Hyderabad is largely Mohammedan, and the Nizam has a considerable army, including a regiment of negro cavalry and a good many Arabs. We were fortunate in seeing a race-meeting the day after our arrival, and this gathering of natives in all their variety of costume and colour was dazzling to our unaccustomed eyes. The populace swarmed in the trees and clustered round the boundary of the course, but even more brilliant were the garments of the native nobles and gentlemen who walked about in the ring and gathered in the grandstand. They wore long coats of every conceivable hue and of rich materials, flowered red and green and gold silk, purple velvet or embroidered white, with gold-worked belts, bright turbans, and sometimes swords. There were little boys gaily dressed like their fathers, riders in white muslin with black and gold turbans, on prancing horses with tails dyed pink, others carrying little flags at the end of spears; Arabs of the Nizam’s bodyguard with high boots and green, red, dark-blue, and gold costumes and striped floating round their heads, and the Nizam’s syces in yellow and blue.
The Nizam himself, an effete individual, had a red fez, a pearl watch-chain, and dazzling emerald rings, but was otherwise in European dress. Around him were the gentlemen of his Court, salaaming to him and to each other with strictly Oriental etiquette, and mingled with them English officers, ladies and civilians. Flags were flying surmounted by the Union Jack, and a band played, ending up with “God save the Queen.” The jockeys were some English and some native, the owners English, Parsee, and Mohammedan.
A hot Indian sun made the scene glow with golden warmth during the afternoon and with rosy pink as it set in the evening with the unexpected rapidity which is almost startling until use has made it familiar. I was talking a few days later to an Indian gentleman about his visit to England, and he said what he did not like was the light, which interfered with his sleeping. Light is the last thing of which I should have expected England to be accused, but there is in India no great variety in the length of night and day all the year round, so my friend was unaccustomed to the very early dawn of an English summer day. Not long ago I heard of an English coachman employed in America. He, on being asked his opinion of the States, said he did not like two things—they had no twilight and said the Lord’s Prayer wrong (i.e. “Who art” instead of “Which art”). It is difficult to satisfy the physical and theological prejudices of an alien in any land.
H.H. THE NIZAM OF HYDERABAD
Jersey had been introduced to the Nizam the day following our arrival; I made his acquaintance at the races, but found him singularly lacking in animation. The only occasion on which I saw him aroused to anything like interest was when we went to the Palace to see his jewels. He had wonderful strings of pearls and emeralds, something like a tiara of diamonds for the front of a turban, large single diamonds in rings, one remarkable ruby engraved with the seals of the Moghul emperors, and an uncut diamond valued at £720,000 which was as uninteresting to look at as a pebble picked up on a beach. If I recollect rightly that diamond afterwards played a part in a lawsuit. Jersey said something about black pearls, which he happened to admire. The Nizam did not appear to notice the remark, which was translated to him, but presently made a slight sign, and with the ghost of a smile produced a little calico bag from which he extracted a couple of these gems.
Poor man—he had four thousand women shut up in his Zenana. That included his father’s wives and women servants as well as his own. Every woman who becomes his wife begins with a monthly pension of 35 rupees, which can, of course, be increased by his favour. There was a story going when we were at Hyderabad that the women had, shortly before, inveigled the Nizam into the depths of the Zenana and given him a good flogging! No doubt strange things may happen in remote apartments where no male except eunuchs may enter. The present Nizam is, I believe, an enlightened and loyal ruler.
The City of Hyderabad was about eight miles in circumference, and as a quarter was occupied by the Nizam’s palatial buildings there was room and to spare both for ladies and Court officials. The Nizam is of course semi-independent, but the British Government exercises the ultimate control. Fortunately, though the Nizam did not shine intellectually, he had some very intelligent Ministers, notably Sir Salar Jung, who exercised the chief control, and the very enlightened Director of Education, Syed Hossain Bilgrami, who with his brother Seyd Ali had originally come from Bengal and contrived to establish an intellectual standard distinctly superior to that of many Native States. Amongst other things Syed Hossain had set up a Zenana School for “purdah” girls of the upper classes, which was at that time quite a new experiment in India. When we saw it the head mistress was a Mrs. Littledale, a Christian Hindu lady married to an Englishman. The main idea was that the young ladies should be sufficiently educated to be real companions to the men whom they were ultimately to marry. One of the pupils on the occasion of our visit was a cousin of the Bilgramis engaged to one of Syed Hossain’s sons. The young man in question was then at Oxford, and understood to be anxious for the education of his lady-love. The whole question of the higher education of Indian women, particularly of those of the upper classes, bristles with difficulties. It has much advanced in the thirty-three years which have elapsed since our first visit to Hyderabad, but the problems have not yet been by any means completely solved. If young women are educated up to anything like a European standard they can hardly fail to be discontented with continuous seclusion. On the other hand, if they are allowed to come out of purdah and to mix freely with others of both sexes they will be looked down upon by large sections of the community, and in many cases, particularly among the ruling families, it will be difficult to arrange suitable marriages for them. One sometimes wonders whether such complete freedom as prevails in Western and Northern lands has been altogether beneficial to their women, and the climate of India might make unrestrained intercourse even more difficult. However, Parsee women are not secluded, nor are the women of the quite low Indian castes.
PURDAH LADIES
As far as I could make out, opinions differed among the ladies themselves as to whether they should or should not prefer to come out of purdah. Some certainly considered that for husbands to allow it would be to show that they did not properly value their wives. For instance, the Nizam’s aide-de-camp Ali Bey, a very active, intelligent soldier, told us that he would not at all mind his wife seeing men or going about, but that she would not wish it. On one occasion when the fort at Secunderabad was brilliantly illuminated with electric lights for some festivity he offered to drive her out late, when the people had gone, to see the effect, but she declined. On the other hand, when we dined with the Financial Secretary Mehdi Ali, and the ladies went afterwards into an inner drawing-room to see Mrs. Mehdi Ali, she rather pathetically said to me in perfect English: “I cannot go to call upon you, Lady Jersey. I am not a woman, but a bird in a cage.” It seemed rather absurd that she should be secluded, for she was evidently highly educated, and I understood read French as well as English. Her costume was somewhat interesting. Most of the Moslem ladies wore trousers and were enveloped in a sari. Mrs. Mehdi Ali had a gorgeous brocade garment specially designed by Howell & James, which at a casual glance looked like an ordinary gown but somehow embraced a “divided skirt.”
I had an amusing breakfast with the sisters of Sir Salar Jung and his brother the Munir-ul-Mulk. We had dined the previous evening at a gorgeous banquet with the brothers, and the ladies of the party, including Lady Galway, Mrs. Howell, and five others, were invited for eleven o’clock the following morning to the Zenana in the same Palace. Of course brothers may be present with their sisters. With a truly Oriental disregard of time the Munir appeared about 11.25, the ladies still later. The Munir was attired in an azure blue coat embroidered with silver. The materials of the most gorgeous men’s coats were imported from Paris—and their fezes chiefly came from Lincoln & Bennett’s in London.