ASIA!

The saga of the Nizams of Hyderabad is deeply intertwined with the fortunes that have swept Asia in the last three-quarters of a century. But where does one start? We might as well begin with the case of the £30 million, today lying frozen in a UK bank and tussled over by India, Pakistan and 96 princely cousins.

It was 1948, and the British Raj stood on the brink of partition. The seventh Nizam of Hyderabad – "Nizam" being a shortened Urdu title meaning "Administrator of the Realm" – was dithering. He was unsure whether to join the newly created Pakistan or an independent India. As a Muslim leader, he was attracted to the former. As ruler of a region with 20 million Hindus, he felt compelled to choose the latter.

The Nizam, let us be clear, was a rich man. In fact, he was the richest man on earth, and had appeared on the cover of Time magazine in February 1937. (In 2008, more than 40 years after his death, the Nizam came in fifth on the Forbes list of All-Time Wealthiest People.)

The Nizam’s collection of pearls alone could have filled an Olympics-sized pool. His gold ingots were carried literally by the truckload. He owned the fabled Jacobi diamond which, weighing in at 185 carats, was heavier even than the Kohinoor. His libraries held priceless illuminated Qur’ans and the rarest of Islamic manuscripts, for the Nizam was widely regarded as the world’s foremost Muslim ruler.

So exalted was his highness that the British entitled him, well, His Exalted Highness. All the other maharajahs – those poor lads who could not boast of a main palace housing 6,000 staff, of whom 38 were employed just to dust chandeliers – had to contend with a mere "His Highness".

As the seventh Nizam, whose name was Mir Osman Ali Khan, considered whether to throw in Hyderabad’s lot with India or Pakistan, or indeed to fight for an independent state, he quite obviously also fretted about the fate of his money. In 1948, in what has turned out to be one of the world’s most still-born flights of capital, he transferred £1 million to the Westminster Bank in Britain. This was an extraordinarily large sum of cash for that time.

Then, as the sun set on the Empire That Never Sets, the Nizam dithered some more.

Next, something rather strange happened, something still being discussed by historians, scholars, legal experts and general-interest gossip mongers. The Nizam’s finance minister signed over the money to an account, in the same bank, which was controlled by the Pakistan high commissioner to London.

It is argued that the Nizam never intended for this to happen, and one evidence of this is that he almost immediately cabled the bank to freeze the transaction. In September 1948, Indian troops annexed Hyderabad. The money was stuck.

After several bouts of litigation between the Nizam and the Pakistani government, the British House of Lords ruled in 1957 that the account could only be unfrozen with the agreement of all parties. It also stipulated that only "intergovernmental" talks could resolve the issue.

Today, the stash is still sitting there and its value has ballooned to about £30 million. The money was initially invested in war bonds, then shifted in the 1960s to a fixed-rate deposit account, the Guardian reported some years ago.

In April this year, the Indian government announced that it would begin out-of-court negotiations with Pakistan and the descendants of the Nizam. The government would try to come to a settlement within 18 months, it said. Both nations appear anxious to resolve the long-festering issue. As Jeremy Page of The Times of London pointed out: "The dispute is one of many between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since Partition and almost went to a fourth in 2002, when both had acquired nuclear weapons."

Even if India and Pakistan can put aside their differences, Page continued, "there is no guarantee that the Nizam’s heirs can do the same." Sure enough, in May, one of the Nizam’s grandsons, Najaf Ali Khan, stepped up claims for his share of the fortune. He was also representing 96 of his cousins, he said.

Ninety-six? How did it come to this? Let's just say that the seventh Nizam, while one of the most famous misers in history, had been quite generous with his seed. He reputedly had 86 mistresses, who gave him more than a hundred illegitimate sons.

It is ironic that this man, who was so tight with spending that he wore the same fez for 35 years, did not stinge on the one area that would greatly threaten to split up his enormous wealth. By the 1990s, in fact, the number of his illegitimate dependents had stood at almost 400.