Torch bearer (clockwise from top) Syed Husain Bilgrami, ayahs house, Lord Morley Special arrangement
Nawab Imad-ul Mulk is a familiar name in the annals of Hyderabad’s 19th century history. He was a noted educationalist, civil servant, prominent administrator and a noted scholar in the Nizam’s dominions. He was private secretary to Salar Jung I, the then Prime Minister of Hyderabad State; also a tutor and conscience keeper of the Nizam — Mahboob Ali Pasha — whose government he served with great distinction. For his dedication for work, strength of character and extraordinary mastery over English language and literature, the British government also utilised his services on many occasions. He had the rare honour of having served as member in the Secretary of State’s Council .He also had the distinction of having met along with Salar Jung I, Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace in London. Nawab Imad ul Mulk was the title that the Nizam bestowed in recognition of the services he rendered, with which he was well known in Hyderabadi circles; but his actual name was Syed Husain Bilgrami.
Syed Husain Bilgrami was born in 1844 at Gaya, where his father held high position under the East India Company administration. He was educated at the Presidency College, Calcutta from where he graduated in English literature. In 1868 he became a Professor at the Canning College in Lucknow before joining the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1873. It was the time when Salar Jung I the Prime Minister of Hyderabad state was looking for English educated young men to be appointed in Hyderabad to modernise the administration and to improve educational facilities in the dominions. In 1872, Salar Jung while on a visit to Lucknow, met young Syed and was attracted to his intelligence and demeanour. He was invited to join the Hyderabad service, which he did the next year. For his impeccable English, both spoken and written, Syed Husain was taken as the private secretary to Salar Jung. The rest of his long career was irrevocably bound with Hyderabad.
The story goes that when Salar Jung asked Syed where his family originally hailed from, he answered, ‘Bilgrami’ (in the then United Provinces). The Prime Minister in a lighter vein suggested that Bilgrami could as well be added to his name and thus he became Syed Husain Bilgrami.
Bilgrami’s rise to prominence in Hyderabad was due to his sheer work as an educationalist. As the first Director of Public Instruction (1875- 1902) he initiated several reforms to improve the educational set up in the state. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Nizam College with English medium, with Dr Aghoranath Chattopadhyay, (father of Sarojini Naidu) as its first Principal. It is said that Bilgrami was the person who discovered the genius in Chattopadhyay, the first Indian to obtain D. Sc in Biochemistry from Edinburgh University. The College was affiliated to Madras University as there was no University in the Hyderabad dominions by then. Bilgrami was for some years taken by the government of India, as a member of the Universities Commission, a forerunner of the present UGC. In Hyderabad, he established Madarsa- i- Aizza, a school exclusively for the children of the nobles with a view to make them cultured and more responsible towards society. A crowning achievement of Bilgrami in the furthering of education in Hyderabad was the establishment of a girls school in 1885 with his personal funds. This was hailed as one of its kind in the country as the girls were taught besides usual subjects, needle work, household duties etc. English, besides Urdu and Arabic, was made the medium of instruction. To make girls from traditional families attend school, bullock carts with curtains were arranged to fetch them to school and back home.
In Hyderabad state, with a view to foster industrial growth, Bilgrami established three Industrial Schools at three important towns in the state, Aurangabad, Warangal and Hyderabad, which later grew to be Engineering Colleges. The State Central Library in Hyderabad also owes its establishment to the untiring efforts of Syed Husain Bilgrami.
Bilgrami was also a prolific writer in English and his books include Historical and Descriptive Sketches of His Highness , the Nizam’s Dominions , in 2 volumes, and A Memoir of Sir Salar Jung I . Besides, he had also composed several poems.
Lord Morely, the Secretary of State for India, who took Bilgrami as a member of his council.
The career graph of Syed Husain Bilgrami reached its zenith when he was made a member of the Secretary of State’s Council, in London. After the Liberal Party came to power in Great Britain in 1906, the new Secretary of State for India, Lord Morley, along with Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India wanted to initiate certain administrative and legislative reforms which ultimately resulted in the passing of India Councils Act of 1909 ( popularly known as Morley-Minto Reforms). For the task of formulating the reforms, Morley took two Indians as members to his council. The first was Syed Husain Bilgrami, who from the days of his first visit to England accompanying Salar Jung way back in 1876, had maintained friendship with several high ranking British political leaders of his time like Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, Gladstone etc. The other Indian appointed to the council by Morley was Krishna G Gupta, a senior ICS officer. Bilgrami thus played a key role in the passing of the first ever Constitutional Act of 1909.
Indian ayahs
The protest note Bilgrami wrote as a member of the council of Secretary of State for India
As a member of the Council of the Secretary of State for India, Bilgrami once made history by protesting the pitiable and callous attitude to Indian ayahs and other caretaker women who had been abandoned by their British employers. Many British officials in those days, employed Indian ayahs to look after their children on the long voyage from India to Britain and the employer was to provide for their passage home. But many a time those ayah s were dismissed once they reach Britain and left to fend for themselves. Such conditions led even to the founding of a ‘Ayahs Home in East London’, where such abandoned destitute ayahs were temporarily provided with food and shelter.
In May 1908, an Indian ayah Meera Sayal from Bombay arrived in London with a British family that was returning home. But she was abandoned by the family on the busy Kings Cross road in Central London, with a mere one pound in hand. The matter was brought to the notice of the India Office in London by the manager at Ayahs Home. The British authorities were of the opinion that Indian ayahs had no legal remedy in the absence of any written agreements that they would be taken back to India and quoted a precedent when the India Office in London in a similar case in 1890 had declined to take any action. But Syed Husain Bilgrami, as a member of the Secretary of State’s Council felt hugely outraged and immediately wrote a strongly worded resentment on “the dishonest and cruel European employers inveighing Indian servants to travel with them and abandoning them on arrival in Britain”. This bold stand of Syed Husain Bilgrami reflected how he was a man of lofty principles and high ideals with a strong sense of duty and impeccable uprightness. This letter dated July 14, 1908, had been quoted in many future complaints of the Asian caretakers against British employers that ultimately led to the betterment of Indian ayah s going with British families to London.
After returning from England in 1909, Bilgrami spent his retirement in Hyderabad in a villa on the slopes of the iconic Naubath Pahad, overlooking the waters of Hussain Sagar and died in 1926, aged 82. Bilgrami had four sons and all of them were brilliant as they excelled in their different chosen fields. Nawab Sir Mehdi Yar Jung Bahadur, the Education and Finance member in Nizam’s administration and who led a delegation to the Round Table Conference in London in 1930 -31, as a representative of the Nizam, was one of Bilgrami’s sons. Yar Jung as the Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University, had hosted the 5th session of the Indian History Congress (IHC) in 1941. Today Bilgrami’s progeny has a network that is spread across all the continents. Prof. Akeel Bilgrami, the California=based renowned academic intellectual, is one among the high-profile, large Bilgrami family.
