Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Muslim Minorities)

128 Sherif

14 June 1931, that Pickthall is to be appointed Publicity Officer in addition

to his own duties as Principal of the Chadarghat High School.80

The response was positive. Preparations were also afoot for Pickthall to
accompany the Nizam’s sons on a tour of Europe, including performing the Hajj
on the return journey.81 Their journey may have been timed to coincide with
the second of the Round Table Conferences, scheduled to start in London in
September 1931. Pickthall was no longer the Hyderabad delegation’s secretary

• those who considered him the “fatuous creature” may have had a word in
  high places.
  However, an amazing episode befitting an adventure novel now intervened.
  The former Ottoman Caliph-Sultan, living in exile in southern France, had
  been receiving a pension from the Nizam. It seems that at the suggestion of
  Maulana Shaukat Ali, the former Khilafatist leader and brother of Mohamed
  Ali Jauhar, the possibility arose of the marriage of Abdul Majid’s daughter,
  Princess Durru Shehvar, with the Nizam’s elder son and heir, Azam Jah. Akbar
  Hydari and Pickthall were soon to be despatched on an even more delicate
  mission than the earlier First Round Table Conference.
  It is a moot point whether the idea to link Hyderabad’s Asifiya dynasty with
  the royal Ottoman family was Shaukat Ali’s or the Nizam’s himself. It may have
  emerged in the course of one of their meetings, as Shaukat Ali recalled in a
  newspaper article,

In the course of the conversation when I referred to the Turkish Princess,

the Khalifa’s daughter; the Nizam himself asked me how I liked the idea

of his son marrying the Khalif ’s daughter: this enquiry was as I had con-

templated. I assured the Nizam that the proposal was an excellent one.

I left him at midday. The Nizam [...] directed me to try my best to bring

about this relationship and afterwards wrote to me. He also issued similar

instructions to Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall and Sir Akbar Hydari.82

Sir Terence Keyes, the Political Resident, seemed to have some inkling on
what was afoot, but his note to Delhi reflects the way the Raj saw the basest
intentions in others:

80 ior, R/1/1/2143, 1931. Letter from the Resident to Sir Charles Watson, 2 July 1931.
81 Ibid., letter from Political Resident to the Political Secretary, Government of India,
15  August 1931.
82 ior, R/2/73/101, 1931; “Translation of Moulana Showketh Ali’s letter from England
published in the Rahber-i-Deccan of the 22 November 1931”.