Hyderabad, June 22 -- The Salar Jung Museum this week launched its platinum jubilee and the birth anniversary celebrations of Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, aka Salar Jung III. The celebrations began with a play, "Salar Jung III: The Man Who Collected the World," presented by Mohammad Ali Baig on the life of the man in focus. The play, which I watched while in the city, is a hagiographic account of Salar Jung's early life and his passion for artefacts, many of which were collected by his grandfather Mir Turab Ali Khan (Salar Jung I) and father Mir Laiq Ali Khan (Salar Jung II).

Among the Hyderabad nobility, Yousuf Ali Khan was easily the most well-read, widely travelled and most sophisticated noble. When the seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, name...