East Did
Meet West
By Dr. Rizwana Rahim
TCCI, Chicago, IL
Kipling presented it as some
kind of an inevitability, but “the twain”
– ‘East’ and ‘West’
– have ‘met’ since, in more
ways and places than one, as ‘they’
had been doing for over three centuries before
he wrote the opening lines of ‘The Ballad
of East and West’ (1899): “East is
East and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet / Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s
great Judgment Sea.”
He was speaking for ‘the West’ in
general, but even if he had used his ‘poetic
license’ for the colonial Britain, he’d
still be wrong. Kipling, “a man of permanent
contradictions” who also wrote the controversial
‘The White Man’s Burden’ in
the same year as the above ‘Ballad’,
was himself bi-cultural: born (Joseph Rudyard
K.) in Bombay where his father taught (in JeeJeebhoy
School of Art), he spent his early childhood in
India under the care of an ayah, then was shipped
to boarding schools in England, only to return
to India in 1882 to work as a journalist. Interestingly,
he ‘The Ballad’ published under his
pseudonym “Yussuf” -- for ‘Joseph’,
Kipling’s real given name. Though ridiculed
for his jingoistic imperialism, “Time,”
W. H. Auden thinks, “has pardoned Kipling
and his views.”
The mixing of East and West or ‘crossing-over’
actually began some 12 years after Vasco da Gama’s
three ships arrived in Calicut. The Portuguese
took over Goa in 1510 -- a good 15 years before
the Mughals entered India from the north. After
conquering Goa, it seems, a Portuguese commander,
Afonso de Albuquerque, ordered his soldiers to
marry Muslim widows of men killed by his army.
He even attended many weddings and gave dowries
etc to the women (“fair Mooresses of pleasing
appearance”). Although the women were later
converted to Christianity, the coming generations
in the next few decades reverted back to the Indian
ways, and at the time of Portuguese Inquisition
(1560), Goa looked more like Delhi than Lisbon.
Few accounts illustrate this East-West ‘cross-over’
(the British ‘going native’) better
than a recent book “The White Mughals: Love
and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India”
by William Dalrymple.* This intricate, multi-layered
saga is basically about Khair-unnisa (then about
16) and Major James Achilles Kirkpatrick (34),
their ill-starred liaison, marriage in 1800 and
children (two), and their rather strange time
together and apart -- all amid considerable intrigue
and politics, and a dizzying number of people
from both the ‘East’ and the ‘West.
Khair-unnisa was one of the two daughters of Sharaf-unnisa
and Mehdi Yar Jung, and a grand-daughter of Baqar
Ali Khan (‘Akil-ud-Dowlah’) of the
Shustari family of Hyderabad (India), with aristocratic
lineage and deep political roots in Hyderabad;
James, the young British Resident, or effectively
an Ambassador of East India Company (1798-1805)
at the Court of Nizam of Hyderabad (Nawab Mir
Nizam Ali Khan, Asafjah II).
Set in the late 18th century Hyderabad during
the British East India Company period, most of
this wrenchingly convoluted story that begins
in Hyderabad unfolds not just there alone but
also in places like Calcutta (headquarters of
Company’s Governor-General), Masulipatnam
(Machlipatnam), and in England. This saga can
be broadly divided into at least four parts: Khair-unnisa’s
liaison and life with James; her life after James;
their family and other related accounts after
their deaths; and the author’s own research
for the book (which in itself is quite a story).
Quite apart from this is a rich ‘dramatis
personae’ of many Hyderabadi and British
notables of the times, and description of locales
only those familiar with Hyderabad would know.
James Achilles Kirkpatrick was born in Madras
(August 1764), the younger child of Col. James
Kirkpatrick (“the Handsome Colonel”)
who was with Madras Cavalry of the Company and
Katherine Munro (daughter of the founder of the
Madras hospital, Dr. Andrew Munro). They returned
to England two years later. In 1798, when James
was about 34, he was appointed as the Resident
in Hyderabad, an immediate successor to his own
older half-brother, William. Not too long thereafter,
the new Resident adopted the ‘dress, customs
and religions’ of India (“White Mughals”),
or went ‘native’ -- not all that uncommon
for the British or the Westerners in general!
James was also known around Hyderabad as ‘Hashmut
Jung Nawab Fakhr-ud-Dowlah Bahadur’, the
title he had received from the Nizam.
In those pre-Victorian British East India Company
days (1790s and earlier), Dalrymple notes, “wearing
Indian costumes, marrying Indian wives and living
a hybrid Anglo-Mughal life style, had always been
more popular, and the transformations more dramatic,
in these great centers of Mughal cultures [Hyderabad,
Lucknow and Udaipur] than they were in the insular
world of Presidency towns [Madras, Bombay, Calcutta].”
He introduces quite a few of these so-called “White
Mughals” in the book, and their lives in
India. Hyderabad’s Asafjahi/Nizam culture
of harems, multiple wives was part of the general
decadence of that period in Mughal India, or ‘native
immorality’ as the British used to call
it, even though some of the British did also splurge
in it. The state of affairs in the 18th century
England wasn’t all that different: There,
in those days, “as many as a third of all
births were illegitimate,” according to
‘Bastardry and its Comparative History (Peter
Laslett, Ed., 1980)’ which Dalrymple quotes.
James had already heard about the beauty of Khair-unnisa
before he was invited to ‘meet’ her
across the traditional purdah, during the wedding
ceremony of Khair’s older sister, Nazir-unnisa.
They developed an interest in each other soon
thereafter, and ‘met’ some more, apparently
facilitated by her mother and other family members.
Before too long, their liaison was a public knowledge,
with many attendant rumors. Eventually, they get
married under strict security because, first,
Khair was too visibly pregnant and, second, James
had reportedly converted to Islam before marriage
but he didn’t want to publicize it or this
marriage (fear of repercussions from his employers).
In the next two years, they had two children.
James himself recorded their births this way:
“born to me in the City of Hyderabad. His
Mother from a Dream she had, wishes Him to be
named Meer Goolam Ali, to which I mean to add
that of Saheb Aallum [Lord of the World”,
born at about 4 AM on Wednesday, 4 March 1801,
10th Shuwaul AH 1215; and Noor-oon Nisa, ‘Saheb
Begum’, born between 8-9 AM on Friday, 9
April 1802, 5th Zehidge [sic] AH 1216 in “my
House at The Residency (Hyderabad).”
The story isn’t all fairy-tale romantic,
simple or straightforward! When James and Khair
‘met’, Khair was already engaged to
Mohammed Ali Khan (son of Bahram ul-Mulk); the
match was arranged by her grandfather but wasn’t
acceptable to Khair’s mother, and she wanted
a way out for the daughter. Because of this, James
and people on his side thought that it probably
was a setup to seduce him, facilitated by Khair’s
mother and others, but Khair’s own feelings
of love expressed to James himself were genuine
and unquestionable (as were James’ own toward
her). Khair had also threatened suicide if she
lost James. It didn’t matter much at the
time that James already had a son with another
Indian woman (perhaps a Telugu). The marriage
had the official Hyderabad blessing: At the ceremony,
the Nizam himself acted on behalf of his “son”
James, and the Nizam’s Minister, Aristu
Jah Azim-ul-Omrah (‘Solomon’ to Kirkpatrick
brothers), in place of Khair’s deceased
father.
Khair first lived in her mother’s ‘deorhi’
in the old city near Charminar till the first
one was born. And, then, James, while still denying
this liaison to the Company in Calcutta, brought
her into Residency complex and put Khair, the
infant and Khair’s mother up in the not-too-spacious
zenana of the Residency itself. Then, for Khair-unnisa,
he began the construction of ‘Rang Mahal’
in the Residency gardens -- later described as
an elegant architectural specimen of rare quality.
However, a later Resident who thought it was as
a specimen of ‘native immorality’
destroyed it (1860). Now all that remains of it
is the gatehouse and “some fragments of
the interior including what appears to be Khair’s
‘kabooter khana’, or pigeon house,
an area in the Residency complex still known as
‘the Begum’s Garden’.
East India Co was investigating not only Jamess
liaison, but his other actives also: His ‘going
native’, his conversion to Islam, close
association with the Nizam and the city itself,
his faithfulness to the Company, and even the
possibility of him being a ‘double agent’.
Feeling harassed, he began devoting more time
to his family life and his other interests: gardening,
agriculture, real-estate, and construction projects.
It was also the beginning of the end of the laissez-faire
attitude of the British East India Company toward
their employees involved in such decadence and
morally questionable affairs. Since becoming Governor-General
(1797), Lord Wellesley had insisted upon strict
imperialistic approach toward the Indians; he
detested the ‘White Mughals’ culture,
particularly James’ behavior, from the reports
furnished to him by James’ enemies.
Even though James survived Wellesley investigations,
it was the Wellesley’s imperialistic approach
of cultural separation that took hold and persisted
till the British left India in 1947. However,
what helped James survive them was his extraordinary
service to the Company (the favorable deals he
obtained for the Company, his extraordinary insight
into the Mughal culture in general and of Hyderabad
in particular, and his personal relationship with
the Nizam) and support from his brother, William,
and others. But it was not without a heavy price:
his health, his family, his happiness, all suffered
badly.
James had planned, as was the custom with the
British in India, to send his kids to England
for education and training. Khair knew that once
they go she may not see them again, or for long.
As the children set sail for England in 1805 (under
the care of a group of four, including a Hyderabadi
ayah and a manservant), their Muslim names and
titles were replaced with Christian ones: ‘William
George Kirkpatrick’ and ‘Katherine
Aurora (‘Kitty’) Kirkpatrick’.
They were baptized in London and were known by
their Christian names for the rest of their lives.
They grew up in Kent, mostly in the care of their
grandfather, ‘Handsome Colonel’, with
occasional visits with their uncle, William, in
Exeter, but were prohibited from contacting their
mother or the Indian side of the family.
Neither James nor Khair did see them again. James
was invited to see Cornwallis, who had replaced
Wellesley in Calcutta. Despite ill health, he
took the arduous journey via Madras, but he reached
after Cornwallis (on his second term in India)
had died. James’ condition worsened after
this needless travel. He ended up in the house
of his niece, Barbara Isabella, wife of Charles
Buller, MP, and a daughter of his half-brother,
William. There, sensing his end was near, he wrote
his will, and died literally among strangers on
15 October, 1805 (age 41), and was buried the
same day in the Park Street Cemetery, with hurried
but full military honors.
This is how Dalrymple describes the condition
those days: “As the saying went, two monsoons
was the average life-span of a European in Bengal;
one year, out a total European population of 1200,
over a third died between August and the end of
December. Every year at the end of the monsoon
in October, the survivors used to hold thanksgiving
banquets to celebrate their deliverance.”
He even quotes from the 1826 diary of a newly
arrived Company wife: “Here people die one
day and are buried the next. Their furniture is
sold the third. They are forgotten the fourth….”
The news reached Hyderabad 18 days later. Just
out of her teens, Khair-unnisa was already a widow,
her husband buried in Calcutta and her children
away in England. But this sad sage doesn’t
end there.
[* “The White Mughals: Love and Betrayal
in Eighteenth Century India” by William
Dalrymple (ISBN: 0-670-03184-4, hardcover; 0 14
20.0412 X, paperback)] (To be continued)
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