Armenians and the French In Shivpuri and Bhopal, India

BY ARUNANSH B. GOSWAMI
Not far from Gwalior, where several members of the “House of Petrosyan,” led by the Razmik Hakob, distinguished themselves in the service of the Scindia Marathas, is a small town named Narwar in what is now the district of Shivpuri in India. Nearly 200 miles from Shivpuri is Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. There was a time when there was a flourishing Armenian settlement in Narwar and Bhopal led by the French royal house of Bourbon.
For researchers of Armenian presence in South Asia, the names Madras, Calcutta, and Dacca crop up quite often during their work, but very few Armenians know about the Armenian settlements in the heart of India, several hundred miles away from the aforementioned cities, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. During the period of Maratha (a group of warriors from modern-day Maharashtra state of India) as Central and Northern India began to expand, several Armenians lived in Central India. In 1736, Marathas (Scindias) had reached Delhi, but soon in 1739, Iranian invader Nadir Shah sacked Delhi, and Armenians from this city had to emigrate to safer places.
The late Colonel W. Kincaid, of the Indian Political Service, wrote in the Asiatic Quarterly Review of January, 1887, “In the latter half of the sixteenth century, about the year 1560, John Philip Bourbon of Navarre (Jean-Philippe de Bourbon de Navarre, Count of Clermont), who was a member of the younger branch of the family of Henri VI, sailed for India, having, tradition relates, been obliged to leave France because he killed a relative of high position in a duel, landed at Madras, a priest and two friends accompanying him. The two latter died on the voyage, and the priest remained at Madras, but John Philip Bourbon, sailing on to Bengal, went thence to Delhi and sought an interview with the Emperor Akbar.
On hearing of the high rank of the exile, the Emperor sent for him, and being interested in his story, treated him with much favor and distinction, eventually appointing him to a post at his court. Not long afterwards, the Emperor, being much pleased at his courtly bearing and conduct and desiring to retain his services, offered him in marriage the Lady Juliana (Armenian), sister of the Emperor’s Christian wife (Armenian), who, on account of her skill and her knowledge of the European system of medicine, had charge of the health of imperial ladies. This marriage was duly solemnized, whereupon the Emperor conferred upon his brother-in-law the title of Nawab and placed the imperial seraglio under his care, and the Lady Juliana was included in the select band of the imperial sisters.”
Several members of the Indian Bourbon family married Armenian wives, the last being Anna Bourbon, who died in Agra in 1855 and lies buried in the old Armenian cemetery there. Prince Jean-Philippe de Bourbon de Navarre married Lady Juliana, an Armenian who built the first Christian church in Agra, and, as per a note in the Agra Mission Archives, it is stated, “The old church was built by Philip Bourbon of the House of Navarre and his wife Juliana, an Armenian lady who was in medical charge of the Emperor’s harem.” They are both buried in the church itself.
One of the Armenian tombs in this church is inscribed with the following: “It is to the memory of one Sookias, the son of Thariguleh, from the great city of Vagharshapat in the district of Yerevan in Armenia.” According to Col. Kincaid, Francis de Bourbon, a great-grandson of Prince John Philip Bourbon came to Narwar with all his clan—nearly 300 individuals—not long after the plunder of Delhi by Iranian invader Nadir Shah in 1739. Five generations after Jean Philippe, the Nawab of Bhopal, Anwar Mohammed Khan, sought the assistance of Salvadore Bourbon I in 1785 to build an army to combat the Marathas (Scindias and Bhonsle of Nagpur). The Armenian Bourbons reached Bhopal via Gwalior and Narwar (Shivpuri).
According to Mesrovb Jacob Seth, “It appears that prior to the Armenian settlement at Gwalior, with a church and a priest of their own, under the auspices of Colonel Jacob Petrus (Hakob Petrosyan), towards the end of the 18th century, there have been Armenians in Gwalior State during the first half of the 18th century. There exist to this day two tombstones bearing Armenian inscriptions at Narwar. One dated 1743 marks the resting places of an Armenian military officer, and the other is to the memory of an Armenian priest who died at Narwar in 1750, at the ripe old age of 72 years.” According to Fr. J. Tiefentaller, who after travelling all over Hindustan, proceeded to Narwar about the end of 1747, “There lived at that time at Narwar a Christian of Armenian descent who stood in high favor with the Great Mughol and was subsequently. appointed Governor of that Province. He resided in one of the first palaces of the city and had houses built for his numerous relatives and employees, as well as a chapel, in which he and all his Christian retinue attended divine service on Sundays.”
In 1778, some Armenian men were murdered by the Raja of Narwar. “The rest escaped to Bhopal, where they earned the patronage of the Nawab, who made them his courtiers, and one of them, Salvadore, even became Prime Minister, and his wife came to be known as Madame Dulhan,” Ronald Vivian Smith wrote in his book, “Delhi Unknown Tales of a City,” published by Roli Books.
Franco-Armenians joined the army of Bhopal and fought against Maharaja Daulatrao Scindia, unlike Petrosyan and his several Armenian officers who fought for the same Maharaja. But a Bourbon entered into matrimonial relations with a relative of a Sardar family of Scindia Maharajas. Sebastian Bourbon married Miss Bernard, daughter of Captain Bernard, of Sirdhana. She was a maternal cousin of the Filose family, who were in the service of Scindia Maharajas. An Armenian Head Master from Constantinople had sold a manuscript translation of the Koran, in classical Armenian, to the Begum of Bhopal for $6.
It appears that the Koran was translated into classical Armenian from the Latin version by one Stephanos of Lou, “a profound scholar and an erudite doctor,” who had entered the Armenian monastery at Etchmiadzin—the Vatican of Armenia—as an inmate in 1635, during the pontificate of Phillipos, the Catholicos of all the Armenians, who was ordained on January 13, 1633 and died in 1655. While there are not many Armenians as there used to be in Bhopal, the Bourbon family, with Franco-Armenian ancestry. still resides there.
The Armenians and French in India over the years interacted with different powers, from the Marathas to the Afghans and from Rajputs to the British and also established their own political power. From India to Southeast Asia and beyond, Armenians established several settlements and prospered. They were indeed agents of early globalization.