Abstract
To assume the position of nawab consort in Bhopal at the end of the nineteenth century in anything but a purely passive role was in many ways courting disaster. Sayyid Siddiq Hasan Khan al-Qannauji al-Bukhari (1832–90), married to Shah Jahan, the third ruling begam1 of the central Indian state, was seen through the influence he exerted over his wife to be subverting the existing political order of Bhopal in which women literally reigned supreme under the benign umbrella of the British Raj. Siddiq Hasan’s steady, calculated assumption of power appeared to challenge both parties to the harmonious relationship which had been built up over generations between a ruling dynasty and the imperial power. To the royal family of Bhopal he was an evil force causing a deep schism among its members concerning the birthright of the family of Dost Mohammed Khan, its founder, to rule the state. To the British he was a scheming, immoral adventurer who, having succeeded at total emotional domination of the begam, attempted to control all aspects of the government of Bhopal by forcing his wife to adopt purdah while using the state’s finances and machinery to propagate his anti-British “Wahhabi” campaign. Condemned by both British officials and the local dynasty, the nawab consort was subjected to a relentless witch hunt until hounded out of the Bhopal court.
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Notes
See Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (New York, 2007).
Barbara D. Metcalf, “Islam and Power in Colonial India: The Making and Unmaking of a Muslim Princess,” American Historical Review, 116 (1) (2011): 6.
Shaharyar M. Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India (London, 2000), 121–2.
Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal, An Account of My Life (London, 1912), 78.
Seema Alavi, “Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–90) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 54 (2011): 6.
M. Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918–1924 (Leiden, 1999), 17, 176–7.
Particularly worrying for British authorities was the elite group of Indian exiles who took up residence in Istanbul alongside pan-Islamic activists, including Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/9–1897), who began to lobby for an Ottoman-supported jihad against European imperialism. Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley, 1972), 60;
Azmi Ozcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877–1924 (Leiden, 1997), 90–4.
Metcalf, “Islam and Power,” 12. For more information on the Yemeni connection see Claudia Preckel, “Wahhabi or National Hero? Siddiq Hasan Khan,” International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Newsletter 11 (2002): 31.
Claudia Preckel, Begums of Bhopal (New Delhi, 2000), 129.
For the impact of print upon the Muslim community in South Asia see Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 66–104.
Saeedullah, The Life and Works of Muhammad Siddiq Hasan Khan, 195–8. 34. W. W. Hunter, The Indian Musalmans (London, 1871), 1, 11, 36;
W. W. Hunter, A Brief History of the Indian Peoples (Oxford, 1893), 222–9. 35. Metcalf, “Islam and Power,” 13. It was as part of this brief attempt at jihad that Siddiq Hasan’s father had fought in the 1830s alongside Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi, although the British appear to have failed to make the connection when composing their case against Siddiq Hasan 50 years later. It is hard to believe that Griffin would not have relished this piece of information had he found it. In his biography of the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh the agent to the governor-general refers to the “Indian Wahabis [sic], who have at different times given much trouble to the Indian Government.” Sir Henry Lepel Griffin, Ranjit Singh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 210.
Siddiq Hasan Khan, Tarjuman-I Wahhabiyah (Bhopal, 1884).
According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Griffin was “a dandyish, Byronic figure, articulate, argumentative and witty” with “an irreverent tongue” and an “overt disdain for modesty.” C. W. Walton, “Sir Henry Lepel Griffin,” in Sir Sidney Lee ed. Dictionary of National Biography: Second Supplement (New York, 1912).
David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (London, 2005), 202–3.
See Caroline Keen, Princely India and the British: Political Development and the Operation of Empire (London, 2012), 120–1.
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation, November 1, 1858, in C. H. Philips, H. L. Singh, and B. N. Pandey (eds.), The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1857–1947: Select Documents (London, 1962), 10–11.
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© 2014 Charles Beem and Miles Taylor
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Keen, C. (2014). The Rise and Fall of Siddiq Hasan, Male Consort of Shah Jahan of Bhopal. In: Beem, C., Taylor, M. (eds) The Man behind the Queen. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448354_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448354_13
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