Goodreads

 

East Did Meet West - 2
By Dr Rizwana Rahim
Chicago, IL

A widow before she was even 21, her late husband (James A. Kirkpatrick, the East India Company Resident at the Nizam’s court in Hyderabad) buried a thousand miles away in Calcutta, her children in England and incommunicado because their British grandfather forbade them from contacting their mother or her family, and no prospect of them returning to even see her. But there’s more for her in store.

Pursuing the people around her, Dalrymple found more about Khair, quite by accident, in the papers of Henry Russell, kept in Bodleian Library of Oxford. Russell was a private secretary and a loyal assistant to James at the Hyderabad Residency, and because of this trust, James had designated him as an executor of his will. In this capacity, Russell dealt with and arranged a lot of personal and property matters of Khair-unnisa.

In May 1806, Khair and her mother traveled with an entourage to Calcutta to visit James’ grave. There, with the help of Russell who was there on his other business, they rented a house in Chowringhee District. After weeks’ of her visits to James’ grave and with support from some of her family and friends she slowly emerged out of months’ of mourning to face the world again. James’ niece, Isabella, in whose house James had died, was already there to console her. Then came to her side James’ old friend and another ‘White Mughal’, General William Palmer (Resident at Poona until he was sacked by Wellesley), and his wife, Fyze Baksh (‘Sahib Begum’), daughter of a Persian Colonel in the service of Nawabs of Oudh. Fyze was Khair’s best friend.

As close friends, the Palmers and the Kirkpatricks also helped each other in various ways. An interesting aside involves one of several children of Fyze and William Palmer: Captain William Palmer, for whom James had found a job in the Nizam’s service, was one of James’ biggest supporters; he was the one (writing under a pen-name ‘Philothetes’) who blasted Governor General Wellesley for treating James shabbily. Despite Wellesley’s demands that James hunt the anonymous employee out for insubordination, James refused. William (son) later became a successful businessman and a powerful Hyderabad banker, supported Fyze after his father’s death, but then he went bankrupt. [Another aside: Fyze’s sister Nur was married to another ‘White Mughal’, a Frenchman, General Benoit de Boigne].

It’s here that Khair, coming out of her mourning, finds refuge in Russell’s arms, and thus begins her another disastrous relationship. Henry Russell was no James Kirkpatrick. Yet, in some ways he was (another ‘White Mughal’ with more than one affair), but things had changed in Hyderabad, worse for Khair and her mother. After Aristu Jah’s death (1804), Mir Abul Qasim Mir Alam Bahadur had become the Minister, because of Wellesley’s support. Mir Alam was part of the old Shushtari family (first cousin of Khair’s grandfather, Baqar Ali Khan). He was also the person most responsible for conveying malicious rumors about Khair’s husband to Calcutta (which is why Wellesley forced him upon the Nizam, even though Nizam had earlier exiled Mir Alam in disgrace). To Mir Alam, Khair was a big smear on his family honor. Both Khair and her mother were vulnerable, and felt so and dreaded it. He had his new Diwan (Rajah Chandu Lal) confiscate the jagir (property) of Kair’s mother, Sharaf-unnisa. From Calcutta, where he was trying to get himself a new position, Russell tried to get the Diwan pay Khair from her jagir.

Russell wanted to bring Khair back to Hyderabad and had purchased a zenana next to his Residency bungalow. Russell had acted as Resident for a couple of months after James’ death, but the new Resident, Thomas Sydenham, was busy removing all traces of the ‘White Mughal’ culture in the Residency that James had created. Sydenham initially agreed to offer some protection to Khair against Mir Alam, as Russell had requested. But Russell’s personal involvement with Khair was an open secret, and the new Governor General Barlow, aware of how this may be taken in Hyderabad and how damaging it might be for Anglo-Indian relations, banned her from leaving Calcutta, which made Sydenham modify his pledge accordingly. Russell then successfully defended Khair’s right as a Hyderabadi citizen (under NO control of the Company or the Governor General), and got the orders reversed so that at least her party could leave Calcutta. Increasingly aware of the mounting opposition from Mir Alam and others to this Russell-Khair, Sydenham warned Russell that, once in Hyderabad, he will have to give up any plans of seeing her. The ever vengeful Mir Alam had already banished her from Hyderabad.

The Khair party (with Russell) left Calcutta, but Russell, instead of going direct to Hyderabad, found accommodation for Khair and her party in Masulipatnam (or Machlipatnam), which obviously was not Khair’s Hyderabad or its culture, and from there he went to Hyderabad alone. In Hyderabad Residency, Henry Russell had a younger brother, Charles, whom Henry had recruited to help him defuse the rumors (like Khair’s husband and Henry’s boss, James, did before with his older half-brother, William) and act as a secure, private communication link between him and Khair. Henry found reasons to be in Madras, and on his way, he initially made stops to see his “dear Khyroo” in Masulipatnam. In the meantime, in Madras, away from Hyderabad and the Mughal culture (and its rumors and scandals about him) and unbeknownst to Masulipatnam, he began moving in the British society, got involved with other women, an Anglo-Portuguese beauty, Jane Casamajor, in particular. Then, he sought Charles’ help to keep Khair in dark about this, as well as Russell’s children with another Hyderabadi woman. Khair was getting money from her estates that Russell had managed to arrange and, while in Masulipatnam, she remained at Russell’s beck and call (through his brother). Her mother, on the other hand, through appeals to Mir Alam family, was allowed to make a trip alone to Hyderabad on the occasion of Muharram, while Khair remained in Masulipatnam.

Khair had desperately wanted to have the portrait of her children that George Chinnery had made in Calcutta but hadn’t gotten from him. Henry Russell had his brother Charles write to their father, Henry Russell, sr, the Chief Justice, to help it retrieve it. For Khair, THAT was the only link to her children.
Over time, Charles’ reports to Khair about his brother Henry became more and more irregular. Finally, Henry asked Charles to break to Khair the news of his marriage (to Jane on 20 October 1808), which clearly shattered Khair’s highly fragile state of mind. Henry wasn’t destined for much happiness either; Jane died within 6 months of the marriage. Henry went back to England, only to return as the Resident to Poona (1809), and then a year later to his dream job, as the Resident at Hyderabad. In the meantime, Mir Alam had died of leprosy in 1808, which made it possible for Khair and her mother to return to Hyderabad. After that, there was NO contact between Henry and Khair, even though, there was some occasional contact between Sharafunnisa and the new Resident.

Then, in the summer of 1813, Lady Mary Hood from Scotland happened to be in Hyderabad, and wanted to meet some ‘Hyderabadi women of rank’. For that, Resident Henry Russell brought Khair-unnisa and Fyze Palmer to the Residency, where he did meet Khair herself, some five years after he had abandoned her. Khair returned to the Residency some eight years after she had kissed her own children off to England and saw her husband for the last time. Lady Hood was quite taken by Khair and impressed by her kindness in making a dress for her.

Toward the end of September, 1813, however, Khair wrote to her former lover for the first time in five years that she was dying. Henry did rise to the occasion and invited her to the Rang Mahal; she was returning to the place some eight years after she was widowed. Over the next two weeks there, she got weaker, and finally passed away on 22 September 1813 (on the same couch she had given birth to her daughter 11 years ago) -- with her best friend, Fyze Palmer, and her mother, holding her hands. She was buried next to her father in a family cemetery, and her funeral was attended by ‘every person of rank’ in Hyderabad. Sharaf-unnisa was inconsolable. Fyze was so moved by the loss of her best friend that she refused to see anyone for about a month.

In the final months, Khair and her mother had begged the children’s British guardians for their return, but there was no response. Finally, a letter with portraits of her children arrives in Hyderabad, in November 1813. Six weeks too late!

Dalrymple writes: “When she [Khair-unnisa] died – this fiery, passionate and beautiful woman—it was as much from a broken heart, from neglect and sorrow, as from any apparent physical cause.” Hard to believe, but Khair was “only 27” when she died (could actually have been 29), but she did live a remarkable life, in a remarkable era. An era that Dalrymple so patiently and richly documented in his book*!
Dalrymple then has more to say about Khair’s children and other people.
[* “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)]