Nizam’s Jewels, valued at
$250 - $350 million by the Sotheby’s and Christie’s, date back to early
18th century to early 20 century. Crafted in gold and silver and
embellished with enameling, the jewels are set with Colombian emeralds,
diamonds from the Golconda mines, Burmese rubies and spinels, and pearls
from Basra and Gulf of Mannar.
While India thought they had settled all deals with the Nizams and their 200 heirs, they are back in the news.
Osman Ali Khan nominated not his
son, but grandson Mukarram Jah (born in France and had Turkish mother),
to be the next (and last) titled Nizam of Hyderabad. Mukarram Jah could
not take the battles over his grandfather’s wealth and escaped to
Australia where in spite of having the best possible education money
could buy (Harrow, Cambridge, LSE, Sandhurst), he run bulldozers,
married and divorced five times, one of them being former Miss Turkey.
He now lives in a two room apartment in Istanbul, Turkey.
Nizam of Hyderabad is reported
to have impregnated 86 of his mistresses, siring more than 100
illegitimate children and a sea of rival claimants.
However, Jah has not been able to escape it all. He has four sons and a
daughter from his five wives. The eldest of them, Azmet Jah , a
cameraman in Hollywood who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Richard
Attenborough, Nicolas Roeg , hopes to come back to Hyderabad.
For the Nizams of Hyderabad,
Muslim rulers of fabled wealth whose authority once extended across much
of southern India, the armored car that carried four steel trunks away
from a Bombay bank vault last month was a punctuation mark to decades of
declining fortune.
The trunks, bound for a
Government strongroom in New Delhi, held a collection of jewels
considered by experts to be one of the greatest ever assembled. Among
them was the fabled Jacob diamond, a duck's-egg-size 162-carat stone
bought by Hyderabad's ruling family in 1891. It was used for much of
this century as a paperweight by Osman Ali Khan, the seventh and last
Nizam to rule the royal state.
The jewels -- diamonds, rubies,
emeralds and pearls, many in gold settings, some acquired from the old
royal courts of France and Russia -- were making their first journey in
more than 40 years. For more than half that time, they have been the
focus of a struggle between the Indian Government and the heirs of the
seventh Nizam, who placed the collection in the Bombay vault after his
domain became part of independent India in 1947.
The seventh Nizam, who died in 1967, was known for his vast fortune and
for his idiosyncratic ways, including a habit of hoarding cash that once
led rats to chew their way through three million pounds in British
banknotes in a palace basement. Wary of his family's profligacy, he tied
up his fortune in a web of trusts. One of those held the jewelry
collection, under terms that forbade its sale until after the death of
his oldest son, Azam Jah Bahadur.
When
that son died, in 1970, a battle opened with the Indian Government that
would continue for 24 years. Finally it was settled by the Supreme
Court last month. In a compromise between the heirs, who hoped to sell
the jewels abroad, and the Government, which contended that the jewels
should become state property with no compensation, the court allowed the
Government to buy the jewels.
Setting aside a valuation of $250 million to $300 million by Sotheby's
and Christie's, the international auction houses, the court set a price
equivalent to $71 million.
For 200 of the heirs, including
the present Nizam, Mukkaram Jah, a grandson of the seventh Nizam who
spends much of his time on a 500,000-acre sheep farm in western
Australia, the settlement was bittersweet. For many, the settlement --
which involves cash payouts for some, annual dividends for others --
will provide badly needed cash to pay off debts or to supplement
declining incomes from the seventh Nizam's other trusts.
Indian newspapers have reported that some of the heirs have barely been
scraping by on annuities from other trusts that have shrunk to the
equivalent of as little as $50 a month.
Now that the jewelry has been sold, other feelings have come into play.
Mohammed A. Hadi, who represented the family as secretary of the jewelry
trust, said he felt some chagrin as he watched an inventory of the
collection last month during the handover at the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank in Bombay.
"Of course, after nearly 20 years, they were happy that there was some
finality to the matter," Mr. Hadi said in a telephone conversation from
Hyderabad in south-central India. "But it was also an emotional, a
wrenching thing."
"They were naturally
disappointed that they couldn't get a better price," he said. "And they
were disappointed too that a big treasure that has been in the family
for centuries has left for another abode."
The jewelry sale has also
revived an old debate about the princely families -- the maharajahs and
nawabs and nizams -- who ruled vast tracts of India for centuries until
1947. The debate has ebbed and flowed since 1970, when Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi annulled agreements reached in 1947 under which the rulers
of the princely states received generous state pensions as well as
other privileges for ceding their domains to the new republic of India.
Some think it outrageous that Indian taxpayers are still paying out
money for treasures like the Hyderabad jewels. Others argue that India
owes a debt to the survivors of the princely families for having
accumulated the palaces and works of art -- and the jewelry -- that now
form part of the country's cultural legacy.
Even now, the issue of the
Nizam's jewels seems likely to drag on, as some members of the family
have threatened to contest their share of the payout. The Telegraph, a
Calcutta newspaper, suggested that the spectacle of family members
squabbling over the money might have amused the old Nizam. "He might be
having a hearty laugh," the paper said, if he sees his descendants
"constantly at each others' throats to salvage what they can from the
spoils of his dead empire."
Now that it has the jewels, the
Indian Government has promised to put them on display, perhaps at the
national museum in New Delhi, perhaps in one of the five royal palaces
in Hyderabad, several of which were opened to the public by the old
Nizam's trustees for the first time last fall.
For the time being, the stones
are back in a vault, this time in the sandstone fortress that is
headquarters for the Reserve Bank of India.
source: http://www.24x7funonline.com/2011/09/crown-jewels-of-nizam.html
