|
|
There is no aspect of the nawabi
culture and life that has not been noted and commented upon by
Maulvi Abdul Halim Sharar. Growing in the sunset days of Wajid
Ali Shah in Matiya Burj, and exposed to the changes that were
taking place in the world, his comments on life and works of the
successive Nawabs is penetrating and incisive, though,
understandably, soft and forgiving to their foibles.
Indulgently, he absolves the last Nawab of any blame, and offers
explanation for the vanquished and the vanishing.
The other two
books supplement the theme of the decay of the culture and the
kingdom. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones has made a very spirited defence
of the Nawabs. It is a different matter that in her eagerness
she has only succeeded in bringing out the single-minded pursuit
of self-interests by the British and the less than determined
approach of the Nawabs to stand firm in their convictions. Veena
Talwar Oldenberg’s remarkable study of the city after 1857
brings out in detail the system evolved by the British with the
sole aim of ensuring their safety, controlling the citizens and
commanding their loyalty.
Abdul Halim Sharar
provides a brief history of Avadh and that of rulers from
Burhan-ul-Mulk to Wajid Ali Shah. The former, who lived in
mud-houses in Faizabad, occupied as he in ‘touring the domains
about matters of administration’ had neither the time nor
inclination for building luxury houses, is contrasted with those
who came later. One was Nasir-ud-Din Haidar, who had become so
effeminate that he spoke and dressed like a woman. The last one,
so romanticised by many, took some interest in military affairs
by giving the regiments fancy names and raising ‘a small army
of beautiful girls.’ Obviously, this did not prepare the
kingdom to face the imperial onslaught of the British.
The extent of
corruption in the largely absent administration comes through
the book of Veena Talwar Oldenberg. She also brings out the
despicable living conditions of the common people in the
dissolute culture of dancing and singing girls, which in turn
was fed by the lawless-ness of the countryside. While Sharar’s
work educates a reader about the life and culture during that
period, her painstaking effort provides an insight into the life
of the citizens in general, though her intention was to study
the system introduced by the British to control and command the
citizens.
A Fatal Friendship
by Rosie Llewllyn-Jones is a book, she acknowledges, written in
anger and sadness. She has attempted to redeem the architecture
of the nawabi period. The less than classical
architecture of the Nawabs has been discussed by her, and she
admits that ‘if one were to engage in the fruitless task of
apportioning blame for the demise of the city as an indigenous
organism one would have to indict the Nawabs as much as the
British for their vacillating, half-hearted attempt to keep the
city purely Indian.’ Nevertheless, in her misplaced defence of
the Nawabs, she has taken exception even to the building of the
observatory, hospital, a bridge and a college (aborted), arguing
that all these were primarily meant to benefit the British. For
much too long Lucknow culture has been lionised and its decay
lamented. This omnibus gives a reader the chance to compare and
evaluate facts and opinions in totality, to analyse history and
its events and to also listen to what is unsaid but nonetheless
loud and clamouring.
At Rs 495, it is a
collector and a reader’s pride.
|
