The Battle Of Phanda, 1787

Continuing with history of Bhopal, on 24 February 1787, both sides squared up for battle at a village called Phanda, eight miles west of Bhopal. Shareef led his army with his seven brothers, while his son Wazir was given responsibility of protecting the women and children of the family at nearby village of Ashta. While the two armies prepared for battle at Phanda, Nawab Hayat remained ensconced in his palace in Bhopal, comforted by his regular attendants of mullahs, soothsayers, eunuchs and courtesans. At Phanda, Shareef’s rebel forces were defeated. Brave and courageous to the last, Shareef and his brothers stood their ground and all except one, Kamil, were slaughtered. Chottey Khan’s victorious army severed the heads of the six brothers and carried them home on swords to Hayat’s palace.


For the next seven years after the Battle of Phanda, Chottey Khan assumed increasing power. Hayat and his mother, now into her 70s, recognized, as so often in history, that their humble, unctuous, adopted ‘slave’ had assumed the role of a Frankenstein who paid scant respect to the wishes of the Nawab or his mother. An assumption of complete control over the state, especially as Mamola Bai was now ageing and losing her grip on power, was also a source of alarm for Hayat and the loyalists who had supported Chottey Khan against Shareef. Chottey Khan had taken wrath of all Barru-kat Pathans that of all of Dost’s family.


Then suddenly in 1794 Chottey Khan died. Soon afterwards, in 1795, the 80-year-old Manji Mamola Bai also died so that within the space of two years, the rule of the two Hindu converts to Islam who had effectively governed the state in the name of reclusive, titular nawabs was at an end. The steadying influence of Mamola Bai that had preserved Bhopal’s sovereignty and independence was gone, so was the firm grip on the administration by Chottey Khan.