False Allies: India's Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma : In Conversation with Manu S. Pillai

Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative in collaboration with Juggernaut Books brings to you a Book Discussion on False Allies: India's Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma by Manu S. Pillai

Join the Author Manu S. Pillai in conversation with Eshan Sharma on 14th October 2021 at 5 PM IST on YouTube and Clubhouse.

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…