CHAPTER 7

Bounty of God, Blessed by Allah

IN EARLY MARCH 1934, a motorcade carrying Aza m Jah and Durrushehvar wound its way from Bella Vista to the Purdah Gate of King Kothi palace. The Nizam’s own Arab guard, dressed in baggy red trousers, heavy blue jackets covered in gold braid and striped headdresses, stood at attention as the heavy canvas curtain hiding the carved wooden doors from the street swung open. Osman Ali Khan had been eagerly awaiting this moment. Swaddled in fine muslin cloth in the crib that Durrushehvar was carrying was the future heir to the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Although the birth had taken place in far-off France, the event had been marked in Hyderabad by the firing of cannons from the Chowmahalla palace, the lighting of fireworks and the distribution of sweets to the population. A notice was published in the local press and government employees were given the day off. A telegram was sent immediately to the Viceroy informing him of the birth and a congratulatory telegram signed by Lord Willingdon on behalf of the Crown was dispatched in return.

Now six months old, Barkat Mukarram Jah, whose name meant ‘Bounty of God, Blessed by Allah’, had the piercing eyes of his grandfather and the determined expression of a ruler-in-waiting. Osman Ali Khan was thrilled. It had been ten years since one of the women in the zenana had borne a child. Now he was holding his first legitimate grandson. As he had always done regardless of whether it was the child of an official wife or one of his dozens of concubines, he bent down and kissed the infant reverentially on the forehead.

There had been no public pronouncement, but in the inner circle of the King Kothi palace and in the Viceroy’s office it was known that the Seventh Nizam had already decided that this grandson would become the next ruler of Hyderabad. Azam’s amorous and pecuniary indiscretions were nothing out of the ordinary, but this eldest son was already walking in the shadow of an infant who could barely crawl. It didn’t matter that Mukarram had yet to learn his ABCs, what counted was his lineage. On his Turkish grandfather’s side he could trace his descent to the first Caliph Abu Bakar, and on his Indian grandmother’s side the family tree went directly to the Prophet Muhammad himself. Osman Ali Khan believed that as the first offspring of the union of the two greatest Muslim dynasties of their time, Prince Mukarram could be groomed to become not only the spiritual leader of Islam but also the ruler of India’s largest Muslim state. The Caliphate would be there for his taking. No other man had a stronger claim. And besides, Azam Jah had already told the Nizam that he had no interest in the role.

Secretly the British had given the Nizam’s decision their tacit approval. It gave them breathing space because it signalled that the Nizam had dropped the idea of having himself appointed Caliph in the case of Abdul Mejid’s death. In May 1933 the Resident, Terence Keyes, had written to the Viceroy expressing his fears about an ‘an open revival of the scheme’ to restore the Caliphate in India through the marriages of Azam and Moazzam. ‘There can be no doubt that it would introduce into Hyderabad affairs such a communal impetus as would result in the extinction of the Asafiya dynasty.’¹ Hyderabad’s Hindus, who provided up to 98 per cent of the state’s revenues, were ‘beginning to resent with increasing bitterness the large expenditure on purely Moslem institutions and Moslem personages of so large a proportion of the revenue’.²

As it turned out the British had no need to worry. Mejid’s death would be overshadowed by World War II. When the moment came for Jah to make his claim for the Caliphate if he so desired, the British Raj had long ceased to exist. And in any case the newly crowned Eighth Nizam would be so preoccupied with protecting his inheritance from capricious relatives that the idea would never cross his mind.

After spending several weeks in Bella Vista palace, Durrushehvar and Azam travelled to Delhi on the Nizam’s richly appointed private train. Lakshmi Raj, whose father was Azam Jah’s personal physician, remembers the huge blocks of ice that were placed on the floors of the compartments and covered with hessian to keep the passengers cool. Fresh ice was provided at Nagpur, the halfway point of the journey. From Delhi the train proceeded to Rawalpindi in present-day Pakistan, where cars were waiting to take the royal entourage, some 60 people strong, to Srinagar, the capital of the princely state of Kashmir.³ Along with nurses, governesses and Azam’s aide de camp was Durrushehvar’s Urdu teacher, Professor Aga Haider Hasan Mirza. Durrushehvar was an excellent student and became fluent in Urdu in less than a year. She wore saris as elegantly as any Indian begum, but in other aspects was thoroughly Westernised, especially when it came to bringing up her son. She knew enough about palace life in India to know what happened to the spoilt children of Indian princes. ‘When my father saw Mukarram crying in his cradle at a garden party, he went to pick him up,’ recalls Mirza’s daughter Begum Meherunissa. ‘But Princess Durrushehvar stopped him and said: “Let him cry, he should know that he will not always get what he wants. He should know what other people want as well.”’⁴

After their visit to Kashmir, Durrushehvar returned to Nice with the young Mukarram for the remainder of the summer, a routine that she would follow annually to avoid the torrid heat of Hyderabad. French, British and Turkish nannies were brought to Nice to bring up the infant, freeing Durrushehvar to pursue her writing and musical interests and look after her parents. Jah remembers little of those early years apart from the ‘always stern expression’ of his maternal grandfather. His days were spent playing hide and seek in the nearby Roman ruins. His favourite walks were through the rose gardens of the Franciscan monastery that looked down on the terracotta-tiled villas of Cimiez and the grand avenues of Nice pointing like spears towards the Mediterranean.⁵

Life in Hyderabad was never as harmonious. Durrushehvar’s marriage to Azam was a disaster. She towered above him in physique and in social status. She had grown up being called ‘Serene Highness’, while he was a mere prince and not nearly as well educated or sophisticated. An official history of Hyderabad published in 1934 described Azam as being ‘a Prince among gentlemen and a gentleman among Princes’. The heir apparent, as he was referred to, was: ‘Quiet, unostentatious with any assertion of self, of authority or position, he submits himself to command and authority and customs and exemplifies in himself the principle that he who wishes to command must himself first learn to obey. What does the greatest credit to the heir apparent is that from childhood he learnt to obey his august father thereby fulfilling not only a filial duty but also an Islamic injunction.’⁶ In reality, Azam was no gentleman. He enjoyed flaunting his wealth and paid only lip service to his father’s orders.

In October 1935 the new Resident, Duncan Mackenzie, sent a confidential cable to Delhi that Azam had ‘imported a dancing girl from Saugor’. He kept the girl in a private house in the suburbs of Hyderabad and visited her ‘from time to time’. The Nizam, through his network of spies, had also learned of the affair and wrote to Mackenzie on 6 November expressing his fears that the girl might become pregnant, which would entail ‘additional expenses’ and might damage the prince’s reputation. There was no mention of how Durrushehvar, who had also found out about the affair and was deeply upset, might feel about Azam taking a second wife or the effect that marital disharmony might have on two-year-old Mukarram. In fact, the Nizam saw nothing strange in the fact that ‘the natural desires of the prince . . . could not adequately be met by one woman’ apart from the dangers of being infected with a ‘bad disease’ or an unwanted pregnancy which could lead to the girl’s parents establishing a hold over the heir apparent, ‘which might be embarrassing in many ways’. The Nizam was more concerned that Azam had broken with palace tradition. ‘Instead of keeping a dancing girl privately she should come to Hyderabad in the same way as other dancing girls,’ he concluded in his letter to Mackenzie, the contents of which were immediately telexed to the Viceroy.⁷

A clearly peeved Mackenzie, who had expected a posting at the Residency to involve arbitrating on much weightier tasks such as the devolution of power under the Government of India Act, was unimpressed. The Nizam ‘has made a mountain out of what in Hyderabad would be considered a very small molehill’, he wrote in the accompanying confidential cable. He also had little time for Azam, whom he described as ‘weak and self-indulgent’. ‘His early upbringing was what you know it to have been, and ever since he was emancipated he has been surrounded by pimps and parasites,’ he reminded the Viceroy’s secretary, Reginald Glancy.

He has before him the example of his own father who has at his complete disposal some two or three hundred women, from whom he still continues to procreate children, and who at Azam Jah’s own age was the subject of far more public talk on these grounds than Azam Jah has been; and he has also the very lax standard of conduct of other personages in Hyderabad and elsewhere. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that he should ‘stand astounded at his own moderation’ or that he should scoff at his father’s admonitions on this score being due to any wish for his welfare or to a feeling of sexual restraint.⁸

What Azam needed, concluded Mackenzie, was a good controller to keep him from ‘a far more debauched course of life’.

After a flurry of cable traffic between the Residency and the Political Department in Delhi, Mackenzie sided with Azam. It was better that the dancing girl be kept under his supervision as there would be ‘no chance of her being able to father somebody else’s child on to him’, he wrote to the Nizam. There was also less likelihood of him contracting another bout of venereal disease:

The proposal made by Your Exalted Highness to have a dancing girl or girls from the bazaar when the occasion arose is open to even graver objection. The girl herself would talk, the general public would know, and the Heir Apparent himself would inevitably contract fresh disease. It was in fact in precisely this way that he got his last attack in April, and presumably all the others previously.

Added Mackenzie: ‘In view of the fact that the Heir-Apparent is now suffering from gonorrhoea for certainly the third and possibly the fourth time since he grew up this is an important consideration.’⁹

Azam had also insisted that the relationship was not entirely sexual. ‘He was fond of good singing and dancing, and this woman was able to gratify these tastes without his having recourse to public professionals from the bazaar.’ Finally, argued Mackenzie, a second marriage would rule out any hope of reconciliation with Durrushehvar and would ‘impair public esteem for the Heir-Apparent, as his present marriage and the resultant grandson have been and still are very popular’.¹⁰

Having finished playing marriage broker, Mackenzie now found himself burdened with the problem of what to do about the debts that Azam and his brother were accumulating in India and while on shopping and gambling sprees on the Continent. A commission appointed in 1933 found that Azam and Moazzam owed 320,000 and 287,000 rupees respectively in unpaid bills. Mackenzie noted that Azam was spending more time abroad than in Hyderabad and recommended that ‘further touring should be discouraged’. ‘Neither of the Nizam’s sons have taken up the social positions which it was hoped they would fill after their marriage with educated wives,’ he complained to Glancy. ‘For this they are not entirely to blame, as the Nizam knows very little about this himself and is inclined to consider any form of social entertainment extravagant and unnecessary. He is also jealous of their attaining more popularity and influence than himself.’¹¹

Mackenzie’s solution was to make Azam commander-in-chief of Hyderabad’s army, a post that would curb his ‘idleness’, keep him away from Europe and its ‘charms’, rein in his expenses and prevent him from incurring further debts. The plan failed. Realising that he had little chance of becoming the next Nizam after Mukarram’s birth, Azam lost all motivation for adhering to any moral or pecuniary norms.

As Mackenzie was learning quickly, the role of the British Resident went far beyond officiating at public functions and representing the interests of the Crown. In the case of Hyderabad the Resident was also regularly called upon to act as a counsellor and confidant. When it came to dealing with the concerns of his dysfunctional dynasty, Osman Ali Khan had no one else to turn to whether he liked it or not. ‘He intensely hated the manner in which the British Residents and the Crown representatives had undermined his authority and disgraced him openly, but silently put up with it,’ Hyderabad’s future Prime Minister Mir Laik Ali would recall later. ‘He had a remarkable capacity for endurance and of marking time and of adjusting himself to calmly face some of the severest trials of life.’¹²

A good Resident also had to be adept at sharpening the claws of his administration. More than anything else that involved obtaining timely intelligence on matters of state and the personal lives of important personalities. The Resident would have a network of spies in King Kothi and other key palaces, while the Nizam would have his informants in the Residency. In fact very little of what went on in Hyderabad remained a secret for more than a few hours.

Osman Ali Khan’s daily routine consisted of rising at 6 a.m., drinking a demi-tasse of black coffee, eating salt biscuits, reading the local papers, which then lay in a pile on the porch outside his bedroom for months, before receiving a daily briefing from the chief of police. Hyderabad had a very good intelligence network, which partly relied on the old Mughal system of using beggars because they had access to every place. This ‘Beggar’s Opera’ would report to the police chief every morning, who would then pass on the relevant information to the Nizam. ‘These reports would be meticulous. What happened between so-and-so and so-and-so. Who got married last night. Did he consummate the wedding or not. How many times does a certain nobleman sleep with his mistress. What operations were carried out at the hospital, who had been fitted with dentures and so on and so on.’¹³

Despite persistent demands by the British to put the police under their control to curtail corruption, the Nizam steadfastly refused to accede to the demand. As well as keeping himself informed of every intimate detail of every affair that his relatives and nobles indulged in, they kept the machinery of state well-oiled. The tasks of the police force, the Resident cabled the Viceroy’s office in Delhi, included being used as:

. . . an instrument of terrorism for sorts of irregular work such as rounding up and bringing back of palace servants (who were rarely paid) when they absconded, the keeping of nobles and relatives of the Nizam who had displeased him under restraint in their houses, the seizing of property of deceased persons, the procurement of cigarettes, ice and mineral waters for the Palace and the compulsory sales of fruit and Palace rubbish, etc.¹⁴

Osman Ali Khan had now completed the twenty-fifth year of his rule. Plans to celebrate his silver jubilee in 1936 had been postponed for a year because of the death of King George V of England. Billed as a ‘spectacle of pomp and power’ that would never be matched by any other Indian ruler,¹⁵ the world’s media now flocked to Hyderabad to observe the two-week-long celebrations and take pot-shots at guessing the wealth of the ‘Richest Man in the World’. Estimates of the Nizam’s income, The New York Times reported, varied from ‘$2,500,000 [US] to $50,000,000 a year and in his vaults below his palace he reputedly has $250,000,000 in gold bars stowed away and an additional $2,000,000,000 worth of precious stones, mostly diamonds and rubies. The combined fortunes of Henry Ford and his son, Edsel, have been estimated at $1,000,000,000, less than half the value of the Nizam’s jewels.’¹⁶

Yet the paper also noted that the Nizam was said to dislike dinner parties because of the expense they entailed and would scribble invitations on slips of paper torn from the backs of used envelopes. ‘No suit of clothes or pair of shoes, according to legend, is discarded by the Nizam until it has been inspected by him and personally pronounced beyond repair.’¹⁷ Another popular story doing the rounds of the press pack was how the Nizam once refused to pay six cents for an ice-cream and reprimanded the seller for asking such a high price.

A year earlier Mackenzie had also tried to calculate Osman Ali Khan’s wealth based on the income from his own private estate and customs and state revenue. Mackenzie put the total annual income at 21,750,000 rupees or about 27.3 per cent of the net and 19.5 per cent of the gross revenue of the state. By comparison, Mackenzie noted, the late King George V and all his family appearing on the civil list took just .091 per cent of the revenues of the state. ‘It is doubtful whether any Ruler in the world, at any rate in historic times, has ever possessed so large a private fortune; and it has to be said that the Nizam could live without difficulty on the interest of the interest of his income,’ concluded Mackenzie. ‘Moreover, apart from this income his hoards may be said without exaggeration to be almost beyond computation. He still manages to take some two lakhs a year in nazars, and a good deal more in bribes; and he has occasional windfalls which help to swell the total.’¹⁸

Time magazine put the silver jubilee on the front cover of its February 1937 edition and began its coverage by declaring that no other state in India was as ‘rich, potent and extensive as Hyderabad’. ‘Some Indian sovereigns are lecherous champagne-quaffing wastrels with a taste for French women and English horses which they spectacularly gratify from Monte Carlo to Epsom Downs and Hollywood, but decidedly the Nizam is different,’ the magazine reported. ‘By an honoured Hyderabad tradition no Nizam has ever left India no matter how good a reason might exist for doing so.’¹⁹ Time lavished praise on the Nizam’s administration. ‘Safety first is the policy of the Richest Man, and in Hyderabad this continued to mean last week the flourishing reign of probably the ablest native government in India, with its key statesman, Finance Minister Sir Akbar Nazarally Hydari. During the cycle of Depression, his famed “Three Year Budgets” have always balanced with a surplus and Hyderabad taxes have not been raised.’²⁰

The jubilee’s guest list was impressive. It included ‘the Empire’s No. 1 Mixed Couple: creamy onetime Mrs. Thomas Loel Guinness, formerly of the “British Beerage” and her present burnt almond husband, the Prince Aly Shah Khan, son & heir of the famed Aga Khan’, as well as numerous other Indian princes. The New York Times reported that orders had been given for 1000 oxen and 10,000 sheep to be slaughtered.²¹

The celebrations began with a thanksgiving at the mosque in the Public Gardens, followed by a motorcade through the city. Hundreds of thousands of people knelt in prayer beside the road as the Nizam drove past in a 1911 Rolls-Royce with its seating specially modified to resemble a ‘throne topped by a gilt dome’.²² Escorting the Nizam’s motorcade were four regiments of infantry, a detachment of native cavalry, a regiment of Arab soldiers and his personal bodyguard made up of Sidis from Africa. The Nizam then prayed at the Mecca Masjid before proceeding to the Silver Jubilee Parade at the Fateh Maidan. Kishen Pershad read an address hailing his ruler as ‘the sole relic of Mughal greatness in India’. For his part the Nizam promised: ‘I will devote the rest of my life for serving my ryots with affection and shall work for their prosperity. I shall be a servant of the people, created by God and shall consider this service as the highest title.’²³

Leading the review of 5000 native troops at Fateh Maidan was Azam Jah, mounted on a ‘magnificent charger covered by a gold cloth with gilded hooves’. The ceremony culminated with the Nizam’s African bodyguards presenting arms to their ruler and chanting prayers in Arabic followed by a 21-gun salute. Images captured by the state photographer, Raja Deen Dayal & Sons, show the three-and-a-half-year-old Mukarram recoiling in terror at the sound of the cannons being fired. In one frame Osman Ali Khan has his hand protectively placed on Mukarram’s shoulders. In another, Mukarram, who is dressed like his grandfather in a traditional sherwani, looks awestruck as he nestles in his grandfather’s lap. Jah remembers the Nizam ordering the guns to stop firing midway through the thunderous ovation.

Mukarram’s parents also appear in photographic souvenirs published after the jubilee darbar, with Azam looking stiff and uncomfortable marshalling the state troops and Durrushehvar in a sari officiating at a Girl Guides ceremony. By now the couple were officially known as the Prince and Princess of Berar. In a bid to draw Hyderabad into the Chamber of Princes, the British conceded the nominal sovereignty of the Nizam over Berar. Under the deal made in 1933, the Nizam could fly his flag along with that of the British from public buildings, confer Hyderabadi titles on the inhabitants of Berar and have his name read in the khutba on Friday in mosques across the district. Essentially, Azam and his wife were vested with titles that had no territory attached to them. It was, as one wit pointed out later, similar to making Mountbatten Earl of Burma after Burma had ceased to be a colony of Britain. ‘It made no difference in the end, but gave a lot of pleasure.’²⁴

The jubilee celebrations coincided with the provincial elections of 1937. The passing of the Government of India Act two years earlier had paved the way for the provinces of British India to become self-governing and contained a provision for an Indian Federation on the condition that a substantial number of princes agreed to join. The election saw the Indian National Congress win a majority in all Hindu provinces and make inroads into Muslim areas. Although the princely states had stayed out of the elections because of the internal autonomy they enjoyed, the Congress victory filled many rulers with dread. The gradual devolution of power to the provinces by the British and the rise of the increasingly left-wing Congress had the potential to threaten their territorial integrity and their dynastic rights. Before the elections, Congress had paid little attention to the princely states, but now it realised that if it was to rule in its own right it needed popularly elected representatives from those states in the newly created federal legislature. The party’s leadership began branding princely rule as a corrupt anachronism and extended financial and organisational support to provincial offshoots in the states.

In September 1938, plans were announced to establish a Congress Party in Hyderabad. Two days before its launch, the Nizam’s government banned the party on the grounds that it was ‘constituted with communal and subversive motives and would only retard the pace of legislative reforms in the state’.²⁵ Undeterred, the Congress Provisional Committee dissolved itself and set up a Council of Action, which demanded responsible government under the auspices of the Nizam and fundamental rights for the people. In October 1938 it launched the first of a series of satyagrahas, a form of non-violent protest used so brilliantly by Mahatma Gandhi against the Raj. Again the government responded decisively, placing its leader Ramananda Tirtha in solitary confinement for 111 days and imprisoning dozens of others. The agitation, however, continued until July 1939 when the Nizam announced a comprehensive scheme of constitutional reform providing the creation of a unicameral Legislature composed of 85 members, 43 of whom would be elected. Electorates were based on economic interests, with separate seats for nobles, farmers and other occupations. Half the elected members were to be Hindus and half Muslims. Freedom of assembly was guaranteed and the press controls liberalised. Though the legislature had the power to initiate bills, the government still had the power to veto any measure passed by the Assembly. As for the Nizam, he was still regarded as ‘the source of law and justice’.²⁶

For the majority of princes a federation dominated by democratic forces that would entail a levelling down of their internal sovereignty was unacceptable. Hyderabad struck a harder bargain than most. The Nizam’s conditions for joining a federation included a ban on federal officials working in his state, the retention of his own currency and postal services and control of the railways. Above all he demanded a written guarantee that Britain would protect the ruling Asaf Jahi dynasty and that any forces used to implement this guarantee would always be composed of races not politically hostile to his government. The best Britain could offer was a vague statement in March 1939 that it would fulfil its treaty obligations ‘if it could’.²⁷

Britain’s refusal to give Hyderabad a defence guarantee and the Congress agitation killed off any prospect of the Nizam agreeing to federate. And a federation without the premier ranking Indian state appeared unthinkable.

The outbreak of World War II provided some breathing space for the princes. The British subordinated their long-term visions for India to the necessity of retaining the support of their princely allies in their hour of need. Schemes for a federation were temporarily shelved.

The war also intervened in the fate of five-year-old Mukarram. In October 1938, Hyderabad’s Director General of Revenue, R. M. Crofton, wrote that the prince’s education demanded special attention. ‘He is said to be a brilliantly clever boy, with a good deal of determination and courage.’²⁸ Durrushehvar was in favour of sending her son to Eton while the Prime Minister Akbar Hydari favoured Winchester, but the Nizam was steadfastly opposed to any education abroad. ‘The question of schooling should be settled during the coming English tour,’ advised Crofton.²⁹ But there was no ‘English tour’. As German troops advanced westwards towards France, Durrushehvar hastily made arrangements to leave Nice and bring Mukarram, his younger brother Muffakham and their governesses to India.

To Durrushehvar’s despair Mukarram’s education was to follow the same pattern as his father’s, grandfather’s and greatgrandfather’s. A private school known as the Madrassa Aliya was set up within the grounds of the exclusive Jagirdars College. English and Indian tutors were appointed and several sons of Hyderabadi nobles were given places alongside the young prince.

Unable to travel to Europe, her plans for educating her son thwarted by the war, Durrushehvar found the atmosphere in Hyderabad stifling. For all the cautious steps towards political and administrative reform undertaken in the last 50 years, palace life was still governed by layer upon layer of tradition, at the apex of which, only one step removed from God Himself, was the Nizam.

‘A strange pageant passes through his marble halls,’ wrote one visitor to the Nizam’s court. ‘Magistrates, philosophers, rich Marwaris of India who come to display their gorgeous fabrics and jewels, debauchees who fan themselves with peacock feathers, gourmands fattened by high living, the dreamy-eyed users of hashish, the effete, the supercilious, the curious, the coarse, the delicate, the pleasure loving and effeminate.’³⁰

The Nizam’s court also reverberated with the sound of poetry. Osman Ali Khan was an accomplished poet whose ‘perfumed ghazals’ were often written on scraps of paper at the rate of up to a dozen a day. Despite having a phalanx of wives, Osman Ali Khan portrayed himself as a love-ravaged hero whose ‘tortured heart’ beat against a breast blushing with ‘love’s wounds’. His output included an annual Christmas ode which was rendered into English by one of Hyderabad’s most noted poets, Nizamat Jung. Criticism of the couplets was unheard of. They could only be recited in gatherings officiated over by the President.

In a nod to modernity, Osman Ali Khan had issued a ban on subjects making an adab (salutation) as he passed through the city. The practice of placing one’s head on the Nizam’s feet had also fallen into disuse. But in the confines of the court little else had changed. On the arrival of the Nizam, noblemen, courtiers and officials would arrange themselves according to rank. They would then bend low and make a dozen or more salutations reaching almost to the ground before saluting with scooping gestures in front of their mouths so as not to defile the air around their ruler as they stood upright. Before approaching the Nizam, a nobleman would place on the upturned palm of their right hand a gold coin on a silk handkerchief, and then, bowing deeply, present it to their ruler. Once this was done, the nobleman would return to his place, still bowing and without turning around because it was forbidden to turn one’s back on the Nizam. It was not unusual for the gold ashrafis to be washed with perfumed soap before a noble would touch them.

Protocol was strictly observed. If a member of the Paigah nobility wanted to go to Poona for the races, he had to seek the permission of the Nizam with the following plea in eloquent Persian: ‘After kissing the Threshold of Your Throne, it is humbly submitted to the Great and Holy Protector of the World, Shadow of God, Mighty Holder of Destinies, Full of Light and Most Elevated among Creatures, the Exalted, May God’s Shadow Never Grow Less, May God Protect Your Kingdom and Your Sultanate, Most Respectfully I beg to submit . . .’³¹

Palace life was bound up in formality. Mukarram spoke to his grandfather directly on only two occasions. Once he was asked: ‘How is your mother?’, and another time the Nizam asked if he wanted more food. Otherwise his grandfather would ask through a chamberlain questions such as ‘How is my grandson doing at school?’, to which Mukarram would reply, indirectly: ‘My honoured grandfather, I did well in my term exams.’³²

Shortly after Mukarram’s tenth birthday, the Resident, Sir Arthur Lothian, sent a confidential telegram to the Viceroy’s secretary in Delhi warning that:

. . . the question of his future education has necessarily to be taken up some day soon, as he is getting beyond the control of his mother and governess. The Prince of Berar takes little apparent personal interest in this matter, but the Princess is most anxious to see that her son is given a really good education, which she considers it will be impossible for him to obtain in Hyderabad in view of the atmosphere of adulation that would surround him there.³³

Durrushehvar’s first preference, for her son to be sent to Eton, received a cool reception in Delhi. ‘Even if there had been no war we doubt if it would have been wise to fall in with the Princess of Berar’s idea that the boy should go to Eton,’ the Political Department advised Lothian at the end of 1943. ‘Over-Anglicisation has its dangers too and what we feel here is that the early education of heirs-apparent should be in India with possibly a term at Oxford or Cambridge.’³⁴

The only options were leaving Mukarram at Madrassa Aliya or sending him to an English-style ‘public school’ outside Hyderabad. The choices were limited. Most Indian potentates sent their sons to one of six so-called ‘chiefs’ colleges’, the most famous of which was Mayo College in Ajmer. Established in the late nineteenth century the charter of the colleges was to provide ‘for the sons of the ruling classes such an education as will fit them for the discharge of their responsibilities to their subjects’.³⁵ For Durrushehvar, however, attending one of these colleges would simply reinforce the princely culture she held in disdain.

The other choice was the ‘Doon School’. Situated in the foothills of the Himalayas on the outskirts of the town of Dehra Dun, the school was the brainchild of S. R. Das, a Calcutta lawyer. Das attended an English grammar school in the 1890s and qualified as a barrister at the Middle Temple, before returning to India and eventually becoming a legal advisor to the Viceroy. Inspired by the English public-school system, Das was determined to open a school in India that would ‘develop in the course of a generation or two as an institution of incalculable value to the future of the educated classes’.³⁶ What differentiated the school Das proposed from the chiefs’ colleges was his belief that it should promote the ideals of equality and freedom which in 1930s India would give it a decidedly nationalist tinge.

Doon was indeed a ‘very different kind of place’, as Marjorie Ussher, governess to three wards of the Nizam, wrote in a letter to her family in England in 1943.

No personal servants are allowed at all and the boys have to make their own beds and do lots of things for themselves. They take boys of all classes and all are treated exactly alike although they have several rulers’ sons there at present . . . The question of religion is not allowed to come between the boys at all – Hindu sleeps with Muslim – they eat at the same table.³⁷

This appealed to Durrushehvar, but not to the Nizam. When she finally convinced her husband to write to Osman Ali Khan urging him to give permission for Mukarram to be sent to Dehra Dun, the response was decidedly negative. On receiving the letter the Nizam remarked to his new Prime Minister, the Nawab of Chhatari, that ‘the Princess was a Turk and outsider, and did not know the traditions of his house’.³⁸

Durrushehvar, however, was not deterred. After a decade in Hyderabad, she knew how to get her way in the royal household and the Residency, particularly as far as her son’s upbringing was concerned. She knew that Mukarram was the Nizam’s favourite grandson and for all intents and purposes the heir apparent. Over the next 18 months she patiently chipped away at her father-in-law’s opposition to a western education for her son. In her determination to succeed, Durrushehvar never shied at twisting the arm of the Resident and even the Viceroy to achieve her goals.

By early 1944 Durrushehvar’s perseverance was beginning to pay off. The Nizam gave way to the proposal to send both Jah and his younger brother to Doon School, but only on the condition that they would be day scholars and their religious training would be looked after in their residence by a special teacher of Islam. But in order not to be seen to be bowing to his daughter-in-law, Osman Ali Khan wrote to Lothian stating that Durrushehvar’s ‘insistence’ was ‘reasonable as the health of the boy is not strong and he has to be kept on a special diet. His physique is not such as to be able to withstand the strain of the very exacting daily routine of the school.’³⁹

The health issue was a red herring as Jah was extremely strong for his age. He could ride horses as well as any of his instructors, had developed a passion for cars and anything mechanical or that involved using his hands. He was a reasonable shot and had accompanied his father on hunting expeditions. The only thing he was not particularly good at was his schoolwork.

Having won over the Nizam, Durrushehvar convinced Lothian to send a telegram to Delhi saying that ‘everything should be done to get the Prince of Berar’s eldest son to the Doon School (even as day boy) accompanied by a Muslim co-guardian. We do not think the acceptance of this proposal need create an awkward precedence. Hyderabad is in a class by itself.’⁴⁰ Hyderabad’s special status, however, cut no ice with the Doon School’s formidable headmaster Arthur Foot. A former student of Winchester College and a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge universities, Foot had been the science master at Eton when he was recruited to become Doon’s first headmaster in 1935. Foot was also a Fabian with strong views on ‘civil society, its aesthetic principles and the rules and ceremonies of its functioning’. As far as he was concerned ‘all boys, once they are in our school, must have similar treatment irrespective of their social position’.⁴¹

Lothian now advised the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, to write directly to the Nizam asking him that the boy be allowed in as an ordinary boarder. On 29 May 1944 Wavell did just that, telling the Nizam that in his opinion, ‘the governors are right in maintaining a strict attitude in this matter, and in insisting that the special character of the Doon School be preserved. If, therefore, Your Exalted Highness’s grandson is to go to the Doon school he must go as a boarder.’⁴² The Nizam knew he couldn’t defy Wavell but in order to save face he waited almost two months before informing Lothian that he agreed with the Viceroy’s suggestion. The only issue outstanding was the question of a maulvi (religious tutor) accompanying Jah to Dehra Dun. On this issue, Foot refused to compromise, writing to the Viceroy’s office that ‘we do not allow any doctrinal teaching of any particular religion’.⁴³

Durrushehvar knew the Nizam would oppose a maulvi not accompanying her son. With less than a month to go before the start of school in September she wrote to Lothian begging him not to tell the Nizam that Foot had not allowed a maulvi at his school. ‘Please do your utmost to assist in this matter, as it would be a calamity for Hyderabad if the arrangement to get the boy educated outside the state fell through at this stage owing to a hitch over this minor point.’⁴⁴

Finally, in early September, Durrushehvar and her two sons boarded a special train in Hyderabad which took them to Delhi, and then changed for the Dehra Dun service. For a highly pampered prince like Mukarram, Doon School was a boot camp. The daily routine started with a rising bell, and continued with exercises, breakfast, assembly, classes, lunch, rest period, sports, extracurricular activities, bathing time, evening meal, study time and finally sleeping. It quickly became apparent to the young Jah that his status no longer counted. The list of morning prayers read out at assembly included one beseeching the ‘Lord of all nations’ to grant that ‘in this our nation, there may be none, high or low, whatever his race or caste, who is bound by the shackles of ancient contempt, and barred from his right of free manhood’.⁴⁵

Durrushehvar was determined that her son stick to the rules and receive no special treatment, but she also took the precaution of renting a house in Dehra Dun in case he had difficulties settling in. Foot reported that the princess was ‘a great addition to the rather provincial society of Dehra Dun and we all got on very well with her’. But he was not impressed with Jah’s performance in his entrance test which showed that ‘even if he understood a sum, he had always been accustomed to have a tutor to do the tedious business of working it out’.⁴⁶

Habeeb Jung, Mukarram’s prefect at Doon School, remembers how he hated the routine. ‘He was too pampered, spoon fed and used to sycophants. I used to call him knock-knees. I allowed him to keep his tuck and his comics, strictly forbidden, under his mattress. He couldn’t stand team games. Anything where he was an individual he excelled at, gym, diving, he was superb at fencing, but when it came hockey he wouldn’t play.’ Foot was a socialist in every sense, Habeeb Jung explains. ‘Boys were not registered according to any titles. Whether you were the son of the Maharajah of Jaipur, or Gwalior, or Kashmir, you were called by your first name. He was preparing us for independence, when we were going to get a boot up the you-know-where. That was good. Nonetheless, the Doon School at the time also produced the biggest snobs in India.’⁴⁷

Despite Durrushehvar’s concerns, Foot reported at the end of term one that Mukarram had settled in well. ‘He seems quite at home and inconspicuous which is about the most valuable thing for him as he is now merged in the mass of small boys his age,’ Foot wrote to the Viceroy’s office in February 1945. ‘When I first saw him at the beginning of his first term in September I thought it very doubtful if he would stay the course at all. He has certainly never mixed with other boys and had never done anything for himself.’ Academically, however, Mukarram was struggling. He was at the bottom class for Arithmetic and one above for English. ‘He is very slovenly in his work and lacking in concentration,’ Foot reported. It was also apparent that Jah was more interested in doing things with his hands than exercising his mind. ‘He is very keen on carpentry and spent a good deal of his spare time in the workshop and this can provide unlimited scope in the future.’⁴⁸

Still licking his wounds at being outsmarted by a ‘Turk’, the Nizam finally found the excuse he was looking for to remove Mukarram from the Doon School before the end of his first year. In May 1945 he wrote to Lothian that his grandson ‘was not keeping good health at the school and losing weight. It was on this account that his mother, acting upon medical advice, took the boy away from the school before it closed to Kashmir for a change.’⁴⁹

Once again the health issue was a red herring. The school’s medical officer reported that Jah had lost just over five pounds, which was normal for boarders. He was however prone to being ‘extremely absent-minded and the greatest vigilance on the part of the dame is necessary to see that he takes his tonics’.⁵⁰ J. A. K. Martyn, Foot’s successor, agreed that there was nothing wrong with Jah’s health but he shared his medical officer’s concerns about his student’s absent-mindedness. ‘He seems to have very little idea of what is going on around him,’ he wrote to Lothian.

The most vivid example that I can give you is that I happened to sit next to him at lunch on the eve of a whole holiday when all the rest of the school were busy discussing what they were going to do, but he still had not realised that there was to be a holiday. It would be a pity if he left because the society of other boys is more likely than anything else to bring him down to earth, and he has of recent months been much more friendly with other boys.⁵¹

The Nizam, however, felt vindicated. ‘Public opinion here is that if proper arrangements had been made here in Hyderabad for his education as was done in the case of his ancestors in the past, it would have been very much better as it would be more in accordance with the old customs and traditions of the family,’ he intimated to Lothian in a letter, before adding some homespun advice:

The people in the East differ from those in the West in many respects. Being born and brought up in oriental fashion and surroundings, their education and training should be such as to harmonise with their surroundings and atmosphere so that they may share in the common civilisation and culture of their fellow-citizens or coreligionists and learn to love and respect them. At the same time they should acquire feelings of patriotism so that their countrymen may understand them and be of assistance to them both in good and in bad times. The absence of any such harmony and understanding may lead to future dangers and difficulties. The necessity for this is all the greater in the case of the young Princes who are the direct line of succession to their forefathers as the future Rulers of their states.⁵²