The Nocturnal Court: The Life of a Prince of Hyderabad

The Nocturnal Court: The Life of a Prince of Hyderabad by Sidq Jaisi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book is a serendipitous offshoot of research for the author’s other book “Memoirs of a City”, or so he claims. Serendipity or not, this is a wonderful book.

Narendra Luther does history aficionados a favour by translating Sidq Jaisi’s memoir of his life and times in Hyderabad written in Urdu into English. Sidq Jaisi’s reminiscences lie at the intersection of history and literature and offer a glimpse of the high-culture of the Nizams during their twilight years.

Luther draws parallels between the decadence of the Lucknow court in Wajid Ali Shah’s era and Prince Muazzam Jah’s revelries in his Hill Fort residence in a delightful introduction to the translated work (Pages. xix - lx). He remarks that there is no other account of the Hyderabad court and therein lies the book’s significance (p. xxii).

Sidq Jaisi’s seemingly personal memoirs throw light on the ideas of work, time and what it meant to be a gentleman in Hyderabad in the 1930s. For instance the ‘mushairas’ or sittings in the Prince’s court were where one had the luxury to “waste” time. Work was not gentlemanly and leisure was the sport to be indulged in. Time was squandered and the ultimate barometer of style and sophistication was to not hurry but to work things out at leisure (P.7).

Half way through the book, I felt absolutely helpless and despondent as I read about the sheltered lifestyle of Prince Muazzam Jah, completely impervious to the forces of change overwriting the destinies of aristocratic and feudal orders in the twenty years before India’s independence in 1947.

In the introductory chapter Narendra Luther discusses the tensions between the son (Prince Muazzam Jah) and the father (Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan). As one reads Sidq’s memoir one can’t help but feel the difference of temperaments between an extravagantly rich Mir Osman Ali Khan indifferent to this wealth, abstemious in his personal life but grandly generous in his public contributions and Prince Muazzam Jah, wallowing in decadence buttressed by his coterie of obsequious sycophants. The differences between the father and son extended to politics too. Apparently, Prince Muazzam Jah wrote to his father insisting on the merger of Hyderabad with India (P. li).

Sidq Jaisi remarks: “The book is a mirror in which the ruler and his ministers, the nobles and the notables are reflected in their true colours. Nobody is unduly praised, but neither is anyone spared” (P. lxi). True to his words, Jaisi portrays the typical courtier at the Prince’s court, through the characters Ummak Jung and Dhimmauk Jung: Obsequious sycophants buttressing the artificial cocoon of the Prince’s existence while the country kept pace with grand historical changes. Despite Jaisi’s praise for the refinement of the Prince (P.13), I could not reconcile this ‘refinement’ with the heights of sycophancy of the courtiers and the Prince’s (deliberate?) ignorance.

Jaisi describes his two initial nights in the Prince’s nocturnal court in the year 1936. He observes: “The principal function of a courtier was to ensure that the Prince never felt bored or become melancholy. It was not an easy job (P.23).” He adds, “Honorary courtiership implied that no financial benefit was expected from the Prince (P.34).” They had the additional responsibility to shadow the Prince in all his waking hours. Jaisi in his essential humorous style remarks: “I prayed to God to save me from such proximity (to the Prince) (P.17).”

Despite the veneer of sophistication and opulence, Hyderabad was hollowing out at its core. The degeneracy was a reflection of the society at that time, rankled by feudalism and illiteracy. Employment at the royal court was a definite means of income. Sidq Jaisi portrays this in touching words:
“The worth of his (Prince Muazzam Jah’s) courtiers was judged by their ability to indulge in obscenities. He used to abuse others and exulted in being abused in turn. The sort of things uttered in his court are too disgraceful to be mentioned. The tragedy of the degenerate nobility of the Deccan was encapsulated in the fact that the goons who shared his company and his cup were spinning around in cars while men of letters like Fani and Yagna Changezi were living in misery (P.32).”

If the Prince’s court was such a den of debauchery and decadency why did men of letters such as Fani and Jaisi want to be admitted into it? Jaisi’s memoir reads like a treatise on human frailities. He remarks, everyone in the Prince’s court were seduced by the richness and the company of the nobility. They wanted to be part of this high society. But they forgot that this “Society requires wealth and ease of circumstances and he (they) did not have them (P.5).”

This book is a must read for all who love Hyderabad. For those who critique the virtues of the present democracy, this book serves as a caveat that behind the splendour of the nostalgic past lie shadows of excess and misery. One has to learn from the past and let it go but cannot revisit it.






View all my reviews

"Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth" by Audrey Truschke

Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth by Audrey Truschke

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


In this book Audrey Truschke takes up the challenge of addressing one of the most controversial figures of Indian history. The book should be read in the spirit it was written- as a "preliminary" engagement/exploration of alternative understandings about Aurangzeb. A historian’s task to this extent is doubly challenging: identifying the source material and putting aside one’s predispositions and prejudices in the task of interpreting the sources. Truschke claims she has stepped forward from earlier research (read Jadunath Sarkar’s) on Aurangzeb in this regard.

The author attempts to understand Aurangzeb’s core values and how they informed his rule as an emperor. She claims that Aurangzeb wanted “to be a just king, a good Muslim and a sustainer of Mughal culture.” She condones Aurangzeb’s use of violent tactics to continue his plans of an expansionist state. In her words: “But the question before us is not whether Aurangzeb was a just king. Rather I want to know what Aurangzeb thought it meant to be a just Mughal king, and how that shaped is world views and actions as emperor of Hindustan” (P.13).

However, at a few points in the book, it is hard to reconcile the author’s benign reading of Aurangzeb with her own evidence. The narrative construct seems repetitive and thin. The reader is left unconvinced. For instance, the author claims Aurangzeb extended state security to Hindu and Jain temples more often than he demolished them. Aurangzeb authorized targeted temple destructions and desecrations throughout his rule (PP 100-101). Though, Aurangzeb issued an order in 1672 recalling all endowed land grants given to Hindus and reserved all such land grants for Muslims it was not strictly enforced, hence a second order was issued.

Truschke contends that: “If strictly enforced, this move would have been a significant blow to Hindu and Jain religious communities, but historical evidence suggests otherwise” (P.105). I feel the author widely misses the point that policy stance sets the tone for public culture. Policy initiatives especially in those times cannot be taken lightly. The empire existed to please the emperor. In the absence of appropriate checks and balances in that time and day the emperor’s inclinations would have directed and shaped political culture of the public.

The idea that Aurangzeb’s religious ideas were puritanical and that he was “pious” than his predecessors is contested in the book. I wish the author would have delved deeper into the tenuous relation between religion and politics. That the Mughal emperors and even the kings of the Delhi Sultanate in the earlier centuries strived to win over the religious leaders to legitimize their authority has been explored elsewhere. It is this nuance that might have been explored in the book. For all his ‘piety’ and stance on morality I feel Aurangzeb was not far from his predecessors in craving approval from the Ulema and privileging the role of religion in real politick. Rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and early Mughal emperors were aware that they might have won over the land but the popular will and sympathies lied with the Sufi masters who were the real Kings ruling the hearts of the people.

I would have liked to read more about Aurangzeb’s contentious relation with the Sufis of Delhi and the Deccan. The author does have a good point that Aurangzeb’s piety might have been a performance for himself (to redeem himself from guilt for his past actions) and for others (to gain credibility). The conflicting personalities of Aurangzeb are laid out in Chapters 4 and 5.
I wish the author would have engaged more on Aurangzeb’s lack of an enduring legacy. Had he consolidated his victories and built a bureaucratic apparatus to implement his idea of justice, history would have remembered him as fair and impartial and not as a vindictive, impulsive emperor meting out retributive justice.

We need more scholars like Truschke to challenge received understanding but we also need rigorous scholarship that moves beyond conjecture and thin evidence.







View all my reviews