The Impostor Prince

In the 1970s, a strange family deboarded at the New Delhi railway station, consisting of a mother and her two grown-up children. As they made their way into the first-class waiting room of the station, their luggage drew the eyes of the onlookers which consisted of beautiful Persian carpets, potted palms, a silver tea-set, a flurry of Nepali servants, and two great Danes. The fierce-looking mother announced herself to be the last queen of the House of Awadh and called herself Begum Wilayat Mahal. She wore heavy silk sarees and kept a pistol in its folds and claimed that the British Government had ousted her family at the turn of the 19th century and demanded that the present Indian Government compensate her for the sacrifices that her family had made during the revolt of 1857. For the next 10 years, Begum Wilayat continued to stage a protest from the first-class waiting room of the station, asking the government to recognize her royal lineage and provide her children Prince Ali Raza ( who later began referring to himself as Cyrus Raza) and Princess Sakina Mahal their rightful realm of the Awadh region, comprising of the present state of Uttar Pradesh. So convinced were the children of their royal heritage that they referred to their mother as “Your Highness”.

The press latched on to this tragic story of the displaced royals and stirred the public sentiment. Under pressure, Indira Gandhi complied, and the Begum and her children received the 14th-century hunting lodge at the Ridge Forest in south-west Delhi, right next to the bustling area of Chanakyapuri. Popularly known as the Malcha Mahal, the medieval building, built by Firoz Shah Tughlaq,  did not resemble anything close to an ostentatious palace suitable for a 19th-century royal family. Bereft of even basic amenities like electricity and running water, the crumbling building now served as a new home for the self-proclaimed royal family. They adorned the ‘mahal’ with all markers of royalty but the reality was more dismal. From the moment they shifted to Malcha Mahal in the mid-1980s, the family became virtually cut-off from the outside world. They enjoyed the solitude of the fort and they welcomed the wildlife that surrounded their new home as their never-complaining neighbours. They also considered it beneath them to interact with commoners and hung an intimidating sign which read – “INTRUDERS WILL BE GUNDOWN”, at the entrance to the only road which led up to the Mahal. 

Living in the heart of New Delhi, the family continued their protest against the government. The queen and her two children were convinced that they were the products of a tragic betrayal by both the British and the Indian governments, followed by the incompetence of the new bureaucratic machinery that was set up in independent India. However, the crumbling walls of the Mahal did not weaken the spirits of the family. They continued to uphold their ‘royal’ sacraments. They only spoke and gave interviews to the foreign media, which they believed to be the only way through which they could make the government realize the innumerable wrongs they had done to the family. Prince Cyrus till the very end of his life held in his heart a great contempt for the government and after his death numerous letters of his correspondence with the foreign media were discovered along with some clues to the real origins of the family.

However, their seemingly ostentatious lifestyle soon succumbed to practicalities. As the bloodhounds died they were replaced by stray dogs and the loyal servants also took their leave. The queen is rumoured to have taken her own life owing to intense depression that engulfed her in later years. It is believed that Wilayat Begum took her own life in 1993 by consuming crushed diamonds and pearls. This piqued the interests of Delhi-wallas who narrate this tragic story with great flair, converting it into an urban legend. After the death of their mother, the Prince and the Princess continued to live in the Mahal, and continued their tirade against the government. 

Two decades after the death of the Begum, both Princess Sakina and Prince Cyrus succumbed to the harshness of time. After the death of his sister, the Prince continued to hold on to his life till he was infected by a serious case of dengue in 2017. With no proper aid or help, the Prince continued to suffer in pain during his last moments, when he finally decided to cycle out of the Mahal to find some help. He did find help— a local electrician from the nearby military facility—who brought him back to the lodge. When he asked the Prince to allow him to take him to the hospital, he refused profusely. At that moment, his sister’s words may have reverberated around his tired and sick mind – “Ordinariness is not just a crime, it is a sin”. In a bid to not commit a sin by going to a hospital and succumb to ordinariness, the Prince chose to breathe his last where he had lived all his life. His life ended just as tragically as the other members of his family. 

The prince was buried with a number on his tombstone since none of his relatives were present to identify his body and is now lost among the numerous graves that are scattered all across the graveyard. His death though did not mark the end of the story of this ‘royal family’. After the prince’s death the Mahal was ransacked and looted but some valuable clues were left behind. Ellen Barry, a New York Times journalist and the only person who came closest to being called Cyrus’s friend visited the Mahal some days after the news of his death. She leafed through the many letters and leaflets strewn on the floor and found two essential pieces of the puzzle: a receipt of cash transfer from Western Union Bank in England by a ‘half brother’ and a letter signed Shahid with an address in Bradford, Yorkshire. 

After her discovery, Ellen found herself in the heart of Awadh: Lucknow. The very city whose heritage was claimed by the royal family. Although many could recall that Wilayat, Raza, and Sakina had resided in the Nawab’s Palace in Lucknow for a brief period in the 1970s, the most original descendants of the members of the Nawab’s court denied the claims of Wilayat Mahal. Further uncovering the blinds behind which the story of Wilayat and her kids remained hidden, Ellen found out that the eldest sons of Wilayat, Shahid and Salahuddin, who were living in Bradford and Pakistan respectively, had much to say about the strange family that occupied the Mahal for 40 years. 

Weaving all their accounts together, it becomes clear that the closest relatives of Cyrus and  Wilayat accused them of being imposters. They say that the story started during the partition, when Wilayat’s husband had decided to shift his family to Pakistan, in view of the increasing violence against Muslims in India. His decision to leave India was further cemented when he himself was attacked by a bunch of Hindu youths outside his house. For Wilayat, who loved Lucknow more than anything else, this decision came as a complete shock. However, for the safety of her family, she agreed to move. Soon after, Wilayat’s husband died, completely shattering the last strands of sanity that held her together. Infuriated by the expropriation of her property, she slapped the Pakistani Prime Minister at a public gathering. In order to avoid a prison sentence, she was confined in an asylum in Lahore for six months and underwent ‘electroshock’ therapy. However, as soon as she was free she smuggled all her valuable belongings along with her two out of four children to India. At this stage, her only goal was to reclaim ‘her’ property. What followed was an elaborate plot in which Farhad became Princess Sakina and Mickey became Prince Ali Raza. They spent the rest of their lives inhabiting this delusion. 

The story of Wilayat and her children is not a story of some imposters trying to con the government for some amount of money in order to lead a lavish life, it was not greed that motivated them. Engrained strongly under their lives was the truth and horror of partition, which for most people became an ordeal that latched on to them like parasites for the better part of their lives. In the 70 years that both the nations of Pakistan and India have existed, we come across various accounts of people from both sides of the border who have lost their property and their livelihoods at a stroke of the pen. However, what we miss out on are the stories like that of Wilayat, where partition did not only separate several members of the family but weakened them to such an extent that they could never recuperate from the reality of partition and its various horrors psychologically. In the end, it led people like Wilayat to create their own realities with its own characters, a relentless method to try and pull themselves out of a dark, dismal abyss. However,  this reality that they weaved around themselves soon turned into delusion and seems to have transformed into a classic case of Folie à deux, where the members of Wilayat and Co. did not only collectively believe in this delusion, but also ultimately took it to their respective graves.