Benjamin B. Cohen. An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad: Scandal in the Raj. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. 368 pp. $28.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-98765-4.
Reviewed by Kate Boehme (Leicester University)
Published on H-Asia (February, 2020)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin)
Benjamin B. Cohen’s new book details the 1892-3 so-called pamphlet scandal in Hyderabad, in which a pamphlet, mysteriously published under a pseudonym and circulated throughout Hyderabad society, accused an official in the Hyderabad government and his Indian-born British wife of prostitution and fraud. Although employing a narrative style, the book is richly sourced throughout, as it follows the story of Mehdi Hassan and his wife, Ellen Donnelly, to examine the many anxieties that plagued relations between princely India and the British Raj in the late nineteenth century.
Though interracial relationships had been more common in the eighteenth century, by the late 1800s—the period in which the story of Mehdi and Ellen unfolds—racial divisions in colonial India had become considerably more severe. A marriage like that of Mehdi and Ellen would have been unusual and, as we see in Cohen’s book, would have raised eyebrows in both British and Indian circles. Yet, as Cohen reveals, the troubles that Mehdi and Ellen face were not solely the result of racial tensions but also derived from their juxtaposition with attitudes regarding class and, ultimately, from political hostilities between those native to the princely state of Hyderabad and those recent arrivals from British India.
Over the course of the book’s nine chapters, Cohen tells the story of Mehdi and Ellen from their origins in the northern city of Lucknow through Mehdi’s rise to power in the Nizam’s Government of Hyderabad to the scandal, trial, and their eventual decline. The book draws on a variety of sources from both Indian and British archives, including private papers, palace collections, government records, and extensive newspaper selections. In particular, Cohen draws on Mehdi Hassan’s own published letters, which were reprinted with an introduction by Omar Khalidi in 2006.[1] These sources are situated within a rich historiography that illuminate aspects of life both in Hyderabad and in British India.
From the beginning, the view of life in 1860s and 1870s Lucknow that Cohen describes in An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad is one shaped by not only race but also by issues of class. Both Mehdi and Ellen were born to lower-middle-class civil servants, a fact that would shape the rest of their lives and help to prompt the backlash they later faced in Hyderabad. As Cohen notes, their social standing made the lives of Ellen and the rest of the Donnelly family distinct from that of upper-class Britons living in Lucknow’s civil lines. They lived in a largely Indian neighborhood and socialized with both Indian and British friends, all of whom were similarly drawn from the lower ends of the socioeconomic stratum of Lucknow society.
In chapters 2 and 3, Cohen describes Ellen and Mehdi’s meteoric rise through Hyderabad society. Mehdi was among a number of British-trained, educated, Muslim civil servants who were recruited by Hyderabad’s then-prime minister, Salar Jung, to work in Hyderabad State. For many educated Indians, the princely states represented a space within which they could realize ambitions that would be denied to them within the British colonial government. Through the story of Mehdi Hassan, Cohen reveals how officials educated in British India achieved advancement through positions in the princely states. This is not necessarily a new story, as examples of prominent, educated men from British India “circulating” through the princely state employment are well known. Most famously, Dadabhai Naoroji, having been educated at the Elphinstone Institute in Bombay, served briefly as Dewan to the Gaekwar of Baroda. However, what Hassan’s story suggests is how widespread this kind of movement may have been, not only among the wealthy but also among those from more modest origins within the civil service. Mehdi’s move to Hyderabad was therefore not abnormal, but as An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad reveals, it was not without its own pitfalls.
Following their move, Mehdi rose quickly through the ranks of the Hyderabad Government, soon becoming one of its most influential figures. Meanwhile, Ellen emerged from the purdah she had adopted on marrying Mehdi and began circulating among Hyderabad’s European high society. Their influence as a couple reached its peak when, on a visit to London in 1888, they attended a reception with Queen Victoria. Mehdi and Ellen’s story is one of mobility, geographic (across princely-British borders), economic, and social. Yet this story also suggests that by the end of the nineteenth century, such movement was not always welcome; Cohen notes that one Hyderabad observer referred to the northern Indians who relocated to the state as “alien parasites” (p. 229).
Mehdi and Ellen’s influence reached its peak when, on a visit to London in 1888, they attended a reception with Queen Victoria. Shortly thereafter however, in chapter 4, An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad turns to the infamous pamphlet and the events that followed its publication. In April 1892, the pamphlet was printed at the Hyderabad Residency Press and circulated to three hundred prominent individuals in and around Hyderabad. The language, Cohen suggests, implies that its target audience was Hyderabad’s elite, English-speaking community. In chapters 5 through 7, Cohen details the nearly year-long defamation trial that followed. The trial narrative is perhaps the most significant and compelling portion of the book, as Cohen deftly draws on this case study to illustrate the complex social dynamics in 1890s Hyderabad as well as the intricacies of political tensions existing within Hyderabad and between the princely and British bureaucracies. It also speaks to the ways in which individuals navigated the intricacies of overlapping judicial systems in Hyderabad, moving between Indian and British bureaucracies as required. Mehdi, for example, chose to have the defamation case heard in the British Residency Bazaar Court rather than within Hyderabad’s own legal system; as a citizen of British India, and as the spouse of a British woman, Mehdi hoped that there he would receive a more sympathetic hearing than he was likely to get in the foreign, Hyderabadi alternative.
Cohen’s book has much to recommend it; it is well sourced and the prose is both fluid and thoughtful. The narrative style invites the reader into the lives of its main characters, conveying the events of the scandal in a vivid and compelling manner but making Mehdi and Ellen’s ultimate downfall seem all the more tragic. However, that is not to say that the book’s stylistic attributes exist at the expense of academic rigor. As a work of historical scholarship, An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad offers an interesting intervention into a literature that transcends a number of different categories.
In the story of Mehdi and Ellen, An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad finds a case study that illuminates the multifaceted tensions existing in India at the end of the nineteenth century. It speaks to relations between princely and British India, offering an antidote to a field that is overly dominated by diplomatic studies. It suggests that regardless of the agreements taking place at the official level, in the lower levels of the civil service and in wider society, those from the other side of the border were viewed as “foreign.” In Hyderabad, this foreignness made recruits from British India a threat; by the end of the century many had been ousted and the government’s weaknesses blamed on them.
Ultimately, however, Cohen suggests that the hostility that Mehdi and Ellen faced appears to have derived from their ambiguity; they defied the categories into which they were born and attempted to move between racial, class, religious, and political classifications. This confounded and infuriated many, both within the British colonial and Hyderabadi princely establishments. Moreover, their story took place in the context of a changing political climate; increasingly conservative British values emerged in conjunction with the rising power of the Indian National Congress. As the height of the British Raj began to slide into what Ian Copland described as “the endgame of empire,” a case like that of Mehdi and Ellen could become a flashpoint for various tensions.[2] Cohen adeptly navigates the complexities of this landscape, offering his book as brief snapshot into the attitudes that pervaded Hyderabad society in this period. He suggests Mehdi and Ellen, not to generalize or extrapolate from their experience, but rather to offer a personal insight into the impact that these more sweeping changes were beginning to wreak in the lives of everyday people.
Notes
[1]. Omar Khalidi, ed., An Indian Passage to Europe: The Travels of Fath Nawaz Jang (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
[2]. Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
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Citation:
Kate Boehme. Review of Cohen, Benjamin B., An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad: Scandal in the Raj.
H-Asia, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54215
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