Last Nizam (9781742626109) (29 page)

Jah remembers seeing the gun carriage lurch wildly as it ran over the devotees who had fallen in its path, the way in which Hindus and Muslims waited silently side by side in the mosque for the funeral prayers, and the breaking of their bangles by the women who saw their Nizam go past for the last time. ‘It was as if they were mourning a member of their own family,' he later wrote. ‘No greater tribute to the meaning of the life and the work of the late Nizam could be paid than . . . the grief of the half a million people or more who could not be restrained from surrounding the coffin, and who expressed in a manner as spontaneous as it was unparalleled in its intensity, their love and their respect for a man who still ruled their hearts.'
⁵⁸
Amid shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar' and ‘Shah Osman Zindabad', Osman
Ali Khan's body was buried next to his mother's at the Masjid Judi mosque.

It was said that between writing odes in Persian, Osman Ali Khan spent much of his final months brooding over a prediction made at the time of the First Nizam. Like all legends, it metamorphosed over the centuries to suit the teller or the times. According to the most commonly told version, Nizam ul-Mulk was returning from a hunting trip in the western provinces of the Deccan when he came upon a
faqir
(holy man) begging for bread. Feeling sorry for the beggar, the Nizam pulled out of his saddlebag seven
kulchas
(flat loaves of bread). In gratitude the
faqir
blessed the ruler's family for seven generations, one for each loaf. In another account it is the Nizam who feels hungry and is offered bread by the
faqir
. Unable to eat more than seven loaves, the holy man bestows on his ruler the same blessing for the same number of generations. In the least-often told rendering of the story, Nizam ul-Mulk is too miserly to offer the starving
faqir
more than seven of the loaves he is carrying. Instead of being blessed, the Nizam's descendants are cursed to rule for seven generations only.
⁵⁹

Whatever the version, the legend would turn out to be prophetic. Osman Ali Khan, the Seventh Nizam, was the last ruler of Hyderabad. Mukarram Jah, his successor, would either run out of blessings or bear the full brunt of the
faqir
's curse.

A
FTER ALMOST TWO DECADES
of being groomed in the finest British public schools, universities and military academies and being placed under the guidance of India's foremost statesman, Jah was no better prepared for inheriting his grandfather's mantle than when he was first carried through the gates of King Kothi as a six-month-old baby. He had few friends in Hyderabad, no idea of the extent of the estate that he was about to inherit and no interest whatsoever in maintaining his grandfather's hallucinatory kingdom with its ageing concubines,
khanazads
, illegitimate offspring and fearsome-looking Arab guards. He was more at home listening to jazz at London nightclubs than to
ghazals
in the
darbar
hall of Chowmahalla. He spoke Urdu, the state language, but had only the vaguest notions about Hyderabad's history. To his hundreds of relatives he was a stranger, to the hundreds of thousands of Osman Ali Khan's followers he was revered more out of respect than for his reputation as a Nizam-in-waiting. Esra had grown used to Hyderabadi society but was more comfortable mixing with London's A-list. Jah's father was bitter about being overlooked for the throne. His uncles and aunts were insanely jealous of the immense wealth Jah was about to inherit.

Like Nizam ul-Mulk, the dynasty's founder, Osman Ali Khan had tried to lay the groundwork for an orderly succession, writing letters to Nehru, restricting the proclivities of his eldest son and promoting his reluctant grandson. He believed in ruling by example, even when his kingdom was reduced to a weird and wonderful Neverland. Jah's mother had also hoped that her son would rise to the challenge when he became the eighth Asaf Jahi. But by wanting the best education and training, Durrushehvar had also estranged Jah from his Indian roots. For her, Hyderabad's society was never the equal of Ottoman culture. She had done the state a great service through her relief work during the war and her patronage of hospitals, educational institutions and welfare bodies, but even now many Hyderabadis feel that she looked down on them. That Jah felt more at home in England and then in Australia than he did in India owed much to his mother's prejudices and her insistence on sheltering him as far as possible from the tradition-bound confines of palace life.

Even Jah's handpicked guardians were not equipped to impart the arcane practices of medieval statecraft that still set the rules in the royal court. Whereas Osman Ali Khan rarely left the confines of the palace except to visit his mother's grave and attend official functions, Jah would wander the world until he created his own kingdom of kangaroos and acacias. His grandfather composed couplets in Persian about unrequited love. To Jah's ears there was nothing more poetic than the drone of a diesel engine.

For now, Jah had more immediate priorities to attend to. The day after his grandfather's funeral he told a press conference that the stories about the late Nizam's wealth were exaggerated. ‘I have not heard of any hidden treasure. My grandfather never seemed to keep track of his wealth.' Jah also announced he had appointed a board to look into the question of how to maintain and run King Kothi palace with its several thousand employees. The entire
set-up would be streamlined, depending on the amount of the privy purse he was entitled to receive. ‘I will, however, have to take care of my grandfather's family and dependants.'
¹

Jah's comments belied the complexity of the situation he had inherited and did not take into account the actions of rapacious relatives, corrupt advisors and a government bent on making princely privileges a thing of the past. Narrating the events surrounding his grandfather's death to an interviewer a few months later, Jah described scenes of chaos as the Nizam lay dying and people helped themselves to jewellery and other valuables scattered around the palace in open boxes. Jah pitched a tent in the palace grounds, hired his own guards and had his own food brought to him. Fearing that the Nizam's relatives would walk out with whatever they could lay their hands on as soon as the old man died, Jah asked the police superintendent to draft a document saying that he was temporarily removing keys to various safes that his grandfather always kept on his person because of the ‘condition of the patient'. ‘My next problem was how to prevent things from disappearing,' he recounted.

Since regular police were not allowed in, my brother, a lawyer, came up with the idea that princes are always entitled to a guard of honour on their death. I got people I could trust dressed up as guards and had them move into the room as grandfather's body was carried out. We had matrons, too, to search the women in saris, and we relieved all of them of quite a few ‘souvenirs'.
²

The night before the funeral, Jah studied the floor plan of all five of his grandfather's main palaces. When he gave the order, guards simultaneously entered all the main rooms and secured the valuables with Sandhurst-style precision.

Jah then undertook an initial survey of what was inside the
palaces. Armed with a blowtorch, he opened dozens of safes containing everything from old papers to priceless pearls. Guided by his grandfather's trusted valet, he was shown rooms, some of which had been sealed for 60 years. One contained 300 cases of French champagne from the 1930s, all of it undrinkable. Another was stacked from floor to ceiling with tins of ghee that the Nizam had bought from a shopkeeper he felt sorry for and then forgotten about. Another contained suits, bought for the same reason, then never worn. ‘The old valet then pointed to a cot in front of my grandfather's window,' Jah recalls. ‘He said: “I slept on that cot for 52 years” and then asked, “Can I continue to do so?” I said, “Of course”.'
³

Jah's biggest problem, he quickly realised, were the 14,718 other staff and dependants who, like the old valet, did not want anything to change. In addition to several hundred
khanazads
, 42 concubines and their 100 or so offspring, there were 6000 employees on the books at the Chowmahalla complex alone, 3000 bodyguards, 28 people whose only job was to bring drinking water to the Nizam and his immediate family from the traditional well outside the city (long since dried up), and 340 kitchen staff. ‘[The late Nizam's] kitchens were feeding 2000 people a day. Every restaurant in the vicinity was being secretly supplied food from my grandfather's kitchens.'
⁴

There were other irregularities. After finding out that 4000 people on the books did not exist, Jah was able to bring numbers on his grandfather's support list down to about 10,000. He then ordered that plans be drawn up to pension off most of the rest. The palace finances were just as shambolic. The royal garage, which was costing up to $US90,000 a year in petrol and spare parts for almost 60 cars, turned out to have only four in running condition. A photographer's bill came in for $US25,000 and a $US6000 taxi bill for taking the
khanazads
to attend a religious ceremony with the Nizam was waiting to be paid.

As Jah struggled to sort out the mess, preparations were made for his formal inauguration as the Nizam. Although Jah's succession was confirmed by the publication of orders by the President of India shortly after his grandfather's death, the formal inauguration could not take place until the end of the 40-day mourning period. Responsibility for organising the
darbar
was given to Habeeb Jung. The Paigah nobleman was given a budget of 40,000 rupees, a three-week deadline and no precedent to follow.
⁵
The installation of the Nizams on the
musnud
had always been done privately in the presence of a handful of nobles, close relatives, the British Resident and a couple of Muslim clerics who would read the relevant passages from the Koran to formalise the succession. The ceremony would be followed several days later by a grand
darbar
and procession through the city. What was being proposed for Jah was an all-in-one, Mughal-style
darbar
at the Chowmahalla palace complete with 1000 guests, guards of honour, gold and velvet carpets, recitals from the Koran, and Persian music to be followed by a banquet. It would be the last of its kind not only in Hyderabad but also in India.

With 3000 servants at his disposal, Habeeb Jung set to work preparing the
darbar
hall of the Chowmahalla palace for the event. The ancestral home of the Asaf Jahis – Chowmahalla or the Palace of the Four Pavilions – was once a massive complex spread out over 40 acres in the heart of the old city. It was the principal residence of the Nizams from 1750 until the late nineteenth century. Having surrendered their authority to the Resident, and having lost the will to rule, the Nizams would retreat to Chowmahalla,
⁶
living out the rest of their days in ‘gloomy retirement and sullen discontent', in the case of Sikander Jah, or opting for ‘a secluded life . . . associating with humble dependants', in the case of Afzal ud-Daula.
⁷

Architecturally the complex was a syncretic blend of Qutb Shahi, Persian and European styles, but it lacked the grandeur of
palaces of much lesser rulers of princely India. ‘On entering the Nizam's palace we were surprised by the plainness of its style, than which indeed nothing could be more commonplace,' reported the Resident Richard Temple in the 1860s. ‘It consisted of a cluster of modern houses, built mainly in the European fashion, without the least attempt at architectural design. The cause is this, that originally in the days of the Mogul empire the Nizam was technically considered to be encamped in the Deccan and had not established in any permanent palace. His successors still cling to that tradition and never erect any palatial structures.'
⁸

Each of the four pavilions was painted in a different colour: ruby red, pink, purple and green with matching coloured glass chandeliers and heavy silk curtains. The furnishing consisted mainly of French period pieces with the odd Queen Anne or Queen Victoria. ‘Harmony was farthest away from the mind of the interior decorator,' writes D. F. Karaka. ‘If an article or a bibelot were beautiful in itself, it found a place in one of the reception rooms where it stood out of period, yet not out of place in the overall richness of its setting.'
⁹

The
darbar
hall, known as the Khilawat, was built by the Seventh Nizam in 1915. Modelled on the Shah of Iran's summer palace at Isfahan, the pearl-white, double-storey building is entered by a flight of steps that leads into a vast audience hall illuminated by several massive chandeliers. The Khilawat was used by Osman Ali Khan to receive noblemen and for special occasions such as his birthday, the Muslim festival of Eid, and Nowroze, the Persian New Year. Now it would be used to inaugurate Hyderabad's last Nizam.

Grainy 16-millimetre footage shot by a German cameraman on 6 April 1967, the day of the
darbar
, shows Jah's motorcade meandering through streets strewn with rose petals and decorated with flags, bunting and arches. Wearing a yellow
sherwani
and
dastar
, Jah looks stiff and uncomfortable as he emerges from
a silver-blue Oldsmobile bearing the number plate ‘HYDERABAD 1'. Esra appears more relaxed, dressed in a pale green sari, her hair covered by a scarf. Inside the
darbar
hall male guests wearing
dastars
, fezzes and turbans sit patiently on a white cloth that covers the marble floor while the women watch from the gallery above the audience hall. Seated to the right of the throne are Jah's father, mother, uncle and brother, together with other close relatives. Other notables are seated on the left.

The old Musyram Regiment, dressed in a peculiar mixture of red and blue French dragoon-style trousers and jackets and Arab headdresses set on fez hats, makes up the guard of honour flanking the entrance to the palace. The Hyderabad anthem is played, followed by prayers in Arabic and an inspection by Jah of the palace troops. Holding a ceremonial sword, Jah enters the
darbar
hall as verses are recited from the Koran asking Allah to forgive his sins past and present, to guide him along a straight path and give help and strength for the tasks ahead. More prayers follow, including the hymn of salutations as sung at the sacred shrine at Medina.

With the religious part of the ceremony concluded, Jah takes his place on the
musnud
, a white marble dais with a canopy of yellow velvet embroidered with pearls, gold and silver thread and an ochre-coloured backdrop embellished with the Asaf Jahi emblem. While seated, the President of India's two gazettes acknowledging Jah as the successor of the Seventh Nizam and declaring him the ruler of Hyderabad and the sole owner of all movable and immovable property of Osman Ali Khan's private estate are read out. From outside the palace come the sounds of a 21-gun salute and shouts of ‘Long Live the Nizam' from the tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets.

After a round of speeches and an offering of prayers by representatives of Hyderabad's Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Parsi and Buddhist communities, it is the turn of the nobles to offer their
nazars
– each coin touched but not taken by Jah. Finally, in
accordance with Mughal customs, two
farmans
proclaiming him the new Nizam are read out and signed. Jah offers
nazars
to his father and mother and then walks to the front steps of the Khilawat, where he and Esra stand while the royal guard presents its arms in a royal salute and the anthem of Hyderabad is played.

The camera lingers on this scene for a long time, not because of its significance, but because the Oldsmobile meant to take the royal couple back to their residence has broken down. Esra looks bemused and Jah slightly bored as Habeeb Jung runs down the stairs and out of the frame to arrange for another much older car as a replacement. Uppermost in Jah's mind at that moment, he would later admit, was not the significance of the ceremony or what he would do with his grandfather's wealth, but why the imported V8 was refusing to start. As for the President's proclamation making him the Nizam, Jah remains indifferent. ‘I think it was a case of someone dragging out some files marked “Succession” and saying, “Let's use this one.” Officially I was the Nizam, but since 1948 there was nothing to rule over.'
¹⁰