Chhota Lucknow was the miniature replica of the Awadh kingdom built in Metiabruz by the exiled Nawab Wajid Ali Shah after 1856. Using his British pension, he constructed magnificent palaces, an open-air zoo, and the Sibtainabad Imambara, transforming the area into a vibrant cultural hub of music, poetry, and architecture.
Part I: A King Who Refused to Be Erased
When Nawab Wajid Ali Shah arrived in Calcutta in 1856, he carried with him something the British annexation could not confiscate: a vision of what Lucknow was, and a determination to build it again.
He was not the first king to be deposed. He would not be the last. But what distinguished Wajid Ali Shah from other exiled rulers of the colonial era was the sheer scale and intentionality of his response to powerlessness. Rather than retreating into private grief or political intrigue, he chose creation.
The neighbourhood of Metiabruz — then a marshy stretch of riverbank in the southwestern fringe of Calcutta, known more for its earthen bastions than any cultural significance — became his canvas.
Over the next three decades, he would transform it into Chhota Lucknow: a living replica of the city he had been forced to leave behind.
Part II: The Resources He Had Left
The British granted Wajid Ali Shah an annual pension of twelve lakh rupees — a sum confirmed across multiple historical accounts, including those drawn from colonial records and secondary scholarship. While this figure sounds substantial, it was a fraction of the revenue of a kingdom that had once commanded immense agricultural and commercial wealth. The British had been quite deliberate in calibrating it: enough to maintain a dignified existence, not enough to fund a political return.
But Wajid Ali Shah used it with extraordinary purpose.
He established his court in the Garden Reach area — a section of Metiabruz along the western bank of the Hooghly — and set immediately about bringing Lucknow to Calcutta. Not in memory or in symbol, but in brick, mortar, and living cultural practice.
He had, critically, not come alone. Thousands of his subjects had followed him into exile: courtiers, musicians, poets, cooks, artisans, tailors, and servants who had structured their lives around the Awadhi court. This migration was not incidental. It gave him the raw material — human and cultural — to reconstruct something real.
Part III: The Architecture of Nostalgia
The most visible expression of Wajid Ali Shah’s project was architectural. He commissioned a series of residential palaces and ceremonial buildings — each one named in a way that consciously echoed the vocabulary of Lucknow.
The Palaces — Built and Lost
- Murassa Manzil — his principal residence; murassa meaning “jewelled” in Urdu. Fate: Dismantled by the British after 1887 and sold off in the estate wind-up.
- Noor Manzil — the “house of light.” Fate: Demolished. No trace survives.
- Adalat Manzil — the “house of justice,” where he received petitioners and administered his household. Fate: Demolished. No trace survives.
Qasrul Baiza — The Egg Palace
Among all his constructions, the most architecturally unusual was Qasrul Baiza — the Egg Palace. It derived its name from its striking elliptical form: unlike any conventional Mughal or Awadhi structure, the building was built in an oval or egg-like shape, making it immediately distinctive against the rectangular geometry of the rest of the estate.
Its upper floor contained a large circular durbar hall, and historical accounts describe music as the hall’s defining purpose. It was here that the Nawab’s court musicians performed his beloved thumri compositions — the intimate, emotionally searching classical form that Wajid Ali Shah had spent his life championing. Visitors described the sound drifting out over the estate at all hours.
Fate: Demolished after the Nawab’s death. No trace survives.
Sultan Khana — The Nawab’s First Home
When Wajid Ali Shah first arrived in Calcutta in 1856, he took over a riverside bungalow in Garden Reach that had been built in 1846 and previously occupied by Sir Lawrence Peel, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He renamed it Sultan Khana.
Fate: This is one of the most intriguing survivals. The building — today known as BNR House (Bengal Nagpur Railway House) — still stands and currently serves as the official residence of the General Manager of the South Eastern Railway. It underwent significant alterations over the decades (including a period as a railway hospital from 1952 until the 1970s), and some historians and descendants dispute whether the current structure is precisely the original Sultan Khana or a successor on the same site. It is not open to the public, but features occasionally on heritage tours of the area.
The Shahi Masjid — Still Standing, Still Active
One of the quieter survivals is the Shahi Masjid — the Nawab’s private mosque, built shortly after his arrival in Metiabruz around 1856–57. A relatively modest structure compared to the grand residential palaces, it was always intended as an intimate place of worship rather than a statement of royal power.
It is well-maintained today, regularly painted, and continues to serve a congregation of local Shia Muslims. Its most notable interior feature is a marble mihrab (the prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca) that stands out clearly against the surrounding masonry.
The Sibtainabad Imambara — The Monument That Endures
The most significant surviving structure is the Sibtainabad Imambara, completed in 1864 and known locally today as the Shahi Imambara.
It was built as a replica of the Sibtainabad Imambara in Lucknow — the very structure that Wajid Ali Shah’s father, Nawab Amjad Ali Shah, had begun constructing in 1847 and which Wajid Ali Shah himself had completed before his deposition. To rebuild its likeness in Calcutta was therefore a deeply personal act: not simply homage to a city, but to a specific structure that carried his family’s identity.
The Metiabruz Imambara was constructed by local Bengali craftsmen who brought their own traditions to the Awadhi design vocabulary. The result is a structure that is recognisably Awadhi in inspiration but distinctly hybrid in execution — an architectural metaphor for exile itself.
The Imambara carries the Oudh coat of arms on its facade and serves as Wajid Ali Shah’s final resting place. For Shia communities in the area, it continues to be the centre of religious observance during Muharram. It is listed as a Grade-I heritage building by the local civic body.
Of the dozen or more structures Wajid Ali Shah built in Metiabruz, three survive in recognisable form: the Shahi Imambara, the Shahi Masjid, and the building now known as BNR House. The palaces — every last one of them — are gone.
Part IV: The Zoo — Where the Wild Things Were
Among the more extraordinary dimensions of Wajid Ali Shah’s Metiabruz life was his private menagerie — a zoo that, by all contemporary accounts, rivalled anything available to the public in Calcutta at the time.
His collection included:
- Indian and Malayan tigers
- A rhinoceros
- Leopards and cheetahs
- Thousands of exotic birds
- Monkeys and fish of various species
- Pigeons — kept in large numbers for kabootarbaazi, the Awadhi tradition of competitive pigeon flying
He was known to spend a significant portion of his income on the animals’ care — some accounts suggest as much as a quarter of his annual resources went to the menagerie. The Nawab kept many animals in open-air enclosures rather than cages, which for the period represented an unusually considered approach to captive wildlife.
The zoo was partially accessible to the public — an early precedent for public wildlife exhibition in Calcutta, predating the formal founding of the Alipore Zoological Gardens in 1876. Wajid Ali Shah was personally acquainted with Ram Brahma Sanyal, the first Indian superintendent of the Alipore Zoo, and donated several animals from his collection to the institution during his lifetime. After his death, much of the remaining collection was transferred to Alipore.
Part V: The Parikhana and the Life of the Court
The spiritual and creative centre of Chhota Lucknow was a building known as the Parikhana — literally “the Fairy House.” The name traced directly back to the Nawab’s famous Pari Khana in Lucknow, where young women had been trained in music, dance, and dramatic performance.
The Parikhana in Metiabruz served a similar function: it was the gathering place for the court’s artistic life. Poets gave recitations. Kathak performers danced. Musicians of the Lucknow gharana performed their compositions. The Nawab himself continued to compose throughout his years in exile, writing under his musical pen name Akhtarpiya, producing works of thumri and ghazal that circulated and were performed long after his death.
He also wrote prolifically in prose — a memoir of his imprisonment at Fort William, accounts of the annexation, and texts on music and aesthetics. These were not the private notebooks of a man resigned to obscurity. They were the acts of a person who understood that the record mattered.
Part VI: Wajid Ali Shah’s Death and the End of an Era
Wajid Ali Shah died on September 1, 1887, in Metiabruz. He was 64 years old and had lived in exile for 31 years — more than a third of his life — spending every year of it ensuring that the culture of Awadh did not disappear with him.
In the days and weeks following his death, the dismantling began. The British moved quickly to wind up his estate. The palaces were sold off, torn down, or repurposed. The Parikhana closed. The zoo was dispersed.
But the people did not leave.
The Awadhi community that had followed Wajid Ali Shah into exile had, over three decades, put down roots in Metiabruz. Their children had been born there. Their trades had adapted to a new market. The skilled Muslim tailors among them — the Ostagars — had begun to build a livelihood that did not depend on royal patronage.
The physical structures of Chhota Lucknow were gone. The cultural inheritance was not.
Read what happened next: The Quiet Evolution →
Editorial Note: The Metiabruz Imambara was modelled on the Sibtainabad Imambara in Lucknow — not the Bada Imambara, as sometimes stated in secondary sources. This is confirmed by independent historical accounts and is consistent with the family connection: Wajid Ali Shah had personally completed the Lucknow Sibtainabad Imambara (begun by his father, Amjad Ali Shah) before his deposition. The zoo claim of “pre-dating modern zoological parks” specifically refers to the Alipore Zoological Gardens (founded 1876), which the Nawab’s private menagerie pre-dated by approximately two decades.
Frequently Asked Questions
Chhota Lucknow was the miniature replica of the Awadh kingdom built in Metiabruz, Calcutta, by the exiled Nawab Wajid Ali Shah after 1856. Using his British pension, he constructed magnificent palaces, an open-air zoo, and the Sibtainabad Imambara to recreate the cultural life he had lost.
No. Almost all the grand palaces, including Murassa Manzil and Qasrul Baiza, were dismantled and sold off by the British after Wajid Ali Shah's death in 1887. The only surviving structures are the Shahi Imambara, the Shahi Masjid, and the building now known as BNR House.
Yes. The Nawab built an extraordinary private menagerie that rivalled any public zoo of the time. It housed tigers, a rhinoceros, leopards, and thousands of exotic birds, many in open-air enclosures. After his death, many of these animals were transferred to the newly founded Alipore Zoological Gardens.