Last Nizam (9781742626109) (26 page)

The reason for the downgrade had more to do with the agreement the Nizam had signed with India obliging him to submit lists of his private property than any actual reduction of his net worth. The most revealing document to emerge from this agreement was the so-called
Blue Book
. The 50-page memorandum meticulously listed every property in his possession from the Falaknuma, King Kothi, Chowmahalla and Purani Haveli palaces to a ‘10 Sq. Yd.' piece of land on ‘Chotulal Street, Mugal Pura'. Under the heading ‘
Kotiyath, Mahilath
& Buildings' were 1516 dwellings described variously as palaces, mansions, mosques, bungalows,
khanas
, villas, houses, cottages, schools, tombs, halls, compounds, garages, tin sheds and huts. There were eight markets and five ‘properties of historic and dynastic value' including the Qutb Shahi tombs at Golconda Fort and the Naukhanda palace at Aurangabad. A second list comprised 630 ‘Gardens and Lands of
Sarf-i-Khas Mubarak
'. Of the 47 gardens most had bungalows whose condition varied from ‘sound' to
‘fallen down'. Scattered around Hyderabad State were tens of thousands of acres of land surrounding houses, bazaars, schools and mosques, many of which were in the names of various members of the Nizam's extended family. The total land area came to around 14,250 square kilometres.
¹⁵

In exchange for declaring that these properties formed part of his private estate, the government agreed that it would ‘have no claim on them'. Although that promise was not honoured in full, the bulk of the ‘immovable property' and most of the ‘movable property', i.e. the cash, jewellery and antiques, that comprised the Seventh Nizam's private estate was intact when he died in 1967. It was this estate that Jah would inherit when he was declared the Eight Nizam by an order of the Government of India.

Having provided for his grandson's future, the ageing Nizam turned to the welfare of his numerous wives, children, relatives and other dependants. One of the clauses in the letter that Chaudhuri had written in 1949 proposed that the Nizam form a trust for the maintenance of his large extended family. Osman Ali Khan not only agreed with the suggestion, he went a step further. Instead of one trust he formed 54, the bulk of which still exist.

The first of these trusts were for his sons Prince Azam Jah and Prince Moazzam Jah. Each had a corpus of 8.2 million rupees. The trusts for Princess Durrushehvar and Princess Niloufer had a corpus of 3 million rupees each, while Mukarram Jah and his brother Prince Muffakham Jah had a joint trust of 21.2 million rupees in their favour. The largest was the ‘H. E. H. The Nizam's Family Trust' with a corpus of 100 million rupees. The smallest was the ‘Wedding Gifts Trust of H. E. H. The Nizam's Two Grandsons' worth just 15,000 rupees. Leaving nothing to chance, Osman Ali Khan also formed a ‘Publications of Poems and Marble Trust', an ‘H. E. H. The Nizam's Family Pocket
Money Trust' and an ‘H. E. H. The Nizam's Grandsons Pocket Money Trust' as well as three jewellery trusts.
¹⁶

The cash trusts, valued at almost 300 million rupees, were partly financed by the sale of gold. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Osman Ali Khan's privy purse of five million rupees a year had to be paid in gold because paper currency was not used in Hyderabad and silver was not being minted fast enough. The giving of
nazars
further swelled his reserves. To transport such vast quantities of gold to the Reserve Bank of India, the Nizam ordered Taraporevala to fetch some ‘fifteen shilling trunks' which were then secured with ‘Allwyn locks costing five shillings each'. The shipment of 60 million rupees' worth of gold was then placed in the special carriage of a train and transported to Bombay, where the sale of such a vast quantity of bullion caused a dip in the market. But when Taraporevala presented an account of the transaction, he was waved away. The only thing that concerned the Nizam was the whereabouts of his trunks and their precious locks.
¹⁷

Though they were formed with the best intentions, the trusts became a source of controversy and litigation after the Nizam's death. The most contentious were the ‘H. E. H. The Nizam's Jewellery Trust' and the ‘H. E. H. The Nizam's Supplemental Jewellery Trust'. Representing the most valuable and significant pieces from the largest private jewellery collection in the world, including state regalia and the Jacob diamond, these two trusts alone were worth more than all the cash trusts put together. They would also be the most bitterly contested. For what he considered to be his rightful share, Jah would find himself in court ranged against thousands of relatives and his closest family.

For now Jah had little concern for the trusts or his inheritance. If he knew of the extent of his grandfather's wealth or that it would be his one day, he never exhibited any outward signs. In 1952 he was in his final year at Harrow and was more engrossed
in gymnastics, fencing and shooting than in doing his homework. His school friends described him as shy and serious. The only concession to his privileged background was the chauffeurdriven blue Bentley that conveyed him from central London to school and back.

Summer holidays were usually spent in Hyderabad. His grandfather was now the
Rajpramukh
(Governor), a mostly ceremonial position, but one that still earned him a measure of respect among his former subjects. His palaces, villas and bungalows remained, even though they were looking a little run down. Courtiers in frayed uniforms still bowed almost to the ground as they made their
adabs
to the Nizam and his family. Loyal servants faithfully dusted the chandeliers, washed the marble floors and swept up the pink and white bougainvillea flowers that swirled around now empty audience halls. The Nizam was still entitled to his gun salutes, his household troops and red ‘HYDERABAD 1' number plate. From the rooftops of King Kothi and half a dozen other palaces in Hyderabad the yellow flag of the Asaf Jahi dynasty continued to fly. Had he been less frugal the Nizam could have used his considerable tax-free privy purse to import cases of gin or the latest model Buick or Ford without paying duty, and travelled abroad on a special diplomatic passport. He was immune from legal action and did not need to apply for a firearms licence if he wanted to hunt on his ancestral estates.

It was the last of these privileges that Jah took most advantage of during his holidays in Hyderabad. Jah was already an expert marksman, and hunted deer, tigers and other wildlife with his father in the forests and lakes surrounding Hyderabad. Brought up by governesses, watched over by guardians and never far from his mother's gaze, Jah had spent little time with his father as a young boy. The hunting trips helped make up for some of the lost intimacy between father and son. Jah remembers how
his father started complaining that as soon as he shot at a flock of ducks they would congregate in the middle of the lake well out of range. Jah's solution was to get an old cannon from one of the palaces and find a member of the Nizam's old Arab guard who could teach him how to fire it. Confident that he knew what he was doing, Jah put the cannon in the back of a Jeep, loaded it up with bicycle chains and pieces of scrap metal and drove down to the lake. The resulting volley scared the ducks into the air, where they were picked off by the hunting party. It also succeeded in strafing two Buicks and a Packard parked nearby, forcing Jah's father to dive for cover. Rather than admonish his son, Azam congratulated him, saying it was the best hunting trip he had been on in years.
¹⁸

The closeness would not last long. Stripped of whatever authority he had exercised as nominal commander of the army before Hyderabad's surrender, Azam sank deeper into a life of depravity. His Bella Vista palace began to resemble a brothel. ‘There were kids, film-star extras and dancing girls. There was a swimming pool in Bella Vista where they used to make blue films. The whole thing was very sordid,' recalls Habeeb Jung.
¹⁹
Meanwhile, Azam Jah continued accumulating huge debts from gambling and indulging in his mania for polo ponies and race horses. Frustrated at not being able to inherit his father's throne, he consulted astrologers and sought the blessing of the saints at holy shrines who could perform rituals to realise his ambitions. ‘Secret prayers were organised and
mannats
(vows) were made seeking the early demise of the Nizam,' writes historian Narendra Luther.
²⁰

Disgusted by his son's behaviour, Osman Ali Khan sent a letter to Nehru on 14 June 1954, finally putting into writing what had been common knowledge for the past 20 years. ‘Prince Azam Jah had, with his extravagant mode of life and addiction to drinks, etc., made himself unfit to shoulder the responsibility
of the head of the family.' Mukarram Jah, he added, would be the next Nizam and thus inherit his private estate.
²¹

Rather than exerting a sobering influence, the Nizam's letter led to a further deterioration in Azam's affairs. By January 1956 he owed more than 6.6 million rupees and offered to put his entire financial arrangements in his father's hands if the Nizam paid off his debts. Admitting that ‘the hopes which I entertained of meeting all my liabilities through my own endeavours, have not materialised', Azam gave his ‘solemn assurance' tendered ‘with humility and respect, that never again will I permit myself to run into debts'.
²²
The Nizam's response was to appoint a committee to investigate the indebtedness of the prince's household and to issue a
farman
demanding that the ‘ladies of Bella Vista' pack their bags or face the consequences. ‘It is only appropriate that they should be grateful for whatever treatment they have received so far from the Senior Prince (which is more than what their status called for) and go back to their houses. Their welfare lies in that.'
²³

The Nizam reluctantly paid off Azam's debts, but not before placing an ad in a local paper warning that anyone lending money to his son from now on ‘would have to bear the consequences and blame themselves for the losses'.
²⁴
He then delivered his son a body blow from which he would never recover. In a sharply written sixpoint letter delivered to Azam on 5 July 1956 he expressed amazement that Azam could not live on an annual allowance of 700,000 rupees when the President of India managed comfortably on an income of 6000 rupees a month. ‘You have proved yourself completely unfit to manage your own affairs and I cannot rely on your word or writing – a presumption with which even the Prime Minister entirely agrees,' the Nizam went on to state.

In the end let me tell you quite frankly that, on account of your misbehaviour, I was compelled to nominate my
grandson to be my successor and the Head of the Family and also of the Trusts created by me. These facts are known to the Government of India, who, in fact, welcome my suggestion. I trust you will read my letter with calm mind and clear conscience and you will not bother me again in this matter, otherwise, I will be compelled to forward the whole correspondence, once again, to the Prime Minister, after his return from Europe.
²⁵

Twenty years earlier, the Nizam would have invoked the Viceroy's name to drive a point home to his wayward sons, who in turn would have sought the Resident's support against their father's tyranny. With the Resident long gone, Azam wrote to India's Home Minister, Pantji, laying out in somewhat slurred English the story of the miserable upbringing he and his brother had endured and asking him to intervene.

Whatever others may think or may have thought, it is no exaggeration to say that our life during our teen years was nothing but a sort of dignified internment confined to a place in an atmosphere of unnatural and artificial mode of life and though, later, on our reaching our manhood and on our approaching the then British Resident at Hyderabad, things eased out a bit and after our European tour and marriage, we were allowed to live, in a limited way, our own life in separate establishments. That even then, our actions were watched every minute of our life and our movements were strictly limited and confined to the bungalow we lived in, that whatever movement was allowed it was always under strict escort and the CID officers of our father were meant to watch and report on us.
²⁶

Azam went on to accuse his father of carrying out a ‘ruthless campaign' in the Urdu weekly
Shiraz
with ‘highly exaggerated and more often untrue and colourful stories regarding my life at Bella Vista and my financial condition'.

I humbly and respectfully pray and request of you to pity me and such of those of my type who have had the misfortune to be brought up cramped and in an atmosphere perverted and unnatural and to help me to put my affairs in order so as to enable me to live a normal and useful life as any other citizen of our land, without any let or hindrance within the four corners of the law.
²⁷

Though Azam was temporarily debt-free, he now had to repay his father from his allowance of 50,000 rupees a month. In October 1956 he filed a suit for the recovery of the full allowance from the trust. Infuriated, the Nizam carried out his threat and wrote to Nehru, laying before the Prime Minister the intimate details of his son's profligacy and perversions:

His days of debauchery had come to an end, but he had developed sadistic tastes, he was entirely a moral pervert, his actions were unfit to be described and every night he collected depraved persons around him and indulged in excessive drinking. He signed Promissory Notes or post-dated cheques running into
lakhs
without maintaining any account, very often for a larger amount than the Prince borrowed, some of his low associates pocketing a good share.
²⁸

The Nizam suggested the prince's movements should be restricted, his women and associates got rid of and a controller appointed to manage his affairs.