Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was not exiled to Calcutta but he came to the city because he wanted to take a ship to London to submit a petition but that departure was restricted and he stayed on, according to a biography written by his great-grandson that has just been translated from Urdu to English by the biographer’s daughter, Talat Fatima.
“Lucknow and Calcutta can be called the two very big and very important chapters in Wajid Ali Shah’s life. People usually think that he was sent in exile to Calcutta, that it was like a punishment from the British. The fact is he came to Calcutta on his own volition. He wanted to present a petition before the British Parliament and before the Queen on his dethronement and on the atrocities committed by the British in India. He wanted to reach London via Calcutta, but unfortunately that did not happen,” said Dr. Fatima, a great-great-daughter of the last king of Awadh.
She is the author of soon-to-be-released Wajid Ali Shah: A Cultural and Literary Legacy —published in India by Hachette — which is the translation into English of the biography, authored in the mid-1990s, by her father Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza, a scholar who also served as a research consultant to Satyajit Ray for Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
