The Princes, rajas, nawabs of India
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An overview
Manu Pillai challenges British propaganda
Oct 17, 2021: The Times of India
It served the British to paint Indian rajahs as clueless, despotic idiots
By tracking the travels of the iconic painter Ravi Varma from the 1860s to the early 1900s, historian Manu Pillai’s latest book ‘False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma’ busts colonial stereotypes that cast the rulers of India’s princely states as spineless and decadent and reinstates them as politicians who tested the Raj. In an interview, Pillai tells Sharmila Ganesan Ram about their king-sized contributions
Where did our perception of maharajahs as passive, wineguzzling despots who didn’t do much come from?
Casting maharajahs as effeminate, greedy, wine-guzzling idiots served the imperial narrative and its need to legitimise British rule in India. Of course, there were foolish rajahs, just as there were hopeless British figures — but picking and projecting the worst specimens from a group is propaganda, not reality. What is more, many rajahs pushed back, becoming heroes to nationalists. This was a big fear for the Raj: that princely prestige and wealth might unite with Indian nationalism. And despite reprimands, multiple maharajahs continued to fund the Congress and other organisations.
What made you pick Ravi Varma’s perspective for this relook at the rulers of princely states?
Ravi Varma was an insider related to royalty. Besides, there were 100 major states, and I didn’t want to write a general textbook covering all. By picking five — where Ravi Varma worked — I could study each in detail. One sees, thus, the diversity of their internal structures, and the balances of power maharajahs had to manage, not only with the British but also within. I also use Ravi Varma’s own royal relatives to talk of gender issues; using Baroda I highlight how individual rulers resisted the Raj; Udaipur is about the tussle between a complex Rajput order and the British; and Mysore is about industrialisation as a means to counter imperial stereotypes.
In what ways, overt and covert, did these royals subvert the British?
The princes were not supposed to have contact with one another without British permission — a rule coolly flouted. In the 1880s when the freshly installed ruler of Baroda started to assume a defiant posture, the British found out that he was in touch with the Indore maharajah, who was notorious for disloyalty. During 1857 it was suspected that he colluded with the rebels, lobbied in London to help save states such as Dhar and Mysore. He donated to Dadabhai Naoroji’s East Indian Association, which spoke for Indians right under the queen’s nose. Of course, he also wrote oily letters to the viceroy, but it was quite clear what the maharajah really thought.
How did the ranis in the princely states react to the Raj and to Victorian morality?
These women were by no stretch passive. British suspicion of the ‘harem’ came precisely from how ranis could fight from the shadows and thwart colonial designs. Often the Raj would take on itself the education of minor princes to ‘save’ them from the ‘illicit’ influence of their mothers and wives; royal women, on the other hand, saw the British as trying to deracinate their men, and retaliated. The harem was no domestic space: it had a political role, and several female figures became powers behind the throne. At times they might work with the British to achieve common ends, while at other times doing the opposite. When it came to politics, many courtly women were willing to choose power over the white man’s character certificates.
To what extent did the maharajahs curate their portraiture? Did you come across any selfies?
I did come across some naughty pictures of a rajah, not just sedate self-portraits (laughs). But yes, portraiture served clear goals. How a ruler dressed, the furniture and objects he kept with him: these were loaded with meaning. In Travancore there is a painting of two boy-princes. The cliché was that Indian royalty was insular and clueless about the modern world. And yet in this picture, one boy holds a book about America, while the other points out the US on a globe. The artist and princes are both making a statement. Similarly, photographs of Ram Singh of Jaipur show him in various traditional avatars, but also seated at a desk, with glasses on. In a sense the maharajah was signalling that he was many things at once: a pious Hindu as well as a Western-style intellectual who read English books.
Some kings consciously wore dull clothes?
The British expected Indian royalty to deck up, so many countered by doing the opposite — wearing simple clothes that lent a business-like air, not one of ‘Asiatic’ excess. In fact, not dressing up often upset the Raj and led to angry correspondence. So essentially, you have white men ordering brown princes to look exotic; and then the images are circulated to reduce the same men to unevolved despots, ill-fitted for the modern world.
Any lessons in governance that modern politicians can learn from the princes?
I would say we need to look at the princes as politicians. Like politicians today, they had self-interest and ambitions, but also visions for their states and, occasionally, for India itself. Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda spoke of how the princely states would have to go if we were to become a nation; the Bikaner maharajah talked of cooperating with democratic forces in British India; a ruler of Travancore wrote of how the British must hand over power into brown hands. These were men who cared for power but they also applied their minds.
