Life & Style | General
The powerful and the glorious
A celebration of the remarkable lives and objets d'art of India's royal families
- By Jan Dalley, Financial Times
- Published: 18:33 October 29, 2009
- A 1925 Cartier 409 carat emerald belt buckle of Mogul emperor Shah Jahan
- Image Credit: EPA
All eyes were dazzled when Maharaja Syajee Rao Gaekwar of Baroda stood at the door, a crystallised rainbow — he was weighted down head, neck, chest and arms, fingers, ankles with such a sight and wonder of diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls as would be “the loot of many a rich town”.
This was the report of the amazed tour chronicler accompanying the Prince of Wales on a visit to Baroda, India, in 1875. “And,” continued the breathless account, “the little gentleman has more at home.”
This glittering figure, the “little gentleman” who could hardly move under the weight of gold, silver and gemstones, was 12 at the time. And how amazed the boy-maharaja must have been at the sight of the British royal personage, who would have been wearing a strict Victorian frock coat, with possibly just a tiny glint of a diamond in his tiepin — a vision of power in black and white. It could hardly have been a greater contrast in styles.
Such an elaborate personal display of wealth, for the Indian rulers, was not just a question of peacockery, nor was it merely to show off successful rule and the military prowess that ensured it — it had deeper significance. In many of the kingdoms of India, the person of the ruler was invested not only with the whole notion of the body politic, the social order itself but also with quasi-divine properties. He was half-king, half-deity and he must shine accordingly.
In addition, it was considered good royal behaviour to be a patron of the arts and crafts. All this, along with the important performing arts of dance, music and poetry, resounded still further to the prestige of the ruler and the wider fame of his court.
The unique combination of circumstances — limitless wealth, a culture of display, a tradition of artistic patronage, foreign influences, plus the need and opportunity to show off one's status to peers and superiors alike — led to a remarkable era in the history of taste.
Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts on at the V&A in London, begins in the early 18th century, when the Mogul empire began its decline, and ends at the independence of India in 1947, when the rulers ceded their territories to the new state and their titles were formally abolished. This period was what Anna Jackson, the exhibition's chief curator, considers a heyday for the maharajas: They flourished in the political uncertainty of the last years of Mogul rule, then made an accommodation with the British that was often advantageous.
Both powers in India — the Mogul (Muslim adventurers who came from the north and ruled from 1526 to 1858) and the British (Christian adventurers who came from the West and ruled from 1858 to 1947) — harnessed the resources of the indigenous rulers. There was much crossover, too, in the arts, with the Mogul/Islamic influence meeting the Hindu traditions and becoming a powerful element in the arts and crafts.
Well before the British finally deposed the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, in 1858, Mogul power had been on the wane. From the early 19th century onwards, Indian rulers had begun to enter into a similar sort of subordinate relationship with the new set of incomers, accepting Britain as a “paramount” power in return for protection of their borders and internal security — and having to put up with a large and increasing degree of interference in their internal affairs. After three centuries of relationship with the Moguls, the British suzerainty must have felt to the rulers like a familiar sort of arrangement, easy enough to manage to one's own advantage.
The British, of course, made political use of the rulers as well, harnessing “tradition” as a block to social progress and a bulwark against the growth of Indian nationalism. They also kept the Indian rulers in line in many ways. Names matter, and while “maharaja” means “great king”, the British always referred to them as “princes” — a subtle but firm demotion.
Until 1947, the maharajas' immense wealth was undiminished. Their wealth and their taste began to show up on the international scene as well. From their traditional court jewellers they moved easily on to commissions for Cartier and Boucheron in Paris, who made modern designs for the breathtaking Indian gems.
As Western-style furniture came to be common in Indian palaces, there came a flood of orders to Western factories and designers as well as to the Indian makers who became adept at style-fusion.
It is this era of change that the V&A's show documents and the range of objects is almost too great to list. Elaborate howdahs turn into silver barouches then into Rolls-Royces. Jewelled scabbards are replaced by beautifully inlaid sporting shotguns — some of them made for women.
The ruler's carpeted dais, from which he would decide affairs of state, is taken away in favour of a sleek art deco writing desk made in France or a stark Modernist dressing table ordered from Berlin; dinner services of hundreds of pieces arrived from Spode and Royal Worcester. The formality of court painting is replaced by photography, with the jazz-loving Maharaja and Maharani of Indore posing for Man Ray in 1930.
The achievement of this exhibition should be to show us, through its objects and images (about a third of them from the V&A's own collection), a unique way of life. Despite rapid progress towards Westernisation, on one hand, and towards Indian independence on the other, it was not always in a smooth line, especially where women were concerned. The Indian rulers had adopted from their Muslim conquerors the practice of keeping women in purdah and the lives of the women within the palaces shows here in a selection of objects — including dumb-bells used for exercise.
The memoirs of Gayatri Devi, the third wife of the glamorous, polo-mad Maharaja of Jodhpur, describe the “almost medieval” zenana (women's quarters) of her 1920s childhood, where the women had never seen the front of the palace in which they lived. And despite her own tennis-playing, trouser-wearing lifestyle, she found herself bundled into a curtained “purdah car” at Calcutta railway station during her honeymoon — although life at Ascot or on the Champs Elysées was very different. It was a life of contrasts.
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