White Mughals (34 page)

More serious for Mir Alam was the Nizam’s disapproval of what had happened to Tipu’s captured treasure. In India there was no equivalent to the European tradition of formally dividing the spoils not only between the commanders but among the ordinary troops too. When James heard that Harris had authorised the prize committee to reward the sepoys in this manner, he realised straight away that there would be trouble from the durbar: ‘When the Nizam and Minister come to know that the whole of the treasure of the Sultaun … has been shared amongst the army, they will I am certain be ready to break their hearts with grief and disappointment.’ He added: ‘I shall endeavour to prepare the Minister gradually for the information, which would be too violent a shock to communicate at once to him.’
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Worse still for the Mir were the unconfirmed rumours circulating around Hyderabad that during the plundering of Seringapatam he had somehow got his hands on Tipu’s finest jewels, including an extraordinary necklace of egg-sized pearls.
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It was true that he had presented a fine selection of looted gems worth a staggering eleven lakh rupees to the Nizam on his return; but persistent rumours continued to circulate that these were mere baubles compared to the treasures he had secretly seized for himself.
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There were also stories doing the rounds which suggested that the Mir had embezzled much of the state treasure he carried with him to the war. Aristu Jah was personally affronted by all of this, and was also seriously worried by the close relationship Mir Alam had forged during the campaign with influential British commanders such as Arthur Wellesley, connections the Mir made no effort to hide from his rival.

Nor was Mir Alam the only member of the Shushtari clan to fall under the displeasure of the Nizam. An intriguing incident had taken place a fortnight before the Mir’s return. After the fall of Seringapatam, Bâqar Ali Khan had accompanied Mir Alam and John Malcolm to Madras, whence they had been summoned to be presented to Lord Wellesley. But for some reason Bâqar Ali had suddenly made his excuses, deserted the army and headed back two weeks early to Hyderabad. When news of his desertion reached the durbar, Bâqar Ali was severely criticised by Aristu Jah for having left his post without permission, and at first ‘was refused admission to the City’; more ominous still, his petitions asking for forgiveness were returned unopened by the Minister.
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The dispute fizzled on for some time. According to James, ‘hurt at this treatment, the old gentleman in the first emotions of anger, wrote an arzee [petition] to the Minister requesting leave to go to Mecca [i.e. to temporarily give up the world and become a pilgrim]. To this arzee he received no answer which provoked him to such a degree that he positively prohibited his wife and family from continuing their attendance in the Minister’s Mahl, and it was not until repeated messages and intreaties from the Boo Begum [one of Aristu Jah’s wives], between whom and Baukers family a great intimacy exists, that the Minister allowed him to return thither.’
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This was all extremely odd—and also extremely unwise and uncharacteristic—behaviour by Bâqar Ali Khan. James’s letters are the only source for this incident, and naturally they contain no mention of what would be the most obvious explanation of Bâqar Ali’s behaviour: that he had somehow heard rumours that something was afoot in his
zenana,
and the women of the family badly needed his supervision.

For all these growing tensions, the popular mood was still one of celebration, and a great round of public entertainments was organised to celebrate the fall of Tipu. The first party—on 18 October, a week after the return of the army—was a huge nautch at Mir Alam’s house during which the Mir’s mistress, Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, danced for the audience and presented a book of her poems to John Malcolm.
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Malcolm, who had become close to the Shushtari clan on the Seringapatam campaign, was also invited to a party at Bâqar Ali’s
deorhi,
where he was invited to meet the women of the family—an unprecedented honour, tantamount in the etiquette of the day to declaring him an honorary brother of Bâqar Ali. It was a measure of the family’s liberal principles, very far, as one observer put it, ‘from the usual narrow prejudices of their sect’.
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Nautch parties and
mehfils
in Hyderabad at this period, as in Delhi and Lucknow, tended to be held outside at night in the illuminated garden courtyards of the great palaces. Some of the most alluring descriptions of such parties are given by Farzand Begum’s grandfather, Dargah Quli Khan, who writes how,

James enjoyed such entertainments, and usually stayed to the very end. Certainly, his letters to Calcutta during November are full of apologies for being so behind in his work, and after one particularly late night at Aristu Jah’s he excuses himself on the grounds that ‘in compliment to the Minister I did not take leave until a very late hour … [Indeed] I have engaged myself to a regular nightly attendance during the remainder of the festivities—the fatigue from which will I hope plead as an apology for the lateness of my address to your Lordship.’
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Just as this circuit of celebratory parties was coming to an end, the announcement of the forthcoming marriage between the Nizam’s son and heir apparent, Sikander Jah, and the granddaughter of Aristu Jah, Jahan Pawar Begum,
^da
prompted a whole new round of entertainments. It also provided James with what he regarded as an important diplomatic opportunity. He was very worried by the marked cooling of relations between the durbar and his Residency which had taken place following the announcement of the much-hated Mysore Partition Treaty, and said he saw ‘serious inconveniences from the ill humour’ of the Nizam, ‘which will increase if not soothed in some way or other’.
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Up to this point James had been an unqualified admirer of Lord Wellesley, writing to his brother of his veneration for the Governor General in terms that sometimes come close to hero-worship: ‘How I long to throw myself at his Lordship’s feet and express to him if possible the deep sense of [my gratitude for] all his goodness towards me,’ he had written to William at one point in February 1799. ‘I earnestly trust this to be not impracticable before his Lordship’s return to Bengal. I really think my veneration and attachment to that great and worthy nobleman is only short of what I feel to my beloved Parent, and of course my love and regard for you.’
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Now however James’s views were beginning to change. For the first time, the Partition Treaty had led him to re-examine his attitude to Wellesley’s aggressive and bullying approach to Indian princes. The Nizam had unflinchingly stuck to his commitments in the 1798 Preliminary Treaty and had provided a huge army at very short notice to fight alongside the British at Seringapatam. The reward of the Hyderabadis was to be cheated of their full share in the division of the spoils. Irritated by this, and by the damage it had done to his carefully nurtured relations with the Hyderabad durbar, James now wrote to his friend General William Palmer, the Resident in Pune, openly criticising the Governor General’s policy: ‘I perfectly concur in the justness of your reflexions respecting our late dictatorialness of spirit. Our success indeed appears to me to have somewhat intoxicated us.’
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It was a view that James would hold more and more strongly over the following months.

In order to try to undo some of the damage done by this Treaty, he now wrote to Calcutta for permission to lay on a major
jashn
(the word means simply ‘party’, but in this case refers to a post-marriage feast)—for Aristu Jah and the Nizam, during which generous presents could be presented to all the members of the Nizam’s and the Minister’s families, including the key members of both
zenanas,
and so pour oil on the troubled waters.
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James realised that it was not going to be easy to sell such massive expenditure to a thoroughly sceptical Lord Wellesley, who would never be particularly enamoured of the idea of spending so much money on ‘natives’, least of all in making donations to the women of various harems, troupes of
nautch
girls and a series of Hyderabadi Sufi shrines. In his letter, therefore, James acknowledged that from the point of view of Calcutta ‘the time is no doubt gone by when the friendship or enmity of this state was an object of serious importance to us, and nothing but some strange vicissitude can hereafter render its smiles or its frowns of much consequence to us. Nevertheless you will no doubt agree with me that harmony and good understanding are at all times desirable things between states in alliance and that it is better if possible to maintain our ascendancy and influence in this by conciliatory acts than by any other means.’
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In the event Lord Wellesley refused to countenance James’s initial estimate of over three lakh rupees for the
jashn,
but he did finally authorise him to throw a more modest party costing one lakh. A date in April 1800 was set, as custom dictated, five months after Sikander Jah’s marriage.

As the great state marriage grew imminent, gatherings of the durbar were increasingly marred by clashes between Aristu Jah and Mir Alam. ‘Meer Allum and Solomon have been sparring a great deal of late,’ James wrote on 1 November, ‘so much so, indeed, that the Meer has sent his son Meer Dauran twice to me, to request my advice or interposition on the occasion … candidly acknowledging at the same time, that the open declaration of my readiness to take his part to the extent required would in all probability enable him to carry the points [with Aristu Jah] he was contending for’.
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When James politely declined to intervene, Mir Alam let it be known—to James’s surprise and mild alarm—that he regarded it as a personal insult.

The real crisis point was however reached two days later on 3 November, during the middle of the wedding celebrations. Aristu Jah had thrown the wedding party at Purani Haveli, one of his residences which he had just gifted to his granddaughter as part of her dowry. James had arrived with the senior Residency staff and some of the more senior army officers led by James Dalrymple, along with ‘the trays containing dresses and jewels for the brides principal male and female relatives’. They had sent ‘various trays of viands together with a large assortment of confectionary into the female apartments for distribution’, and had themselves been ‘regaled agreeably, as is the usage on such occasions, with sherbet’. Moreover each British officer was presented with a valuable
sarpèche
or turban jewel. Aristu Jah, huge bearlike man though he was, spent much of the party in tears, ‘so great is his grief in parting with his granddaughter in whom all his affections centre’.
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Later that night, very publicly, in front of the gathered Hyderabadi nobles, a tearful Aristu Jah challenged Mir Alam as to the whereabouts of Tipu’s state jewels. Mir Alam denied all knowledge of them and after a moment’s silence and extreme embarrassment the festivities continued; but everyone realised that a point of no return had been reached in the relationship between the two most powerful officials in Hyderabad.

Even so, when Mir Alam left Hyderabad a few days later to take up his post as Governor of the newly conquered Mysore district of Rydroog, few could have guessed how swift, complete and ingenious Aristu Jah’s retribution would be.

Mir Alam was the Nizam’s official
vakil
to the Company, effectively his Minister for British Affairs. Ever since his three-year stay in Calcutta with Bâqar Ali Khan from 1787 the Mir had had excellent contacts with the senior Company staff in Calcutta, and Aristu Jah realised that if he wished to disgrace him, he would have first to alienate him from his British supporters. He now set about using James and Khair un-Nissa as the unwitting agents of this revenge. His plan was as brilliant as it was simple.

Mir Alam had already heard rumours about James’s infatuation with his cousin, and according to James had joshed him good-naturedly on the subject before he left Hyderabad again at the end of December.
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The Mir clearly had no idea, however, how far the relationship had progressed. So, shortly after Mir Alam arrived at his new posting in January 1800, Aristu Jah hit on the simple but ingenious ruse of leaking the news to a Hyderabadi newswriter, but in a deliberately exaggerated form.