India under Ripon: A Private Diary

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

“Father Kerr sat at my other hand at lunch. He is sad, having just received a telegram announcing his mother Lady Henry Kerr’s death, whom I used to know so well years ago at Huntlyburn.

“We stayed quiet all the afternoon, and dined at the camp, as there is a large official dinner at the Residency. I sat next to Mr. Lambert, the head of the secret police, who said he had heard from Primrose about the Patna affair, and was making investigations. I gave him an exact narration of the thing, which he did not seem to have had correctly; and he expressed unbounded astonishment at it, as an incident the like of which had not occurred in his twenty-one years’ experience. He would not hear of its being a common thing for natives to be insulted on the railways, and seemed even a little to doubt my accuracy. But I think I convinced him, at any rate, about the particular incident. As an instance of the contrary, he told me how Villayet Ali had written to him and asked for a special compartment for himself and friends to go to the Exhibition a little while before, and how he had willingly written to the station master about it. But the tale seems to me to prove, if anything, the danger natives run—or why should a special compartment be needed?

“At half-past 9 o’clock we went to the Viceroy’s levée, and Lord Ripon, as soon as he saw me, came to me rubbing his hands, and said, ‘Well, I have had my talk with him [the Nizam], and I flatter myself, at last, that he has told me everything.’ Lord Ripon did not say precisely what this everything was, but I gathered from him in our subsequent conversation, which lasted about a quarter of an hour, that there had been some ‘eye-openers.’ ‘There is no doubt either,’ he said, ‘about his wishes. He spoke them strongly and decidedly; and my opinion clearly is that they ought to be followed.’ I did not press to know whom it was the Nizam wished for as Diwan, for I shall learn that later, but I feel no doubt it is Salar Jung. I asked Lord Ripon, however, whether on the whole he had been favourably impressed by the young Prince, and he said: ‘Oh, very much so. He has ideas and opinions of his own. But I told him things which I fancy he is not likely to hear again, and which will be good for him.’ So I suppose he has given him a thorough good talking to about his morals. Lord Ripon was anxious to know, and asked me to find out if possible, what the Nizam’s own impression of the interview had been, and I shall probably be able to do so to-morrow.

“I then suggested to him my idea about an official adviser being appointed to the Diwan, whoever he might be, with written instructions to work in Hyderabad interests, not those merely of the Indian Government; and I expressed my opinion strongly about the Foreign Office policy in respect of the Berars. Lord Ripon would not admit that I was correct in my view of the case, but his protest was feebly made. The essential in any settlement of the Hyderabad problem is to remember that the Resident cannot be trusted to advise for good. What Lord Ripon said was: ‘Would not this be introducing new Englishmen into Hyderabad? It seems to me that there are too many already. I should like to make a clean sweep of them all.’ I said: ‘By all means make a clean sweep.’ I suggested, however, that Moore might be intrusted with the new duty, as a man who really understood and sympathized with the native races, and really wished them well.

“We were talking a quarter of an hour in this way, very much in evidence, and I noticed poor Cordery watching, and Clerk once even came up and interrupted our conversation. I don’t know what they can all think of my position here as the Viceroy’s adviser, in spite of the ‘Wind and the Whirlwind,’ and everything else. Indeed, it is a singular one, and it shows how strangely politics are managed here, and at home, too, for that matter, for I am going about with a decree of exile from Egypt in my pocket, no more nor less than if I was a proclaimed rebel.

“5th Feb.—A day to be marked with white. We went quite early into Hyderabad to the Clerks, where we had tea, and then went on to the Chou Mahaila Palace, which is the old palace where installations have always taken place, and where Mahbub Ali was this morning installed. The city was a magnificent sight, crowded with people and decked with flags, the people most of them sitting on the ground, and even some of the soldiers on duty so seated, as they used to be at Haïl. Everything was most orderly, with the single exception of one man, probably an Arab, who seemed to have been making a disturbance, for he had a sword drawn in his left hand, and was being led away by four or five others. We arrived at the same time as Cordery, and walked through the palace garden to the open hall where the Durbars are held. Here the nobles were assembling, and those officers of the English cantonments who had received invitations, perhaps one hundred and fifty of each, the natives occupying the right, the English the left of the thrones. We had reserved seats, Anne’s close to the thrones, mine a little way down, and I sat next to Lambert and close to Gorst. We had an hour to wait, but we occupied it talking to Rasul Yar Khan, Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami, and others of our friends, who were in fine feather, for our balloon has gone up at last, and at 2 o’clock last night Salar Jung was named Munir el Mulk and Diwan. The news began to be whispered round, though it seemed too good to be true, for, till the last moment, it had been believed that Cordery and the Foreign Office would carry the day. But it was soon proved by the arrival of the Peishkar, who came to take his seat next the thrones but was bundled out of it, to his confusion, and made to take his chair several places down. Poor old man, he seemed quite dazed, for it was the first he had heard of his disgrace.

“There was a good deal of confusion, too, among the nobles, and C. whispered to me that his Nawab, Bushir-ed-Dowlah, had fainted just as he stepped into his carriage, the news being brought to him that his chair had been put below Kurshid Jah’s, and so had gone home to bed. But the triumph of the Salar Jung party was crowned when he and Saadut Ali arrived with the Nizam, all three wearing yellow turbans in sign of their alliance. Salar Jung, I must say, showed considerable dignity and absence of visible elation; but the coup de théâtre to us who knew what lay behind the scenes was all the more striking. The Nizam and Viceroy arrived together, and sat down together on two chairs in front of the two equal thrones, and, after some announcement made by Mr. Henderson, who did the duty of herald, Lord Ripon made an excellent speech full of good advice and piety, though I was a little disappointed that he did not allude to the Nizam’s position as head of the Mohammedans of India, but perhaps this was thought indiscreet. Lord Ripon alluded, however, to old Salar Jung’s services to the State, and declared the policy of the Indian Government to be that of peace and goodwill towards the Nizam’s, and the encouragement of good government and progress.

“The speech affected me almost to tears, and it seemed to affect the Nizam, whose answer, drawn up for him by Seyd Huseyn, was almost inaudible. He behaved, however, with considerable dignity during the rather trying quarter of an hour when, seated on his throne by Lord Ripon’s side and girt by that nobleman with a new diamond-hilted sword, put on on the wrong side, he waited to be photographed, for such was the banal termination. Swords also were given to Salar Jung, Peishkar, and Kurshid Jah, the latter’s with an ivory hilt, reminding one of a large paper cutter, perhaps lest he should go home and commit suicide with it, for he must have been very angry. I hear the poor Peishkar was so utterly confounded that he walked home immediately after the ceremony without waiting for his carriage, and was picked up somewhere in the street by his servants, having lost his way. But this may be an exaggeration. Lord Ripon has a pleasant voice speaking, but his style is that of a sermon, which, however, suited the occasion, and all the Hyderabadis, except the disgraced nobles, seemed delighted with him. I believe this appointment of Salar Jung to be generally popular. But Rasul Yar Khan told me there were some who were not best pleased.

“Then we drove back to Mrs. Clerk’s, where the Commissioner-in-Chief and Sir Frederick Roberts were also invited to luncheon. Sir Donald Stewart is a dear old fogey, but with wits enough to appreciate Colonel Moore, and Sir Frederick is a gallant officer of the unostentatious, strictly professional type. I like them both. We stayed there the afternoon, and went in the evening to a great banquet at the Palace, in the new part of it, which is extremely handsome and built in excellent taste only about twenty years ago by an Italian architect. The illuminations, both in the Palace and in the city, and for miles round, surpass anything I ever saw attempted in Europe, even at Paris in the palmy days of the Empire. There were at least two hundred guests at this dinner, which was held in a very long hall. Anne was taken in by the Viceroy, but I had to shift for myself, and was fortunate enough to get hold of Seyd Ahmed, the Persian attaché and translator of the Foreign Office, an Afghan with whom I had a most instructive conversation. He had been educated by some missionaries at Peshawar, and is to a certain extent denationalized, but is a good Sunni, and seems still fond of his own people. He was employed in that mission to Shere Ali which was refused admittance to Ali Musjid. I asked him his candid opinion about the Afghan War, and he said he could not approve it either at the time or now, though Shere Ali had brought it on himself by intriguing with the Russians. He said, moreover, that any Mohammedans who might have pretended to me that they approved the war were hypocrites, for all were strongly against it. The Mohammedans of India were, nevertheless, loyal as a body, though not all. They were so from interest. He lamented the quarrels which divided them, and was sure I was doing a good work in bringing them together. If they only were united, and knew their strength, the Government would be obliged to do something for them. But they were far from united. He did not approve of Seyd Ahmed of Aligarh, though far from a bigot. He had been brought up an utter bigot till he went to school at Peshawar, but now his ideas were changed. He also told me he had travelled with Major Napier in Persia, and corroborated much of what Malkum Khan had told me of the Persians. He was of opinion that they were doomed to fall to Russia, they were so much diminished in numbers, only three to five millions in a territory as large as India. Afghanistan was far more prosperous. He would not hear of his countrymen being treacherous, except to Englishmen, who they thought were spies, or in cases of blood feuds among themselves. He thought I might travel safely among them, and the best way to go would be through Persia. He had heard Malkum Khan’s history, much as I had heard it from Malkum Khan himself. I met Vikar-el-Omra after dinner, who seemed in his old friendly mood. I asked him how he liked the new political arrangement, and he said he thought he did, but Salar Jung was very young to be Diwan. I believe his idea had been a council of seven, with himself as one of them. So he is naturally a little disappointed. I told him I thought the success or non-success of Salar Jung would depend mainly on the kind of advice given him by the Resident. We slept at Bolarum.

“6th Feb.—A telegram from Ferid-ed-Din begging me to congratulate the Nizam in the name of the Mohammedans of Allahabad and the North-West Provinces, and also a letter signed by some hundred of the chief Mohammedans of Patna expressing their confidence in me. I have written to Salar Jung with the first message to beg him to remind the Nizam of his promise to speak to the Viceroy about the university, for it appears that Lord Ripon told Anne he had expected the Nizam to broach the subject. But they seem lukewarm about it, and, if they don’t take it up more seriously than they seem now inclined to do, I shall wash my hands of them, and look to Lucknow as a better place. It would ruin the scheme to establish it here without thorough and determined support.