Tag Archives: Kaukab Qudr Meerza

Covid-19: Wajid Ali Shah’s scion passes away

Kolkata, WEST BENGAL :

A file photo of Prince Anjum Qudr, Dr Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza and Prince Nayyar Qudr posing for a photo with Meerza’s daughter, Manzilat Fatima, at Imambara Sibtainabadin Metiabruz, Kolkata, sometime during 1985-1986

Kolkata / Lucknow :

Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza, the great-grandson of Awadh’s last monarch, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, and grandson of Nawab Birjis Quder, died of Covid-19 in Kolkata on Sunday afternoon, aged 87.

Considered an authority on Wajid Ali Shah’s literary and cultural contributions, he is survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters.

Meerza may be buried on Monday at the royal burial ground(Gulshanabad Imambara), about a kilometre from the Sibtainabad Imambarah in Metiabruz, where Wajid Ali Shah rests.

A popular figure in the billiards and snooker fraternity of  the country, Quder had graduated with honours in economics from St Xavier’s College in the same batch as Amartya Sen.  He studied political science and then a three-year law course.

Subsequently, he studied Urdu at CU, won a silver medal in 1962 and also earned a UGC Junior Fellowship for research on the “Literary & Cultural Contributions of Wajid Ali Shah” in the department of Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University. In 1967, he joined the department as a lecturer and earned a doctorate for his thesis.

Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza’s daughter, Talat Fatima, is now translating his book from Urdu to English. “His research was extremely rich. This book, published in the late 70s, has a compilation of some 42 works of Wajid Ali Shah. Some of them are in Persian,” she said, adding that her father preferred to be addressed as “Dr Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza” instead of using the title of a prince.

It was his academic interest in his forefather that had also got Satyajit Ray to get in touch with him during the making of “Shatranj ke Khilari”.

On Ray’s birth anniversary this year, his daughter, Manzilat , had tweeted: “There are a couple of letters that were exchanged between Bawa [her father] and Satyajit Ray during the making of Shatranj Ke Khilari.” On Sunday, she spoke about how Ray  had even visited their 11 Marsden Street residence that is popularly known as ‘House of Awadh’. “Ray could have gone to anyone else for information. But he chose to get in touch with my father. In fact, he had made many attempts to meet my father but the meeting never happened. Hence, it was through correspondence that he got the information regarding Wajid Ali Shah. I feel Ray had portrayed Wajid Ali Shah in the right light. Many often claim that Wajid Ali Shah had been exiled, but that isn’t true. He had left the kingdom of his own volition. I believe my father’s information helped him give authentic information about Wajid Ali Shah,” she said.

Quder was also a great connoisseur of food. A big photograph of him along with his two brothers hangs in the rooftop restaurant opened by his daughter. “He was happy when he saw how, in my capacity, I was upholding the family name. Awadhi food was already losing its identity. He was happy I was making the effort to popularize that food,” Manzilat said.

Incidentally, he was the chief referee of first World Snooker Championship held at the Great Eastern Hotel in Kolkata in 1963-64. He had remained the chief referee of the National Billiards & Snooker Championship till it left the Palm Court of the Great Eastern Hotel in the 70s .

“It was my father who coached me to play snooker and billiards. I became the first woman participant from India to play the games at the national level,” said Manzilat.

The rolling trophy of the IBSF World Snooker Championship, the MM Baig Trophy, was designed by him. In the 70s, he had also brought out a pioneering Billiards magazine, “The Baulkline”.

According to his son, Irfan Ali Mirza, “He was the founder-secretary of The Billiards & Snooker Federation of India, The West Bengal Billiards Association and The Uttar Pradesh Billiards & Snooker Association.

Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Peerless Hospital and a student of Meerza, describes his mentor’s demise as a “huge loss”. “A part of our cultural history is lost with his demise. He came with pneumonia and was admitted to the ICCU. Unfortunately, he passed away today afternoon due to Covid pneumonia. Jawaharlal Nehru had initiated the idea of the government of India bearing the expense of his education. He was my research guide while writing the book titled ‘Pearl by the River: Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s Kingdom in Exile’,” Mitra said

The Peerless Hospital CEO, said according to his research, he was “the last royal pension holder”. “In 1892, the British government had created a royal pension book where only the lineage of Birjish and his wife, Mahtab Ara Begum, who was the granddaughter of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last  Mughal Emperor of India, was recognized.

Birjish, who was the only son of Wajid Ali Shah and Begum Hazrat Mahal, was the eldest surviving son of Wajid Ali Shah when the latter died in 1887. That is why this lineage has been recognized for royal pension,” Mitra said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata / by Priyanka Dasgupta and Yusra Husain / TNN / September 14th, 2020

The Prince is Dead. Long Live The Legend

UTTAR PRADESH /  Kolkata, WEST BENGAL / NEW DELHI :

They are not the only one calling the Malcha Mahal prince an imposter. Many old families of Lucknow that have for long maintained their discernment for the Royal family concur.

King Wajhid Ali Shah in Matiaburj. (Image: News18)
King Wajhid Ali Shah in Matiaburj. (Image: News18)

New Delhi:

The Prince who died in Malcha Mahal was a pauper. Not just in the life he lived but also in the claims he made about his family lineage. At least that’s what the descendants of Wajid Ali Shah and Begum Hazrat Mahal, currently living in Kolkata, will have you believe in.

They are not the only one calling the Malcha Mahal prince an imposter. Many old families of Lucknow that have for long maintained their discernment for the Royal family concur.

Taken aback by the media reports which referred to one Ali Raza— who died in New Delhi’s 14th century’s Malcha Mahal— as Prince, the living members of the Royal Family of Oudh are trying to clear the air on Nawab’s lineage. 

“We want to assert our credibility as the real heirs to the title. We have in the past dealt with the menace of impersonation. My uncle also raised the issue with the government of Uttar Pradesh and the Prime Minister when the impersonator – the mother of the deceased ‘prince’ called Vilayat Mahal got an allotment in Malcha Mahal on the false claims of royalty,” said Manzilat Fatima from Kolkata, who is the “great, great grand-daughter of Wajid Ali Shah. She lives in Kolkata and spends her time working to “preserve Awadh cuisine”.

The Malcha Mahal, Fatima claims, was a Mughal hunting-house or shikargah given to Vilayat Mahal and her two children including the ‘ the dead Prince’ when the family arrived in Delhi after many a unsuccessful bid to claim the Nawab’s title in Lucknow.

The family spent days in the waiting-room of the New Delhi Railway Station before their petition to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for temporary accommodation in Delhi was acceded to by the government.

Fatima’s 89-year-old father, Dr Kaukub Qudr Meerza, is not surprised by the reports of ‘Prince’s death’, because he knows the real Prince is still alive. His Highness, and yours truly, Dr Meeraz, says “our family has witnessed the hoax for years now.”

The family says one of the immediate relatives— Prince Anjum Qudr had in-fact challenged the false claims of Vilayat Mahal before the government.

Qudr wrote a series of letters in 1975 to the UP government and then again in 1985 to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi informing him about the “impersonation” being done by Vilayat Mahal calling it “hoax”. The letter is available on the website of their Oudh family to keep people informed about the legend of impersonation. Qudr wrote Begum Hazrat Mahal had only one son Birjis Qadr, who was crowned in 1857.

Details regarding Qadr’s children from different wives are available in Kaiserut Tawarikh Vol-2 and other books on the history of Oudh. An auto-biographical Masnavis (illustrated stories) of Wajid Ali Shah Huzn-e Akhtar or Tarikh-e Pari Khana also describe the Nawab’s lineage in some detail.
These details corroborate with other sources of information on the exiled King from the poems and Diwan of Birjis Qadr- the only son of the Begum of Oudh.

The original claimants say that there are records of the Political Pension Office of the District Collector of 24 Parganas, West Bengal, from where all heirs of Birjis Qadr drew a political pension after Qadr was assassinated in 1893 in Kolkata. Wajid Ali Shah in his will has named only one son Birjis Qadr (and no daughter) that Begum Hazrat Mahal bore him.

“Fraud of the present claimant is obvious from her very name “Begum Vilayat Mahal” because Mahal is not really an inheritable work,” said Qudr in his appeal to the various government. Mahal is a title which used to be awarded by a Muslim King or Emperor in India to his wife after she bore him a son.

Thus when Birjis Qadr was born to Begum Hazrat, that King Amjad Ali Shah awarded the revered title Mahal to the wife of his Crown Prince. Just as Mumtaz, Mughal Emperor Shahjahan’s wife acquired the title after bearing successor to the Mughal throne.

Nawab Ibrahim Ali Khan of Shish Mahal, Lucknow, where Vilayat Mahal lived briefly before leaving for New Delhi, told News 18.com that the veracity of the claims can be established from the family tree or shajra of Nawab Saadat Khan who established the Oudh dynasty in the early 16th century.

He adds, further that King Wajid Ali Shah, when he was exiled to Matia Burj, Calcutta [now Kolkata] in 1856, took all his sons and daughters with him and only his siblings, divorced wives and close relatives were left behind. Some of his progeny migrated to Pakistan and England later on. Every descendant of King Wajid Ali Shah is registered with the Kolkatta office.

For the record, any title of Maharaja, Raja, Rana or Nawab recognized by the East India Company and later by Her Majesty’s government was registered with the British Indian Association or Anjuman e Hind in 1861.

The documents are still available at Lucknow Baradari.

source: http://www.news18.com / News18.com / Home> News 18> India / by Eram Agha / November 19th, 2017