“[. . .] in spite of the dazzling glare of the limelight, every modern event of international importance without its secret incidences remains simply half told.”
Abdul Qayum Malik, Editor, Islamic News & Muslim Standard, London, 1919-1924
This is a series of blogs drawing on archives, memoirs, newspapers and other historical sources for information on the “secret incidences” referred to by a young journalist-lawyer who worked at the Islamic Information Bureau in London in the years of the Great War and the immediate aftermath.
The blogs’ focus is on Muslims of the Subcontinent who served in the Empire’s intelligence networks as police detectives, SIS agents or willing informants. There is also detail on organisational structures and guiding hands at base. The title ‘Empires of Intelligence’ refers to the many centres of intelligence gathering and direction in the decades when the Raj was at its zenith.
It is a world of smoke and mirrors where there will be many gaps in the narrative – blog readers are invited to chip in and provide their responses to the enigmas. There can also be reflections on contemporary resonances.
Blog I: Clever Detective Munshi Azizuddin
Azizuddin – referred to as Munshi Azizuddin in the India Office archives of the 1880s – was an agent held in high regard by the British authorities. He is variously described as “a clever detective”. someone who “possesses very exceptional qualifications” and with “conspicuous detective abilities”.
Munshi Azizuddin was born in 1857, the year the anti-British Raj uprising by both Hindus and Muslims was put down with much force by the East India Company’s military supported by some local troops and reinforcements of the British crown. In the aftermath of the uprising, the East India Company’s control came to an end. A Viceroy of India was appointed, initially based in Calcutta (the move to Delhi was later in 1911, though the summer capital had been Simla much earlier). Overall political, administrative and financial control was vested in the Secretary of State for India, based at India House in London.
The Subcontinent was divided to reflect various modes of direct and indirect rule: three Presidencies (Bombay, Madras and Bengal), directly ruled provinces, princely states. The administration was in the hands of an elite Indian Civil Service (ICS), sometimes termed the ‘heaven-born’ because of their powers and privileges. The ICS officers were selected and given their postings by the India Office, London. (It is important to distinguish between the India Office, London, and the Government of India, Simla/Delhi).
Munshi Azizuddin was a protégé of John Lambert, magistrate and the Deputy Commissioner of Police based in Calcutta since the 1870s. In the archives, his code name was ‘LM’ – Lambert’s man. Lambert was also attached to the Foreign Department of the Government of India, and kept a watchful eye on Muslim activists, particularly those returning from England with Ottoman sympathies. His immediate boss was Sir Mortimer Durrand, Foreign Secretary, Government of India.
Further archival research is needed to establish Azizuddin’s family background and early career, though there is reference to him as “a former Calcutta railway ticket inspector”. However, this could have been an undercover assignment at a time when there was need for surveillance after incidents such as the assassination of the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in 1871 and Viceroy Lord Mayo a year later in the Andoman Islands off the Bay of Bengal.
In the 1870-1880s period, the Raj lacked a specialised and dedicated intelligence gathering organisation. Lambert was in overall in charge of a ‘Thagi and Dakaity Department’, which as the name suggests, tracked criminal gangs. The department was headed by ex-army officers, firstly Major Edward Bradford and later Colonel Henderson. The former was later head of the Secret and Political Department in the India Office; London. Henderson was charged with a review in India of intelligence collection and recommended the renaming of the Thagi and Dakaity Department as the Central Special Branch, with local Special Branches in the provinces. At the outset, the latter were staffed by local police officers who did not have any special training. In his study, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, Richard Popplewell notes, “police intelligence was very much dependent on the efficiency of underpaid inspectors and sub-inspectors who did not receive special training for intelligence work and who had simultaneously to carry out their ordinary duties.”
In the mid-1880s, British policy makers were alarmed by two developments: the possibility of Czarist forces in central Asia aligning with Afghanistan to invade India; the efforts of the exiled Maharaja Duleep Singh to lead a Sikh revolt in the Punjab. In Christy Campbell’s book on Maharaja Duleep Singh , there is a reference to Munshi Azizuddin in Bukhara in 1885, from where he sent a dramatically worded message, “Care of British signaller at Meshad. I send you this intelligence at the risk of my life with a view that it may be of some use to the Government whose servant I am. After perusal send it to Mr J. Lambert C.E.I. in India, and to no one else otherwise my life is over [. . .] Six hundred Akhal Tekes have been enlisted by the Russians, they are armed with Berdan rifles [. . .].”
Munshi Azizuddin was also assigned the Maharaja’s case and trailed supporters across India. His success was in infiltrating a network in the French enclave of Pondicherry in 1887 and even obtaining passwords to enable future access. He was then able to use these codes to win over the trust of Abdul Rasul Kashmiri, in Cairo in 1888. There is an account in Friendships in the Square, “He [ . . .] Abdul Rasul] lodged at the at the Hotel Rue D’ Alexandria in Cairo [. . .] Also staying at the Alexandra Hotel was an Indian Muslim on leave from Government service and proceeding for a tour of Europe. This was Munshi Azizuddin [. . .]”. Azizuddin’s memoranda to Sir Evelyn Baring, British Consul General of Egypt and to his direct boss Mortimer Durand included information on Abdul Rasul’s Pan-Islamic network, incriminating the Sudanese leader in exile in Cairo, Zubair Pasha, and one “Mian Lal Din of Jamu, who ran away from India in November last, is now in Medina and making preparation to go [. . .] to Constantinople [. . . ].”
While appreciating the information provided by Munshi Azizuddin, the higher echelons were cautious of everything he reported, as uncovered in Friendships in the Square: “ I wish he [Azizuddin] could be a little more exact in giving the authority for each specific more convincing for those who have to judge on the value of his information, and to act on it”, noted Sir Donald Mackenzie, Sir Evelyn Baring’s private secretary. Even more pointed was the observation from Mortimer Durrand in Simla to Edward Bradford, “Remember that Azizuddin, though a clever detective and well meaning, is apt to jump to conclusions. I know him to be very wild indeed’”. Azizuddin continued with his travels, proceeding to Constantinople and then via Berlin to London, where he lodged with friends in Kings’ Road, Clapham Park. Further references to him in the archives are more complementary.
His mentor, Lambert, retired as Chief Commissioner of Police in 1897. During his tenure as Viceroy from 1899 to 1905, Curzon initiated changes in intelligence gathering. The Thagi and Dakaity Department/Central Special Branch was replaced by central Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) with the provinces having their own Criminal Intelligence Departments (CIDs). Azizuddin was appointed Assistant Commissioner in the Central Provinces in 1906. He was awarded an M. V.O. (Member of the Victorian Order), most likely for duties during the visit to India of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905-1906.
Azizuddin was in correspondence with India Office in December 1906 because he felt he was owed some pay relating to a new appointment in Simla. The archives provide further information in a supporting memorandum sent from the Finance Department, Government of India to Lord Morley in London:
The Director of Criminal Intelligence has recommended the appointment to the new post [Assistant Director of Criminal Intelligence] of Munshi Aziz-ud-din, M.V.O., whom he considers especially qualified for it. This officer’s substantive appointment is that of an assistant commissioner of the second class in the Central Provinces (Berar), but in view of his conspicuous detective abilities we selected him for special duty in connection with the police arrangements made on the occasion of the recent visit of Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales to India. He was subsequently employed on special duty under the Director of Criminal Intelligence. Munshi Aziz-ud-din is well fitted for this work for which the Director wishes to utilise his services, and as the special qualifications he possesses are extremely rare, we have approved his appointment as Assistant Director with effect from the date of the receipt of your telegram sanctioning creation of this post [. . .] the Director of Criminal Intelligence has represented that Munshi Aziz-ud-din should be permitted to draw an initial pay as Assistant Director of Rs. 1,000 a month instead of Rs. 800, the minimum pay of the post [. . .].”
Image acknowledgment: India Office Records, The British Library, [Shelfmark IOR/L/PJ/6/792]
Richard Popplewell also notes, “the appointment proved to be a diplomatic asset for the DCI, since Aziz-ud-Din came to be a very popular figure with the officials at the India Office.”
On 1 July 1909, Sir William Curzon-Wylie, Political Aide-de Campe at the India Office, was shot dead by Madan Lal Dhingra at a meeting at the Imperial Institute in London. A security net was cast around Hindu and Muslim student activities in the Capital, particularly those associated with India House in Highgate, that had been visited by Dhingra. The enquiries extended to Paris, a point of refuge for the ring leader who had supplied Dhingra the revolver. As described in Friendships in the Square, “An immediate response of the authorities was to assess the intelligence failure. A factor was the poor communication between Scotland Yard in London and the Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) of the Government of India in Calcutta. Apparently, one of DCI’s undercover agents, operating unknown to Scotland Yard, had been well aware that some of the India House party were practicing revolver shooting.”
There is an archival note in the diaries of Arthur Hirtzel, Private Secretary to Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, that Azizuddin’s advice was sought on 13th July 1909 “to recommend a spy” . This was likely to support the work of the Lee-Warner Enquiry on Muslim students in England. An outcome was an increase in surveillance. A secret service network was subsequently established, to be controlled by a deputy of the Director of DCI and based at India Office in London. This too could well have been Detective Munshi Azizuddin. At this point, he fell out with the newly appointed DCI in India, Charles Stevenson-Moore. Word reached Lord Morley, who intervened. In a letter to Viceroy Minto in October 1909, stating that he had been advised [probably by Lord Cadogan] “not to let these difficulties [. . .] shut the man out of employment [. . .] He [Cadogan] gave me one or two remarkable facts, which it is not expedient to write, but which certainly seemed to show that the man [Azizuddin] knows what he is about and has clues to the doings of evil doers in Paris and elsewhere.”
Munshi Azizuddin was awarded a CIE (Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire) around this time. He was due to retire in 1912, but a special provision was made for a secondment for “special duties” for a further two years “to assist the Director of Criminal Intelligence in dealing with the seditious movement.” Eventual retirement did not bring an end to his sense of responsibility for the Raj’s interests. Nile Green’s biography of Sardar Ikbal Shah notes an event in London in 1919: the Sardar had given a lecture at the Northbrook Society, “a gathering place for elite Indian expatriates. One such listener in the audience was Aziz-ud-din, a senior colonial official and commander of the Royal Victorian Order, who, immediately after the lecture ended, wrote to inform the India Office’s political department about a ‘fraud who calls himself Ikbal Ali Shah’. Aziz-ud-din declared himself not in the least fooled by the man [. . .]”. The loyal Munshi was now in his sixties – were his final years in London? Further archival research awaits.
Long Read to be continued: Blog II – Spy Mustafa Saghir
Jamil Sherif, September 2026