879. Letter from Farid-ud-din Qadr to Colonel Arthur Elderton, 11 September 1877, IOR.

  29. Ibid., p.151.

  30. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal Political Department, 1879, p.206, IOR.