Tag Archives: Wajid Ali Shah

Wajid Ali Wah!

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Community Involvement / Social Issues, Inventions, Innovations (wef. Nov 30th, 2021), Leaders, Royal Families, PreIndependence -Descendants (wef. Jan 02nd,2022),

Awadh, U.P. / WEST BENGAL:

Calcutta may not have a birthday, but there can be no disagreement that the city is an alchemy of multiple events and influences. One such is the arrival of the ruler of Awadh. Wajid Ali Shah arrived in Calcutta in 1856, remained here till his death in 1887 and continues to tick on in the city’s DNA.

Illustration: Visual artist Soumyadeep Roy’s portrait of Wajid Ali Shah, a detail from his exhibition Dastaan e Akhtar celebrating the King’s bicentenary year at his resting place, the first ever exhibition held at the 159-year-old Sibtainabad Imambada in Metiabruz / Sourced by the Telegraph

Metiabruz

Before 1856, Metiabruz was a nondescript place on the outskirts of Calcutta taking its name from a matiya burz or earthen tower. The shipbuilding yard of Garden Reach had just started developing. It was the advent of Wajid Ali that transformed the very nature of the place. He purchased land from the King of Burdwan and built around 22 palatial
residences in Metiabruz. With these at the core, an entire mini-Lucknow came up. “He made this city his home and left a legacy, some tangible and mostly intangible,” says Talat Fatima, one of the king’s progeny and currently working on the English translation of the book Wajid Ali Shah Ki Adabi Aur Saqafati Khidmat by Kaukab Quder Meerza. Meerza Sr’s son, Kamran, points to the remnants of the king’s mimic kingdom — Sibtainabad Imambara, Begum Masjid, Shahi Masjid, Baitun Nijat and Quasrul Buka.

Thumri

Until the early 19th century, Calcutta’s aristocracy had some exposure to Nidhu Babu or Ramnidhi Gupta’s semi-classical tappa. As for dance, there was the form practised by the khemtawalis of the red-light areas of Chitpore and Bowbazar in central Calcutta. Enter Wajid Ali Shah. He was, historians note, an “enthusiastic” patron of the arts. The “light classical” vocal form of thumri flourished in his court. He himself composed thumris under the pen name of Akhtar or Akhtar Piya. The thumri was traditionally performed by tawaifs or courtesans. And though there are arguments to the contrary, their dance style had “undeniable links” with Kathak. To make a long story very short, the king arrived in Calcutta with his musical entourage, thus stirring into its environs and culture a new rhythm. Courtesans like Malka Jaan were appointed by his court. Other ustads and musicians arrived too and many Bengali-speaking singers such as Bamacharan Bandyopadhyay were also groomed. A new style of thumri evolved with folk influences and it came to be known as the bol banao thumri. The babus of Calcutta loved it. Many of the musicians and courtesans settled down in the Chitpore area of north Calcutta, turning it into a production hub of musical instruments. This legacy, somewhat contagious, influenced commercial theatres and produced musical exponents such as Gauhar Jaan, Angoorbala and Indubala who went on to cut gramophone records and became the first artistes to do so. If Wajid Ali had not left Lucknow nagari, Ray’s Jalsaghar would be missing the jalsa; the sound of Begum Akhtar singing, “Bhar bhar aayi mori akhiyan piya bin…”

Haute Couture

It was not just Wajid Ali who arrived in Metiabruz; he was accompanied by his family, his many wives, dancers, a retinue of specialised servants and tailors. By some estimates, within a decade of his arrival, the palace had 2,000-plus employees and 1,000 soldiers. All of these people needed clothes, as did the king, who loved to dress. In his early 20th century work Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, Abdul Halim Sharar suggests that the achkan was Wajid Ali’s gift to Indian haute couture. And so the fitted tunic with its stylish necks debuted in Bengal, as did the angrakhas. The king also wore an elaborate cap called the alam pasand. The royal tailors, their pupils and their descendants popularised Awadhi fashion — the chapkan, the churidar, the shararas, the ghararas… Their progeny has now turned Metiabruz into one of the largest tailoring hubs of unbranded garments. None of this would exist if it had not been for the good old trendy king. But for him, homegrown celebrity designers who are synonymous with wedding wear, sherwanis and fancy achkans would have been making patterns on their bottom line today.

Kabutarbazi

The king was famous for his menagerie and also for the thousands of kabutars or pigeons he reared and kept. He employed hundreds of people to look after the birds. Among the varieties were peshawari, gulvey, choya, chandan, shirazi — many fetched from Lucknow. Some of them were trained to perform manoeuvres during flight. “You’ll still find breeders invoking the royal pigeons while making a sell in the bird market,” says Kamran Meerza, the great-great-grandson of Wajed Ali Shah. Many babus of north Calcutta eventually embraced the hobby and pigeon roosts were a common architectural feature in old mansions of the city. The king also brought one of the best kite fliers of Lucknow, Ilahi Baksh Vilayat Ali, with him. He himself could design kites and encouraged others to compete with his team of kite fliers. The tradition of flying kites from those days still survives in Calcutta. Beginning August 15, right through to winter, the city skies are dotted with kites, most of them made in Metiabruz. Kabutarbazi and kite flying are not just random sports, they are synecdoches of a culture of great panache even in great leisure.

The Calcutta Biryani

The king’s khansamas gave Calcutta a taste of the Awadhi style of dum pukht or slow oven-cooking. Their descendants spread across the city and continued to popularise and adapt this style of cooking to fit the plebian kitchen. The Calcutta Biryani would be nowhere on the culinary map had it not been for the banished king. Manzilat Fatima, who is Wajid Ali’s great-great-granddaughter, wields her secret family recipes to create the Calcutta Shahi Biryani and Awadhi Galauti Kebab among other Lucknavi delicacies in her boutique restaurant in south Calcutta. Manzilat clarifies that the potato, an exotic tuber in the 19th century, was used as an experiment by the king to enhance the taste of the biryani and not to incorporate a cheaper substitute as has been suggested. Jab tak rahega biryani mein alu…

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph Online / Home> Culture / by Prasun Chaudhuri / August 27th, 2023

Remembering 4 Muslim women who fought for Indian independence

Amazing Feats, Community Involvement / Social Issues, Education, First War of Independence 1857 / Naval Mutiny 1946 / Others PreIndependece (wef. July 27th, 2022), Freedom Fighters (under research project), Leaders, Royal Families, PreIndependence -Descendants (wef. Jan 02nd,2022), Women/Girls(since May26-2021), , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

UTTAR PRADESH / PUNJAB :

Hyderabad: 

On the occasion of 74th Independence Day, let us remember these Muslim women who proved their strength, enthusiasm and determinism in the fight for freedom.

These women broke the stereotype of Muslim women in the society, who are merely perceived to be clad in Burqha and were never let out of the house. They participated in the India’s struggle for independence and emerged victorious.

Begum Hazrat Mahal (1830–1879)

Begum Hazrat Mahal, a prominent woman of 1857 rebellion, was born in 1830 Faizabad of Uttar Pradesh. Her actual name was Muhammadi Khanum. Her father is Gulam Hussain of Faizabad. At her tender age itself, she showed good talent in literature.

She was married to Wajid Ali Shah, the Nawab of Awadh. They were blessed with a son Mirza Birjis Khadir Bahadur. On 13 February, 1856, the British troops imprisoned Wajid Ali Shah. They sent him to Calcutta on 13 March and occupied Awadh illegitimately. This irked the people and native rulers.

They revolted against the British under the leadership of Begum Hazrat Mahal. The native rulers and people met at Chavani area of Lucknow, the capital of Awadh on 31May, 1857 and declared independence. They taught a lesson to the British troops and wiped out their power in Lucknow. Later, Begum Hazrat Mahal declared her son Birjis Khadir as the Nawab of Awadh on 7 July, 1857.

As the King’s mother, she gathered 1,80,000 troops and renovated the Lucknow fort spending huge amount of money. She established a high level committee for the good governance of the state. Hazarat Mahal ruled the state on behalf of her son for about ten months and challenged the British force by inspiring patriotism among the people and the fellow native rulers. She issued a historic statement on 31 December, 1858 challenging the proclamation issued by the Queen Victoria on November 1, 1858.

But, when Delhi, the prime center for the First War of Independence was captured, the British troops surrounded and attacked Lucknow in March 1859. There was a fierce battle between the Company troops and the Begum troops. When defeat became inevitable, Begum Hazrat Mahal retreated to the Nepal forests along with the co-revolutionary leaders like Nana Sahib Peshwa and others.

The British rulers offered her huge amount of money and luxurious facilities in order to bring her back to Lucknow. But, the Begum denied them and made it clear that nothing else was acceptable to her except Independent Awadh state. Begum Hazarath Mahal was struggling for the independence of her state till her last breath. She passed away at Khathmound of Nepal on 7 April, 1879. In 1984 Government of India released a postal stamp in her honour.

Abadi Bano Begum (1852-1924)

Abadi Bano Begum, who took active part at par with men in the Indian National Movement, was born in 1852 in Amroha village, Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married to Abdul Ali Khan of the Princely State Rampur.

Though she lost her husband at a young age, she did not remarry. She had two sons Moulana Mohammed Ali and Moulana Showkath Ali, who were famous as ‘Ali Brothers’. She nurtured her children, into becoming memorable leaders of the Indian Independence Movement. Her involvement in the freedom movement began with the Home Rule Movement, to which she rendered moral and most importantly, financial support.

When the British government detained the Ali Brothers in Chindanwad village, under the Indian Defence Regulations, she went along with them. When a police official proposed for the surrender of her sons, she bluntly refused saying, ‘If my sons agree to the proposal of the government, I will kill them by strangulation. I hope God will bestow enough energy into this old woman’s hands’. Abadi Bano met Mahatma Gandhi in 1917 for the first time.

There after Mahatma Gandhi always addressed her ‘Ammijan’, and all other freedom fighters followed Gandhi’s address. She helped Mahatma Gandhi and other Khilafath leaders financially for undertaking all India tours.

She attended the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League sessions in 1917, held at Calcutta. She spoke in those meetings emphasising that complete freedom could be achieved through unity between Hindus and Muslims.

She also played a constructive role in the Khilafat and Non[1]Cooperation Movement in 1919. She declared in several meetings that ‘it was her ambition that even the dogs and cats of her country should not be under the slavery of the British’.

The fact that the British government official records treated her as a ‘dangerous person’, which established the kind of challenge she hurled at the colonial rule.

 Apart from participating in politics she also guided several women’s organisations all over India. So intensely patriotic and nationalist that Abadi Bano Begum who played an active role in national movement without caring old age, ill health and cruel atrocities of police, breathed her last on 13 November, 1924.‹

BIBI AMATUS SALAM (1907-1985)

Bibi Amatus Salam, who strongly believed that freedom from the slavery of British could be achieved, through the Gandhian methods only, was born in 1907 in Patiala of Punjab in Rajputhana family.

Her father was Colonel Abdul Hamid and her mother Amatur Rehaman. Amatus Salam was the younger sister of six elder brothers. Her health was very delicate since her childhood. She was inspired by her eldest brother, freedom fighter Mohammad Abdur Rashid Khan.

Following the footsteps of her brother, she decided to serve the people of the country.

Amatus Salam participated in the Khadi Movement and attended the meetings of the Indian National Movement along with her brother. She was attracted towards the Non[1]Violence theory of Mahathma Gandhi and Sevagram Ashram.

She decided to join Sevagram Ashram, and went there in 1931. She joined Ashram and followed the strict principles of the Ashram. With her selfless service she became very close to Gandhi couple.

They considered Amatus Salam as their beloved daughter. During the Indian National Movement, she went to jail along with other women in 1932 despite her illness with the permission of Gandhi.

After being released from Jail, she reached Sevagram and took over the responsibilities as Personal Assistant of Gandhi. She said that besides achieving independence, harmony between the Hindus and Muslims, Welfare of the Harijans and Women were her life ambitions. When communal riots erupted, she toured North-West Frontier, Sindh and Noukhali areas as an ambassador of Gandhi.

She held Satyagraha for 20 days to normalize the situation in those areas. After Independence, she rededicated herself to the Public Service. She published an Urdu Magazine called ‘Hindustan’ to promote national integration and communal harmony. When Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan toured in India in 1961, she travelled with him as his personal assistant. When India was at war with

China in 1962 and with Pakistan in 1965, she took all the pains in reaching the mountains or war area along with her adopted son Sunil Kumar to encourage our soldiers and to serve them. Bibi Amatus Salam, who spent all her life following the Gandhian ideology, breathed her last on 29 October, 1985.‹

HAJARA BEGUM (1910-2003)

Hajara Begum, who fought against the British to liberate the Nation and worked for the welfare of the toiling masses of the country, was born on 22 December, 1910 at Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. She came to know about the sacrifices of the freedom fighters who were fighting against the British from her father, who was a police officer.

After the failure of her marriage, she went to London to pursue her higher education, where she got acquainted with the anti-British forces. This led her to decide to fight against the British Imperialist forces to liberate the nation. She had to face the anger of the British Government as she was criticizing their acts in several International fora.

She returned to India and joined as a lecturer in the Karamat Hussain women’s College at Lucknow in 1935.

She also worked along with famous poet Sajjad Zahir in the formation of All India Progressive Writers’ Association.

She got married to a nationalist leader Dr. Zainul Abedeen Ahmed in 1935 and in the same year both of them took membership in the Indian National Congress. Since the police were after them for their anti-British activities, they resigned their jobs and dedicated themselves totally to the Indian National Movement.

While participating in the activities of the Indian National Congress, Hajara Begum also campaigned for the Communist Party without the knowledge of the Police. She actively took part in the election campaign in those days, and as a result of this a number of Congress leaders could get elected. She attended a secret political workshop at Kotthapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in 1937.

 She spoke on different subjects in the workshop as a lecturer. Hajara Begum was against the gender bias since her younger age. She fought against all types of inequalities successfully. She left the Indian National Congress in 1940 along with her husband. Since then, she played a vital role in organizing the unorganized labour sector.

She became very popular as ‘Hajara Aapa’ in the circles of toiling people and women. The Soviet Union honoured her with ‘Supreme Soviet Jubilee Award’ in 1960 in recognition of her work for the downtrodden people on the eve of the birth centenary of Lenin. Hajara Begum, who spent her entire life in the service of the country, breathed her last on 20 January, 2003.

Syed Naseer Ahamed can be contacted at Phone: +91 94402 41727

source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Featured News / by Nihad Ahmed / Input by Syed Naseer Ahmed / August 15th, 2020

Second Lucknow ‘fixed’ in sepia

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), Community Involvement / Social Issues, Leaders, Travel & Tourism, World Opinion, , , , , , , , , , ,

WEST BENGAL :

Liveried servants of the Nawab of Oudh wait with a palanquin in one of the rare photographs of Metiabruz, during Wajid Ali Shah’s time. The royal insignia is embroidered on the back of one of them. Copied from the original by Rashbehari Das
Liveried servants of the Nawab of Oudh wait with a palanquin in one of the rare photographs of Metiabruz, during Wajid Ali Shah’s time. The royal insignia is embroidered on the back of one of them. Copied from the original by Rashbehari Das

A portfolio of fast-fading photographs that provides possibly the only pictorial document of the second Lucknow that Wajid Ali Shah had created in Metiabruz, after he was exiled there, is urgently in need of preservation. The photographs are, moreover, some of the earliest examples of the art as practised the world over.

Amjad Ali Mirza of Garden Reach Road, in his 60s, who is a great-great-grandson of the ruler of Oudh, possesses the photographs. But he doesn’t know how to preserve these friable prints whose sepia has, in some cases, turned a ghostly shadow of its former self. Says Mirza: “I have no doubt about the authenticity of the photographs. The portfolio is ancestral property. It was handed down to me by my uncle, Yaqub Ali Mirza, who died in 1973.” Some of the photographs are captioned in Urdu. But the identity of the photographer shall always remain a mystery. Oscar Mallitte, a French commercial photographer, we know, had captured a view of the village at Garden Reach, circa 1864, but there is no evidence he did this assignment.

Abdul Halim Sharar (1860-1926) tells the story of Oudh in his book Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture. In it, he has also documented the last days of Wajid Ali Shah in Metiabruz, where he set up a city whose splendour surpassed Lucknow’s glory in the pre-Mutiny days. The palaces, pleasure gardens and zoo that the Nawab had created on the banks of the Hooghly come alive in these photographs, not much larger than postcards. It is as if chemicals and light had “fixed” the scenes that Sharar’s readers conjure up in their mind’s eye.

Soon after the Mutiny had fizzled out, the Nawab was released from confinement in Fort William and he returned to Metiabruz. There, while turning abstemious, he developed a passion for animals and for building beautiful houses. Before the Zoological Gardens was established in Alipore in 1876, the Nawab had already acquired a large menagerie that included rare birds, deer, horses and an open-air snake-pit that left visitors awestruck. But after Wajid Ali Shah’s death in 1887, Metiabruz became a hell-hole almost overnight.

The photographs prove that Sharar, when he described Metiabruz, never deviated from reality. Unlike the Lucknow architecture, with its embarrassment of stucco ornaments, the buildings of Metiabruz are constructed on the lines of European bungalows. The lines are simple but no less grand than the palaces of Lucknow.

Overlooking the river or surrounded by expanses of water, they are connected by bridges. Flags flutter on their tiled roofs. There is hardly any Islamic influence in their architecture, save a low-rise with triple minarets. Ostriches, deer, sheep and horses were the showpieces of the Metiabruz parkland. The snake-pit resembles a giant termite hill. One can almost hear the harsh calls of the clumsy pelicans and cranes strutting around the aviary. The liveried servants wait outside the palace gate with a palanquin. The piscine insignia of the royal family of Oudh is stitched on to the back of one man’s coat. There are two significant photographs. In one, the gang of smiling labourers carry construction material on their heads as they create the new Metiabruz. Another shows the buildings of Metiabruz being demolished. An exquisite way of life being wiped away forever.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph / Home> West Bengal / by Soumitra Das in Mirza / July 14th, 2003

Princess Omdutel of Oude Buried At Paddington Old Cemetery

Community Involvement / Social Issues, Travel & Tourism, World Opinion, , , , ,

Awadh, UTTAR PRADESH / London, U. K / Paris, FRANCE :

While walking around Paddington Old Cemetery during my lunch break earlier today, for some reason I felt compelled to read the faded stone slab that marked the resting spot of Princess Omdutel. Instantly my attention was grabbed, a Princess buried in Kilburn, North West London of all places, that sure wasn’t something I was expecting to find.

PrincessOmdutelMPOs20jan2018

I have walked past the grave of Princess Omdutel, perhaps a 100 times or more since I moved to Kilburn and never paid it any attention. Now she had my full attention.

The badly worn and faded inscription on the stone slab was barely readable, but after a lot of scratching of my head, I finally managed to decipher the words: Sacred to the memory of Princess Omdutel Aurau Begum, daughter of the late General Mirza Sekunder Hishmut Bahadur, Brother to His Majesty King of Oude, who died 14th April 1858 aged 18 months.

With a little help from Google and www.findagrave.com, I managed to find the following information: Princess of Oude. Oude, or Awadh, which was the epicentre of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, when the sepoys rebelled against the British after baulking at orders to use cartridges greased in pig and beef fat. Members of the Awadh Royal Family arrived in London soon afterwards, lobbying unsuccessfully for the return of their lands. The princess’s father, Mirza Bahadur, died two months before her and is buried in Père Lachaise in Paris.

The British obviously offered the Awadh Royal Family a haven in London after they were ousted. I’m not sure how long the family had ruled for in Awadh, which is a region in India. But from what I can gather it seems likely that they were a puppets installed by the British Government.

Princess Omdutel Aurau Begum, her life had barely begun, when she died at only 18 months of age. I wonder if any of the family survived and if so what became of them. It is also intriguing that her father died two months before her in Paris. No mention of the mother, which is kinda sad if you ask me…

I find it strange that I have walked past the grave of Princess Omdutel numerous times over the past twenty months and never once read it, until today. Very strange. Maybe she was wanting a mention on London Is Cool…

source: http://www.londoniscool.com / London is Cool – a blog about Life in London / Home> Out and About in London / by William Wallace / February 21st, 2011

Malika Kishwar: A forgotten Indian queen in Paris

Community Involvement / Social Issues, Travel & Tourism, World Opinion, , , , , , ,

Awadh, UTTAR PRADESH / London, U. K / Paris, FRANCE :

The tragic story of Malika Kishwar, who rests in an unmarked grave in France’s most famous cemetery

The grave of Malika Kishwar at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The grave of Malika Kishwar at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

She lies buried amidst sepulchres that house the remains of many who are still famous.

There is Jim Morrison on the premises, the American rock legend whom trains of tourists come to pay homage, like pilgrims bearing flowers. Edith Piaf, the waif who sang her way to greatness, finds her peace nearby, as does Frederic Chopin, the composer whose pickled heart is in Warsaw but whose body dissolves in the French capital. Benjamin Franklin’s grandson rests here, and in the vicinity there is a man believed to have been sired by Napoleon. Oscar Wilde’s sculpted grave competes with Marcel Proust’s neat bed of stone, and many more still are the artists, writers, and persons of esteem who crowd the hillside cemetery that is Père Lachaise in Paris.

And yet, between them all, under a platform of rugged rock, lies this tragic Indian woman. Her name and cause have been largely forgotten, but since 1858, she has been here, longer than many of her revered neighbours. Tourists walk by with cameras, oblivious to her unmarked square existence. But every now and then there is a stray visitor who arrives on a quest: to locate the final resting place of that remarkable woman, the last queen of Awadh.

I was that visitor a few days ago, when I trekked up Paris’ most famous graveyard to look for this forgotten tomb.

The lady appears in yellowed old books by several names. She was to some Malika Kishwar, while others knew her as Janab-i Aliyah, Her Sublime Excellency, mother to the ruler of “Oude”, Wajid Ali Shah.

In 1856, when the British deposed this nawab from his ancestral seat in Lucknow, his family departed for colonial Calcutta, with all the money they could gather and what dignity they had left. But while the son (a “crazy imbecile” in the eyes of his sneering oppressors) prepared to fade quietly into history, the mother was determined to win back that which was her family’s by right.

That very year, this woman who knew little beyond her sequestered palace, set foot on a ship, determined to sail to England so she might speak—woman to woman—to the English queen in person. After all, declared the middle-aged begum, Victoria was “also a mother”; she would recognize the despair her people had unleashed, and restore to the House of Awadh territory, titles, and its rightful honour. And so proceeded Malika Kishwar, her health already in decline, braving cold winds in a foreign land, to plead the cause of royal justice.

The mission was doomed from the start. Advisers were many and much was the money they sought for the privilege of their counsel. The results, meanwhile, were nowhere to be found.

As historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones records, Kishwar discovered quickly enough that Queen Victoria, in her “circular dress”, had little power to bestow anything more than polite conversation on her and her Awadhi line—when an audience was granted, they spoke about boats and English mansions, not about imperial treacheries and the unjust business in Lucknow.

In the British parliament, things got worse. A prayer at long last prepared was dismissed on spurious bureaucratic grounds: the begum was to submit a “humble petition”, words that she failed to use in the document laid before the House. While her son accepted British imperium, the mother was obstinate in battle. So, when she wished to travel, they sought to dragoon her into acknowledging their suzerainty—if Malika Kishwar and her ménage wanted passports, she would have to declare herself a “British subject”.

The begum refused to do anything of the sort, prepared, at best, to be under “British protection”, but never anybody’s “subject”. And legal quibbles aside, the Great Rebellion of 1857 compounded matters—there was now no prospect of relinquishing even a fragment of British power when the hour called for a demonstration of obdurate strength alone. Awadh was lost forever.

The tide having turned, in 1858, the begum decided to return at last, defeated and unhappy in the extreme. But in Paris she fell ill and died on 24 January. The funeral was simple, but there was yet some dignity and state—representatives of the Turkish and Persian sultans gave this Indian queen the regard the British denied her and her line.

A cenotaph was constructed by the grave, but it has long since fallen to pieces—when decades later the authorities at Père Lachaise sought funds to repair the tomb, her exiled son decided from Calcutta that it was simply not worth his pension, while the colonial state was even less inclined to honour a difficult woman lying several feet underground in an alien European country. And so, since that time, in a graveyard full of magnificent memorials, the queen of Awadh has remained, a shell of broken stone sheltering her from the weeds and overgrowth that alone have made a claim upon her and the story that she tells.

Others of her suite also suffered. A younger son had come with her, Sikandar Hashmat by name. He died in England, and was carried to join his mother in her unmarked grave. A grandson’s infant child was also buried within, turning the tally in Paris to three.

But it was in London that one more of the delegation fell, this one a baby princess, born to Sikandar Hashmat from his Rajput wife on British shores. I walked around a dull little place called Kilburn to look for this grave. And there, in a cemetery, after an hour between tombs set in the soggy English ground, I found a memorial to the child: Princess Omdutel Aurau Begum, “who died 14th April 1858”, months after her grandmother who was once a queen.

But Omdutel, all of 18 months, had a minor triumph where her royal grandmother had none—lying by a pathway in that cemetery in Kilburn, her grave at least bears her name.

The begum, on the other hand, has become to the passing tourist at Père Lachaise in Paris a plinth on which to rest, smoking a cigarette and looking on to a horizon full of the dead, till a stranger might appear to tell how they have under them.

Medium Rare is a column on society, politics and history. Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne: Chronicles Of The House Of Travancore.

He tweets at @UnamPillai

source: http://www.livemint.com / LiveMint / Home> Leisure> Medium Rare / by Manu S. Pillan / Friday – Jan 12th, 2018

Indra on Wajid Ali Shah’s throne!

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Travel & Tourism, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

“The Other Lucknow” captures the syncretic traditions of the city

Guru Dutt’s immensely popular film Chaudhvin Ka Chand opens with a Shakeel Budayuni song sung by Mohammad Rafi and composed by Ravi. The song  Ye Lakhnau Ki Sarzameen sums up Lucknow and the essence of its famed cultural heritage. Perhaps, no other city in the sprawling Hindi-speaking region evokes such nostalgia, romance, devotion and attachment as Banaras and Lucknow do.

So far, for nearly a century, we used to go back to Abdul Halim Sharar’s classic “Guzishta Lakhnau” that vividly describes the city’s cultural and social life, customs, traditions and history in great detail. This was serialised in the form of articles between 1913 and 1920 in Urdu literary journal “Dilgudaz” that Sharar had launched in 1887. Later, the articles were brought out as a book with a rather longish title “Hindustan mein mashriqi tamaddun ka akhiri namoona: Lakhnau” (Lucknow: The last example of Oriental culture in India). However, the world knows it simply as “Guzishta Lakhnau” (The Lucknow of the Old). National Book Trust published a Hindi translation in 1971 titled “Purana Lakhnau” (The Old Lucknow) with a scholarly introduction written by eminent Urdu critic Mohammad Hasan.

Born in 1860, Abdul Halim went to Matiaburz when he was nine years old. Matiaburz was the place near Calcutta (now Kolkata) where the deposed Nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, had shifted in 1856. How close his family was with the Nawab can be gauged from the fact that his maternal grandfather had gone to London to present Wajid Ali Shah’s case before Queen Victoria.

When still in his teens, Abdul Halim started writing and adopted the nom de plume ‘Sharar’ (spark). His book is a treasure trove of information about the history and culture of Lucknow which was a truly unique city representing the famed Ganga-Jamuni culture.

Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab, was an accomplished poet, musician, dancer, actor and dramatist. Urdu drama owes its beginning to him and dance-dramas like “Inder Sabha”, which he commissioned, where Indra, the king of Hindu gods, would sit on a throne wearing a dress that resembled that of the Nawab himself and fairies would sing thumris in Braj bhasha while conversing in chaste Urdu. What better picture of a syncretic culture can we find elsewhere?

Sharar divided the book into three parts and devoted the first two parts to the history of Awadh and Lucknow and that of the nawabs of Awadh. The third and the last part is the one that introduces us to the way people of Lucknow dressed, talked, ate, sang and danced, set new standards of cultured behaviour and etiquette, gathered to celebrate religious and social festivals at fairs, and offered an example of harmonious communal living. It was also a great centre of the Shias.

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Now, Vani Prakashan, which is essentially a publishing house of Hindi books, has come out with a book on Lucknow in English in collaboration with the Ayodhya Research Institute, an autonomous organisation of the Uttar Pradesh government. Titled “The Other Lucknow: An Ethnographic Portrait of a City of Undying Memories and Nostalgia”, it is the outcome of a research project headed by social anthropologist Professor Nadeem Hasnain, who has put the book together.

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The book appropriately opens with a poem that the Jnanpith award winning poet Kunwar Narain, who spent most of his creative life in the city, has written on Lucknow. It has been reproduced in Hindi which lends a special flavour to the book as the rest of it is a collection of articles, reports and analysis written in English. It is a sort of counterfoil to Sharar’s book as it brings the story of Lucknow in its fullness up to the present times.

“The Other Lucknow” is in a class of its own as it can equally serve a tourist as a guide book and an intellectual who wants to know and understand the history, culture, politics, arts and crafts, business and trade, literature, music and dance, architecture and religion – both past and present.

The book opens with a scholarly article “A Short Cultural History” by noted scholar Sandria Freitag followed by an excellent survey of the city’s social fabric underling its diversity. The survey is based on field research and informs us that Kashmiri Pandits, Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Malayalis, Oriyas, Maharashtrians and Assamese have also become an integral part of Lucknow’s population. It also offers a detailed description of the religious and caste communities residing in the city. In addition to paying close attention to the mohallas, mandis, bastis, landmarks, arts and craft, music and dance, religious places, Ram Leela, qawwalis and danstangoi, the book brings out the city’s Bollywood connection.

It concludes with an article on Dalit imaginations, laying bare the story of the mega monuments and parks created by former Chief Minister Mayawati to commemorate Dalit icons.

One is not surprised to read, as quoted by Nadeem Hasnain to begin his introduction, what William Russel, correspondent of The Times, London wrote in 1858 about Lucknow: “Not Rome, not Athens, nor Constantinople, not any city I have ever seen appears to me so striking and so beautiful as this.”

The writer is a senior literary critic

Corrections & Clarifications:

This article has been edited for a factual error.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Metroplus / by Kuldeep Kumar / July 09th, 2016