Last Nizam (9781742626109) (3 page)

Aurangzeb's faith was not misplaced. Qamruddin would become the first Nizam of Hyderabad and one of the most successful rulers of eighteenth-century India. His empire would fill the void left by the disintegration of the Mughal dynasty. From a loyal soldier, he would rise to become a kingmaker, a skilled diplomat and an able administrator. Described by one historian as the last representative of the ‘Aurangzeb school of public duty and integrity',
¹⁵
he inherited his grandfather's piety and his father's military prowess. ‘Taking all the actors together, from one end of Hindoosthan during the period that Nizam-ool-Mulk played his part, his stature takes colossal dimensions,'
wrote Briggs. ‘If Moosulman were accustomed to perpetuate the memory of their heroes by posthumous ovations, India might have seen a hundred statues of her greatest Mahommedan hero of the eighteenth century.'
¹⁶

For the young Qamruddin, Aurangzeb's Deccan obsession presented him with endless opportunities to rise through the ranks. Each victory, each heap of stones added to the empire, brought promotions and handouts. Like his grandfather, Qamruddin took to the saddle as soon as he could walk, and before he had reached his teens began accompanying his father into battle. His first promotion came at the age of 13 after the successful capture of the forts of Poona and Supa, when he received the rank of 400
zat
, 100 horse. By the time he was 16, Qamruddin had added the fortresses of Raigarh to his list of conquests and was rewarded with a bejewelled sword, a robe of honour and an elephant. In 1688 he joined his father in the successful assault on the fort of Adoni and was promoted to the rank of 2000
zat
and 500 horse and presented with the finest Arab steed from the Mughal stables. At the age of 20 Qamruddin was gifted a female elephant and was bestowed with the title of Chin Qilich Khan (boy swordsman). For surviving an attack that blew off three of his horse's legs during the siege of Wakinhera fort, he was given an Arab steed with gold trappings and a ‘pastille perfumed with ambergris'. For fighting on and capturing the fort he was raised to rank of 5000 horse and awarded 15 million
dams
, a jewelled sabre and a third elephant. He was also made the Viceroy of Bijapur.
¹⁷

The assault on Wakinhera in 1705 was the last undertaken by Aurangzeb. With the conquest of the Deccan now complete, he decided at the age of 87 to lead his army back to Delhi. But this was not the return march of a triumphant monarch. Aurangzeb had taken Mughal rule and its brand of Sunni Islam west beyond the deserts of Baluchistan, east into the Arakan and south as far
as the Cauvery River near present-day Madras. Not until the British consolidated their rule after the Mutiny of 1857 would such large swathes of the sub-continent be united under a single force. However, after two centuries of empire-building, the Mughal Empire was overstretched and fraying at the edges.

Aurangzeb had drained his coffers, demoralised his soldiers and corrupted his court with his expensive military campaigns. When Aurangzeb had come to the throne the Mughal fighting force in the Deccan alone numbered around 170,000 soldiers. Wherever the army went, so did the imperial court. At each stop a tented city was set up, complete with bazaars, cantonments and harems. Counting non-combatants and camp followers, the number of inhabitants that had to be fed and housed was close to half a million. The ranks of nobles who expected suitable remuneration in the territories under Mughal control also grew exponentially. When Sir William Norris, trade representative of King William III, had visited Aurangzeb a few years earlier, he reported that the Emperor's soldiers had not been paid in two years and his courtiers could be bribed for a bottle of wine. ‘All administration has disappeared,' wrote one eyewitness. ‘The realm is desolated, nobody gets justice, they have been utterly ruined.'
¹⁸

As Aurangzeb marched north ‘slowly and with difficulty', local warlords moved in to reclaim their territories and armed bands of Marathas shadowed his forces. In January 1706 Aurangzeb ordered his soldiers to set up camp at Ahmadnagar for what turned out to be the final time. Although he was ‘very weak and death was clearly stamped upon his face', he still stuck to his royal routine, up to the point of holding a make-believe
darbar
which he reviewed from his sickbed.
¹⁹

In the early hours of Friday, 3 March 1707, ‘when one watch of the day had gone and the prayers and creed had been duly recited, his weary spirit was released'. Manucci recounts that at the moment of his death ‘a whirlwind arose, so fierce that it blew
down all the tents standing in the encampment . . . The day became so dark that men ran into each other . . . villages were destroyed and trees overthrown.'
²⁰

Well aware of the chaos that surrounded his own ascension to the throne, Aurangzeb had tried in vain to lay the groundwork for an orderly transfer of power. Fearing that they would rebel against him, he imprisoned three of his five sons for petty crimes such as embezzlement. Another was dispatched to a post at a farflung corner of the empire. In his last testament Aurangzeb advised his successors never to trust their sons or get too close to them. ‘The main pillar of government is to be well informed in the news of the kingdom. The negligence for a single moment becomes the cause of disgrace for long years.' He also asked for a simple burial with the funeral expenses to be met only from sale of the Korans he had personally copied and the prayer caps he had stitched. ‘Bury this wanderer . . . with his head bare, because every ruined sinner who is conducted bare-footed before the Grand Emperor is sure to be an object of mercy.'
²¹

But in the end it all came to nought. The great Mughal's burial near Daulatabad touched off a debilitating fratricidal struggle that saw son conspire against son, puppet against pretender, often with murderous consequences. In the course of a dozen years no fewer than 17 aspirants would jockey for the throne. Aurangzeb's death also opened the way for new players to enter this eighteenth-century great game for the control of the Indian sub-continent and its vast wealth. No longer would wars be fought solely between Hindu and Muslim armies. Britain and France, once content to send emissaries like Norris bearing gifts to win favours from local rulers, were about to become full-blown rivals for trade and territory. For the next hundred years British mercenaries and French freebooters would serve whichever side offered them the greatest rewards. Nawabs,
peshwas
, rajahs and sultans were forced to sue for peace by handing
over territory to the East India Company or French forces and by emptying their treasuries to pay for reparations. Only those rulers with wealth, cunning and a great deal of luck would find themselves with an empire to speak of by the end of the century. One of them would be the Nizam of Hyderabad.

After attending the burial of Aurangzeb, Qamruddin offered his services to the Emperor's successor, Bahadur Shah, and was appointed the Governor of Oudh. However, Bahadur Shah's reign lasted only five years, and with his death the fragile empire that Aurangzeb left behind began to collapse. Nowhere was that disintegration more pronounced than in the Deccan. Chroniclers of the time reported that two decades of war had left its provinces ‘black and barren' and its fields filled with ‘the bones of men and beasts'.
²²
The Maratha chieftains who had surrendered to Aurangzeb renounced their pledges, resumed their lands, took up arms and began their raids again.

Tired of the political machinations that had engulfed the Mughal throne, and the ‘frivolity and incapacity of the Emperor', Qamruddin opted for a private life in Delhi. ‘For a considerable period he abstained entirely from coming to court, lived in seclusion, and was seldom seen abroad, and then only for the purpose of paying a visit to some man renowned for his piety or his learning.'
²³
But his sabbatical was cut short when, in 1712, the sixth of Aurangzeb's successors, Farrukhsiyar, managed to stay on the throne long enough to convince him to take up the post of Viceroy of the Deccan with the hereditary title of Nizam ul-Mulk (Regulator of the Realm) Fateh Jung. Nizam ul-Mulk (as Qamruddin was now known) began building up his own power-base independently of the Mughals in Delhi, while continuing to give obeisance to the throne and even remitting money to the centre.

Farrukhsiyar demanded Nizam ul-Mulk's help in subduing the Saiyid brothers, Hussain Ali Khan and Abdullah Khan, who
had developed a reputation for setting up and removing emperors ‘like skittles'. In 1719 they marched on Delhi, captured Farrukhsiyar, who was hiding in the
zenana
, blinded him with a needle, locked him up in a prison cell for two months and then stabbed him to death. Farrukhsiyar was eventually replaced by the 18-year-old Muhammad Shah, who rewarded Nizam ul-Mulk for his help in defeating the Saiyids with the post of
Diwan
(Prime Minister) in his own court. However, Nizam ul-Mulk's attempts to reform the corrupt Mughal administration with its cliques of concubines and eunuchs created many enemies. According to Nizam ul-Mulk's biographer, Yusuf Husain, he grew to hate the ‘harlots and jesters' who were the Emperor's constant companions and ‘greeted all great nobles of the realm with lewd gestures and offensive epithets'. Nizam ul-Mulk's desire to restore the ‘etiquette of the Court and the discipline of the State' earned him few friends. ‘By envious, malicious insinuations [the courtiers] poisoned the mind of the Emperor against his devoted servant.'
²⁴

In 1724 Nizam ul-Mulk resigned his post in disgust and set off for the Deccan to resume the Viceroyalty, only to find Mubariz Khan, who had been appointed governor by Farrukhsiyar nine years earlier, refusing to vacate the post. Mubariz Khan had successfully restored law and order in the Deccan and fended off marauding bands of Maratha raiders, rebellious Telegu
zamindars
, bandit chiefs and renegade Mughal commanders, but he was also paying lip service to the Mughal throne, making only token payments and dividing plum administrative posts among his sons, his uncle and his favourite slave eunuch. Unimpressed by the upstart occupying what he considered to be his rightful place, Nizam ul-Mulk gathered his forces at Shakarkhelda in Berar for a showdown with Mubariz Khan's impressive army. The encounter was short but decisive. Wrapped in his blood-soaked shawl, Mubariz Khan drove his war elephant into battle
until he died from his wounds. His severed head was then sent to Delhi as proof of Nizam ul-Mulk's determination to annihilate anyone who stood in his way.

With this decisive victory Muhammad Shah had little choice but to recognise Nizam ul-Mulk's claim to the suzerainty of the Deccan. ‘Now there came to him from the Emperor an elephant, jewels and the title of Asaf Jah, with directions to settle the country, repress the turbulent, punish the rebels and cherish the people,' recorded Khafi Khan.
²⁵
Asaf Jah, or the Equal to Asaf, the Grand Wazir in the court of the biblical ruler King Solomon, was the highest title that could be awarded to a subject of the Mughal Empire.

There were no lavish ceremonies to mark the establishment of the Asaf Jahi dynasty in 1724. The inauguration of First Nizam, as its leaders became known, took place behind closed doors in a private ceremony attended by the new ruler's closest advisors. Nizam ul-Mulk never formally declared his independence and insisted that his rule was entirely based on the trust reposed in him by the Mughal Emperor, to whom he swore eternal loyalty. His faithfulness to the Mughal court was unswerving and would be passed down through the generations that followed. The Nizam's Dominions yielded an income that was almost equal to the rest of the Mughal Empire, yet there was no throne, no crown and no symbol of sovereignty. Coins were still minted with the Emperor's name until 1858. It was in the name of the Mughal ruler and not the Nizam that prayers were read out in the
khutba
(Friday Sermon). On the seal used to authenticate all public acts, the Nizam was designated as the ‘Servant of the Emperor'. Though he conferred titles on his subjects, he received his designations from the Mughal Emperor in Delhi.

As the Viceroy of the Deccan, the Nizam was the head of the executive and judicial departments and the source of all civil and military authority, ruling as an absolute monarch. All officials
were appointed by him directly or in his name. Assisted by a
Diwan,
the Nizams drafted their own laws, raised their own armies, flew their own flags and formed their own governments, but they refused to adopt the title of King even when it was offered to them by the British in 1810. It was not until India was granted its independence in 1947 that the Seventh Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, formally claimed to be a ruler in his own right, but by then it was too late for a sovereign Hyderabad to coexist with a free India. Its independence lasted less than 400 days.

Despite Nizam ul-Mulk's earlier differences with the Emperor, his letter acknowledging Muhammad Shah's
farman
was couched in the most reverential language. ‘Even if the pen opens its thousand tongues of gratitude for His Majesty it would simply be impossible to recount one out of the innumerable favours and benefits conferred on his servant,' he wrote. ‘As long as the sun shines on firmament, may the altar of the Caliphate and the asylum of the world remain victorious and blest causing envy to the assembly of Jam and the garden of Paradise.'
²⁶

Nizam ul-Mulk had good reason to be grateful. Alongside his own personal wealth came the spoils of war and status. As the Nizam he was entitled to the lion's share of gold unearthed in his Dominions, the finest diamonds and gems from the Golconda mines and the income from his vast personal estates. He also adopted the Mughal practice of accepting
nazars
(gifts) every time someone came to him with a petition or to mark a special occasion.
Nazars
ranged from gold coins, emeralds, rubies and other precious stones to the finest horses, the best elephants, expensive clothes, daggers and swords, palaces, eunuchs and even dancing girls.