Nazar Mohammad Khan, 1816 –19

Wazir married two Hindu wives. The first, Rani-jee, was the daughter of a pandit. The second was a Rajput lady who bore him two sons, Amir Mohammad Khan and Nazar Mohammad Khan. Amir was spoilt and pleasure loving, while Nazar Mohammad Khan was a young man who had inherited his father’s qualities of leadership. He had fought alongside his father in many of the battles with the Marhattas. He had also taken part in the heroic resistance during the Siege of Bhopal. Ghous, who languished contentedly in a palace, officially wore the crown. He knew that Wazir, through his innate decency, would not allow any harm to come to him.

On Wazir’s death in 1816, the nobles and people of Bhopal who had suffered grievously under two weak rulers, quickly closed ranks behind Nazar Mohammad Khan as the chosen (elected) de facto ruler, conveniently bypassing the older Amir Mohammad Khan on the grounds that the nawab Ghous was still alive. This was a very unusual decision, mainly by two stalwart power brokers of Bhopal, Bakshi Bahadur Mohammad Khan and Shahzad Masih. A legalistic solution was found, in the betrothal of Nazar Mohammad Khan to one of Ghous’ 65 children, Qudsia Begum. Wazir announced Nazar’s engagement to Qudsia a few months before his death, and the marriage was carried out in 1817, a year after Nazar became the de facto ruler.

In 1818 Nazar Mohammad Khan signed Bhopal’s first treaty with the British East India Company. The treaty was negotiated at Fort Raisen between Captain Stewart representing the East India Company and Sardar Bashi Bahadur Mohammad Khan, assisted by Shahzad Masih, acting on behalf of Nawab Nazar Mohammad Khan. In essence the treaty guaranteed Bhopal’s security and territorial integrity in return for acceptance of the East India Company’s overall sovereignty. Nazar, who was accepted as the Nawab in this treaty, and hos successors would remain “absolute rulers of their country and British jurisdiction ould not be introduced in any manner into the principality”. The British were given agarrison to which Bhopal agreed to provide 400 troops and 600 horses. Immediately after the signature of the treaty, a British garrison was located in the cantonment at Sehore, which also became the residence of the Political agent who reported to the Agent to the Governer General at Indore.

On 10th November 1819, Nazar had taken his infant daughter Sikanadar, to relax at the Islamnagar fort. Nazar had married only one, to Qudsia (referred to as Gohar Ara in The siege of Bhopal) and did not keep a harem. Qudsia’s younger brother Fauzdar Mohammad Khan, the eight-year-old son of Ghaus Mahammad Khan, while playing with a laoded pistol, shot Nazar Mohammad Khan fatally in the temple, killing him immediately.

It might not be incidental that the young pathan boy, Faujdar knew how to handle firearms at a very young age. By eliminating Nazar, Ghaus and his family had major motifs of bringing back the throne of Bhopal to the family folds, and hence the incident might not have been an “accident”.