Nicholas Abbott focuses on early modern and early colonial South Asia to understand the primary role of the Begams, the chief consorts of the ruling dynasty of Awadh in controlling wealth, their contribution to state formation during the period, and the ways in which they defined the relationship of the Awadh regime with the East India Company. Utilizing as yet unexamined Persian sources, notably, the Company’s extensive but scarcely-used Persian language archive, the book argues for the Begams as essential, even if contested, architects of both the State of Awadh and the Company state. The author emphasizes the major influence of the Begams in carving the regime of Awadh notwithstanding the historiographic traditions that obscured and denigrated their status as ambivalent partners in forging evolving political economies and emerging concepts of statehood and sovereignty, particularly during transition between the Mughal and the British rule. Abbott urges that while households led by men have attracted major scholarly attention, female elites upheld parallel sarkars or the state, which could be either utterly separate or entrenched within the larger formations of male relatives. These, he stipulates, were equally significant in driving factional and imperial succession politics or even served to connect state and society.
Proposing gender-specific reading of state and colonialism during the period of transition in South Asia, Abbott probes affluent women, the highly propertied Indian matriarchs, their contribution to the making of the idea of state, economic and political culture, and intensifies the conversation on the property and political rights of South Asian women. To substantiate his argument, he tells the story of three queens—Taj Ara Begam, the ‘dowager queen’ of Awadh, Begam Hazrat Mahal, a junior wife of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, and Queen Victoria, designated as the ‘Indian’ queen, who had actually never visited South Asia, but had a prominent role in influencing the affairs of the subcontinent, and had promulgated a proclamation that transferred power from sarkar-i kampani (Company state) to sarkar-i angrez (British Government), and yet the Company translators affected by Mughal Persian lexicon held that despite the state in India being brought under the direct rule of the Queen of England, it remained largely identical to what had preceded it.
Taj Ara Begam had travelled to London in August 1856 to persuade the British Crown and the British Parliament to restore Awadh, annexed by its ally, the British East India Company to her deposed son, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. Later, by 1857, the Indian sepoys of the Company, engaged in anti-British insurgencies across North and Central India, converged around Begam Hazrat Mahal, and hailed her as the ruling matriarch, Sarkar Begam, of the restored Awadh regime, and legal regent to her and Wajid Ali Shah’s enthroned young son, Birjis Qadr. In November 1858, the British forces brutally and savagely crushed the revolt in Awadh, and forced the remnants of Hazrat Mahal’s establishment into Nepal. This was followed by the proclamation, stated above, by Queen Victoria and the transfer of power.
Roughly ninety years prior to the travel of Taj Ara Begam to London, Bahu Begam, another Begam of Awadh, who held sway over mammoth personal and familial assets, had paid a handsome ransom to the Company in exchange for the restoration of the monarchy of Awadh to her husband, Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula. Subsequently, Bahu Begam consented to abandon the remains of her wealth to the Company, and emerged as one of the largest individual investors in British India’s public debt. This action demonstrated not only the willingness of the Company to reinstate the Nawab but also its anxiety to be recognized as a sovereign state in the South Asian political order, and its dependence on the financial and political capital of women like Bahu Begam. The narrative is significant essentially for two reasons: it points to the prominence of these rich women during turbulent times and transition of power from the Mughals to the British; and reflects the ways of monied female elite and their integral contribution to the burgeoning of South Asian finance, political culture and state formation.
Abbott argues that Bahu Begam—the protagonist of the book—along with her mother-in-law, Sadr-un-Nissa Begam had acquired economic and political distinction and eminence among the ruling elite of Awadh that facilitated them to support their reigning husbands and sons by providing emergency ‘bailouts’ like the indemnity payment to the Company, which heralded the Anglo-Awadh treaty alliance in 1765. It was the enormous influence of Bahu Begam, Abbott observes, that has impacted the research on the women elite of the Awadh dynasty with a focus on Bahu Begam, while appraising the Begam and her mother-in-law as ‘power brokers’. In such capacities, the wealthy, elite women interacted with male rulers and British officials, contributing thus to the formation of paramountcy, the colonial political and fiscal order, and the ideas of the state. These attempts, Abbott specifies, were to achieve their aspirations of being recognized as an integral part of the state. Their ambitious assertions were inspired and persuaded by sarkari Persianate vocabulary of early colonial India, earlier ideas of ‘the sarkar’ as state, and persistent traditions of household and state building as well as intra-familial finance. Notwithstanding, the contentions of the begams were equally affected by alignments and clashes with male rulers and British administrators, also their individual impressions and exposition of their views of statehood, sovereignty and gendered forms of authority.
Evaluating the escalating power of the begams in the mid-eighteenth, early nineteenth century, and then their growing irrelevance by mid-nineteenth century, Abbott argues that as the Company emerged politically, fiscally and militarily strong, it felt obliged to construct a gendered case for annexation by framing the begams, the ‘effeminate’ male rulers and their unruly sarkars, which it reckoned as implacable impediments to their idea of good governance and advancement of paramount authority. The narrative of the wealthy matriarchs, Abbott argues, emphasizes not only on how precolonial concepts and political cultures signaled the later colonial period but also demonstrates how in early modern and colonial India, gendered languages and the internal dynamics of family became a crucial premise for constituting and strengthening the ideas and structures of the modern state.
Recounting lucidly the inter-linked stories of the begams of Awadh, sarkar and state formation, and conceptual transformation induced by Persian glossary, Abbott engages his audience with the notion of sarkar, state, and state formation in early modern South Asia; investigates the office of powerful, magnetic senior wives and widows, the processes developed by them for sarkar-consolidation despite gendered expectations and constraints inflicted upon them. He points to the consistently changing connection between Bahu Begam, the Awadh regime and the Company, the evolving dynamics, and reformulated ideas of the state.
Nevertheless, the households of wealthy elite women remained imperative to the structure of the Awadh regime well into the nineteenth century. However, the opulent matriarchs along with the newly enthroned kings of Awadh could not escape the gendered critiques that manifested them as potential threats to the state, heralding thus the annexation of Awadh by the British in 1856. Even so, Abbott reiterates, Taj Ara Begam and Begam Hazrat Mahal continued to invoke the traditions of household formation and familial finances in the mid-nineteenth century, and carried out fierce parleys to restore the Awadh state and the political order. The strategies of the Begams of Awadh, Abbott evinces, were emulated by a Begam of Bhopal in the early twentieth century.
An interesting, grasping read of the developments in early modern and colonial South Asia, Abbott makes an invaluable addition to feminist debates in the particular context of the property entitlements and political rights of South Asian women. The maps and genealogical chart of the Awadh dynasty enrich the understanding and deepen the gendered study of the period.
Meena Bhargava, a historian of medieval and early modern South Asia, is former Associate Professor, Department of History, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, Delhi.