David Ochterlony - Personal Life

Personal Life

As the official British resident of Delhi, David Ochterlony acculturated and thoroughly embraced Persian Mughal culture. He was reputed to have thirteen Indian concubines. Every evening, he used to take all his thirteen wives on a promenade around the walls of the Red Fort, each on the back of her own elephant.

The most prominent among his wives was Bebee Mahruttun Moobaruck ul Nissa Begume, a former Brahmin dancing girl from Poona who had converted to Islam. Nicknamed "Generallee Begum", she was Ochterlony's favorite wife and mother of his youngest children. As such, she took clear precedence over the others. She was known to be a devout Muslim, having once applied for leave to make the hajj to Mecca.

Although much younger than Ochterlony, she maintained the dominant part of the relationship. This led one observor to remark that "making Sir David the Commissioner of Delhi was the same as making Generallee Begum". Another observer remarked that "Ochterlony's mistress is the mistress now of everyone within the walls. As a result of her influence, Ochterlony considered raising his children as Muslims and when his two daughters by Mubaruk Begum had grown up, he adopted a child from the family of the Nawabs of Loharu, one of the leading Muslim families of Delhi. Raised by Mubaruk Begum, the girl went on to marry her cousin, a nephew of the famous Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib.

She even seems to have set herself up as a power in her own right and to have formed her own independent foreign policy. At one point, it was reported that "Mobarruck Begum, alias Generalee Begum fills the (Delhi) papers with accounts of the Nizars and Khiluts (gifts and dresses of honor) given and taken by her in her transactions with the Vacquils (ambassadors of the different (Indian) powers - an extraordinary liberty, if true."

However in spite of all her power and high status, Mubaruk Begum was widely unpopular among the British and the Mughals alike. She offended the British by calling herself "Lady Ochterlony" and on the other hand, also offended the Mughals by awarding herself the title "Qudsia Begum", a title previously reserved for the Emperor's mother. After Ochterlony's death, she inherited Mubarak Bagh, an Anglo-Mughal garden tomb he had built in the north of Old Delhi, but her intense unpopularity combined with her dancing girl background ensured that no Mughal gentleman would use her structure. To this date, it is still referred to as the "Rundi ki Masjid" (The prostitute's mosque) by the local inhabitants of the old city.