“No, no, show her that document first. Where’s the envelope? Here, look at this.” Papers are spilling over the table for three at San Gimignano, The Imperial’s reputed Italian restaurant, which Mohammad Amir Mohammad “Sulaiman” Khan, former Raja of Mahmudabad, has selected for Lunch with BS.
He and his wife Vijaya are plying me with documents and eagerly interrupting each other the better to explain their extraordinary story to regain an inheritance that had been labelled “enemy property,” writes Kanika Datta.
Most press photographs of Sulaiman Khan show a genial man in a sherwani. Today, he’s dressed in blue-striped shirt and blazer and looks almost too diminutive for the giant battle he’s fighting. The accent is British, but the deep-rooted indignation at his predicament unconsciously provokes emphatic cadences.
“San G” is a rare choice among lunchers with BS, but it’s a favourite with my guests: a waiter with a stolidly Indian name but faux Italian accent greets them with familiarity and they order without consulting the menu. It’s Ramzan, but this year Khan had decided not to observe it. He is a teetotaler and chooses a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water with a slice of lime, and his wife and I settle for fresh orange juice.
Sulaiman Khan, 67, is something of a storied individual. Had the complications over his citizenship and his inheritance not intervened, he may have been, like many former royals after the privy purse was abolished in 1971, a businessman running hotels and housing projects refurbished from the myriad palatial properties in Lucknow and Nainital that were, till recently, occupied by state government officials and sundry small businesses from restaurants to car rentals.
Or, he may have furthered his involvement in politics, having been a two-time Congress MLA. Or spared time to advance his interest is helio-seismology, the study of the seismology of the sun. This elegantly reared Cambridge mathematician has an effortless ability to move between Islamic and western cultures, quoting the classics extempore and discussing recent research in history. Yet all this has been subsumed by a long, many-layered battle that has come to define him and, by proxy, the tricky issue of the communal politics in India.
Neither Khan nor his wife allows the constant tensions of their lives – including mounting debt and lawyers calling him a “terrorist” in court -- to override a natural charm. They're raring to talk but take time to choose the meal. As a starter, share a Mozzarella Bufala, slices of mozzarella made from buffalo milk, served with tomato and olives in a light dressing – “their Mozzarella tends to be very fresh,” Vijaya says (it is).
For the main course, Khan chooses Salmon Di Scozia, a smoked salmon, but specifies that it should be without the white wine poach, Vijaya a Merluzzo, cod fried in butter with lemon, sage and parsley, and both approve my choice of Anatra, slices of roast duck with apple sauce. San G lives up to its reputation, but Khan’s story is too absorbing to merit full appreciation.
First, a brief background. Khan’s father, an associate of Jinnah and member of the Muslim League, left India for Pakistan in 1957. Soon after, he left Pakistan in disillusionment and eventually settled in London where he died in 1973. His wife and only son chose to stay behind in India.
After the 1965 war with Pakistan, the government passed the Enemy Property Act in 1968 that transferred to a government-appointed custodian control of properties left behind by those who emigrated to Pakistan.
Khan’s case for inheritance was made complex by the question of his Indian citizenship, although the issue should have been moot since he had been in his mother’s legal custody. Eventually, a 1981 cabinet decision authorised the release the properties of the late Raja Amir Mohammad Ahmad Khan – Khan’s father – to the legal heirs and successors, a status he had established through the civil courts. The Cabinet decision was, however, significantly diluted in its implementation, which is how the case first went to the Bombay High Court, then the Supreme Court.
Khan won both cases and, following a 2005 Supreme Court order, was in the process of regaining his properties when the government passed an ordinance on July 2 this year overriding, with retrospective effect, court jurisdiction over the Enemy Property Act. In effect, the ordinance would bar all legal heirs of such properties from going to court, a ruling that would impact not just Khan but scores of other Muslims.
That day, a national daily had reported that cabinet was meeting to consider re-introducing the ordinance which had lapsed because the government withdrew the Bill that followed it. But the damage was done, because the property he’d recovered under the Supreme Court order was in the process of being repossessed –including the Metropole Hotel in Nainital for which he’d taken out a substantial loan to renovate. Khan is now back in court with a writ petition against that ordinance – and that’s one of several cases.
As the appetizer arrives, Khan energetically takes up a less-reported aspect of his story – and he is happy to be undiplomatic on record. “I want to say very categorically that this ordinance has been brought about by a forgery and the nexus of the forgers, big business, so-called tenants and lawyers.” He focuses on Home Minister P Chidambaram's involvement in the controversy.
That’s a long story too. Khan and his wife met Chidambaram in 1995-96, when he was commerce minister (in those days enemy property came under commerce and transitioned to home around 2007). Chidambaram was the last of several commerce ministers he had met over the years; when those meetings yielded nothing, he filed a writ petition in the Bombay High Court (the office of the custodian of enemy properties is located there), which was admitted in 1997.
In 1998, Khan continues, “Government counsel waved a piece of paper in court saying there are other claimants to this property. This was the first time we became aware of this document which claims that my father had given away all the property in 1955.”
To whom? His father’s three brothers – one real and two step. Sulaiman returned to Lucknow to check the registrar’s records and discovered that the index referred to a completely different transaction from the one stated in the court document – the sale of a house by one Mr Rastogi. The index is used to find the main document in the register. When he turned to the relevant page, he discovered that the document presented in court had been interpolated.
A subsequent CBCID inquiry, which took about 11 years (“to prove something that would have taken 10 minutes!”), deemed this document a forgery and, last year, non-bailable arrest warrants were issued against the rival claimants.
Meanwhile, the Bombay High Court passed judgment in 2001 in Khan’s favour and the government appealed against it in 2002 in the Supreme Court. On April 5, he and the government appeared with their respective counsels. “Then, a third person appears -- Mr Chidambaram. Who does he appear for?” The rival claimants. The implication being that Chidambaram should have recused himself, having been associated with the issue when in government (in a recent letter to national daily, the home minister says he has no recollection of this case but his name is listed in the record of proceedings.)
The story now gets into a tangled skein of government review petitions that rely on the forged documents and tenants (“occupiers,” Khan calls them) who refuse to vacate and commissions that report radically opposing findings (one for, one against). He also considers it remarkable that Ram Jethmalani, Arun Jaitley, Mukul Rohatgi and Harish Salve – “the whole BJP cohort” – appeared for the “occupiers”.
Meanwhile, Khan had signed an agreement with developers to turn the reclaimed into a low-cost housing project. The ordinance has halted that plan. At the Metropole, all work has been stopped and the building is daily being damaged by unseasonably heavy rains and weeds.
The main course over, Vijaya strongly recommends Affogato, a sinful confection of cream and chocolate, which Khan specifies should be served to him without cream and in a dish. When the tall, unwieldy glasses arrive, I understand why.
Given all the financial burdens on him, how did he make a living? “If we have survived today it was because my mother was the Rani of Bilehra,” he replies. Bilehra was a tiny principality near Mahmudabad, which his mother, who died in 1991, ruled from the 1920 (though she came from a talukdar, not a princely, family). “Had there been no Bilehra I would be probably working on a construction site.”
Instead, he went to Aldenham School in England (where his two older sisters now live) and then cleared the scholarship exam for Pembroke, Cambridge University, where he studied mathematics and later supervised undergraduate students.
There’s still loads to talk about – accusations about having money in alleged Swiss Bank accounts (“I wish I did!”), Islamic terrorism, the radicalisation of Indian politics, how he knew Agha Hassan Abedi, promoter of the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International – but time is running out and Ali, his son, comes in to remind him of another appointment. We walk out, still chatting animatedly -- and it is with some reluctance that I head for the car.