The two previous instalments of this article were published on Tuesday and Wednesday.

LONDON: His initial response had been: “‘No way — it sounds like a snake pit.’ No other Indian royal family had this level of indebtedness and financial chaos...” Then he met Esra and decided she was a remarkable woman — “upright, straight, clear-headed and trustworthy. So I agreed to help.”

It was Shankardass’s amazing achievement to have persuaded all 2,740 claimants — legitimate and illegitimate descendants of the different Nizams – to agree to a settlement of the jewel issue. In the process he was regularly blackmailed and threatened, both by the Hyderabadi mafia and the claimants themselves. Several threatened to shoot him; on one occasion his car was hijacked as he drove to the airport. “There were some extremely rough men among the sahibzadas (princes),” he said. “Undesirable characters — hollow, shallow and proud. I had to have a full-time guard for two years.”

In the end, the Indian government banned the export and public auction of the jewels, which they rightly regarded as a national treasure, but instead agreed to pay around $80m for them – less than a quarter of the market value, but much more than anyone had expected from the government. Of this, just under half was to go to the Nizam.

Next, the 130-odd legal cases still outstanding against the Nizam were settled, and debts, then standing at around $6m, were paid off.

All this still left a considerable fund for Esra to invest in the restoration of the Nizam’s properties. She has the same talent for picking honest and effective people to work for her as her husband once proved to have for employing crooks. To supervise the restoration of Chowmahalla she chose Martand Singh, chairman and one of the founders of Intach, the Indian National Trust: “The first time I saw the state the palace was in, I thought it would be impossible to save,” Singh remembers. “I thought it was hopeless. After the Nizam sacked his 14,000 staff, it had gone to the dogs. Decomposition can set in very quickly in India — one monsoon can do it — and these properties had been neglected for 30 years. Most of the decay was actually cosmetic. From the start, Esra was completely positive. She asked, ‘How long is this going to take?’ ‘Three to four years,’ she was told. ‘Too long,’ she replied. ‘I want it done in two.’ And Rahul succeeded in two and a half.”

The first task was to restore a service wing of the palace, which was turned into a scholars’ retreat, where architects, urban designers, art and ceramic consultants, conservators, specialist carpenters, photographic experts, textile restorers, antique upholsterers and historians could be lodged while they worked on the different collections. A conservation laboratory and museum store area followed. By 2002, the largest team of restorers ever employed on an Indian restoration project was at work. The collection of arms, along with the best of the textiles, carriages and photographic records — including the harem pictures, published here for the first time — were ready for the recent grand opening of the Chowmahalla palace.

Fifteen Urdu and Persian scholars are currently sifting through the Nizam’s vast archives. Already they have stumbled across a major historical discovery: the Nizam’s negotiations in the early 40s with the Portuguese to buy Goa and so provide his state with a port, and with it a real hope – never realised, perhaps thankfully — of remaining independent from India once the British finally quit India. In November (last month), Princess Esra returned to Hyderabad from her base on an island off Istanbul, to oversee progress. She swept in, sari-clad, imperious, a flurry of energy, and as ever, everyone stood to attention. Long lines of unframed canvases were laid out along the corridors and she walked past them, giving an instant decision. “No, not that one. It’s Venetian — I don’t like it. Not that, either. Now look at that — the sixth Nizam out riding with the Kaiser — yes, send that off for restoration immediately.”

I asked if, looking back, she had any regrets. “Many,” she said. “If I had the head on my shoulders I have now a few years ago, I would never have let things get into the state they did. But I was too young. At the time it all seemed impossible – the law suits, the huge taxes, debts accumulating, criminal cases, people abusing the trust we had put in them. We had no ready cash, and the palaces seemed like white elephants. So we fled, and then terrible things happened. So much just disappeared — jades, miniatures, furniture, chandeliers...” “And the Nizam?”

“He had a brilliant brain when I met him,” she said. “He’d had the best education money could buy — Harrow, Cambridge, LSE, Sandhurst. But partly because of his diabetes he went into decline, and in the end really, well, disintegrated. Today he keeps to himself in Turkey. Lives simply, doesn’t love extravagance. Lives in a two-room flat in Antalya, and spends his time exploring Roman ruins, going swimming... He’s upset, of course — that he didn’t achieve what he had hoped, and he feels awkward he let so much go. He wishes he had done things differently — but then that is true of most people...”

Esra’s 47-year-old son Azmet, heir to the eighth Nizam, Mukarram Jah, hopes to come back to Hyderabad and take on what remains of the family role in the city. Osama bin Laden and the assorted Islamist extremists who hope to bring back the institution of the Caliphate are no doubt unaware that Azmet, the man who has the strongest legal claim to inherit the title, was until recently a Hollywood-based cameraman who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Richard Attenborough, Nicolas Roeg.

“I am planning to spend much more time here,” Azmet told me. “The death threats and law suits that kept us away are cleared up now, and I have great affection for this place.” He paused: “I am determined to maintain what has been saved. We’ll not make the same mistakes again.”

— Dawn/The Guardian News Service

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