Manu Bhagavan is Professor of History, Human Rights, and Public Policy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center-CUNY, and Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is the author of The Peacemakers (2012, 2013) and Sovereign Spheres (2003), and the (co-) editor of 4 other books.  His latest work, India and the Cold War (ed.), released in Fall 2019 from UNC Press and Penguin India. He is currently writing a biography of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, one of the most celebrated women of the 20thc and a pioneer in international diplomacy. His  Quartz essay on global authoritarianism went viral internationally and was translated into German as the cover article of the May 2016 Berliner Republik magazine.  In the spring of 2019, Manu was featured, along with several other historians, in a comedy roast of the president of the United States as part of the Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner, an event hosted by the political satire television program, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Manu is the recipient of a 2006 Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and regularly appears in the media to comment on global affairs.

Read more about some of the points Manu made:

Fatehsinghrao Gaekwad’s Sayajirao of Baroda gives an insider view to the reign of Sayajirao and the royal family of Baroda during the twilight years of the princely order.

Public Library Movement in Baroda 1901-1949, a PhD dissertation written by ML Nagar, explores one of Sayajirao’s seminal reforms in depth, and by doing so, outlines the astonishing efficacy of his administration.

Host & Producer: Niki Aggarwal

Fact-checking: Ranvijay Singh

Sound Engineering & Design: Hanisha Harjani

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Secretary of State for India - A British cabinet rank position, the Secretary of State for India was the political head of the India Office and was responsible for the governance of British India. The position was established after the East India Company transferred its governing rights to the British government in 1858.

India House (England) - A student residence established to house Indian students in London, India House soon became a hotbed for revolutionary politics and actively promoted nationalistic views amongst Indian students in Britain. In 1909 the activities of the house were suppressed after a member of the house, Madan Lal Dhingra, assassinated Sir WH Wyllie.

British Resident - Appointed by the British Government, the Resident was the chief political and diplomatic representative of Britain in a princely state/group of princely states. The amount of influence they wielded varied depending on the local circumstances; at times they would even become the de facto political dispensation.

Niki: I'll just tell you the truth right now. Today's episode is going to be a little different. This is the first in a new series called footnotes. Think of these as addendums to our regular episodes in which we share scenes that didn't make the final cut, answer your questions about specific plot points and air conversations with experts who can put the story of our episodes within a larger historical context.

So today we are doing the footnotes for the Durbar incident, episode number one. Quick recap, there was a coronation ceremony for king George in 1911 called the Delhi Durbar. And the crux of the episode was whether the Maharajah Sayajirao Gaekwar the third, the Maharaja of Baroda. Was intentionally snubbing the king and committing sedition when he arrived at the Durbar under dressed and bowed, not three times, but once.

But we left you with a little bit of an ambiguous ending as to whether Sayajirao was being subversive and what his intentions were.

I recently spoke with historian and critically acclaimed author, Manu Bhagavan Manu currently serves as a professor of history, human rights and public policy at hunter college. And he also is the senior fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for international studies.

We had read one of his papers when conducting research for the episode for the original Darbar.

So I was really excited to get his take on the Darbar incident. We also talked about the larger context of the incident and why the British were so scared of Sayajirao.

Manu: In a nutshell, the way he dressed and his actions, which overall were relatively speaking minor transgressions, were purposeful. They were not forgetful. Now we know this actually because his grandson said as much.

Here Manu is referring to a book Sayajirao’s grandson wrote in which he recounted a conversation that Sayajirao had with his prime minister. But the prime minister isn’t the only one who spoke with Sayajirao at the Durbar. One of the other attendees was Motilal Nehru, a prominent member of the Indian National Congress and father of the first prime minister of India.

When the Durbar begins, Motilal has a prime seat. Guess who he's sitting next to: Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwar of Baroda. So the two of them have a conversation and Sayajirao asks Motilal what he thinks of the whole event and Moti Lal responds that he thinks it's a “grand tamasha”, meaning a fantastic show. It's the scene to be at. Then Motilal asks Sayajirao what he thinks and Sayajirao says, “oh yeah, it's a pretty big spectacle...it's a pretty interesting event. It's just too bad that we're all asked to basically perform as if we're in a circus.” I am paraphrasing, but he definitely uses the word circus. And so that's a clear indication that he resents being compelled to be an actor in this performance. He is very purposefully not following the protocols. This is not incidental. It's not “I gave my pearls to my son.” Now as for the rest of it, the bowing and all, I think that part is blown out of proportion. That is not something he necessarily meant anything by.

Why do you say that?

We know that what he did was not that different from what several other of the rulers did. As you note in the podcast, there's a bunch of films that are made. One company called Gaumont and a couple of the other films make a film clip and it's called the Durbar Incident and then they broadcast this all over. They're not depicting Sayajirao at all. They're depicting the Maharaja of Mysore. The film is showing the wrong thing altogether and what that means is that they were confused when they were looking for the incident, they couldn't find it because there likely wasn't anything substantial there. And so all of this seems more concocted. He's accused of not bowing properly to the Queen but he had a perfectly fine relationship directly with the Royal family. Several months before the Delhi Durbar, King George is coronated in London at Westminster Abbey. Guess who's there? Sayajirao Gaekwar. And then subsequently they have a private gathering in Buckingham Palace. Guess who was there? Sayajirao Gaekwar the Third. I don't think he intended to necessarily offend the monarchs directly. This was about British colonialism in India. This was about the administrative structure. And this was about the way in which the princes were treated in India. But he didn't want to veer into something actually seditious.

Niki: Right, so one of the pieces of evidence that we mentioned in the podcast that supports the idea that the incident was intentional was about the previous Durbar.

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.

But there’s actually even more to that story which further suggests Sayajirao’s actions were intentional. Could you talk about what happened at the previous durbar?

Now in 1903 there's the Second Delhi Durbar for the coronation of Edward. Now Edward does not come, but his brother, the Duke of Connaught, does. Sayajirao Gaekwar is invited to participate in a very special procession on elephant to the grounds. Sayajirao gets the invitation and he responds, you know, “Thank you very much but I don't think so. I don't feel like riding on an elephant, and no.” And then they wrote back and they tell him Your Highness, we've received your message and thank you for sharing with us your views, but may we just remind you that we're really not asking and that you—in short— will ride this elephant

So Sayajirao then responded “Oh, I didn't really realize that this was what you were saying. Of course I will be there.” So he shows up and it comes time for the procession and guess what: Sayajirao is not part of the elephant pre-session.

And why isn't he part of the elephant procession? Because he makes a claim at the last moment that his mother had recently died and he was still in mourning and therefore he could not be expected to ride the elephants and to take place in this important part of the ceremony.

Understanding that context we could view his actions as almost artfully subversive. Besides the Durbars, what are the other examples of this kind of sophisticated resistance to the British Raj?

One of the earlier Viceroys of India was a man named Lord Curzon. He and Sayajirao had a terrible relationship and that terrible relationship kind of began in 1900. Sayajirao was abroad in Europe on a trip with his wife. They were abroad for health reasons. This was not uncommon. Wealthy people from all over the world would make trips to places in Europe for climate and for access to various things which were seen as having health benefits. While they were abroad, Curzon released a circular. It came to be known as the Curzon Circular and what it said was that it was going to tamp down on the freedoms of Maharajahs and Indian rulers and prevent them from doing things like traveling at their will because this was all seen as very wasteful and that they were more interested in their personal luxuries than in being practical rulers. This was the claim

But this circular, when it came out, the press immediately gave two examples of the worst offending Maharajahs in the country. And one of them was Baroda. Sayajirao did not take kindly to this.

Sayajirao decided to exact his revenge by hosting a reception for the viceroy. Now that might not sound like what you would do for someone you're mad at, but the catch here was that Sayajirao was not going to be in Baroda at that time. He was still going to be in Europe. So it was a giant snub to be like “Oh, I will host you a party but it's not important enough for me to be there.” Curzon caught on very quickly.

Curzon said, “Well, you won't be there, so no, I'm not going to come, but you know what? Let's reschedule. Let's do it for November when you will be back in the state.” “Yes, yes. Great.” So they set the whole thing up and then Sayajirao just stays in Europe and then that's a way of not having this reception. I think you can see that Sayajirao gets away with resistance by playing within the rules and not necessarily admitting it.

But Sayajirao’s resistance went beyond just ceremonies and parties right. Could you speak about the times when Sayajirao was involved with activists from the Independence Movement?

In 1909, the aide de camp to the Secretary of State for India is assassinated by a member of what's known as the India House in England. Britain warns Sayajirao that he needs to be on the lookout for sedition in his state and he sits on this for a little bit and then he responds by saying, “You know, I'm really not sure of the extent of this, but thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Some parts of the nationalist press in India respond very favorably and they say,“Look, this is the way you treat this nonsense.” And the British press then pick up on this and say, “Sayajirao is someone we need to watch, he's someone who might be harboring seditionists.”

Now right before the Delhi Durbar, two officers in the Baroda administration are accused of sedition by the British resident. Now what has happened? Why are these two officers accused of sedition?

In essence, some pamphlets are found in Bombay which are Aurobindo’s writings.

Aurobindo was an Indian freedom fighter, philosopher, and writer.

They were published in a district in Baroda. They had covers which indicated they were about vegetables, but in fact were about how to bring down the colonial government. And so they (‘they’ being the British Resident) then went to the district official there and said, “what's going on here?” And the district officials said, “What are you doing here? You have no authority to conduct any inquiry. This is the princely state of Baroda and without the authorization of the Maharaja you should not be conducting an inquiry.” And they apologized. They said, “You know what you are, right.” And then they accused this district official of a conspiracy, and of obstruction of justice, of hampering an investigation.

Now it was upto Sayajirao to determine their punishment.

Sayajirao looked into the matter and he decided that he wasn't going to take any serious action. He was just going to transfer them. I mean these are two people who are being accused of a serious crime by British officials and he doesn't take any serious action against them. I think that's also very telling.

So Sayajirao is clearly not in favor of answering to the British. I am interested in how we should view him in the larger context of the anti-colonial movement. As we mentioned a little bit in the podcast, he was a relatively progressive ruler in terms of women’s rights and free education and civic and social infrastructure. And at the same time he also fit into some of these stereotypical ‘Maharaja’ tropes of splurging on all of the luxuries and spending months if not years at a time in Europe. So given these differing dimensions, how should we view him as a ruler and is that term ‘progressive’, is that accurate, is that anachronistic?

It's not anachronistic to call him progressive. He was called progressive in his time. As part of his early reforms, he helps establish a legislative council in Baroda which is a democratic forum. He speaks by the early 20th century against the princely order. He uses the term national to refer to the subcontinent as a whole more than almost anyone in the princely order. I think you make note of this in the podcast as well. He patronizes the arts. He supports a whole range of important figures in the anti-colonial movement. And then most importantly, everything he does in his state, all the reforms themselves are part of this resistance because he says look, “The British claim to be here because they say that they're going to deliver X, Y, and Z which natives cannot do. And I'm here to tell you,” Sayajirao Says, “that not only can we do it, but that we can do it better than the British and indeed better than anywhere else in the world.” And the best example of this has to do with his libraries.

The library movement is being pioneered with funding from Andrew Carnegie in the United States and he brings an expert from there to help him. And then the American expert says that what Baroda has done exceeds even what the United States has done.

I had to look this up later and was blown away. During Sayajirao’s reign, an entire statewide free public library system was created. It included a central state library, one library for each of the four districts, forty five town libraries, and then more than one thousand libraries in different villages. And all of these individual libraries were interconnected.

And so these are examples of how pioneering he really is and what he's able to accomplish. And this ultimately— more than the Durbar incident and more than anything else— is the threat to the British empire. It's the very idea that the Empire is not necessary. That it does not need to be there to deliver anything because the local populations are completely capable of making their own decisions and of taking actions to design world-class modern institutions and that this modernity in the sub-continent is not a replication of a Western kind of modernity, that it is very indigenous, that it’s its own thing. And that gap is what I think is perceived as threatening. And that is what I think behind the visceral reaction to the Durbar incident and why it becomes such a big deal for the British and in the press.

The Durbar incident essentially boils down to a moment of an important and self-assured figure with a fair amount of power, prestige, and protection deciding to signal his unhappiness, and to lightly thumb his nose at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. That is then blown into something much bigger because of this larger narrative, which is behind those actions.

OUTRO

We want to give a huge thank you to Manu Bhagavanfor accepting our invitation and taking the risk of being our first guest. Before we wrap up I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you might enjoy.

Redefining ABCD is hosted by ————————. On each episode they bring guests of South Asian-American descent to explore how each guest has used their career and goals through their unique hyphenated identity. You can find Redefining ABCD on the podcast app you are using right now.

So dear listener, what did you think of this episode? Should we do a “Footnotes” for the “Myth of the Pink City” episode? Hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, or email us to let us know your thoughts.

This episode was produced by me Niki Aggarwal with production assistance from Hanisha Harjani and Ranvijay Singh. In addition, Hanisha and Ranvijay performed their usual roles of sound engineering and fact checking respectively. MISREPRESENTED is a part of the Kahaani project, a storytelling project to put the ‘World’ back in World History. To learn more, visit Kahaani.io/misrepresented .