We get it, you are now fascinated by all things Delhi Durbar and deconstructing Empire. Here is where you should start:

Julie Codell’s essay “On the Delhi Coronation Durbars, 1877, 1903, 1911.”

Chapter 4 in Manu Pillai’s latest book False Allies: India’s Maharajas in the Age of Raja Ravi Verma

Manu Bhagavan’s article “Demystifying the Ideal Progreassive: Resistance through Mimicked Modernity”

You should also check out these visuals:

A photo of King George’s sparkly, sparkly crown

Footage from the original Durbar film

Host & Producer: Niki Aggarwal

Fact-checking: Ranvijay Singh

Sound Engineering & Design: Hanisha Harjani

FEATURED MUSIC

Slow Down by Akrti

Without You by Kumail

Gotta Be by Sickflip

Class Sikh Maut Vol II by Prabhe Deep, Seedhe Maut & Sez on the Beat

Dilli Darshan by GHZI PUR

Annotated version with citations available here

[00:00:00] Niki: Queen Victoria opened parliament in 1876 by speaking about her son's recent trip to India.

[00:00:07] Queen Victoria: "I am deeply thankful for the uninterrupted health which my dear son, the Prince of Wales, has enjoyed during his journey through India, the hearty affection with which he has been received by my Indian subjects of all classes and races assures me that they are happy under my rule and loyal to my throne.

[00:00:30] Niki: Victoria had to rely on her kid's word that Indians were happy and loyal because the self-declared empress of India had never actually left Europe. In fact, it would take two successors and nearly four more decades of British rule before a sovereign would manage to visit the sub-continent. In 1911, there was finally an occasion that was important enough to draw the king to the land of jewels and spices and $40 trillion worth of tax revenue: a party.

[00:01:13] The Delhi Durbar was ostensibly a coronation ceremony to officially crown the emperor of India. But the spectacle was much, much more than that. Imagine an event that had the global significance of the U.S. Presidential inauguration combined with the attendance of the summer Olympics, topped off with the glamor of the Met ball. That was the 1911 Delhi Durbar.

[00:01:39] Julie: Entire villages were cleared to make room for these events.

[00:01:43] Niki: That's art historian, Julie Codell. I asked her about what kind of infrastructure was set up for the Durbar.

[00:01:51] Julie: Hundreds of tents for tens of thousands of guests and their servants, extensive gardens, dining areas, arenas for sporting events and military reviews, communication centers for the press.

[00:02:04] Niki: No expense was spared. And why would it have been? India was footing the bill. All in all, the event cost Indian taxpayers nearly 1 million pounds, which would be nearly 100 million British pounds today. In fact, the Darbar was so costly that the event caused a spike in the global price of silver. Five separate film crews from Britain were commissioned to travel to India and document the ceremony. That might not have been enough. There was so much demand from curious spectators across the globe that the film reels hopped from country to country for a full year after the event, playing in front of sold-out cinemas, showing after showing after showing.

[00:02:53] This was a big freaking deal. The empire wanted the entire world to witness their successful subjugation of the land that had foiled all other Europeans before them. Had King George known about the humiliation he was going to face at the Durbar, I wonder if he would have left the camera crews at home.

[00:03:18] You're listening to Misrepresented, and I'm your host, Niki Aggarwal. In this podcast, we unravel histories that are more fiction than fact, and we uncover how those facts got twisted in the first place. Today, I'm going to tell you the story of the Darbar I,ncident, the weirdest international scandal of 1911. We are going to figure out what it was, why it mattered and get a whole new meaning for clutching one's pearls.

[00:03:49] Our story begins a few days before the Durbar ceremony on the shores of Bombay. Bombay was a vital seaport that exploded in use during the British Raj. There was a constant influx of cargo ships flowing through the main port. They took cotton, sugar and spices to Europe and brought back finished textiles to India. The port was also a gathering place for local traders to make deals and for merchants to hawk their goods to the crowds.

[00:04:23] But on December 2nd, 1911, all of this normal activity came to a halt. The king was coming.

[00:04:35] It had taken them a month to sail through the Suez canal, but King George and Queen Mary had finally made it to their dominion. As the British Royals stepped onto the port, they were greeted by a 20-foot-tall cardboard structure. A cardboard monument sounds kind of underwhelming, but this structure was extremely convincing. It was very much like the facades that go up during wedding season in Bombay today. It had to be cardboard because the architect needed another 10 years to complete the real monument that is still standing today: the Gateway of India.

[00:05:14] As soon as the king and queen arrived, a ceremony was held right there on the port itself.

[00:05:21] The foreign rulers were formally welcomed and introduced by Pherozeshah Mehta. Mehta was a politician known around town as the uncrowned king of Bombay. He was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress. He regularly spoke out against the British tendency to stoke communal based divides. Just a few months before the Durbar, Mehta founded the Bombay Chronicle, a nationalist newspaper.

[00:05:52] Considering how momentous this occasion was, it seems like quite a risky choice to offer up the mic to this dude. But as soon as Mehta began speaking, it was clear he was not going to make the king and queen uncomfortable. No, it wasn't Mehta that would embarrass the king and queen, but a different member of the Indian National Congress.

[00:06:17] Let's pause for a sec. Cardboard monuments and fawning speeches aside, George and Mary didn't come all this way just for an ego boost. The Delhi Durbar was a shrewd strategic move to strengthen the British Raj.

[00:06:34] The state of British India was actually a loose collection of nearly 600 different states. The vast majority of those states were ruled indirectly through alliances with the local Kings and Queens. These alliances meant that the king or queen took care of the day-to-day governance while guaranteeing steady tax revenue and trade monopolies for the British. These allied states were called princely states, which sidebar, was such a passive aggressive move because a. Some were ruled by women and b. These rulers had been Kings and Queens in their own right long before the British had arrived.

[00:07:14] Anyway, while it was cheaper and strategically better to have all of these Indian Kings and Queens doing the British Empire's bidding, it required a lot of coordination and diplomacy to keep those rulers in line. That's where the Durbar ceremony came in.

[00:07:35] The empire used pomp and circumstance to achieve a delicate balance. They had to honor Indian rulers to ensure complicity, while at the same time make it very clear that none of them were equal to the British Monarch. For example, all 600 of the Indian princes were ranked according to their relative significance to the empire. This rank determined the procession order at the Durbar and the number of gun salutes that each particular ruler would get. This ranking system instilled loyalty, and it also made the rulers competitive with one another, as opposed to competitive with the British.

[00:08:16] Even the name Delhi Durbar was part of the ploy. The British Raj owed a large part of its success to the decline of the Mughal empire. And they hoped that by using the Mughal term "Durbar," the Indians would see their rule as a natural extension of the old order...not what it was: an entirely new, foreign entity. And here is the best part. It was so important to hold these lavish Durbar coronation ceremonies that the Brits didn't even care if the actual Monarch was physically there. So the 1911 Durbar was the third Darbar to take place. King george was just the first one to actually show up to his own coronation. So let's get back to him.

[00:09:10] After a shortstop in Bombay, the king and queen made their way to Delhi. The king was scheduled to ride in on an elephant, but was not down with that plan. He rode in on horseback instead. While he was more comfortable, it meant that he blended in with all of the infantry also riding in on black horses. So the Indian onlookers had a little trouble spotting their king. But once the king reached the pavilion, there was no mistaking him as he and the queen sat in their thrones, sparkly diamond crowns heavy on their heads.

[00:09:49] About those crowns...British royalty are prohibited from taking their crowns out of England because, back in the day, they had a habit of pawning off the jewels to fill their private coffers. So King George had to have a special crown made just for the Delhi Durbar. The Imperial crown, as it was called, had over 6000 diamonds. And it was paid for entirely by the government of India.

[00:10:21] 6,000 diamonds is pretty, but it ain't comfortable. King George wrote in his diary that night.

[00:10:29] King George: Rather tired after wearing my crown for three and a half hours. It hurt my head, as it is pretty heavy.

[00:10:35] Niki: Heavy, crown aside, everything else seemed to be going right on the day of the Durbar. The sun was shining bright and unobscured. 50,000 spectators had gathered to watch the event. Many of those folks had been transported to the Durbar from other states to fill out the stands. Turns out, even a hundred years ago, imperialists liked to talk about the size of their crowds.

[00:10:59] Suddenly, a burst of trumpets and a drum roll signified that the ceremony was about to begin. The king stood up from his throne to address his dominion

[00:11:09] King George: It is with genuine feelings of thankfulness and satisfaction that I stand today among you. This year has been to the queen empress and myself one of many great ceremonies and of an unusual...

[00:11:19] Niki: After a few more remarks about agricultural advances and an administrative change, the king concluded his speech and returned to the throne. Now it was time for dignitaries to pay homage to the king and queen. Senior British officials went first followed by the princes, according to their rank. First of the Indian princes was the Nizam of Hyderabad, a man with an impressive mustache. He bowed to the emperor and empress, had his share of gun salutes, and went on his way.

[00:11:56] Up next came the Maharaja of Baroda, the man who would trigger the incident.

[00:12:10] Gopalrao was never meant to be a king. He was the second son of a farmer and was destined for a life of modest means. But he did have a few drops of royal blood. Kind of the way that people take a 23andme test to brag about being Michelle Obama's seventh cousin. While Gopalrao spent his early days tilling land with his brothers, 200 miles away, a crisis was brewing.

[00:12:39] The year was 1870. The Maharaja of Baroda had just died without an heir. So according to the rules of succession, his brother became king. But Malhalrao, the brother, was a total mess. He confiscated property, including entire villages, whenever he wanted to do friends a solid. If his advisors tried to reason with him, he just tortured and imprisoned them. While Malhalrao was wreaking havoc, the British were taking note.

[00:13:11] They usually didn't interfere with Indian kings and how they ruled their states. But Malhalrao's erratic behavior made him an unreliable ally. So he had to go. He was exiled from Baroda and sent a thousand miles away.

[00:13:28] Now Baroda needed another king. The queen mother, Malhalrao's sister-in-law, was in charge of finding a suitable replacement. She had spent five years weathering Malhalrao's chaos, and anyone would be a better king than him. She literally held an open casting call for the next king. She assembled a commission to search the entire kingdom of Baroda for a suitable male with even a single drop of royal blood. That's where Gopalrao steps in. The queen mother ordered for Gopalrao and his two brothers to interview at the Capitol.

[00:14:03] Now, despite multiple historical accounts, this is where facts rnd, and fiction begins. It's not quite clear what happened next, so I'm going to tell you the version that tickled me most.

[00:14:16] As soon as the three brothers arrived at the palace, they were lined up in a row and asked, "why are you here?" Gopalrao looked at the asker and simply said, "I have come here to rule." And everyone was like, "DAAAAAAMN he has the confidence and the audacity we are looking for in a kiiiiiing. Plus, he's a kid so we can mold him however we want." The former queen gave her blessing and the British government, which had the final say, validated his rule. From then on Gopalrao was crowned Sayajirao Gaekwar, Maharaja of Baroda.

[00:14:57] If that story is true, the people of Baroda got extremely lucky. Despite the influence of his advisors and the British empire, Sayajirao stayed laser focused on the welfare of his subjects. In fact, his non-traditional background enabled him to understand his subjects lives and challenges in a way that kings usually cannot.

[00:15:19] He was pretty progressive on caste matters and it was Sayajirao who funded Ambedkar's Columbia tuition. He was the first Indian ruler ever to implement free compulsory education for children. He also created libraries, expanded women's rights, opened up agricultural boards. You name the progressive policy, this guy enacted it.

[00:15:43] News of his success quickly made its way back to Britain, where members of parliament attempted to replicate his reforms across the Indian states that they governed. But to do so would be to admit that Indians were just as good if not better at governing. So the head of the India office tabled that proposal.

[00:16:03] One of Sayajirao's most enduring legacies was founding the bank of Baroda, which today is one of India's big four banks. In fact, the bank opened its first branch just a few months before the incident. Oh, right.

[00:16:20] We'll get back to the Darbar in just a minute, but first you need to hear from someone else.

[00:16:25] Priya: Hi, my name is Priya. I'm on the Kahani team. I'm interrupting this episode for just a moment to ask you for one quick favor. You're clearly enjoying this show because you're already halfway through. We need more people like you to listen so we can keep making episodes. Could you go text two friends really quickly saying something like, "Hey, I'm listening to this podcast and think you should too."

[00:16:47] I'll give you five seconds to send those texts right now.

[00:16:57] Thanks guys. and back to Niki.

[00:17:01] Niki: Okay. The day of the Durbar. King George and queen Mary are sitting underneath their heavy crowns, waiting for the Indian Kings and Queens to greet them. The Nizam of Hyderabad approaches first. He bows once, and then another time. He slowly backs away and exits the stage on the opposite side from which he entered.

[00:17:23] Now, it is our main man the Maharaja of Baroda's turn. Sayajirao has dawned a minimalist white suit for the occasion. He climbs the five steps onto the stage, bows to the king and queen, turns around, and quickly walks back off the pavilion. The Durbar Incident.

[00:17:51] I'm going to guess that you are a tad confused. To understand what just happened, the key is to remember how every single move in the Darbar was part of a carefully planned strategy to maintain and strengthen the British empire. And Sayajirao had breached protocol not once, not twice, but three separate times.

[00:18:21] First, the Indian rulers had been ordered to don their fanciest, most ethnic attire so that the king and queen could enjoy the full spectacle of the natives. Sayajirao showed up in a plain white suit. The Indian princess were also instructed to bow exactly three times to their newly crowned emperor. Our Maharaja bowed just once. And during this homage ceremony, under no circumstances was the prince allowed to show his back to the emperor. But after his one measly bow, Sayajirao did a 180 to return to his seat.

[00:19:02] Now to casual onlookers, there wasn't any sign something was amiss during the Darbar itself. In fact, the British newspaper the times reported that "there was not a single jarring. No slip in the ceremonials, no awkward pauses." But behind the scenes, in the camps of the British attendees, there were whispers of impropriety.

[00:19:33] (whispering)

[00:19:33] Niki: As soon as Sayajirao heard the rumors, he tried to set the record straight with the top dogs of the British Raj. He was innocent! He'd missed the dress rehearsal and he was nervous about this lavish important ceremony. But the murmurs were enough for Sayajirao to be disinvited from the remaining celebrations.

[00:19:52] And within three days, the charges against him had exploded into full blown roars. There was no way this was a mistake. There could only be one explanation: sedition.

[00:20:09] The Maharaja was forced to write a public apology that was published in all of the newspapers at home, as well as back in Britain. The apology went on for two pages. Perhaps Sayajirao thought that a heartfelt Mea culpa would nip the matter in the bud. Instead, his letter ignited a year long battle in the international press.

[00:20:32] London daily The Times, which just days before had said everything went very well, quickly published a scathing editorial accusing Sayajirao of sedition.

[00:20:44] The paper argued that there were several reasons to suspect the Baroda Maharaja, like the fact that the Indian nationalists who were starting to rise up against the British rarely attacked Sayajirao when they attacked other kings. One paper even managed to find two eyewitnesses to go on the record and claim that not only did Sayajirao turn his back on the monarchs, but he laughed in their faces before doing it.

[00:21:12] So to recap, the newspaper was suggesting that Sayajirao underdressed and skipped out on bowing in order to incite a rebellion against the king of Britain. And they weren't the only ones crying sedition. Every other paper of record began to jump in with a hot take. The incident went viral, Twitter trending, breaking news on CNN, the whole shebang. As the story of the Durbar incident crossed the Atlantic, it turned into a full blown Desi serial.

[00:21:48] Dozens of American local newspapers published the same anonymous eye witness account who claimed that Sayajirao sneered at the queen and the queen gave him an icy stare in return. All the while, Sayajirao maintained his innocence. So a lot of he said, he said, he said. But luckily we do not just have to rely on these accounts because, remember, there was a film made about the event.

[00:22:22] Five separate film crews sailed with the king and queen to India to document the historic Durbar. The event was such a highly coveted opportunity that one of the filmmakers slept with a gun under his pillow. He was worried his footage would be stolen before he could make it back to England. The film with our king and queen through India hit London cinemas in February 1912.

[00:22:48] The film had already been highly anticipated just because of the sheer scale and importance of the Darbar. But the Darbar incident created somewhat of a frenzy, especially in Britain. The British public eagerly filled theater seats, ready to witness the drama for themselves. An hour into the showing, Sayajirao's name flashed on screen. The silence of the cinema was suddenly broken by hissing and booing. The Maharaja of Baroda appeared on screen, and the jeering went up a couple of decibels. But as Sayajirao bowed to the British Royals and exited the stage, something strange happened. The audience fell silent.

[00:23:40] That was the incident? Where was the drama the audiences had been hearing all about? Instead of an underdressed brown man laughing in the face of the British empire, the film showed an Indian prince in a shiny white suit bowing very visibly. He then side shuffled off stage and maybe turned his back on the king, but also maybe not?

[00:24:09] Showing after showing the audiences filed out of the theaters, disappointed, feeling robbed of their righteous indignation. This was not the threat to monarchy they'd been promised. Sayajirao wasn't fully off the hook. But he was no longer considered public enemy number one. The calls for his removal faded away. The public moved on, bored with the incident, reassured that India was still theirs for the keeping. Even the original provocateurs changed their tune. The Times published a new editorial nearly a year after the Durbar saying that the Maharaja of Baroda was understandably nervous and could be forgiven for being momentarily awkward.

[00:24:57] By 1913, the broad consensus was that Sayajirao had made a couple of procedural errors, which the British elite then blew out of proportion. The incident was merely an accident...but there are some pretty gaping holes in that.

[00:25:19] This was not Sayajirao's first rodeo. He knew how things worked. He had been at the 1903 Durbar and had gone through the entire procession without a hitch. And showing up without jewelry was very off-brand for the Maharaja of Baroda. Sayajirao was one of the richest men in the world, and he took every opportunity to display his wealth. He had a Pearl necklace worth 500,000 pounds, and his diamonds were so large, they had poetic names like the moon of Baroda and the star of the south Sayajirao's original excuse .Was that he had been running so late that he hadn't had time to put on his jewelry. And yet in his biography, he claimed that, actually, he was wearing a Pearl necklace originally, but he chose to give the pearls to his son who also curiously forgot jewelry that day.

[00:26:19] Well, I should have said, in his first biography. Sayajirao actually commissioned three different biographies over the course of his lifetime. Yet in each biography, the facts changed.

[00:26:38] So Sayajirao's disobedience seemed too tame to be an act of sedition, but the theory of mistakes doesn't really hold up either. There's actually a third possible explanation for the Durbar incident, but it requires a little bit of backstory.

[00:26:59] At the turn of the 20th century, the British empire was considered to be one of, if not the, greatest empire of all time. That greatness was greatly tied to the Desi subcontinent. The lands that today make up Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India back then comprised 50% of the empire's GDP. But in the early 1900s, the British Raj made a serious error, which put the cash cow at risk. Six years before the Darbar, the British Raj redrew state lines in Bengal. They claimed the Bengal partition was implemented for administrative efficiencies, but the governor's private letters tell a different story.

[00:27:46] Governor: Bengal United is a power, but the state divided will pull in different ways. One of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.

[00:27:56] Niki: Shockingly, the Indian residents weren't really fans of the policy of divide and rule. Activists tried to get the British administration to change their decision through petitions and town hall meetings. Nothing changed. So the activists began protesting. The British army quickly stepped in to scare the protesters out of resistance, but their aggression only ignited the flames of rebellion. News of the partition and ensuing protests ignited solidarity movements as far as Bombay, Punjab, and Baroda. As more people joined the movement, the demands grew as well. Protesters were no longer calling for a return to the status quo in Bengal. Instead they shouted in unison for the end of the British Raj.

[00:28:49] These protests and subsequent rise in nationalism were very much forces the British had to contend with at the 1911 Durbar. In fact, one of the main highlights of the king speech was an undoing of the Bengal partition. Given the recent civil unrest, it's not surprising that members of the British Raj arrived to the Darbar with their spidey senses tingling. They were ready to identify the slightest twinge of seditious sentiment.

[00:29:21] So when Sayajirao appeared to flouted protocol, they pounced. Now as for why the Maharaja of Baroda was their victim of choice. I mentioned earlier that Sayajirao was a benevolent king. He may have also been a radical one. Sayajirao filled his cabinet with nationalists and revolutionaries. One of his speech writers was none other than Aurobindo.

[00:29:49] Aurobindo wrote a speech once, which Sayajirao enthusiastically gave, in which the Maharaja drew a straight line between colonialism and South Asia's extreme poverty. Sayajirao more than once made the case for Indian autonomy. One historian noted that Sayajirao used the term nation more than all of the other 600 princes combined.

[00:30:15] Under Sayajirao, Baroda became a gathering place for freedom fighters who conducted underground meetings and circulated banned books. But Sayajirao was still a key official in the British Raj. He couldn't just be out on the streets, fist raised and sign in hand. He had to tow the line and make sure that he was respectable enough to maintain power. He knew from his predecessor, what happened if he got on the wrong side of the British. Getting deposed from his throne wouldn't be very helpful to his people.

[00:30:49] So he showed up to the Darbar with the full intention of respecting the king and the ceremony. But the night before there had been the dress rehearsal. That dress rehearsal didn't involve the king, just members of the bureaucracy so Sayajirao was like, cool, I don't need to be there. And he sent his brother in his stead. So that's why he made those procedural mistakes, due to lack of preparation the day before. But because of Sayajirao's rebellious background, British officials were sure he was trying to bring the empire down when they saw the incident.

[00:31:27] There is one other possible explanation for the Durbar incident. It could be argued that Sayajirao radicalism wasn't that radical. He gave multiple speeches indicating that his dream was for the Indian sub-continent to become the next Australia or Canada. Both of those countries still pledged loyalty to the king and Sayajirao was on board with that because he wasn't necessarily anti British, he was anti British Raj. He didn't want anyone between him and the king in terms of authority and power.

[00:32:01] One of the key pieces of evidence that those crying out sedition levied against the Maharaja was the fact that he had spoken out against British taxes. But what they failed to understand was why Sayajirao was not a fan. He wasn't saying that the taxes shouldn't be implemented. He was saying that the British shouldn't be in charge of those taxes. He wanted control over them. S

[00:32:25] ayajirao was a benign king. Welfare in his state was higher than most states in the world at the time. But he could only work for his people so long as he was in a position of power. And in the current system of British colonialism, he stayed in charge. Without the British, who knew what would happen? So it could be that the incident was in fact, an act of resistance, but not against the entirety of the British Raj. Just the minutia.

[00:32:59] I've taken you through all of these explanations, but in some ways it doesn't really matter whether this was a mistake or a deliberate act of resistance. Regardless of Sayajirao's intentions, the incident didn't trigger any type of action within India. Nobody, not a single Indian nationalist, used this incident as a rallying cry.

[00:33:23] Yet, the British still freaked out about the possibility of sedition. At the time of the Darbar, the British empire ruled over 400 million people. That's nearly a quarter of the world's population at the time. They were a mighty, unstoppable force. Well, that's what they got everyone to believe. Yet, if the elite and even the Viceroy of India at the time, were this worked up about a single strand of pearls, perhaps those in the inner circle saw the British Raj as a much more fragile thing.

[00:34:06] I wonder what would've happened if the Indian subjects interpreted the Darbar incident just as the ruling class had. Because if all it takes is a fashion faux pas and a weird bow to stoke the flames of paranoia, what does it take to overthrow an empire?

[00:34:26] Woohoo! We did it! The first episode of misrepresented. Now, while you heard from me for the majority of this time, there are way more people behind the mic, so to speak.

[00:34:47] Ranvijay Singh, who made sure that everything I said was factual. Our sound designer, Hanisha Harjani, made the episode come alive through music and sound. That music was made by desi artists around the world, including Kumail, Sickflip, GHZI PUR and Akrti. Check out our show notes for details and links to their work. When you started the episode you tapped, or you clicked on our beautiful logo, which was designed by Suraj Venkat. And you found our podcast in the first place thanks to Priya Phagu, our communications lead.

[00:35:25] We love feedback, we thrive off of it. So email us, hit us up on Instagram, or Twitter or on our website. Just want to hear from you, talk to you soon.

Ambedkar

Pioneering social reformer and Indian politician, Bhimrao Ambedkar played a central role in gaining rights for ‘untouchables’ in South Asia. Post-independence Ambedkar spearheaded the process of formulating the Indian constitution and served as India’s first Law minister.

Aurobindo

Aurobindo Ghose was an Indian freedom fighter, philosopher, and writer. A prominent leader of the early nationlist movement, Ghose left politics and retreated to spirituality in his later life after being jailed for anti-British activity.

Bengal

A region in the eastern region of South Asia, Bengal is now divided between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Historically Bengal was one of the most prosperous regions of the subcontinent and was always vied for by the dominating political dispensation of the subcontinent.

British Raj

The term refers to the British rule of South Asia. Whilst many use it to refer to the entire colonial period of the Subcontinent, it specifically alludes to the period starting from 1858 when the East India Company transferred the right to rule to Queen Victoria following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Durbar

Persian in origin, Durbar denotes the court or public audience held by a ruler. The word was brought into currency in the subcontinent by the Mughal, who themselves were renowned for their deliberately lavish durbars to underline their political power.

Nizam

A title originally bestowed upon a 18th century Mughal statesman and general Asaf Jah I, during the decline of the Mughal Empire Asaf Jah became an autonomous ruler of the largest Mughal successor states in South and Central India upon which his family continued to rule until independence. In 1911 Mir Osman Ali Khan was the Nizam and he would be the last Nizam due to the dissolution of his state upon independence.

Viceroy

The Viceroy was the senior most representative of the British monarch in India. Initially titled as the Governor General when the position was created in 1773, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 the title of Viceroy was added and became how the representative was commonly referred to.

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