White Mughals (93 page)

Old India hands who returned to England with their fortunes came to be known as ‘nabobs’ in the eighteenth century, especially after Samuel Foote’s 1779 play
The Nabob
brought the term into general circulation. The word is a corruption of the Hindustani
nawab
, literally ‘deputy’, which was the title given by the Mughal emperors to their regional governors and viceroys.

The inventory of goods that Stuart left behind him when he died gives a powerful picture of someone strung between two different worlds. On the one hand he clearly has the normal paraphernalia of a Georgian gentleman—sugar tongs, toast racks and billiard cues, along with the usual camp tables, map cases and portable furniture you might expect from a campaigning soldier of the period; he also clearly enjoyed his
shikar
(hunting). On the other he owns a quite amazing amount of ‘Hindoostanee’ clothes and objects: pointed slippers, Mughal water flagons, yak-tailed flywhisks, spittoons for betel, hookahs and so on. The list also details a huge collection of statues of Hindu deities which Stuart appears to have worshipped. Certainly he built a Hindu temple at Saugor, and when he visited Europe he took his Hindu household gods with him. Inventory of goods of the late Major Genl. C. Stuart, OIOC L/AG/34/27/93-765: pp.745-63 [museum] and 765-87 [personal].

Stuart was also perhaps the first recorded devotee of what the Bollywood film industry now knows as the wet-sari scene: ‘For the information of ladies recently arrived in this country, it may be necessary to state that the Hindoo female, modest as the rosebud, bathes completely dressed … and necessarily rises with wet drapery from the stream. Had I despotic power, our British fair ones should soon follow the example; being fully persuaded that it would eminently contribute to keep the bridal torch for ever in a blaze.’ Stuart’s articles were anonymously reprinted in
A LADIES’ MONITOR Being a series of letters first published in Bengal on the subject of FEMALE APPAREIL Tending to favor a regulatedoption of Indian Costume; and a rejection of SUPERFLUOUS MALE APPAREL Tending to favour a regulated adoption of Indian Costume; and a rejection of SUPERFLUOUS VESTUREBy the ladies of this country: with Incidental remarks on Hindoo beauty; whale bone stays; iron busks; Indian corsets; man-milliners; idle bachelors, hair powder, side saddles, waiting-maids; and footmen. By the author of A VINDICATION OF THE HINDOOS
(Calcutta, 1809).

Thompson gives a fascinating list of examples of Company participation in Hindu rituals. At Cuddapah ‘prayers for rain (
Varuna Pujam
) were ordered by the Collector to be presented at the various temples in seasons when drought and famine were feared’, and ‘150 star pagodas’ of government revenue put aside to finance the pujas. In Madras the Collector had revived the defunct ‘festival of the idol Yeggata’, and given presents to the idol in the name of the Company. On another occasion Thompson tells how a missionary acquaintance of his discovered that at the salt warehouses at the mouth of the Ganges, the Company employed a full-time Brahmin to perform prayers to the goddess Laxmi ‘to secure the Company’s trade in salt against loss’. The same missionary later discovered that there was a similar arrangement in place at ‘the Opium agency in Behar’, where Brahmins were retained to pray for a good harvest and the safe arrival of the first opium boats. Rev. A. Thompson,
Government Connection with Idolatry in India
(Cape Town, 1851), pp.4, 17, 29, 32. Other sermons of the period contain many other such tales, for example the case of the commanding officer of a regiment near Tanjore giving his sepoys money to sacrifice a sheep to Kali, and the commander himself coming and bowing down before the image to eradicate cholera from his ranks. James Peggs,
A Voice from India: The British Connection with Idolatry and Mahomedanism, particularly the Government grant to the Temple at Juggarnarta and numerous other temples in India. A letter to Sir J.C. Hobhouse
(London, 1847).

After the two ‘fair’ boys had arrived, Hastings wrote around his friends to find a school where their ‘birth and complexion would be no impediment to admission’. When a school was found in Edinburgh, there remained but ‘one great objection to such plans of education … I mean the Scotch language which Boys cannot help acquiring … [Let us hope] it may be rubbed off by their removal to England before it is too completely fixed.’ Colour prejudice, it seemed, was far more acute among the British in India than at home, where, as late as 1805, Hastings clearly believed that a Scots accent was at least as damaging for someone’s prospects as any Indian blood or a swarthy complexion. Hastings Correspondence, BL Add Mss 45,418, Vol. II, p.132, Letter from Hastings to Anderson, Daylesford House, 23 July 1805.

William Palmer did not become a General until 1805, and in 1786 was only a humble Major. But to avoid confusion, I will refer to him throughout as General Palmer.

Not an unusual state of affairs in eighteenth-century England, where as many as a third of all births were illegitimate. See Peter Laslett (ed.),
Bastardy and its Comparative History
(London, 1980).

For a wonderful picture of the Strachey family lined up at prayer, girls to one side, boys facing them, in descending order of age, see the cover of
Bloomsbury Heritage: Their Mothers and Their Aunts
(New York, 1976), by Elizabeth French Boyd.
^‡
On their return from America the Kirkpatricks apparently ceased to think of themselves as Scottish, settling in Kent and becoming church-going Anglicans.

The source material gives the name ‘Perrein’, but this is surely a mis-rendering of the common Indo-Portuguese surname Perreira.

The word ‘seminary’ at this period did not necessarily suggest a religious establishment; and as the Kirkpatricks were Anglicans, not Roman Catholics, it is highly unlikely that the word was being used in that sense. It is much more likely that the writer meant merely ‘boarding schools’.

Certainly, William comes across as a vulnerable and lonely man who craves affection, and he is especially articulate about his bouts of depression. ‘By gravity,’ he writes to Kennaway on 13 June 1779, ‘I intended to express that kind of shadow or image of calm sorrow or grief which is observable sometimes in the air, sometimes in the speech, and sometimes in the writing of a person … I have a thousand times, Jack, when low spirited, almost been blind and deaf to all around me—wholly absorbed in my painful reflections—and possibly so extravagant in my remarks and assertions as … to incur the reproach of a dull and mad fellow.’ Kennaway Papers, Devon Records Office, Exeter, B961M ADD/F2, William Kirkpatrick to Kennaway, 13 June 1779.

William’s languages seem to have been merely a valuable tool that in due course would give wings to his career: in 1779 he was promoted to Persian interpreter to the Commander in Chief of the Bengal army, and in 1781, only ten years after his arrival in India, was promoted to captain. Increasingly he used his language skills to make intelligence-gathering a speciality, carefully collating Persian newsletters from the different Indian courts and forming contacts with men like George Cherry, one of the Company’s most senior intelligence officers. In time these contacts would become central to the careers of both Kirkpatrick brothers. But William’s slightly businesslike attitude to Orientalist learning is in no way complemented by the pleasure, surprise or enjoyment of India that one finds in many other letters of the period, notably those of his younger half-brother James.

Shore’s official job description was ‘the senior and presiding member of the Calcutta council’, until he formally succeeded Cornwallis as Governor General of Bengal. After 1792 he was awarded a baronetcy and became Sir John Shore. In 1798 he was made Lord Teignmouth.

Although not mentioned in the letters of either brother in Vizagapatam, in 1793 carpenters of the Kamsali caste were busy making some of the most beautiful objects ever to come out of the fusion of Western tastes and Eastern skills, for which Vizagapatam had quickly become internationally famous: superbly delicate furniture where ivory was inlaid in sandalwood and ebony in a dazzling efflorescence of Anglo-Indian marquetry. For a superb study of Vizagapatam furniture, see Armin Jaffer,
Furniture from British India and Ceylon
(London, 2001), pp.172-221.

In this context, ambassador or representative, though in common usage it means ‘lawyer’.

The Nizam’s Minister, Ghulam Sayyed Khan, was not in fact awarded the title Aristu Jah (‘the Glory of Aristotle’) until 1796; at this point he was known as Mushir ul-Mulk (‘Advisor to the Kingdom’). But as Aristu Jah is the name by which he is almost universally known in contemporary histories, for purposes of clarity and continuity he will be referred to by this title throughout.

Nizam Ali Khan’s two great court painters were Rai Venkatchellam and Tajalli Ali Shah, both of whom, significantly enough, had the status of senior nobles in the Hyderabad durbar.

The low arrangement of cushions and bolsters which formed the throne of Indian rulers at this period.

The Hyderabadis considered themselves a semi-detached fragment of the old Mughal Empire, and always referred to their forces as ‘the Mughal army’. This is also how they are referred to in Maratha documents.

A crore is ten million—so around £60 million in today’s currency.

Around £4.2 million.

British commentators who saw the Zuffur Plutun on parade tended to make snide remarks about their ‘ridiculous appearance’. Those who saw them in action, however, were always surprised by the women’s ferocity, discipline and effectiveness: Henry Russell later quoted ‘an officer of high rank in the King’s Army [who] once said on seeing a party of them that they would put half the native corps in India to the Blush’. From ‘Henry Russell’s Report on Hyderabad, 30th March 1816’, reprinted in
Indian Archives
, Vol. IX, July-December 1955, No. 2, p.134.

Approximately £6 in today’s currency.

The spectacular citadel near Aurangabad that had once been the Muslim bridgehead in the Deccan and the capital of the Delhi Sultanate.

Say £120 million in today’s currency.

William tried in vain to persuade the Nizam to reconsider the grant, reporting that ‘The Nizam was either too grateful for his recent services, or too fearful to refuse the remuneration he required. The artifices of our enemies, joined to what HH is pleased to consider our coldness with regard to his interests—manifested as he thinks by declining to meet all his unreasonable expectations [during the Khardla campaign]—have rendered him of late more unmanageable on certain points than would be wished.’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/5, p.8, 17 January 1796, William Kirkpatrick to James Duncan.

William was not mistaken in his estimation either of James’s gratitude or of his affection for him. As James wrote to him the following year, after laying aside ‘Rs. 10,000 a year for the use of my dear little nieces … setting aside our close connection by blood—our strong—nay, I will add, unbounded mutual affection and attachment, and the many, many juvenile obligations I owe you (and which made an impression on my heart never to be effaced) setting aside as I say all these considerations, could I possibly have done less than this to the Man to whom I am not only indebted for my present high station with all its concomitant advantages, but even for the very share of acquirements which have enabled me hitherto to acquit myself therein to the satisfaction of my superiors? Such has been my invariable attachment to you from the time that I began to know and appreciate your virtues and talents, that there was nought in my possession or power that I would not at any time have resigned most joyfully upon the smallest hint from my dearest and best beloved brother.’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, F228/11, p.112, 4 April 1799, James Kirkpatrick to William Kirkpatrick.

Shi’ism lay at the heart of the identity of Qutb Shahi Hyderabad. The origins of the divide between Sunni and Shi’a go back to the very beginnings of Islam in the period immediately after the death of the Prophet, when the Muslim community was split over the succession. One group, the Sunnis, recognised the authority of the Medinan (and subsequently Ummayad) Caliphs. The other major group, the Shi’as, maintained that sovereignty was a matter of divine right and resided in the descendants of the Prophet, starting with his son-in-law, Ali (
Shi’at Ali
meaning ‘the Party of Ali’ in Arabic). Ali was murdered in 661 AD, and his son Hussain died at the hands of the Ummayad Caliph al-Yazid at the Battle of Kerbala nineteen years later, in 680. Thereafter Shi’ites remained almost everywhere an Islamic minority until the start of the sixteenth century, when the Iranian Safavid dynasty made Shi’ism the sole legal faith of their Persian empire. Soon after this, a series of Shi’ite leaders came to power in the Indian Deccan, among them the Qutb Shahis, who dedicated their new capital, Hyderabad, to Ali, Hyder being one of his names. They also accepted the nominal overlordship of the Iranian Safavids of Isfahan, the mortal enemies of the Sunni Mughals of Delhi.

The appreciation of scent was especially dear to Deccani Muslim culture, and a matter of great connoisseurship. Many texts on scented gardens, on erotic scents, on the art of incense and perfumery survive, but two in particular stand out. The ’
Itr-I Nawras Shahi
is a treatise on perfumery written for the great syncretic Bijapur Sultan, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, which describes how to prepare volatile oils and vapours to scent bedrooms and other contained spaces, as well as the hair and the clothes; it also details the preparation of massage oils, gargles, dentrifices and breathfresheners. The other great surviving Deccani perfumery manual is the
Lakhlakha
, a Hyderabadi text of the early nineteenth century which goes into incredible detail on the preparation of ambergris, camphor, musk and scented candles. See Ali Akbar Hussain,
Scent in the Islamic Garden
(Karachi, 2000), Chapter 5.