BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • False Allies: India's Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma

    (By Manu S. Pillai)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 27 MB (27,086 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 668 times
    Last checked 14 Hour ago!
    Author Manu S. Pillai
    “Book Descriptions: India?s maharajahs have traditionally been cast as petty despots, consumed by lust and luxury. Bejewelled parasites, they cared more, we are told, for elephants and palaces than for schools and public works. The British cheerfully circulated the idea that brown royalty needed ?enlightened? white hands to guide it, and by the twentieth century many Indians too bought into the stereotype, viewing princely India as packed with imperial stooges. Indeed, even today the princes are either remembered with frothy nostalgia or dismissed as greedy fools, with no role in the making of contemporary India. In this brilliantly researched book, Manu S. Pillai disputes this view. Tracking the travels of the iconic painter Ravi Varma through five princely states ? from the 1860s to the early 1900s ? he uncovers a picture far removed from the clichés in which the princes are trapped. The world we discover is not of dancing girls, but of sedition, legal battles, the defiance of imperial dictates, and resistance. We meet maharajahs obsessed with industrialization, and rulers who funded nationalists, these men anything but pushovers for the Raj to manipulate. Outward deference aside, the princes, Pillai shows, forever tested the Raj ? from denying white officials the right to wear shoes in durbars to trying to surpass British administrative standards. Good governance became a spectacularly subversive act, by which maharajahs and the ?native statesmen? assisting them refuted claims that Indians could not rule themselves. For decades this made the princes heroes in the eyes of nationalists and anti-colonial thinkers ? a facet of history we have forgotten and ignored. By refocusing attention on princely India, False Allies takes us on an unforgettable journey and reminds us that the maharajahs were serious political actors ? essential to knowing modern India.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    Lords of the Deccan : Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas

    ★★★★★

    Anirudh Kanisetti

    Book 1

    An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

    ★★★★★

    Shashi Tharoor

    Book 1

    India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765

    ★★★★★

    Richard M. Eaton

    Book 1

    Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom

    ★★★★★

    Sanjeev Sanyal

    Book 1

    Bravehearts of Bharat: Vignettes from Indian History

    ★★★★★

    Vikram Sampath

    Book 1

    ബാല്യകാലസഖി | Balyakalasakhi

    ★★★★★

    Vaikom Muhammad Basheer

    Book 1

    Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

    ★★★★★

    Cyrus Mistry

    Book 1

    Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence

    ★★★★★

    Shrayana Bhattacharya

    Book 1

    The Spy

    ★★★★★

    Paulo Coelho

    Book 1

    Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT

    ★★★★★

    Chetan Bhagat

    Book 1

    The Shadow Lines

    ★★★★★

    Amitav Ghosh

    Book 1

    India Moving: A History of Migration

    ★★★★★

    Chinmay Tumbe

    Book 1

    The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

    ★★★★★

    William Dalrymple

    Book 1

    Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond

    ★★★★★

    William Dalrymple