Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah Read online

  On being expelled from Lucknow again, this time by the unrelenting Resident William Sleeman, who described him as ‘the mischievous Mr B.’, Brandon settled in Cawnpore and established himself as Brandon & Co. railway contractors and agents for the North Western Dak Company, a passenger and mail service using horse-drawn carriages between Lucknow and Cawnpore. In his spare time he founded an English language newspaper, the pro-nawabi Central Star, published twice a week with a bi-monthly news digest, and he was also proprietor of an hotel. Today he would be praised as an entrepreneur and successful self-made businessman, but the prejudice of British officials and inherent snobbery of the time meant that he was seen as a disreputable, almost comical, figure. Canning commented to Vernon-Smith that Brandon had left his railway contract ‘in the lurch to take up the cause of the ex-Royal family, not unselfishly we may presume’, and that he was ‘the guide and protector of the present mission’ to London by the royal family.24 Brandon has not been given credit for his role in driving forward, literally, the Awadh deputation. It was in carriages belonging to the North Western Dak Company that Wajid ‘Ali Shah, his relatives, servants and a few courtiers left Lucknow for Cawnpore on the night of 13 March 1856, with Brandon sitting beside the coachman. It was in Brandon’s bungalow at Cawnpore that the king spent his first night on British soil. It was Brandon, according to James Outram, who had encouraged the king ‘to adopt a course of negative opposition and passive resistance’ to the British, and who had assured ‘His Majesty that, if deputed to England as his Agent, he will, without doubt, obtain his restoration’.25 This is how Brandon and his wife came to be onboard the SS Bengal as it steamed towards the port of Suez four months later.

  As president of the Board of Control, a post equivalent to that of a cabinet minister, Vernon-Smith was the man most closely concerned with Janab-i ‘Aliyyah’s mission to England. He was warned about her arrival by Lord Canning, early in August 1856: ‘I do not know whether you will object as much to a visit from the Queen Dowager of Oude as to one from the King; but I am afraid that by this time that energetic old lady must be with you. I knew nothing of her intentions until she was onboard of the Steamer … but had I been aware of them I should not have crossed them. Had I done so openly it would immediately have been made the ground of a complaint that restraint and constraint were used against the royal family, in spite of all professions to the contrary; whilst it would have been expected that I feared the result of an appeal to London: to have attempted to do it privately would have stimulated her all the more to go.’26

  Janab-i ‘Aliyyah’s arrival, with her eclectic party, was duly reported to Canning by Vernon-Smith, who insisted on referring to her as ‘the Queen’. ‘She has just arrived’, he told the governor general, ‘and I am out of her way now’ (he was still in Scotland), ‘but Outram recommends me not to receive her en Reine. The difficulty will be with our own Majesty who sometimes patronises these deposed despots. The Chairs [of the Board of Control] are rather annoyed at your writing so strongly in her favor, when you yourself declined to receive the ex-King.’27 Canning protested that he had not refused to meet Wajid ‘Ali Shah, because the king had not asked for a reception and that ‘were he to do so, he should have one tomorrow’. The king’s mistake had been to send an ex-minister to Government House, without proper accreditation. But this frank and highly confidential exchange raises some interesting issues.

  Was there ever a possibility that the annexation of Awadh could have been reversed? Although Dalhousie’s aggressive policy of annexing Indian states had been heavily criticised both in Britain and Europe, Wajid ‘Ali Shah would not get his kingdom back. The new British administration was already in place in Awadh, reforming the collection of land revenue, the corrupt judicial system and the appalling prisons discovered as officers systematically surveyed the city of Lucknow. Over the next year the king’s army was broken up, his servants paid off and palaces requisitioned or part-demolished in the interests of hygiene, a new found British preoccupation. What the king could have gained was a more generous pension, the right to remain in his Qaisarbagh Palace, the right to exercise jurisdiction in specific places and to continue his life much as it had been before, but without the burden of trying to administer the kingdom of Awadh.

  Janab-i ‘Aliyyah had not known, in her passionate declaration to seek the kingdom’s restoration from Queen Victoria, that the British queen had no power to restore Awadh to her son. This was not how things worked in Britain, and Janab-i ‘Aliyyah’s realisation of this fact after arriving in England was a bitter blow. Lady Login, an old friend of the queen mother from her Lucknow days, told Vernon-Smith that Janab-i ‘Aliyyah was ‘most wretched and discovered she was duped and did not know where to turn’.28 She told Lady Login that she thought she had the governor general’s leave to travel to England, which was not actually the case, as we have seen. Janab-i ‘Aliyyah also said that she had vowed to meet Queen Victoria before returning to India, and Vernon-Smith thought there was no reason why an audience could not be arranged as long as the queen mother promised to leave quietly afterwards. He admitted that he was ‘perplexed’ about the ‘Queen of Oude’, as he called her. Lord Dalhousie and his cronies seemed determined to treat her and her party ‘most cavalierly’, whereas Vernon-Smith said his own inclination was to be ‘most courteous to fallen royalty and respectful to the energy which has induced her to venture into foreign lands and over strange seas to plead her own and her children’s case’.29 He dismissed hopes that Awadh would be restored to any members of the family, but said he would address any complaints of ill-treatment and undue severity towards them while in England.

  As Canning had anticipated, Robert Bird joined the royal party on its arrival at Southampton and was put in charge of the business of presenting the Awadh claims to Parliament and the Court of Directors. Brandon was sent off to London to look for suitable accommodation and after a couple of weeks selected Harley House, a large mansion standing in its own grounds at the Regents Park end of the Marylebone Road. The house had previously been occupied by another distinguished foreigner, the Duke of Brunswick, who gave his name to the adjacent Brunswick Place, and it was to be let unfurnished at an annual rent of £550. There had been no shortage of comment on and description of the royal party during their ten-day stay in Southampton, while Brandon searched for a house. The Times, having run daily articles, then seemed to lose interest; by the end of August it was reporting wearily, ‘The excitement which followed the arrival of this illustrious family has almost entirely subsided. The strangely dressed natives stroll and lounge about the street without apparently the slightest notice being taken of them. The policeman’s occupation whose duty it is to guard the exterior of the residence of the oriental visitors, is gone.’30

  But Janab-i ‘Aliyyah had not been without visitors during the Southampton days. A number of distinguished people had made their way to the Royal York Hotel, some of whom had no Indian connections at all, but were driven by a combination of courtesy and curiosity to meet the queen mother, or at least to view a veiled figure behind a curtain. Visitors included Admiral Charles York, the Earl of Hardwicke and his wife, Lady St John of Bletso, Field Marshall Sir George Pollock, who had led troops back into Afghanistan in 1842 after the fatal retreat from Kabul, Sir George Wombwell, whose family had Lucknow connections, and Rear Admiral John Ayscough. The mayor of Southampton, Richard Andrews, who had been called upon to manage her disembarkation from the SS Indus, was allowed to shake a female hand extended through the purdah curtain. The Globe, after noting these visitations by the British aristocracy, commented, ‘There is a certain propriety in receiving with courtesy unfortunate strangers from a far distant land; but it is one thing to show hospitality to ladies and gentlemen in distress, and another to convert them into a spectacle.’31 The visits, it went on, were not to gather information about the queen mother’s mission. Had they been, then Captain Bird was standing by, as an early version of a publicity agent, although in the languag
e of the day he was described as ‘the guide, philosopher and friend’ of the party.

  Captain Bird, for all his faults and tantrums, did his best to present the royal family’s point of view. He stood on the balcony of the Royal York Hotel and in a long, extempore speech tried to explain the reasons behind the delegation from Awadh to the crowd standing below: ‘a crowd that knew as much about the real facts of the case as they did of the political condition of Thibet and who therefore accepted the ex-parte statement of the Major [Bird] with cheers’, sneered The Globe’s reporter. ‘It was a daring concept to bring the late Court of Oude bodily before the British public, and appeal directly to their passions, to their best attribute—the love of fair play—against the mature judgement of the much vexed and long-suffering Government of India.’ In his speech, Bird went on to list the services rendered by the Awadh family to Britain through the East India Company, no doubt listing the enormous and largely unredeemed loans it had made. He skirted over the protection offered to the royal family by that same Company, and the undoubted corruption and oppression in the kingdom. ‘Suppose’, he asked rhetorically, ‘that the Emperor of the French were to deprive Queen Victoria of her throne to save Britons from misrule…’32 A cry went up from the crowd and Bird had won them over.

  The Times had underestimated the continuing curiosity of Southampton’s citizens, because it subsequently reported that the street opposite the Royal York Hotel was blocked by spectators as the royal party left by special train for London on Saturday 30 August. A fleet of horse-drawn cabs took the hundred-strong party to the station, with servants sitting on top and waving farewell to the crowds. Brandon, returned from London, directed the proceedings, but Mr Watkins, the stationmaster, refused to clear the platform as Janab-i ‘Aliyyah entered the first-class compartment. After some fruitless attempts to hold back the crowds, the tallest servants lined up holding calico sheets to form a human corridor along which the queen mother passed. Two enterprising English lads who had climbed up unseen on to the roof of the carriage to peer over were disappointed at the closely veiled figure who was helped into her compartment. An artist from The Illustrated London News sketched the scene for its readers and it was lithographed in the issue for 6 September. No one speculated on how a middle-aged Indian woman might feel embarking on the first train journey of her life in a foreign country.

  On reaching Waterloo Station, the south London terminus, the large party made its way northwards to Harley House. Saturday evening was not a good time to arrive at an unfurnished mansion in Victorian England. Brandon had not had time to organise anything, and all shops and businesses were shut on Sunday. The queen mother must have spent a miserable day, listening to the ‘considerable number of people’ who had gathered outside and were gawking up at the windows. Early on Monday workmen and upholsterers were called in to organise the furniture, while servants and interpreters set out shopping in hansom cabs. Brandon held a press conference, telling journalists he had been ‘connected with the family for several years in the kingdom of Oude’, glossing over the fact he had been expelled from it twice, once by a previous nawab and once by the Resident.33

  The principal people in the Awadh mission, apart from the royal family themselves, were a mixture of other relatives, senior court officials and servants. Nawab Julus-ud-daulah was the king’s aide-de-camp, who had left his master in order to travel to England. Nawab Mahdi Quli Khan was in charge of Janab-i ‘Aliyyah’s household staff, nawab Jur’at ‘Ali Khan was the chief eunuch, Hakeem ‘Ali Wasma the queen mother’s medical advisor, and Mir Farzand ‘Ali Khan the Persian writer. Prince Hamid ‘Ali, the heir apparent, had his own staff, including two eunuchs (Haji Tawakkul ‘Ali Khan and Nilum ‘Ali Khan), two soldiers as bodyguards, and his own medical adviser and tutor. The prince’s uncle, General Sikandar Hashmat, had a similar retinue. All of these important servants would of course have brought their own servants with them, so that the figure of just over a hundred staff was quickly reached.

  Strangely, Brandon forgot to mention one of the most important members of the delegation, Maulawi Masih-ud-Din Khan Bahadur, who was to take a leading part in the battle with British officialdom. Masih-ud-Din had been employed in the Persian Department of the East India Company in Calcutta for twelve years, receiving from the Company the honorific title of Khan Bahadur. In 1844 he was dismissed from his post for leaking the contents of a letter from the governor general of the time to nawab Amjad ‘Ali Shah, father of the present king, before its official dispatch. He returned to work in Lucknow, where his family had served former nawabs for several generations, but was dismissed ‘from all employment about the Court of Lucknow’ in 1847 by the Company—a measure of how much it could interfere in the nawabs’ domestic matters. When Wajid ‘Ali Shah attempted to reinstate Masih-ud-Din as his agent or representative immediately after annexation, the Company simply refused to recognise him or to answer his letters.34 Masih-ud-Din was a clever, sophisticated man, fluent in English, Persian and Urdu, and he is one of only three senior officials to appear in a group photograph taken in London, with the king’s brother and son, in 1857. He was also to have the sad task of arranging the funerals of two out of the three members of the royal family the following year.

  Skilled though he was, Masih-ud-Din was only a representative of the king, an agent or wakil. By not pressing his case in person, Wajid ‘Ali Shah almost certainly lost the chance of bargaining for a better deal. The Awadh mission lacked focus from the start. There were too many people involved: Robert Bird, with his brief to approach the Liberal MPs and his family connection to the Court of Directors; John Rose Brandon, who claimed to the press that he was the ‘interpreter and general agent’ to the royal party; Masih-ud-Din, the king’s agent whom the British deliberately did not recognise; and of course Janab-i ‘Aliyyah, the queen mother, whom the British could not recognise, because she was in purdah and could only act through intermediaries. In addition there was her son General Sikandar Hashmat, a tall stout man in his mid-thirties who spoke no English; and the heir apparent, Prince Hamid ‘Ali, who also spoke no English and was described as ‘bashful in the presence of strangers’.

  The Awadh delegation was of course unaware of what was happening behind the scenes at the Board of Control and the Court of Directors in Leadenhall Street. Vernon-Smith was not unsympathetic, as we have seen, and on the queen mother sending him a letter announcing her arrival, he wanted to send Sir George Clark, a former governor of Bombay, to see her, as a mark of respect, but was dissuaded by ‘the Indian authorities’ at the Court of Directors. When Janab-i ‘Aliyyah made a direct request for an interview with Vernon-Smith, he turned her down. A firm of British lawyers, Gregory, Gregory, Skirrow & Rowcliffe, who advertised themselves as ‘Parliamentary Agents’, was hired. Although they had some success in obtaining papers on which an appeal to Parliament could be based, the months dragged by with little apparent progress. There was also the problem of funds. Like many Indian visitors before them, the royal party found living in England much more expensive than they had ever anticipated. No longer heading a rich kingdom, they had not made the necessary financial adjustments to their changed circumstances; entire hotels were booked, London mansions rented, special trains laid on, fleets of hansom cabs used, top lawyers hired—it all added up. And Wajid ‘Ali Shah, who was funding the delegation, found himself suddenly deprived of regular income from land revenue at the very time when he needed more money to establish himself in Calcutta.

  A petition from the king had been sent to the Court of Directors on 10 December 1856. In response the Court directed that a pension of 12 lakhs per annum (£120,000) should be offered to him in return for the loss of his kingdom. Vernon-Smith told Canning that he thought this was a ‘magnificent proposal’, but at the same time hoped the governor general would not ‘consider the liberal grant … to the Oude family’ a concession to the queen mother’s pleas. On the contrary, it was ‘the feeling of this country in which I must say I share’ that the Awa
dh family should be decently compensated. Queen Victoria herself was ‘most anxious he should be more liberally treated and I think it good policy, if we take Kingdoms, to pay Kings’.35 So Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s financial future was assured, but in London the Awadh delegation continued to pursue the fruitless task of trying to reverse the decision of annexation.

  On 16 January 1857, five months after their arrival, General Sikandar Hashmat and his nephew, Prince Hamid ‘Ali, were entertained to lunch by the Court of Directors at the Leadenhall headquarters of the East India Company. They were met by Sir Henry Rawlinson, the chairman and former agent at Baghdad, with Robert Bird in attendance. The Times reported that the royal couple, magnificently robed in crimson velvet and laden with jewels,36 were formally received at East India House, introduced to a number of the Court’s directors and shown around the Company’s museum. They lunched in the Finance Committee’s room, not perhaps the most tactful place to entertain men whose ancestors had often financed the Company in happier times, and whose loans would not now be repaid. William Bathe of the nearby London Tavern in Bishopsgate provided the catering, and the meal was served ‘in a style of great elegance’, ending at 3.30 p.m. when the royal party returned home.37 This was all very well as another ‘oriental spectacle’, but went no further towards the plea for restoration of the kingdom.

  To keep the royal family in the public’s view, a number of letters from and about the Awadh mission were published in newspapers, including The Times, with long and abstruse arguments against annexation and the perfidy of the East India Company. The Oude Blue Book, the official justification for annexation, had been presented to both Houses of Parliament in 1856.38 It has been called ‘an indictment against the King of Oude’s Government, [and] is composed of all the imputations, past or present, vague or minute, real or rumoured, or even absolutely false, which the Company could collect by ransacking its archives or by stimulating the zeal of its officials to seek for elsewhere’. This was Robert Bird’s description, published in 1857 in a book that he co-authored entitled Dacoitee in Excelsis or the Spoliation of Oude by the East India Company. Although the book is attributed to Samuel Lucas, barrister at law, it is clear that Bird’s input was considerable. Lucas was one of the ‘Manchester men’ and had spent five years setting up secular schools there. He was editor of a radical newspaper, The Morning Star, and a man known for championing worthy but unfashionable causes. He was thus a good choice to put forward the king’s side of the story. Although Lucas had no Indian experience, it was hoped that his position as a barrister would lend more weight and impartiality to the book than had it been published under Bird’s name. (Bird had already published his own 24-page booklet, The Spoliation of Oude.) The word ‘dacoitee’ was of course a dig at Bird’s old enemy, William Sleeman, who was credited with putting down the dacoits or thugs (both Hindustani words) who preyed on travellers in rural areas of India.