The life and travails of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, who inherited a fortune but not a kingdom, and how he lost it all
By Dilip Bobb
THE LAST NIZAM By John Zubrzycki Picador India
Price: Rs 395 Pages: 375
You could call it the William Dalrymple school of writing. Like The Last Mughal, which retraced the desecration and demise of an emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, his dynasty, a city and a civilisation, John Zubrzycki does much the same with the Nizams of Hyderabad, mixing a historian's perspective, a scholar's research and a journalist's flair for language to chart the rise and fall of a dynasty and the fairy tale splendour that was Hyderabad. The Last Nizam refers to Mukarram Jah, the tragic-comic figure who is the surviving heir to what was once the greatest fortune in all of India. Like Dalrymple, Zubrzycki was a journalist based in India and has transformed his fascination for the fabulous lifestyle of Indian emperors and Maharajas into a book that sexes up history without straying too far from the truth. While much of this volume charts the rise of the Nizams to extreme wealth and debauchery under the Mughals and later, the British, it is really the Australian connection that adds weight to this account. The author is a senior editor with The Australian and Mukarram Jah spent many years running a half-a-million acre sheep and cattle farm in the Aussie outback, the size of a small country. While most Indians know Jah from his visits to India with his Turkish wife to fight the complicated legal battles over his inheritance, the palaces, the incredible collection of jewellery-the most valuable in the world-including the famed Jacob and Golconda diamonds, and other property, he spent most of his time driving tractors and bulldozers in the sheep farm where his extravagant lifestyle and his then wife's sexual scandals created a sensation in the Australian press.
PICTURE SPEAK
LEGAL TIES: Jah with two of his progeny in front of the Hyderabad palace
In India, despite the legal complications, the hundreds of claimants to the seventh Nizam's fortune, including his many wives, concubines and their children, Jah had already inherited considerable wealth if not a kingdom-he was the grandson of Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam, who had anointed him as legal heir rather than his debauched, profligate son. Jah was also grandson by marriage to the last Caliph of Islam, hence the Turkish connection. Osman Ali died in 1967 but the incredible fortune he had amassed, greater than all of India's princely states put together, was mostly tied up in a welter of litigation, Andhra Pradesh politics, family intrigue, a web of financial trusts and the Indian Government's objections to the historic collection of jewellery being exported out of the country.
Jah's life and times as heir to a non-existent kingdom and his battle for the inheritance is the most fascinating part of this book. The author traces his relationship with his grandfather, whose wealth and eccentricities were the stuff of legend, his early years in Doon School, Harrow, Cambridge, Sandhurst and the fabled legacy, including the fabulous collection of jewels, 14,718 palace staff, 42 concubines and their offspring, 60 cars and the palace complex itself. The author also digs up Jah's little-known relationship with Nehru, who brought him from Hyderabad to work as his aide. Jah now lives like a recluse in Istanbul with occasional trips to India to oversee the upkeep of the decaying palace but his life and times is a story worth telling and Zubrzycki tells it exceedingly well.
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THE LAST NIZAM
