Victoria Gowramma by C.P. Belliappa

 An Indian Victoria

When the Raja of Coorg turned renegade, the (English East India) Company deposed him, grabbed his kingdom, and exiled him to distant Benares. The Raja’s ancestor had invested over one million rupees with the Company, in an instrument, which in these days would be called non-convertible debentures. This investment obliged the Company to make periodic interest payments. Even these payments were ended by the Company. The Raja decided to sue the Company. But there was a problem. He was required to be in London to start the proceedings, and Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General refused him permission to travel.

The wily Raja, kept his intentions a secret, and appealed over the head of Dalhousie to the Court (Board of Directors, in current parlance) of the Company for permission to travel. The reason? He wanted his daughter, Gowramma, to be converted to Christianity! And, raised as an Englishwoman.

The evangelists in England salivated over this offer. The business of conversion had been the second oldest profession in India, but had had little success. The brown washed oriental heathens were spectacularly refractory when it came to seeing the Light of God. Decades of evangelical labour had resulted in a single desultory Christian settlement at Fatehgarh (90 miles from Cawnpore, now Kanpur), and even these Christians were converted at pain of starvation during the periodic deadly famines that swept the plains of India. Those who agreed to convert, starving orphans mostly, had been first baptized, and then fed.

Imagine the potential of the Raja’s offer. Duleep Singh, son and successor of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had settled down in Fatehgarh after the annexation of Punjab. He had voluntarily converted to Christianity. If Gowramma could be converted and married off to Duleep Singh- a union of two Royals, the whole of India would follow suit and the kingdom of God could be spread over the whole subcontinent. Queen Victoria was delighted over these prospects. Dalhousie’s skepticism was overcome, and the Raja of Coorg came over to London with his entourage. Gowramma was baptized in the presence of Queen Victoria herself, who became her Godmother, and named the little girl after herself. Princess Victoria Gowramma! She was placed in charge of an English couple chosen by Queen Victoria herself. With this obligation out of his way, the Raja promptly sued the Company in the Chancery Courts in London much to everybody’s annoyance.

And then the Evangelists’ dream unraveled: Duleep Singh refuses to marry Victoria Gowramma. There was no empathy between them. She has an affair with a man-servant! And he with a series of women below his rank. The Union of Royals remains a distant dream. As though this was not enough, the Sepoy army rises in revolt in India, and the settlement at Fatehgarh is completely destroyed.

How Gowramma’s life is cut short tragically, and how the Raja of Coorg faces his future in London before dying there, makes a fascinating story. Belliappa’s narration is tight and gripping.

The story of the Raja of Coorg has been immortalized by Masti Venkatesha Iyengar in his Jananpeeth award winning (Kannada language) historical novel titled ‘Chikka Veera Rajendra’.

Conversations with Waheeda Rehman by Nasreen Munni Kabir

The Art of Conversation

Waheeda Rehman is a highly regarded actress in Indian cinema. Starting from the age of 15 in 1955, she appeared in countless films in a variety of roles till 2009. She was widely admired for her beauty, her graceful dances, and her acting skills. There is bound to be public interest in a life such as hers. But what makes Rehman’s life of even greater interest to historians of Indian cinema is her partnership with the actor-director Guru Dutt, which gave us several iconic films. It is impossible to think of Rehman without also thinking of Dutt at the same time. The unexpected death of Guru Dutt in 1965, at the age of 39, has been an unresolved mystery. What is known is that he was depressed in the last days of his life. What is however not known is whether he took his own life, or he died by accident. What was he depressed about? Was he secretly in love with Waheeda? Did his depression have anything to do with her?

Evidently, these are deeply personal and sensitive questions. However Time is a great healer. The conversations published in this book were recorded in 2012-13 nearly 48 years after Guru Dutt’s death. This is time enough to look back dispassionately at the past, and reveal oneself without embarrassment, or regret. But Rehman does not do this, and parries the questions in a bland, noncommittal way, always referring to Dutt as “Guruduttji”. Kabir’s failure to draw her out on her relationship with Dutt is a great disappointment. There is not even a categorical denial of a relationship.

The Conversations could have been edited better. The Conversations were reportedly recorded over 25 sittings spanning a period of over a year. They occupy 212 printed pages and are presented as a single chapter without any break. If the Conversations were broken down subject-wise, or period-wise, they would have been more readable. An epilogue of Kabir’s impressions at the end of the interview would have been welcome too, that is assuming that Kabir did indeed have something to say!

The book contains numerous black and white photographs of Rehman’s family, friends and professional colleagues, and also of some iconic sets of her movies. This could be a treasure trove for her fans.  

For those interested in the art of conversation, this Reviewer has two recommendations to make:

(1)    Conversations with Chandra, which appears as Epilogue to Chandra- A biography of S. Chandrasekhar by Kameshwar Wali.

(2)    Talking India Ashis Nandy in conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo.

Two different individuals, one a Nobel prize winning Physicist, and the other a social psychologist-humanist with a penetrating insight into India and the world.

Passion India by Javier Moro

 Consort or Concubine?

The difficulty with historical fiction, as I have observed elsewhere (see my review of Raja of Hirsil), is to distinguish what part is history, and what part fiction. Matters become much worse when writers of historical fiction introduce events into their narration involving actual historical personages that never took place!

This book is the story of a Spanish dancer Anita Delgado (the name is spelt Anita Delgrada in Allen & Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes) who the Maharaja of Kapurthala takes as his fifth wife. In India, she became famous as the “Spanish Maharani”. It was the fashion of the time for the royalty in India to flaunt a white wife. The Spanish Maharani was one among many of these sorry women picked off the streets of Europe, and whisked away in marriages to Indian princes (see Coralie Younger, Wicked Women of the Raj for more on this). After a few years of unimaginable affluence, the bored Maharani has an affair with her stepson, a happy lad of her own age, is discovered, and then banished to Europe for life with a generous pension. She outlives her husband, the British Raj, and the Indian royalty, survives the world wars, and takes a lover, before dying in 1962, in the arms of her son by her Kapurthala husband.

Among her many vicissitudes in adjusting to a life in India, was the attitude of the colonial administration which never accepted her marriage, and vigorously denied her the recognition as the Maharaja’s consort. In the aftermath of the 1857 disaster, the Indian princely states were in theory autonomous in matters of internal administration. Needless to say, the Maharaja’s private life ought to have been, well entirely private. But the British colonial administration, even in the era of Edwardian promiscuity, vigorously protested the taking of European wives by Indian royals. Reams of paper were filled with notes on protocols, and harem gossip, each file-noting closely scrutinized by none other than the Viceroy himself. There were sound reasons behind all this interest even in the midst of the Great War. If such marriages were to be accepted, the Viceroy- representing the Paramount Power, would have to countenance the offending spouse in parties, and other social gatherings. In a British setting, the parties in question- the Viceroy and the street nymphs turned queens, would have been Upstairs and Downstairs respectively in any establishment, and never met! How the Spanish Maharani counters all this with humour and charm, makes interesting reading.

However there are major factual errors in the book, which reflects poor research.

(1)    The Royal Garhwal Rifles was not the 571^st Regiment in the Indian Army. It was numbered 39 and there were two of these numbered 1/39, and 2/39 respectively. Although it is not clear what these regiments have to do with Kapurthala.

(2)    M.A. Jinnah’s wife was Ruttie Jinnah, not Rita as written in the book.

(3)    India was represented at the Versailles Palace during the signing of the armistice by Edwin S Montagu, Secretary of State for India, and Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner. The latter held the rank of Honorary General in the British Army. Kapurthala was not a part of this meeting as suggested by the author.

(4)    It is likely that Clemenceau visited Kapurthala as stated in the book, after he lost the post war election, and retired from politics, although this Reviewer could not find any account of this event among his sources. If indeed he did, how did the colonial administration which kept a vigilant eye on the comings and goings in Kapurthala permit it? Post war fatigue?

In conclusion, the book is eminently avoidable.    

The Last King in India Wajid Ali Shah by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

 

In status, the equal to Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India

Ever wondered how the King of Awadh came to live in Calcutta at Garden Reach, now popularly called a ‘Muslim area’? On being deposed in 1853, on grounds of misgovernance, he set out from his capital city Lucknow to London, to appeal directly to his equal, the monarch of Great Britain to reverse the annexation of his kingdom. His entourage and he arrived at Calcutta to board the next available steamer to England. There was a problem though. The King of Awadh had never in the past travelled any great distance out of Lucknow. The farthest he had ever gone was to Cawnpore (now Kanpur) then British territory, and only to meet the Governor General when the latter passed by. This journey was all of 60 miles. It was no surprise that by the time he reached Calcutta, he ran out of steam and decided to send his mother, and brother together with his young son, the heir apparent ahead to England, while he himself decided to wait in Calcutta for their triumphant return. He rented out a couple of large bungalows in Garden Reach, then an upper class mostly whites- area where each bungalow was surrounded by a large garden overlooking the river.

The delegation went with great hopes of success, as an earlier delegation sent by the Nawab of Surat had successfully appealed to the Parliament for the restoration of his kingdom (see my Review of Surat by Moin Mir). But in the five decades since that success, much had changed: (i) the success of a series of annexations engineered by the ‘doctrine of lapse’, an invention of Dalhousie, had given the Company tremendous confidence, (ii) Victoria had gone into confinement to deliver one of her numerous children and was not in position to receive visitors, and more seriously (iii) news had begun to filter in that the Sepoy army had mutinied.

In the time it took Victoria to meet with the Dowager Queen of Awadh, ample information had been received about the serious nature of the mutiny, its anti-Christian tilt, and finally the devastation being wrecked on the Lucknow Residency by the former soldiers of the Awadh army that had been arrogantly disbanded in the aftermath of the annexation. The Governor General had taken the King into custody, fearing that he could become the focus of the revolt. When finally the two Queens met, the appeal for the restoration of the Kingdom was forgotten, and an appeal was made for the release of the King from his detention. Despite the toning down of the appeal, there was no toning down of the gifts handed over to Victoria. 

Tragedy struck the visiting delegation in multiple ways. The appeal failed. The Dowager Queen Mother died. A month later, the King’s brother also died. The young heir apparent thoroughly enjoying his European sojourn delayed his return. All this caused untold misery to the King, who was finally released after Lucknow had been reclaimed. On realizing that his kingdom was lost for good, the King bought out the property he had rented, and neighbouring ones as well, and amalgamated them into what the author calls a ‘mimic kingdom’- a mini-Awadh Court. This included nearly 350 wives- as a devout Shia, he never had sex with any woman unless he had married her first. It also included a vast menagerie of wild animals.

This book is a riveting story of the event and how it all ended.

As an exercise in alternative history, it would be well worth speculating what if the King of Awadh had not left his home. After all he was not expelled from his palaces. He left by choice. He expected to return after the annexation of his kingdom had been reversed. In case he had remained behind, like the King of Delhi, he would have without doubt got caught up with the revolt of 1857. He would have become the focal point of the revolt just as the King of Delhi had. The initial success of the revolt would certainly have shaken his faith in the invincibility of the Company army. After all, did not Begum Hazrat Mahal, the wife he disavowed not lead the rebellion with unusual fury. And when it all failed, what of the King of Awadh? What would have been his fate? Exile in Burma, like the King of Delhi faced? Or would he have succeeded in fleeing to Nepal, like his wife and made a life there? Since he lived almost 30 years after the event, when the passage of time had healed all the wounds, would he have been allowed to return and reclaim whatever was left, like the Rani of Ranjit Singh was? In hindsight, his choice saved him much trouble- he was able to continue his lazy life without interruption, except for the small matter of the loss of his kingdom.