"A hundred years, along the 18th and 19th centuries, in India, there sat upon the throne in royal state, Nawab of Awadh, the title of the rulers who governed the state of Awadh, belonged to a dynasty of Persian origin from Nishapur, Iran, " said the Moon after starting with Basmalah and Salaam. "'The 'Awadh,' anglicised as Oudh, over which that autocratic monarch ruled was not merely, the shrivelled, circumscribed subdivision of a province which it is to-day, but it extended to the north to the borders of Nepal and Eastwards and Westwards and Southwards, far beyond the limits of the present United Provinces. But it is not for the magnificence and brilliancy of his Court that we remember this King: it is for his idiosyncracies, his vagaries, his puerilities, his extraordinary fondness for European attire and English people.It was an early summer morning when the second King of Oudh, Nasir-ud-Din Haider Shah, was walking in the cool of his garden. He stood for a while before the fountain and watched the morning sun bursting through the spray in vari-coloured tints. Through that veil of rainbow colours, he saw a shadow flit past from one evergreen shrub to another.What could it be ? A man, a murderer, a spy on his harem ? All these questioning thoughts, must have flashed through his mind, now surcharged with dark suspicions.'Come here, villain,' he called, 'come forth at once and explain how you lurk here.' The figure emerged quiveringly from behind the shrub. He was ragged and poorlydressed, with dishevelled hair and beard. Hardly had he approached within 20 paces of the King, when he prostrated himself on the ground muttering, 'O Roof of the World, Protector of the Poor, Worshipful Presence—mercy.''What brings you here, blackguard?' demanded the King. 'My brother is in your service, Your Majesty,' cried the prostrate man. 'He is Razzak, groom, and I came here to look for him and ask him to help me to get employment in Your Majesty’s stables. I am a stranger here and lost my way, never dreaming that I would insult Your Majesty’s eyes with the vision of so miserable a sight as myself.'The King realised that the man was perfectly honest, but always fond of a joke, dissembled anger and increased suspicion. 'Villain!' he cried, 'You lie! Murder is written in your face, and I take your presence to mean treason. You shall be put to death.At that moment, one of his servants, with consternation in his eye, approached the King. 'Bring me my pen and a scroll of paper. I shall write this man’s death warrant.''Mercy! Mercy!' cried the man, in broken accents of agony and apprehension. Immediately, the pen and paper were at hand. The King proceeded to write while his victim continued to writhe and cry in the acuteness of his suffering. 'Give this man a post on 5 rupees a month,' he wrote and rolling up the paper, with a grim smile, he handed it to his servant.'Give this,' he said to the servant, 'to the Royal guard and order them to send this man immediately, under escort, to the Prime Minister who will carry out my orders at once.' The prostrate man, still pleading for mercy, was immediately conveyed from the scene, and hardly had he gone, when the King was convulsed with laughter.The Prime Minister at that time was Nawab Mir Fari-i-Ali Khan. He was unable to reconcile the pitiful cries of the supposedly condemned man with the terms of the order he had received. So, he wrote a note on the scroll explaining the circumstances to the King and asking if there was some mistake about it.The King, on receipt of the enquiry, merely passed a line through the Prime Minister’s remarks and added a dot after the figure '5' in his order, which made it read in the vernacular, '50 rupees.'The Prime Minister was still more confused on receipt of this and thinking that someone was befooling him, wrote back again by a special and trusted messenger of his own, asking the King, whether these were his orders. Again, the King passed a line through his remarks and added another dot to his order. "Give this man a post on 500 rupees a month” was what the order now read. Dumb-founded, Nawab Mir Fazal-i-Ali Khan hastened to the Palace himself and explained to the King, that if there was no mistake and the order was meant to be carried out to the letter, the Royal coffers were so empty that this would be increasing the strain upon it, for the sake of an employee who would be worthless in any capacity.'Nawab Sahib,' replied the King, "You are right. There is a mistake. Give me the parwana (order).’' Taking the scroll, he chuckled to himself and added yet another dot after the previous figure making it read '5,000 rupees a month.''The mistake is now rectified,' he said. The Prime Minister bowed in obeisance and was departing, when the King added, 'Now, convey my order to the man and send him to me.'The Prime Minister obeyed the Royal command and soon the ragged man stood before him, as in a dream, unable to understand what would be the end of these developments, unable to realise what the real object of the King was. 'Release him,' said the King to the guard, and the shackles which bound him were removed. Then, turning to the released prisoner, the King said, 'Your thanks ate due to the Vazir (Prime Minister) for your promotion from 5 rupees to 5,000 rupees a month. Go now, and when the Court opens to-day, you will be created a Nawab.'The surprised man salaamed deeply and was on the point of backing away from the Royal presence, when suddenly, the King turned and spoke again. 'But wait; you cannot go like that! It would be a disgrace to the position you now hold.' He then sent a servant to have the man bathed and groomed and ordered that some of his own clothes should be put on him.In half-an-hour, the stranger was present before His Majesty, apparelled in garments of the richest brocade. 'Now,' said the King, 'you may go.' And then, again, he checked the stranger.'But wait; you cannot walk in the streets like that! It would be a disgrace to the position yon hold.' Immediately, he ordered that a troop of Cavalry should be given him as a guard of honour, a retinue of 30 servants for personal attendance and 20 elephants, gaily caparisoned, to convey the new dignitary and his staff to the Palace vacated by the previous Prime Minister and now assigned to this new power in the land.And so, the gorgeous procession proceeded on its triumphal march. An hour later, it retraced its footsteps to the Court, where, in Royal State a new Nawab was created and a new star scintillated—for a while—on the Mogul horizon.What has been told before, is not as beautiful as what was told later. Many people, not as beautiful as their original color. In a terrible June night, the seven corpses found in a room measuring 10 ft x 10 ft, with no ventilation, the door to be chained from outside, were buried in the same grave outside the Palace gates. They were they girls of ages ranging from 11 to 17 years; but what of that? There ware many others like them in the Royal Court of King Nasir-ud-din Haider.A weak mind like that of the King, haunted by suspicion at every turn, influenced by every soothsayer and adviser, and in many cases, by his Prime Ministers, was enough to sway him. On a whisper Raushan-ud-daula, one of his Prime Minister, slandering the king's step-mother, Badshah Begum. The King believed the crafty Raushan-ud-daula and flying into a rage, consigned a leather quilt, given by the Begum as a gift, to the flames.The Begum was both distressed and alarmed to hear of the fate with which her gift had met and wondered what the King’s next move would be. Lest he should attack her again with his Army, she started recruiting a force of her own. In a few days, she had collected nearly nine thousand soldiers around her.On hearing this, the Resident of the East India, alarmed, and to avoid further bloodshed, asked the Begum to disband her Army. The Begum, however, replied that she only retained them for self-protection; but the Resident insisted, and even employment would be paid from the Royal Exchequer. The Resident then wrote to the King saying that he had settled the matter and that the King should pay a sum of 15,000 rupees a month to his step-mother as a maintenance allowance and also two lacs in’a lump sum to her Army, which would be disbanded immediately.The Resident’s letter reached the King that evening, and he issued directions to the Prime Minister, to put up a payment order before him the following morning for his signature, authorising the withdrawal of the money from the State coffers.Dawn broke: the King lay motionless in his bed : the curtains were drawn: the King was dead. And courtiers in hushed voices, whispered the word 'poison’ to each other in the fax comers of the death chamber. Thus, passed King Nasir-ud-din Haider at the early age of 35."Soon, the sun will arise, before she go, the Moon said, "And the mighty power fell. Whatever it is, no matter how strong, there will always be one after another, just like a night turns into a day, everything has its time.Shakespeare might have been peering into these scenes of fallen glory when he wrote those memorable lines;And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind.And Allah knows best."
Citations & Reference:
- L.H. Niblett, India in Fable, Verse and Story, Thacker & Co
