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What were our Maharajas like?
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That's actually a silly question to ask, because Maharajas were people too, and people
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Back in the days of our military states, we had Maharajas who were Sanskrit scholars,
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we had Maharajas who were drunk in the salute all the time, we had Maharajas who were great
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sportsmen and also shitty sportsmen.
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Some Maharajas were doctors in practice medicine, and there was even one who allegedly liked
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to fornicate with his elephant, Jumbo my darling.
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And yet, where there are multitudes, there must also be simplistic narratives.
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And interestingly, the most common simplistic narrative about the Maharajas was one propagated
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by both the British Empire and their enemies, the freedom fighters of India, led by the
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For the British, the Maharajas were a bunch of ridiculous feudal autocrats incapable
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of governing wisely, so the British had to do it for them.
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For the freedom fighters, the Maharajas were, well, a bunch of ridiculous feudal autocrats
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incapable of governing wisely, and so independent India had to be constructed without them.
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This narrative suited both parties.
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This narrative is false.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is a brilliant young historian, Manu Pillay, who has been on my show three
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Each of those episodes are wildly popular, just like his books, and I'll link them from
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His latest book is called False Allies, India's Maharajas in the Age of Ravi Verma, and focuses
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on busting simple stereotypes around our Maharajas with powerful storytelling centered around
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the princely states of Travancore, Pudukottai, Baroda, Mysore, and Mewar.
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Indeed, Manu's book should be a model for how to write history because of the way they
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combine gripping storytelling with rigorous research.
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When I first recorded with him for the Scene and the Unseen, I compared his book Rebel
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Sultans to the Game of Thrones.
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That's how much fun he is to read, and in fact, that's how much bloodshed there is in
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And 30% of each book of his consists of extensive footnotes and endnotes, which speaks to the
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depth of his research and offers us so many rabbit holes to explore.
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So let's move on to this conversation now, but before we begin, let's take a quick commercial
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Over the last year, I've enjoyed teaching my online course, The Art of Clear Writing,
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We have workshops, a newsletter to showcase the work of students, and vibrant community
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In the course itself, through four webinars spread over four weekends, I share all I know
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There are many exercises, much interaction, and a lovely and lively community at the end
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The online course rupees 10,000 plus GST or about $150, and the October classes begin
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That's indiaankar.com slash clear writing.
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Being a good writer does not require God given talent, just the willingness to work hard
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
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Manu, welcome back to the scene in the end scene.
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You're being I think the fourth time.
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It is indeed the fourth time and you said something delightful as you stepped into my
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In fact, this is the first episode we're recording in my little makeshift home studio, which
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I intend to get properly sound treated, but listeners do give feedback on what you feel
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about the sound of this because remote recording sounds aren't always the best.
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So I just thought rather than try to kind of book a studio every time, it's convenient
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to have a studio at home.
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But as Manu entered my home, he said that he has a distinction of doing the first longest
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episode with me, which basically meant that one of the episodes we did, and I forget which
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one and they were all widely popular, was the longest at the time.
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And you know, one of my readers, I think it was a good Sudhir Sarnobar, did this interactive
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Did you see that where essentially it was a map of all my episodes and how the length
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So it just kept on going up.
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And of course I reached four hours 59 minutes in episode 200, but that's kind of cheating
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because I was a guest there with people like you kindly asking questions.
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But apart from that one special episode, I've hit four hours a couple of times, I think.
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But the thing that we haven't really done in the three episodes that we've done, which
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we haven't really covered, is something that I try to do now in all the episodes I do,
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which is talk about your kind of personal life and get to know you a little better by
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I don't mean personal life.
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I mean your history kind of.
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So tell me a little bit about where you grew up, what kind of kid you were and so on.
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I was born in Kerala, but I grew up in Pune.
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I was the kind of kid who got into, I mean, it's not something that comes across to people
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anymore because now I look very dignified and proper.
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But in those days I was up to very strange things.
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I used to throw myself down staircases, try and jump out of the balcony.
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I set my house on fire once.
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I used to have these hot wheel cars, which I used to drench in deodorant and set them
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on fire and then watch them zoom around while they were lit.
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So it was not a very ordinary childhood in terms of my personal leanings and inclinations.
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I was a social child, very happy, running around, you know, plenty of friends and things
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Reading happened when I was about 11 or 12.
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That's when my sister basically to calm me down, thrust a book into my hand and said,
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I read comics and then slowly graduated to other books.
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I remember writing an essay for my school newspaper.
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I don't think it got published about when I read David Copperfield for the first time.
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It was my first long book, 600 pages, I think, the unabridged version.
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And it felt like an achievement because I was 12 or 13.
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And then from there, you know, I took an interest in reading, took an interest in history and,
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you know, eventually ended up writing.
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The writing initially used to be, you know, funny little skits for school.
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I remember writing a funny poem about my bench partner in school.
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It was sort of a comical account describing her and she obviously didn't like it.
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But yeah, I was, you know, I had a good childhood in that sense.
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Nothing to complain about.
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In fact, I remember an anecdote you told me about your childhood, but it was, I think,
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It was off the record where when you were 16, you took a rat or something and you held
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it in a bucket to see if it would drown.
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It wasn't when I was 16, I was a little younger than that, maybe 13, 14.
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And you know, my grandfather got the rat.
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This was in his house in Kerala, old houses, they've got plenty of mice and things running
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around and he caught it in a little, almost like a cage.
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The trap was like a cage and he said, go release it outside.
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But then somewhere I had heard something about a bucket and something.
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So I decided to try and see if I could, you know, conduct this experiment where I sort
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of drowned the rat and it was not very pleasant afterwards.
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I was, it did die and you know, it felt, it's very strange at the age of 13, that kind
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of power over another creature.
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It's a, I wouldn't say it's intoxicating, but it was different.
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You could feel that power.
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And I felt very bad afterwards.
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The instant it died, I felt so guilty and then I turned vegetarian for seven years because
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I thought that was the only way I could expiate my sin.
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But yeah, eventually at the age of 21, I again started eating eggs and then slowly graduated
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to chicken occasionally and gave up my guilt about killing the poor animal.
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But yeah, that was my homicidal thing at that time.
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Yeah, I think Amitav Kumar wrote an essay once or a book about how in Bihar, a particular
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place to eat rats, to catch rats and eat them.
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So when you said intoxicating, I thought it will set you down a very interesting path,
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Well, one day if I become a dictator, well, it's probably very dangerous thing because
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clearly you imagine 13 year old and just having that kind of control over another living being,
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You know, now that I think of it, what was I thinking?
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Was I some kind of crazy child?
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Anyway, the fact that I felt guilt immediately after I think can give me some relief that
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I wasn't completely out of that moral limit that we place on ourselves, which is yeah,
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which is it's good to know that I have that moral limit.
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Yeah, just thinking of that impulse reminds me of this beautiful book by Ryu Murakami,
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the other Murakami as it were, a book called Piercing, where the book begins with this
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guy sleeping in a room with his wife and the babies in the crib.
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And he gets up and he has this uncontrollable desire to stab the baby.
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And obviously he doesn't actually want to do it because it's his baby, but he has this
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So and he knows that the only way to quench this, the only way he can save his baby is
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by going out and killing someone else.
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And that's the rest of the book.
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So it's a fabulous book and one of those things where you don't kind of need to explain something,
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the impulse is just there and the way it unfolds so naturally, you feel, yeah, I mean, this
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Human beings are weird.
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We are such complicated, strange creatures.
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There's really no predicting how a human being can behave as you know, only so much conditioning
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At the end of it, I think every human being is capable of sort of, you know, breaking
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out of that and becoming something completely different.
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Yeah, I mean, people often ask with astonishment that how come in Hitler's time so many
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ordinary Germans were kind of privy to that thing Hannah Arendt used the phrase the banality
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of evil and without getting too much into current politics, I think we see that, you
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know, it's not that unusual shit can happen.
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So how did you then move towards like, did you have a fascination with history particularly
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as a genre or was it just storytelling and history kind of fit into that?
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Like was there a time when you started reading history and after that, was there a time when
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you said that I want to write history?
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Well, it began frankly with just stories about my ancestors I would hear from my grandmother.
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And it wasn't like these people, these were famous people or anything.
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It was just that the way she related the doings of her uncles, her great uncles, her father,
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her mother, they didn't feel like great grandmother, great grandfather.
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They just felt like really funny, interesting people, you know, so to begin with just seeing
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older people in your family, not as relatives, not as these esteemed sort of, you know, older
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figures, but as individuals, that was very special and I started getting interested in
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So I would read a lot of biographies, I would read and then that obviously is linked to
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history because if you're reading about people long dead and gone, naturally, you know, you're
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going to pick up history books.
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From there it sort of picked up and then, you know, as we did that podcast on The Ivory
#
Throne, I found that story at the age of 18, the story of this queen, female Maharaja of
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Travancore who sort of ends up lapsing into oblivion and dying as a nobody after having
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much power and money and all of that and I thought here's an interesting story and I
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want to sort of peel back the layers.
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So it was part interest in the biography but also in the history and since then history
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sort of, you know, become the main thing but I still try and connect it often to the people
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who populate history, not in the sense necessarily of great men and great women, but trying to
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just understand history by looking at it through their eyes as opposed to in the abstract or
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in the context of economic trends and things like that.
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So yeah, it was a process.
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And where did the bit about learning how to do history come from?
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Because it's one thing to have an interest in history, to read a lot of history books
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and so on and so forth.
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You know, how do you get that discipline?
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And you became a historian in a sense when you were very young, right?
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Ivory Throne was written when you were what, 11, 12?
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Finished when I was 25.
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Finished when you were 25.
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So was that kind of daunting or did it help that you were too young to know better and
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you just kind of dived into it?
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How did you learn that bit of doing history?
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I think, you know, nobody was there to guide me at that time.
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I was doing it entirely privately.
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I was managing jobs, etc.
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But the thing is, I took to the archives like a duck to water.
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For some reason, I loved the space.
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I loved touching files that were so old that nobody had touched before.
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And then I think I just formed an aptitude and, you know, managing that kind of primary
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material, interpreting it, reading academic material that helps you interpret it.
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And then you pick up the skills and then you slowly realize that, yeah, this is what historians
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do as well, which is why, you know, Shashi Tharoor once told me that when he read my book,
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he said, this could have been your PhD thesis.
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And I said, yes, this always happens.
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I write a book and then realize that I could have just done this as a PhD thesis instead
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Now I'm doing a PhD separately, which is nothing connected to any of these books I've
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But, you know, it's just it's a habit I picked up.
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And since then, once I decided consciously that I wanted to stick to this, then obviously
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you start figuring out the methods properly, the rigor, the approaches you're supposed
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You consciously read up on the latest academic research just to make sure that you're on
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top of what is happening in the field more broadly.
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But, yeah, the beginnings were almost by accident.
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You know, I had decided I wanted to do this book that became The Ivory Throne eventually.
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I decided I wanted to be in London and decided to go there for a master so I could access
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And from there, it just took a life of its own.
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And habit just turned into, I mean, luckily, for all you know, you know, you often do find
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people who do history books without necessarily doing all the hard work that they should.
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So luckily for me, I would like to believe that that didn't happen.
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The six years that I took to write the book, I wasn't in a hurry.
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I ended up taking the time.
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And I think giving myself that kind of time also meant that I was growing up in the process,
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which meant I was also getting more mature about how I was reading the same subject,
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reading the same materials and files again.
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So you know, the drafts that were written when I was 22, very different from the drafts
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that were published at the age of 25, because much changed in that time.
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But I began not because of any academic guidance or a degree or any kind of official training.
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The training came after I had already picked up a lot of the skills just in terms of streamlining
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And you know, you mentioned sort of doing a PhD, which you know, you're doing one now
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And that leads me to sort of another question about, say, academic historians and people
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who are not academic historians.
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And obviously, you know, there is a certain amount of resentment among academic historians
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of popular historians who haven't paid the dues, so to say, and have just gone out there.
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But my question is not just about that, but something larger, which is about the relevance
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of a lot of academic paths that people take.
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Like what, for example, I can't fathom is that when you have written these acclaimed
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books of history, why would you want to do a PhD?
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I mean, okay, you know, within certain circles, it can still be considered a mark of respect
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But you are a historian, you are a respected historian, no one criticizes your methods
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And also, what are the kind of trade-offs?
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Like what role does the whole academic discipline, I mean, I know what role it has played
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through the decades because you need history and you need historians.
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But going forward where you don't have to depend on gatekeepers or degrees or whatever,
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anyone can just get in there and do history if they are passionate about much like you
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You know, will the relevance or the role of academic historians change?
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And I sort of ask this because I think about this in other fields, for example, where academics
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is elapsing more and more into irrelevance.
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You know, many fields were never relevant anyway.
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History is very relevant and very important.
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So what's your sort of thinking on this and why are you doing a PhD?
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Well, you know, the whole question of resentment on the part of certain academic historians
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for popular historians, you know, I don't think that exists that much in the West because
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a lot of academic historians do write for popular presses and trade presses as well.
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My favorite example I give in many places is Mary Beard, you know, she's a proper scholar,
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she's a very senior scholar, but she also wrote a book like SPQR, which is for a lay
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audience and they don't see it very much as an ego issue.
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Whereas I think in India, there's still some of that ego thing, which is that if you're
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an academic historian, you don't write in a way that can even remotely be called storytelling.
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You know, storytelling is a bad word.
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You're meant to use the jargon, etc.
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And I have an allergy for that.
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I don't like words like epistem or whatever that is, I can't even pronounce it properly.
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It's just not, it doesn't come to me naturally, because history to me feels like something
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you should take out into the world.
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You know, on the one hand, we complain that people are perverting history, mistreating,
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misusing history, but then if you're not going to make an effort to actually communicate
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good history in an accessible way to large numbers of people, you sort of lose the right
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to complain about these other things that are happening.
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You can fill a gap with fake news because a gap exists, you know, whereas if you try
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and bridge the gap properly, then, you know, it becomes a very different kind of game altogether
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and you can be in a position of strength.
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So yeah, I mean, and I have no reason to complain, of course, the only resentment I've got from
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academic historians are from my contemporaries, not from senior historians.
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I've got glowing reviews in peer-reviewed journals, I've got awards and things like
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I've been invited to give lectures in fairly academic sort of settings.
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So none of that really worries me.
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But you know, PhD still, if you want to teach, for example, tomorrow, then it's useful to
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Some pressure, I will admit, comes from my mother, because my father never finished his
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PhD, so she's been quite determined that I should at least finish my PhD.
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So, you know, some of it is also that.
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But it's just, I know, a thing you do.
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It's not my main thing, you know, I'm currently doing a PhD, but in the process, I've written
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And as I said earlier, I could have easily made those my thesis if I wanted a shortcut
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But I didn't think of it that way, I didn't think of it strategically.
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This is just something I'm doing.
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And I think, in some ways, you know, it does, I think having that kind of footing in academia
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does give you one strength, which is that you learn to theorise better.
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When I'm doing, for example, a narrative history, I'm not really contributing in terms of theory.
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Whereas being in academia, you also have a certain pressure to come up not just with
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original research, but also theorise about a larger point.
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You know, so if it's Travancore, for example, it's not just about that incident, say theorise
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about kingship and the place of kingship, not just in Indian history, but also in contemporary
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So that kind of theorising is something that you pick up in academia, and you don't feel
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any such need to do that for a regular audience, which I think is a useful skill because it
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gives you some kind of capacity to look at the bigger picture, you know, build a conceptual
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base that other people can then develop or argue with or sort of have a debate about,
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which is an interesting challenge in its own right.
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That happens in a much smaller circle.
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It's not really for a large audience.
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But you know, challenges are interesting.
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So I thought, let me just take this off the box, take it as it comes, enjoy the process
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while I'm also doing what I really want to do.
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And I'm one thing is sure that even if I do a thesis, I'm never going to publish it as
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I never see myself doing that.
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Do you think that that's a trap that academic historians can fall into?
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Like, do you read a work of history then and notice it, notice that it's happening, that
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there's a narrative that they've chosen or a particular ideological viewpoint that they
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have to take, and they've obviously got their own incentives at play within academia, and
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they want to fit in there with their peers and, you know, often tow the party line, as
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So do you feel that that affects the doing of history?
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And that in some ways is something that has kind of changed in modern times, where because
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of technology, because of perhaps easier access, which I'll ask you about next, there are more
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people just liberated to kind of do history.
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So is there a problem like that with academic history, and why is so much of academic history
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Yeah, that's the thing, you know, two parts, I'll give the answer in two parts.
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The one thing is academics have their own politics, they have their own ego clashes,
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they have their own disputes and very human petty issues with each other.
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You know, sometimes it's masked behind a lot of jargon, but in reality, it can come down
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to very basic human resentment that has nothing like in any other profession.
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Some people don't get along with each other.
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Some people are resentful of somebody else's success in some seminar circuit.
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And yes, there is a pressure sometimes, for example, to come up with new original terms,
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you know, like a new original concept, like something that is path breaking, and everyone's
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trying to be path breaking, which is demeans the whole point of being path breaking.
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If everyone's trying to do that, everyone's trying to invent a new concept and a new definition
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and a new term, you know, contribute to the jargon rather than contribute to the subject,
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So there is that in academia.
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There is a certain amount of ideological hesitation in India sometimes, you know, I wrote an article
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on the Mapla rebellion for the Hindu.
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Many people liked it, but many people said, no, no, you can't highlight the religious
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element of that rebellion in 1921, because it will be used to victimise present day Muslims.
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Now, the thing is, I understand, and obviously one doesn't like to contribute to that kind
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But all the same in the longer term, if you don't talk about it, you're again creating
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room for somebody else to misinterpret it.
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So a lot of historians will focus just on the economic aspect, they will focus just
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on the social aspect, they will focus on landlordism, feudalism, but they will do everything possible
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to studiously avoid religion.
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I mean, don't avoid it.
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Acknowledge that it's at least in the room, because there's plenty of evidence that that
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So the Mapla rebellion is the big event in 1921, but there were a series of smaller outrages
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through the 19th century.
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And you see that religion does play a role, because all of these people, when they go
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out and start the rebellion, there's a whole ritual, they dress in white, they go and take
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the blessings of a Muslim cleric.
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All of that happens when they attack temples, for example, they festoon it, and this is
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a quote, they festoon one in 1852 with the entrails of a cow.
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These things have a religious overtone as well.
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There may be economic motivations, that may be the main motivation, but the protest is
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articulated and justified through religious ideology.
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You stand up to the landlord who's treating you badly in an economic sense, but you justify
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standing up in religious language.
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All of these elements are part of the same process.
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But there is sometimes in India hesitation to highlight the religious.
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We all, to some extent, succumb to that, because it comes so naturally.
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Anything you read tries to studiously avoid the religious.
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So it's now taken me some to peel back those layers to start realising that, hold on, there's
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certain issues with this.
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And we do need to acknowledge it.
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We talk, for example, Kabir's poetry about Hindus and Muslims being one, but even in
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saying that they should be one, you're essentially acknowledging that there's some kind of difference
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So you're aware that there is a difference and you're trying to bridge it.
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So we have to be aware of that ourselves as well.
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We can't highlight just the uniting of the religions and forget that why is he trying
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to unite them in the first place?
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What is it that is causing him to sort of say, no, let's rise above this?
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When we say that kings used religious vocabulary during times of war, true, and they would
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have had political reasons, just as politicians today mind religion for political purposes.
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But it also means that it has some appeal to somebody and to some sections that are
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clearly powerful, because that's why you're using religion, because clearly it's having
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some kind of an effect.
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So if religion has an effect in our society today, it's possible equally that in the past
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at least some sections, some powerful sections did work within that frame of politics as
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Again, it's tough because you don't want anybody to be victimised because of this,
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but also not talking about it is, I think, dangerous.
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Because then other people can come and say, oh, look, all these historians are liars.
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All of them are biased.
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They're not telling you this.
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They're not telling you that.
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They're all trying to look the other way, which is dangerous because that's what creates
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the space for fake news and a lot of misreading of history.
#
Another part of your question.
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What was the second part of your question?
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I said there were two parts I was going to answer.
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About whether academic history will gradually become sort of not become redundant, but the
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role will change because the gatekeeping is falling apart.
#
Well, yes, that's true, because a lot of material is now much more easily available.
#
Archives are being digitised very slow, painfully slow in India, but it is happening.
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A lot of visual material is being digitised.
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The Asiatic Society here in Mumbai, they've got a huge newspaper archive, Times of India
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going back to the 19th century.
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Wonderful resources are now available just a click away and 12,000 rupees a year, which
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I mean, it's expensive, but it's not too bad if you're if you're willing.
#
It's a one year subscription, so it's not bad at all.
#
But all the same, I think it's also important democratising access is one thing, but also
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training people to read that material in the right way also matters.
#
You know, this is you can read something and take it at face value, whereas historians
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are taught to interrogate the source itself.
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They're taught to ask questions of the source itself.
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Why is this document in this format?
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Why is this document written on this date?
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What language is it written in?
#
All of these questions come in because you're trained to ask those questions.
#
If you're not trained and you just go in because the access is there and try to put together
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a narrative, there will be certain flaws in it and people can sort of point out holes
#
But again, these are issues that will eventually resolve itself.
#
The world is in a state of flux.
#
Everything is generally falling away in all fields, as you said, and therefore in future
#
in this interim, there may be some chaos, there may be some confusion, people may not
#
necessarily do their best work.
#
But I think eventually once this becomes the new normal, a new kind of system of moderation
#
will fall in place and then that will create a kind of balance of its own.
#
Things have a way of eventually, once the existing system falls apart, a new balance
#
will eventually form on its own, is what I feel at least.
#
Coming up on what you said earlier about how when you wrote that particular historical
#
column, people told you, hey, don't do it because it will be used by so and so for such
#
And it strikes me that that has that kind of tendency that don't interrogate this right
#
now, don't say this right now, that it's not just about truth, but there are other issues
#
I think it has been there for a long time and is there in other ways also, for example,
#
in science, where you will hear people say that don't talk about innate differences between
#
men and women because people might interpret it in a prescriptive way and not a descriptive
#
Or people might say, don't just talk about genetic differences because hey, eugenics
#
happened once upon a time and because it may be misused in this way.
#
And just in the context of history, I read an episode with Kapil Khome Reddy, who wrote
#
the book, the provocative book Malevolent Republic, an excellent read, where one of
#
his central points was that historians of the 50s and 60s in India made exactly the
#
mistake that you're alluding to.
#
This is his take on things, that because they saw that India was fragile, because you cannot
#
take it for granted that the center will hold and there were all these competing passions
#
which could be out of place, they felt that it's best to sort of when you write history,
#
you talk about the Mughals, you talk about all that, you minimize the damage that they
#
did so that there aren't repercussions in the present time.
#
And Kapil's point was that this actually had the unintended effect of making things worse
#
because so many people just felt that the elites are not even acknowledging what has
#
And that has actually worsened the passions that we see in play today.
#
So in a sense, the doing of history with this kind of impulse or with any impulse that is
#
not just about telling the truth, the best way that you can, I mean, obviously no one
#
has a monopoly on the truth, but the best way that you can, making a good faith effort,
#
but instead letting these extraneous considerations come in, it can't end well, that was a point
#
What do you think about that?
#
I mostly agree with that, with that position.
#
A lot of the historians of the 50s and 60s, I don't think they did it consciously.
#
To a great extent, this would just have been the dominant narrative at the time.
#
And without us even realizing it, the dominant narratives do shape how we think.
#
It sort of adds a filter in front of our eyes and we start looking at everything through
#
You know, when the British Empire was in power, you know, a lot of people had sympathy with
#
India, but they were still broadly thinking within the terms of the empire.
#
They would still think that, oh, the British still need to be in India to civilize India,
#
but they could be kinder, they could be nicer.
#
So that basic filter doesn't move away.
#
So in the same way, you know, post-independence partitions, secessionist movements, insurgency,
#
all of this is happening.
#
So I suppose there was an impulse almost subconsciously to try and sort of do something that is unifying
#
and takes people together rather than exacerbates differences that are already there on the
#
But I think 70 years into independence, if we don't start acting a little more maturely,
#
about these sensitive topics and start sort of talking about them transparently without
#
too much hesitation, without too much shame and things like that, it's not worth it,
#
Then what are we ultimately doing?
#
We can take that gamble because we are already seeing why the risks involved in not doing
#
You know, not doing it.
#
As I said, we are creating room for people to peddle rubbish's history.
#
And to some extent, the blame sits with us itself because we've not acknowledged these
#
We've not focused on these areas.
#
And you know, religion matters to people.
#
There was that few research that came out a couple of months ago, which tells you how
#
much to this day, religion matters to people.
#
It reminds me of a quote in the 18th century, I think there was this one East India Company
#
official who says that in this country, he's talking in Madras, but he's like in this
#
country, when a person makes money, he finds no other way to show it off but to start building
#
And you know, it's interesting because I see the same thing in Kerala where the Gulf
#
boom comes in, people have disposable income, they're building big houses.
#
But there's also this huge boom in in renovating old family temples, groves, resuming poojas.
#
Astrologers are making a lot of money because people do sort of fall back on what they think
#
is traditional high culture, which they did not perhaps have access to earlier.
#
They do fall back onto those things.
#
And it's fascinating that, you know, that 18th century quote in some ways fits this
#
late 20th century context in Kerala as well.
#
So it is real, it's not a phenomenon we can play down.
#
Religion did have an impact on people's lives, it could be syncretic, in other cases it may
#
not be, but we should be able to have an open conversation about it and if it is unpleasant
#
at certain moments, we should still be able to talk about it without resorting to name
#
calling and immediately sort of branding people on that account.
#
I think otherwise, it doesn't serve the purpose of history itself.
#
You know, we were again falling into the same old trap.
#
If you want to break out of the trap, you also need to learn to have some of these,
#
let's say, uncomfortable conversations around uncomfortable topics.
#
If we have it today, 20 years later, it won't be an issue because we've already dealt with
#
We've already crossed that bridge.
#
Instead of avoiding it and sort of, you know, skirting it, we've already got there.
#
Except that, you know, the bridge is not being crossed, the bridge is being blown up, there
#
is a war in the middle of the bridge.
#
What we kind of see nowadays is this narrative warfare that actually doesn't have any regard
#
It doesn't matter what happened, what archives you can go into and how rigorous you can get.
#
It's all about what narrative you can sell better.
#
And the necessary thing about all these narratives is that they are necessarily simplistic.
#
You know, one of the cliches on my show is how I keep quoting Whitman and that whole,
#
you know, people contain multitudes kind of thing.
#
But the thing is that they do.
#
That's what good history brings out.
#
That is, in fact, the very thing that False Allies aims to do, to kind of beat back a
#
simple narrative and show different layers of it and it succeeds so well in doing that.
#
But if anything, I think the tendency of the times is to ignore that.
#
Like, from what I remember, just 15 years back, you could read more nuanced pieces about
#
Nehru than you can today.
#
Today, he's either a demon who destroyed India and is responsible for, you know, everything
#
that happens today, including Amit Shah getting acidity on a Wednesday afternoon, or he's
#
a saint who did nothing wrong and who built this great modern India that the barbarians
#
are going to take down.
#
And these are both nonsensical narratives.
#
He messed up in various areas.
#
But it seems that the space for those kinds of nuanced narratives is kind of going down.
#
And I won't even say to throw an additional thought there.
#
I don't think the appetite for those nuanced narratives is going down.
#
I just think that the vocal minorities kind of shout out the silent majorities.
#
So even someone writing about it today will be more inclined to cater to one side or the
#
other, especially if they've kind of joined a camp.
#
And I've not in the specific context of Nehru, but in some other context, I've forgotten.
#
I've had the argument made to me that I know that X is a more complex subject, but I'm
#
going to write about it in this particular way, because otherwise the other side will,
#
you know, pick up on or whatever the exact same thing that you said about the Maplar
#
So what's kind of your take on that?
#
Because at one level, I feel hopeful that anybody can do history, that the gatekeepers
#
are kind of gone, anyone can dig in for their own research, and therefore you would imagine
#
that in this marketplace of ideas, the truth will eventually prevail, that quality will
#
But at the same time, we are so dominated by simple narratives that people are actually
#
becoming scared to say nuanced things because they'll get attacked from both sides.
#
And I think the important word, the term you used is that vocal minority.
#
I think a lot of this happens on social media.
#
In my personal experience, I speak at a lot of colleges.
#
Not all of them are in your big cities.
#
In Kerala, for example, I've spoken at fairly smallish colleges and towns.
#
And yesterday I had a session with students at Loyola College in Chennai.
#
You speak to students in those contexts and you realise actually there is a huge appetite
#
People don't get upset if you talk about things, which are even uncomfortable.
#
People, especially kids, they're willing to listen to you, they're willing to entertain
#
an argument, even if it seems unsavoury, even if it goes against a seemingly dominant ideology.
#
A lot of the noise happens on social media.
#
And I think the tragedy is that that social media noise has somehow started translating
#
to newspaper clout and press clout and generally other areas also where these subjects are
#
discussed at a lot of top level, which is tragic because on the ground, that's still
#
At least in my experience, Lit Fest, other contexts, if you're physically in a room
#
with say 100, 200 young people, it is not the response you would get for saying the
#
same thing on social media.
#
Which to me, gives me a great deal of optimism.
#
As you said, silent vocal minorities can often change the course of history, they can often
#
wield disproportionate influence, so it's dangerous.
#
But I think it's important also for some of us to keep our head down, focus on what
#
we're supposed to do and not immediately get drawn into these debates.
#
I use Twitter very little, I just retweet things constantly.
#
I don't air opinions, I'm not posting things, even when some rubbish comes up, I'm not the
#
one who, if somebody else points out holes in it, I may retweet it, but I don't personally
#
go out and do it, because I've got my job, my task cut out for me and I want to focus
#
Because if one tries to do everything all at once, one tries to fight all these battles
#
at all fronts, it's going to be a losing process and it's going to be a very frustrating process
#
and I don't want to do that to myself to begin with and I want to focus on one area where
#
I can do something well, play to my strengths and make a contribution that will hopefully
#
It may be an idealistic way of thinking, but I think it has some meaning, perhaps not in
#
the short term, but I think in the medium and long term, people eventually, fake news,
#
all the saturation of noise, etc.
#
Everything has a shelf life.
#
When that shelf life comes to an end, when people have finally had it, they will eventually
#
come back to the books, to the bookshelf and pick up things and I would rather try and
#
contribute to filling that bookshelf, even if it's a less glamorous task for the next
#
10 years, but I think that in the long term is a better cause to follow than get into
#
these debates, into this online noise and these online battles.
#
Online is going to be noisy.
#
It's going to be about these battles.
#
Every day somebody is going to invent a new controversy.
#
I'm not prepared to play that game.
#
I'm going to play the game on my terms and I will wait for the day that the terms in
#
general also change and then hopefully then people like me will be in a position of strength
#
because we've put in the hours and taken those years of effort to try and contribute
#
something more long lasting and not so transient as an online debate that happened one Friday
#
and next Friday it's a new thing and the next month something else comes up.
#
It's a completely different set of things.
#
I'm not playing that game because that game is skewed anyway.
#
It's skewed towards a certain set of people.
#
You're always on the defensive.
#
You're always trying to show why something else is not what it is, what people are claiming
#
I would rather proactively make that case.
#
It may not be in a tweet.
#
It may be in a 500 page book but to me it seems like the most sensible thing to do with
#
my time and energy rather than frittering it away in these things.
#
I wish I could spend less time on social media.
#
You're a social media celebrity.
#
It's with a perverse fascination that I keep going to Twitter and doomscrolling as it were.
#
I think it's fairly toxic even for me.
#
One of the mistakes I think I made when I was a young man and which I tell my writing
#
students today not to do is of thinking of life or even writing or whatever one does
#
in terms of goals, in terms of things to do rather than in terms of processes, in terms
#
of what you want to be.
#
Now, if I can throw that back at you, when you started the Avery Throne, I'm assuming
#
at some level it was about I want to write this book and it is going to be very enjoyable
#
for me and it is a goal.
#
But in the course somewhere along the way, I'm assuming that it became less about what
#
you are doing but more about what you are.
#
So is there a point where you feel that you just define yourself as I am a person who
#
does history and then whatever else happens, the various books that you've written and
#
all the columns that you write and all of that kind of happens by the way, but you have
#
kind of come to a firmer definition of who you are because to me, I think people who
#
get that kind of notion of what they are, that consciousness that I am this, I am happy
#
I wake up every morning looking forward to doing this and I get to do this, which is
#
such a great fortune and great privilege.
#
So do you feel that happened to you along the way or were you clear from the start that
#
No, I wasn't clear from the start.
#
I knew I wanted to do that one book.
#
I knew I wanted to tell the story of Saitulakshmi Bhai because injustice had been done to her
#
That person deserved a better sort of reading from a historian.
#
So that was very clear in my mind, but there was no long term plan.
#
I enjoyed writing and all of that.
#
But frankly, my interest in those days was foreign policy.
#
In fact, I still keep one toe in that field.
#
I still go for these conferences and international seminars and all that on that.
#
But it's a very small part of my life now.
#
At that time, that is what interested me.
#
That's why I went and worked with Shashi Tharoor in parliament because he had just come back
#
from the UN and he was head of the Foreign Affairs Committee, all of that.
#
That's why I went and worked with the member of the House of Lords.
#
All of that was part of that, what I thought would be my professional trajectory.
#
Then Ivory Throne happened.
#
It was a six year process.
#
People congratulate me on the book, but frankly, I owe the book a great deal because it in
#
some ways taught me who I am and had a huge impact in shaping the kind of person I became.
#
And that then, and I think, I mean, this is probably modest to say, but success I think
#
often helps, which is that the book did so well and it had such a tremendous response
#
It gives you the confidence then to start thinking, oh, wow, okay, hold on.
#
Maybe I can take this up as something.
#
Why didn't I even think of it as a career option?
#
Because nobody tells you being a writer or being a historian is a career option.
#
So then that sort of gave me pause and I decided, let me see if I can make this work.
#
And since then, as of now, I've managed to make it work.
#
And yeah, now I'm quite content with where I am.
#
I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
#
You asked me earlier why I don't start a podcast of my own, partly for this reason.
#
One may be tempted to do several things, but if there is something one already enjoys and
#
you're good at it, focus on that.
#
In today's world, it's very easy to be drawn and attracted to lots of things.
#
I don't want to at the moment do that.
#
I'm enjoying what I'm doing, writing, the research, the slogging, even the complaining
#
All of that is part of my life now.
#
It really brightens my overall sort of perspective about things, as opposed to, you know, just
#
because you may be good at something, then trying that and then trying something else.
#
That's not my style, at least I want to focus on what I've clearly decided is my path.
#
The other thing is because writing is also in some ways precarious, you know, you may
#
have several successes, but what if one book doesn't do well?
#
Immediately your stock in the market goes down a little bit, you know, your advances
#
go down a little bit, publishers take a pause, you know, as to whether they want to necessarily
#
go ahead with you with the next book.
#
So some of those fears also exist, which means at some level, I'm also like, I really need
#
to keep my game up as far as this is concerned, so that I'm in that position of strength where
#
I can keep doing more and more of what I enjoy, whereas if I fritter that energy away, then
#
what if I fall and then it may be tough to again sort of come back.
#
So there's some of those practical constraints and fears as well.
#
So it's not completely all, you know, wonderful colours and perfect, different elements come
#
So it's very clear that this is what I want to do.
#
And you mentioned that Ivory Throne changed you as a person, or it helped you discover
#
who you were as a person.
#
Can you elaborate on that a little?
#
It was a very isolating process because, you know, I started at 19, in your early 20s,
#
you're still a student, you're still sort of with young people.
#
I've had my fair share of getting drunk and partying and all of that, I was a very social
#
So for me to be chained to a desk for 12 hours at a stretch to sit in a library hall, in
#
an archive, a room in the archives for long hours without a single person around me uttering
#
a word, that kind of thing was initially a challenge, you know, because I'm not that
#
I'm generally quite talkative and all of that.
#
So it's almost meditative, you're almost, I mean, quite literally with just yourself
#
and of course the files.
#
But it also does sort of hold up a mirror to you.
#
So you, you know, in my early 20s, I would see you do feel peer pressure, right?
#
You see your friends, some of them making lots of money in corporate jobs or whatever
#
their first corporate jobs.
#
Many of them are travelling, they're partying, they've got these wonderful Facebook photographs
#
and here I am, sitting with my, with my parchment and paper and, you know, coming back at nine
#
o'clock and then staying up till three to write.
#
You do feel a little lonely and isolated, but that isolation also becomes a means for
#
You start figuring out what works for you, what doesn't, what is an issue for you and
#
what is not, and you are also able to surmount a lot of those pressures.
#
Earlier, I might have felt left out that, oh, you know, why am I stuck with this project
#
while everybody else is having fun, but very quickly I was able to get over it.
#
And then you realise actually, look, it doesn't matter.
#
I can go out and have fun on my terms, but the fun doesn't define me.
#
I decide when I want to go and have fun and then the rest of the time I can equally with
#
just the same appetite, direct my energy at work and have no issues with it.
#
So I can go an entire year without socialising with just research and I can go another year
#
just with socialising, but doing no other serious work.
#
It's possible because I have control over that process now and that control is something
#
I developed when I was working on The Ivory Throne.
#
For better or worse, it happened when I was very young, in the early 20s, which meant
#
that at a relatively early age, I had figured out what I wanted to do, how I was as a person,
#
what my strengths were, what my weaknesses were, what upset me, what made me happy.
#
Those things all were wrapped up in that book.
#
For example, small things, I was always a very skinny person and the one time I put
#
on weight was when I was doing this book because I was stress eating at this one stage where
#
the book was simply not moving forward and I was eating and since then I have an obsession
#
with cake, but I have to really control myself because even now if it's sugar, I can lose
#
It was in that time that I realised this about myself that stress eating is a part of this.
#
It's obviously a sign that you're depressed in some way and you're trying to fill that
#
vacuum with as much sugar as you can.
#
These are all methods of figuring out also who you are and it was in some ways enlightening
#
in your early 20s to be able to understand all that.
#
I made my share of mistakes and all of that.
#
I have no regrets, but yeah, for me it was also a process where I was growing up.
#
So I wrote the book, yes, the book did well, it got its award and acclaim and all of that,
#
but the book also did play a big role in helping me figure out who I was.
#
So as I say, the person who went in at 19 is not the person who emerged at 25 and that
#
six year gap really was a very meditative, personal, interesting time.
#
And do you feel that it helped you discover yourself or do you feel that it actively shaped
#
Because one of the things that I hold is that what you do shapes you actively, even in terms
#
of the forms you choose while you're writing, like I'd written an essay on how a simple
#
thing like the length of a podcast, if you're a podcaster, can end up changing the person
#
you are because if you're doing a three hour podcast, for example, you do way more research,
#
you go much more deeply, you learn to listen.
#
Listening is the most important part of conversation, whereas if you're doing a five minute podcast,
#
you don't even have to read the book, you just ask a couple of stock questions and you're
#
done, you can stay shallow.
#
So the form forces a certain kind of content, the content forces a certain kind of behavior
#
and then that changes you in the long run.
#
Like I definitely think that I'm more open and a better listener now after all these
#
years of doing this podcast than I was before.
#
And I would imagine that is perhaps a similar thing with writing, not just something that
#
is book length, but something that by the nature of being history and by the nature
#
of the rigor that that involves, involves your constantly looking deeper, peeling back
#
So do you feel that that also played a part, like had you done something else?
#
Do you think you'd be fundamentally a different person, like had you become a banker?
#
Oh God, can't even imagine that.
#
The only alternate career I thought of in my teens was architecture, but that didn't
#
Would you have been a different person if you were a different person?
#
I have a feeling I might have.
#
Because I think because the first book was also biographical, it was also about trying
#
to get into the head of this woman who had died so long ago and occupied a completely
#
You're not just peeling back the layers or trying to get into their mind, you're also
#
learning how to peel back your own layers.
#
So you are also evolving into a different person, when I say the book changed me, it
#
was partly because I was trying to get into somebody's head and the method by which
#
I was trying to do that, I could also apply to myself and I could also start figuring
#
out a lot of things about myself in the process.
#
So yeah, I think it fundamentally changed me.
#
I don't think if I was in another line of work, I would be this person.
#
It would have been another person, another version.
#
That version, that version would have had its own issues and challenges.
#
Perhaps there would have been other experiences that would shape that person.
#
But what happened with this book in the first six years of my research was very unique and
#
very special to tailoring me into this particular avatar.
#
And I don't think anything else could have done it with that kind of force.
#
And as far as the craft of writing is concerned, how did that evolve?
#
Because one of the things that I have pointed out about your previous books and in our previous
#
conversations is just your storytelling ability.
#
And some of it, of course, comes from the stories, mad rampaging elephants and all of
#
It's just, you know, your history books are as much fun as the Game of Thrones.
#
But some of it comes from the craft.
#
And it seems to me that, you know, to get that kind of craft so early is tough because
#
I look back on how I wrote in my 20s or how so many young people who do my class kind
#
of write is that they'll overthink it, they'll go overboard, they'll try too hard to impress
#
others or to convince themselves that, wow, I can write.
#
And there is none of that in your writing.
#
In that sense, you are always lost in the story.
#
You're never noticing the pros for itself unless you're also, you know, somebody keenly
#
involved in the craft and you're looking for that.
#
So how did that evolve?
#
You know, were there drafts?
#
Did you do a first draft and then look at it and say, no, the writing isn't working?
#
I got to tell me a bit about that.
#
In fact, the early drafts of the Ivory Throne are frankly embarrassing now because I was
#
trying very hard then because at that time, you know, somebody had told me that, oh,
#
you know, it has to be exciting for the reader and I said, oh, how do I make it exciting
#
Let me just be very dramatic and all of that.
#
Even in the final version, something which may not work for all readers is I thought
#
I was being very clever, where if you've noticed the Ivory Throne, it begins with a flourish.
#
Like there's a lot of archaic language in the start.
#
And then as the era develops, so you begin in the 19th century and it ends in 1985, the
#
language also slowly, let's say, gets more and more modern, more and more contemporary
#
as the book proceeds, which I was doing as a deliberate thing, thinking that, oh, you
#
know, it begins in the 19th century, 1860s, Ravi Varma, all of that.
#
So let me use more antiquated words there and then slowly build up.
#
But that doesn't mean, you know, I write like that all the time.
#
You know, somebody asked me, you know, how do you write with such antiquated words all
#
I said, I don't actually write that kind of antiquated language.
#
So there was some conscious sort of, you know, tailoring of the prose to that extent.
#
A lot of it just came from reading.
#
And you know, I think I may have said this on your podcast earlier, which is that fiction
#
and especially Woodhouse had a great impact in the way I write and try to sort of, what
#
I think is subtle, but subtly, you know, weave in some humour into the text without necessarily
#
pointing out saying, oh, this is humorous.
#
I don't have to say this is funny.
#
It's just the tone sometimes.
#
It's just your choice of words sometimes.
#
If you're trying to convey irreverence, you can do it without having to sort of mark it
#
as irreverence and put a flag there saying that, oh, look, this is the irreverent section.
#
So fiction to some extent did play a role in sort of giving me that general sense of
#
This is what people call the writer's voice.
#
And you know, in my case, the voice was informed a great deal by fiction because I'd read
#
plenty of nonfiction and there was often a certain dryness, except for example, Dalrymple's
#
William Dalrymple was the first person I think in India who wrote that kind of accessible,
#
you know, storytelling format while also being good on research.
#
And that to me was wonderful because this is exactly how I grew up hearing stories.
#
This is exactly how I took an interest in the past.
#
And if I did it, why not others?
#
So yeah, there was, I would say that, you know, there was some conscious effort to please
#
in the early drafts, but then as time passed and as I got older, it became clear to me
#
that, you know, let's just focus on telling the story well and not get so focused on how
#
it sounds to a certain person or an intended audience.
#
I was very clear that I wanted the reader to want to turn the pages, you know, that
#
you have to keep the reader in mind.
#
You can't just write to please yourself because that's another trap.
#
You're writing just to please yourself and you're writing essentially for your mother
#
and your aunt and your sister.
#
There's nobody else who's going to read the book and enjoy it.
#
So to a certain extent, yes, impressing the reader or rather wooing the reader and persuading
#
them to turn the pages is important.
#
But then just tell the story and develop your own style and your own voice.
#
More than any kind of creative or conscious polishing of the prose, it really is about
#
figuring out how you want to tell that story and how you have a style in developing your
#
own special way of doing that.
#
And I love many of the touches of humor that come up in your prose and some of it is, of
#
course, because of the content like in previous books, you've discussed mad elephants being
#
let loose and to punish people.
#
But in this book, you also have a bit about how they were royals who fornicated with elephants
#
And I loved your description of Malhar Rai Gaikwad, for example, as, quote, textbook
#
dubious, stop quote, which is such a lovely phrase.
#
And of course, you go on to elaborate upon that and there is no textbook with those ways
#
of dubiousness I mentioned, but it's quite sort of delightful there.
#
So tell me about how the subjects are evolving in your head because you do the ivory throne.
#
Then you you do the the courtesan book is, of course, a collection of your essays.
#
And we had a great episode on that as well.
#
And you have, you know, those middle centuries in the Deccan and all of that, which we did
#
our first episode on, I think.
#
How did you arrive at the subject for false allies?
#
And since so much of it is based on Raja Ravi Verma, like in a very loose sense, he is sort
#
of not the sutradhar, per se, but like a sutradhari kind of travels through the story.
#
And in all of these princely states, he's been there.
#
He's painted these people and all of that.
#
It seemed a very interesting thread.
#
So was it just sort of a continuation of that early interest into Raja Ravi Verma?
#
Or did you feel that this theme is something that needs to be tackled?
#
How did you arrive at this book and what else are you working on?
#
Because you said this was one of two books you're working on simultaneously.
#
So you know, the books that came before this, it's very interesting ivory throne, I came
#
I was very interested in Kerala history because my family is from Kerala.
#
So it gave me an opportunity to dig into that and to tell that particular story.
#
The Deccan book I did because I grew up in Maharashtra.
#
And here, you know, as I said on your podcast as well, we discussed the Deccan in terms
#
of the Mughals and the Marathas and we forget that there was a whole five century period
#
where there were Islamic sultanates in the Deccan.
#
And I thought, you know, I usually work on the colonial period.
#
That is my strong point.
#
I don't work on the early modern period.
#
I don't read Persian, for example.
#
So I knew that this was not a core area that I was interested in.
#
But all the same as somebody who grew up here, all the same as somebody who only found academic
#
texts on the Deccan, I thought there was a gap that needed to be filled, something accessible
#
for people to just go pick up in case they're interested in Deccan history.
#
But this was also about challenging myself because the ivory throne was such a long book
#
Each chapter was about the length of a master's thesis.
#
You know, my master's thesis in London was 15,000 words.
#
And each chapter is between 12 and 20,000 words in that book.
#
I got very used to having that kind of space.
#
So it was the career and the life of these Maranis in the 20th century spread over 700
#
pages with rebel sultans as trying to do the opposite.
#
Five centuries, you know, sort of compressed into just over 200 pages and the rest is notes.
#
It was also a way to challenge myself to see if I could do that kind of brisker, faster,
#
sort of broad canvas storytelling.
#
The book's done well, but what's interesting is people who've read rebel sultans have
#
not necessarily liked ivory throne because it's such a big shift for them in style.
#
People who've read the ivory throne first find rebel sultans too fast and too brisk
#
But for me personally, it wasn't about impressing anybody as such.
#
It was really about figuring out whether I could do it.
#
And because the publisher liked it, it ended up getting published.
#
Same with the collection of essays because I wanted to see if I could encapsulate something
#
You know, your newspaper column has a fixed space when it's a print column.
#
In that newspaper, you have that much real estate and you really can't go over your
#
So each week trying to sort of condense a story and obviously there would be strengths
#
But just the process of doing that was also a way for me to learn and I was getting paid
#
So why should I not do it?
#
So that's how that happened.
#
The fourth book, False Allies, is partly because when I was doing the Travancore book, that's
#
when I realised that this whole cliché of princely states being about elephants, dancing
#
girls and the British sort of controlling these Rajas is far too simplistic.
#
In Travancore, you have firstly internal palace dynamics and there's a history of how the
#
dynasty comes to power and that edifice of power is constructed.
#
You have local politics, which has nothing to do with the nationalist struggle.
#
It has nothing to do with what's happening in British India.
#
It's rooted entirely in local caste, local religious identities and what people would
#
And that sort of bubbles up.
#
Eventually it results in communism becoming powerful in that particular region.
#
It's an internal history and it's fascinating in its own right.
#
It's when we say that, you know, history of India in the modern period, the emphasis
#
is always on British India.
#
But the princely states covered about 40% of the territory of this country, which means
#
that what is happening, the micro histories of each of these states is also fascinating
#
and Travancore gave me a very in-depth sort of study of that, you know, understanding
#
what that whole process was and why a single princely state like that could be so fascinating.
#
And that then, you know, since then I've wanted to do a princely states book.
#
I was very keen to do a princely states book, but then, you know, the Ravi Varma thing happened
#
because I was asked by the Ravi Varma Foundation in Bangalore to do a coffee table book on
#
him and his journeys in various princely states, which I did.
#
It was a private publication that came out last year, but they read it and they said,
#
you know, you should try and publish this for a general audience because we found it
#
So then I sort of spruced up the manuscript, made it longer.
#
This is a 550 page book, even though again here 150 pages are notes, but still.
#
So I decided that what I would do is 562 states.
#
You obviously can't choose.
#
How do you choose from such a large number?
#
One way is get rid of about 300 odd because when people say that India had 562 states,
#
there's already a little bit of, let's say, negative thing in that.
#
You can go look so many of them, Chhota Mota Rajas everywhere, none of them had any value.
#
The frank truth is about 300 states were spread over just 6,500 square miles in what is called
#
So you get rid of them, you're down to just about 400 and something states.
#
The real major states who qualify, frankly, to be called partially sovereign states as
#
opposed to Zamindaris, Jagirs, etc. were just over 100 states.
#
So that reduces your options a great deal.
#
And in that again, there's variety, we think of Maharaj as drowning in alcohol, sitting
#
with their dancing girls.
#
Maharaja of Gondal who ruled for decades was a doctor and he used to practice as a doctor
#
in his state, ruled over 1000 square miles, but interesting character.
#
Maharaja of Kuchan was, you would not find him in the lap of a dancing girl.
#
He would be pouring over his Sanskrit manuscripts, very different kind of character.
#
But also the bigger states were interesting because there's more happening within these
#
So a state like Baroda, for example, you have a Maratha royal family ruling over Gujaratis.
#
The political dynamics in the state are very different because of that natural, a lot of
#
the Gujaratis there in Baroda state, it was the Marathas who were the colonisers, not
#
the East India Company, not the British.
#
When you refer to an outsider, it is your king.
#
He's an outside invader who's come in.
#
So how did that polity and how did its system evolve?
#
Mysore, you have an aristocracy that is powerful, but numerically very small.
#
And politics is controlled by the Vokaligas and the Lingayas.
#
These are two powerful rural elements, which is still the case in Karnataka.
#
Even now in Karnataka, Karnataka politics is dominated by these two communities.
#
And you can actually trace that back into princely Mysore politics as well.
#
You go to a state like Pudukottai, different set of issues because the ruling caste is
#
technically a low caste of robbers.
#
You know, they're a robber caste, the very term Kallar means to rob or thieves.
#
And they're the ones who've become kings here.
#
Dynamics are very different compared to other places.
#
Rajputana on the other hand, completely complicated because the king is present and you would
#
think the king only has to deal with the British, but not true.
#
The king has subordinate vassal lords who are very autonomous in their own territories.
#
And he's also trying to fight off their efforts to reduce his power.
#
So each of these states have almost distinct political structures.
#
Each of their rulers is dealing with a different set of pressures.
#
So colonialism and the Rajas wasn't just about the British coming, the Raja hosting
#
a darbar, people having parties.
#
There's a lot of political nuance and intricacy and layers of politics that you can see in
#
And I was very keen to sort of, you know, do a book on these princely states.
#
Here Ravi Varma comes in because this man went firstly, he's from a princely state.
#
His sisters-in-law, his granddaughters were rulers of those princely states.
#
They were part of the royal family.
#
And then he also travelled through some of these major princely states doing portraits
#
So I thought you take him, follow his career.
#
So 1860 to say 1880, he's working in Travancore.
#
In late 1870s, for the first time, he leaves the state and does a portrait commission in
#
Pudukottai, so that gives me an opportunity to discuss Pudukottai.
#
Then 1880s, he comes to Baroda, so you get a chapter on Baroda.
#
Then he comes off to Mysore, so you get a chapter on Mysore.
#
And shortly before his death, he goes to Udaipur and therefore you have a chapter on Mewar.
#
1906, 1901 he goes to Udaipur, 1906 he dies and that is it.
#
It sort of enabled me to weave five states, rather different in their internal composition,
#
rather different in their internal politics and try and sort of use him as the common
#
In those chapters, he's just a cameo appearance.
#
He's in the background, he's visiting and I'll describe the portrait he's done of the
#
But the chapters really are about the states, about the rulers and the states and what's
#
happening inside these states.
#
He's merely an excuse to sort of look at those states, otherwise choosing individual states
#
and then sort of having a mechanical sort of one chapter per state without necessarily
#
connecting them, that didn't appeal to me too much.
#
Here, he may be a very slender thread, but he's a thread.
#
So I thought I would structure the book that way.
#
Yeah, he kind of appears in things, much the way Hitchcock appeared in his films, like
#
Hitchcock always made these guest appearances in his films and there's one film where I
#
think these people are marooned on a boat, so you wonder how will he make an appearance.
#
But if I remember correctly, there's a newspaper cutting and his picture is in there.
#
So yeah, but of course, all those stories were shaped by Hitchcock here.
#
I think in many of these cases, Raja Ravi Verma was just kind of a bystander, a bit
#
But the thing is, obviously, it is convenient for the British to paint the Maharajas as
#
dissolute because then they can advance a narrative that, listen, Indians can't govern
#
themselves, we have to do it for them.
#
And equally, it is convenient for the congressmen or the freedom fighters who eventually take
#
over independent India to paint them that way because then they can justify what in
#
a sense was their own act of colonialism, just getting rid of all the princely states,
#
using the colonial apparatus which exists to this day of predatory Indian state and
#
There's a convenient narrative for both of them.
#
Now, what, of course, you've done is that shown in this book, given glimpses of the
#
multitudes that are contained within.
#
But I think a danger for anyone looking at the past, not just a historian, must be the
#
danger of hindsight, that you already know what has happened.
#
And that can sometimes taint the way you look at stuff in the past.
#
How difficult is it to actually make that imaginative leap where you actually put yourself
#
in somebody's eyes, right?
#
What does the world look like to me?
#
Like, today we know how history unfolded.
#
If you're sitting in 1860 in, say, Travancore, you haven't heard the word colonialism.
#
The idea of India, you know, what is it?
#
You know, maybe it's not there for you.
#
Maybe it's incredibly nebulous.
#
So is that a shift that you keep making, that you have to remind yourself to make?
#
Like, I remember, you know, one of the main characters in your book is T Madhava Rao.
#
And you point out about how when he was dying, despite his immense eminence and the admiration
#
he was held in and the great work he did in administrative terms in the princely states
#
where he was the main administrator and the regard that the empire held him in, at the
#
end of his life, he was kind of irrelevant because of modern day radical freedom fighters
#
who were coming up were like, oh, this guy is a stooge and this guy is like supporting
#
the empire and all of that.
#
And even they, you know, even a person sitting in 1890 is not making that imaginative leap
#
of what the world looked like in 1880.
#
So from this distance, how hard is it?
#
And is that something that you've learned to habitually do, to first construct that
#
contemporary world so you can see it from their eyes, or do you have to keep reminding
#
Or do you feel that you've ever fallen into that trap sometimes?
#
No, this is the thing, right?
#
So as somebody who gets more and more used to sort of dealing with historical material,
#
you realise that none of these narratives can be taken for granted.
#
All these narratives were constructed either by somebody, not one individual, but by a
#
generation for a certain purpose and therefore that's the logic for the narrative's existence.
#
But you know, with the princely states, for example, we would often assume that these
#
were always inevitably going to fail, for example, inevitably they would have to go,
#
If you look at the evidence as late as the 1930s, there was a seat at the table during
#
the negotiations of the 1935 Government of India Act, which is what became what the British
#
called India's constitution in that year.
#
They had a seat at the table.
#
There was actually a federal system that was being planned where the princes would be a
#
part of the political structure.
#
Go back to the 1860s, nobody would have dreamed that a hundred years later the princes would
#
We now think that, oh, they were feudalistic, they were backward, therefore we don't need
#
The frank truth is that in the 1860s and 70s, people did respect them.
#
The nationalists respected them.
#
For the nationalists, for example, the British interfering in a princely state and say toppling
#
a Maharaja, replacing him by somebody else.
#
These were not something the British were supposed to do.
#
It was a nationalist cause to preserve the autonomy of the states because these were
#
the final enclaves where the British did not directly affect policy, you know, did not
#
directly affect the lives of Indians, but Indians were able to rule.
#
Dada Bhai Nawroji, if you read Dinyar Patel's book, he was on your show, you know, there's
#
this quote I've used from his book in this book, which is where Dada Bhai Nawroji comes
#
We've never heard of this.
#
We always talk about Dada Bhai Nawroji winning an election to parliament in Britain, but
#
not that he was a Diwan in a princely state.
#
And he says that we've not come to serve the man, we've come to serve the cause.
#
And the cause is precisely this, preserving the autonomy of the princely state, preserving
#
it from British inroads, because that matters.
#
It mattered to nationalists.
#
Ranade, when he, if you look at his collected writings, he's got this bit where he talks
#
about the future Indian parliament and he actually sees it as a house of commons represented
#
by people in British India and a house of lords, where the princes and their people
#
are represented, which suggests that he also saw the princes very much as a legitimate
#
element in Indian politics, not illegitimate.
#
Gandhiji, as late as the mid 1930s, he was always hesitant to interfere in princely states.
#
As late as the early mid 1930s, he was saying that, you know, interfering in a princely
#
state is like interfering in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.
#
You know, that's not something the Congress party can do because we are only focused on
#
British India where the British are directly.
#
But the funny thing is Dada Bhai Naoroji won the election in parliament and that election
#
was funded by a lot of Maharajas.
#
You know, they were the ones helping him because they had an active interest in having somebody,
#
an Indian, a brown or as the British, I think a British politician called him a black man,
#
you know, wanting him in parliament because he, that was their way of sort of giving a
#
poke at the imperial power.
#
In the late 19th century and from good chunk of the early 20th century, the nationalists
#
and the princes were actually more or less on the same page.
#
R.C. Dutt, he was a Congress president, also ended up becoming Diwan of Baroda.
#
Madhav Rao was in the early phase, he was part of the Congress process.
#
He was at the reception committee in Madras, etc.
#
You know, a number of overlaps existed in this form.
#
Panikkar has written about how it was in the princely states that a whole generation of
#
talented Indians, they would all join as clerks into the British service, even if they lived
#
And then after a few promotions, they would realize there was a glass ceiling because
#
of the colour of their skin, they could never go beyond being a sort of glorified secretary.
#
Your titles may change, but you are always a white man's secretary.
#
Those men who managed to rise above this usually moved to princely states, where they would
#
become Diwans, where they would become ministers and thus sort of create not just a career
#
for themselves, but also a reputation and a reputation as Indians governing Indians
#
and doing it well, doing it sometimes at standards that exceeded those in British India.
#
It gave a lot of Indians pride.
#
These were heroes of that generation, especially in the 19th century.
#
You mentioned T. Madhav Rao.
#
He studied in Madras in a British school.
#
He joined the clerical service of what was then the East India Company, still ruling
#
But then in around 1850, he transfers to Travancore state as tutor.
#
Now, the local Maharaj in Travancore wants an English tutor because he knows that in
#
this new world, in this new colonized sort of space that is India, the English language
#
is extremely important.
#
He already speaks English himself, but he wants his nephews also well-trained and well-tutored.
#
He gets Madhav Rao to come and teach them and become their tutor.
#
And that Madhav Rao impresses the Maharaja that he's very soon after given a very high
#
post in government, just two steps below that of the chief minister.
#
A few years later, when it comes to finding a new chief minister, there's a local candidate
#
who's senior and then there's Madhav Rao.
#
Madhav Rao wins because he speaks English.
#
He's got lots of friends in Madras.
#
So he becomes a bridge.
#
On the one hand, the colonial state is happy with him because he's what Macaulay called
#
on the face of it, a man brown in colour, but English in taste and speaks English well,
#
writes very well, has read everything that the English value as good literature.
#
But the Maharaja values him because he can become a good spokesperson for the state.
#
And that's what he becomes.
#
He becomes the one of the state and starts actively developing the state.
#
He knows that how do I prevent British intervention in the state?
#
They can intervene if revenues are bad.
#
They can intervene if there are social injustices.
#
They can intervene if there aren't enough roads, public works, schools.
#
Let me get all of these things done.
#
So you have a huge budget for public works.
#
You start diverting funds into schools.
#
You've got hundreds of schools being set up in the vernacular languages.
#
The Maharaja himself transforms the way he dresses.
#
From your colourful Persian attrobes, you start wearing these sober, almost dull and
#
boring English type clothes because you want to show that you're also an active ruler.
#
You're not like a puppet or you're not an exhibit who is meant to look exotic.
#
There was an active effort to show that no, we can actually govern and we can do so far
#
better than the British.
#
And you see Madhav Rao moving from Travancore, then he ends up in Indore for a while, then
#
My friend Rahul Sagar is doing a biography.
#
He told me, I found out in one of his essays, it's not in my book, where he says that Madhav
#
Rao even lobbied for the divanship of Mysore because these were the important big states.
#
And for him, it was his life's mission to go and improve these states and make successes
#
And for the Rajas, they needed suitably trained Indians, so they didn't need to get the colonial
#
There was this wonderful sort of compact between these two people.
#
The Indian National Congress, very hesitant for the longest time to discuss the princely
#
states, partly because the Maharajas were funding them.
#
In 1887, Viceroy tells the Maharaja, stop funding them.
#
He tells Mysore, Mysore stops.
#
But as late as 1901, Sayaji Rao Gaikwad of Baroda still secretly giving money.
#
One scholar has written about how even into the late 1920s and 30s, covertly, a lot of
#
Maharajas were paying the Congress because they wanted the British to be held to account.
#
They had an incentive in keeping the British on their toes because they were not passive.
#
They were not just, they didn't just pretend to be dead and allow the British to do everything
#
They actually did try to fight.
#
It was not military means, obviously, as rulers of states, it was not satyagraha on the streets
#
But it was these subtle and rather interesting ways by which they stood up to the British.
#
Sometimes by making statements, you know, Mysore, when the royal family was returned
#
the state after 50 years of British control, it became almost like this cult in Mysore
#
to have industrialization and to sort of develop the state as an industrial headquarters for
#
By the 1940s, the Maharaja didn't sanction it because he thought it would be a white
#
But Mysore was actively considering setting up a car manufacturing unit because the sort
#
of technocracy that controlled the state really wanted an Indian princely state in the subcontinent
#
to become this huge hub of automobile manufacturing because everybody believed, no, no, backward
#
country, poor, brown people, what are they going to do?
#
They don't have the scientific and technical prowess.
#
And Mysore invested a lot of its money, lost a lot of its money, pulling off these industrial
#
experiments simply to make a political statement.
#
Many of these ventures didn't turn profits.
#
The Rajas knew they would never turn profits, you know, for decades they did not bring them
#
a single penny in terms of, you know, returns.
#
But they would still pour money into it more and more and more simply because it was important
#
to the identity of the state as a very industrial and forward-looking place, as a way of sort
#
of taking the sting out of the British argument that natives were no good when it came to
#
science and technology.
#
Each of these states have these very interesting ways of countering the British, sometimes
#
through ceremonies, sometimes through ritual, you know, the way you treat your resident.
#
And the British sometimes, you know, in their texts and writings, they make it seem as though
#
these Rajas were too obsessed with ritual, etc., which is not true because the British
#
So the British would come and fight with the Raja saying, why have you put my agents, my
#
representatives chair on the left side, the right has greater honour, it has to be on
#
Then the Raja will fight back saying, no, no, no, the left is always where the chair
#
has been, so you can't move to the right.
#
It's actually a political negotiation.
#
These are not eccentric, so fighting over the place of a chair.
#
The place of the chair has political meaning.
#
So if the Raja allows this man to come and sit on the right side, he's essentially acknowledging
#
that person's capacity to not only bully him, but also show publicly that this person
#
has greater power over the Raja.
#
So the Raja will insist as far as possible to keep him on the left.
#
In Hyderabad, the Nizams would not allow the residents to wear shoes in Darbaras and the
#
English found this really insulting because, you know, for them, it was a mark of their
#
privilege and status to walk into a Darbar with their feet covered and the Nizams wouldn't
#
Two generations this dispute went on.
#
Finally they succeeded when there was a little boy on the throne and there was a regent who
#
The regent had some other negotiations with them, a return of territory, other issues.
#
So he said, okay, fine.
#
We'll let you win here so I can gain something bigger later.
#
And that's when the British finally get the right to wear shoes in the Nizams court.
#
On the face of it, if you write a sort of sexified version of the princely states, ha-ha,
#
these frivolous people fighting over shoes.
#
But no, it was really politics through ritual.
#
These small details all had political meaning, you know.
#
Before Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled in 1858, I mean, if a Viceroy or a Governor General
#
passed Delhi, there was one, I think, forget his name, I think it was Lord Hastings, who
#
would not go to Delhi because he knew that if he went there, he would have to go and
#
meet the Emperor and he would have to take the supplicant position for formal purposes.
#
And he said, no, the East India Company is now supreme, I will not do it.
#
So he didn't go, but all the same, he didn't want to upset the Mughal Emperor, so he sent
#
him gifts, some carriage or something.
#
So he was trying to sort of come to a compromise, but the Mughal Emperor would insist that if
#
the Governor General came, he would have to take a supplicant position.
#
The Mughal had no power.
#
But that ritual allowed him that final sort of capacity to make a political statement.
#
And so the British were also doing politics through ritual.
#
They were also very much part of this game.
#
And so were the Nationalists, you know, when there was this boy, Maharaj of Kolhapur, he's
#
a footnote in the book, I couldn't keep him in the main text.
#
He ended up being killed by his British warden.
#
He was beaten to death.
#
Young boy in his teens.
#
He even tried to run away at one point because of how much they were trying to control him.
#
It was a huge issue for the nationalist press, the Kesari, Tilak, you know, all the Maratha
#
They were all up in arms protesting against his treatment and actively trying to support
#
Kolhapur state because they said that this is not just about a local Maharaja and him
#
becoming trained by British people or whatever.
#
It's an issue that matters to all Indians.
#
When you treat an Indian of this kind of importance, Kolhapur is basically Shivaji's descendant.
#
When you treat him poorly, it is a cause for Indians as a whole.
#
It is not a cause just about one princely state.
#
And the British were therefore very aware of this and they knew that princely states
#
could also be used as platforms against them.
#
So just as in later times Maharajas would give funding and support to the Congress behind
#
the scenes, at one point in Baroda, I think in the mid 19th century, you have a situation
#
where dacoits and raiders would go out from Baroda, rob and sort of attack British territories
#
And as the police chased them, they would come back into Baroda.
#
Problem being the British police could not follow them into Baroda.
#
And the Maharaja would look the other way, pretend he had no idea.
#
Every now and then he would catch one or two of the dacoits and hand them over to the British.
#
But he actively let that happen because he enjoyed the fact that his people were going
#
out and giving the British a little bit of a bloody nose every now and then.
#
In Mysore, as late, you find in 1906 or 1907, a British official complaining that these
#
papers in Mysore, the royal family, if you criticise the royal family, they will take
#
you to the cleaners, the Mysore government.
#
But if you criticise the British government, the Mysore government will pretend nothing
#
They were allowing their local press to criticise the British actively because there the Mysore
#
Maharaja had no interest in protecting the British or their sentiments.
#
Same complaint repeats in the 1920s, which means that for a 15 year period, Mysore Maharaja
#
is looking the other way, letting his press call the British whatever the names they want.
#
And there's this wonderful quote where the resident says that, you know, the British
#
resident says that if these papers were in British India, they would have been long ago
#
sort of prosecuted into oblivion.
#
But because they're in a princely state, the British can only request and cajole and add
#
But unless the Maharaja issues the orders, nothing can be done.
#
So these Maharajas were not passive.
#
The British called them allies, which is why the title of the book is False Allies.
#
They were not necessarily allies in a meek submissive sense.
#
They were stuck in this strange political equation.
#
But the moment the British eye turned in some other direction, they would try to shift.
#
So these pillars were very shaky.
#
One moment the weight is on them, it will pretend that it's a very stable pillar.
#
The moment the British attention moves to some other topic or some other state, these
#
Rajas will try to see how much room they have to manoeuvre and try to amend the equation
#
So they were not passive by any stretch.
#
They were not necessarily committed to the empire.
#
The very fact of them funding revolutionaries and anti-British politicians shows that they
#
were not, you know, they were capable of playing a political game.
#
They didn't just lie down and take it.
#
They had their own ways of fighting back as well.
#
And some did it more overtly than others.
#
Like one of the fascinating characters in your book is Sayaji Rao III of Baroda, where
#
you know, he's anti-caste, he starts supporting the underprivileged with schools and all that.
#
He funds Ambedkar's education, right?
#
And you know, whenever he goes abroad, he meets revolutionaries like Taraknath Das,
#
Madam Kamaha, Shyamji Krishna Verma, no relative of either mine or Raja Ravi Verma, who founded
#
the famous India house in London from, you know, with Savarkar was a part of and pretty
#
radical bunch and Sri Aurobindo was his aid for a while.
#
The other thing that sort of strikes me is that fighting the British can happen both
#
in overt ways and more subversive ways, which are kind of under the surface.
#
Like you pointed out when Dadaji Narubhai was for a very brief while, the Diwan in Baroda,
#
I mean, you know, the Maharaja didn't like him, the resident didn't like him and allegedly
#
the Maharaja tried to poison the resident and later got convicted for that.
#
And it was full on drama, which I think I discussed in my episode with Dinyar.
#
But he's very clear that this is for the cause, not for the man, as you've quoted him saying.
#
And he's very clear that if we show that Indians can govern themselves, then the biggest raison
#
d'etre for the British to be here kind of goes away.
#
And there are other people like Madhava Rao who are not saying that, their rhetoric isn't
#
But clearly that is what they are doing.
#
And therefore it's sort of a dilemma for the British also in a sense, right?
#
Like one, the British need the good administration for the revenues because they're bleeding
#
But on the other hand, they also want a reason to sort of keep control and all of that.
#
How does this sort of rhetoric evolve over the years?
#
Because even right down to the 1930s and 1940s, if you look at sort of Churchill's utterances
#
on how Indians are effectively brutes who can't govern themselves and this will be a country
#
driven by caste and torn apart and the British are required.
#
How is that narrative kind of shifting and is there a realisation that, hey, this is
#
just BS, like within the company, as it were, within the British Empire?
#
I mean, there are multitudes there also, right?
#
Not everybody is your officer in Lagaan.
#
So what sense did you get of that?
#
You see, there are lots of British officers who actually celebrate these native statesmen
#
They're called native statesmen because in quotes, because that's what they were called
#
Statesmen could only be white.
#
So if you were a brown statesman, you were called a native statesman.
#
It's a loaded term, but I use it in the book because it belongs to that period.
#
So there were some of them, for example, there's this character I discussed called Shesha Yashastri.
#
On the one hand, trained in an English school, very good at sort of rising up the British
#
bureaucracy, hits of sealing himself, is treated poorly, not given the same salary, has to
#
And till then, he's relatively obedient.
#
He will stand up for himself, but he's not really talking about the wider Indian sort
#
But then he becomes Diwan of Travancore and suddenly his tone towards the British changes.
#
So when they send him to Travancore to become Diwan, they think they've got a loyal man
#
who knows them and therefore will be a wonderful bridge with the Raja there.
#
The Raja, of course, has his interests, which is that I don't want you to be loyal to them.
#
I want you to obey everything I will say.
#
Shesha Yashastri has his own agenda, which is he wants the Raja to become a constitutional
#
ruler and sort of develop the politics and the structure of the state.
#
But all the same, he's also a Brahmin Hindu.
#
So he's just as interested in the state's temple activities.
#
So the British say, you know, these temples are costing too much.
#
There is a drain on the Exchequer.
#
He says, no, this is a princely state.
#
There is a state temple.
#
There are so many temples to take care of.
#
As it's Diwan, I am going to do this because it is also part of my duty.
#
And he sort of deploys statistics to show that actually the revenue from those temple
#
lands, which the government takes, is far higher than what they spend on maintaining
#
So already there's a slight turn there.
#
He starts writing on various British policies.
#
He picks a fight with the British.
#
They have this rule, which is not written in any of the treaties with the Rajas.
#
But the British will simply not allow a royal judge to try a white man.
#
Seshaya tries to pick a fight on this count, saying that unless Travancore as a state gives
#
away that right to the British by treaty, you cannot insist that Travancore judges cannot
#
They have to come to a compromise where eventually, you know, there's brown as well as white judges
#
But in the fight itself, you show that this man, even though he was trained in the British
#
bureaucracy, even though a lot of British bureaucrats loved him and they thought he
#
would be a very sort of, let's say, friendly figure, even when he moved to the princely
#
state, no, once he moved to a home territory where it was brown people in control, brown
#
people in power, brown people in their element, in their own country, completely in control
#
of what was happening, his tone immediately shifted.
#
And that essentially suggests that it was always there within.
#
It just got an opportunity to manifest itself the moment it was released from British control
#
into what was called native territory.
#
You mentioned Sayajirao Gaikwad of Baroda.
#
Even more fascinating story.
#
You know, and this is where you realize that even in princely politics, it's not just one
#
You have at the beginning of the story, you have a Maharaja, Khanderao Gaikwad.
#
He doesn't have children.
#
He's got two wives, no children, picks up a 13 year old girl when he's in his late thirties
#
approaching 40, marries her, lives with her for four years, no children.
#
The moment he dies, his brother, who's been locked up already for being a slightly textbook
#
dubious character, Malhar Rao, he becomes the Maharaja.
#
The widow has a strange strategy and this is something the British note in 1884, there's
#
a gentleman who writes about this says that Indian Maharani's are very shrewd because
#
anytime there's a disputed succession or there's a ruler who dies without an heir, they will
#
instantly declare themselves pregnant, by which for nine months at least you have to
#
And that opens up a window for different factions in court to realign themselves, change the
#
political landscape, come to terms and try and hammer out an agreement without the British
#
gaining too much control over the situation.
#
In Baroda, the same happens, the late Maharaja's wife, who's all of seventeen, suddenly claims
#
The brother who's been released hates it because he's like, you know, how can you suddenly
#
I thought this was my party and you're now trying to snatch it from me.
#
She unfortunately gives birth to a girl and it's fascinating because she moves to the
#
British residency to give birth because the brother-in-law is trying to poison her.
#
So she's also countering that by living under the British agents.
#
She forms an alliance with the British.
#
So there are different interests at play.
#
She and the British both dislike the brother.
#
So in that context, she allies with the British, gets rid of the brother.
#
He rules for five years.
#
This is when Dadabai and Nauroji comes in, he proves to be a bad character.
#
The whole story of him attempting to poison the resident is slightly questionable because
#
he was never actually convicted of that.
#
The jury was split as far as that was concerned.
#
But the British have decided we're not going to let him rule anymore.
#
So after five years, they get rid of him.
#
Now the Maharani comes back.
#
She, by the way, during these five years, the complaints that the British use as an
#
excuse against Malhar Rao to depose him, many of those complaints were sponsored by her.
#
She would sit in Pune where she had lots of her own money given to her by her late husband.
#
She would use that money to fund complaints against her brother-in-law in Baroda.
#
She would use that money to bribe the British resident's own officials.
#
So even when you say there was a British resident in a state, he was also susceptible to lots
#
That person could also be manipulated in a way where the British resident didn't even
#
realize he was being manipulated.
#
In her case, this Maharani Jamnabai was just paying his servants and assistants to keep
#
fanning his animosity with the Maharaja.
#
On the other hand, she's getting other people to complain to the resident about the Maharaja.
#
Altogether she's putting so much pressure on the Maharaja that he ends up blundering
#
and is eventually kicked off.
#
Now she and the British ally, they come together and they decide we need to choose a new king
#
Both have, again, a common interest.
#
The British want what they say in one quote, a malleable boy whom they can shape and sort
#
of make sure he's loyal as he grows up.
#
She too wants a young boy because then she can retain her control over the boy and essentially
#
be the person, the power behind the throne.
#
So there's an older man in his twenties, they exile him, saying that no, no, your claims
#
We're going to bring in a distant relative, a boy of twelve, which is the future Saiyaji
#
And my god, this poor chap, Madhav Rao also enters the scene.
#
On the one hand, he's got the British resident on him, he's got a white tutor on him, he's
#
got this wonderful administrator Madhav Rao on him, and he's got the Maharani.
#
All of them have their own incentives to tutor him and tailor him in a way that fits their
#
Madhav Rao wants a constitutional ruler, the British want a loyal ruler, Maharani wants
#
a puppet, a rubber stamp.
#
Each of them is putting pressure on him.
#
When he eventually comes to power in the year 1881, he very quickly shows that none of this
#
He is essentially his own man.
#
The British, for example, try to impose conditions on him, saying that, oh, you know, because
#
the previous Maharaja was such a bad egg, you know, you're going to have some limitations
#
Sayajirao says, fine, you know, you're my overlord, so I will accept the limitations,
#
They say, no, no, no, you can get rid of them whenever you want.
#
He says, no, no, no, I want a clear time limit, two years at most, not beyond that.
#
A wise decision, because they do this in another princely state, in Bikaner, and the poor chap
#
was saddled for nearly a decade with these restrictions on his power.
#
So Sayajirao managed to show that he would not take things lying down.
#
Two years into, he picks a fight with the Maharani.
#
The Maharani starts demanding large sums of money.
#
He's not obeying her orders, he's not treating her as if she's the queen of the state or
#
the ruler of the state.
#
She actually writes to the British, and this is a quote from her letter, where she says,
#
he has not now been listening to you and your orders, we must put an end to his self-sufficiency.
#
So she's trying to come back an ally with the British to get rid of this one, or at
#
least, you know, tame him.
#
This time, for some reason, the British don't support her.
#
One of the reasons may be that this was a time when Lord Rippon, a very popular pro-Indian
#
viceroy was in power, which also tells you about how much individual British officials
#
and officers could make a difference.
#
And she's told, no, no, mind your business, he's going to rule.
#
And he then, you know, becomes this slowly more and more confident.
#
He's meeting the politicians of Pune, which is Ranade, Gokhale, Tilak, these are the people
#
he's hanging out with, Jyoti Bafule.
#
So he's picking up things from them.
#
He's starting to go abroad.
#
He's picking up ideas and, you know, forming a vision for his state abroad.
#
And one thing he realizes very quickly is that the British, when they say an Indian
#
state should modernize, they essentially want a bad copy of the British model.
#
They don't want an innovative new copy.
#
They don't want a system or a version that is rooted in Indian ideas.
#
They don't want a system that is better than the British.
#
They want a bad copy that will allow them to say, oh, we're letting the state modernize,
#
but look, it's not good enough, so we still have to control the state.
#
You know, they want to have their cake and eat it also.
#
And he realizes this very quickly.
#
On the one hand, he's got to deal with this imperial sort of pressure.
#
But as I said earlier, Baroda also has a situation where you have a Maratha royal family over
#
So there's also that politics.
#
So you have Gujarati, for example, his Gujarati minister, he appoints a Gujarati minister
#
for the first time in the state's history.
#
The minister ties up with the British resident and tries to cut the Maharaja out.
#
So then he has to get rid of the Gujarati minister and slowly let Gujaratis in at lower
#
levels so his own position can't be challenged.
#
And then by the end of the 19th century, you start seeing him flirting much more seriously
#
with the Congress party, with Congress politicians, funding Nauruji's election, funding other
#
activities of the Congress, giving speeches that very quickly the British start getting
#
very uncomfortable about.
#
And they think that this is bordering sedition, you know, what the kind of things that he
#
Every speech he will talk about national ideas, he'll use the word national, he'll say we
#
must have a national culture, a national art, a national government in future.
#
He's saying things that Maharajas are usually allowed to feel, but never allowed to say.
#
But he's boldly going out and saying these things.
#
Trying to stop him doesn't work because he's a major Maharaja.
#
He's delivering good things to his government.
#
His finances are wonderful.
#
There's no debt in the state.
#
The government's run efficiently, schools are being built, roads are being built.
#
So you really can't find a corner into which you can force him and make him obey you.
#
Of course, the straw that finally breaks the camel's back is a good 30 years into his reign,
#
This is when in the pan-Indian context bombs are being thrown, revolutionary activities
#
are picking up in India.
#
And there's this time where he's asked to give a speech and he says that I don't agree
#
with revolutionary methods, but he also adds that the core issue must be addressed, which
#
British rule, foreign rule.
#
So he's not completely giving the British what they want.
#
They try to get him to get his speeches pre-approved and he says absolutely not.
#
The future King of England as heir apparent visits India and he's passing through Baroda
#
and Maharaja says no, no, I'm too busy, I have to go to Yoruf myself, so I'm not staying
#
around to receive this prince.
#
He can come, my government will take care of him, which the British don't like.
#
Finally there's this viceroy around 1909 or 10 who's coming to Baroda.
#
On the way a bomb is flung at the viceroy, the viceroy survives.
#
He comes to Baroda and he hears of graffiti on the wall saying that you may bring all
#
your troops and armies here, we will not cease to resist.
#
This is in a princely state in the Maharaja's capital.
#
This is written while the viceroy is present.
#
And it's very difficult for the British to believe that these things could happen without
#
the Maharaja, if not actively supporting it, definitely looking the other way.
#
They have this time where they find that of about 167 seditious revolutionary propaganda
#
books that are published in India and which are banned by the British government, 17 have
#
And the Maharaja claims, oh I have no idea, which the British simply don't believe.
#
At one time Bombay police raid Baroda, get to two presses and identify these books.
#
They find a book called Vegetable Medicines, which is actually about bomb making.
#
And they hold the Maharaja's government to account, but the Maharaja's officials turn
#
around and say, okay hold on, before we go into this whole revolutionary thing, on whose
#
authority have you entered Baroda state?
#
Who gave you the permission to raid our state?
#
So your very action is not acceptable, so first you go back to Bombay.
#
You had no authority entering and the British are very upset, saying how can you talk jurisdiction
#
when we found revolutionary material here?
#
They say Maharaja, you must sack these people, appoint a white man as head of your police,
#
appoint white officials into your government.
#
Maharaja doesn't sack them, he demotes them.
#
One of them gets angry and he is not happy being demoted.
#
Maharaja gives him 10,000 rupees as a gift.
#
All of these are clear signals to the British, basically telling them to f off, saying that
#
this is my state, you may be everything else outside, but in my state, I am sovereign and
#
I will not take things lying down.
#
Of course, then there is that famous episode of the 1911 Delhi Darbar, where Sayaj Rao
#
goes to meet the British king, where by accident it is construed that he insulted the king
#
by turning his back and not properly bowing to the king.
#
Some say the greater sin that he committed was that he came there in regular sort of
#
business attire, which is a usual white hachkan with just a string of pearls, none of his
#
British titles and robes and medals and all of that, and they were very upset because
#
when Maharajas came out in Darbar, they were supposed to look like bejeweled ostriches
#
They were not supposed to look like ordinary people who could do business.
#
They were supposed to look exotic and he refused to play that game.
#
So then they say, oh, he's not loyal.
#
You know, he must be, he must have either he must abdicate or he must be deposed.
#
That pressure finally gets to him and he realizes, okay, hold on, I've pushed the British to
#
the brink so far, but getting deposed is not worth it because if you get deposed, who's
#
going to be put on the power on the throne, they're going to be beholden to the British
#
So they're going to be easy for the British to manipulate.
#
So he sort of pulls back a little bit.
#
After that, all his statements, which are anti-British are channeled through somebody
#
else, usually his divan, some official, somebody else.
#
He will not directly pick a fight, but he will find other ways to get that message put
#
And then he dies in 1939.
#
And you know, it's a long reign, a very exciting reign.
#
He was such an interesting man that at one point his own divan was able to propose a
#
constitutional form of monarchy to him, saying with full representative government, give
#
Baroda a constitution and you will then become just a titular monarch.
#
Sayajirao did not buy it.
#
He said, no, that's too ambitious.
#
The very fact that that proposal could even be made to him is suggestive that he was a
#
man willing to consider a different kind of future, even within the princely states.
#
And there's this diary of the Aga Khan where the Aga Khan recounts a conversation with
#
Sayajirao who says that if there's ever an Indian nation, all these princely states will
#
And if you had to become a nation, they will have to go.
#
So even though he's a prince, even though he's part of that universe, he's aware that
#
there may be sacrifices coming up for a better future, for a different kind of future.
#
And he's willing to acknowledge that.
#
So overall, in this book, he's one of my favourite characters because such a textured, layered
#
person, he was not much of an original thinker himself, but he had this knack for surrounding
#
himself with talent, whether it came from the Congress, whether it came from British
#
The British, for example, were very upset at one time that he was being guided by an
#
Englishman called Elliot, who was his tutor.
#
Now, the British liked white men governing and helping brown people, but they had to
#
They had to be part of that official system.
#
You couldn't get a white friend to come and do it.
#
That was just as taboo as having brown people run their own affairs.
#
So this man was fascinating and interesting in a remarkable degree, ruled over Baroda
#
And because he was so successful at government, it took the British a long time to find an
#
excuse by which they could finally say that, look, we will depose you.
#
Otherwise, for decades, he was able to get away with saying the most pointed things and
#
criticising them in the sharpest ways and boldly doing things such as supporting revolutionaries,
#
which people would not dare to do if they were really afraid in those days.
#
He could do it because he knew he was secure.
#
But they finally found that one chink in his armour and managed to sort of get him to sober
#
But yeah, overall, I think he was perhaps the, of all these princes of that generation,
#
he was the boldest and the sharpest.
#
And for all those who think of the Indian princes as capricious or eccentric or whatever,
#
you know that King George, the fifth incident of the 1911 Darbar is worth pointing out what
#
So, overall, was that each prince, one at a time, had to go up to the king, bow in a
#
particular way, then take seven steps backwards and then move off.
#
And he apparently, without taking all seven steps backwards, turned his back and that
#
So, that is not an Indian prince getting offended by the stupid ritual, it's a British king.
#
But what's also interesting is, there's actually video footage of this, of that 1911 Darbar,
#
and Sayajira wasn't the only one to do it.
#
Baroda, sorry, Mysore and a number of other Maharajas did the same thing, but only Baroda
#
was targeted because the British had already decided that he was a bad egg, and they wanted
#
to put him in his place.
#
The video footage shows clearly that nothing Sayajira did was not done by others.
#
The other senior princes also acted in similar ways, but they were not targeted because they
#
didn't have that sort of, you know, the mark on their forehead already.
#
The British had already decided that this one is somebody we need to put in place.
#
Yeah, it's like how the Americans got Al Capone for tax evasion, they couldn't get him for
#
No, I mean, just reading that chapter of your book, it just feels like it would be such
#
a great web series and not just for Sayaji, like even before him, like the craziness of
#
Malhar Rao Gaikwad, like I don't want to give too many spoilers, but this is really fascinating
#
because Malhar Rao Gaikwad's brother Khande Rao is on the throne, Malhar Rao is locked
#
up for trying to poison his brother.
#
Then his brother dies, so he automatically becomes a king.
#
Now the minister who got him locked up, he sends him to jail, and that fellow dies.
#
And meanwhile, the things Malhar Rao does is things like just abduct women and take
#
Like you use the phrases taken like pigeons and filthy violations being committed on them.
#
So it's all incredibly colorful.
#
But eventually he also falls to this kind of Al Capone tax evasion thing where he has
#
actually poisoned people and killed people, but he's framed for something he probably
#
Yeah, which is quite ironic that that's how it finally they snatched the throne from him.
#
And in the middle of all this, Dadavav Naavruji landed up for a couple of years and he's like,
#
So we'll take a quick commercial break now.
#
And although you've spoken at length about this particular chapter of your book, when
#
we come back from the break, we'll actually start talking about the rest of the book.
#
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There's colors with an OU and make art a part of your life.
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Unseen for 15% off at IndianColors.com.
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Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Manu Pillai about his wonderful book, False Allies.
#
And let's start talking about the book now.
#
And you start with this very interesting portrait of Prince Aswathi Tirunel by Raja Ravi Verma.
#
And he's sitting on this tricycle with these really giant wheels.
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But he's wearing European clothes and he's got this stern expression on his face and
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none of the accoutrements that you'll expect from royalty.
#
And there is sort of this sense that not just him, I think you talk about it as something
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representative of what a lot of royals were doing at the time, wanting to be seen as more
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European and less of the sort of the Oriental Indian sort of debauched Maharajas dressed
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like peacocks and all of that.
#
So tell me a little bit about how that process was taking place, a point at which you kind
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of aspire to being like the British.
#
Like I remember I did an episode recently with Peggy Mohan on the evolution of languages.
#
And there at one point she talks about how some of Ghalib's poetry, for example, is not
#
at all intelligible to many people because it's so much more Persianised than poets of
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an earlier age or than he was in his regular everyday writing and there is a reason for
#
that and because he doesn't want it to come so much to the attention of the emperor and
#
So language indicates which way the politics of the day is going.
#
And there is something happening in the 19th century which I think persists with us to
#
this day, that this desire to learn English and to be like the English and all of that,
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which of course has had a terrible, deleterious effect on the way that we use the English
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language with all its pomposities and so on, which even the British have thrown away.
#
But tell me a little bit about what's going on inside royal heads at this time that on
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one hand they must be resenting their rulers, but on the other hand they're trying to be
#
So what's happening there?
#
You know there's this quote from I think a time Lord Macaulay, I think who visited one
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of the Maharajas of Mysore in the early part of the 19th century, somewhere in the 1830s.
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And he says, oh, you know, his house is like that of a vulgar, cockney cheese monger.
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You know, it's got strange European paintings, random furniture from Europe, it's just filled
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with all kinds of things.
#
And then in the 1850s with the Travancore Maharaja called Uttaram Tirunalo, so you have
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a similar comment where a British official comes and sees his house is full of mirrors,
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these objects he's collected from Europe, completely random, no order, nothing.
#
In another Maharaja's place they see these, I think these gas lamps, they used to put
#
a street lamps or hang on carriages sitting inside his main audience hall as though it
#
was some grand thing, whereas in England it was used on carriages.
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Now, it would appear that these were comical things and these Rajas were just these idiots
#
who saw these beautiful trinkets from abroad and their eyes just went wide and they said,
#
But no, the thing is, for the Rajas also, as far as their subjects were concerned, having
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these strange and interesting possessions was a way of reflecting their international
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reach, saying, look, I've got all these wonderful things, these mirrors and clocks and, you
#
know, clocks are such a remarkable thing at that time.
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So I've got 20 clocks because, you know, I've got so much international reach.
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Whereas the story of a Raja who thinks he's, I think it's called bonbons or something,
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he thought he was importing a bunch of things he could eat, it turned out to be these, these
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either wigs that people used to wear in those days, those powdered wigs, or like this frame
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that women wore under their gowns and he was just taken aback that this is what he had
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But the Rajas were essentially trying to communicate to their audience that, look, I have international
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The British may look down on it, but the Rajas had their own purpose.
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That painting you referred to, it sits in a private house in Trivandrum.
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It's this very strange Ravi Arma painting.
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That tricycle is, it's one of those giant, it's a royal salvo, Queen Victoria had one
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It was all the rage in the 1870s and 80s, where, you know, bicycles were no longer fashionable.
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This is what you had to be on for a few years.
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And this guy by posing on it at the age of 16, he's frankly, he's passed his matriculation
#
Now, princes usually didn't go to college.
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He would end up getting a BA degree as well, and he was actually called the BA prince because
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he was the first prince in India to get a college degree.
#
Now, in not wearing those Indian clothes, in not wearing those embroidered Persian robes
#
that the Travancore Maharajas used to wear earlier, he's not just trying to, he's not
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He's not trying to anglicise himself in the sense that he's ashamed of what is at home.
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The Travancore Maharajas still fed 15,000 Brahmins on state events.
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They still had those great ceremonies where they would take a dip in water and come out
#
of this Padma Garbha with all kinds of, you know, new status ascribed to themselves.
#
They would still go to their temple and they would still maintain a lot, spend a lot of
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money on temple rituals.
#
But they would not allow themselves to be treated by the British as just these exotic
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So dressing in a dull grey coat, wearing trousers and shoes and posing on a tricycle, which
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everybody is posing on in Europe and everybody owns in Europe, is a way of signalling that
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I am part of the same cosmopolitan global elite.
#
I am part of that same thing.
#
I'm an equal member of the same thing.
#
I may be brown, but I can also lay claim to that particular, you know, world.
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And you cannot look down at me as though I'm just a sort of prop that's here to look pretty
#
while real men who are white come and actually do the governing of my state.
#
So he's actually trying to do multiple things all at once.
#
He's trying to communicate a certain kind of self-image.
#
There's another portrait I describe in the book, but don't have a picture of, unfortunately.
#
It's a picture where the same Ashwati Tirunel and his older brother, they're standing near
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a globe and the globe, you can see America on it.
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And there's a book in one of their hands and the book, you can see the text is also about
#
Why are they posing like that with a book about America and a globe marking America?
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They're trying to signal that, look, oh, we're sitting here in India, we're supposed to be
#
like these backward princes who don't know anything about the world.
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But no, through this book, we're actually exploring the world and here my older brother
#
is showing me on the globe, you know, what I'm reading about America in my book.
#
It's interesting because if you go back a few decades, there's a painting of Raja Ram Mohan
#
Roy's son, where it's also a globe, but Raja Ram Mohan Roy's son is actually showing where
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Bengal is on that map to a Western audience, like he's pointing out Bengal to a presumably
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Here, the role is reversed.
#
It is Indians laying claim to the larger world rather than pointing out their home to Europeans.
#
So these are all forms of sort of defining yourself in a world that is racist, in a world
#
that is unequal, and in a world that is competitive because you know the colour of your skin and
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your religion, your language will all be held against you as a weakness.
#
So on the one hand, celebrating all those things, but on the other hand, superficially
#
giving yourself this garb, you're also trying to negotiate both those worlds.
#
You're trying to sort of see how much of a balance you can strike between the two.
#
And that is what this chap is trying to do and multiple Maharajas try to do.
#
As I said, Sayajirao Gaikwad dressing in simple white Ashkan with just a small necklace around
#
his neck and not all the baubles and all the jewels that Baroda and its royal family were
#
He wouldn't wear that because he also wanted to prove the point that I am an active ruler.
#
I am not somebody who sits around on a throne while other people rule for me.
#
There's this bit in Mysore, for example, I describe how in the early 1900s when a new
#
Maharaja grows up and comes to power, an official account with great pride says that the Maharaja
#
handed 900 files in his first year.
#
It's a form of saying that, you know, our Maharajas also work.
#
They're not just sitting in grand palaces and riding elephants, they actually do work.
#
And the question is not whether he actually did work or not, whether the 900 figure is
#
By making that claim, you're essentially signalling that these are active administrators, not
#
just pretty boys who are sitting there to sort of titillate Westerners and give them
#
an exotic glimpse of some kind of long lost India.
#
They were not stuck in the past.
#
These people were very much part of that late 19th century colonial universe.
#
They were very much part of that change and they wanted to be on top of that change.
#
You know, they didn't want to be swept away by a change.
#
This generation was very keen to be on top of that change.
#
The Maharajas were swept away because of things that happened in the 30s and 40s, not in this
#
And that's why, as I said, a lot of Indians also treated them with respect, a lot of nationalists
#
treated them with respect, precisely because they were also fighting a fight that nationalists
#
in British India were trying to pull off.
#
I'm kind of struck by what you said about how some Maharajas like Travancore would,
#
you know, feel the necessity to signal to their subjects, as it were, their global citizens,
#
while not caring that the British are actually laughing at them.
#
So when I started my writing course last year in April, I got a Facebook request from another
#
guy whose description said writing coach.
#
So I said, okay, one of my own tribe, let me check out what he does and I went on YouTube
#
and he does all these videos where he is basically telling people to do the exact opposite of
#
what I say, where he is saying that never use a simple word.
#
Where every word use the most complicated word you can find, and then he has demonstrations
#
So instead of say, you should say articulate, opine, utter, all of that.
#
Basically write with the thesaurus.
#
Basically write with the thesaurus and I'll teach you all these kind of words.
#
And I realized that that's not irrational and he got millions of views and all that.
#
And that's not irrational.
#
Like as Nikda Poonam writes in her book, Dreamers, and she was also on my show, that one of the
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rising industries in all these small towns of India is learning English.
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These English coaching institutes.
#
And what these people are doing is that their aim isn't clear communication or impacting
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other people with their writing.
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As the people who sign up for my course would be aiming at their aim is to signal to their
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peers that I'm so sophisticated, which goes back to that English being a marker of class
#
that the better your English is, you're signaling to others where you stand in the social hierarchy.
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And it's kind of fascinating to think that by the mid 19th century, this was already
#
in play, in play at the highest levels.
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The other big passion was this Ashwathya Tirunel and his brother both were into photography.
#
And you actually see these Travancore official publications and official accounts where they
#
say both were great photographers.
#
They were not great photographers.
#
It's just that them wielding the camera, wielding this technology from the West and owning
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Ashwathya Tirunel, his claim to fame as far as photography goes is that he took a famous
#
portrait of Swami Vivekananda.
#
But that process of an Indian prince standing behind the camera and taking a photograph
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of an Indian icon, there's something, again, it's a signaling, it's a statement that is
#
being made where Indians can pat each other on the back saying, oh, wow, you've picked
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You own a Western technology.
#
Here you're picking up a Swamiji who's sort of reforming and sort of redefining what Hinduism
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They're all part of that generation that is trying to own that change and be part of it
#
and make a political statement.
#
Of course, these people had their eccentricities.
#
This Malhar Rao by Gaikwad's brother, he saw a Scottish regiment once and he immediately
#
got the Baroda troops to start wearing kilts, except that he decided to add pink tights
#
to it because they all had brown hairy legs and he decided, let me add pink tights to
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So they had their quirks.
#
But again, to assume that these quirks were just the Maharajas who had them, only they
#
had these eccentricities is not true.
#
I don't mention this in the book, but Lord Curzon, this stiff upper lip, erect back, very
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stuffy Viceroy, he had it in him to go skinny dipping and play long tennis naked ones.
#
He had affairs with married women as well.
#
We don't hold it against him because he's a white man.
#
What they do is just their private life, that's interesting.
#
But when an Indian in a position of influence also has, in quotes, an interesting private
#
life, that becomes a stick by which to beat them and say, ha, ha, ha, look at these people,
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so frivolous, so useless, they're not good political figures, they just care about their
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That is unfair because then you have to be fair in terms of dishing out criticism for
#
eccentricities across the board.
#
Here there's a sort of selectivisation where you play on this, which is why, and because
#
these people, the Maharajas were very aware of the cliches in which they were trapped,
#
some of these people did make an active effort to try and break out of that, to try and look
#
Mysore Maharaja, very gentle figure, Krishnaraja Wadiar IV, very gentle figure, did not intervene
#
unnecessarily in politics, let his divans, his ministers govern for most part.
#
He would be in control, he would issue policy directions, but he would not soil his hands
#
with the actual running of the government.
#
He did try to be this almost constitutional figurehead at the head of the state, uniting
#
all the factions and trying to build the state and take it forward into some kind of bright
#
Again, he's also making a political statement.
#
He may wear an achkan, he may wear a turban, but he sees himself very much as a man of
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He doesn't see himself representing some kind of ancient dynasty.
#
That's why the Mysore Maharajas, they had the traditional Dasara, which is, a kingly
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Dasara is a tradition that comes all the way from Vijayanagara.
#
It's a political symbol that's come down in a traditional way, quote traditional way to
#
But at the same Dasara, they also have an industrial exhibition, because they're also
#
signalling to the world that we are good at industry.
#
So all the people of Mysore, they'll bring their crafts and their arts and whatever,
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they'll have a grand exhibition there.
#
And the industrial event happening in parallel with Dasara is meant to signal exactly that.
#
Dasara is the traditional state event, the industrial thing is the modern state event,
#
and both manage to exist together.
#
All of these people are therefore, if not successful at trying to sort of negotiate
#
this, they're aware of it, and they're grappling with that.
#
And therefore, that process of grappling itself shows that they are active political figures.
#
They're not passive people sitting in closed palaces, watching dancing girls and riding
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They had their elephant, Mysore had its elephant processions, but it also had its iron and
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It also had its sandalwood oil factory, and it also had dreams of an automobile factory,
#
which is that both can be carried together into the future.
#
Yeah, I think Aswati Thirudal would probably be better remembered as a photographer if
#
he had one photograph showing Lord Curzon playing lawn tennis naked, which is so fascinating.
#
And you point out how the European view of the royals, at least the view that they're
#
putting out there in the narrative, is so derogatory and so based on these stereotypes.
#
Like at one point, you quote the phrase, like a scorpion at the base of a beautiful lily,
#
you know, implying that's a quote, and you're implying that they don't deserve India.
#
And at another point, while talking about their view, you say, quote, for the British
#
it conveniently infantilized Indian rulers and cemented the claim that natives were simply
#
capable of serious government.
#
India's traditional leaders were no good except for frivolous sex and fancy dress, thus justifying
#
stern manly imperial supervision.
#
Similarly, for a younger crop of nationalists animated by democratic ideals, silken autocracy
#
was a relic of feudal yesterdays.
#
India's destiny recovered after a long struggle, could not brook men who played no part in
#
the battle threat matter, stop quote.
#
And your book basically busts these kind of stereotypes.
#
Give me a sense of what is the landscape around this time of princely India.
#
Like one of the sort of things that you've pointed out, which I think many listeners
#
may not realize, is that there isn't British India.
#
There is a British ruled India and there is an India ruled India, which is the princely
#
states, which controls 40% of the territory with about 25% of the population, you know,
#
coming within its bounds.
#
So now, what is that like and what are the arrangements that the British have with them?
#
Like one very fundamental kind of meta question is, how does a British have so much say that
#
they are controlling all of these princely states?
#
Like do they have a powerful army out there?
#
You know, is there a stake?
#
How has that process kind of evolved that even someone like a Sayaji Rao, who's been
#
funding all these revolutionaries, you know, is worried about being deposed by them and
#
just completely chills after that.
#
So lay out that landscape for me.
#
Each of these princely states, the way they came into contact with the British would vary.
#
You know, for example, the state of Pudukottai, its rulers were a recent royal family.
#
As I said, they came from a caste that was not a caste of kings, they were considered
#
a robber caste, you know, but they became the system in that particular region.
#
And the time when they were transitioning to kingship also happened to be the time when
#
the East India Company was coming into power.
#
And the Pudukottai royal family saw an advantage in allying with the East India Company because
#
it would aid and augment their rise to kingship.
#
And that is precisely what happened with Pudukottai.
#
In fact, Pudukottai did not pay tribute to the British, nothing, nor did they have a
#
treaty with the British.
#
There was no paper that was signed between the Raja and the East India Company, you know,
#
defining what the relationship was.
#
But because of their respective political, you know, influence and clout, the British
#
were obviously the superior and the Pudukottai Raja was the inferior.
#
You know, Gwalior, for example, the Marathas were defeated only in 1818.
#
We often think that Battle of Plassey means British Empire began.
#
Battle of Plassey is in Bengal.
#
By the time the Sikhs are defeated, it's 1849, a whole century passes before the British
#
have full control of what we call the Indian subcontinent.
#
It's in that century that a lot of these Maharajas fall into various alliances and sort of arrangements
#
So with Gwalior, for example, they were defeated.
#
They sort of come to terms in the early 19th century.
#
But Gwalior, till the 1840s, has a very strong army of 40,000 soldiers.
#
The British still can't sort of, you know, boss around Gwalior because it has armed troops.
#
It has foreigners who are training these troops, not British, but people from other countries
#
in Europe who are training these troops.
#
Most importantly, Gwalior has a lot of profit coming in from opium sales.
#
The British want to sort of control opium sales because they've got China and, you know,
#
the wider history of that.
#
And Gwalior tries to subvert it.
#
It says we will find our own market, we will not come into the British system because its
#
money depends on that and that money is important for maintaining the army and that army gives
#
Gwalior the teeth to withstand further British encroachment.
#
Finally, of course, the British, it's in a military action in 1843 that the British
#
But because it was so late, unlike, for example, in Travancore where the resident was already
#
bullying the Raja in 1810, because by then the British were in that much control and
#
they were able to disband the Travancore army, which meant the Raja had no teeth by which
#
Gwalior, because it had teeth till the 1840s, Gwalior actually treated the East India Company
#
with contempt for the longest time, you know, when there was this one resident who came
#
in during the regency of this Rani called Baizabai.
#
And when he arrived, he found nobody had been sent out to receive him.
#
He was treated like any other letter writer, you know, one of these reporters who used
#
to come from other courts.
#
He was treated just at that level, not given any importance.
#
He couldn't even find firewood to light in his kitchen the day he arrived because no
#
arrangements had been made.
#
She consciously treated him as a nonentity because she had the power to do it.
#
Of course, after 1843, when the army is gone and the army is completely smashed, Gwalior
#
also has to fall into line.
#
This is not the same, for example, with the Kathiawar states.
#
The Kathiawar states were those, the 300 odd, hundreds of states who have spread over a
#
Many of them, the British had no treaties with.
#
They were paying tribute to one ruler before that.
#
The British became the next overlord, so the British took the place.
#
So for them, it was just the overlord changing, not a big deal.
#
With Rajputana, very complicated because in the early 19th century, you have the British
#
They will sign, they all signed their treaties with the British becoming allies.
#
Lord Wellesley is replaced by another Viceroy, another Governor General, who is not interested
#
He wants to pull back the East India Company from being mired in too much Indian politics.
#
And all these treaties are abrogated.
#
Then it's only after 1818, when the Marathas are defeated, that the British walk into the
#
vacuum that the Marathas have left and claim control of the Rajput states.
#
But here again, the internal Rajput structure is very different.
#
The British find that because the Rajput states in the Maratha period have been weakened or
#
the Raja has been weakened, the Raja's subordinate vassals have become very powerful.
#
So the Rajas have an incentive in allying with the East India Company because the East
#
India Company soldiers will help the Raja reclaim his power, push back the vassals,
#
put them back in their place and the Raja can reclaim power.
#
So it's not as though these Rajas sort of all fell down and sort of prostrated before
#
They had various incentives for allying with the British.
#
Some cases it was forced, Gwalior in 1843, some cases the Rajas wanted the British to
#
come because they needed to rescue themselves from their own subordinates and their own
#
nobles because they were being cornered in their local political structures.
#
In some cases like Travancore, Travancore had no option because they needed East India
#
Company support in the 1790s fighting Tipu Sultan.
#
That is where they had to sort of get into bed with the British.
#
Each state therefore has a different reason for allying with the British.
#
Some may pay tribute, some may not, some may have a treaty, some may not.
#
There's actually no structure to the way the British did this.
#
Even when they classed, for example, Pudukottai was a princely state, but its original overlord,
#
the kingdom of Ramnad was classed as a zamindari, which is lower than Pudukottai.
#
But even though the histories of the states are different, where Ramnad is superior, Pudukottai
#
is inferior, the British sort of topple it and invert it because of various historical
#
So there's lots of things happening in different places.
#
And we sort of assume that India as a political entity was a given, which it was not, which
#
is also why during the 1857 rebellion, Travancore loudly supported the British and said we stand
#
loyally with the British.
#
Not because he cared for the British, the Raja had been facing pressures of annexation
#
He was afraid the British were going to annex his state.
#
So when they were in a crisis by loudly proclaiming loyalty, he was basically trying to put them
#
in a moral position to not annex his state because he had shown that when they were at
#
their lowest and their weakest, he stood with them.
#
It's a footnote in this book, but Priya Atwal in her book on the Sikhs, she talks about
#
those few Punjab states that survived, Kapurtala, Patiala, etc.
#
They signed with the East India Company because they knew Ranjit Singh was becoming too big.
#
So there's this wonderful quote she says where one of the Rajas basically says that my options
#
are it's a quick death with Ranjit Singh or slow death with the British.
#
So at least I have some more years in power and my state will continue for some more time
#
in a truncated form as opposed to being completely wiped out by the Sikh empire of Ranjit Singh.
#
All of these are calculated decisions.
#
Each of them has their local individual reason for allying.
#
They did not see themselves as part of one unified nation.
#
That frankly did not exist.
#
Nationalism was constructed in India.
#
Perhaps we had what people call a civilizational identity and all that, but that was not nationalism.
#
Nationalism was consciously, painfully, painstakingly constructed in the late 19th century.
#
Before that, all of these people saw themselves as belonging to different regions.
#
A Travancore Maharaja had no incentive in joining an anti-British rebellion with the Raja of
#
Banaras for example and Nizam of Hyderabad didn't see why he had to join forces with
#
a Maharaja of Kashmir for example.
#
They saw themselves as legitimate rulers of legitimate independent political spaces.
#
Their priority was not fighting for a larger India because that concept of a larger India
#
Their concept was simply I will fight to protect my turf.
#
I will fight to protect my kingdom because I am the legitimate king of this kingdom.
#
So the terms itself are different and the landscape therefore is this patchy landscape
#
where you have British territories and then intervening it you got lots of princely territories.
#
A lot of princely states were not compact.
#
Baroda for example was spread over four or five different parcels of land.
#
So there was one set of territories around the capital.
#
Then disconnected from that there are three other territories because that's how its
#
exchange with the British took place.
#
A lot of states in Kathiawada used to pay tribute to Baroda.
#
The British eventually came in and said we will collect that tribute for you.
#
So there was a weird sort of political arrangement there also.
#
In Rajputana the Rajput Maharajas paid many of them paid tribute to the British only based
#
on the revenue of what was called their core sort of crown territory.
#
Their vassals territories were not included because the vassals had their own autonomous
#
rights and most importantly these vassals would often lobby the British for independent
#
recognition as princely states.
#
So the Rajas had to also quickly sit with the if the British resident was sitting with
#
a danda over the Rajas head the Raja was sitting with a danda over his vassals heads to prevent
#
the vassals from becoming too big.
#
So there's you know each of these states is balancing different things and thinking very
#
much from an let's say I wouldn't say myopic because that assumes that they were somehow
#
supposed to have a grand vision but they were thinking from their respective individual
#
positions which to them were very legitimate and the people in those days also recognized
#
So I have three follow-up questions from this at least three more might occur but the first
#
of them is this that when you speak of civilizational identity that there's a possibility that there
#
might have been a civilizational identity was there one what is your sense and if so
#
how would it have been constructed because this is not the age of mass media.
#
You know all these states are very different things there's not much communication going
#
on all these are separate languages you know I assume that there is hardly any interaction
#
or common culture between the people of Patiala and the people of Travancore for example.
#
So do you find a sense of that civilizational identity like one thing that we discussed
#
in the middle episode we did the second or the three episodes we've done so far is where
#
you spoke about how a lot of modern Hinduism might actually have ended up being a colonial
#
construct in the sense that the British come to India who are their early interlocutors
#
it sees elite Brahmans who sell them on this vision of Brahmanism with the caste system
#
and all of that and then that becomes a way the British look at India and they control
#
all the mass media and they control the narratives and today that becomes a way we look at ourselves
#
and it's not necessarily the case so that is sort of one civilizational view which is
#
playing out among you know elite Brahmans and elite colonial forces but is there a broader
#
civilizational identity you feel that is there or is it all dissipated and dispersed and
#
different things everywhere and multitudes that eventually move towards homogeneity
#
but at that time they don't.
#
As a historian how does one even get a sense of this because if someone writes a history
#
of 2021 you have plenty of sources you know what everybody thinks because of social media
#
how do you get a sense of what it was like then and what is your sense?
#
See one of the issues with this is also conceptual which is that you know some people say Hinduism
#
was invented by the British I wouldn't say the Hindu religion was invented by the British
#
to say that Hinduism as a religion was invented by the British basically means oh it was only
#
in this time that we decided we must have a core set of books and a core set of beliefs
#
etc that much is true that we absorbed the western definition of what a religion must
#
be which means books to chaiya because Christians and Jews everybody has books so we must also
#
find books so we've perhaps taken that conceptual bracket but all the same that religious identity
#
sort of existed before that as well it was not invented by the British the current shape
#
we've given to it was the conceptual bracket came from that particular period but prior
#
to that also for example because of the Puranic tradition for example a villager in Patiala
#
and a villager in Travancore may not know much about each other their practice of Hinduism
#
may also be different but both would have heard the Ramayan both would have heard the
#
Mahabharat and both would not have gone to Kashi but they would know that there is such
#
a place as Kashi that place exists somewhere in that spiritual landscape somewhere in that
#
mental map you don't even have an idea of what the Indian subcontinent looks like nobody
#
has seen a map but you know there is a place called Kashi this is broadly the direction
#
which Kashi lies the Patiala guy will also know there is a place called Rameshwaram because
#
he knows vaguely that you know there is something there so that you know that spiritual landscape
#
is perhaps a common thread that you find and that is constructed not through the Vedas
#
not through some kind of esoteric ideas but through these wonderful narratives that is
#
the Puranic tradition these stories are basically weaving together different things and sort
#
of giving them a sort of overarching umbrella you know you're basically saying that all
#
this is true that's why some of the stories are sometimes contradictory the British read
#
these Puranic texts and they say there is no consistency there's no chronology why
#
are these stories so chaotic you start a story and then you digress into five different stories
#
then you come back and again digress into something else it's not because it was chaotic
#
or people didn't have structure it was because at different times different elements different
#
parts of the country were being woven together into one messy but one unified narrative fabric
#
that fabric still has different threads of different colors but it is one fabric to that
#
extent yes I think you know there was some awareness that there is this broader thing
#
and you see that as technology gets better access to these places becomes stronger the
#
biggest set of Brahmins in Banaras which is in northern India was from Maharashtra because
#
the Marathas as they picked up as they sort of spread out their armies would also be accompanied
#
by Brahmins their armies would also be accompanied by pilgrims and it became a way for the Maratha
#
state to flaunt its piety because everybody knew that Kashi was an important state nobody
#
had seen Kashi but it was an important city so when the Maratha kings and nobles built
#
ghats over there the current form of Kashi was largely built in the built in the Maratha
#
period when they do that and they go even if they say they go to some place in Tamilnadu
#
and say we renovated Kashi we built 20 ghats in Kashi people will understand the importance
#
of it you know they may know they may not know have been to Kashi they may not know
#
where Kashi is but they know doing this in Kashi is a pious important thing and therefore
#
they will connect on that particular plane even so it's not like the Maratha version
#
of Marathas practice of Hinduism was what a Bengali would practice nor that a Maratha
#
invasion suddenly Bengalis would all clap saying welcome we are fellow Hindus no on
#
the contrary when the Marathas invaded Bengal you have the Maharashtra Puran which is rather
#
scathing of the Marathas they don't see a common element there when Puri is taken from
#
the Marathas by the British the Puri priest actually write a letter to the East India
#
Company Governor General Lord Wellesley praising him to the sky saying you are the best of
#
all monarchs we've had so far so far we couldn't breathe in peace but you've come therefore
#
we are you know finally at ease etc super you know superlative language they use for
#
an Englishman but there is an awareness there is knowledge you know that these places and
#
these sacred sites matter it's something that's why even the Marathas when they come
#
into Orissa for the first time they want control of Puri because controlling Puri not only
#
marks status it sends a message out to lots of people you know kings ally themselves with
#
the important temples because it has a larger resonance than his very localized power his
#
power may be localized but by weaving himself to an important site mentioned in the Puranas
#
mentioned in traditional accounts he's also connecting himself to that larger fabric so
#
there is a fabric but it's not like somebody's given it a shape you can't say it's a rectangular
#
fabric or a square fabric with perfect borders it's a constantly knitted constantly being
#
and someone's constantly weaving and adding more things to it in different directions
#
the fabric is going growing in different ways but something exists and people are aware
#
of that something when they say as I said when they say that you know I've gone to
#
Kashi that has meaning no matter where you are in India that word Kashi represents something
#
and if you understand it and the other person also understands it you're part of that particular
#
fabric so you know that is how I would I would define it yeah you made the fabric expanding
#
in all directions no shape sound like H.P. Lovecraft's Thulu and another good reason
#
to control Puri of course is that if you control Puri sooner or later you control Lalu excuse
#
me for that yeah I had to get my one dad joke out of the way I would of course never argue
#
with you because zero knowledge but the only part of what you said that I feel a little
#
skeptical towards is when you said a person in Patiala would know where Rameshwaram is
#
dude a person in Patiala today doesn't know where Rameshwaram is and if you're listening
#
to this from Patiala you're obviously an outlier because you're listening to this so they wouldn't
#
call it Rameshwaram they would call it Dakshinakashi which is you know the southern Kashi that's
#
how it's called if you generally go to let's say a person who's you know vaguely well versed
#
in these Puranic things frankly I shouldn't have said Patiala because Punjab is slightly
#
an outlier in these things which is why even the old Brahmins used to include that in what
#
was called Mlechadesha you know barbarian country don't even go there and caste wasn't
#
as strong as it was in the Gangetic belt so maybe that was the wrong example to give but
#
still if you found somebody who would broadly belong to that Hindu tradition was not a Sikh
#
for example and you said Dakshinakashi they would understand broadly what you were referring
#
Fair enough the second of my three questions is that maybe there was a sense of a civilizational
#
identity which was undefined nebulous always changing when did a sense of a national identity
#
come about because my sense of the princely states you know from your writing and those
#
of others would be that there is no sense of an India per se as we know it now you know
#
it's just that I would imagine that a ruler in that time would have his princely state
#
everything else is a foreign land including other princely states and then there is this
#
foreign land which has suddenly come and the British and that's what there is so when does
#
a national identity start taking shape where princely states can also think of the possibility
#
of something called India when they can start using the word national for example.
#
I think it's having the British as a common enemy why is it that the early nationalists
#
who had the toughest task of firstly articulating what nationalism is how do you explain or
#
construct nationalism them and the princes the reason they were on the same page in the
#
early decades the first 50 odd years of that process was partly because they had a common
#
enemy when you have a common enemy becomes easier to define what you have in common as
#
brown people and I think that helped a great deal that's why the early congress also stayed
#
away from touchy areas that would emphasize difference you know they didn't want to get
#
into social reform and anything where people end up quarrelling with each other they focus
#
strictly on political things they required for example the English language because otherwise
#
they would all get lost in each other's languages so they needed people who were brown spoke
#
English had gone to the new schools agreed on a core agenda of things to discuss and
#
together they would then construct nationalism.
#
The princes joined the party because they said great you know you're also fighting
#
against the British we're also not very happy with the British so let's sort of come together
#
so nationalism occurs I would say you know there's this some people would put it down
#
to the 1860s Radhava and Aurogyi that generation but frankly already if I'm not wrong was
#
it the 1840s or the 50s there's this mysterious not mysterious we know the identity now but
#
I don't remember the name now there was this gentleman who was writing letters to the editor
#
of the Bombay Gazette this newspaper in Bombay and it was fascinating that those I think
#
it's six or seven letters that he wrote but a very strong critique of colonial rule economic
#
political everything so I would say somewhere from mid 19th century there was you know the
#
initial sort of shoots of this were emerging awareness that the British are bad for India
#
you know if you're and the thing is this awareness was also linked to a great extent to English
#
education not because English education suddenly enlightened people but because English education
#
gave us a language and a vocabulary and words like democracy nationalism which we could
#
use to express ideas that were already there those feelings were there the English language
#
allowed people to express it in a form that even the colonizer would understand and people
#
in Britain would understand and therefore it could become some kind of a movement so
#
the second half of the 19th century really is when people start thinking of India as
#
a whole as one unit and where people need to come together and manage to achieve something
#
it was not easy the early Congress used to meet once a year end of the year in December
#
they would give speeches and they would go and the British would laugh at them saying
#
you know they're like a suburban debating club you know people come they give long speeches
#
and everybody goes home but that itself was the beginning of that process beginning of
#
saying no we are all part of one thing we may only meet once a year but we are part
#
of one political landscape so it's really in the late 19th century that this happens
#
which is why at that time these people were allies with each other and the British were
#
the common enemy having a common enemy always helps because I think it even now politicians
#
make this huge bogey out of Pakistan because it helps sort of rally people together behind
#
them in India and then sort of takes attention away from problems within by focusing on an
#
external enemy it's not the perfect analogy but essentially the same principle is in play
#
you highlight a foreigner and say that at least we all belong here we may not have defined
#
exactly what our places are in this landscape but we definitely were born here whereas this
#
person has not only come from outside he also comes from an alien culture and is dominating
#
us and we know one thing we may disagree on everything else but we know one thing which
#
is that we want to push back that domination so that common cause becomes a medium by which
#
to then think about nationalism think about how you have things in common think about
#
that civilizational element think about the religious traditions that bind you together
#
think about and sort of intellectualize the argument but I think it begins essentially
#
with having a common enemy and as a German theorist Karl Schmidt once said that for politics
#
you always need an other so I guess this is a convenient other now you speak of that one
#
nation actually coming together and when it actually does come together after 47 after
#
the British thief it comes together in a lot of violence like I did an episode with Narayanini
#
Basu on her excellent book on VP Menon and the thing that strikes me is that what Sardar
#
Patel and VP Menon do for what we would consider a good cause today because it's all over and
#
we are beneficiaries is an act of colonialism that is actually harsher and more brutal than
#
the original British act of colonialism because they take over control of the princely state
#
so they derive their influence in the princely states over a long period of time whereas
#
what Patel and Menon do is over a short period of time with a lot of violence like some you
#
know you've written about how between 27,000 to 40,000 people died in Hyderabad while that
#
Yeah that so-called police operation actually I mean your police operation involved bombs
#
from aircraft I'm sorry it was not a police operation it was an invasion it was a military
#
takeover of the state which I'm not saying as a good or bad but we should call it what
#
it was police operation even then was used to play down what exactly it was.
#
And subsequent broken promises in terms of what you know you promise them something they
#
sign up on that basis and then you kind of break that so is that something that we should
#
also consider like when we think of colonialism we think of the colonialism of the British
#
and that's a great evil in the subcontinent but what happened in 47 to get the princely
#
states in and I am of course glad it happened but now that it's over because I'm glad to
#
be here in you know in an independent India where we can travel freely I can go to Rameshwaram
#
or Patiala anytime I feel like but the manner in which it happened is something that I find
#
it hard to look at and say that no that was as you know that was as evil as colonialism
#
what are your thoughts on that?
#
The thing is the Maharajas in some way lost sympathy in that final decade before independence
#
till the mid-30s they were relatively strong nobody could envision in India without them
#
only perhaps a few socialists in the Congress but generally Gandhi was circumspect Patel
#
you know the same Patel who got them to integrate their states with the Indian Union in 1929
#
or so in a speech in Mysore you know some of the local politician complained about the
#
Mysore government and Sardar Patel basically said this is a great government if there's
#
the Maharajas wonderful if you've got issues with them the people of Mysore have a problem
#
not the ruler it's your problem not the ruler's fault you must have some issue with you he's
#
telling the people the local congressman in Mysore the same Patel gets them to eventually
#
give up their rights in the states several things of course are at play one from their
#
perspective from the perspective of the Congress partitions happened India can't be allowed
#
to succeed you can't have these semi-autonomous units in the state Nehru has an allergy when
#
it comes to these hereditary rulers and each of them has their reasons so there is an incentive
#
in trying to sort of get a strong state together for which all of these these little barriers
#
in these states these islands cannot be allowed for the same reason I mean it's also a sort
#
of implicit recognition that just as the British found that a princely territory could be used
#
to harbor anti-British dacoits to harbor seditionists to support revolutionaries I mean it could
#
also easily become a footing for anti-India forces for example to use these princely states
#
against the new Congress government or whatever or the British to continue to manipulate Indian
#
politics you know they might find ways to sort of control the Rajas and thus destabilize
#
India or try to retain control in India the British certainly had a brief moment of flirtation
#
with Travancore because Travancore had thorium which they were very interested in so they
#
were like hmm should we you know try and perhaps give Travancore special treatment but you
#
know so there were lots of fears 1947 is a time of great chaos nobody's really sure
#
about where all these pieces are going to land so you really are going in and you have
#
to do your best it's almost on a war footing but what really causes the Maharaja's trouble
#
is the fact that they were increasingly losing sympathy from their own subjects even the
#
best of them in states like Mysore Travancore etc Maharaja's lost sympathy ultimately because
#
of their own success on the one hand you build schools etc but you're stuck in a colonial
#
framework which puts certain limitations on how many jobs you can give etc etc people
#
start getting political you know you're on the one hand equipping them to think of democracy
#
and modern rights and speak that democratic language but you're a hereditary ruler so
#
there's already a slight sort of disjointedness over there by the 1930s and 40s it's becoming
#
very clear that the British are slowly going to have to leave the Maharajas are now lost
#
because they're like which way should we sway and they fail to unite this is where
#
their quirks come in in the sense that Hyderabad is too grand to sit with say a Patiala which
#
it sees as a minor state Travancore will not sit with a Jaipur for example because it thinks
#
its status is higher the Maharajas do not come together and lobby as a group and efforts
#
to get them to lobby as a group fail from their perspective too they are legitimate
#
rulers of these states they are still stuck in a place where they do not see India as
#
a nation-state so CP Ramaswamy Iyer of Travancore Diwan goes to Lord Naunbatten and says you
#
know this is not going to last and tells the Maharaja of Travancore within six months of
#
the British departure there's going to be civil war in India and after the massacre
#
of the Congress leaders you have to decide how you want to behave and what your future
#
will be he was convinced that was going to be a massacre of Congress leaders because
#
this was not going to happen the Indian state would not survive so many of them were really
#
genuinely caught up in the idea that you know there could not be some kind of unified Indian
#
nation and because they saw themselves as legitimate legitimate why should they sort
#
of give up their powers and sacrifice something for a larger better together even lobby together
#
why should I sit with another Maharaja I mean I'm you know in my own right I have I have
#
that capacity etc so that's one thing the other thing is repression and this is interesting
#
because we assume that all Indians when they stood up and fought it was anti-colonial which
#
is not true as I said in Travancore Mysore in Baroda it was anti-Gujarati Marathi in
#
in Travancore it was Naya's versus Irawas versus Syrian Christians these were internal
#
politics in the 30s whether you look at Baroda, Mysore, any of the big states there was an
#
overlap between nationalism and this internal politics what happened is the local politicians
#
realized having links with the Congress allowed them to punch above their weight because the
#
Rajas were sensitive to Congress criticism so having a Congress tag was a good way to
#
negotiate with the Raja the Congress especially for example the local Congress stood for election
#
in Mysore and they lost people are no interest in the Congress's you know message at that
#
time so they realized they need local allies to create a footprint in the states so there
#
was a sort of politics of convenience there was a convenient marriage between local politicians
#
and the Congress party local politician said let's forget our factionalism and our communalism
#
for now get together under the Congress party negotiate with the Maharaja for better rights
#
for more democratic representation so Maharajas were suddenly in a position where outside
#
British India there overlords whom they could otherwise manipulate or play some game with
#
they're being pushed out Congress is rising to power local politicians who they so far
#
have been playing are now actually using the Congress's language and becoming anti Maharaja
#
till yesterday the Maharajas are being celebrated by the Congress now however they've become
#
the villains and instinctively almost all of them whether it's in Mysore whether it's
#
in Travancore they start having very very repressive strategies in play physically sort
#
of attacking people guns being fired there's in Viduraswatha in Mysore there is what is
#
called the Southern Jallianwala Bagh in Travancore Punna Pravala you know after 1810 for the
#
first time in the state troops being brought out to attack its own people you know bloodshed
#
in the streets that kind of thing starts happening in the states and the Maharajas lose sympathy
#
and finally with World War II coming in the complete global landscape changes now the
#
Maharajas are really small fry the British really want to leave and they want to leave
#
relatively quickly the Maharajas become an inconvenience in certain ways and it makes
#
sense logically speaking it makes sense the British are going to hand over power to the
#
Congress government they're not really going to look after the Rajas the best they can
#
do is claim that the Rajas are now freed from all obligations to the British they have to
#
negotiate independent treaties with the Indian government but you know the Rajas ultimately
#
their armies aren't that strong they can't withstand the Indian army and you know the
#
kind of resources the Congress party is going to inherit and using that Sardar Patel goes
#
with carrot and stick both where the stick is needed he uses it in most cases the carrot
#
works negotiations are held people think in 1947 the Rajas stopped ruling not true Rajas
#
ruled in 1949 it was only when the integration took place in 1949 that they finally took
#
a political backseat they became these figurehead rulers they were given their privy purses
#
and you know that was it now here again people assume oh you know poor country why should
#
we pay these people so much money etc but the frank truth is they actually gave up legitimate
#
political power they had territories Stravanko had a revenue of nine crores which was one
#
of India's richest provinces at that time nine crores doesn't sound like a lot today
#
but in those days it was a heap of money for such a small state of eight thousand square
#
miles one of the reasons the Maharaja was hesitant to merge with the Indian Union was
#
because Malabar which was the part of Kerala that was under British control was far more
#
backward and he said what will happen is you'll form some kind of a state between all three
#
Malayalam speaking elements and my richer subjects will end up subsidizing this place
#
in North Kerala which is backward and what about our progress we've come so far we will
#
end up going backwards if we merge with other parts of Kerala which are you know which are
#
going to pull us down or drag us down they had some logical economic considerations and
#
fears as well but you know the larger current of history was in a certain direction the
#
British abandoned the Maharajas finally and the Maharajas had fallen out with the Congress
#
in those final fifteen odd years even Gandhiji who otherwise respected the Rajas had turned
#
around by 1940 even he was a bit anti-Maharaja after several events so you know they became
#
the casualties of that larger shift in history and perhaps rightly so you know the Rajputana
#
chapter in the book which is chapter seven that talks about how several states would
#
have faced trouble anyway because in Rajputana it was not really Congress or Nationalists
#
it was tribal unrest because the local Rajput system of governance had already started failing
#
the world had changed so you know your feudal levies in Rajputana was pretty feudal it was
#
not a place that progressed very far unlike the southern states for example so tribal
#
unrest is there peasant unrest is there it was going in the mid 1910s and 20s people
#
really thought Rajputana would go Bolshevik because it was it was getting to a stage that
#
was pretty bad and perhaps that way the Rajas would have been toppled so the Rajas they
#
adapted to colonialism but by doing so they also limited their shelf life they also became
#
part of that structure to survive they adapted in certain ways so that when the structure
#
collapsed they were left flailing with no place in a future India which you know was
#
perhaps how it would inevitably be in the end they had all the book argues is that the
#
argument that they did nothing till then is not true many of them did great things in
#
fact many of them contributed to the process of what we would today call a nation building
#
or you know part of India's national story and narrative all of that is it's important
#
that we acknowledge that just to understand modern Indian history better but indeed in
#
the final stage they in many ways let themselves down of course their final obituary by Indira
#
Gandhi was perhaps a bit unfair her argument was we're paying these people lots of money
#
it was actually not that much money you know very few Rajas had grand as I said of the
#
562 most got really trivial sums very few had large sums and it was in most states it
#
was agreed that with each generation the amount would be reduced reduced further till finally
#
it was just a nominal kind of figure the reason Indira Gandhi finally you know sort of ended
#
the privy process is simply because the Maharajas were not happy with her socialist turn they
#
were funding opposition parties the Rajmata Vijayanagar was a key funder of the Janasang
#
for example the swatantra party used to get funding from the Maharajas she basically wanted
#
a little bit like today's government you know doesn't allow other parties to get funding
#
from industrial houses same logic if you pay them I will come and attack you since the
#
Maharajas are paying them you're essentially taking government of India money Indira Gandhi
#
sees herself as the government of India and you're using it to attack the government
#
of India I'm not going to allow it she puts an end to the privy process of course she gives
#
it socialist justification and all that but it wasn't such a big deal it wasn't such
#
a big amount it was not a big drain on the Indian exchequer it was simply I think for
#
political reasons that that promise was was broken and you know that was that yeah it's
#
an unfortunate how much Narendra Modi has learned from Indira Gandhi though one could
#
argue they're both creatures of their perverse incentives and I was amused by the phrase
#
that you just used that Nehru was allergic to hereditary rulers I wonder how he would
#
have kind of felt today so you mentioned the possibility that was held out by many that
#
the Indian state would not hold the centre would not hold it would collapse you pointed
#
out the prediction that the congress leaders would be slaughtered now the thing is history
#
happened and we know that none of that happened the centre held the congress leaders were
#
not slaughtered and we are here today but you know history always makes seem everything
#
that has already happened inevitable like it's hundred percent going to happen this
#
way but there was a non-zero chance that the centre would not hold there was a non-zero
#
chance that it would all fall apart in fact it's precisely because of that that our constitution
#
was designed to be so centralizing that we kept so much of the oppressive colonial apparatus
#
because we needed it stability for stability and for circumstances like that so even though
#
your book isn't about that and doesn't touch on that but you are a historian and you've
#
read a lot how big would you say that non-zero chance really was I mean again this is you
#
know it's speculative to say what might have happened but I think because we made a wise
#
choice to retain for example the administrative services that administrative apparatus the
#
same officials who are serving the government the British government of India one fine morning
#
woke up and started serving the Nehru's Nehruvim government of India they there was no ego
#
clash there you know it's not like oh you supported previous people therefore I won't
#
I won't play with you Sardar Patel for example had an important role I don't think Nehru
#
liked VP Menon a lot but Sardar Patel had no issues with the fact that VP Menon came
#
out of the British bureaucracy and it served the British state for so long because he was
#
able to arrange for a smooth transition and make sure that although the the the people
#
and power at the top have changed overall the structure remains more or less the same
#
because otherwise if you sort of tamper with everything all at once the whole thing will
#
fall apart so holding it together required sort of you know as you said holding on to
#
colonial rules etc colonial laws and and the apparatus I think that's the only reason
#
it we didn't sort of break apart I think that was a wise decision whether it was taken
#
consciously or subconsciously because there was you weren't sort of lighting too many
#
fires all at once you didn't have to firefight all at once either you were able to go one
#
after the other because overall there was a degree of stability then the other big thing
#
is one big issue was of course partition so there was a lot of energy and attention sort
#
of diverted into that but the rest of the country to great measure was was stable just
#
because the British left it was not as though everything collapsed and you know people started
#
fighting with each other and all of that it was all controlled very quickly the Indian
#
army you know it was an army that fought for in the name of the British king in World War
#
II but we retained it we retained the same officers the same leadership and we were able
#
to sort of do that without getting personal without getting ego letting egos get in the
#
way which unfortunately is not true today anymore if you've served a previous government
#
then you know you can be sacked by the next government it's a very dangerous game because
#
the whole point of having a bureaucracy that is not part of that political sort of shifting
#
of sands is precisely for stability whereas if bureaucracy also becomes political very
#
quickly then everything is political everything then can start shifting that's a bit dangerous
#
in in 1947 we didn't make that mistake as much but you know that mistake can be made
#
in the future also and then we'll perhaps have an answer to your question as to where
#
it will take us in 1947 we missed that that terrible or possibility but you know you can
#
never take it for granted in India that you know now this is set and now this this the
#
landscape will never change I don't think you can say that with any guarantee it depends
#
entirely on who's in control and how they how much they are willing to play by the rules
#
of the game because everything ultimately boils down to the rules of the game rules
#
are what hold it together speaking of an independent bureaucracy I had an episode a couple of weeks
#
back with Josie Joseph and one of the big themes that comes out from his book is that
#
the reason India's security state is such a menace to our citizens but the way it has
#
been designed is that it is under political control so everyone who you know comes to
#
power is going to use it to oppress his enemies you know and it's kind of one of the ironic
#
things that I think like Modi was an RSS Pracharak in the mid 70s when emergency happened you
#
know there is this famous story about him going to the railway station in Ahmedabad
#
to meet I think either George Fernandes or Subramaniam Swami whatever dressed as a Sardar
#
George Fernandes I think it was in receiving him and taking him to a guest house and all
#
and you would imagine that the lesson which Modi and Jaitley and all of those people who
#
were jailed would take from that is that we should not be this oppressive that we should
#
make the state less oppressive but the lesson they seem to have taken instead is that when
#
we come to power we will be in charge of this state and we will use it as we want that is
#
usually the case I mean ultimately it all boils down to power right you know I have
#
power now so why should I give up why will I I've worked very hard to gain power now
#
why will I sit and dilute the things that you know that matter for power you know exactly
#
I'm happy being you know just as oppressive except that you know it really is a question
#
of who's in power that's all and again it struck me in the context of why we didn't
#
break up in 47 and here's a question of how big a role does inertia play in history like
#
looking through history one would imagine that every moment in some way or the other
#
because of the conflicts or the turmoil or the injustices that are happening every moment
#
holds a seat for evolution but what you have instead most of the time is a slow evolution
#
so looking at the currents of history in the time that you have how big a role does inertia
#
play how much of history is shaped not by what people do but by what they don't do
#
a good deal I think 1857 is a good example as I said a lot of the Rajas actually supported
#
the British because they saw advantage in supporting the British at that time you could
#
easily say that if they decided to jump on the on the revolutionary battle wagon or the
#
rebellion or joined it the British would have been kicked out Punjab Maharajas who help enabling
#
supplies to the Delhi army for example if the Maharajas had cut off supplies the Delhi
#
army would have struggled you know so it's a bit complicated I don't know if inertia
#
is the word I would choose they all had their incentives to behave the way they did at that
#
time it was not that they lay back and said well let me just watch what is happening no
#
they actively made certain choices which in hindsight may look like the bad choice look
#
like inertia or whatever but at that time to them it made sense some cases however are
#
just I suppose accidents of history you know I was reading this book by Amarpal Singh it's
#
coming out with Harper Collins on the 1857 rebellion and he focuses just on Delhi and
#
it's fascinating that the rebels have a huge advantage over the British the British have
#
the only advantage that they have a strategic location where they've come and the rebels
#
didn't even bother to block them off from that location that location was sitting there
#
the rebels could have just taken control of it but by the time they did the British had
#
come in and they had taken control of it the second thing is the rebels had a huge advantage
#
in terms of numbers each faction in it it was not a regimented army where everybody
#
listened to one commander there was no single commander there were different kinds of commanders
#
with different back downs who had their own internal politics their own internal incentives
#
some groups are going around plundering Delhi itself some are going to the emperor and blackmailing
#
the emperor others are going and telling the emperor no no no we'll rein them in you are
#
protected and your people will be protected lots of chaos is happening in the same process
#
what was most fascinating is outside Delhi there are these tribes or these communities
#
of gurjars and it's so interesting that if a let's say an Englishman is riding to say
#
Meera Tamathura one of those places these people will catch hold of him strip him of
#
all his valuables and then send him off but if it's a rebel going they'll do the same
#
thing to the rebel leader as well because for them it makes no difference if it's a
#
white person or if it's a brown Indian fighting against the British both are equally targets
#
for plunder that is what is happening in the in the countryside now again there's a logic
#
for this they don't see themselves as part of one nation they don't see themselves as
#
part of one common grand cause it did not work you know is that inertia no it's just
#
that at that time in that logic in their context this is what they saw my self-interest why
#
should I bother about what is happening in Delhi or what the rebels are wanting to do
#
as far as I'm concerned I've got an opportunity to make a lot of money through plunder let
#
me just focus on that whatever happens in Delhi kings come kings go rulers come rulers
#
go we will just take care of our self-interest and that at different political levels you
#
see that playing out in different ways that's why I'm not a bit hesitant to say inertia
#
plays a role but I think not everybody perhaps subscribes to a grand vision not everybody's
#
part of some kind of grand movement of history you know it's not really the case as far as
#
I can see yeah this is really everything you've described I agree inertia doesn't fit it because
#
these are just people responding to their immediate incentives and you know game theory
#
could explain why most of the princes said they supported the British during 1857 because
#
you know if you give them an ideal situation where there is a guarantee that everybody
#
will be on the same side they'll choose that side but otherwise you just go for the status
#
quo and play safe I think by inertia I meant something that is outside of incentives more
#
a bias towards inaction as it were which I think plays a part in all our lives as individuals
#
certainly I don't know how it comes together but let's let's get back to your book now
#
and and your first chapter is titled the Raja in a suit and it's about Travancore about
#
which you've already written so much so tell me a little bit about what's happening here
#
how is the relationship between the Travancore kings like Uttaram Tirunel and his successors
#
how is that evolving that relationship with the British Empire and so on so you know this
#
Uttaram Tirunel was at this interesting juncture where he's inherited a system where kingship
#
is defined very much through temple service Hindu religious institutions in fact there's
#
a report written by one of his Divans which is all about and it's fascinating it's an
#
administrative report but it's about the quality of priests and temples how many meals
#
are being dispensed to Brahmins those are the kind of incentives that those are the
#
things that define what a good Hindu state is at that time but he's also facing pressures
#
that come from the presence of Christian missionaries who are talking about caste and saying that
#
this is unjust missionaries of course you know they were not altruistic or completely
#
sort of impartial parties you know they had their own agendas and intentions as well but
#
they were highlighting an important truth that you know the king is he just the king
#
of the elites and the existing system or is it his job also to ameliorate the conditions
#
of poorer people who are not privileged and who are marginalised that's the question
#
that comes up the British come up and they're like a king's job is not just to you know
#
preside over this partially religious partially political order but to actively promote progress
#
which is what roads dams schools you know irrigation that kind of thing so he realises
#
that I'm at this juncture and he's not always successful at it he's very good socially with
#
the British because he speaks English wears English suits and you know likes to be painted
#
in English suits and all that but he realises that I need to be able to negotiate this other
#
language as well that is where Travancore's modernisation begins it doesn't come from
#
the king's deciding one fine morning that oh we will now be modernisers and we will
#
set new standards no it comes from real political pressures and their desire to preserve the
#
sanctity and the power of the throne to preserve that power they have to adapt so their game
#
with the British is constantly adapting that's where that Madhav Rao who we mentioned at
#
the start he comes in they find him as a good candidate who's in good books with the British
#
speaks English but is also a Hindu Brahmin and therefore meets all the criteria that
#
you require as a Brahmin he has social authority over Hindus as an English speaker from an
#
English school in Madras he's got contacts with the British he becomes the person who
#
starts you know the word is reform they start reforming the state cutting down certain taxes
#
antiquated taxes are thrown out of the window roads are being built you know agriculture
#
is being widened coffee cultivation instead of forests the forests are being cut down
#
and you've got plantations coming in lots of like innovative things that are coming
#
in things that are sometimes just fashionable because the British think it's fashionable
#
not all of it is true the Maharajas also knew that there were different ways of manipulating
#
the British for example a lot of things every year they would have a progress report that
#
they would publish in the English language talking about how many miles of roads they'd
#
built etc etc but what's interesting is a lot of the social reforms stayed just on paper
#
the British came and said why is it that lower castes are not allowed on your roads Maharaja
#
will issue a proclamation saying all lower castes are now allowed on the roads in reality
#
changes nothing you know in my grandmother's village as late as the 1950s nobody would
#
dare walk on the temple road even though officially in the 1920s itself the rules had been changed
#
and all roads had been thrown open so there was a conversation going on with the British
#
and they they also knew exact ways in which to impress the British English language write
#
reports have statistics and keep the British resident at bay and then if you're building
#
schools you can also justify spending money on your temple rituals if you're only doing
#
temple rituals and the British will come and nag you so this becomes a form of adapting
#
so good governance itself becomes a form of keeping the imperial power at bay because
#
that's the only way you can say you can give the resident and the British no cause for
#
complaint once you've taken care of what is called good government you can do what you
#
want you know you have the freedom and the room to maneuver and continue your Brahminical
#
Hindu rites etc etc and Uttaram Dhrinal is the man who starts it in the 1850s but it's
#
taken forward by his nephews Iliyam and Vishakham of whom Iliyam is in power for 20 years Vishakham
#
is just bursting with energy he's an heir apparent so poor man can't sit on the throne
#
till his brother dies so he's setting up a cigar factory he's a botanist he's collecting
#
plants he's writing commentaries on Sanskrit text he's writing you know articles in newspapers
#
he's writing anonymous articles criticizing British policy he's writing open articles
#
criticizing British policy fascinating like some of the writings he's put down it's almost
#
the same language as a Gokhale as a Ranadev because he's speaking that same general language
#
he talks openly about as a Maharaja about how the British if the Empire has to have
#
a moral purpose it is ultimately of handing India back to Indians he's able also able
#
to as a Maharaja he's able to articulate a future where Indians will be in charge of
#
India but and that's fascinating you don't think of Maharaja's thinking about these things
#
but he is thinking about larger issues he rules only for five years but both Maharajas
#
are extremely hands-on you know they realize that to beat the British and to keep the British
#
at bay to preserve our own power we've got to work for it whether it's changing our costume
#
whether it's changing the language we speak whether it's focusing on political reform
#
we have to do it to survive their nephew sort of drops the ball a little bit and it creates
#
room for the British to once again come and poke their nose in Travancore but for a good
#
20-30 years these two Maharajas managed to hold their own and you know just play the
#
British they played within rules set by the British but they aced that game they said
#
the rules are unfair the rules the ground is not a leavened playing field it's tilted
#
in favor of the British but we will still play and we will still succeed and in great
#
measure they did and what I kind of find fascinating about this beyond the larger currents that
#
you talk about is also the intimate personal portraits that emerge for example Uttran Tirunel
#
is so fascinating in the sense that you know you've described him as what a charming kid
#
he is I think when he's a little infant he climbs on the knee of a British the Singh
#
and ask how are your people doing and then he takes an interest in medicine and does
#
an apprenticeship under a proper doctor and starts a dispensary and before he comes to
#
the throne and people come there just because they want to interact with him with his royal
#
They come with fake illnesses because you know a prince is treating you it's the most
#
fascinating thing A prince is treating you and then this obsession
#
with Kathakali where you know he is obsessed with it but he cannot perform it because he's
#
a royal so he performs in front of a mirror in his palace and all of that and at the same
#
time he loves European company wears European dress collects all kinds of nonsense and that
#
itself is something that should make us sit back and think that there was a time that
#
a clock was a thing of wonder and there was a time that a map was a thing of wonder there
#
are people who never saw a map in their lives can you imagine you know it's just absolutely
#
fascinating and map making that's actually a fascinating process in its own right in
#
the late 18th and early 19th century when these surveyors would go out a lot of people
#
would think this was an invading army because they would have flags and they would have
#
like people accompanying them with strange instruments and local people would see them
#
with great suspicion and a lot of Indian Rajas were against these these mapping processes
#
because what it does is it gives data to the British it gives data to the British exactly
#
where you have a fort exactly where your boundaries are whereas your interest lies in not having
#
that kind of precise data given to the British so each of these processes itself is political
#
map making itself is a political process an imperial power needs a map to know what on
#
earth is governing the people on the ground who are doing the governing especially the
#
Indian Rajas they don't want the imperial power to know these things you know there's
#
an example I think it's a footnote in this book not in the main text about how Kashmir
#
you know they had Kashmir under their control but the Kashmir Maharaja had a habit of secreting
#
a good part of his revenue in various forts in forms of like jewels and jewels and gold
#
whatever at one point the British invade and they sort of started you know going to these
#
these forts and just figuring out what is in these and they discover large quantities
#
of treasure which they didn't even know existed because the Maharaja had hidden them away
#
in different places one Jaipur Maharaja he would fudge his accounts royally you know
#
he would he modernized his government in certain areas roads railways fine but his revenue
#
management he refused to modernize because modernization means what's reports and statistics
#
which means what the British resident can read them and understand them as easily as
#
the Raja I will do it in a way where only I have control over the data only I understand
#
what this data means and through that he was able to cut off as much as 20 lakhs of his
#
revenue and avoid paying the British a higher tribute they counter manipulating the British
#
as late as 1906 the British are even aware of this Jaipur Maharaja makes a series of
#
donations to British charities and the British officials say we know exactly why he's doing
#
this because he wants us to not pay attention to his books of account so this is a form
#
of bribery he's paying them off in some other charitable situation so they don't poke their
#
nose into his actual serious accounts and figure out how much money he's concealing
#
from the eyes of the British and thereby paying a lower tribute constant wonderful like fascinating
#
strategies in play in all these states so you're just that reference to map making
#
just you know sent me down this this route of thinking of how even something so basic
#
that we today take for granted was actually a political negotiation with very serious
#
political consequences yeah and and it's it's another web series right there you can call
#
it the map maker and the accountant about how information you know brings power with
#
it and how it's so important and the two nephews you know there's Aayilyam Tirunala
#
I hope I pronounced that right yeah who is on the one hand you know he's a polyglot
#
he's he's described by the British as conservative by temperament but liberal by intellect but
#
at the same time he's also described as a quote moral wreck and sexual pervert stop
#
quote and you describe this wonderful dying ritual which royals apparently had almost
#
a Dorian grayish kind of thing where when a royal is dying he'll you know a random outside
#
stranger will not get money a Brahmin will be paid money to come and take on all the
#
sins sins of the royal and you basically embrace the royal who's dying and by that you sort
#
of you become the scapegoat you you you absorb all his sins yeah yeah and then the royal
#
dies happy that he's not committed any sins and the Brahmin is escorted outside the kingdom
#
and said okay get get lost and don't come back here and here's your money presumably
#
but no what's interesting in the Travancore Rajas is that the Raja embraces the Brahmin
#
the Brahmin takes sins but where do they send the Brahmin into British India tell him you
#
take my sins and get lost into British India just don't come back to Travancore with my
#
sins lovely there's a story in that also maybe you know maybe there's a Brahmin who goes
#
to all the different kingdoms in the assist and Visakh and Tirunala is also so fascinating
#
that one there is that poignant frustration that he's next in line for the throne but
#
for 20 years and the thing is that because of the matrilineal structure you know it's
#
the earlier kings utrams sisters kids who are the next in line so his brother is a king
#
it's not like his father is a king and eventually the father will die his brother is a king
#
he has to wait he has to outlive his brother god knows how long he will get there is that
#
whole poignant thing and what comes naturally out of this is that he hates his brother's
#
courtiers and one of them is Raja Ravi Verma so he kicks Raja Ravi Verma out of the throne
#
in fact the one painting that you have a Visakhana in your book is by Ramaswami Naidu who's
#
Raja Ravi Verma's big rival what do you think of his work?
#
Equally interesting in fact Ramaswami Naidu is not as famous Ravi Verma sort of became
#
more famous and his name we all know now but in the late 19th century Ramaswami Naidu was
#
also a very famous artist and in fact before Ravi Verma Madhav Rao who was Divan of Travancore
#
then became Divan of Baroda he actually invited Ramaswami Naidu to come and this is again
#
I should credit Rahul Sagar for this he recently told me about this in 1876 Madhav Rao invites
#
Ramaswami Naidu to come and visit Baroda and work there but Raja Ravi Verma comes only
#
around 1880 1880 1881 that is when Ravi Verma comes he's second so that essentially shows
#
that Ramaswami Naidu even as late as the 18 you know early 1880s was sort of considered
#
one notch perhaps higher than Ravi Verma although eventually Ravi Verma sort of picked up one
#
of the reasons being Ravi Verma's pedigree you know he came from an aristocratic family
#
in many ways he was a social equal with many of the Rajas he met so you know he visits Udaipur
#
for example and Udaipur has a local painter from a local artist and caste who's actually gone to
#
London and studied at the Slade School of Art on a scholarship from the Maharana but he's still
#
treated as a craftsman whereas Ravi Verma when he comes he's treated as a nobleman he's given robes
#
of honour he's given a necklace he's not just given a fee he's treated as an equal through these
#
symbolic gifts as well which I think plays a big role in Ravi Verma's reputation Ravi Verma's
#
reputation wasn't purely talent it was also privilege it was also the fact that he could
#
move around with great ease among the crowd that he was painting he was never in a supplicant
#
position he was like this fashionable man who came from an aristocratic family with tens of
#
thousands of acres of land sisters-in-law Aranis of Travancore he was in some ways exotic to the
#
British for that reason that's why they called him the painter prince he wasn't a prince but
#
you know that that tag sort of caught on because of his his background so you know speaking of
#
Raja Ravi Verma to take a quick digression I just realized that it is very much sanskari for me to
#
take digressions because hey our epics did but to take that digression from the time you first saw
#
Raja Ravi Verma's paintings what is the effect of your appreciation of his work due to context
#
like one you get the kind of context of the different influences that he's getting like
#
those early influences in the Travancore kingdom are obviously the Kerala murals and all that but
#
as you point out he then spends a lot of time in the palace where he looks at you know the art of
#
the European artists and gets influenced by that and then he's traveling through all these places
#
he's evolving at one of the things that happened in Baroda was that he got so much patronage there
#
that he was freely allowed to travel and show his paintings and that becomes popular he can buy his
#
lithograph press and no doubt that changes the direction of his work how much is your appreciation
#
impacted both by getting a deeper understanding of the circumstances and the context in which
#
he's creating his work and also by the good luck and the privilege as you describe it and the
#
fact that it must have been so much harder for competition and also for what his work came to
#
mean like at a particular point in time we discussed civilizational identity earlier and
#
you've also pointed out about mythological paintings became so popular and perhaps played a part like
#
Amarchitra Katha in later days or you know the serial Mahabharata and Ramayana in the 80s perhaps
#
played a part in forming a part of that civilization and I didn't yeah because this is where you know
#
Baroda state comes in because till then Ravi Orma is doing mainly a lot of sentimental works in the
#
sense woman with a flower woman doing her hair you know these pretty paintings which lots of
#
people like and he's doing portraits this is his thing with Baroda what he taps into really is
#
is by depicting scenes from the epics he started doing some of it he's done a Shakuntala for example
#
he's done a Sita Bhume Pravesh for example before he comes to Baroda but in Baroda really the kind
#
of interest the Maharaja has in having these epic scenes depicted in the you know that realistic
#
academic western style that gives him an idea and he displays these paintings before they are sent
#
to the palace and the kind of people who come there they're in awe because the thing is you've
#
gone to temples and you've seen sculptures you've gone and seen figurines of gods in you know that
#
you can you can perhaps do puja too in your houses but you've never seen goddesses in high neck
#
blouses and contemporary saris remember that at that time this is a very contemporary dress
#
that is being worn we now look at a Ravi Orma painting saying oh so quaint and so old-fashioned
#
at that time this is basically the fashionable way of draping the sari in Bengal your gods have come
#
out in human form in in front of you and this is he wasn't the first to do it but his works because
#
of the access he had managed to garner a lot of attention and that sets him off on an idea which
#
is larger than art itself it's sort of a nationalist technique and this is why Sayaji Rao also supports
#
him and most importantly Madhav Rao. Madhav Rao who is the Diwan he seeds in Ravi Orma the idea
#
that your paintings are fine but only elites are collecting them if you make prints of the
#
paintings they can go across to all households in India and become a real major thing and create
#
a kind of national imagery for India. Ravi Orma has that idea clearly in his head because of
#
Madhav Rao's comment. Sayaji Rao's commission of those 14 Puranic paintings and the success
#
this received whenever they they displayed he realizes that maybe I should invest in a lithograph
#
press so then these paintings are churned out in these cheap prints that are there and he that's
#
why he's by some called a calendar artist but the thing is suddenly your gods are able to come to
#
your house and they look appealing they look accessible and you've got them on your walls
#
so when ever since then when people shut their eyes and they visualize a Saraswati or a Lakshmi
#
people are visualizing a Ravi Orma depiction of Saraswati and Lakshmi in a sari standing in a
#
certain way with that proper long sleeved high neck blouse it's not your traditional sculpture
#
where the women are topless it's not your traditional sculpture where the women are voluptuous
#
it is a very victorianized but then socially in the late 19th century very socially acceptable
#
way of depicting women but they're also goddesses and they also look larger than life he's not
#
completely humanized them that they look common at the same time he's made them human enough
#
for people to take a very keen interest so he does end up doing something and he's very aware that
#
this has a kind of national resonance the idea is at the time when the nationalism is being built
#
when the nation itself is being built people are aware of difference Gujarati Bengali Maharaja
#
of Baroda one of his incentives in sort of allowing this kind of grand depiction which
#
can appeal in any corner of India is because he's very aware of dealing with differences within
#
Indians you know among Indians so when you create this kind of a Lakshmi it doesn't matter whether
#
you're in Kerala or in Kashmir it will appeal to people he's given it a visual form that will
#
appeal to people and give them one more means by which to realize that you are part of one common
#
story and one common religious slash civilizational tradition how much of this he did consciously
#
from the start is debatable but it's clear that the idea was told to him by Madhav Rao with a
#
very clear statement that this will have a nationalist kind of impact and he runs with
#
the idea gets the patronage of Maharaja of Baroda and you know ends up doing something that in some
#
ways the reputation he enjoys among commoner communities or more ordinary people is because
#
of the prints not because of his grand paintings the paintings were in palaces and big halls
#
the prints are what really made him a I wouldn't call a household name but a much more sort of
#
well-known figure across India which in those days was not an easy thing to build that kind
#
of reputation that's why he left Ramaswami Naidu behind Ramaswami Naidu never became a household
#
name whereas he did by taking that very business decision of churning out prints that would appeal
#
to everyone whether it's a Tilak in Maharashtra or Maharaja of Baroda in Gujarat or the Mysore
#
Maharaja in the south everybody loves them and is that a double-edged sword in some way like on the
#
one hand of course there's something that goes across regions and across people and across
#
languages and speaks to people but on the other hand is making a picture of something for the
#
very first time in a sense an act of vandalism simply because if you're painting a goddess and
#
so many different conceptions of the goddess could have existed before but then you make that
#
picture and then that is the picture and then when people think of the goddess to think of that
#
picture by Raja Ravi Verma and have we lost something in doing that by homogenizing a particular
#
idea of something yeah but you know I mean that's why I said in context if you look at it it was a
#
time of homogenizing everybody wanted a common nationalism a common identity a common language
#
Hindi is essentially constructed in the late 19th century to serve as some kind of common unifying
#
language in that time it was part of that homogenizing trend you know and it's clearly left an
#
impact as you said even that serial Ramayana the kind of thing costumes they were they looked like
#
they walked out of a of a Ravi Verma painting because it's clearly left that kind of a cultural
#
impact have we lost something yes we have the diversity the different ways of depicting God
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some in in ways that would not be considered sanitized and proper anymore you know some that
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were very localized very regional a lot of subaltern traditions of art have been lost because
#
he also elevated a Brahminical reading of things not just you know because he came from a highly
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Sanskritized family his mother everybody was scholars in Sanskrit so their reading was also
#
extremely elite not just in class terms but also in caste terms and that became the new gold standard
#
leaving out a lot of other forms of you know representing these ideas even if in his paintings
#
it's always the maid or the asura women who are dark-skinned you know everybody else is fair
#
which is ironic because a lot of the puranic figures he painted in the Puranas they are dark
#
Draupadi is dark but he paints her fair you know Krishna is dark but he won't make him that dark
#
you know Shri Rama also he will not make him very dark whereas the maid will be properly dark
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Ravi Varma's mother-in-law was dark and he painted her as she was but perhaps there was a reason
#
people often don't like their mothers-in-law so yeah and a formidable woman you've described
#
this famous murder case I think of 1862 where this mother-in-law was allegedly having a scene with
#
some outsider to the family and the father-in-law got that person murdered and it was a famous case
#
and whatever you also speak about Raja Ravi Varma's iconic painting there comes papa in this
#
which was really a painting which showed his wife Kochupanki and daughter Mahaprabha and
#
Mahaprabha and her daughter her son oh Mahaprabha and her son sorry and it's called there comes papa
#
and the interesting thing about this which you point out is that so far at that point Kerala
#
society was really matrilineal the women mattered you waited for the mother you waited for the woman
#
the uncle at most yeah the papa was like a very peripheral figure but here that is flipped around
#
the woman and the child are waiting for papa because he's doing this this painting is being
#
displayed for a victorianized audience for whom the papa matters so you know if you asked a
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Malayali of that generation who your father is they would they would answer but the real question is
#
who's your uncle you know that your maternal uncle your mother's brother who's your mother
#
what is her family that is what matters to illustrate my i remember asking my grandfather
#
his father's name i knew and because my grandfather told him and i asked him what is your father's
#
father's name grandfather had no clue he has no idea who his father's father is he knows who knows
#
whose mother's father is but not his father's father because that man was never in the picture
#
there was no question because he was your father himself is from a different family father's father
#
nobody even bothers to care about you know it's not a question that arises naturally when i asked
#
him he actually sat down and wondered why on earth have i never asked this question because even in
#
the 30s when he was growing up it was still a matrilineal sort of culture where people still
#
focused on the mother's side Ravi Varma's painting though although he painted his wife his daughter
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and son and the lady's pointing out someone's approaching and she's pointing out to the baby
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that look someone's coming to a Malayali you would say uncle is coming mother is coming
#
grandmother's coming father is a bit unusual just and we know this is for a victorianized audience
#
because this painting was sent to America to be displayed and at that time if you look in the
#
painting there's also dog in that painting dogs were not kept as pets in high caste hindu houses
#
they were considered unclean the dog was added simply because in western countries the dog
#
represented that kind of domesticity and Ravi Varma wanted to signal that oh look this is an
#
Indian native woman in Malabar but even she is is the same as you even she has a pet dog and she's
#
waiting for her husband he's again trying to construct something that the westerner can
#
relate to easily without taking away too much from his daughter's in quotes native appearance
#
so he's also trying to say different but like you you know that's the the message he's trying
#
to send across in that painting but it's kind of fascinating because when I read about it my
#
assumption was that this it's a sign of Kerala society changing but what you're saying is he's
#
actually also signaling for his new patrons that change is something he's writing he's realized
#
that this change is coming and he's sort of riding that wave by saying by sort of depicting that
#
on on in on canvas you know he wants to show that yes change is coming and this reform is coming in
#
husbands are becoming very important and he's you know joining that conversation as well through
#
the book one of the themes is that there is what you call a triangular contest between the prince
#
between the divan and between the sort of resident or the representative of the british empire so how
#
did that play out in travancore because obviously they kind of got lucky with the divans that they
#
had and you know in the sense madhava rao and say shasri so you know how is that kind of
#
playing out and how do things then proceed like there's clearly a movement through the decades
#
where things eventually start to unravel so take me through that so the thing is a lot of these
#
people are very conflicted the raja wants to progress but only so far he doesn't want to
#
progress so much that his royal power and authority is questioned the divan has is educated in the
#
english style and therefore he also wants to progress but he also wants the raja to become
#
more and more constitutional because in his mind it's important that monarchies become constitutional
#
in the western in the british format which basically means what the divan has more power
#
so there's also on the one hand the raja and the divan are on the same page in terms of answering
#
british propaganda but internally there's a conflict between the raja and divan divan says
#
as the minister as an educated trained minister i should be supreme and i should be in control the
#
raja should not poke his nose too much he should be constitutional the raja is like no no no i've
#
got enough taken away by the british i'm not going to let my minister also reduce my power so there
#
was a conflict going on between them the shesha shasri is actually quite fascinating because he
#
moves to pudukottai and you see these twin pressures that are that are in that state
#
on the one hand the british as well as madhura madhura writes to shesha shasri saying pudukottai
#
is in a terrible state if it continues like this the british will come and take over the state
#
as indians we we are all naturally well-wishers of the states we have to protect the states so
#
you're like a doctor think of yourself as a doctor going there to rescue a patient or think of pudukottai
#
as an insect struggling on water and you have to go and sort of save it so shesha shasri is going
#
into the state with this huge savior complex so his incentives are multiple there he wants to make
#
the state reformed and progressive so it can answer british standards and sort of exceed british
#
standards to an extent he succeeds but in the process he's also an upper caste brahmin man in a
#
kingdom governed by robber caste kings which are technically much lower than him in the caste
#
hierarchy he cannot help but try and brahminize these people as well so in travancode the raja
#
calls himself padmanabhadasa because his deity is padmanabhaswami shesha comes and says okay now
#
you have to start in pudukottai the state deity is brihadamba you have to call yourself brihadambadasa
#
it was a title some rajas used but it was by no means a key title to the throne whereas now
#
shesha shasri uses that and makes the raja this very pious brahminized sort of version of king
#
then similarly shesha shasri dismantles the entire internal structure which depends on
#
color lords you know internal relatives of the royal family and bureaucratizes the state and
#
bureaucratizing a state and centralizing a state is always painful because you're taking away power
#
from traditional institutions and sort of putting it in a secretariat with men who are just qualified
#
men not men who necessarily have roots in the ground and this is the problem a lot of princely
#
states ultimately faced and it caused a lot of internal politics as these states bureaucratized
#
and progressed in courts they would import bureaucrats from madras or from other parts
#
of british india and inevitably most of these bureaucrats would be either tamil brahmins or
#
marashtrian brahmins so when in travancode when in pudukottai when in Mysore people say we have
#
we fighting the foreigner the foreigner refers to these brahmins and these men who come from
#
other parts of india and take over the bureaucracy of these states in Mysore for example it started
#
in the 18th century and through the 19th century it sort of picked up and eventually there was this
#
whole travancore for travancoreans Mysore for Mysoreans we will not have foreigners that kind
#
of an argument so there's so the divan has his own power to preserve his own vision of what the
#
king should be and he's trying to push that the king has a sense of his power and how loyal the
#
divan should be and is trying to push that the british are sitting and watching saying which
#
one can be manipulated at any given time and the maharaja is also trying to see which one can i
#
manipulate at any given time so he the maharaja for example madhav rao at one point has a lot
#
of power maharaja has no option but to listen to him so maharaja doesn't say anything to him he
#
goes to the british resident and complains and gets the british resident to pull madhav rao into
#
line later madhav rao and maharaja have a falling out but they decide let's keep the british out
#
you and i will come to terms ourselves so the british don't get involved we will just close
#
this quarrel between us ourselves nobody has any fixed idea you know this is a time of flux everybody
#
has multiple interests in play which is why again as i said this princely politics was by no means
#
simplistic you know in in rajputana again people will say it's quirky and eccentric the raja goes
#
and he doesn't like going to these imperial functions that the viceroys invite him to
#
because often the udaipur maharana is placed behind baroda for example rajputs will never
#
stand behind a maratha for example at least in those days they used to look down on the marathas
#
to so to have your elephant behind a maratha maharaja was hugely insulting and in rajputana
#
you often your title was hindu suraj you were the son of the hindus so how can you go and stand
#
behind other rulers you have to be first in the queue so these rajas in dealing with the british
#
they would come up with all kinds of diplomatic illnesses raja would come to delhi but conveniently
#
fall ill on the day of the darbar and not show up in the procession or he would come to delhi
#
and then some urgent thing would take him back to udaipur and he would turn around so he could tell
#
the viceroy hey look i came to delhi but i'm sorry something urgent came and i had to go back
#
or he would say i came to delhi so i came for your procession but i'm so sorry i fell ill
#
baroda did this once where it came and he refused to come for one of curzon's darbars by saying an
#
old widow died in the palace therefore i'm ashruddha and i have to do all kinds of rituals
#
therefore i can't come excuses but the thing is and udaipur maharana also has to do this
#
because if he lets the british treat him let's say not as number one his nobles will start
#
chewing his away at his authority so he's got that to deal with he similarly maharana fatih
#
singh of udaipur doesn't even have a divan there was a divan called rai pannalal mehta and and he
#
was an english speaking you know very good on on good terms with the british and all of that
#
and raja started thinking that hold on i think this pannalal is becoming too pally with the british
#
at my cost if he and the residents start getting too comfortable with each other what about my
#
power so he finds interesting strategies to get the british to to sort of you know negotiate with
#
him the british are very keen on a railway project into udaipur raja sits on it for years british
#
they know you must must must finally he says i will if you let me get rid of rai pannalal mehta
#
they say fine you get rid of your minister he gets rid of the minister now to appoint any minister
#
next minister he needs british approval raja simply does not appoint a minister for the next
#
many many many decades he simply doesn't appoint a minister just has secretaries gets the secretaries
#
to fight with each other so he's fully in charge prevents the resident from having too much of a
#
say and this is another one of the baroda maharajas also did this when he was told that any ministerial
#
appointment requires british sanction no minister i will root myself you know a way of subverting
#
that so there's different layers at which and the same figure is acting in in different ways it may
#
seem contradictory it may seem eccentric it may seem strange but it again has an internal logic
#
involving all these players simultaneously doing different things madhav rao may feel loyalty to
#
his british uh you know masters he may feel like he has a cause in in shaping the future of the
#
states he may feel like the ruler has to become constitutional the ruler also has certain common
#
elements with him where he will ally with madhav rao but at certain places he will diverge with
#
madhav rao and ally with the british state instead so again very complex very complicated
#
yeah and fascinating and you said that these guys you know they they would make excuses to the
#
british where they go to delhi and they'd say i've fallen ill and i think that's a credible
#
excuse because one of the things i was struck by was you know every time you mention one of these
#
guys for the first time you're giving the year of birth and the year of death and they all died young
#
like you know visakhan tirunal at one point i think laments that no one in my family lives till 50
#
yeah and aswati tirunal in fact died of obesity i think he was a he he had diabetes then and it
#
became very serious because his weight was out of control and yeah he died of that yeah and you know
#
in that age where medicine was nowhere near where it is it's so kind of precarious from pudukottai
#
you also speak about the precarious state of ramachandra tondamine who was a king till
#
uh 1886 and how after 1854 where the british kind of made the diwan much more powerful he was so
#
dependent on the diwan and the resident for funds that at one point in 1870 he applied for funds to
#
buy a pet cheetah which you know you throw in all these little things randomly in the this thing as
#
if it's something completely normal to buy a pet cheetah the royal who fornicated with elephants
#
how does one fornicate with an elephant i have no idea the thing is the source i've cited i went
#
into it to see where he got the information from he doesn't reveal it because he says it would amount
#
to defamation to name the prince who you know who is suspected of having romantic feelings for
#
elephants so i've said that in the foot yeah i've said that in the footnote which is that you know
#
edward i think it's an edward haines essay where i've said haines has not revealed who this is
#
because he says it's defamatory but it's interesting i mean obviously haines is a respected
#
scholar so it's very likely he got it from a serious so somewhere in the archives there must
#
be a letter where a resident suspects that hold on there's something wrong with this raja the poor
#
that kolhapur maharaja i mentioned the poor chap who was who was beaten to death by his british
#
warden at one time he ran away on a bullock cart pretending to be a car driver because he was so
#
tortured and traumatized by these british tutors that had been appointed to take care of him
#
he ran away you know his mental health was was in tatters and you know it was it's sad you know not
#
all of them like sayajirao survived the tutoring tutoring of the british and became a strong man
#
this guy was the same was a contemporary of sayajirao same age but he completely crumbled
#
and ended up dying as a as a young boy because he couldn't withstand the pressure so the british
#
could be very very cruel to people in pudukottai the rani for example this is where shesha yashastri
#
and the british sort of united the british frowned on rani's because the rani's harems were out of
#
control for the access for the british resident even in darbar they could take control of they
#
could amend ritual but the harem is sealed it's closed you cannot enter as a white man so they
#
always tried to get rid of the power of the women in the harem so they saw that as illicit power
#
illegal power slandered these women are saying they're constantly intriguing and plotting but
#
in reality the women saw the harem as a political space the harem had a legitimate right to advise
#
the king and try and amend policy shesha yashastri doesn't like it either because he's a devan who's
#
an autocrat he likes power in his hands he thinks as i said he has a savior complex about
#
reforming and improving and saving the state so the rani and shesha yashastri also sort of have
#
issues at one point she has a sacrifice of cobras because she's trying to get rid of him through
#
black magic and he's like haha no none of this is going to work this is going to end up making you
#
look worse in the eyes of the british he cuts off access from the harem to the royal bed chamber to
#
the maharajah's the boy maharajah's chambers the devdasis who serve the women they're actually
#
shesha yashastri doesn't like them because the victorians don't like devdasis but in reality
#
the devdasis are a source of intelligence for the ranis they tell they are not parda women
#
devdasis can move everywhere they're dancing girls in the court in the temple they're hearing what
#
the people are saying and they're overhearing conversations in court they report this to the
#
rani so the ranis are not surrounded by you know the wrong type of women as shesha yashastri thinks
#
they've actually got a network of informants which he's cutting off so all of these things
#
even an intervention of the harem and preventing devdasis from entering is a political act it is
#
about saying you are a woman your job is not political you sit in the harem and serve the king
#
in the bed chamber you will not get involved in politics and i will cut off all sources of
#
political information from you that's why i said as you peel back the layers you start realizing
#
that all these things have meaning what the british sort of played down saying oh you know
#
foolish rani surrounded by devdasis no she's surrounded by a network of informants who are
#
telling her what's happening in the kingdom and as you described what shasri also does is that he
#
installs his own nephew as a tutor yeah yeah as a junior tutor yeah and his own nephew is supposed
#
to be like a smaller mirror image of his which i found quite funny and and the future raja at
#
that time martandabhairav he is also such a fascinating character that he can't you know
#
he can't find an indian woman he likes so he marries this australian he meets in a hotel
#
molly fink who's called molly fink yeah when the king hears of this he says what kind of
#
name is molly fink firstly raja marrying an australian woman was quite scandalous at that time
#
and this guy he actually gives a speech why he says you know because of the way i've been brought
#
up and so i'm so cosmopolitan etc he's basically taking a jab at the british because they have
#
raised him to be this very cosmopolitan figure he's basically saying you've made me so cosmopolitan
#
that i must have a white wife i cannot have any local wife you know these were things the british
#
were horrified at indian maharajas having white ranis because it opened up all kinds kinds of
#
issues you know half breed prince you know would he be able to succeed to the throne would he be a
#
hindu or would he be a christian questions the british had no interest in dealing with plus of
#
course pure racism you know a white man marrying a brown woman is fine a brown man even if he's a
#
king marrying a white woman was a huge threat in that time yeah and you describe shastri's
#
dilemma also very well that dilemma of conservatism versus patriotism which would have been i think a
#
dilemma that so many people would have had to face within themselves right not just shasri but even i
#
think all our early liberal leaders from rana day to go clay to whatever would have kind of been
#
trapped within that that you want to kind of maintain the order of things away in which things
#
have worked you don't want chaos you want don't want anarchy to be loosed upon the world but at
#
the same time you you know you you get this sense of this larger cause that is kind of coming you've
#
already spoken at baroda about length your fourth chapter is about that which is really quite
#
superb and should be a long long web series you know so i would just not want to go through your
#
entire book in detail because one we can't it's it's a book with so much detail and two i'd
#
just like readers to pick up the book for themselves so some broad parting questions in in terms of
#
your historical inquiry what sort of interests you like one obviously is carilla you start with that
#
urge that this is where i come from these characters that i've heard about are so interesting
#
let me find out more and then because you're in pune because you're in maharashtra that whole
#
decan period which no one talks about which is neither the mughals nor shivaji and you know
#
and all of this in a sense is a continuation of that but what drives you for the future like are
#
there currents of history which interest you more than others are there personalities which interest
#
you more than others figures which interest you more than others what can we expect from you in
#
times to come the common theme is just all these subjects are marginalized in one way or the other
#
you know we often think of marginalization through a prism of class which is that marginalized must
#
be lower class people but in reality the princely states are a marginalized historical subject
#
you know the the the maharani of travancore in the first book was a marginalized historical figure
#
the decan is marginalized under these towering figures like shivaji, yadav, the mughals and so
#
on that's also been marginalized so for me it's always these stories that somehow are fascinating
#
but not enough people have made an effort to tell those stories not enough people have tried to
#
bring that into the limelight that really is what motivates me and sort of drives me to research on
#
on things that you know are slightly different and which i feel deserve greater attention
#
as i said you know the princely states are so fascinating to really reduce them to this
#
cliche of elephant and dancing girls is quite tragic because not only does it do an injustice
#
in the fact that as i said 40 percent of the country was under princely rulers so essentially
#
erasing or eclipsing 40 percent of the territory and its internal histories from what we call
#
modern indian history even in understanding how indian political structures adapted to
#
modernity and colonialism how indian political figures dealt with colonialism it wasn't just
#
gandhiji and his satyagraha it wasn't just dada bhai navroji and his economic drain theory
#
it was also multiple other characters in that same time each of them trying to find a different
#
answer to the same question ultimately one answer may have triumphed and been become the big answer
#
but there were other people trying to find solutions to the same problem and i think
#
i think 70 years after independence we should start like looking at these stories just because
#
they're so fascinating and interesting and they tell you about the political conundrums people
#
face the political questions people have to grapple with the the contradictory impulses they feel
#
you know you mentioned shesha shastri conservative because he's a brahmin man
#
an upper caste brahmin english educated man but also a modernizer in terms of he wants
#
roads and bridges etc but not too much social reform these tell you about the kind of internal
#
battles that human beings have how human beings are also flawed even the greatest of them are
#
flawed there are issues they have their prejudices they are also creatures of their time and frankly
#
in today's sometimes ultra-vogue times i think it also helps suggest that we should treat people
#
with more sympathy because you know people are complex people are not perfect ideal versions of
#
what they ought to be people have a mix of emotions and we should have the maturity to deal with it
#
that way same with history you know it's not about saying were the maharaja's good or were the
#
maharaja's bad that's not what is interesting to me the interesting thing is what were the maharajas
#
even if they had elephants what does the elephant represent even if there are 20 dancing girls why
#
are the dancing girls there what is this this court ritual supposed to represent those questions are
#
something we should investigate instead of simply saying oh elephants dancing girls not interesting
#
they didn't contribute anything bye bye everything if you ask a question of it will throw up some
#
fascinating answers and and in many ways complicate our understanding of things like nationalism the
#
evolution of india as an idea and many of the big questions of history this may not give you this
#
may not be the answer to it but it'll shed some more light in explaining what those answers are
#
i think rather than use the term complicate our understanding i'd say deepen our understanding
#
and of course as a reader i shared that fascination for a marginalized characters b
#
characters which defy a simple narrative where you're kind of exploring the multitudes that i
#
talk about on my show unpeeling those layers and like i look at contemporary times and we of course
#
are more people alive today than ever before just in sample size of things that are happening there
#
is so much more say in any 10 year period than say a 100 year period from the past there are so many
#
histories kind of taking place in real time there are stories of the marginalized to be told here
#
as well layers to uncover and all of that so when you sort of think of current times and when you
#
think of history one is it only what you consider historical that is already sort of there is
#
something fixed and you can go back and you can uncover layers of it that interests you or are
#
you also interested in contemporary stories and whatever the answer to that is what would you say
#
is a dividing line for you like after watch point in time are you really not interested in kind of
#
getting into that or is it because there is such a surfeit of material available around you today
#
that you're like enough people to do that you know let me write about the Deccan in 1800 the present
#
on its own terms doesn't interest me that much frankly for that you have good journalists who
#
are going out and putting those stories out there what interests me is perhaps making sense of why
#
the present is in its current shape by looking at the past so in that sense if i had a cut off i
#
would say 1947 you know independence for me i'm interested in the period before that really the
#
modern period 18th century till the mid 20th century perhaps a little bit longer into the
#
20th century but that is my face because i see a lot of our current political institutions a lot
#
of the ideas a lot of the historical experiences that has made us the people we are with our
#
strengths but also our insecurities a lot of the the reason the map of india is the way it is
#
a lot of this depends on events that happened in these centuries of course the other centuries
#
have had an impact but practically speaking this is what appeals to me and i want to keep working
#
on on that the present in its own right my skill set is not adequate for for sort of unraveling
#
that that i think you have journalists and people who can go into the story and and dig them out i
#
would rather dig out things from a different time and try and make sense of the present you know by
#
explaining why those times have have resulted in this system that we have now so on that note
#
while we are shaped by what happened we are also shaped by what we think happened right which is
#
all of these kind of narratives that are all around us and are fighting us and i think we
#
brought this up at the start of the episode that we are you know there is narrative warfare all
#
around us how much does history really matter how much does it matter what actually happened
#
or how many people Akbar may have slaughtered or how many temples Aurangzeb may have built
#
to me at at one level it should not matter at all and yet it is these narratives that seem to
#
matter and not history itself do you sometimes think that this is an insurmountable battle to
#
fight all of history is frankly about narratives right it is about narratives when i talk about
#
the princely states it's they were marginalized because of a British narrative you know everything
#
ultimately is about how we make sense of the past and this is not just our generation all
#
generations try to link themselves to the past when a king you know crowns himself and then claims
#
he's a long-lost descendant of Arjuna or Krishna or whatever he's connecting himself to something
#
that is recognized as supreme and wonderful and great all of history is about narratives and this
#
this sort of constant conversation and battle between narratives to say which one or the other
#
defines not just the present but what shape the future will take you know the current government
#
has a huge interest and investment in shaping a historical narrative because that will enable
#
them to guide and shape the future so the three are in some ways linked that way but you know i'll
#
just end on one quote by Srinath Raghavan which i think he said in a print interview but it's a
#
very wise line and i think it teaches historians also humility and a certain amount of modesty
#
which is that history does not teach any lessons historians do and i think that's a wonderful line
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and you know that's uh it teaches us that at the end of the day we are also in the business of
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narratives uh we i never make the claim that i've uncovered the truth you know i have uncovered
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certain evidence certain things i've connected the dots and said that this is why this happened
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and these are the things that happened but it is my narrative ultimately i am i am by no means
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claiming that this is some kind of truth that will never change in time in future somebody else may
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counter my my version of events with another reading of of of history and that's perfectly
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fine history you know recently somebody invited me for a debate i couldn't participate saying
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should history be rewritten and it struck me in my head that history is always being rewritten
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you know politicians writing it is one thing that is a political uh football that they're sort of
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kicking around but history is about the past being constantly rewritten retold revisited
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reanalyzed that is exactly what history is about so to say should indian history be rewritten is
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kind of redundant because it's always been i saw an ad on twitter for that and i i thought the
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question was kind of vague but either ways you know i mean uh whether history is rewritten or
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not history should at least be read and you make it easy to do that with your wonderful narratives
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and your incredible storytelling so thank you so much for your time and insights today and for
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coming all the way to andheri from puna although you didn't come just for this but thank you anyway
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and thank you for writing these great books more power to you thank you for having me for the
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fourth time on your podcast hopefully this is uh longer than my first longest episode
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you've beaten your own record but you are nowhere close to the longest but you've at least
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next time next time next time on that hopeful note thanks see you bye
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if you enjoyed listening to this episode head on over to your nearest bookstore online or offline
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and pick up false allies india's maharajahs in the age of ravi varma by manu pillay you can follow
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him on twitter at unampille that's one word you can follow me at amit varma a m i t v a r m a you
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can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene unseen dot i n binge listen older
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episodes explore history my friends did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen
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if so would you like to support the production of the show you can go over to scene unseen dot
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i n slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank
