Legacy of the rebel begam

Sudhirendar Sharma

Sudhirendar Sharma

During the centenary year of the Uprising, the first war of India’s independence, Jawahar Lal Nehru had requested the Indian embassy in Kathmandu in 1957 to search for Begum Hazrat Mahal’s grave. Why the woman who seemed to have come from nowhere and vanish into nothingness gained so much interest? She remains an elusive figure in Indian history - little being clear about her early life, date and place of birth. But she was known to be the daughter of a slave – of African ancestry – and a domestic servant.

Considered by many that she was an unscrupulous woman who led a failed revolt before vanishing completely, upon her death a government official had curiously wondered ‘who she was’? Archivist and a historian specializing in colonial history, Rosie Llewellyn Jones from the University of London brings to life the begum’s story, the relationship she had with her ex-husband King Wajid Ali Shah and the part she played during the Uprising in 1857. Having had constructed the imagery of the king in The Last King of India in 2014, the acclaimed historian rescues the unlike ruler from obscurity, Hazrat Mahal.

She had neither royal blood nor family connections with nobility but became an accidental heroine by getting married to the king. However, the marriage didn’t last long. Towards the end of the 1840s the king divorced Hazart Mahal and seven other mut’ah wives. The king undertook around 375 wives in two kinds of union, the nikah or permanent marriage and mut’ah or temporary marriage. Noticeable is the fact that the king didn’t associate with any woman without getting into some kind of marriage. What is known is that she entered the life of the king as a courtesan and was named Hazrat Mahal. She gave birth to their son Birjis Qadr in 1844 and, after Wajid Ali inherited the throne, briefly enjoyed the position of a favorite before getting divorced.

In 1856, the East India Company annexed Awadh and deposed Wajid Ali Shah. The takeover was sudden and brutal, with the deposed king exiled and eventually imprisoned in Calcutta. Under the new situation, thirteen-year-old Birjis Qadr became the royal figurehead of Awadh’s rebel opposition and his mother, the begam, its de facto leader. Hazrat Mahal was forced to unite the fragmented rebels: erstwhile nawabs, powerful landowners, enraged soldiers and citizenry. Lack of education and experience notwithstanding, she negotiated with an unimaginably powerful enemy by keeping the rebels united. And at the center of her brief rule was one of the most dramatic episodes in the colonial history: the siege of the Lucknow Residency. It was not a single structure, but the generic name for a 33-acre complex on a hill overlooking the Gomti.

What makes her story unique is how she seized the opportunity and exploited it to keep the all-powerful East India Company at bay for nearly a year. That in itself deserves recognition. and equally remarkable is how she was able to influence trusted officers much senior her age. An erstwhile province of the Mughal empire, Awadha gained virtual independence at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It didn’t last long. Towards the middle of the century, the East India Company had overwhelming presence all across. 

Rosie observes that writing the first full-length biography of the begum was not without negotiating several opposing points of view, to present an honest picture of the extraordinary woman. Without doubt, Hazrat Mahal was so closely associated with the Uprising that it was often difficult to separate her own history from the events that took place during that period. It was not lack of courage on her part that led to the defeat but lack of resources. It is clear that Hazrat Mahal chose exile in Nepal in 1860, never to live under the colonial rule. 

Spread across nine chapters, Hazrat Mahal provides details of the begum’s remarkable transition from poverty and obscurity to becoming a wealthy, confident woman in a royal household. The king could not have related in any way to Hazrat Mahal’s background. A lower-class woman from a servile background had found no reason to emulate the niceties of the royal language. She was focused on what was important: trying to wrest Awadh from the British enemy. Interestingly, the begum was rarely seen on the battlefield not as a participant but an observer, concealed in a curtained howdah on the back of an elephant. 

The fifteen months between the departure of the king and the start of the Uprising saw the emergence of a rebel begam named Hazrat Mahal.

Hazrat Mahal

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones      

PanMacmillan, New Delhi

Extent: 273, Price: Rs. 560.

(Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma is a writer and researcher specialising in development issues. He is based in New Delhi, India.)

First published in www.raagdelhi.com (Hazrat Mahal: Legacy of a rebel begum)