Nawab Wajid Ali Shah: A victim of shrewd political plots

How many people know that Nawab Wajid Ali Shah had built a printing press in Metiabruz wherefrom books on occidental science were published and Charles Darwin kept a track of his zoo and studied the process of raising animals?

King Wajid Ali Shah has been blackened in history with malafide political intentions of the English. Not only his downfall but also his death, making Metiabruz his permanent exile, its destruction thereafter, the systematic obliteration of Shah from history, all seems to be carefully maneuvered. The English rulers and even the later European historians have chosen to have a myopic vision of the king and have willfully ignored all positive aspects of his characters.

He founded the Madarsa Sultan e-Awadh, where occidental science was taught along with theology and calligraphy was as important a subject as physical training and horse riding.

The Nawab was also an admirer of animals. He built a zoo with numerous animals — tigers, birds and reptiles. The curator of Asiatic Society, the Englishman Blith, supplied these animals to him. Charles Darwin kept a track of these animals through Blith. Separate animal units were also maintained at Azad Manzil and Murassa Manzil in Metiabruz.

He was a gifted writer, lyricist, kathak dancer, singer-composer and a dramatist. A thoroughly secular king, he was a Shia Muslim. He was loyal to his faith, a devout follower of his religion. Yet as king, he was not dictated by his religious identity. To him, religion meant ethics. Novelist Samim Ahmed, head of department of Philosophy, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira and a scholar on Mahabharata, in the Bengali novel Akhtarnama, has endeavoured to grasp his epic life. The books written by the Nawab is more than forty. Apart from rekhtas, shers, ghazalas and thumris, he has written many plays, an autobiography, a history of Hindustani classical music and made an almanac. Contemporary musical stalwarts Saurindramohan Tagore (Prince Dwarakanth Tagore's cousin) and Jadubhatta were among king Wajid Ali's dear friends and admirers of his art. The king was trained in kathak dance form under the guidance of Pundit Durgaprasad and Thakurprasad, the ancestors of Birju Maharaj. Bindadin Maharaj, the famous kathak dancer was the Nawab's contemporary and the two were friends.

Akhtarnama reads into all this. And yet does not plead to be history. It is a docu-fiction that recounts the king's historical life, excluding anachronism but plays on an imaginative view of history nevertheless.

The book will be released on July 30 at Press club by Shahanshah Mirza, the great

great grandson of the king. Mirza is the great grandson of the king's son Dr Babar Mirza, who studied medicine

at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. Maulana Muhammad Shafique Qasmi, grand Imam of Nakhoda Mosque, Swami Sastrajnananda, principal of Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira and writer Suddhasattwa Ghosh will be present at the function too.