Khair-un-Nissa -The white Mughals

 

Khair-un-Nissa -The white Mughals

                                            

Khair- un -Nissa

      Before the War of Independence in 1857, after which India became part of the British Empire, many British men working for the East India Company, who had come to India to make their fortune, got married to local women and settled down to raise families . the romance between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad and his Muslim wife Khair-u-Nissa Begum for whom he converted to Islam .

      James Achilles Kirkpatrick was a bit of a hybrid Brit, born at Fort St. George, Madras in 1764 but sent back to Britain where he attended Eton College. To make his name and his fortune, the ambitious young man returned as a “cocky young imperialist intending to conquer India” by working for the British East India Company and became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Company’s Army. His colourful and unusual story is told by William Dalrymple in his entertaining history book The White Mughals, which many of you may have read .

     Nizam-ul-Mulk Nawab Mir Nizam Ali Khan Siddiqi Bayafandi Bahadur Asaf Jah II reigned Hyderabad from 1762 to 1803; he belonged to the Asaf Jah dynasty founded by Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiq, a Mughal appointed Viceroy of the Deccan. When Mughal control collapsed after Shehnshah Aurungzeb’s death in 1707, Asaf Jah declared himself independent and in control of Hyderabad in 1724 . The Nizam lost all the major battles that he fought against the fierce Marathas . The East India Company meanwhile was fighting against Hyder Ali and later his son Tipu Sultan in Mysore who were supported by the French. Four Anglo-Mysore Wars were fought to establish the Company’s control over this region . During the First Anglo-Mysore War (1767–69) the British convinced the Nizam to attack Hyder Ali, but the Nizam changed sides at the last moment and supported the Sultan. When Hyder Ali attacked Madras, the British convinced the Nizam to sign a new treaty with them in 1768 to maintain the balance of power: the British, Marathas and Hyderabadis on one side and Mysore on the other .

                                            

       James was initially appointed as the translator at the Nizam’s court during his elder brother William Kirkpatrick’s tenure as the Company’s Resident (ambassador) in Hyderabad. In 1795, savvy and skilled at diplomacy, at only 33 years of age, he replaced his brother as the Resident. Said to be a good looking and charming young diplomat, he was responsible as the East India Company’s Resident in Hyderabad for nurturing relations with the State’s rulers and keep them on the side of the British . Taking his diplomatic tasks very seriously, he fluently conversed in Persian, Hindustani, Tamil and Telegu and immersed himself in Hyderabadi Indo-Persian culture . In 1799, James was depicted in “Hindostanny dress,” draped with long ropes of pearls, and with khussas on his feet. James smoked hukkahs, chewed paan, attended mujras and even had a zenana, living the life of a veritable White Mughal. He fathered many children with various local women that he kept there, just like the Hyderabadi elite. “Thanks partly to these women,” wrote a contemporary Hyderabadi historian, “he was always very cheerful.”

               In 1798, Lord Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, later Marquess Wellesley, had been appointed as Governor-General of India . Britain’s main rival was France .

       Not only did Khair-u-Nissa belong to the ruling family, but she was also a Sayyida, a descendant of the Prophet, and of Persian descent. If he wanted to be with her, he would have to marry her and for that he would have to first convert and become a Shia Muslim . Kirkpatrick met all the conditions plus the Nizam made him his adopted son. The couple was duly married in a nikkah ceremony. Kirkpatrick was elevated to the ranks of Hyderabadi nobility. The couple became known in Hyderabadi circles as Sahib Begum and Sahib Allum (The Little Lord of the World, and the Lady of High Lineage) .

                                         

          James built a separate zenana in the Residency compound for Khair-u-Nissa who still observed purdah . The good looking couple had two children:  a son, Mir Ghulam Ali Sahib Allum, and a daughter, Noor-un-Nissa Sahib Begum. The leading artist of the British community in India, George Chinnery, painted a portrait of the siblings in Madras in 1805 that is regarded as one of the masterpieces of British paintings in India. Shortly after the marriage in as early 1801, a major scandal broke out in Calcutta over the nature of Kirkpatrick’s role at the Hyderabad court.

      Rumours started to float about Kirkpatrick’s interracial liaison. There was a steady stream of reports that he had “connected himself with a female” of one of Hyderabad’s leading noble families. The girl had become pregnant and given birth to his child. The girl’s grandfather was understandably livid and had ‘expressed an indignation approaching to frenzy at the indignity offered to the honour of his family by such proceedings, and had declared his intention of proceeding to the Mecca Masjid (the principal mosque of the city)” where he threatened to raise the Muslims of the Deccan against the British. Worse, Kirkpatrick had formally married the girl, by converting not just in name but in deed and had become a practising Shi’a Muslim.

                                

Governor General Wellesley was not kindly disposed to Kirkpatrick’s relationship with the Nizam. Wellesley was responsible for welding British India into an integral entity and the process necessarily involved gaining ascendancy and control over the Indian Kingdoms, or Princely States as the British had begun to dismissively referring to them. Wellesley, having decided to dismiss Kirkpatrick, summoned him to Calcutta.

         The authorities in Bengal started questioning Kirkpatrick to determine whether his political loyalties could still be depended on or had he in fact become a double-agent.

Upon questioning, James at first denied his marriage with Khair un-Nissa, but upon the Company’s further investigation into the matter he confessed that he had married her in an Islamic ceremony. He was summarily dismissed and as a punishment for his religious conversion it was decided that his two Anglo-Indian children would be taken away from the parents and sent to Britain to be raised as Christians . A tearful Khair-un-Nissa had secured a settlement of £10,000 each on five year old William and three year old Kitty, a substantial sum at the time. When they were taken from their parents, the children spoke little or no English only Urdu, the language of their mother .

        James, perhaps already perhaps terminally ill, died of a fever in 1805 in Calcutta shortly after his kids were shipped off. “He had lasted longer than the proverbial two monsoons allowed to the British in the India of those days but still died young, aged 41 .

                                    

   Khair-u-Nissa heard of his death 18 days later. In his will, Kirkpatrick stated: “the excellent and respectable Mother of my two children for whom I feel unbounded love and affection and esteem.”

“Dalrymple describes George Chinnery’s painting of the Anglo-Indian Kirpatrick siblings: “Two of them in their Hyderabadi court dress, standing at the top of a flight of steps…. Sahib Allum – an exceptionally beautiful, poised, dark-eyed child – wears a scarlet jama trimmed with gilt brocade, and a matching gilt cummerbund; he has a glittering topi on his head and crescent-toed slippers. Round his neck hangs a string of enormous pearls. His little sister, who is standing one step from Sahib Alum, and has her arm around her big brother’s shoulders, is discernibly fairer-skinned, and below her topi is a hint of the red hair that would be much admired in the years to come. Yet while Sahib Alum looks directly at the viewer with an almost precocious confidence and assurance, Sahib Begum looks down with an expression of infinite sadness and vulnerability on her face, her little eyes dark and swollen with crying.”

                                

                                            Khair-un- Nissa childern

         Without her children and her husband, Khair-un-Nissa turned for protection to Kirkpatrick’s assistant Henry Russell who replaced him as the Resident in Hyderabad. After spending a few years with the widow, Russell tired of her and married a younger half-Portuguese heiress he had met in Madras. Hyderabad aristocracy hadn’t approved of  Khair-un-Nissa’s suspected liaison and banished to the coastal town of Masulipatam for a while. She died heartbroken at the young age of 27 in 1813 .

                                

                                       Khair-un Nisha tomb

           Our story doesn’t end there. We follow the children to England where they had been sent to live with their grandfather Colonel James Kirkpatrick at his London residence and country estate in Keston, Kent. Upon arriving in London, they were baptised at St. Mary’s Church, Marylebone Road, and christened as William George Kirkpatrick and Katherine Aurora “Kitty” Kirkpatrick. Henceforth, they became Evangelical Christians and never again saw India or any members of their maternal family .

  Thank You for read

Best wishes from

                  

Suvendu Singha ( India , Odisha , baleswar , Jaleswar)

 

.