Out of Phase: The Forgotten Queens of India

We account for the rise of the modern Indian nation state through the retreat of the British Raj and the decline of the British Empire, but in fact it was more than that: more than a movement for independence among Indians, it was also a movement for republicanism and Indian unity and the end to the many centuries of all the various kingdoms and principalities that had existed as a shifting patchwork in the Hindoostani sub-continent. This was its wider ideological agenda. It was essentially a socialistic national movement - altogether typical of that part of the XXth century - that matched "anti-imperialism" with a liberal egaliatarian nationalist ideology. Independence activists were not only against the British but also, necessarily, against many time-honoured Indian institutions as well. The British Raj had, in fact, been an umbrella over a network of local kings, princes, maharajas, nizams and others. When the Raj ended - more because of the exhaustion of war against the Germans in Europe than because of the merits or methods of so-called 'freedom fighters' in India - the influence of Indian royalty ended as well. Today, the Maharajas have no official power, although many of them continue to be influential, wealthy and widely respected (where they have not degenerated into buffoons or tourist celebrities.)

A new book, published on the last day of 2015, celebrates the forgotten queens and princesses of the wide lands of Hindoostan. The simple purpose of this post is to recommend it. The book, Maharanis: Women of Royal India, is a collection of exquisite photographs of the women of those royal houses that became officially defunct in 1947. The photographs have been collected from diverse sources and are presented with accompanying essays, mostly concerning the photography and the role of photography in modern Indian history. It is a book, that is, by and for photographers, first and foremost. But it is also a beautiful and timely book for those of us who remain firm in the conviction that royalty and monarchy are worthy expressions of human dignity, embodiments of the sublime, and not just "outmoded forms of inequality" as the envy-driven would have it.

The present writer, in any case, makes no secret of his fondness for royalty as an institution and for monarchy as an element of tradition and government. (The organic principle of monarchy is that the best analogy of the state is a family, not a corporation, not a contractual partnership, not a machine.) This book records and celebrates a dimension of the royal houses of Hindoostan - and some of their marital interconnections with royalty from other lands - that is usually overlooked or has, indeed, been kept from public view. Alas, in contemporary India these women have been replaced by the vamps and tramps of Bollywood - you cannot really abolish aristocracy, you only end up replacing it with secular dynasties and ill-bred pretenders.

The photographs are beautiful in themselves, as are the women, but also of interest in the way that royal portraiture developed in India, usually by the adoption of British Victorian conventions. In some cases, though, distinctive Indian traditions intrude, such as conventions borrowed from the traditions of the Moghul miniature, especially among official the court photographers in the larger royal courts in the north of the sub-continent.

Click on any photograph for an enlarged view.