Abstract
Bhopal, one of the ‘princely states’ and vassals of the British Empire, enjoyed special favour with its sovereign. Throughout a century, it was ruled by women who gained themselves, in India and outside, the glory of enlightened and progressive monarchs. Archival documents and memoirs allow glancing at the hitherto hidden world of domestic servants, who not only ensured the comfortable and luxurious life of the princely family, but also its high status and prestige. Among the numerous servants employed by the Bhopal rulers, freely hired local residents prevailed. However, the natives of some other countries, quite far from India, were present as well. Some of them came to Bhopal by force: The reputation of ‘progressive’ was no obstacle for the Bhopal queens for using slave labour, getting in response mild admonition from their British superiors.
Introduction
The principality of Bhopal that had emerged in Central India in the early eighteenth century was one of the notable vassals of the first English East India Company and subsequently of the British Empire. A specific feature of Bhopal was that, throughout almost a century, its rulers (nawābs) had been women: Qudsia Begum (1819–37), her daughter Sikandar Begum (1847–68), granddaughter Shah Jahan Begum (1868–1901) and great-granddaughter Sultan Jahan Begum (1901–26). 1 With the exception of the widowed Qudsia Begum, all those women rulers were married, but enjoyed the whole power and authority, while their husbands, with one exception (to be mentioned below), had none—a unique situation, indeed, for a Muslim dynasty of Afghan origin. The epoch of those energetic and gifted queens who had done a lot to strengthen territorial, political and economic foundations of the principality, to develop the infrastructure, education and medical care, especially for women, has been justly viewed as the ‘golden age’ of the Bhopal state.
The begums spared no effort to enforce their reputation of wise, clement and judicious rulers, faithful to the traditions (primarily those of the Mughal Empire) 2 and at the same time exceptionally loyal to the British Raj, besides being open to European influence. Foreign visitors to Bhopal usually confirmed this high estimation. They could see, in all its exotic beauty, the ‘Oriental lavishness’ that the British censured so much and at the same time emulated in their own lifestyle in India. By the beginning of the twentieth century, according to the memoirs of Princess Abida Sultan, 3 the official residences of the princely family, eclectically combining Mughal and European architecture styles had amounted to seven in number, not to mention their endless villas, garden houses, hunting stations, resorts and so on. 4 In each of them, a high-ranked European visitor 5 could enjoy an exceptional degree of hospitality. A compulsory part of the programme for European guests was visits to girls’ schools, colleges and hospitals, opened by the benevolent rulers (some of those establishments have survived). With rare exceptions, the British and European estimates of the Bhopal princely state and its rulers were quite positive. Sultan Jahan Begum came particularly to be noted for her contributions to education, especially female, and her support of the reformist movement among Indian Muslims with a special attention to the uplift of women. 6
However, a significant contribution to this high repute was by a set of nameless people who had almost never found mention in the Bhopal chronicles or in British reports. They were, as in any Indian aristocratic household, domestic servants who provided the princely lifestyle and comfort to the ruling family and, no less importantly, helped maintain its self-estimation and prestige. The servants did so not only by cooking, nursing, guarding, cleaning, driving, doing errands and so on, but also by just accompanying their mistresses or masters whenever the members of the princely family went. No person from the nawābī family could go out without servants, even if no work was required from the latter. Princess Abida Sultan reminisced about how, in her childhood, she would go horse riding with her two sisters every morning. Waiting at the palace gate were
three ponies, three grooms, three messengers, three pages liveried in blue, white and gold, and Thakur Chaman Singh
7
… We three sisters were not permitted to go outdoors without being escorted by at least one female attendant each; usually there were many more.
8
Wherever the Bhopal rulers went, even for a short time, they had to be accompanied by servants. This tradition could create inconvenience even for their British sovereigns. Discussing the details of the forthcoming visit to Bhopal of the Viceroy of India, Lord Lansdowne (1891), the British officials demanded that, during the welcome ceremony at the Bhopal railway station, the personal maids of Shah Jahan Begum should remain seated under the Begum’s canopy and not stir out of it. 9 Most probably, the British authorities knew that the Begum would come to receive the distinguished guest along with the entire staff of her servants, who could fill much of the platform, creating crowd and commotion. To be sure, servants accompanied the rulers of Bhopal during their distant travels, like pilgrimages to Mecca or journeys to Europe. When in 1911, Sultan Jahan Begum, along with her two sons, their wives and children, went on a ‘private visit’ to Europe, in Marseilles, the princely family boarded a specially prepared train, in which a ‘second class car’ was allotted for their servants. 10
Domestic servants, as a distinct group of working population that had existed in all countries and societies from remote antiquity, usually remain invisible in historical sources; in literary works and epics, they would sometimes come on the surface only when they happened to save their masters or, like the slave woman Manthara in the Rāmāyana, move the story to its climax with their ill intentions and intrigues. This silence had as a reason not only the servants’ usual belonging to the lowest social strata. In India, from ancient times to the present day, the life of families, even not very affluent ones, has been unimaginable without domestic workers. Their service has been so habitual and unavoidable that to write about their activities looks for many Indians like recording breaths (only nowadays there have been Internet chats where ladies discuss methods of disciplining and effectively managing the domestic helpers).
There have been a number of successful international projects on socio-economic, gender, cultural, emotional and other aspects of domestic service. 11 For India as well, there are illuminating works (unfortunately, a rather small number) on the medieval period, 12 on colonial times—those works discuss both British and Indian households, in their specificities and inter-influences; 13 and on the modern era—high-quality studies based primarily upon field data. 14 Apart from those, there have been seminal works attempting to trace the history of domestic service in India during different epochs. 15 What has now attracted scholars from different countries to the sphere of domestic service is the realisation that the theme constitutes a crossroads of different methodological approaches in history, anthropology and other social sciences (labour studies, gender studies, slavery studies, history of everyday life and family, postcolonial studies, visual studies, migration studies and so on). 16
The servants of the Bhopal ruling family used to be numerous indeed. Exact data have not been available to me, but some documents from the local archive 17 show, for instance, that by the end of the nineteenth century, the elephant stable alone that had been serving the princely family and, as ‘office transport’, the government officials of the highest rank, had the staff of 118 workers. Even more populous was the staff of the baggī-khāna; the princely ‘baggies’ or coaches were in the care of 20 coachmen and 103 grooms. 18 According to Abida Sultan, only the ‘Nur us-sabah’ palace, built for her by her grandmother Sultan Jahan Begum (now a luxury hotel), had a staff of fifty-two servants. 19 If we consider that there had been seven such palaces, then there could be a possibility that in all of them, plus the numerous villas, hunting stations, guesthouses, elephant, horses and camel stables, kitchens, royal parks and gardens, and so on, a few thousand servants of different professions found employment. A majority of them were hired locals, Muslims and Hindus. However, in the Bhopal princely household, slaves were conspicuous as well. The purpose of my study is to reconstruct some of their life stories from the available documents and to use the Bhopal case for situating slavery within the domestic service realm.
Slavery in India has indeed had a millennia-long history. For the ancient period, it has been researched by Dev Raj Chanana, 20 Ram Sharan Sharma, 21 Romila Thapar 22 and other scholars. There have been comprehensive studies on slavery in medieval and colonial India, like the explorations of Irfan Habib 23 or the studies collected in a special volume. 24 Not going deeply, I would highlight two important features of the Indian variety of slavery. First, given all the differences in approach, most scholars agree that, especially in medieval times, the majority of slaves in India had been domestic servants; 25 this, due to the above-mentioned reasons, makes the research on this topic even more difficult. Another important category was ‘military slaves’, so comprehensively studied by the late Sunil Kumar 26 and Richard M. Eaton; 27 in many cases, their ‘slave status’ was formal and no obstacle for building significant military careers and even becoming kings. Second, while some of the available textual sources provide an abundant material on slaves, it is not always possible to discern them from other categories of bonded and ‘free’ labourers. The terms that can be translated as ‘slave man/woman’ could signify a hired servant or even a disciple of a guru. Even a person mentioned as ‘servant’ could be a slave, a free hired labourer, an official in royal service and so on. Some slaves, as the present study will also show, were salaried, and their wages could be higher than those of hired workers. 28 This perhaps made the Greek observer Megasthenes declare that slavery did not exist in ancient India, and some scholars like the celebrated Indologist A.L. Basham argued that the Indian version of slavery was ‘milder’ and a slave ‘was probably better off in India’ than in other countries. 29 In the South Asian context, according to Richard Eaton, ‘barriers between slave and non-slave status were often quite permeable’. 30 This makes the research on Indian slavery a hard job, indeed.
Among the slaves in service of Indian rulers and aristocrats, of especial relevance to my study were men and women of non-Indian origin, who usually came to India via the world slave trade routes or had been enslaved as war booty. For example, one may take the cases of a Russian slave family in service of Hamida Banu Begum, the mother of the celebrated Mughal emperor Akbar (reigned 1556–1605), who had incidentally manumitted all his palace slaves, 31 or a Portuguese woman Juliana Dias da Costa (d.1734), who became extremely influential at the Mughal court as a woman doctor and governess of children. 32 Noteworthy were East Africans, traditionally known in India as, notwithstanding their origin, ‘Ethiopians’ (Habshī) or Siddis (siddī). 33 Those slaves, imported into India throughout the whole of medieval and post-medieval periods, were employed as warriors (some succeeded in making an illustrious career, like Jamal ud-din Yāqut, the favourite of the celebrated Razia Sultan, Malik ‘Aṁbar the general and Prime Minister of the Ahmadnagar state or the famous rulers of Janjira). If not warriors, the Habshīs or Siddis became household servants whose appearance highlighted the high social rank of their masters. The fashion for black slaves was inherited by the princes of colonial epoch. Bhopal was no exception: Abida Sultan’s little son was attended, apart from the German bonne Marie Liefells and an Englishwoman Pat Naylor, by an ‘Ethiopian’ maid, Jingo. Abida Sultan’s ‘most faithful servant’ was ‘the Abyssinian Bunney’. 34
Household slavery continued to exist in India during the colonial period, 35 notwithstanding the facts that in 1833, slavery had been abolished in all British colonies; in 1843, Indian Slavery Act made slave owning and trading grave offences; and in 1861, this provision was included in the Indian Penal Code. The problem, however, was that the princely states, like Bhopal, had the status of formal independence, albeit vassal, principalities. The subsidiary treaties signed by the British administration with every prince guaranteed the Raj’s non-interference in the internal affairs of the native signatories. 36 Therefore, the imperial laws were largely non-applicable to the princely states, and the British colonial administration avoided interference in the internal affairs of ‘native states’ in matters where the British government’s own major concerns were not involved.
A Bhopali-Georgian-African Drama from Colonial Archive
At the beginning of January 1872, the Bombay police detained a suspicious group consisting of three women (two very young and the third aged) and three men, one of whom was a seedee (Siddi), and the other two were Indian Muslims. All were from Mecca. Interrogation made it clear that the young women were Georgian slave girls, bought by the Bhopal ruler Sikandar Begum during her pilgrimage to Mecca, while the Siddi man happened to be a slave bought by her in Mecca as well. They were accompanied by the two servants of Shah Jahan Begum, the ruler of Bhopal at that time: an aged woman, by name Adil Booa (Bua), 37 and Subhan Khan, the guard. In the nineteenth century, girls from Georgia and other Caucasian regions, kidnapped during raids or sold by impoverished families, were a popular human commodity in the Near and Middle East. 38 Such slave girls, bought by rich Muslim families, were, if initially Christians, usually converted by their owners to Islam. In 1873, Sikandar Begum, along with her mother Qudsia Begum, undertook a pilgrimage to the holy places of Mecca and Medina. She described her journey in a travelogue where, among other things, she mentioned several times the Georgian slave girls whom she met in the houses of the Meccan aristocracy. 39
The story of the Georgian slave girls of the Bhopal princely palace, along with that of their Siddi companion, is the theme of an archival file. 40 It begins with the cover letter by W. Wedderburn, Esq., Acting Secretary to the Government of Bombay, to C.U. Aitchison, Esq., Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department. This letter, like all other documents in the file, except one, is typographically printed, which somehow adds importance to the whole collection. The cover letter is attached to the report by Frank Henry Souter, Esq., Commissioner of Police, Bombay. The report begins with the statement that during the interrogation, both Georgians and their Siddi companion had made it clear that they ‘were being sent to Mecca much against their wish’. Then the Commissioner reports taking charge of the girls and informing them that ‘they were free to go wherever they desired’. The aged woman, Adil Bua, and the guard, Subhan Khan, were allowed to proceed to Mecca; Adil Bua consequently deposited with the Commissioner the sum of ₹200 given to her by the Bhopal Treasury to meet the expenses of taking the girls and the Siddi to Mecca. One of the girls, by name Roshan Ara, expressed the wish to join her husband, Ahmed Husain, who had followed her to Bombay and was one of the male members of the group. The second Georgian girl, Akhtar Ara, desired to stay with Roshan Ara ‘till she got settled in this country’. The statements of all the three ex-slaves, translated and included in the report, were, according to the Commissioner, testimonies ‘of very cruel treatment from the present Begum of Bhopal’. 41
The first Georgian girl, Roshan Ara, alias Zainab, stated that around six years ago, at the age of about 13, she had been bought by one Abba Baker from her previous master, an Arab by name Abdul Rahim, ‘for a large sum of money’. Abba Baker put the girl on board of a steamboat, and, as she confessed, ‘I was very unhappy after this and cried much, as I did not like to leave my country’.
42
From Bombay Abba Baker took the teenage slave to Bhopal where she was
presented to Her Highness Sekander Begum and henceforth remained in the palace. Her Highness treated me with the utmost kindness and gave me many presents of jewelry and clothing. About 12 months after my arrival at Bhopal (by order and desire of the Begum) I was married (by nikah) to one Ahmed Hoosein, who was then an Assistant in the Record Office. My husband and I lived very happily together, and Her Highness continued to be very kind to us; we had apartments assigned to us in the palace, and I still attended upon Her Highness as handmaiden and companion.
43
This happy life lasted for two years and ended when Sikandar Begum died (1868); the successor, Shah Jahan Begum, married, for the second time, Siddiq Hasan, her secretary and long-time favourite. Since then, ‘troubles began’. Roshan Ara’s husband was imprisoned, and the Georgian maid, ‘without having been charged with, or convicted of, any offence’ was flogged by the order and in the presence of the Begum and her consort, as well as other domestics. She was requested to divorce her husband, but refused to do so. All clothes and jewels presented by the late Begum to Roshan Ara were confiscated; she was threatened with imprisonment. Finally, along with Akhtar Ara and Siddi Yakut, she was entrusted to Adil Bua and Subhan Khan and sent off to Bombay. Roshan Ara was sure that the aged servant woman ‘had orders to take us to Bombay and thence to Mecca where I believe I was to be re-sold’. She was definitely ‘unwilling to forsake my husband and prefer remaining with him in Hindoostan’. 44
The second Georgian slave girl, Akhtar Ara, stated that at the age of 16, an Arab by name Abdul Rahim purchased her from the Sharif of Mecca and brought her to Bhopal, where Sikandar Begum, who treated her as benevolently as Roshan Ara, married her off to ‘one of her relations, named Nuzeeb (Najib) Mahomed Khan’, presenting her valuable jewellery and clothes. As in the case of Roshan Ara, Akhtar Ara’s happy married life ended with Shah Jahan Begum ascending the throne and marrying Siddiq Hasan. The latter, ‘to serve his own ends preferred a false charge of adultery against me, upon which I was without any investigation cast into prison and kept there for four months in irons’. Thereafter, Akhtar Ara was given 200 lashes on her bare legs in the presence of the Begum and all the servants of the palace; the ill-fated woman could not walk for sixteen days. After that, she was released and informed that her husband had divorced her, and all jewels and gifts from Sikandar Begum had been confiscated. Then, along with Roshan Ara and Siddi Yakut, she was entrusted to Adil Bua and Subhan Khan to be taken to Mecca, where she was unwilling to return. 45
Adil Bua, the aged servant woman, stated that she had applied to Shah Jahan Begum for permission to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. The Begum consented and asked her to take charge of the Georgian girls and the Siddi. Adil Bua laid special emphasis on the fact that her duty was to take all the three to Mecca and ‘let them go wherever they wished’, that is, not to sell them, as both the girls feared. Siddi Yakut declared that ten years earlier he had been bought in Mecca and brought to Bhopal where he became the servant of the then heir apparent, Shah Jahan Begum, who had him married to a palace servant-maid. Thereafter, ‘in consequence of the complaint made by my wife’ (no details given), Siddiq Hasan forced Yakut to divorce his wife, which the Siddi refused to do. Then, he was sent to Mecca with the two Georgian girls.
Subhan Khan, the guard, was not interrogated. However, Ahmed Husain, Roshan Ara’s husband, made a statement that provided some important details to the story. He corroborated his wife’s testimony and declared that the marriage gift from Sikandar Begum was worth ₹10,000 in jewels and apparel (a fantastic sum for that time). Siddiq Hasan, after marrying Shah Jahan Begum, ‘began to turn out all servants of the late Begum and brought in his own favourites’. He quarrelled with an ‘immediate superior’ of Ahmed Husain, an officer by name Hamid Husain, and accused the latter of adultery with Akhtar Ara. The officer was suspended while Ahmed Husain was arrested ‘on suspicion of acting as a go-between for him and Akhtar Ara’. 46 Ten days after the arrest, Ahmed Husain got an order from the Begum to divorce his wife, which he refused to do. Another order followed, to the same effect, and then the third one, stating that ‘as Roshan Ara was a slave-girl, the property of the Begum, the latter had the right and authority to separate us’. Still, the man refused, and so he was tied up for flogging. ‘Being helpless and through fear’, he now signed the divorce paper. Kept in gaol for three months, he was forced to do hard labour in irons. Ultimately released, Ahmed Husain followed his wife to Bombay and prayed that the police restore her to him. 47
After the police report, a handwritten reply to the Acting Secretary of the Government of Bombay follows, signed by H. Lester Wynne, Under Secretary of the Government of Bombay. This reply contains orders, on behalf of the Governor General, to explain to both the Georgian girls and the Siddi that they were free and to divide the sum of money deposited by Adil Bua between them. The copy of the letter, with all details, had to be forwarded to the Political Agent in Central India to resolve the question of the girls’ property confiscated by the ruler of Bhopal. 48 On 6 May 1872, Major General H.D. Daly forwarded to C.U. Aitchison the translation of Shah Jahan Begum’s explanatory reply to the letter containing the statements of the two slave girls, Siddi Yakut and Ahmed Husain.
The translation begins with the rendering of the complaints by the Georgian girls and the Siddi (the latter being for an unknown reason called Yakub, not Yakut as in the police protocol). Then the explanations by Shah Jahan Begum follow. According to these, Siddi Yakub (Yakut?) was brought by the late Sikandar Begum while on her pilgrimage at Mecca with permission from the British Consul in Jeddah. This permission, in a special letter, stated that the man was going to Bhopal of his own free will. In 1867, also with permission from the British Consul, Roshan Ara and Akhtar Ara 49 came to Bhopal, where, according to the Begum, they were granted ‘the rights of a free citizen’, 50 married off, allotted living space within the palace premises and ‘were not required to do the work of menials’. 51
The wife of Siddi Yakub, as the Begum called him, complained of her husband’s being impotent and divorced him; the Begum had him married to another woman (a Siddi, like the previous one) with a bond granting the ruler the right to dissolve the marriage contract if necessary. The bond, in the words of the Begum, was on the State Record. The man, according to the Begum, maltreated his new wife, who applied for a divorce to the qazi, the Muslim judge, and was granted the same in accordance with Islamic procedure.
As for the two Georgian women, according to the Begum, Akhtar Ara entered an illicit relationship with one Ahmed Husain 52 and ‘was aided and abetted’ by Roshan Ara and her husband. When the affair became known, Akhtar Ara’s husband disowned her, and she was warned against this misconduct, but in vain. The affair continued; Akhtar Ara got pregnant by her lover. Roshan Ara and her husband helped her in causing a premature delivery. The baby, born much before time, died shortly after birth; two palace servants (names given) witnessed the child’s burial. Despite the gravity of the offence, the culprits were ‘dealt with comparative leniency’, being only ‘restricted to their place of abode’. Ahmed Husain was imprisoned for three months, while ‘Hamud Husain’ 53 was dismissed from service. Ahmed Husain gave his wife a written divorce, corroborated by respectable men, in full accordance with Islamic law. The forceful exile of all the three slaves to Mecca was, according to the Begum, a lie; three persons could never be convoyed by an old woman and only one guard. Akhtar Ara and Roshan Ara desired to go to Mecca, and, therefore, they were entrusted to the servants going on pilgrimage, and not sent against their will. A sum of money was allotted for their travel and food expenses. 54
Further, the Begum explained that Akhtar Ara, causing premature delivery, was guilty of murder. Her punishment by whipping was
a light punishment as compared with the seriousness of her crime. The punishment of whipping is authorized both by the British laws and those in force in the State for minor offences; the punishment that was inflicted on the offender cannot, therefore, be considered as unnecessarily severe. Roshan Ara was never flogged; her complaint being false.
55
Further, the Begum stated that the three complainants had been instigated by a certain ‘Mahomed Yacoob, a convert’ and ex-servant of the Bhopal state who had gone to Bombay. Muhammad Amjad Nawab, the Munshi (secretary) of the Bhopal state, had informed the Begum about the whole affair on 9 January. The Begum concluded: ‘I have no concern with the Georgian girls and the Seedee; they are at liberty to stay anywhere but at Bhopal’. 56
After that, the ruler of Bhopal discussed the question of the confiscated jewels in detail; according to her, they had not been gifted but given ‘for wearing only whilst in her (Sikandar Begum’s) employ’; 57 this could be corroborated by the fact that all the jewels in question had been still registered in the documents of the state treasury. The list of the jewels is included: It comprises pearl necklaces, golden tika (forehead jewel) adorned by diamonds, golden and silver bracelets, golden earrings and nose rings, in total, valued at ₹3,921—a large sum for that epoch. 58 The last folio of the file is a shortened version of the same explanatory letter with the addition of one more argument: Akhtar Ara was treated mildly, since, according to the Sharia laws, a married adulteress had to be stoned to death. 59
In his covering letter containing the Begum’s version of the story, Major General Daly wrote that ‘the explanation is in no way satisfactory’.
60
Admitting that the late Sikandar Begum, while purchasing the Georgian girls, could indeed have good intentions to settle them in Bhopal and to provide for them, he viewed the story as ‘so liable to abuse and akin to the worst kind of slavery’. Daly suggested that the Governor General might ‘express to Her Highness his anxious hope that these transactions shall cease’. He further wrote,
The Begum is exceedingly anxious to stand well with the Government of India, and yearns for the kindly notice of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen; in this view a few words from His Excellency might weigh with her Highness to desist from countenancing this trade in human beings’.
61
Serving by Just Being Visible
The documents from the file make it impossible to conclude whose version of the events—the one presented by the slaves or the one expounded by their owner—was correct. Obviously, someone had lied (or, maybe, in the case of the Begum, was misinformed)—but it cannot be ascertained who. It is nevertheless clear that the two Georgian girls and the Siddi had been sold to Bhopal by slave dealers and, in spite of Sikandar Begum’s benevolent treatment, enjoyed no ‘rights of a free citizen’, especially when they became the property of Shah Jahan Begum. The archival material corroborates the above-mentioned thesis that slavery, in its Indian variant, was characterised by a rather vague distinction between slaves and freely hired servants; the latter in Bhopal were, to be sure, an absolute majority; however, slaves were also present in the princely household.
As the documents testify, all the three slaves brought from Mecca to Bhopal got salaries and could quite possibly be better off than the hired servants of the palace. The owners arranged their marriages, choosing partners for them. This was traditionally practised for both slaves and non-slaves as part of duty of a generous master towards his/her servants of whatever status 62 and even office clerks, like Roshan Ara’s husband. Such benevolent deeds presupposed marriage ceremony at the masters’ expense, lavish gifts to the newlywed and dowry for the servant brides. This perhaps was the reason for the free employed servants’ and clerks’ consent for such marriages: As for the choice of partner, they would likewise have had none if married off by their own families. Both hired servants and slaves were stimulated by gifts and punished by fines, imprisonment and beating. And since those who served royal or princely families usually got a better salary than those working for other employers and, in addition, hoped for lavish gifts, the freely hired domestics, even if treated badly, were as unable to leave their masters as the slaves. They preferred, if necessary, to suffer rudeness and violence, but not abandon their better-salaried job. 63 This, however, by no means signifies that the Indian variety of slavery could be more benevolent than its counterpart in any other region of the globe. Beaten and abused or cared for and rewarded, a slave remained a slave, whose life was determined by the owner’s whims.
Situating the Bhopal case within the framework of domestic service research, it is worth contemplating on what had been the purpose of the Bhopal rulers when they imported ‘Ethiopian’ and Georgian slaves from faraway Mecca, spending considerable sums of money on those human ‘commodities’. To be sure, they had no dearth of domestics. The duties entrusted to all the three slave servants in question were rather obscurely defined in the documents. The statement of the Begum that the Georgian girls were not engaged in manual labour corroborates the slaves’ own testimonies; thus, Roshan Ara served the Begum as ‘handmaiden and companion’. Discussing the servants’ duties within the household as ‘reproductive’ and ‘recreational’, 64 scholars focus their attention primarily upon the activities like providing the masters’ family with all necessities, caring for children disabled and seniors, maintaining the comfort and beauty of the house and so on. However, there was, in many societies, a no less important job of domestic servants: to ensure the employers’ social status and authority. World literature of the West and East, from medieval epoch onwards, abounds in the stories of impoverished masters who had no money to pay their servants’ wages, but, belonging to the elite by birth, could not do without maids and lackeys and thus ‘degrade’ themselves with any kind of labour, even like dressing and undressing. The number of employed servants as well as the multitude of their specialities has been a marker of a family’s status. In the princely palace of Bhopal, as the archival documents inform us, the servants’ specialities could be counted in dozens, such as gaddī-sāz, cushion-setter (his job was to spread cushions for sitting on the floor) and peshdast, 65 who, during palace feasts and receptions, had to simply stand behind the distinguished guests, ready to do any errand, if necessary, but primarily proclaim their masters’ regal status. 66
It appears that the Georgian and Siddi slaves had been brought to Bhopal to perform such ‘decorative’ work, ensuring by their very presence in public by the Begum’s side the high prestige of the princely family, which thus boasted of being as rich and powerful as to bring servants from faraway countries. The exotic look of those slaves was an important reason for spending large sums of money on procuring them, bringing them to the princely state, arranging their marriages and decorating them with precious jewels (the latter two aspects had to demonstrate both the Begum’s munificence and her absolute command and property right over her slaves’ bodies—if so desired, she could ‘decorate’ those bodies with lash scars as well). Perhaps, the same reasons made European aristocrats, since medieval times, boast of lavishly attired black lackeys at their doors or carriage footboards. 67 Moreover, in the self-consciousness of the Bhopal rulers and the standards of lifestyle they set for themselves, emulation played an important role. Sikandar Begum visited Mecca, saw African and Georgian slaves in the houses of local aristocrats and wished to purchase the same for her Bhopal palaces.
In a similar vein, the Bhopal rulers employed European servants (freely hired, no doubt and highly salaried) as nurses, butlers and housekeepers. The begums of Bhopal, as mentioned before, were distinguished by their exceptional loyalty to the British crown. This was corroborated, apart from other factors, by their active exchange of letters and gifts with the British royalty, especially Queen Victoria, and the visits of the begums, their children and grandchildren, to the metropolis and Europe, reciprocated by the Bhopal journeys of the British viceroys; in 1922, Bhopal was privileged to host the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII. One of the reasons for the British suzerains’ favouring their Bhopal vassals was their reputation as progressive and enlightened native princes, so highly evaluated in London. To the maintenance and enforcement of this prestige, European servants contributed significantly. Usually, they were hired by the princely family members during visits to Europe, and subsequently invited to Bhopal. European servants were usually entrusted with caring for and upbringing the scions of the princely families—this tradition was common for many native princes in India as well as for other Asian rulers. 68 In Bhopal, the newly born princes and princesses were immediately after birth brought to the custody of the Begum Grandmother. The reason was, primarily, that notwithstanding its ‘progressiveness’, the princely family practiced child marriages: When Abida Sultan was born, her mother Maimuna Sultan was only 12; herself a child, and she could not bring up her baby adequately. The Begum Grandmother, busy with the affairs of the state, had no time for rearing the grandchildren, nor did such responsibility tally with her regal image.
Therefore, the scions of the Bhopal princely family grew up under the guidance and care of servants. Apart from wet nurses and ayahs (maids), usually local, the children were looked after by European bonnes (nursery-governesses) and governesses. Thus, Abida Sultan and her sisters had two bonnes: Winifred Sybil Burke, an Irish woman, and Marie Francesca Liefells, a German. Both European women were hired by Sultan Jahan Begum during her visits to Europe; the latter subsequently nursed Abida Sultan’s son. 69 In 1925–26, during her European visit, Sultan Jahan Begum hired, apart from other British attendants, a butler by name Badcock; when the visit ended, he followed the Begum to Bhopal and kept serving her there, winning everybody’s respect and providing the princely household with a certain European glamour, which was especially necessary during the visits of high-ranked British officials. 70 The very presence of ‘white’ servants in the palace enforced the Bhopal rulers’ reputation both as ‘akin to civilised Europeans’ in British eyes and ‘akin to white sahibs’ in the eyes of their subjects. It may look strange, but the free, lavishly salaried and respected Europeans were employed in the Bhopal palace with the same purpose as the enslaved Georgians and Africans: to demonstrate by their outlandish looks and origin the resources and high status of their princely owners.
‘Demonstrative’ or ‘decorative’ role of foreign servants in Bhopal explains the high value of the jewels, which both the Georgian girls got from their owner—the more lavishly attired were the servants, the higher was their owners’ prestige, even if the latter, like the begums of Bhopal, preferred a modest dress style. 71 It adds veracity to the Begum’s statement that the expensive jewels had not been gifted to the slave girls but given to her to wear on duty. This was what the duty of outlandish slaves had to be, just to attend the begums, especially in public, demonstrating by their exotic look and expensive jewellery high status, might and richness of the Bhopal rulers. Therefore, discussing the ‘reproductive’ functions of domestic servants, we have to consider their role as ‘reproducers’ and enhancers of their masters’ social prestige.
The reaction of colonial administration to the case of the Georgian and Siddi slaves was truly predictable. Interestingly, the Begum’s statement on the British Consul in Jeddah providing permission for all three slaves going to Bhopal got no response from the authorities, who, by a simple logic, had to investigate the case and either punish the consulate staff for participating in slave trade or treat the Begum’s statement as false. Neither action is indicated in the archival file. The ruler of Bhopal was mildly scolded and asked not to allow such episodes again. For the British rulers of India, the loyalty of the Bhopal princely family was more important, and taking strong measures against the nawābs was deemed necessary only on graver occasions. Such happened in 1885 when the main tormentor of the Georgian slave girls, Siddiq Husain, was stripped of the Nawabi title and authority. 72 The documents are silent on the further lives of the ‘decorative’ servants. Their convoyers were allowed to proceed to Mecca. Roshan Ara and her husband, as well as Akhtar Ara, presumably stayed in India. What did Yakut choose to do, is likewise obscure. The Bhopal princely family continued to employ outlandish servants. European bonnes and butlers, ‘Abyssinian’ lackeys and handmaids (and maybe new Georgians too) up to the very end of the princely rule (1949), to carry on their decorative duties, highlighting the ‘Oriental’ might and luxury and, at the same time, the ‘Occidental’ ‘progressiveness’ of their masters.