Princely India Re-imagined

Abstract

The princely states of India covered about 40 per cent of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. Focusing on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, it offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the relationship of king and subject in South Asia.The book argues that the denial of political and economic power to the king, especially after 1831 when direct British control was imposed over the state administration in Mysore, was paralleled by a counter-balancing multiplication of kingly ritual, rites, and social duties. The book looks at how, at the very time when kingly authority was lacking income and powers of patronage, its local sources of power and social roots were being reinforced and rebuilt in a variety of ways.Using a combination of historical and anthropological methodologies, and based upon substantial archival and field research, the book argues that the idea of kingship lived on in South India and continues to play a vital and important role in contemporary South Indian social and political life.

Hindu Nationalism, Gurus and Media

“…Scholars have shown how state and government institutions mediate guruship and guru-shishya relationships in numerous ways. Aya Ikegame (2012), for instance, has explored the history of complex guru-state relations in the Princely State of Mysore, while Arkotong Longkumer (2023) discusses the implications of the North East Zone Cultural Centre's (NEZCC) bestowal of the status of 'guru' on the northeast cultural icon Guru Rewben Mashengwa (the NDA government also recently honoured Jaggi Vasudev with the Padma Vibhushan 17 for 'exceptional and distinguished service' 18 ). However, it is representations of Guru Drona as the ideal guru that are most frequently at the heart of state remediations of guruship.…”

Mathas, toward understanding the public religious, educational, and political ascetic institution in South Asian religions

“…These historical developments shaped the institution of the matha into the powerful religious and political force that was negotiated during the colonial period (see Price, 2006; forthcoming; Ikegame, 2013, pp. 42–52).…”

“…61–68). These negotiations of authority, sovereignty, and power crystalized during the British colonial period as colonial administrators attempted to make sense of mathas ' complex function in society and their immense legal and extra‐legal influence (Chatterjee, 2013; Ikegame, 2013; Price, 2006).…”

Reconfiguring colonial hierarchies: Examining the ‘European versus native wrestling’ debate in the late nineteenth-century India

“…As Ikegame points out in the case of Mysore, 'these royal strategies of assertion and empowerment were … inevitably more cultural and social rather than political and economical [sic]'. 107 In case of the Bux and Cannon match as well, the role of the three princely states of Jodhpur, Darbhanga and Cooch Behar can be interpreted as a form of cultural nationalism which took pride in a native sport with a strong heritage and refused to cow down to a colonial challenger like Cannon. According to Partha Chatterjee, as Indian men found their horizons severely restricted in the colonial public sphere, they turned to other avenues such as the domestic sphere, to express their agency and power.…”