The Muslim State of Bhopal in India and British Rule

The Light (UK), May 2009 Issue (pp. 3–5)

The Pakistan newspaper The News International, 25^th March 2009, carries an article by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the country’s popular nuclear hero, about the history of the state of Bhopal in India, from where he originates and where he spent his school days. It is entitled The Begums of Bhopal, these being the Muslim ladies who ruled the state for some years in succession. In it he writes:

“In 1844 Sikander Begum, daughter of Qudsia Begum, became the ruler [i.e., of Bhopal]. She witnessed the 1857 War of Independence and saved Bhopal from marauding mutineers. She gave humanitarian shelter to some European ladies and children and the British were particularly grateful to her for this.”

Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, while himself too young at the time in 1857, has written of his father as having provided support for the British against the mutineers. He writes in a Notice addressed to the government in 1897:

“It may also be mentioned that in his statement Dr Clarke has alleged about me, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, that I am a danger to the government. However, I inform the authorities through this Notification that such an opinion in respect of me is a terrible injustice. I belong to a family which is staunchly loyal to the government. My father, Mirza Ghulam Murtaza, was faithful and loyal in the eyes of the government and was entitled to a seat in the Governor’s court. He has been mentioned in [Sir Lepel] Griffin’s History of the Punjab Chiefs. In 1857 he had given help to the British government beyond his resources. That is to say, right during the Mutiny he had helped the British government by supplying fifty horsemen and horses. In view of these services he had received from the authorities letters of appreciation, most of which, I regret, have been lost.”¹

The Dr Clarke mentioned here was a Christian missionary who had brought a case against Hazrat Mirza sahib, of sending a man to murder him, and during the case he also made against him the allegation that he was a threat to British rule. To clear himself, Hazrat Mirza sahib published this Notice.

On the basis of such statements by him, Hazrat Mirza sahib is widely accused by the opponents of the Ahmadiyya Movement, particularly in Pakistan, of being a tool of the British government of India. Yet we have now a great hero of Pakistan proclaiming that the Muslim rulers of the state of Bhopal in India, the place where he grew up, also supported the British during that uprising. Dr Khan continues:

“Sikander Begum’s biggest achievement came when she travelled to Delhi at the invitation of the Viceroy, Lord Canning. Jama Masjid in Delhi, built by Shah Jehan, had been turned into stables by the British after the 1857 uprising, as it was considered to be a safe haven for Muslims. Sikander Begum was able to convince Lord Canning that, by allowing the building to revert to being used as a mosque, he would win the loyalty of the large Muslim population.”

Just as Hazrat Mirza sahib writes above that his father

“was entitled to a seat in the [British] Governor’s court”,

similarly we find that the lady ruler of Bhopal was invited to Delhi by the Viceroy. We are told that she advised him to give consideration to the religious feelings of the Muslims which would win over their loyalty to British rule. Likewise, when more than forty years later, Hazrat Mirza sahib wrote a memorial addressed to the viceroy of that time, Lord Curzon, asking that Muslims be given Friday as their religious holiday of the week, he said in it:

“I am further encouraged to prefer this request to Your Excellency by the fact that Your Excellency has already shown your sympathy with Muhammadan [Muslim] religious feeling on more occasions than one, by restoring to religious use mosques which had been desecrated and by otherwise showing Your Excellency’s regard for these sacred buildings.” (Review of Religions, December 1902)

And he added that the Muslims:

“…are a people in whose practical life religion is the most important factor and nothing is calculated to more attract their hearts or make them overflow with loyalty and gratitude to the Government than a religious favour bestowed on them. Therefore the most excellent practical step which the Government can take to completely conquer their hearts is to give them a benefit which affects their religion.”

It is quite clear that there is no difference between the approach adopted by Sikander Begum of Bhopal, as related by Dr Khan, and what Hazrat Mirza sahib has written in his petition. Both had the same outlook towards the British rulers of India and the same relationship with them. According to Dr Khan this approach shows the

“the wisdom, foresight and diplomacy”

of the lady rulers of Bhopal. Yet the same attitude by Hazrat Mirza sahib is reviled in Pakistan, and in Muslim circles outside Pakistan, and he is accused of treachery against the Muslims, and complicity with British rule, and flattery and subservience towards it.

Dr A. Q. Khan then moves on to the next ruler:

“Shah Jehan, daughter of Sikander Begum, became Nawab in 1868. She was a very capable ruler and facilitated the cultural development of Bhopal. The famous mosque at Woking in England was built at her initiative.”

Her financing of Dr G.W. Leitner to build the Mosque at Woking in 1889 is, of course, well known in our Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, although she died a dozen years before Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din established the Woking mission there. The Mosque does not appear to have been named after her until the Khwaja opened it up for regular use in 1913.

Her successor is also of interest from our point of view. As Dr Khan writes:

“After Shah Jehan, her daughter, Sultan Jehan, became Nawab and ruled from 1901 to 1926.”

In the British Pathe newsreel archive, there is a film clip from 1925 showing this lady Nawab visiting the Woking Mosque and being shown around by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din. Lord Headley and Mr Habibullah Lovegrove also appear in this clip.² In The Islamic Review of October–November 1925 there is an article by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din entitled Her Highness The Begum of Bhopal and her Succession. The Khwaja sahib tells us that:

“For the last four generations the nomination of a successor [to the throne of Bhopal] has always come from the existing ruler and the British government has upheld the nomination, as being in accordance with Mohammedan Law.”

This lady had nominated her only surviving son, Hamidullah Khan, as her successor. However, says the article, there is a grandson of the lady from the deceased eldest son and it is to be determined if he has the better title to be heir. In this connection, the Khwaja sahib’s article quotes an official letter sent to the ruler of Bhopal in 1862 by the then viceroy Lord Canning, which runs as follows:³

Here, then, was a key Muslim state of India which had pledged loyalty to British rule and entered into treaties with the British government long before Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad appeared on the scene. Another point to note is that it is alleged by our opponents that the British government “created” the Ahmadiyya Movement. This letter opens by conveying to the ruler of Bhopal that the British government wishes the rule of their house over the state to be “perpetuated”.

This information about the history of Bhopal is merely one piece in an entire mass of evidence clearly showing that other Muslim leaders in India had the same relationship with the British rule of India as did the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement [Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian]. The allegation that he was a tool acting for the British government is, in fact, a total fabrication, a falsification of well-known historical facts, and a deceit perpetrated by his opponents on a mass scale.

We are pleased to note that these facts about the history of Bhopal have been brought to public attention through an article written by a hugely popular hero of Pakistan, a man whom our critics would most certainly not consider as disloyal to Muslims, but quite the opposite.

Footnotes:

1. Notice dated 20^th September 1897, included in his book Kitab-ul-Bariyya. ↩︎
2. To find the film clip, see: www.wokingmuslim.org/film/ ↩︎
3. Words in square brackets are added by me for clarification. ↩︎

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