White Mughals (32 page)
Authors: William Dalrymple
An even more dramatic transformation in status was experienced by General Sir David Ochterlony’s senior
bibi,
Mubarak Begum. Though Ochterlony is reputed to have had thirteen wives, one of these, a former Brahmin slave girl from Pune who converted to Islam and is referred to in his will as ‘Beebee Mahruttun Moobaruck ul Nissa Begume, alias Begum Ochterlony, the mother of my younger children’,
50
took clear precedence over the others.
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bibi,
Mubarak Begum. Though Ochterlony is reputed to have had thirteen wives, one of these, a former Brahmin slave girl from Pune who converted to Islam and is referred to in his will as ‘Beebee Mahruttun Moobaruck ul Nissa Begume, alias Begum Ochterlony, the mother of my younger children’,
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took clear precedence over the others.
51
‘Generalee Begum’, as she was also known, occasionally appears in contemporary letters, where she is frequently accused of giving herself airs. She offended the British by calling herself ‘Lady Ochterlony’—in one letter it is recorded that ‘Lady Ochterlony has applied for leave to make the Hadge to Mecca’—and also offended the Mughals by awarding herself the title Qudsia Begum, previously that of the Emperor’s mother.
52
cq
Much younger than Ochterlony, she certainly appears to have had the upper hand in her relationship with the old General, and one observer remarked that Ochterlony’s mistress ‘is the mistress now of everyone within the walls’.
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cq
Much younger than Ochterlony, she certainly appears to have had the upper hand in her relationship with the old General, and one observer remarked that Ochterlony’s mistress ‘is the mistress now of everyone within the walls’.
53
Mubarak Begum ultimately overplayed her hand: after Ochterlony’s death she inherited Mubarak Bagh, the Anglo-Mughal garden tomb he had built in the north of the city, and she used part of her considerable inheritance to build a mosque and a
haveli
for herself at Hauz Qazi in the old city of Delhi.
54
But her profound personal unpopularity, combined with her dancing-girl background, meant that no Mughal gentleman would ever be seen using her structure. It is still, to this day, referred to in the old city as the ‘Rundi-ki-Masjid’, or Prostitute’s Mosque.
cr
haveli
for herself at Hauz Qazi in the old city of Delhi.
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But her profound personal unpopularity, combined with her dancing-girl background, meant that no Mughal gentleman would ever be seen using her structure. It is still, to this day, referred to in the old city as the ‘Rundi-ki-Masjid’, or Prostitute’s Mosque.
cr
Mubarak Begum’s extreme social and political ambitions led to her nemesis. But her story is nevertheless a graphic illustration of quite how powerful a woman could become by being the wife or even the senior concubine of a British Resident. Sharaf un-Nissa was a widow whose father was pressuring her to marry her daughter to a man neither mother nor daughter thought suitable. Kirkpatrick clearly represented a very eligible escape route.
Yet there is one further possible explanation for Sharaf un-Nissa’s willingness to indulge her daughter’s wishes. Sharaf un-Nissa’s great friend was Farzand Begum, the daughter-in-law of Aristu Jah, and the moving force in the Prime Minister’s
zenana.
cs
Over and over again in the records, we hear of Sharaf un-Nissa visiting Farzand Begum, and Sharaf un-Nissa later insisted that Farzand Begum had encouraged her to marry Khair un-Nissa to the British Resident.
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Farzand Begum seems to have been involved in encouraging the liaison from the outset, for it was later reported that Aristu Jah had supervised it from its commencement, and in Mughal society the only way he could have done this would have been through the women in his
zenana.
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It is also unclear whether Aristu Jah or Farzand Begum offered Sharaf un-Nissa any inducements to make her daughter available to Kirkpatrick; but it is known for sure that following the marriage Sharaf un-Nissa was indeed granted lucrative
jagirs
(estates) of fifty thousand rupees per annum by the Nizam.
57
zenana.
cs
Over and over again in the records, we hear of Sharaf un-Nissa visiting Farzand Begum, and Sharaf un-Nissa later insisted that Farzand Begum had encouraged her to marry Khair un-Nissa to the British Resident.
55
Farzand Begum seems to have been involved in encouraging the liaison from the outset, for it was later reported that Aristu Jah had supervised it from its commencement, and in Mughal society the only way he could have done this would have been through the women in his
zenana.
56
It is also unclear whether Aristu Jah or Farzand Begum offered Sharaf un-Nissa any inducements to make her daughter available to Kirkpatrick; but it is known for sure that following the marriage Sharaf un-Nissa was indeed granted lucrative
jagirs
(estates) of fifty thousand rupees per annum by the Nizam.
57
If this was part of a deal, a
quid pro quo
for giving Khair un-Nissa to the British Resident, it would follow that the affair between Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa was to some extent planned—or at least manipulated—by Aristu Jah, a tactician of genius who realised how far he could use the relationship for his political advantage. As later events would show, Aristu Jah also clearly hoped that if he played his cards carefully, the relationship might be the weapon he had been looking for to revenge himself on his great rival, Khair un-Nissa’s first cousin once removed, Mir Alam. If this is the correct interpretation—and it was certainly what Mir Alam later believed to be the case
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-then it would follow that Khair un-Nissa was made available to Kirkpatrick as what (in the parlance of modern spy novels) is known as a ‘honey trap’.
quid pro quo
for giving Khair un-Nissa to the British Resident, it would follow that the affair between Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa was to some extent planned—or at least manipulated—by Aristu Jah, a tactician of genius who realised how far he could use the relationship for his political advantage. As later events would show, Aristu Jah also clearly hoped that if he played his cards carefully, the relationship might be the weapon he had been looking for to revenge himself on his great rival, Khair un-Nissa’s first cousin once removed, Mir Alam. If this is the correct interpretation—and it was certainly what Mir Alam later believed to be the case
58
-then it would follow that Khair un-Nissa was made available to Kirkpatrick as what (in the parlance of modern spy novels) is known as a ‘honey trap’.
If this is the case, how should we judge Sharaf un-Nissa’s actions? Was she effectively prostituting her daughter for her own ends and ambitions? However we may regard it today, this is certainly not how the women of the family would have looked at it themselves. Sexuality was a key asset and weapon for women in Mughal India, and subtly finding a way of making the women of a family available to powerful rulers and officials was a recognised means of achieving advancement and preferment at court and in society.
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All Sharaf un-Nissa was doing was adapting this ancient tradition to the new semi-colonial environment—and here lay her problem.
59
All Sharaf un-Nissa was doing was adapting this ancient tradition to the new semi-colonial environment—and here lay her problem.
Even with the most Mughalised British official, there were big differences between setting up a marriage alliance with a British Resident, and doing the same with a senior Mughal courtier, as the women would in due course discover. What might be regarded as normal courtly behaviour in a Mughal environment could be misconstrued by Europeans as procurement or pimping; moreover British Residents moved quickly from court to court before, in most cases, returning home to Britain. Alliances that in a Mughal environment would be permanent often became dangerously short-term in a colonial one. At first Sharaf un-Nissa’s strategy to gain influence through marrying her daughter to the British Resident seemed to work. Only time would reveal the scale of the difficulties involved in trying to cross such sensitive cultural frontiers.
In the end, motives are always difficult to establish. But what is certain is that with Bâqar Ali Khan away on campaign with the army, Sharaf un-Nissa was free to follow her own plan to bring her daughter and the British Resident together. She did not hesitate to take full and immediate advantage of that opportunity. According to Mir Alam’s later testimony, it was shortly after he and Bâqar Ali ‘took the field against Tippoo Sultaun [that] Kirkpatrick debauched this girl’.
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It was several months before James admitted to his elder brother that he was sleeping with Khair un-Nissa. Indeed he only did so explicitly long after the scandal had broken and William had written to him repeatedly demanding to know exactly what truth lay behind the ever more outrageous rumours emanating from Hyderabad.
The two brothers had lived closely together in Hyderabad, and each knew that the other was involved in a long-term relationship with at least one Indian woman. Some time after his wife Maria’s return to England, William had re-established his relationship with Dhoolaury Bibi, by whom he had earlier fathered two children, Robert and Cecilia, both of whom were now teenagers and living with the Handsome Colonel in Kent. Dhoolaury Bibi had joined William in Hyderabad when he became Resident, and after William had left to recover his health at the Cape, James had written to his brother assuring him that his mistress was well and happy, and that he was looking after her. After William returned to India, Dhoolaury Bibi followed him to Calcutta, and was still living there, with her son Robert, twelve years later when she received a substantial legacy in William’s will.
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It seems to have been a serious and loving relationship; it was certainly longstanding: as their first child, Robert, was born in 1777, the two appear to have lived together for at least twenty-three years, except for the brief interlude between 1785, when William married Maria Pawson, and 1788, when Maria left India to return to England.
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It seems to have been a serious and loving relationship; it was certainly longstanding: as their first child, Robert, was born in 1777, the two appear to have lived together for at least twenty-three years, except for the brief interlude between 1785, when William married Maria Pawson, and 1788, when Maria left India to return to England.
James, meanwhile, was also living with at least one Indian girl, by whom he had had a son. Neither her name nor that of the child has survived, and all that is known of the girl is that she was significantly darker-skinned than Khair un-Nissa, and so was perhaps of Tamil or Telugu origin.
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James seems to have treated the relationship in a rather offhand manner: there are explicit references in the Clive Report—and in some of the Indian sources—to James’s women in the plural,
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and stories of his amorous adventures at this period reached even Arthur Wellesley in Seringapatam three hundred miles away: ‘About three years ago he is supposed to have debauched a young Mogul woman by pretending to be a Persian from Iran,’ the future Duke of Wellington reported to his brother Lord Wellesley, ‘[and it is said] that he has her now in his house.’
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He also reported that Mir Alam had told him that this sort of adventure was far from unusual for Kirkpatrick, and that if he were to come to Hyderabad ‘he would hear enough to make him ashamed that such a man was an Englishman’—much the same sort of thing as had long been said of James’s oversexed father, the Handsome Colonel.
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James seems to have treated the relationship in a rather offhand manner: there are explicit references in the Clive Report—and in some of the Indian sources—to James’s women in the plural,
63
and stories of his amorous adventures at this period reached even Arthur Wellesley in Seringapatam three hundred miles away: ‘About three years ago he is supposed to have debauched a young Mogul woman by pretending to be a Persian from Iran,’ the future Duke of Wellington reported to his brother Lord Wellesley, ‘[and it is said] that he has her now in his house.’
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He also reported that Mir Alam had told him that this sort of adventure was far from unusual for Kirkpatrick, and that if he were to come to Hyderabad ‘he would hear enough to make him ashamed that such a man was an Englishman’—much the same sort of thing as had long been said of James’s oversexed father, the Handsome Colonel.
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After Khair un-Nissa appeared on the scene the ‘dark girl’—and any other women then living in the Resident’s
zenana
—simply disappear from James’s letters, and the ‘dark girl’ is referred to only once, as ‘my old inmate’.
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It is possible that she had died; certainly she received no legacy or any mention at all in James’s will. James’s apparent indifference to the girl seems to have extended to her child. Even the Handsome Colonel, never one to take the business of parenting too seriously, was a little shocked by James’s apparent lack of interest in his ‘Hindustani boy’, and wrote to admonish him, saying that ‘in his opinion there is no difference in the duty a parent owes to his legitimate and illegitimate children’.
67
When the child tragically caught a fever and died in the Handsome Colonel’s arms in the summer of 1804, James wrote correctly but a little distantly to his father about ‘that much lamented youth’, saying how ‘the estimation as well as regard in which my departed son was held by all who knew him, and by him in particular [i.e. the Handsome Colonel] who from his superior discernment, as well as opportunities, is so eminently qualified to form a just opinion, is the highest compliment that his memory could receive’.
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zenana
—simply disappear from James’s letters, and the ‘dark girl’ is referred to only once, as ‘my old inmate’.
66
It is possible that she had died; certainly she received no legacy or any mention at all in James’s will. James’s apparent indifference to the girl seems to have extended to her child. Even the Handsome Colonel, never one to take the business of parenting too seriously, was a little shocked by James’s apparent lack of interest in his ‘Hindustani boy’, and wrote to admonish him, saying that ‘in his opinion there is no difference in the duty a parent owes to his legitimate and illegitimate children’.
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When the child tragically caught a fever and died in the Handsome Colonel’s arms in the summer of 1804, James wrote correctly but a little distantly to his father about ‘that much lamented youth’, saying how ‘the estimation as well as regard in which my departed son was held by all who knew him, and by him in particular [i.e. the Handsome Colonel] who from his superior discernment, as well as opportunities, is so eminently qualified to form a just opinion, is the highest compliment that his memory could receive’.
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This was very different from the sort of deeply felt and emotional language James would use about Khair un-Nissa and his children by her, and perhaps illustrates how far the British brought with them to India a morality that was determined as much by class as by race: there was one way you were expected to behave with a mistress from the lower classes, and quite another set of rules for educated girls from the top drawer of society, irrespective of their skin colour or nationality.
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Certainly, it was precisely Khair un-Nissa’s aristocratic birth and connections that led to James’s reticence on the subject to William. Seducing Mir Alam’s cousin had clear political implications, and initially James responded evasively to William’s questions about the relationship by merely denying that he had any intentions of marrying Khair: it was, he maintained, ‘an absurd report’ that William had heard.
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But William could see that he was not getting straight answers to the questions he was asking, and in letter after letter he kept up the pressure on James: was it true—had he seduced the girl or not? James was eventually forced to respond by giving William a full account of exactly how and where he had first slept with ‘B[âqar]’s granddaughter’, as he refers to her. In this letter he tried to clear himself of the charge of having taken the initiative in ‘debauching’ the girl: on the contrary, he maintains, it was Khair un-Nissa who had come to visit him—bringing her mother and granny along to his
zenana
, ostensibly as part of a visit to his women: ‘My dearest Will,’ he wrote,
70
But William could see that he was not getting straight answers to the questions he was asking, and in letter after letter he kept up the pressure on James: was it true—had he seduced the girl or not? James was eventually forced to respond by giving William a full account of exactly how and where he had first slept with ‘B[âqar]’s granddaughter’, as he refers to her. In this letter he tried to clear himself of the charge of having taken the initiative in ‘debauching’ the girl: on the contrary, he maintains, it was Khair un-Nissa who had come to visit him—bringing her mother and granny along to his
zenana
, ostensibly as part of a visit to his women: ‘My dearest Will,’ he wrote,
When I declared myself to you in my former letter unreservedly with respect to what passed between B’s granddaughter and myself I did so because towards you I have never known what concealment was, though it may admit of a question how far I had
right
to open myself even to you in the present instance. It being now however at all events too late to recall what has passed, and placing as I do the most implicit reliance on your discretion as well as affection, I shall proceed to answer without even a shadow of reserve the enquiries you are so anxious to have satisfied.
right
to open myself even to you in the present instance. It being now however at all events too late to recall what has passed, and placing as I do the most implicit reliance on your discretion as well as affection, I shall proceed to answer without even a shadow of reserve the enquiries you are so anxious to have satisfied.
By way of Prelude it may not be amiss to observe that I did once
safely
pass the fiery ordeal of a long nocturnal interview with the charming subject of the present letter. It was this interview which I alluded to as the one when I had full and close survey of her lovely Person—it lasted during the greatest part of the night and was evidently
contrived
by the Grandmother and mother whose very existence hang on hers to indulge her uncontrollable wishes. At this meeting, which was under my roof, I contrived to command myself so far as to abstain from the tempting feast I was manifestly invited to, and God knows but ill qualified for the task, attempted to argue the Romantic Young Creature out of a passion which I could not, I confess, help feeling myself something more than pity for—She declared to me again and again that her affections had been irrevocably fixed on me for a series of time, that her fate was linked to mine and that she should be content to pass her days with me as the humblest of handmaids. These effusions you may possibly be inclined to treat as the ravings of a distempered mind but when I have time to impart to you the whole affecting tale you will then at least allow her actions to have accorded fully with her declarations.
safely
pass the fiery ordeal of a long nocturnal interview with the charming subject of the present letter. It was this interview which I alluded to as the one when I had full and close survey of her lovely Person—it lasted during the greatest part of the night and was evidently
contrived
by the Grandmother and mother whose very existence hang on hers to indulge her uncontrollable wishes. At this meeting, which was under my roof, I contrived to command myself so far as to abstain from the tempting feast I was manifestly invited to, and God knows but ill qualified for the task, attempted to argue the Romantic Young Creature out of a passion which I could not, I confess, help feeling myself something more than pity for—She declared to me again and again that her affections had been irrevocably fixed on me for a series of time, that her fate was linked to mine and that she should be content to pass her days with me as the humblest of handmaids. These effusions you may possibly be inclined to treat as the ravings of a distempered mind but when I have time to impart to you the whole affecting tale you will then at least allow her actions to have accorded fully with her declarations.
Until the above time (which might be a fortnight or three weeks before the interview spoken of in my former letter
71
) the young lady’s person was inviolate but was it human nature to remain proof against another such fiery trial? No, will perhaps be your reply, but wherefore you will probably ask, expose yourself to it? In answer I have nought to plead but human feelings, or if you please human frailty, which would not withstand the heart rending account of this interesting young female’s state of desperation and the pressing message from her grandmother to fly to her relief.
71
) the young lady’s person was inviolate but was it human nature to remain proof against another such fiery trial? No, will perhaps be your reply, but wherefore you will probably ask, expose yourself to it? In answer I have nought to plead but human feelings, or if you please human frailty, which would not withstand the heart rending account of this interesting young female’s state of desperation and the pressing message from her grandmother to fly to her relief.
Here again however I did not act but on the fullest previous conviction founded on numerous collateral circumstances as much as actual information, that the grandfather and the mother (though they kept aloof on the occasion) were privy to the assignation—I went then and when I assure you, which I do most solemnly, that the Grandmother herself plainly intimated the design of this meeting and the granddaughter in faint and broken accents hinted that the sacrifice she was about to make me was the only chance (as she fondly persuaded herself) of avoiding a hateful marriage I think you cannot but allow that I must have been
something more or less than man
to have held out any longer. Deliberate female seduction I hold in as much contempt and detestation as any man, but whatever charge of imprudence (and who is at all times wise?) may be considered as attaching to my conduct on this trying occasion, or unwarrantable as it may be if tried by the rigid rules of morality, I can on no account endure the slightest whisper of it having being dishonourable or ungenerous …
something more or less than man
to have held out any longer. Deliberate female seduction I hold in as much contempt and detestation as any man, but whatever charge of imprudence (and who is at all times wise?) may be considered as attaching to my conduct on this trying occasion, or unwarrantable as it may be if tried by the rigid rules of morality, I can on no account endure the slightest whisper of it having being dishonourable or ungenerous …
I could say a great deal more on the foregoing subjects—[but] I must entreat you, my dear Will, to spare me if possible the pain of any further discussion of them,
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