ISLAMABAD: The Asian Study Group presented a talk by John Zubrzycki, a Sydney-based writer and journalist, at the Serena Hotel on Tuesday.

Zubrzycki spoke about his latest work, ‘The Mysterious Mr. Jacob: Diamond Merchant, Magician and Spy’, which has been hailed as one of the best books on India published in 2013 by The Wall Street Journal and a number of Indian newspapers.

The meticulous and painstaking research that went into weaving the details of the book came from Zubrzycki’s own background in journalism and politics.

John Zubrzycki has worked for several media outlets including The Australian, Radio Australia, The South China Morning Post and The Christian Science Monitor. He also served as a diplomat in New Delhi and Jakarta and taught politics at the Australian National University. As a journalist he reported from the Pacific, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Europe, including four years as a correspondent based in New Delhi.

His first book ‘The Last Nizam: An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback’ was a best-seller in Australia and India and he is currently studying for a doctorate at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, focusing on how Indian magic spread to the West.

From the title of his new book, he explained that Mr. Jacob caught his imagination while he was working on his first book. “He was a larger than life character who was a celebrity of his times and yet he was a character about whom little was known,” he added.

Zubrzycki said: “Alexander Malcolm Jacob was a magician, diamond merchant, mesmerist and spy. He was the man who inspired all those who met him, including Rudyard Kipling who immortalised him as Lurgan Sahib, the ‘healer of sick pearls’ in his classic novel ‘Kim’.

“After arriving penniless in Bombay in 1871, Jacob became the most famous jeweller in princely India, a player in the Great Game and a confidante of Viceroys and Maharajas.”

Starting on the banks of the Tigris in modern-day Turkey where Jacob was born, Zubrzycki strips away the myths and legends to discover the astonishing story of one of the most enigmatic figures of the time.

The journey takes him to the slums of Bombay, to the fabulous court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the heights of Simla, the summer capital of the Raj, and finally to the labyrinthine corridors of Calcutta’s High Court, where Jacob’s career ended in bankruptcy and humiliation.

The search for Jacob’s truth led the author from Simla to London, wading through a plethora of files. He shared the immense difficulty in finding concrete references and arriving just a little too late to places.

Zubrzycki said: “I never actually saw Jacob’s grave. I found the cemetery, went through the large register of plot numbers and lists of who was buried there. I located the graveyard plot where Mr Jacob was buried, only to be told that the entire section had been bulldozed a few days before I got there. All I saw were bulldozer tracks.”

Much of the author’s information came from the scandal that rocked the Raj when in 1891, the notorious curio-dealer from Simla offered to sell the world’s largest brilliant-cut diamond to the Nizam of Hyderabad.

The deal went sour due, in part, to Jacob’s overambitious pricing, the British Government’s unwillingness to let the Nizam buy the diamond from someone who was potentially a Persian or Russian spy and the Nizam’s reneging on the agreement.

The Nizam accused him of fraud, triggering a sensational trial in the Calcutta High Court that made headlines around the world. Jacob dabbled in magic and was a player in the Great Game and yet he died in obscurity, carrying many of his secrets to his grave.

The book is an interesting look at one of the more mysterious and flamboyant figures of the late 19th century British Raj. The dearth of concrete information about this gem-dealer and likely spy means the book raises more questions than it answers.

Side stories abound and are equally fascinating, such as the Victorian era’s obsession with the occult, the journey of the Imperial Diamond and so on.

To Naeem Qadir’s query about research methodology, Zubrzycki explained that physical research in reconstructing events through long-lost letters, court records and annotations on files and Raj records is needed to build such a narrative.

Published in Dawn February 25th , 2015

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