The idea of university in a princely state

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
K. Srinivasulu
Keyword(s):  
Princely State

FOREIGN SERVANTS IN AN INDIAN PRINCELY STATE BHOPAL (19TH — EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-163
Author(s):  
E. Yu. Vanina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Central India ◽  
High Status ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
British Colonial

Bhopal, one of the ‘princely states’ and vassals of the British Empire (Central India), enjoyed special favour with its sovereign. Throughout a century, it was ruled by four generations of women who gained themselves, in India and outside, the reputation of enlightened and benevolent monarchs. Archival documents and memoirs allow glancing at the hitherto hidden world of domestic servants who not only ensured the comfortable and luxurious life of the princely family, but its high status too, both for fellow Indians and for British colonial administrators. Among the numerous servants employed by the Bhopal rulers, freely hired local residents prevailed. However, the natives of some other countries, quite far from India, were conspicuous as well: the article highlights West Europeans, Georgians and Africans (“Ethiopians”). In the princely household, foreign servants performed various functions. While British butlers and Irish or German nannies and governesses demonstrated the ruling family` s “Westernized” lifestyle, Georgian maids and African lackeys showcased the affluence and might of the Bhopal queens. Some foreign servants came to Bhopal by force: the reputation of ‘progressive’ was no obstacle for the Bhopal queens to use slave labour. When such cases became public, the British authorities responded with mild reproaches: condemning slavery, they nevertheless loathed any discord with their trusted vassals.

A Renaissance Marriage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn James
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Spousal Relationship ◽  
Prescriptive Literature ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Princely State

Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, this book analyses the marriage of Isabella d’Este, one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance, and her less well-known husband, Francesco Gonzaga, ruler of the small northern Italian principality of Mantua (r. 1484–1519). It offers fresh insights into the nature of political marriages during the early modern period by investigating the forces which shaped the lives of an aristocratic couple who, within several years of their wedding, had to deal with the political challenges posed by the first conflicts of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and, later, the scourge of the Great Pox. The study humanizes a relationship that was organized for entirely strategic reasons, but had to be inhabited emotionally if it was to produce the political and dynastic advantages that had inspired the match. The letter exchanges of Isabella and Francesco over twenty-nine years, as well as their correspondence with relatives and courtiers, show how their personal rapport evolved and how they cooperated in the governance of a princely state. Hitherto examined mainly from literary and religious perspectives and on the basis of legal evidence and prescriptive literature, early modern marriage emerges here in vivid detail, offering the reader access to aspects of the lived experience of an elite Renaissance spousal relationship. The book also contributes to our understanding of the history of emotions, of politics and military conflict, of childbirth, childhood, and family life, and of the history of disease and medicine.

Prisons and Prison life in Princely State: A Historical Study of Cooch Behar

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Ram Krishna Biswas
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
Princely State

The present paper deals with the issue of prisons and their life in the Princely State of Cooch Behar. Cooch Behar was princely state during colonial period in India. With the advent of colonial power in India; the princely state had indirect relations with British power. Due to the contact with colonial power, the indigenous native rule in India became modified and codification of law and orders, regulations were introduced in the line of British pattern. The primitive systems of jails and prisons confinement were revised accordance with the new light of reformation, and in India especially in the princely rule modified. However, in this content the main aim is to find out the condition of the prisoners in the jails and police custody under the rule of Princely State.

Sport and the Imperial Bond: The 1911 ‘All-India’ Cricket Tour of Great Britain

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 261-285
Author(s):  
Prashant Kidambi
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Summary This article explores the interplay of sport, politics and public diplomacy through a case study of the first ‘Indian’ cricket tour of Great Britain in 1911, an extraordinary venture peopled by an improbable cast of characters. Led by the young Maharaja Bhupindar Singh, the newly enthroned ruler of the princely state of Patiala, the team contained in its ranks cricketers who were drawn from different Indian regions and religious communities. The article examines the politics of this intriguing cricket tour against a wider backdrop of changing Indo-British relations and makes three key points. First, it suggests that the processes of ‘imperial globalization’ that were presided over by the British in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked an important epoch in the evolving relationship between sport and diplomacy. In particular, it highlights the role of sporting tours as instruments of public diplomacy in the age of empire. Second, it shows how the organization of the 1911 tour reflected the workings of a trans-national ‘imperial class regime’ that had developed around cricket in colonial India from the late nineteenth century onwards. Finally, the article considers the symbolic significance that came to be attached to the tour, both in imperial Britain and in colonial India.

scholarly journals Alternative Modernity of the Princely states- Evaluating the Architecture of Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Niyati Jigyasu
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Urban Planner ◽  
Built Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Princely State ◽  
The City ◽  
Lasting Influence

The first half of the 20th century was a turning point in the history of India with provincial rulers making significant development that had positive contribution and lasting influence on India’s growth. They served as architects, influencing not only the socio-cultural and economic growth but also the development of urban built form. Sayajirao Gaekwad III was the Maharaja of Baroda State from 1875 to 1939, and is notably remembered for his reforms. His pursuit for education led to establishment of Maharaja Sayajirao University and the Central Library that are unique examples of Architecture and structural systems. He brought many known architects from around the world to Baroda including Major Charles Mant, Robert Chrisholm and Charles Frederick Stevens. The proposals of the urban planner Patrick Geddes led to vital changes in the urban form of the core city area. New materials and technology introduced by these architects such as use of Belgium glass in the flooring of the central library for introducing natural light were revolutionary for that period. Sayajirao’s vision for water works, legal systems, market enterprises have all been translated into unique architectural heritage of the 20th century which signifies innovations that had a lasting influence on the city’s social, economic, administrative structure as well as built form of the city and its architecture. This paper demonstrates how the reformist ideas and vision of an erstwhile provincial ruler lead to significant architecture at the turn of the century in Princely state of Vadodara.

Migration, Citizenship and Belonging in Hyderabad (Deccan), 1946–1956

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
History Of ◽  
Princely State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
Foreign Birth ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
The Way

AbstractWhilst the history of the Indian diaspora after independence has been the subject of much scholarly attention, very little is known about non-Indian migrants in India. This paper traces the fate of Arabs, Afghans and other Muslim migrants after the forcible integration of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union in 1948. Because these non-Indian Muslims were doubly marked as outsiders by virtue of their foreign birth and their religious affiliation, the government of India wished to deport these men and their families. But the attempt to repatriate these people floundered on both political and legal shoals. In the process, many were left legally stateless. Nonetheless, migrants were able to creatively change the way they self-identified both to circumvent immigration controls and to secure greater privileges within India.

An Inheritance of Loss: The king's debt, women's wills, and public charity in princely Mysore

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
JANAKI NAIR
Keyword(s):  
Customary Law ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Princely State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Anglo Indian

Abstract In 1845, the banker Damodar Dass of Srirangapatna loaned a large sum of money to Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III of Mysore. For the next seven decades, until the unpaid debt was turned into public charity, the multiple claims of Damodar Dass's heirs to this inheritance led the colonial state and the Mysore government (especially after 1881) to form a substantial archive. Occupying the foreground of this archive were the legal dilemmas posed by the transition from direct to indirect British rule in Mysore, involving the fate of kingship, debt, reciprocality, and masculine honour. Other legal dilemmas concerned the relationship between scriptural and customary law and, in particular, the portability of customary law between regions that were unevenly exposed to Anglo-Indian legal regimes. The claims also reveal the important ways in which a new moral order was being shaped as the relationship between the colonial regime and the princely state (or later its bureaucracy) was defined and the status of four female heirs was called into question. Additionally, the archive has the potential to disturb the univocality of this statist discourse. A third narrative may be uncovered that involves the ‘small voices of history’. What hopes did this era of profound transformation hold for women of the non-domestic sphere? What, moreover, can the women in these archives be heard to say about the truth of their times?

Federating the Raj: Hyderabad, sovereign kingship, and partition

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUNIL PURUSHOTHAM
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
British India ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Muslim Majority

AbstractThis article explores the idea of federation in late-colonial India. Projects of federation sought to codify the uncodified and fragmented sovereign landscape of the British Raj. They were ambitious projects that raised crucial questions about sovereignty, kingship, territoriality, the potential of constitutional law in transforming the colonial state into a democratic one, and India's political future more broadly. In the years after 1919, federation became a capacious model for imagining a wide array of political futures. An all-India Indian federation was seen as the most plausible means of maintaining India's unity, introducing representative government, and overcoming the Hindu–Muslim majority–minority problem. By bringing together ‘princely’ India and British India, federation made the Indian states central players in late-colonial contestations over sovereignty. This article explores the role of the states in constitutional debates, their place in Indian political imaginaries, and articulations of kingship in late-colonial India. It does so through the example of Hyderabad, the premier princely state, whose ruler made an unsuccessful bid for independence between 1947 and 1948. Hyderabad occupied a curious position in competing visions of India's future. Ultimately, the princely states were a decisive factor in the failure of federation and the turn to partition as a means of overcoming India's constitutional impasse.

scholarly journals Politicized Literature: Dramas, Democracy and the Mysore Princely State

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Vijayakumar M. Boratti
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Princely State

Literary writings such as poetry, drama or novel in colonial India manifest themselves into, react or subscribe to the larger discourse of colonialism or nationalism; rarely do they hold uniformity in their articulations. As colonial experiences and larger nationalist consciousness varied from region to region, cultural articulations—chiefly dramas—not only assumed different forms but also illustrated different thematic concerns. Yet, studies on colonial drama, thus far, have paid attention to either colonialism/orientalism or nationalism. There is a greater focus on British India in such studies. However, the case of princely states demands a momentary sidestep from the dichotomy of colonialism versus nationalism to understand the colonial dramas. The slow and gradual entry of nationalism in the princely states did not have to combat the British chiefly and directly. Much before its full blossom in the princely states, it had to grapple with a range of issues such as monarchy, democratic institutions, constitutionalism, bureaucracy and other pressing issues locally. In the present article, the Kannada dramas of Devanahalli Venkataramanaiah Gundappa (DVG) in the early decades of the twentieth century are examined to throw light on the ways in which they act as political allegories which imagine and debate democracy and its repercussions in the social and political spheres of the Mysore princely state.

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