Dan Snow's History Hit - The Fall and Rise of India's Royal Families

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

One aspect of India's independence that is often overlooked is the role of India's princely states; the Maharajas. During the Raj, these states had been semi-autonomous and not actually part of the British Empire. They did however rule with the permission of the British Government and were really puppet sovereign figures. However, when India got its independence after the Second World War these state's became a problem that had to be resolved for the new Indian state. John Zubrzycki, author of The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India's Most Glamorous Royal Family, is an expert on what happened to these royal families. He joins the podcast today to explain the structure of these royal states, their relationships with each other and how they were brought into the republic of India sometimes using force. In particular, he tells the story of the Royal House of Jaipur and Maharaja Man Singh II and his wife Maharani Gayatri Devi who was India’s mid-century golden couple rubbing shoulders with the Windsor's and the Kennedy's. This is a story of the end of empire, political fights, wealth, fashion and celebrity. 

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. One of the forgotten stories of the Indian independence struggle,

which we've covered several times on the podcast before, is the role of India's royal families, the Maharajas of the princely states of India, which so formally were semi-autonomous within the British Empire. They're not actually part of the administrative structure of the British Raj. They ruled with the permission of the British Raj or the British government. So they were kind of, in a way, puppet sovereign figures. But legally, it was a bit of a knot to undo when India got its independence after the Second World War. John Zubriskie has worked in India as a foreign correspondent. He's a diplomat. He's an author. He's a historian. And he's told the story

of these royal families, how they were bounced into the Republic of India, whether they liked it or not, sometimes through the use of force. He focuses in particular on the Royal House of Jaipur, who during the height of the Cold War were some of the most fashionable, famous celebrities on planet Earth. They were India's mid-century golden couple, like the Kennedys or the Windsors here in the UK. It's the story of the end of empire, of independence, of political fights, fashion, of celebrity. It's got it all. It's got it all. So I thought we'd get John on the podcast to have a little chat about it. It's interesting stuff. If you want to listen to other podcasts about Indian independence, we've got those. We've talked to Anita Rani about her traumatic family

story. We talked to Yasmin Khan about how independence came about. Please become a subscriber to history hit we've got all the back episodes of the podcast on there without any ads at all so if you just go to history hit dot tv history hit dot tv you get all the back episodes of the podcast you also get all the amazing tv shows that we're running at the moment huge interest recently in our women of iran what happens the women of iran following the revolution that's proving very very popular on the channel at the moment so enjoy this interview John, about India's royal families and head over to historyhit.tv afterwards. Get yourself a subscription. Enjoy.

John, thanks for coming on the pod. Hi, Dan. Thanks very much for having me on the show. Okay. First of all, how many royal families are there after independence and what kind of happens to them all? Look, if you took a map of pre-independence India, you would see this patchwork of princely states, 562 in all, give or take a few, scattered all over the subcontinent. Some were just a couple of acres in size, so for a population of maybe just a few hundred, ranging up to Hyderabad, which was the largest of the princely states. It was about the size of France and had a population of 16 million. The British, in their mania for organisation and

classification, gave about 120 of these princely states gun salutes, ranging from nine guns up to 21 guns. When Lord Wavell became the viceroy in 1943, he devised a mnemonic to remember who those five 21 gun salutes were, and that was Hot Kippers Make a Good Breakfast. Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, Waliul and Baroda. hydropad kashmir mysore waleo and baroda jaipur the subject of my book was a 17 gun salute about the size of switzerland and with a population of around three million yeah it's an under reported story in the independence of india pakistan but in the last days the raj did these royal families have any power or they like dukes and earls here in the UK? You had sort of huge houses and traditional land and things, but didn't actually have any formal role within the government of these areas?

Look, the states were a very disparate group, as you can imagine, given the range and size, the geographical spread. And the amount of autonomy they had, the amount of power they had, depended very much on the treaties that they signed with the British after 1818, which is when the British took control of India. So some, particularly the larger ones, had significant control over their internal affairs, whereas the smaller ones tended to be, as you said, like the dukes and lords in the UK with very little formal role or power. But what they couldn't do was to declare war or have their own foreign policy. Even a state the size of Hyderabad couldn't send an ambassador abroad, for instance.

They couldn't refer to themselves as kings. They sat on goodies, not thrones. That's because only the king of England could be a king and only British royalty could sit on a throne. The British had the final say in successions, in the appointment of Dewans or prime ministers, in whom they could even marry. In the case of Jaipur, Sawai Mansingh, the Maharaja of Jaipur, when he became Maharaja, he was only about 11 years old, the Maharaja of Jaipur. When he became Maharaja, he was only about 11 years old. He had to wait until he became an adult to take on full powers. So the British had power over how long he could remain in the Zanana or the Harem, who he could marry, even when he could consummate his marriage, where he went to school, whether he could travel abroad, all of those sorts of things. But the interesting thing is that the British had very little power to induce these princes to undertake reforms in their states.

They ranged from being debauched, despotic, but all of them were quite autocratic. And the British started warning them in the lead up to independence that if you don't reform, if you don't make your states more democratic, you're going to have to face the music when independence comes. And we've talked on this podcast before about Kashmir, and people remember that actually it was a Maharaja, the decisions that actually are central to the nature of the Kashmir crisis. And was it Hyderabad where the ruler decided like, no, I'm going, I'm doing this. And there was an invasion and the Republic of India had to conquer Hyderabad. Yeah, Hyderabad was an interesting case.

There were actually three states that didn't accede to the Indian Union in 1947. You can imagine how difficult it was to convince all 560 odd states to either join India or Pakistan. There were three holdouts. Kashmir, you've mentioned, Hyderabad, but there's also a small state called Junagadh. And if you get an official map of Pakistan today, you will find on it a small enclave, coloured green, the colour of Pakistan, in the middle of Gujarat, which is a western Indian state. Now, Junagadh was ruled by a Nawab, a Muslim ruler over a largely Hindu population. He decided in August 1947 that he would accede to Pakistan.

Now, he was completely surrounded by Indian territory, a couple of hundred kilometers even by sea separated him from Pakistan. And of course, the Indians weren't going to have a bar of it. They put a lot of pressure on him. They surrounded the state with their military forces. He eventually fled to Karachi with his begums and his collection of dogs. He had hundreds of dogs. He was a sort of canine mad ruler. And Junaid became part of India, something that the Pakistanis still don't recognize. Now, Hyderabad was a much more problematic case. For starters, it was huge. It was 16 million people. It was strategically located in south-central India in the Deccan. And if it retained its independence, that would be

a huge body blow to India. It was something that they just could not accept. There was a protracted period of negotiations with the Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan, this rather eccentric ruler, fabulously wealthy but miserly. If he invited you for afternoon tea, he would probably serve you a cup of tea and a biscuit and then smoke the rest of your cigarette stub. But he was convinced that he was different, that he was more important, more powerful than the rest of your cigarette stub. But he was convinced that he was different. He was more important, more powerful than the rest of the Indian princes. And he was egged on in this belief by a group of, I guess you could call them Islamic fundamentalists, the Razakas, not all that dissimilar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, who convinced him that he had the right to be an independent ruler.

He employed an Australian gunrunner to fly weapons from Karachi to secret airfields in his state, and even took his case to the United Nations. But all to no avail. And in September 1948, the Indian army moved in and in 36 hours, it was all over and he had to surrender. So what about these royal families after independence for India, after the establishment of the Republic? I mean, we think about, of course for India, after the establishment of the Republic, I mean, we think about, of course, in terms of the rejection of the British Raj, getting rid of the British colonial masters rule from London. But clearly within these states, there's going to be some pretty gigantic political and social

upheavals as well. Were they allowed to continue in that formal role? Look, ostensibly after independence, these states were granted a lot of autonomy, except in the areas of foreign affairs, defense, and communications. That was part of the bargain to get them to accede to India. They were also allowed to retain their titles. They could still call themselves Maharaja or Raja or Nawab or Nizam or whatever. They could still go hunting tigers in their royal reserves. They could still import their Rolls or whatever. They could still go hunting tigers in their royal reserves, they could still import their Rolls Royces, they could retain their palaces and so on.

But in terms of autonomy, political autonomy that they had enjoyed prior to independence, that was gradually whittled away. They found that they were absorbed into larger political units. Jaipur, for instance, became part of the state of Rajasthan. And this caused quite a bit of disquiet. They felt that they'd been betrayed by the British, who hadn't guaranteed that the autonomy they had enjoyed prior to independence wouldn't continue. And they felt very betrayed by the Indian government as well. And that's the interesting bit, because now when you travel around India, you see these kind of quite threadbare collections of Maharajas, Rolls Royces and museums and kinds of these Maharajas,

like aristocracies across Europe, have tried to kind of reinvent themselves and go into land or tourism or whatever. How did the Jaipur family turn themselves into such rock stars? Jaipur is an interesting case. I mean, there were plenty of prominent Maharajas and Maharanis around, but a lot had to do with the personality of Sawai Mansingh, the Maharaja of Jaipur. He was this handsome, athletic, very personable playboy prince, I guess you could describe him as. He was also a star polo player. So when he captained the Indian polo team and went to England in 1933, they won just about

every single tournament that season and went on to repeat that record until the outbreak of the war. So I'm saying I think he had a handicap of eight. Other members of the team had handicaps of seven, eight and nine. They were unbeatable. Polo is, of course course a sport of the aristocracy, at least it was very much in those days, and so that gave him an entree into the world of British royalty. He met the Mount Battens, he met the King and the Queen of England, he would be invited to tea at Number 10 Downing Street by Ramsay MacDonald, he would be invited to balls at Buckingham Palace, and his circle of friends in these high places just grew and grew and grew. At that time, he'd already been married twice to the aunt and niece of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, but this did not stop him from having some very well

publicized affairs. One of them was with Joan Ayres Monsall. Some listeners might recognize her as being the future wife of Patrick Lee Femore, but perhaps his most high profile affair was with Virginia Sherrill, who listeners again might remember her. She was plucked out of obscurity by Charlie Chaplin and was the blind flower girl in the final scenes of City Lights. Virginia Sherrill went on to marry Cary Grant. That was a bit of a disaster. Then she went to England and she met Sawai Munsing. They had an affair that went on for about six or seven years. He even invited her to Jaipur.

Interestingly enough, it had the approval of Jaya's second wife, whose nickname was Jo Didi, Kishore Kumari, because Jo was a fairly liberated woman and saw Virginia as a sort of passport to freedom. She actually encouraged her to marry Jai, thinking that they got on very well, and if he had taken her as his third wife, then she would enjoy some of the freedoms that had been denied her. Jaipur was a very traditional place. Wives were confined larger to the Zanana and would have to be in purdah if they ever went in public. In the early 1930s, he met Gayatri Devi of a small princely state called Kuchbha in eastern India, a 13-gun state. Her mother was a very

liberated woman, pioneer in fields of fashion, became the regent of her own state. Gayatri Devi grew up hunting. I think she shot her first panther at the age of 12. She could ride horses. She never wore purdah. She was partly educated in Switzerland. She could speak French better than she could speak Hindi. She had a schoolgirl crush on Sawai Mansingh when she was about 13, and six or seven years later, they were finally married. She became his third wife. Now, once they got together, they became India's glamour couple. Jai as he was known to his friends, Jai short for Jaipur and Aisha as she was nicknamed that was because her mother was reading Ryder Haggard's She when she was born and Aisha is one of the main characters in that really took Europe and

England by storm. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was a fashion trendsetter. She could ride. They were invited everywhere. They became India's equivalent of the Windsors of the Kennedys who they'd invite back to their palaces in Jaipur. I remember going through the guest book at Lilipur, which was Aisha's residence in Jaipur. And the very first signatures were that of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. And then you had the Kennedys and you had poets and diplomats and artists and anybody from anywhere went there. So it was quite the glamour couple. Jai with his portfolio of palaces and collectible cars and taxidermied tigers.

Aisha, who was just this sophisticated, highly westernised princess, very liberated, very quickly became India's best-known royals. If you listen to Dan Snow's history, I'm talking about India's royal families, their rise, fall, rise again and fall. More after this. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now?

Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark? I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. On Gone Medieval, we'll uncover the most exciting and unexpected stories about the Middle Ages, hearing from the best and brightest minds. We will disentangle fact from fiction, bring you the latest discoveries, and reveal how the so-called Dark Ages laid the foundations for much of the world we're living in today. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. What was their agenda? Was it to have a good time? Was it to protect their personal wealth?

Or was it to try and build another political pole, almost in opposition to Congress's Republican government? They didn't spend all their time parting in Europe and England. Jai took on some formal roles after independence. He was a Raj Pramukh, which was like the governor of Rajasthan. He was appointed ambassador to Spain. Aisha, she opened a school for girls in Jaipur, which is still there and is the top school in the city. She did a lot of work in the field of women's welfare and promoting Jaipur as a tourist destination, encouraging arts and crafts and so on. But whenever they could, they escaped to Europe. As soon as it started getting hot in

Jaipur around about the beginning of May, they'd be on the first plane to London and they'd come back in October. You asked about their involvement in politics. Jai did dabble with the idea of joining Congress, asked Nehru about that, but that came to naught. And it was really Aisha who became the star in that field. In 1961, she joined the Swatantra Party, which was a free market party opposed to Congress. In 1962, she ran as a candidate for the electorate of Jaipur and won the largest landslide in modern

history in a democratic election. It was so large that it actually got a mention in the Guinness Book of Records. She repeated that in 1967 and 1972, not to such a large extent, but she was very, very successful in her political career. And the Svartantra party attracted quite a few ex-royals. Not all went over to Svartantra. Some formed their own parties, others joined political groupings, but there were considerable political force then, enough to start getting Jawaharlal Nehru and then later Indira Gandhi worried that they might be exploiting their royal heritage a little bit too much and giving Congress a run for its money.

You mentioned lots of royals getting into politics, and perhaps in the case of Jaipur, were they very heterodox in their political views, or were they kind of staking out a different vision of India? Yes, they were quite heterodox in their political views. These princes had their own agendas, their own rivalries, their own jealousies, who had the largest stable of Rolls Royces, who had the largest diamonds, all these sorts of things. And that continued pretty much after independence. The only thing that really drew them together was when Indira Gandhi in the late 60s started talking about abolishing the privy purses and

the other perks that they were enjoying. Congress was starting to slide in the polls and it needed a scapegoat. In those days, even the richest Indians, the best thing they could buy would be a clunky old ambassador car, whereas the princes were still able to import their Rolls Royces and their Buicks and so on. So Indira Gandhi tried a couple of times to get a bill through parliament to abolish the privy purses. In the end, she had to change the constitution to do that. In the meantime, Jai lobbied Mount Batten, asked Mount Batten to lobby Indira Gandhi to stave off abolishing the privy purses, but all to no avail. And in December 1971, they went the way of the dinosaurs. India's princely class became no more. They still call themselves Rajas, Maharajas, and so on, but those titles are meaningless in today's India.

So she is in Vogue's magazine, 10 Most Beautiful Women on Earth. She is a politician. She physically caught up in India's turbulent politics, didn't she? Yes, Aisha really physically caught up in India's turbulent politics, didn't she? Yes, Aisha really got caught up in India's turbulent politics. But first, I think I should just go back a few years and mention that in 1970, Jai died while playing polo. She was in her early 50s at the time. And that came as quite a shock to her. I was told a lovely anecdote by one of her friends, Momin Lateef, who told me that shortly after Jai died, she went to him and said, can you sell some saris for me?

My husband's dead and I'm broke. This is an extraordinary story. And it's very revealing as well, because she probably never had to handle cash at all in her life. Jai took care of everything. And she had no idea really where his wealth lay. A lot of it was in trust funds overseas at the time or so-called immovable wealth such as palaces and havelis and so on. And he just laughed at her and said, look, you know, your husband was one of the richest men in India. He will have provided for you. So there's nothing to worry about. So she really had to pick up the pieces of her life

after Jai's death. And that wasn't easy, particularly when in 1975, Indira Gandhi, having been accused of electoral fraud, imposed the emergency and threw Aisha into Tihar jail, together with, at the time, there were hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, political activists, politicians being arrested and thrown into jails all over India. Interestingly enough, she was charged under India's Foreign Exchange Act. Several months before being thrown into jail, Indira Gandhi ordered the tax authorities to raid the Jaipur palaces and found, in addition to almost a ton of gold, about maybe 20 pounds altogether in loose change, foreign exchange, pounds, francs, a few dollars here and there.

But in those days, in quasi-socialist India, having foreign exchange, no matter how minute the amount was, a punishable offence. So she ended up spending six months in Tihar jail, the Jaipur princess having to share the prison exercise yard with petty criminals, prostitutes and pickpockets, and had a pretty rough time. I mean, even though she had friends who would send her jars of beluga caviar and Fortnum and Mason Christmas cakes at Christmas, her health suffered.

She ended up writing quite a groveling letter to Indira Gandhi promising she would give up her political career and was eventually released on health grounds. But yes, it was a pretty tough time for her. She made a ripe old age though. She went on into the 21st century, didn't she? her. She made a ripe old age though she went on into the 21st century didn't she? She did live to a ripe old age she died at the age of 90 in 2009 but a lot of her final decades were not particularly happy. She watched as her only son Jagat became

an alcoholic and then died of alcohol-related illness at quite an early age. And unfortunately, what was once quite a cohesive family broke up. As I mentioned, Aisha was the third wife, so there were three branches of the family. And pretty soon they were embroiled in litigation, sometimes two branches against one, sometimes all three fighting against each other, whether it was over property, inheritance, allegations of forged wills, trusts, movable and immovable wealth, you name it, they started fighting over it. And these cases, which started in the 1980s, a lot of them are still ongoing. I think at last count, 1980s, a lot of them are still ongoing. I think at last count, there was something like 30 or 40 cases still active before various courts in Jaipur and Delhi, sometimes going up all the way up to the Supreme Court. You've spent so much time in India. What's the story today about these

royal families? How are they inventing themselves in the new India? That depends very much on individual former erstwhile rulers of India. Look, in the case of the Jaipurs, they've turned their palaces into hotels. Anybody who's been to Jaipur will be familiar with the Rambagh, Jai Mahal and Raj Mahal palaces, if they're fortunate enough to be able to afford to stay in one of them. Some of these erstwhile royals have gone into fashion, some into film. The current Maharaja of Jaipur, and I use that title in inverted commas, is emulating his great-grandfather and becoming a star polo player.

Quite a few have gone into politics as well, including the Jaipurs and other royal families. So it's a mixed bag, but by and large, they've adapted fairly well to modern democratic India. But I guess we're all hearing about that part of the BJP and how traditionally it's a right wing, it's got kind of Hindu nationalist positions. I mean, are these former royal families finding a home in the BJP that they were excluded from in the kind of republicanism of the post-independence generation? of republicanism of the post-independence generation? Some have joined the BJP, but not all. An interesting case in point is the royal family of Gwalior, Gwalior having been one of those 21 gun salutes states. Vijaya Rajah Sindhya, who was the wife of the last Maharaja of Gwalior, was a BJP politician for years. But her son, Madhavrao Sindhia, was in the Congress party for decades until just last year when he jumped ship and joined the BJP. Not unusual in today's India. A lot of Congress politicians are jumping ship and joining other parties. In the case of

the Jaipurs, Diya Kumari, the mother of the current Maharaja, she's a star BJP politician. In the 2019 election, she ran for a seat in Rajasthan and won it by something like 550,000 votes. Interestingly, she told me an anecdote that quite often when she would arrive at a village, some dusty village in Rajasthan, the people there would lay their clothes out on the ground so that her feet wouldn't have to touch the earth. And that's a very telling anecdote about just the reverence with which India's royals are still held in today. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast to talk about this extraordinary family.

And what's the book called? The book's called The Inside Story of India's Most Glamorous Royal Family and it's published by Hearst. Thanks very much for coming on. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history,

our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favour, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one,

ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you. the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.