America born Sir. David Ochterlony, East India company’s military commander and his 13 wives!!
American by birth David Ochterlony was an important army commander of the East India company, India. Strangely, he had 13 wives of Indian origin much to the envy of Indian rulers. That how did he manage them and the military matter at the same time is a subject of debate!!
Among the foreigners served with the East India company, a major employer for the westerners in those days, and later with the British crown, none of them had attracted more of our attention and curiosity than David Ochterlony. He was an interesting personality and none of the British officers could surpass him in handling matters on two different fronts without making a glaring mistake. He was the military commander of the British East India company and had the unique credit of having a bevy of 13 beautiful wives (Bibis or Indian concubines) to the envy of Indian Nawobs and rich Indian Maharajahs. In this strange tropical land, to get rid of his loneliness and boredom, being away from his native country, he found refuge in the lap of bewitching Indian women. With some exception, most of the people that I know of lament their inability to coup with one wife. How come this man Ochterlony, Massachusetts-born general of the East India Company, successfully managed all the 13 women emotionally and materially in his harem without losing his sanity as well as his shirt?
The moot question that many people may ask is: How in the world did he have time to manage his difficult military commitments on the security front and the needs of 13 ladies on the romantic side? No doubt the exploits and romantic escapades not only kindle our inquisitiveness but also make us wonder to what extent his Casanova like attitude had added color to the dull pages of the British India history which was replete with exploitation of natives and their lands by the English company. Bibi Mubarak-ul-Nissa, a Brahmin dancing girl of Pune, (now in Maharastra) who had converted to Islam was the most popular among his wives. She bore him two daughters and was known as “Generallee Begum”.
David Ochterlony, first and last Baronet of Pitforthy, first Baronet of Ochterlony GCB (12 February 1758–15 July 1825) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Son of a Scottish gentleman, he attended the Dummer Charity School (now known as The Governor’s Academy) in Byfield, MA. He went to India and joined the Bengal Army in 1777 as a cadet (in the 24th Native Infantry) under the East India Company and served under Lord Lake in the battles of Koil, Aligarh and Delhi. He was appointed resident.
David’s deft and strategic handling, with minimum forces, in the Maratha war against the forces of Jaswant Rao Holkar during the long siege at Delhi (1814–15) shows his military genius and the victories won him laurels . He was created a baronet and appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1815. In the following year, he won yet another covetous award a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB), and so became the first East India Company officer to receive that honor. The most exciting military Romeo was buried at St John’s Church Meerut city. He had a Makbara built in Mubarak Bagh, Delhi, gifted to him by the Mogul ruler Shah Alam. It still exists in Delhi. He held the powerful post of British Resident to the Mughal court at Delhi and developed good contact with various rulers.
Above imge: “Many men and women born in Boston, Massachusetts, have achieved fame and fortune in other places, but few have traveled as far from their place of birth as Major General David Ochterlony of the British East India Company, the “Conqueror of Nepal” and Resident at the Court of Emperor Shah Alam. This early nineteenth-century miniature portrait on ivory depicts Ochterlony as a military commander in India.”https://www.masshist.org/database/822
Tit-Bits:
01. According to J.S. Gill, Director of the Central Reserve Police Force Academy, Gurgaon, an authority on Ochterlony, the CRPF Academy mess in Neemuch, once a the British residency was built by Ochterlony in 1822 at a cost of Rs.50,000 released by the English company. David lived there for three years. Commander Ochterlony who was of Scottish descent was known by the name of as Luni Akhtar (crazy star). One of his descendants claims besides Polish, American and English blood, he also has some Indian blood and has no idea which of the 13 wives was his great, great grand mother.
Above image: Watercolor by an anonymous Delhi artist of Sir David Ochterlony in Indian dress smoking a hookah ca. 1820s
02. Ochterlony, being inquisitive and independent chose his life style as he wished unmindful of criticism from other quarters. As the first British resident in Delhi, he developed keen interest in Indian mannerisms and followed Indo-Mogul culture unlike other British officers.
03. He was fond of parading his dozen-odd bibis, with him on elephants near the red fort (Kashmere Gate) in the evening. Nothing gave him more excitement than this almost daily ritual; the only difference is he lacked royal regalia!!
04. Mubarack begum was a dominant personality and wielded lot of power and had her own foreign policy. Widely unpopular among the moguls and British, she was very close to the heart of”Qudsia Begum”. The Mogul title was meant for only royals and not for common people. Mubarak Begum, fought against the British during the great Indian rebellion (the “Sepoy Mutiny”) of 1857, demonstrating the drastic breakdown in British-Indian relations caused by racism, segregation and oppression
05. Ochterlony died at Meerut in July 1825 after contacting cold and fever at his summer house in Shalimar Bagh. He was not on good terms with the Governor-General, Lord Amherst, who countermanded his orders in the field. He resigned the highest post in protest and and this incidence affected his health very much. He felt offended and discredited for his devoted work and this hastened Ochterlony’s death. He is interred in St. John’s Church in Meerut. The Ochterlony column at Calcutta commemorated his name, though it has since been rededicated.
06. After his death, Mubarak inherited Mubarak Bagh, an Anglo-Mughal garden tomb Ochterlony had built in the north of Old Delhi,The Mogul rulers never used the tomb because of Mubaraks’s background as a dancing girl and her dominating personality and supposedly ill-mannerism
07. There is a memorial erected to his memory in Calcutta in 1828 which is now known as the Shahid Minar (the Martyr’s Memorial).
08. David Ochterlony was born in Boston on 12 February 1758, the eldest son of Captain David Ochterlony of Scotland and his Boston-born wife Katherine Tyler, a niece of Sir William Pepperell. Because of circumstances Captain Ochterlony died insolvent in 1765. After his demise, the family moved to England where Katherine married Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King-of-Arms. Throughout David’s life Issac was both a father figure and close confidant.
09. Ochterlony had six “natural” children with two or more of his Indian wives, but he felt that his children would not be fully accepted by either English or Mughal society. His children were to become part of a new class in India known as “Anglo-Indians”. Anglo-Indians lived in the English quarters of India; but too white to live with Indians, and too “dark-blooded” to live in England.
10. Sir David’s only son Roderick Peregrine Ochterlony, born in 1785, had both an English and Mughal education. In 1808, he married Sarah Nelly, the daughter of Lt. Col. John Nelly of the Bengal Engineers, at Allahabad, India. Roderick and Sarah had three children, including Charles Metcalfe Ochterlony, born in 1817, from whom the Ochterlony line of baronets descended.
Ref:
http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/ochterlony-and-his-bibis
/article2001540.ece
https://www.masshist.org/database/822
http://masshist.org/database/822
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ochterlony
Originally published at http://navrangindia.blogspot.com. (modified:21 June 2020)
