Last Nizam (9781742626109) (18 page)

But even greater changes were imminent for the now tall and slender teenager. In the summer of 1931, the reservations clerk at the Negresco, Nice's most fashionable and expensive hotel, received a booking from Hyderabad for two entire floors in the names of Azam and Moazzam Jah and their entourages. Durrushehvar had never been to the Negresco and had never met the Nizam's sons, but within six months she and her 15-year-old cousin Niloufer would be boarding a steamer from Marseilles to Bombay with their new Indian husbands.

It was not the first time Azam and Moazzam had been to Europe. The British had always taken a close, almost intimate, interest in the upbringing of the heir apparent and his brother and considered visits to the West an essential part of their training. With their father's encouragement an Englishman named
Hugh Gough had been given the job of guardian. From then on the boys had very little contact with their father and were housed in separate palace complexes. Gough's duties included teaching them ‘table manners, how to dress, how to hold a knife and fork, how to enjoy their whiskey and how to pee'.
¹¹
One Resident thought Gough was ‘utterly senile and refused to admit that his geese were anything but swans'.
¹²
W. G. Prendergast, the Australian-born, ex-British-Army drill sergeant appointed as their senior tutor, was not held in high regard either. In a report submitted to the Nizam when they turned 16, Prendergast wrote that they were well-versed in literature, English and Indian history. He praised their ‘lofty principles of reverence, self respect, truthfulness, clean living and clear thinking'. The princes possessed ‘a well informed and well trained intellect, a keen and alert mentality, a healthy and well developed body; in a word
mens sana in corpore sano
, and the simple manly and moral character which constitute the finished product of a liberal education'.
¹³

Unfortunately, much of Prendergast's pompous report was imagined or greatly exaggerated. It was more intended to impress the Nizam and the Viceroy, Lord Reading, who read it with interest, than to provide an accurate picture of the boys' development. The Acting Resident, Stuart Knox, was not fooled by Prendergast's account of the princelings, or
sahibzadas
as they were known. ‘They are very seldom seen at any function, except the few palace dinners, and get little opportunity of acquiring any polish or courtesy whatsoever,' he reported to the Viceroy's secretary J. P. Thompson. ‘Their manners are not good, and one can hardly expect them to be when their tutor is an ex-Sergeant – a very worthy fellow indeed but who cannot by any stretch of courtesy be called a gentleman.'
¹⁴

In March 1925 Azam wrote an extraordinary letter to the Resident Charles Russell, in which he called on the British to depose
his own father. ‘Here I am more than eighteen years old and allowed no money, no motor car and no liberty; I am never allowed to go the Residency; it is all so different from the way Father was treated by Grandfather,' he complained to the Resident. ‘I am old enough to be installed as Nizam; but I am having no experience of State business. Father tyrannises over me as he is tyrannising over everybody else . . . Surely the Government of India will either check my Father or depose him.' And in case the Resident did not get the hint, he added:

I see that the Viceroy is going to England and I believe that he will then discuss this question with the Secretary of State. Lord Reading has already deposed many Ruling Princes. The way Father behaves towards the British Government is disgraceful. Every morning he abuses them. He seems to forget that our ancestors fought side by side and that but for the British Hyderabad would not exist.
¹⁵

Russell's response was to ignore Azam's complaints and instead put the onus on the heir apparent to alter his behaviour. ‘If the
Sahibzada
learnt self-control and self-reliance he would no doubt in due course be able to do a great work in the State.'
¹⁶

Russell's replacement, William Barton, was similarly unimpressed by Azam and Moazzam. In the absence of a proper education, he feared the boys were developing the Nizam's money-grabbing habits. ‘The son need not be as the father if given a chance, although people feared it would be so,' Barton concluded gloomily.
¹⁷

Barton believed the Nizam was largely to blame for his sons' behaviour by keeping them in virtual captivity and giving them a meagre allowance of just 500 rupees a month. Barton's solution was to pay the sons directly from the state's funds rather than the
Nizam's personal estate. But the Nizam at first rejected the idea, pointing out that his personal estate, or
Sarf-i-Khas
, was the traditional source of payment for heirs to the throne. In the end, however, the Nizam caved in and agreed to increase their allowances to Rs 20,000 for Azam and Rs 15,000 a month for his younger brother. He also agreed that the money would come from the state's coffers rather than his own pocket.

In 1928, when they were reaching adulthood, the princes were packed off to Europe to provide them with what was officially termed ‘training in administrative work on the friendly advice of the Government of India'.
¹⁸
‘The Nizam was very serious in cultivating his boys to take on the responsibility of marrying highly educated ladies and cut out for themselves an international platform,' recalls Habeeb Jung. ‘Unfortunately they squandered the opportunity.'
¹⁹

No sooner had they landed in Europe than the temptations of shopping on the Champs-Élysées and trying their luck in the casinos of Monte Carlo took precedence over their administrative training. The network of informants the British nurtured in the princes' entourage reported that Azam devoted himself to polo and driving expensive cars, while Moazzam spent most of his time with tailors and haberdashers ‘being manicured and scented' and attending nightclubs. Moazzam also developed ‘an unerring flair for selecting approachable women, and, within a few minutes of entering a restaurant where all sorts were congregated, had made his choice and never made a mistake'. The only thing Moazzam could talk of was ‘the night life of Berlin and Paris which he much prefers to London'. Word also leaked out from one of Moazzam's dancing partners that the heir apparent and his brother wanted ‘to get away from their controllers and marry anyone they took a fancy to in Egypt or Europe'.
²⁰

The same information quickly reached Osman Ali Khan, who
confided in Barton in January 1930 ‘that he feared there was a danger of his heir-apparent falling in love with someone in Europe'. He asked Barton for his assistance ‘in the shape of giving his son a hint that the match should be one of his [father's] selection but one acceptable to him'.
²¹
A few years earlier the Nizam had put the word out among fellow Muslim leaders in India that he was interested in finding suitable brides for his two sons, but with only a handful of Muslim rulers in British India the choice was limited. The Nizam's next preference was an arranged marriage with relations of his already considerable family. In a letter to his sons he argued that such a marriage was necessary ‘so that the elephant which carries the standard at the head of the procession should be the pick of the train'. After that, he added, ‘you can marry as many outsiders as you like'.
²²

But even among his relations eligible brides were scarce. When the Nizam presented two young female relatives of his first wife Dulhan Pasha to Barton's successor, Terence Keyes, for his assessment and approval, he was taken aback by the reaction. ‘They were uneducated, undersized, unattractive little things, and most obviously the matches would have been distasteful to the
Sahibzadas
,' Keyes wrote in a secret cable to his superiors in Simla, the summer capital of British India, in August 1931. ‘His Exalted Highness seemed very disappointed at my opinion and twice tried to persuade me to see them again in the hopes that I would change.'
²³

Aside from this negative judgement regarding the Nizam's taste in women, Keyes was much less critical of Osman Ali Khan than Barton had been. ‘Barton's “Frontier attitude” was illadapted to the atmosphere of courtly Hyderabad and to what Barton saw as the Nizam's “characteristic oriental mentality”,' writes historian Lucien Benichou.
²⁴
In one of his last cables, Barton had described the Nizam's dominant motive for getting back his old tyranny as ‘loot, pure and simple'.
²⁵
Keyes was less critical.
Just a few months into his posting in May 1930 he described the Nizam to the Viceroy Lord Irwin as a ‘queer little creature' with ‘distinct powers for good . . . a quick sense of humour, an unexpected capacity for friendship . . . [and a] pathetic craving to be liked and understood'.
²⁶
Added Keyes: ‘He never seems to bear malice, takes every setback with good humour and, within his limitations, I really believe he means to do well.'
²⁷

The difficulty in finding a suitable match for the young princelings did not escape the attention of Shaukat Ali, who had begun working on a plan that involved marrying Azam to Mejid's only child, Durrushehvar, the piano-playing princess with a fondness for sweetmeats. Shaukat Ali told the Nizam that she was ‘aged about 17 . . . attractive and very well-educated' and that Mejid was in favour of the marriage.
²⁸
Moreover, Prince Ahmad Tevhid, the ex-Caliph's nephew, had a sister called Niloufer who was of marriageable age. If a marriage was fixed between Azam and Durrushehvar, Moazzam could complete the arrangement by taking Niloufer as his bride. To drive his point home, Shaukat Ali reminded the Nizam that such a match with the family of the ex-Caliph would ensure that he became the predominant Muslim leader not only in India but in the Islamic world.

Shaukat Ali's description of Durrushehvar hardly did her justice. Mejid had devoted nearly all his time in exile to his young daughter's education. She dominated the Turkish microcosm that existed inside the villa in Nice where she was nicknamed ‘Sultan' but always formally addressed as ‘Her Imperial Highness'. ‘She is extraordinarily well educated and has an excellent style in English and French,' observed one of her early admirers. She contributed poetry to French magazines, spoke fluent English and Turkish and showed promise as a musician. ‘She is beautiful, has great dignity and
savoir faire
and a very strong character.'
²⁹

Niloufer attracted even greater compliments. When writing his autobiography, Conrad Corfield was so taken by Niloufer's ‘violet eyes and blue black Circassian hair . . . her perfect features, her creamy complexion and the dimples in her cheeks' that he devoted almost half of the chapter on his term as Political Secretary in Hyderabad to describing the hold she had over men.
³⁰

Even if the Nizam took notice of such flattering remarks about his future daughters-in-law, it did not allay his fears about forging ‘too close an alliance with a numerous and impecunious family with a royal etiquette which may prove very burdensome'.
³¹
His preference, he told Keyes, was still for matches ‘from certain respectable local families – Hyderabadi girls not independent and advanced like those of Turkey and Persia'.
³²
Marrying into the Sultan's family also went against ‘the traditions of the House' which had never sought a matrimonial alliance with royalty from overseas.
³³
Moreover, the Nizam feared it would ‘certainly be embarrassing as the entry of one member of the Sultan's family will be followed by an influx of the many descendants of the Sultans of Turkey of which there appear to be many residing in France and Syria'.
³⁴
There was, however, another reason that the Nizam was loath to admit to, but the British were well aware of. His wife, Dulhan Pasha, was furious at being overruled in her choice of whom her sons should marry and at the prospect of losing what little influence she had over them.
³⁵

As the Nizam dithered, a bidding war broke out among three other royal families for Durrushehvar and Niloufer. King Faud of Egypt, King Faisal of Iraq and Shah Reza of Persia lobbied hard to obtain the hands of the girls in marriage for their sons or relatives, believing that an alliance with the spiritual head of the Muslim world would strengthen their thrones. Press reports spoke of vast sums of money and fabulous dowries for the princesses.
³⁶
It was a high-stakes game. On the death of the ex-Caliph, the world's
300 million Muslims would look to the male offspring of his daughter as the new ‘Pope' of Islam if none other had been chosen. But in the end what mattered to Mejid was not the money but the Nizam's long-standing generosity. By 1931 the Nizam was keeping at least seven of Mejid's relatives clothed and fed. Nothing that Faud, Faisal or Reza could offer was enough to offset the personal debt that Mejid felt he owed to the House of Hyderabad. Finally, in the summer of 1931, the Nizam mustered enough courage to take on Dulhan Pasha and ordered that his sons would marry into the ex-Caliph's family. As usual, the Nizam then asked the Resident to seek the Viceroy's permission for the match. As soon as that approval was forthcoming he sent a team of officials to London, headed by his Finance Minister, Akbar Hydari, to negotiate terms for the dowry and trousseau with representatives of the brides' family. Whatever charitable streak had motivated Nizam to help an exiled fellow Muslim evaporated as soon as the talks began. Updated daily by his informants, Keyes watched in disbelief as the marriage was nearly derailed by the Nizam's pettiness and the proposed treatment of his future daughters-in-law.

Throughout October 1931 Keyes relayed each unseemly bargaining point in secret cables to the Viceroy's office in Delhi. To save money the niggardly Nizam firstly insisted on a double wedding with one trousseau and that the funds should come from the state's funds rather than from his own personal fortune. Twice he called the talks off owing to the ‘unacceptable conditions' put forward by the ex-Caliph. The Turks wanted a trousseau worth 20,000 rupees. The Nizam was only willing to give 10,000, but eventually compromised on 15,000 rupees.
³⁷
Keyes then reported that the Nizam was against providing his eldest son's future wife with a decent allowance as this would enable her to ‘maintain a large alien establishment, jeopardise her relations with her husband and upset seriously the tenor of Hyderabad society'.
³⁸
He also objected to the demand that Durrushehvar be allowed to return
to Nice ‘every hot weather' with her husband in tow. ‘The Nizam is convinced this would end in the extinction of his dynasty.'
³⁹