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| Searching for maharanis at Jagmandir Palace in Udaipur |
One of my favorite
parts of a recent India trip was staying at the City Palace in Udaipur. This is the seat of
the Mewar kingdom—a dynasty of Rajput kings who were never conquered by the Moghals
or British. Mewar joined with other Rajput kingdoms in northern India to become
the state of Rajasthan in the Democracy of India after 1947.
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| Guest room view at Shiv Niwas Palace hotel within the Udaipur palace complex |
While the Government of India doesn’t provide funds to
support the old maharajas' lifestyles—and their properties—the nobles at least
had the pleasure of retaining their titles and homes. The Udaipur City Palace has
a maharaja with wife and children still living in their own guarded residence—a
proximity that adds glamour to the visit.
But in the historic section of the palace that serves as a
museum, I began revising my ideas about what it was like to be a maharani. The zenana section in which royal women were protected from view was hot and shadowy due to the windows being carved jali screens rather than open to views. I
was overcome by a sensation of being closed in. Even the women’s outdoor
courtyard was small and dull, compared to other outdoor spaces at the palace.
After that short tour, the life of an Indian maharani seemed like imprisonment.
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| The book I found at Ames Library |
But there's nothing like hearing the story from a maharani hersel.
Recently, I was at the Ames Library of South Asia in Minneapolis. I came across an old book titled Autobiography of an Indian Princess. I knew I had to read it—and thank goodness I was able to find a reprinted edition on line to add to my own library.
Recently, I was at the Ames Library of South Asia in Minneapolis. I came across an old book titled Autobiography of an Indian Princess. I knew I had to read it—and thank goodness I was able to find a reprinted edition on line to add to my own library.
Autobiography of An
Indian Princess was penned in 1921 by Sunity Devee, the 57-year-old Dowager
Maharani of Cooch Behar, a small northeastern kingdom near Bengal that remained
independent of British rule. Actually, the title’s a bit of a misnomer. Sunity
was a maharani, which means queen. The English government insisted on calling Indian
maharajas and maharanis “princes” and “princesses” so as not to overshadow the
Empress of India: Queen Victoria.
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| Maharani Sunity Devee photographed in London |
Sunity was a commoner born of “good family” in Calcuta. Her
father, Keshub Chunder Sen, was a famous minister and social reformer who
converted from Hinduism to the Brahmo Samaj, a faith founded by Bengali Hindus
who wanted to worship one deity (Brahma) rather than multiple Hindu gods and
goddesses. The British in India thought highly of Mr. Sen and worked hard to
persuade him to allow a match between 13-year-old Sunity and 16-year-old
Nripendra, the crown prince of Cooch Behar. Sunity’s father had worked hard to ensure
passage of a law setting the minimum age of marriage for Hindu girls living in
British India at 14. The bride's tender age resulted in considerable verbal
backlash against Keshub Chunder Sen, although the actual marital cohabitation did not
begin until she was sixteen and her husband nineteen and returned from his
schooling in England.
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| Sunity's sons photographed in London during their school days: the two eldest boys became maharajas |
Sunity and Nripendra’s arranged marriage turned out to be a
very happy one. The royal couple shared interests such as traveling, fashion and
jewelry, literature and art, and high society. They had four sons and three
daughters, insuring the security of the royal line—which pleased Cooch Behar’s
population. Sunity spoke just Bengali
at the time of her marriage, but learned other Indian languages and English
fluently. She was constantly in London and became arguably the most popular Indian woman
in British society. Sunity was friends with Cornelia Sorabji, the Parsi woman
lawyer who represented the interests of many Indian noblewomen in the early 1900s. Cornelia
stayed with Sunity in the zenana at Cooch Behar so the two could discuss books. Sunity and Cornelia tried to establish a nursing school for Indian women, but it never came to be.
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| Sunity's granddaughter Ayesha, on far right of one of her brothers, became a maharani and then was elected member of India's parliament |
Reading Sunity’s autobiography, I learned that in Cooch Behar, purdah and zenana were customs observed at home only. This
meant Sunity traveled in a heavily curtained palanquin so the country’s people
could not catch sight of her face, and she cooked and prayed and concentrated on childcare and
lived in the palace zenana. She obeyed her husband's directive not to ride or play tennis. When Sunity was away from Cooch Behar, though, she posed
happily for photographs in French couture gowns.
And while Sunity adored her British royal friends in
Britain, she chafed at the way the British in India treated Indians. In exchange
for the right to rule over their own lands, maharajas were forced to pay annual
taxes to Britain—taxes that could be raised if the British political agent took
a dislike to the maharaja. The British government also had the power to
investigate a kingdom’s accounts at any time, and to even choose a successor to
the throne if the maharaja didn’t have a son.
The controls over royalty were as tight or even tighter than
for everyday Indians. A maharaja had no right to travel outside of India without
getting permission from his British political agent. This agent might tell him where
his sons must go away to school, and they created their own boarding schools
for Indian noblemen inside India where they received a biased education
(Maharaja Nrirenda himself went to such a place before finishing up in
England). The elaborate supervision seemed meant to create a line of obedient princely states.
Sunity’s boys were all educated abroad at the order of
the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal—despite her wish to have them stay longer at
home. As a result, the sons came home from Eton speaking French and Greek, but
having forgotten their local language.
The Cooch Behar royal family was regarded throughout India
as the most westernized royals—and in most eyes, this was not a compliment. They were envied, but not really able to
live lives of their choosing. For instance, when Sunity's eldest son, the crown
prince Rajey, finished his Oxford education and wanted to work with his
father’s ministers in the Cooch Behar government, the plan was refused. The British
government said he had to join Lord Curzon’s Army Cadet Corps instead—a fancy
honor guard. This diversion kept him from learning what he needed to know about Cooch
Behar to be an effective ruler.
Rajey and his younger brother Jit grew up to serve as maharajas of Cooch Behar. The three daughters (Girlie, Pretty and Baby) were taught
to ride, play tennis and dance, and all had sophisticated educations. The parents matched Girlie to a respectable, non-royal Calcutta boy of Brahmo faith and
allowed Pretty and Baby to marry Englishmen and live in England. Ironically, the Cooch Behar princesses’ lifestyles in the 1920s were too advanced to make them suitable for
marrying Indian maharajas at the turn of the century. And the England that both enthralled and frustrated Sunity was the place where she thought her daughters would do best.
I was fascinated with the idea of princesses when I was a child—and in my
adulthood I’ve turned into a serious India royalty buff, thanks to the
fascinating backstories of many of India's princely states. In addition to The Autobiography of an Indian Princess by Sunity Devee, I am digging Lucy Moore's Maharanis; The Extraordinary Tale of Four Indian Queens and Their Journey from Purdah to Parliament and Posing for Posterity; Royal Indian Portraits by Pramod Kumar. There’s a great series on the Indian NDTV channel called
Royal Reservation gives the viewer a quirky, inside tour of various palaces and
has candid interviews with the royals who still live there. Watching one of
the programs, I was intrigued to learn that a Muslim begum (equivalent of
maharani) in Gujarat hopes to open the doors to her palace's zenana as a hotel for women tourists.
