Has anyone read the book "From Plassey to Pakistan" written by Humayun Mirza, the son of Iskander Mirza? I have not read the book, but from the reviews and some excerpts of the book, it appears that Humayun doesn't consider his family a Bengali family.
From Plassey to Pakistan: A Historical Study
By Humayun Mirza
Maryland
As the heat rises to a climax in Washington’s summer, my book is about to be born, telling the story of my family from the time of a battle in another summer almost 250 years ago. From Plassey to Pakistan: The Family History of Iskander Mirza, the First President of Pakistan, will be published by the University Press of America (Lanham/New York/Oxford) in the fall of 1999. The current flare-up of conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir takes its source in the events recounted in the book. Decisive military action by my father, then Secretary of Defense for Pakistan, could have resolved the matter at the outset of the crisis. The Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, decided to refer the matter to the United Nations in the mistaken belief that the UN had the ability to resolve such issues.
The 1818 Society newsletter editor has persuaded me to prepare a summary of the book, and she has also added parts of its preface to whet your appetite. In the book, I trace the fortunes of my ancestors, the Nawab Nazims of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the powerful rulers of one of the wealthiest provinces of the Mughal Empire, as they struggled against foreign predators. In 1757, Robert Clive defeated Nawab Nazim Sirajud-duala at the Battle of Plassey, setting the stage for Britain to colonize the rest of India. The events leading to the end of the British Indian Empire are then explored, including the origin of the Kashmir issue that continues to plague relations between India and Pakistan. The great-grandson of the last Nawab Nazirn and later the first president of Pakistan, my father, Iskander Mirza’s role in these events is examined. The book concludes with an account of my own experiences as an insider looking at the World Bank as it evolved from a highly respected international development finance institution of Eugene Black’s days to what it is today.
Iskander Mirza’s career started in the British Indian Army after the end of World War I. Spanned over the final years of British rule in India, and ended with his overthrow by a military dictator in Pakistan. My own story reflects the fate of many whose lives were disrupted by the sudden breakup of their country of birth. I hope my telling of both my father’s and my stories can shed new light on the roles played by Pakistan’s political leaders, such as General Ayub, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Zia, thus providing the basis for an analysis of the country’s present woes.
Setting the Record Straight
Until now books on the British in India, nearly all written from the British point of view, have depicted the Englishman as the conqueror of a vast continent, rich in resources, which he ruled for over a century. This book gives the other side of the story and, in the process, paints a picture of the fortunes of a family caught up in the tide of history. It is also a unique inside study of the career of Pakistan’s first elected president. When my father was overthrown by the military dictator, General Ayub Khan, the latter had my father’s personal papers burned in an attempt to erase his name from the history books, The syllabus in Pakistani schools was altered to portray Ayub Khan as the savior of Pakistan and was restored only under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Children born luring Ayub Khan’s long dictatorship grew up, with a distorted view of that period in Pakistan’s history, and those who have written about the events that plunged Pakistan into those dark days of military rule have had to struggle with scraps of information to reconstruct the events.
However, my father had written many detailed letters to me while in office and also talked to me extensively during his exile in England. Starting with this material, I spent ten years of painstaking research following my retirement to produce this book; I believe it helps to fill an important gap III the history of India and Pakistan.
How I Came to Write the Book
In July of 1986, when I was still with the World Bank in Washington, DC, I received a letter from Morris Bierbrier from the British Museum in London. A historian himself, he was preparing “scholarly pedigrees of a number of Muslim families” and wished to include a “complete pedigree of the Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad including all modern descendants.” He asked for my help to complete this pedigree. Two years later, when I retired from the World Bank after 30 years of service, I decided to visit Morris Bierbrier in London to learn more about his research. He particularly aroused my interest when I found that some of the information that he had gathered threw new light on what really happened at the Battle of Plassey. I also learned for the first time details of the last Nawab Nazim of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Mansur Ali Khan’s 11-year stay in England. Morris Bierbrier’s research thus added a new dimension to the reasons for the Nawab Nazim’s eventual abdication and the subsequent disintegration of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa,
These intriguing, though unrelated events, encouraged me to further study the facts. Thus was born the idea to write the book. Morris Bierbrier agreed to do further research in England on my family’s genealogy and the lives of the early Nawab Nazims. I supplemented his research with my own in India, Pakistan, England, and the United States.
Looking for My Father in History
To conduct research, I made a number of trips to India, in particular, to Calcutta, Murshidabad, then the capital of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, and the battlefield at the village of Plassey. The West Bengal Archives contain a gold mine of information. The British kept detailed records of all that went on at that time, and these were all made available to me in Calcutta, as were the records kept by the District Commissioner in Behrampore. In the library in Behrampore the records are mostly in Persian, the official language of the court of the Nawab Nazims. The numerous petitions of the Nawab Nazims and their family were translated and reviewed by the British Resident, who was at first based in Behrampore and then moved to Murshidabad to be closer to the ruler. He forwarded the petitions along with his recommendation to the government of India in Calcutta. These provide a valuable background, particularly to the events that led to the abdication of the last Nawab Nazim in 1880.
In Pakistan, my research was less successful. I had been told that my father’s personal diaries and papers were held either in the Ministry of Interior or in the State Bank of Pakistan. I searched both in vain and finally learned from the Ministry of Interior authorities that all information relating to my father had been burned on orders from Ayub. It became clear that Ayub had tried to obliterate my father’s place in Pakistan’s history.
The Dawn newspaper provided useful information from its archives in Karachi. In England, the India Office Library contains a wealth of information, as does the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Library. The intelligence reports on my father’s presidency held at the National Archives in Washington, DC, are an excellent source. Many were released under the Freedom of Information Act and make up for the material ordered destroyed in Pakistan by General Ayub.
The Power of Women
Women played a critical role in the lives of the rulers of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and later in the life of the first President of Pakistan. Being absolute rulers in a part of the world where society considers the person in authority all-powerful, the Nawab Nazims tended to maintain large harems and engaged in affairs with dancing and servant girls. These women also served as concubines and knew that their days in the sun were short lived. Whenever a new Nawab ascended the throne, he brought with him his own retinue of concubines, which replaced the previous group. The concubines lived by their wits, not only to survive during the lifetime of their benefactor but also to ensure their future when he was gone.
Some of these concubines tuned out to be more cunning and wily than the well-born wives of the Nawab Nazims. They resorted to intrigue and connivance and rose to wield great power and wealth that changed the course of history. Munni Begum was one such dancing girl. She married the Nawab Nazim and used her wealth and power to bribe British officials, which allowed her to engage in widespread smuggling and place her minor sons in positions of power. The British in turn used her to take control of the Nizamat finances and rewarded her by naming her the Mother of the East India Company. They made deep encroachments into the authority of later Nawab Nazims during this period.
The British later also took advantage of another concubine who had become the mistress of the last Nawab Nazim. Her intrigues and the Nawab Nazim’s own excesses with European women gave them the excuse to strip him of his throne and titles and acquire the whole of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. They abolished the throne of the Nizamat family and exiled the Nawab Nazism’s legal wife, Shams-I-Jehan Begum, from Murshidabad, along with Khurshaid Kudar Syed Iskander Ali Mirza the legitimate heir to the throne of the Nawab Nazim and her only remaining son.
Almost 80 years later, many in Pakistan believe that had her great-grandson, lskander Mirza, not entered into a relationship with the wife of an Iranian military attaché in Pakistan, he would not have lost his presidency to a military dictator, His liaison with the wife of a foreign diplomat violated the code of conduct of the armed forces, which he himself had established and vigorously enforced when he was Pakistan’s powerful secretary of Defense. He thus lost the respect of the younger officers and indeed that of the rank and file of the armed forces. General Ayub capitalized on this to engineer the military coup d’etat against Pakistan’s first civilian president and to send him into exile in England. Even worse, Ayub set a precedent for other ambitious generals to involve the military in government, which is largely responsible for the corruption practiced by subsequent and current governments.
The Power of Greed
Contrary to popular belief, the colonization of India was achieved through rough intrigue and manipulation rather than force of arms. The British originally came to India to trade but soon leaned that by playing one faction against another they stood to gain both territory and immense personal wealth. This is how India was colonized, and how Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in particular were acquired. The British then proceeded to plunder the riches of their new colony. It is interesting to note that the excellent infrastructure of transport they built during the Raj was aimed at collecting revenues and exporting India’s wealth to England and not at easing the lives of the Indian people.
Conclusions
I conclude this book with two chapter, devoted to my own experiences and my view of the reasons for Pakistan’s current sad condition. Since I spent 30 years of my life at the World Bank, I deviate for a moment to focus on the evolution of all institution, which I hold in the highest respect, from the days of Eugene Black, when I joined the Bank as an operations officer, to those of Barber Conable when I retired. Drawing on Pakistan’s historical background and the political turmoil of its first 50 years of existence, I also present my ideas of how it can avoid the pitfalls of the past and rejoin the community of nations as a respectable member.
I have tried to bring out the facts as accurately as possible and to fill some of the gaps in Pakistan’s history. If I succeed in doing this, then I feel that I have done my duty by my ancestors, my father, and my country.
Humayun Mirza retired from the World Bank in 1988 after 30 years of executive service. His book “From Plassey to Pakistan: The Family History if Iskander Mirza, the First President of Pakistan” will be out next month. Pages 448. Illustrations 63 photos. Price: cloth $44.50.
