Now here's a richest-to-rags story on a truly
astonishing scale, have you heard about the Indian prince who lost it all in
the Australian outback? His name is Mukarram Jah and he is, or was, the last
Nizam—which means he was the last ruler of Hyderabad.
This is story of Last Nizam Mukarram Jah of Hyderabad, From Untold Riches to Total
Obscurity.
The
Prince Mukarram Jah was born in 1933 in Hilafet Palace in Nice (France). His
mother Princess Durru Shevar Sultan was the daughter of the last Sultan of Turkey
(Ottoman Empire) Sultan Abdul Mejid II.
She died in the beginning of the 2000s. His father was Azam Jah, the son and heir of Osman Ali
Khan, the last reigning Nizam of Hyderabad state.
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| Mukarram Jah and Princess Esma at Coronation Ceremony |
He
was educated in India at the Doon School in Dehradun and in England at Harrow
and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He also studied at the London School of Economics
and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
Mukarram Jah
was a friend of India's first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and
stated in 2010 that Nehru had wanted him to become his personal envoy or the
Indian ambassador to a Muslim country.
Like his father, Mukarram was the
richest man in India until the 1980s. However, in the 1990s he lost some assets
to divorce settlements with his wife Princess Esra. His net worth is
nevertheless estimated at $US1 billion.
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| Mukarram Jah with Princess Esra |
Officially
He was the Nizam of Hyderabad State, but since 1948 there was nothing to rule
over.
Coming at the end of the 40-day period of mourning for
Jah’s grandfather, Osman Ali Khan, it should have signified a new era for what
had been India’s largest, richest and most powerful princely state.
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| Princess Durr e Shahwar her husband Azmat Jah and sons Mukarram Jah and Muffakham Jah |
Jah had just
inherited what was probably the largest fortune in the world. The vast estate
included a treasury that was said to contain more jewels than those of all the
other princely states put together.
A list of properties including palaces, forts
and havelis more than 50-pages long and 14,718 staff and dependents that his
grandfather still maintained, two decades after Hyderabad had lost its
independence.
The Nizam made his grandson the successor to the gaddi
on 14th of June 1954 instead of his first son Mir Himayat Ali Khan alias Prince
Azam Jah Bahadur.
Therefore, Mukarram Jah succeeded as the Eighth Nizam
on the passing away of the last former reigning ruler of Hyderabad on 24th
February, 1967.
His succession was recognized in
principle by the Government of India. He was officially called the Prince of
Hyderabad until 1971 when the titles and the privy purses were abolished by the
Indian Union.
Coronation
Ceremony of Mukarram Jah as the Eighth Nizam
Wearing a yellow sherwani and dastar, Mukarram Jah
looks stiff and uncomfortable as he emerges from a silver-blue Oldsmobile
bearing the number plate ‘HYDERABAD 1’.
His wife Esra appears more relaxed, dressed in a pale
green sari, her hair covered by a scarf.
Inside the Darbar hall of the Chowmahalla Palace in
Hyderabad, male guests wearing dastars, fezzes and turbans sit patiently on a
white cloth that covers the marble floor while the women watch from the gallery
above the audience hall.
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| Princess Durr u Shehvar Sultana with father Ottoman Calip Abdul Majeed and husband Prince Azem Jah in 1931 |
The Hyderabad anthem is played, followed by prayers in
Arabic and an inspection by Jah of the palace troops. Holding a ceremonial
sword, he enters the darbar hall as verses are recited from the Koran.
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| Osman Ali Khan --vii Nizam of Hyderabad |
As Jah takes his place on the musnad, the president of India’s two
gazettes acknowledging him as the successor of the Seventh Nizam and declaring
him the ruler of Hyderabad and the sole owner of all movable and immovable
property of Osman Ali Khan’s private estate are read out.
From outside the palace come the sounds of a 21-gun
salute and shouts of ‘Long Live the Nizam’ from the tens of thousands of people
gathered in the streets.
Captured on grainy 16-millimetre footage shot by a
German cameraman on April 6, 1967, the Mughal-style darbar would be the last of
its kind not only in Hyderabad but also in India. 
After the coronation he famously told an American
reporter that the only pleasure he got from going to Hyderabad was tinkering
with the broken-down cars in his grandfather’s garage. “I inherited a
scrapyard,” he said. “I have a lifetime’s work before me.”
When the government
abolished princely titles, privileges and privy purses, he decided to settle in
Australia and become a “farmer”. He rarely visits Hyderabad, and currently
lives in Turkey.
Mukarram left the management of his
inheritance in the hands of people he thought he could trust. It was a mistake.
Priceless antiques were pillaged or sold off at a fraction of their worth.
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| Princess Durr e Shahwar and Azmat Jah at their Marriage in 1931 |
Jewels landed up at international
auction houses. Palace lands were encroached on. Jah had just inherited what
was probably the largest fortune in the world.
And fate had determined that he would never fulfil his
dreams of living in Australia. He was a lonely man, cut off from his friends
and deeply missing life in the Outback.
He
loved the anonymity, the informality, the wide-open spaces of the Australian
outback.
It was as far away as one could get from the fawning
sycophants who surrounded him whenever he stayed in Hyderabad, and also the
Indian tax authorities and the rapacious relatives who felt entitled to a slice
of his inheritance.
For the next quarter of a century he tried to carve
out a kingdom in the desert, nurturing dreams of retiring quietly and
gracefully as ‘an old-fashioned gentleman farmer, who through choice of his own
adopted the Australian way of life’, as he once said.
His adopted lifestyle, however, came at a cost.
Murchison House Station ran at a constant loss, draining his resources. But the
main damage was being done in Hyderabad.
But the property, the precious antiques and so on were
vanishing from his palaces. Lots of people were making money and the
controlling authority was very weak. Whoever Jah put there was unable to check
the slide.”
By
1990 the slide had become a rout. The pain was being felt in Australia where
Jah was unable to pay his bills.
An old family friend, the late Hyderabadi jeweler
Sadruddin Javeri, lent him money and briefly put his affairs in order, but the
damage had been done and in 1996 Murchison House Station and his mansion in
Perth were on the market to pay off his debts to Javeri.
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| Princess Durru Shehvar Sultan in 1999 --London-She died here in 2006 at age of 93 |
But
Jah rarely visits Hyderabad and has never returned to Australia, where he insists
he spent the happiest years of his life. At 87, he is in frail health and his
memory is fading.
Mukarram Jah Bahadur owns property in
Hyderabad such as the Falaknuma Palace, Khilwat Palace, King Koti and Chiran
Palace which is located in the middle of KBR National Park in Jubilee Hills.
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| Falaknuma Palace |
The properties are looked after by his
first former wife Princess Esra who occasionally visits and stays in Hyderabad
at Falaknuma Palace, which has been turned into the Taj Falaknuma Palace.
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| Chowmahalla Palace-=(Khilwat Palace) |
No
one really knows where all the wealth has gone.
Mir Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad
(1911-1967), was considered the richest man in the world with a fortune of $2
billion.
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| Nizam Hyderabad's Necklace Worn By Queen Elizabeth ii |
For long his family wanted to know where all the money
had gone. Now they are fighting for what is left.
“The fight is between two grandsons of the Nizam,
Prince Mukarram Jah, the crown heir, and his brother Prince Muffakham and the
rest of the family,” said Nawab Najaf Ali Khan, one of the grandsons of Mir
Osman Ali Khan.
He is also the president of the Nizam Family Welfare
Association. The family has nominated him to take care of the legal aspects of
the dispute.
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| Princess Esra with her husband PRINCE Mukarram |
Moin Nawaz Jung, who was Mir Osman Ali
Khan's finance minister, transferred one million pounds to North Westminster
Bank, now called Royal Bank of Scotland. This wealth is also being claimed by
the two grandsons and the governments of Pakistan and India.” A day before
Operation Polo, the military action that annexed Hyderabad to the Indian Union
in September 1948.
Currently
the amount has grown to 36 million pounds. “It has been in litigation since
1956,” said Nawab Najaf.
“I look after the untouched issues, which are pending
in the form of assets and money,” he said. “I have been given absolute mandate
from the 120 or so whom I am representing in the UK High Court, claiming the
Nizam's money”.
In 2013, the Pakistan High Commissioner went to court
claiming that the money belonged to his country, but the bank said the matter
was in dispute.
India has also staked claim for the amount. “We hope
for an amicable solution,” said Nawab Najaf. But, considering the adamant
stance of the parties concerned, it would be difficult, he conceded.
The Nizam had 18 sons and 16 daughters. “Today, only
one son and one daughter are alive,” said Nawab Najaf. “There are 120
grandchildren.
The richest of them are the two eldest grandsons,
Mukarram and Muffakham, because all the assets were in their control after the
demise of my grandfather in 1967.”
In 1951, Mir
Osman Ali Khan formed a trust called The Nizam Jewelry Trust for his vast
collection of jewelry and precious stones.
The government purchased it for Rs 206 crore in 1995,
after 20 years of litigation. “The family was not allowed to sell the jewelry
outside India,” said Nawab Najaf. “It could have fetched Rs 2,500 crore at that
time.”
If he had chosen to stay in
Hyderabad, a seat in the Indian Parliament would have been his for the asking.
Other maharajahs transmuted themselves into successful
politicians and businessmen. So why couldn’t he, whose fortune and status was
greater than theirs?
Most of what Mukarram Jah inherited is now gone. The
palaces in Ooty and Mahableshwar were sold for a song. The five palaces in
Hyderabad—Falaknuma, Purani Haveli, Chowmahalla, King Kothi and Chiran.
As for the famed jewelry collection, those in the know
say what the government managed to acquire—the fabulous 173 pieces including
the Jacob diamond that were bought by the government for Rs 218 crore in 1995
after nearly two decades of negotiations and court battles.
When Mir Osman Ali Khan, the
seventh Nizam of Hyderabad died in 1967, his fortune was estimated to be the
richest in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records.
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| Mir Osman Ali Khan with Prince MUKARRAM Jah |
Apart from the taxes that he was allowed to collect of
a vast empire that stretched all the way from the borders of the present Madhya
Pradesh in the North to Tamil Nadu in the south, Mir Osman Ali had devised
other innovative ways to get richer.
Twice a year—on Eid and his birthday—the nobility of
the state and government officials had to provide him gifts or Nazar, the
minimum of which was one gold coin and four silver.
Noblemen who were granted his audience were expected
to bring expensive gifts as a mark of gratitude. Even the famous Falaknuma
palace in Hyderabad came to him as a gift from one of his subjects.
So it wasn’t surprising that his fortune was the size
it became over the six decades that he was the Nizam.
Mukarram’s problems started at home
itself, and that too with his father Azam Jah.
But he was so much in love
with his kingdom that he unilaterally declared Hyderabad independent in June
1947, two months before the nation was granted independence.
The revolt was short lived and it did not take more
than a police force to subdue his army in the September of 1948.
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| Princess Esra |
He was however allowed to keep his wealth, and along
with it the title of Nizam. As a sign of respect to his status he was also
given a new title of Raj Pramukh, or the constitutional head of Hyderabad state.
Moharram's problems started at home itself, and that
too with his father Azam Jah.
Azam Jah, the
Nizam’s elder son, who was to inherit the throne, however proved to be a
different kettle of fish. He was by all counts a profligate and rampant
womanizer who caused his father a lot of pain.
His wife Princess Durru Shehvar (Mother of Mukarram
Jah) was a beautiful European-born and educated royal, daughter of the then
Caliph of Turkey and hence the pre-eminent Muslim princess in the world.
The wealth may
have been aplenty, but her husband’s harems and lifestyle were too shocking for
her European heart to accept. But she kept up the dignity of the marriage in
the royal style and Hyderabadis still talk nostalgically about her wonderful
grace and beauty with awe.
She packed off Mukarram to
Eton at a very young age to make an Englishman out of him.
Mir Osman Ali Khan, who was already upset with the
kind of debt Azam, had been running up with his wastrel lifestyle.
The last straw came
while he was on his death bed, when Azam, by now desperate to end his father’s
long reign, wrote to the government to recognise him as the new Nizam.
A shocked Mir Osman Ali retaliated by writing to the
government that on his death Azam be passed over in favour of his grandson
Mukarram Jah for the title of Nizam.
Thus Mukarram, then in his 30s, woke up one day to
find he had superseded his own parents in royal status and now they had to bow
to him as the future king. It may have offered him grim satisfaction, but the
rift between father and son was now complete.
Mukarram, despite his British public school education, proved to be too
inept to handle the enormous responsibility that was thrust on him. In 1969,
the then prime minister Mrs Gandhi abolished all the officially recognized
princely titles and two years later abolished the system of privy purses
The tax free annual compensation that was paid to the
rulers in exchange for merging their kingdoms into the Indian union in 1948.
This meant that the rulers like him now had to feed
and look after their palaces, courtiers and the thousands of retainers with
money from their own pocket.
His problems were further compounded by hundreds of
family members who moved courts for a share of the fortune. The internecine
warfare to grab some of that booty would have tested the strongest of leaders.
So he crumbled. This was not the life of
fame and fortune he had expected. He chose to deal with the problem in the only
way he knew, by escaping from it. He left his affairs in the hands of
courtiers, signing away his Power of Attorney and took to travelling aimlessly
around the world.
With
no one to manage the vast estates, it wasn’t surprising that the family fortune
started dwindling at a rapid pace. While the king was away, it was a free for
all at the palaces.
The courtiers, friends and relatives took to
plundering the palaces and estates. Anything that they could lay their hands on
was taken away to be sold. And whatever could not be taken away was mismanaged.
For example, in the case of the famous Nizam’s jewels,
which some value at more than Rs 1000 crore, the family ended up getting very
little. It was acquired by the government for Rs 218 crore, of which Rs 183
crore came to the family after taxes.
Of this Rs 25 crore was paid to Mukarram
and another Rs 25 crore to his brother Prince Muffakham Jah. The rest of the
money is still under litigation with hundreds of relatives claiming parts of
it.
Marriages and issue
Mukarram wasn’t as prolific as his grandfather, but he
had married five times only, including a former Miss Turkey who was his third
wife. His first wife was a Turkish noble woman, Esra Birgin (b. 1936), and they
married in 1959.
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| Mukarram JAH viii Nizam with Princess Esma at HIS Coronation Ceremony |
In the family’s tradition Mukarram was married off
very young to a Turkish blue blood, Princess Esra, when he was very young. Esra
preferred the company of her mother-in-law with whom she had more in common
than her taciturn, arrogant husband.
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Mukarram Jah with Son Prince Azmet Jah
|
Within a few years of taking
over as Nizam he took refuge from the home front by escaping to Australia where
he fell in love with his secretary Helen, a large, rambunctious, sensuous woman
who enjoyed boasting of her many lovers.
She could not have been more different from the stiff
lipped aristocratic women in his family and he adored her for it. He married
Helen only to regret it a few years later when she contracted AIDS and died.
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| Helen Simons |
The rift with his mother and first wife was now too
vast to bridge. They were appalled at his choice and how he had allowed the
prestigious 250 year’s old Asaf Jahi dynasty to be associated with a commoner.
After Helen’s death Mukarram got back to his
globetrotting ways, moving, finally to Turkey. Istanbul had in any case, right
from the beginning, felt more like home than Hyderabad. On a blind date there
he was introduced to the charming ex-Ms Turkey Manolya Onur who became his
third wife.
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| Maynolya Onur |
Manolya was drawn to what she says was, “the sadness
in him. He was so obviously lonely. When I came to know that his mother was our
Great Pasha’s daughter, I was shocked.” They got married and on her insistence
returned to India.
By then, fortunately for him, his mother and first
wife had migrated to London to set up mansions there. For Manolya, India was a
dream. She recalls how they came to India to live in unimaginable luxury in his
beautiful palace.”
It was like a fairy tale. A palace
straight from The Arabian Nights, the most magnificent jewels and clothes to
wear, battalions of servants falling over you, a fleet of cars at my disposal.”
But for Mukarram, the nightmare had restarted within a
few months. Says Manolya, “Everyday he was having his ears filled by different
factions. People kept threatening him with court cases. The government was
constantly encroaching on his various properties.
The arguments with everyone over money irritated him.
After three months he could not bear it anymore. He decided to escape to
Australia once again.
He bought this huge ranch in the outback in Australia
and insisted we shift there to live among dingo dogs, cowboys, cattle and
snakes. It was a nightmare.
When Mukarram drove out with the cattle I was
completely alone. I could have died there and no one would have known we were
so far from civilization.”
Shaking her head, she adds, “I begged Mukarram to
return to the comfort and luxury of India and the respect of his people. But he
loved the outback. He actually enjoyed the loneliness and the tough life.”
Manolya got pregnant and insisted she return to Turkey
for the birth of their child. Mukarram now took to taking off on his own.
Manolya heard through Turkish papers that he had got married a fourth time.
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| Jameela Bourges |
A Moroccan lady, Jameela Bourges, was
his wife for a very brief period. Six months later she was out of favor.
I could not believe Mukarram had got hitched to her.
Mukarram realized his mistake but the lady extracted her pound of flesh, $
500,000, before she agreed to the divorce.”
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| Mukarram Jah -- Now lives in Turkey |
Currently Mukarram lives
in Istanbul with his fifth wife, another Turkish lady Orchid Kapani, (b. 1959).
The biggest
mistake of Prince Mukarram Jah was, instead of staying in Hyderabad and sort out
his problems, he turned his back on them and left the city of his forefathers.
Jah’s advisor and close friend, Sadruddin Javeri, who
managed his estate in his absentia squandered away a huge part of his wealth.
It was Javeri’s cupidity that the world famous Falaknuma Palace was sold to the
Taj Group of hotels in lieu of unpaid debts. No wonder, the advisor who called
himself Prime Minister of Nizams’ was unceremoniously sacked in 1997.
It is not that every thing is over for
Prince Mukaram Jah, the eight Nizam of Hyderabad. He still posses’ huge assets
in the city. What is expected from him is to stay in Hyderabad and sort out his
litigations.
Its any irony that the man who is still being
addressed in his native place as; His Exalted Highness, Sultan, Pasha, Huzoor
Nizam, Mai-Bap and Sarkar and many such epithets, prefers a life of recluse in
a foreign land.
It is indeed a sad story of wealth lost and squandered, the frailty of
human vanity and status, the total inability of a man to cope with great
historic changes taking place around him.
Today the Prince lives in relative anonymity in
Istanbul, only making infrequent trips to Hyderabad when a crisis requires his
attention.
Interestingly his
first wife Princess Esra, who now lives in London with and two children, has
after two decades of frigid indifference, started taking an active interest in
the family’s Indian properties. She jets to Hyderabad.
The End
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