White Mughals (95 page)

Presumably this was the ceremony known as a ‘
mangni
’, or more picturesquely the ‘
lahri bel
’ (green creeper), at which first contracts were exchanged. In this ceremony the mother of the groom, accompanied by her relatives and friends, pays a visit to the house of the girl, bringing with her trays full of gifts for the bride and her parents, including dresses, ornaments, perfumes and betel leaves. The girl would then be unveiled and her face shown to the visitors for the first time. This initial meeting with a future mother-in-law was often a very traumatic experience for the bride, and it is quite possible that one of the major attractions of life with Kirkpatrick in Khair’s eyes was that she would be mistress of her own
zenana
and not under the authority of a possibly cruel or unpleasant older woman. See Zinat Kausar,
Muslim Women in Medieval India
(New Delhi, 1992), pp.25-7.

Mir Zein ul-Abidin Shushtari was as remarkable a figure as his brother Mir Alam and first cousin Mir Abdul Lateef Shushtari. Like these two, he was a poet, writer and scholar as well as a successful and prominent courtier who led several diplomatic missions for Tipu. He rose to power in Mysore after composing for Tipu an army manual, a verse history and an epic in praise of fighting the jihad against the
firangi
infidels, the
Zad ul-Mujahedin
. See Kate Brittlebank,
Tipu Sultan’s Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain
(New Delhi, 1997), pp.27, 35.

‘Hat wearers’, or
topi wallahs
, was a common Indian term for Europeans, especially the notably behatted English at this period; Indians were of course
pagri wallahs
, or turban-wearers. Half a century earlier, Tipu’s father, Haidar Ali, at the very beginning of his career, had captured a Madras clerk named Stuart and forced him to train his infantry. When Stuart pointed out that he was an accountant and had not the faintest clue how to drill troops, Haidar replied that he ‘never doubted the soldiership of a man who wore a hatt’. From
Mr Stuarts Travels in Coromandel and the Dekan, 1764
, quoted in Kate Brittlebank,
Tipu Sultan’s Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain
(New Delhi, 1997), p.21. Intriguingly, in certain circumstances, hats also seem to have been important to Europeans as expressions of their distinctiveness from Indians: when Lieutenant John Lindsay was captured by Tipu he spent his time in prison manically making hats from material he begged from his jailers, as a sort of symbol of resistance against the circumcisions and forced conversions to Islam that several of the British prisoners were forced to undergo. See Linda Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales: Captivity, Collaborations and Empire’, in
Past and Present
, No. 168, August 2000, p.179.

She even seems to have set herself up as a power in her own right, and to have engaged in her own independent foreign policy: at one point it was reported that ‘Mobarruck Begum alias Generalee Begum fills the [Delhi] papers with accounts of the Nizars and Khiluts [gifts and dresses of honour] given and taken by her in her transactions with the vaqueels [ambassadors] of the different [Indian] powers’—an extraordinary liberty if true. Gardner Papers, National Army Museum, Letter 87, p.226, 10 August 1821.

It is an interesting question if there is any etymological link between the Hindustani ‘
rundi
’, a prostitute or dancing girl, and the modern English word ‘randy’.
The Oxford English Dictionary
says the derivation of the word is ‘obscure’, and suggests it may have come from the Dutch; but an Indian link seems equally likely.

Farzand Begum, a granddaughter of the previous Prime Minister Rukn ud-Daula, was the widow of Aristu Jah’s only son Ma’ali Mian, who had died in 1795 as the Hyderabadi army was on the way to the Battle of Khardla. She was also the sister of Zaman Ali Khan, Munir ul-Mulk, one of the most important Hyderabadi
omrahs
, who succeeded Aristu Jah and Mir Alam as Prime Minister. Henry Russell described him as ‘having all the vices of a man of weak understanding, timid, ignorant and bigoted … incapable of warm and steady attachments, never refusing the smallest bribe … not quite illiterate’. ‘Henry Russell’s Report to Lord Moira, reprinted from the Russell Papers in the Bodleian Library’, in
Indian Archives
, 9, 127, p.143. Farzand Begum clearly had more charm and talents than her brother.

When Sir David Baird’s Scottish mother heard that her son had been captured by Tipu at the Battle of Pollilur in 1780, and that the prisoners had been led away handcuffed two by two, she remarked, ‘I pity the man who was chained to oor Davie.’ Quoted by Denys Forrest in
Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan
(London, 1970), p.48. A letter from James Dalrymple to his father, Sir William Dalrymple, smuggled out of the prison of Seringapatam, survives in the India Office. According to a note written by James’s Anglo-Indian grandson, G. Wemyss Dalrymple, ‘The paper was rolled up, and put into a quill, then passed into the person of a native, and so brought into the prison. With the same quill, he wrote the letter, the ink was solid Indian ink, and was also in the quill, and the letter was brought out of the prison, by the same native in the same manner.’ OIOC, Eur Mss E330.

Choderlos de Laclos, author of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
, studied fortifications directly under Montalembert before, in 1793, being offered the job of Governor General of the French settlements in India. He was however arrested before he could take up the post. It is fascinating to speculate about the effect both on the fortifications of Seringapatam, and on the literature of India, if he had made it to Pondicherry. See Jean-Marie Lafont,
Indika: Essays in Indo—French Relations 1630-1976
(New Delhi, 2000), p.186 and p.200 n57.

Some secondary sources erroneously have Tipu’s body being discovered by Arthur Wellesley. That it was Baird who found him is made quite clear in the letter Baird wrote to General Harris; it can be found in Montgomery Martin (ed.),
The Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of … Wellesley
(London, 183 6), Vol. 1, pp.687-9. Arthur Wellesley’s role in the taking of Seringapatam has been exaggerated by some historians, who have slightly inflated his importance with the benefit of hindsight and in view of his subsequent European triumphs. Baird and Harris were the two ranking officers who at the time were credited with defeating Tipu.

Literally ‘all do-er’: a messenger, runner or newswriter; a spy (or ‘intelligencer’).

Legends of ‘cursed’ gems were very common in India, the Koh-i-Noor (’Mountain of Light’) being the most famous example, as it was reputed to bring disaster on all its male owners. It was †taken from Mughal India by the Persian adventurer Nadir Shah, who was assassinated less than a decade after seizing the diamond. Four kings succeeded to the Shah’s throne in as many years, the last of whom, Shahrukh Mirza, was blinded and tortured to get possession of the Koh-i-Noor. Several other subsequent rulers were also dethroned and imprisoned before the diamond was eventually taken from the treasury in Lahore and given to Queen Victoria in 1850, a little before the death of Prince Albert. The traveller Richard Burton was appalled when he heard that the Koh-i-Noor was to be given to the Queen, and quoted a Hyderabadi friend of his who asked, ‘Are they going to send that accursed thing to the Queen? May she refuse it! All natives spit with horror when they hear it mentioned.’ Victoria also appeared to have believed the legend, and gave orders that the stone should only be worn by women. It currently rests in the crown of the late Queen Mother. Another Golconda stone, the 112.5-carat violet-coloured Hope Diamond, has left an even more bloody trail of death, disease, execution, palace coups, revolutions, nervous breakdowns and car crashes behind it, though its current owner, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, seems to have survived its presence in its galleries without too many fatalities. See Omar Khalidi,
Romance of the Golconda Diamonds
(Ahmedabad, 1999).

With Mir Alam came the orphaned children of his brother Zein ul-Abidin Shushtari. It is unclear whether the Mir’s brother died during the assault on Seringapatam or shortly before it, but Mir Alam henceforth took his Mysore nephews and nieces into his own household.

The Koranic name for Mount Sinai.

Jahan Pawar Begum was the daughter of Sharaf un-Nissa’s great friend Farzand Begum. Her father was Ma’ali Mian, Aristu Jah’s son, who had died on the way to the Battle of Khardla, after which she and her mother Farzand Begum had continued to live in the Minister’s
zenana
.

The miniature is still in the possession of Kirkpatrick’s descendants. The inscription in his hand is on the reverse of the image and reads in full: ‘This was copied from a sketch taken of me in the Hindostanny dress presented me by Meer Allum & which I wore at his particular request at his son Meer Dowraun’s nuptials; with this difference, that the original drawing which was made by old Shah Tajully was a more flattering—and according to the opinion of those who saw it a more faithful—likeness in a sitting posture and the coloured dress which I had on at the time and which was
nah firmaun
[more appropriate].’ The inscription on the front reads in Persian: ‘Mutamin ul-Mulk, Fakhr ud-Dowlah Bahadur, Hushmat Jung’.

After this engagement, Dalrymple had organised a joint letter from all the officers to be sent to James Kirkpatrick, then newly appointed as Resident in place of his brother William, testifying to Bâqar Ali’s bravery and kindness: ‘We cannot in justice withhold our warmest acknowledgements, nor omit declaring that no man whatever could have excited himself with more warmth or attachment, or have accorded himself with more gentlemanly acquiescence to our differing habits and customs, than he has done.’ OIOC, Kirkpatrick Papers, Mss Eur F228/83, f.1, Camp at Rachore, 1 May 1796, James Dalrymple et al to James Kirkpatrick.

James Dalrymple was himself married to the daughter of the Nawab of Masulipatam and had five children by her, so he was in a good position to understand the finer points in the etiquette of dealing with such interracial relationships. Scottish Records Office, Edinburgh, GD135/2086, The Will of Lieutenant Colonel James Dalrymple, Hussein Sagar, 8 December 1800.

Maula in this context meaning ‘My Lord’.

In the Islamic lunar calendar.

Literally ‘slave girls of the gods’: temple dancers, prostitutes and courtesans who were given to the great Hindu temples, usually in infancy.

See for example the use of Delhi Sufi shrines as places to meet lovers and pick up prostitutes, as recorded by Dargah Quli Khan (trans. Chander Shekhar), in
The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli
(New Delhi, 1989), e.g. p.7.

Temple sweets given to devotees in exchange for offerings—a tradition that was transferred from Hindu to Islamic practice in many Sufi shrines.

According to the biography commissioned by Mah Laqa, the
Hyat-e-Mah-e-Laqa
, towards the end of his life the Prime Minister Mir Musa Khan, entitled Rukn ud-Daula, married his courtesan mistress, Mahtab Kanwar, who was the sister of Raj Kanwar Bai, and the aunt of Mah Laqa. Mahtab Kanwar also appears to have been the mistress of Aristu Jah at some point in her career. Ghulam Samdani Gohar,
Hyat-e-Mah-e-Laqa
(Hyderabad, n.d.), and Rahat Azmi,
Mah-e-laqa
(Hyderabad, 1998). The source of this information—in a book personally commissioned by Mah Laqa—may mean that it should be treated with a certain scepticism. It was most unusual for courtesans formally to marry into the nobility (though it was their stock in trade to have affairs with them); but then, Mah Laqa’s dynasty does appear to have been unusual in almost all respects.

Nizam ul-Mulk had led the newcomer ‘Turkish’ faction at the Mughal court in Delhi, and almost all those Sunni nobles who had joined their fortunes to his accompanied him to Hyderabad.

The short opening chapter of the Koran, which is part of the ritual prayer and is also read in all sorts of ceremonial contexts.

It is interesting to speculate on the difference it might have made to subsequent European history had Wellesley persevered with this plan, and moved Arthur, the future Duke of Wellington, away from the military and into the diplomatic line of the Company’s service.

Munshis
were highly educated Indian assistants who specialised in helping Euopeans surmount their language difficulties. They could sometimes act merely as language teachers, but in the British Residencies they were much grander figures who often acted as confidential advisers and private assistants, and in some instances—such as here with Munshi Aziz Ullah—would even perform such important and delicate tasks as negotiating treaties and dispensing bribes to the appropriate officials in the durbar.

It is unclear from the sources at what temperature the tar was meant to be applied. One presumes that if applied hot it would make a very effective contraceptive indeed.

All of which makes the Vatican-endorsed rhythm method seem the height of reliability and sophistication.

Around the base of the shrine of Maula Ali there still survives a great spread of crumbling mansions dating back to around 1800. It is probably the single place in Hyderabad that is least changed and which would today be most immediately recognisable to Kirkpatrick.