Opinion That antique land of Awadh

How did we divide the region in the past? Let me count the ways. Awadh might well have been the mythic kingdom of Ayodhya,of the Kosala dynasty,the location of many adventures and travails — starting with the greed and jealousy of a stepmother that exiles the heir-apparent Ram and his wife Sita,followed by the abduction of Sita by the ten-headed scholar-king,Ravana,who is eventually killed in the battle for her rescue waged mainly by monkeys,ending in Rama’s coronation and Sita’s tragic exile and suicide. The story was immortalised in Valmiki’s epic,took the subcontinent by storm,and is told to this day in three hundred or more variations in South and Southeast Asia. Ayodhya,(later Awadh) derived from the Sanskrit word a-yudhya,or that which cannot be fought over — an ironic misnomer for a hugely contested space.

This area,peopled with warrior clans,who skirmished over slices of territory,has changed its dimensions many times over. In 1526,Babar,who defeated Ibrahim Lodhi,conquered it and made it the nucleus of the Mughal empire. Humayun lost it in battle and his son,the emperor Akbar,fought and won back Awadh from the Surs in 1557. He cobbled together a very large,prosperous subah of Awadh,which stretched from the edges of Bihar to Kannauj,and from the Kumaon Himalayas to Allahabad. In the fits of intrigue that convulsed the later Mughal court,Sa’adat Khan,an unscrupulous Persian adventurer,whose dexterity at changing sides and duping people were both amply rewarded by the Mughal court,was appointed subahdar of Awadh and faujdar of Gorakhpur in 1772. It did not take him long to change it into a dynastic fiefdom,while remaining a major player in Delhi as wazir of the Mughal empire and the governor of Akbarabad (Agra). With strategies worthy of a Hollywood epic peopled with mustachioed warriors with swords drawn,clanking around in gore-spattered coats of mail,Sa’adat Khan rebuilt Awadh. He quickly subdued the semi-independent rajas,who had amassed huge fortunes,built palaces,forts and armed retinues,and extracted his dues. He vanquished the rajas of Tiloi,Pratapgarh and Baiswara; he cajoled the Kakori sheikhs to help him pulverise the sheikhzadas of Lucknow. That accomplished,he went on a triumphal rampage,toppling a string of Hindu rajas of Banaras,Ghazipur,Jaunpur and Chunar. He finally overreached by secretly encouraging Emperor Nadir Shah of Persia,who had already ransacked much of the Punjab,to loot the treasure of Delhi. Shahjahan’s gem-studded Peacock throne was carried off,along with a thousand camels and elephants laden with jewels. To avoid paying the ransom he had promised the plunderer,Sa’adat Khan died by his own hand in 1739. There were 9 crores of rupees in the Faizabad treasury — a bigger,stronger,richer Awadh had been created by greed and villainy.

Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula,third nawab of Awadh,was a handsome man,even more wily than his forbears. He swooped down from Awadh and annexed Allahabad while his cousin,the subahdar,was summoned elsewhere,making a very profitable bulge in the map of Awadh. This gave him the fertile Doab and the revenue collected from the Hindu pilgrims who came to bathe at the confluence of the Ganga and Jamuna rivers. He then also grabbed Kora district after defeating the Marathas.

Awadh’s riches also drew the grasping tentacles of the East India Company,until Robert Clive could no longer bear it and provoked the momentous Battle of Buxar. It was a rout; the combined might of the Mughal emperor and the nawabs of Bengal and Awadh was decisively humiliated. The Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 dramatically restructured Awadh. Apart from paying a huge indemnity of Rs 50 lakh to the Company,Shuja-ud-Daula had to cede the districts of Chunar,Kora and Allahabad,and Awadh looked sadly truncated in its eastern and northern flanks. After his death,his widows were pestered by Warren Hastings to yield the treasure he believed they secretly held. His bullying became so outrageous that he was brought to trial in England,eloquently charged by Edmund Burke,but acquitted after seven-and-a-half years in the dock.

A decade later,in 1775,Asaf-ud-Daula,the fourth nawab,was forced to move his capital from Faizabad,away from his mother,to the more centrally located Lucknow. With shameless meddling and bullying,the Company managed to detach more hunks of territory during his reign. Awadh was now in the fatal embrace of the British,who milked their cash cow even as they sliced its rump for steak. In 1819,Ghazi-ud-Din Haider,reduced to a mincing marionette,was inveigled by the British Resident to break his ties to the Mughal empire,give up his title of “nawab wazir” and take on the English title of “king”. This reoriented the map of the Mughal empire,leaving it a mere sliver. History was farce; Awadh was risible.

In 1856,when the last king,Wajed Ali Shah,refused to sign a ridiculous treaty,the British annexed his kingdom and kept him under house arrest in a suburb of Calcutta. This would be the last territorial acquisition by the Company in India. In 1877,the British,in a bid to trim their budget,merged Awadh with its neighbour,calling the new province the United Provinces of North-West Provinces and Awadh,with Allahabad as the capital. This infelicitous arrangement,with its clunky name persisted,though Sir Harcourt Butler,the chief commissioner,ordered the capital back to Lucknow in 1920. Lucknow became a slightly larger dot on the map of British India.

But worse was to come: Independence did not alter the map of the region,but changed its name to the Hindi appellation of Uttar Pradesh. At a stroke of the pen,Awadh vanished altogether as a name and a place from the map of India. Some gall,that. But wait! Uttar Pradesh (which lost its uttar wing to Uttarakhand not so long ago) is a huge,unwieldy,overpopulated (200 million and growing fast),and under-developed sitting duck waiting to be carved anew — perhaps for effective governance. One of the three or four portions will be called Awadh Pradesh. A millennial,slender,reborn Awadh Subah with Lucknow as its capital. Where is that quill?

The writer is professor of history at Baruch College and CUNY. Among other books,she is the author of ‘The Making of Colonial Lucknow,1856-1877’