The history of South Asia is usually viewed as one of great empires, often of external origins, that ruled over the vast Indian Subcontinent. But in reality, ages of imperial unity were very rare and the vast majority of South Asia was composed of regional monarchies. Following the collapse of the Mughal Empire, many more of these principalities were created and most of the Muslim states began in that timeframe, although some stretch back to pre-Islamic times. These states later entered into subsidiary alliances with the British and enjoyed varying degrees of independence while the rest of the Subcontinent was firmly under direct foreign rule. Of these hundreds of states, only a handful acceded to Pakistan and theirs is a complex and often harrowing story.
I do hereby declare that I execute this instrument on behalf of this State and my heirs and successors.” All of the Instruments of Accession signed by the rulers ended with this line. The clauses before that included guarantees that the internal independence of the states and the rights and privileges of the rulers would be continued – and the instruments were countersigned by the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Nawab Jahangir Khanji, Nawab of Junagadh
Within years, however, all of these clauses were broken by a combination of political manipulation, forced agreements and presidential ordinances. The final blow came when the then Civil Martial Law Administrator, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, passed “The Rulers of Acceding States (Abolition of Privy Purses and Privileges) Order, 1972 (P. O. No. 15 of 1972)”. This was a populist move inspired by Indira Gandhi’s similarly titled statute that was passed in July 1971 by the Indian Parliament. Bhutto’s action, though, was not a parliamentary law. It was a unilateral presidential ordinance.
From here onwards, I want to concentrate on the human side of the story, one which has not been told. The princely houses were greatly affected by this ordinance. It effectively brought an end to way of life they had known for hundreds of years. Political progress and the democratic devolution of power is something positive but the complete de-recognition of a group who had sovereign guarantees from none other than the founder of Pakistan and who had all made monetary and political sacrifices for the creation of the nation was hard to bear. Many of the rulers went into severe depression for the rest of their lives.
Within years, however, all of these clauses were broken by a combination of political manipulation, forced agreements and presidential ordinances
In the winter of 1972 Bhutto called all of the now de-recognized rulers to a meeting in Islamabad to discuss the ordinance. My father Saif-ul-Mulk Nasir, the Mehtar of Chitral, was the youngest ruler in attendance, then only twenty one, and he was a silent observer to the proceedings. The Wali of Swat, Miangul Jahanzeb, refused to attend as did my maternal grandfather Nawab Saeed Khan of Amb. Subsequently both of them were personally received from their lodgings in Rawalpindi by Bhutto and thus arrived late. The tone of discussion was quite heated, with Bhutto saying he had done what he did to appease the people of Pakistan who needed signs of progress following the secession of East Pakistan. In response to his socialist rhetoric the Khan of Kalat replied, “Sahib, Pakistan hum ne banaya hai, sab se bare qurbani hum nai di hai.” (Sir, it is uw who made Pakistan and gave the biggest sacrifice for it). Then he gestured to the Nawab of Bahawalpur saying, “Mulk chalaney kai liye paisa bhi is ne diya tha!” (He gave the money to run this country!)
In conclusion Bhutto agreed to give the rulers pensions for the rest of their lives and approved an amendment to the ordinance. Most of the rulers would pass away within a decade or two. And thus ended the official patronage of the ruling houses. The only ruler from the pre-1972 era – and in fact from before the 1947 Partition – who lives to this day is Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur, the Mir of Khairpur.
The Wali of Swat Miangul Abdul Wadud signing the Instrument of Accession to join Pakistan in 1947. On the right are his son Miangul Abdul Haq Jahanzeb, his grandson Miangul Aurangzeb and the Chief Secretary of Swat, Ataullah
So what happened to the ex-rulers since 1972? This is a story as varied as the circumstances they found themselves in. Many took the route that was perhaps best suited to their legacy and entered into electoral politics. Others joined the government service and yet others wasted their days away as depression and living in the past took hold of their lives.
Overall the story is not a bleak one. A key factor that remained part of the princely heritage was the ancient connection to the land and its people. Most of the rulers also happened to be the heads of prominent tribes/castes and this has enabled them to remain relevant. In Ayub Khan’s era the personal properties of the rulers had already been gazetted and declared, so despite later usurpations of private property at the hands of the government – of which I, too, am a victim – the princes at least avoided poverty. Unlike India where many of the former Maharajas became leading businessmen, this trend never really caught on among their counterparts in Pakistan. Due to their strong regional status and continued respect for the Instruments of Accession, the princes in Pakistan have continued to receive assistance and a degree of recognition from the various provincial governments, including being issued police and levies for personal security and being included in official guest lists.
Mir Ali Murad Talpur, the Mir of Khairpur - and his son Mir Mehdi Raza
What I have written till now applies to Bahawalpur, Khairpur and to the Balochistan and Frontier States. There were also two other categories: the rulers of states who acceded to Pakistan but whose states were later occupied by India, including Junagadh and Manavadar, and the former vassal states of the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir, i.e. Hunza and Nagar in Gilgit-Baltistan. The first two were never de-recognized as this would mean an end to Pakistan’s claim to the territory of those states, thus the Nawab of Junagadh and the Khan of Manavadar are still formally recognized by the Government of Pakistan and continue to receive privy purses, although the value of these payments is now greatly diminished due to inflation. Both of them now reside in Karachi. As for Hunza and Nagar, they continued to function as princely states until 1974 when Bhutto merged them into the newly created territory of the Northern Areas. Despite being merged, the rulers, although not formally recognized, continue to receive privileges from the Federal Government. Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan of Hunza has remained a prominent politician and was the Deputy Chief Executive of the Northern Areas and later Governor of Gilgit-Baltistan. He is also a close associate and patron of the Aga Khan’s development programs. Both the Hunza and Nagar families have enjoyed being very high-profile and glamorous members of elite society.
Of the Balochistan states the most prominent was Kalat. In fact, all of the other Balochistan States (Mekran, Kharan and to a lesser degree Las Bela) were vassals of the Khan of Kalat. The current Khan, Suleman Dawood Jan, is now in self-exile in the UK as he has been associated with Baloch separatism. The current Jam Sahib of Las Bela, a coastal region just west of Karachi, is Jam Kamal Khan who happens to the be the sitting Chief Minister of Balochistan. He was previously the Minister of State for Natural Resources in the last government. His father also served as Chief Minister of Balochistan during the Musharraf regime. The Nawab of Kharan’s successors have come upon difficult times due to the tense situation in Balochistan during the last two decades but it was due to Kharan that the princely states almost had a revival last year.
Map of British India on the eve of independence, showing the princely states before they joined the two newly independent countries
As I mentioned earlier, the only acceding ruler alive today is the Mir of Khairpur, a state in Upper Sindh which was the last vestige of the Talpur Confederacy. As a minor ruler in 1947 he came of age a few years before the merger of Khairpur State in 1955. He made Khairpur a model state with free universal education, a thriving industrial sector and a social welfare system unmatched in Pakistan to this day. For the past few decades he has largely stayed out of the public eye and the legacy of Khairpur State is mostly handled by his younger son Sahibzada Mir Mehdi Ali Khan Talpur. Neither the ruler nor his sons have ever taken part in electoral politics, but nonetheless are very popular among the people of Khairpur. Both the Mir Sahib and Mir Mehdi are pioneers in the field of wildlife conservation as their private wildlife sanctuary, Mehrano, is the best example of riverine scrub jungle left in Pakistan with an abundance of species that have gone extinct elsewhere.
Of the Frontier States the smallest was Amb. The state of Amb and its capital Darband were located on the Indus just south of Torghar. Most of the state was flooded under the Tarbela Dam in the 1960s and the remaining areas are divided between the districts of Mansehra and Haripur. After Darband was inundated, the Nawab shifted to his summer residence, Shergarh, in the hills close to the town of Oghi in Mansehra. Nawab Saeed Khan passed away at an early age and his son Nawabzada Salahuddin Saeed became Nawab at the age of fourteen. Despite facing huge financial problems and family intrigues, he was able to be elected as the youngest ever MNA in Pakistan’s history and subsequently regained his seat in the National Assembly five times. Currently his eldest son Nawabzada Farid Salahuddin is a member of the KP Assembly.
Pakistan still has a Federal Ministry which handles the affairs of the merged states, The Minstry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON). In fact, SAFRON is mostly concerned with the second part of its title which includes the supervision of regions along the Durand Line as well looking after Afghan refugee affairs. When Lt. Gen. (Rtd.) Abdul Qadir Baloch became the minister for SAFRON in Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government in 2013, the first thing on his agenda concerning the states was to assist them. General Sahib himself belonged to the tribal nobility of the State of Kharan and he was aware of how the Nawab’s family had fallen into rough times and were struggling to make ends meet. He also realized that the Khan of Kalat might have become estranged with Pakistan due to the end of the privileges guaranteed to him by the Quaid-e-Azam. He also saw that the Malakand insurgency and the rise of the Taliban in that region had its roots in the administrative vacuum left after the merger of Dir, Swat and Chitral. The rulers were, after all, a symbol of Pakistani nationhood as their legacy and legitimacy were closely linked to the Quaid-e-Azam – who personally invited each of them to support the new nation and guaranteed recognition for their successors. The only thing holding back the General’s efforts was the aforementioned ordinance passed by Bhutto, which was subsequently included in a constitutional amendment. So he got to work on a bill amending the ordinance to allow the successors to receive allowances and privileges. Sadly Nawaz Sharif’s administration faced such a rough time that the bill could not be passed until the very end of the government’s tenure. Thus finally in December 2017 the “The Rulers of Acceding States (Abolition of Privy Purpose and Privileges) (Amendment) Bill 2017” was passed by the National Assembly. The law, though, never achieved its purpose.
The law was in the process of implementation when the interim government was established. During this time the new bureaucrats assigned to SAFRON decided that the law would only apply to living rulers. Thus the Mir of Khairpur was the only beneficiary. The increased allowance and privileges have not even been extended to Junagadh and Manavadar. The reasoning they gave was that the bill did not include the word “successor” and only used the phrase “Ex-Rulers and their dependants” Any lawyer worth their salt can tell you that the word dependants also applies to the children and in some cases grand children of an individual.
When I initially started to write this article, I had a different picture in mind. I wanted it to be light reading – something about the nostalgia of the Princely States with a few biographical sketches of current Nawabs thrown in. But in the Pakistani context the story of the states is a story of broken promises and that does not lead itself to light reading. Nonetheless I would like to end by saying that the heritage of the states does not have to be a gloomy one. The rulers still maintain beautiful heritage properties and are the centre of many colourful local ceremonies and traditions. The successors of the rulers can work together to preserve and enhance these as our counterparts in India have done. This will also contribute greatly to tourism and will create a softer image of Pakistan. Inshallah the future of the “Nawabi Riysats” is not entirely a grim one!
The author is the ceremonial Mehtar of Chitral and can be contacted on Twitter @FatehMulk
