Giles Tilotson’s Jaipurnama weaves a deft narrative about the city’s history, culture, and the quirky characters that have populated its many periods.

Gayatri Devi’s autobiography A Princess Remembers to get a first-person account of the transition from a princely India to a republic. This is where we found all of her juicy quotes about the private plane and such.

John Zubrzycki’s book The House of Jaipur to delve into the modern history of the Jaipur Royals.

Host & Producer: Niki Aggarwal

Fact-checking: Ranvijay Singh

Sound Engineering & Design: Hanisha Harjani

FEATURED MUSIC

MALFNKTN | Roaches

Yasuke Mazda | Tabla With 8-Bit

Nickodemus & Maharaj Trio | Southern Magnolia

Rajastani Jagalbandi

Victor Orchestra | Hearts and Flowers

Mausam Poorvanuman | Bardte Kram Mein and Jal Prapaat

Prince of Wales

A title usually granted to the heir apparent of the British throne. During Queen Victoria’s reign, the Prince of Wales was Albert Edward—the future Edward VII— who visited India in 1875-76.

Treaty of Alliance (Subsidiary Alliance)

An agreement undertaken between native India states and the East India Company/British Government. The alliance would usually entail surrendering the control of their defence and foreign policy to the British in return for protection...and their guaranteed existence.

Sepoy

A term used for native soldiers serving in the British East India Company (and then British Empire). The term is Persian in origin, and it was initially used by the Mughal Empire to refer to all infantry soldiers.

Annotated version with citations available here

[00:00:00] Tourists: It was so unique because first of all, everything was pink.

[00:00:08] The pink City was like a dusty kind of pink

[00:00:13] When you entered the Pink City, you can actually see the walls are painted pink

[00:00:15] It wasn’t a pink, pink..it was this mystical thing

[00:00:17] It was an earthen dusty

[00:00:19] dusty kind of color

[00:00:27] Niki: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Niki Aggarwal and you are listening to Misrepresented, a podcast in which we tell stories about stories about the past. To say that in a less confusing way, we explore how misleading histories about South Asia get written.

[00:00:44] In today's episode I am going to be sharing a conspiracy theory with you about how one Indian dynasty maintained power for over five centuries. The story involves secret alliances, poets for profit, and a Guinness World Record.

[00:01:01] And the best part is it all started with a paint job.

[00:01:05] There is a city in India that is entirely pink. All of the buildings within the historic city walls of Jaipur have been painted the exact same shade of terracotta pink. Now all of the property owners in Jaipur didn't just wake up one day and decide that on Wednesday and every other day they would wear pink.

[00:01:29] Hey Google. Why is Jaipur pink?

[00:01:32] According to Wikipedia, during the rule of Sawai Ram Singh I, the city was painted pink to welcome HRH Albert Edward Prince of Wales in 1876. Many of the avenues still remain painted in pink giving Jaipur a distinctive appearance and the epithet ‘Pink City’.

[00:01:48] When I visited Jaipur myself, I heard a slightly different origin story. That in fact when Queen Victoria visited, the Maharaja ordered for all of the city streets to be lined with rose petals. The Queen was so taken by this display that the Maharaja then proclaimed that the city would be painted pink thereafter in her honour.

[00:02:12] There's even a few other variations of the story behind why Jaipur is the Pink City, but they all have two key things in common. First, they all credit a visit from the British Monarch as the defining moment Jaipur went pink.

[00:02:28] And second they're all completely false, like so, so false.

[00:02:35] Queen Victoria never even set foot in India, let alone Jaipur. The Prince of Wales did visit India and indeed visited Jaipur, but the city had been pink long before his arrival. It's kind of easy to prove too. There are paintings from the 18th century that depict Jaipur with its iconic pink city walls. No one knows exactly who started this origin myth and why, but I think this lie about the city's paint job can be traced all the way back to the top, to the Jaipur Royal family.

[00:03:14] This family came to power over one thousand years ago. The size of their kingdom changed drastically throughout the years. At one point, they ruled over the largest kingdom in all of Rajasthan and at another, they almost lost everything.

[00:03:33] They managed to hold onto power until the very end when India became a free republic. As for why the Royal family would manufacture a story about the city's color scheme...well, it's complicated. But spoiler alert, it has something to do with power. In order to prove this theory, I'm going to have to walk you through the dynasty's history. But don't worry, in just nine minutes, you will know the real reason Jaipur became the pink city. Okay, let's do this.

[00:04:09] Before there was a Jaipur, before there was a Rajasthan, before there was an India, there were the Rajputs. The Rajputs were a collection of dozens of individual clans all led by Hindu warrior kings. Each Rajput clan claimed divine lineage i.e., that they were direct descendants of god. This claim of divine heritage was key to maintaining power in a world without government institutions the way we experience them today

[00:04:50] But as a king, you couldn't just go up to your subjects one day and say, “Hey, by the way, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was God”...because you might not believe him. So the Rajputs employed the help of the greatest mythmakers of the time: poets.

[00:05:13] All Rajput Kings had bards performing in their courts who wrote and sang epic poems about their King’s hospitality, their devoutness, and their beautiful women, and above all, their divine heritage. It's likely that each king then sponsored the bards' travel to other courts and villages. Because one anecdote about a godly king won't stick, but four or five traveling poets coming in at different times and from different kingdoms, corroborating that story? Well, you might think that there's a grain of truth to it.

[00:05:54] Eventually all of these myths became interconnected, which helped each individual Rajput clan bolster its own myth. The clan that we're most interested in today, that would eventually build and rule over the Pink City, was just like any other Rajput clan: managing a relatively small kingdom and employing bards to sing their praises across the land. This way of life continued for about 500 years until something outside of the Rajput’s territory changed all of their lives forever, forcing our clan to adopt a new strategy to maintain power.

[00:06:35] The Mughals were conquerors from Central Asia who commanded a large empire across the subcontinent. They created one of the most prosperous empires in the history of the world, so much so that it's from them that we get the English word “mogal.” Early on in their empire building, the Mughals set their sights on the rich Rajput kingdoms.

[00:07:01] The Rajput clans were no match for the disciplined Mughal military. So by the 1500s, the Rajput rulers reluctantly accepted a new world order in which they held onto their kingdoms, but now ultimately served at the pleasure of the Mughal emperor.

[00:07:19] But our clan wasn't happy to be just one of many. Now, a large part of that divine heritage myth was this idea of pure bloods: Rajputs marrying other Rajputs. But the Rajputs didn't have power anymore, so our Royal family quickly abandoned that myth when it no longer served them. Instead, they concocted a plan. They sent an envoy to the Mughal court to present the emperor with a unique proposal: a marriage proposal.

[00:07:54] Now the concept of marrying into power is an idea as old as marriage itself. European dynasties were famous for it. But the Jaipur clan took it to a whole new level. They basically became an extended arm of the Mughal court. One of their own even became emperor: Jahangir.

[00:08:17] For the next 200 years, our clan strengthened this matrimonial alliance with the Mughals. It guaranteed them protection, elevated status, and plenty of funds for their kingdom. But then the Mughal empire began to decline.

[00:08:33] The Mughals in Delhi had gotten greedy for land, and their forces were spread way too thinly across South Asia. The slow crumble of the empire was creating a lot of chaos. For example, the landed nobility were freaking out. They were worried that the leases for their land would no longer be honored with the Mughals out of power.

[00:08:53] Instead of panicking though, our clan’s Maharaja, Jai Singh, was plotting. He approached any and every noble with an offer to buy their land. The Maharajas holdings quickly grew into a massive kingdom of 50,000 square kilometers. That's about 100 times the size of Jaipur today. Next, with this huge kingdom, the Maharaja built a new capital.He named it after himself, Jai-pur.

[00:09:25] When it came to constructing the city, he used the cheapest local stone, which naturally had a reddish terracotta color. He then directed his contractors to paint the city walls and buildings a very specific shade of dusty pink. See, he wanted his buildings to be painted the same shade as the most powerful buildings of that era: the Mughal fortress in Delhi. Because with the Mughal decline, the Jaipur Maharaja knew people would be looking for the next great power player. So he thought that maybe, if he could make his entire city pink, then just maybe his kingdom - the size of Mississippi - would be compared with the empire that spanned across today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

[00:10:15] And it kind of worked, just not for the audience the Maharaja intended.

[00:10:22] Okay. Before I tell you who the pink walls impressed, we are going to take a 45 second break so you can hear from our sound designer, Hanisha Harjani.

[00:10:32] Hanisha: Hello! I'm here to ask you to help us spread the word about Misrepresented. Can you text two friends about the podcast and why they should listen to it?

[00:10:41] To give you some ideas of what you might say, here are some emails and texts from other listeners. Sanjena said “The first episode had amazing storytelling with just enough anti-colonial snark and context.” Allie said “As a historian who’s invested in constructed silences and intentional representations, I am so excited to listen.” Or my personal favorite Srikant who said, “The sound design person seems rather heavy handed with the sound effects at times.” Fair enough. So no matter what you choose to say, please share the podcast.

[00:11:19] Alright, back to the episode. As a reminder, you left off at Maharaja Jai Singh founding the Pink City of Jaipur, and then there was some mysterious new audience who was impressed by the Pink City's wall.

[00:11:36] Niki: The British East India Company was established in the year 1600 to facilitate trade between Britain and South and Southeast Asia. They very quickly formed a monopoly on trade and gained so much economic power over key Indian regions that they began to exercise governing power as well. It's a little wonky.

[00:11:59] It's kind of as if a city were to become so dependent on Amazon, that Amazon would get to appoint its own city administrator that worked with the town mayor and the mayor would ultimately have to report to the Amazon board. And then in order to ensure governance in the region, Amazon would commission its own military and that military would grow to be twice the size of the United States’ military. Not the perfect parallel, but that's kind of what was happening in India in the late 1700s.

[00:12:32] The East India company infiltrated South Asia piece by piece. First Surat in the west, Madras in the south, Bombay, Calcutta...and then it was Jaipur’s turn.

[00:12:48] The Jaipur Royals signed a treaty of Alliance with the trading company in 1818. They were definitely on the later side of things in terms of kingdoms forging alliances. And yet they managed to find a place in the inner circle of the British Raj. It's possible it’s because the Jaipur Maharaja's plan worked, and the British saw the family as a natural successor to the powerful Mughals.

[00:13:13] But we can't give all the credit to that first Maharaja. His successors were adept at currying favor with the British. Like in the 1850s, there was a major rebellion against the British known as the Sepoy Mutiny. During this movement, the Jaipur Maharaja, of his own accord, provided refuge for all of the ranked British officials. So of course, when the Prince of Wales visited India in 1885, he had to make a stop to see his trusty friends, the Jaipurs.

[00:13:47] Every Maharaja that got the chance to meet the Prince of Wales gifted him lavish items and memorabilia. So the Jaipur Royals knew that just any old gift would not be enough to stand out. So in honor of the occasion, the king ordered for the city to be repainted the glorious pink.

[00:14:07] Yes. The city got a fresh coat of paint for the Prince of Wales, but the color hadn't changed in any way. They simply were sprucing up the city.

[00:14:16] But I do think the Jaipur Maharaja may have told the prince of Wales that the city was painted pink in his honor, in order to wow the monarch’s son and to build up even more good credit with the British. To be clear, no one else is saying this. It is 100% conjecture that the Maharaja was the one who started this rumor. But just to get you on my side, I'm going to tell you about all the other myths that this family continued to create and spread in order to hold on to power.

[00:14:53] Things were going swimmingly for the Jaipur Royals. They had used myths and ruthlessness to gain favor and power within the British empire. But like all empires, the British peaked and then began to weaken as subjects all across south Asia demanded independence. Unfortunately for the Jaipur royals, independence came hand in hand with the biggest threat to their throne: democracy.

[00:15:23] Now at first, the Jaipur Royals fought the tide. Like the palace limited the presence of newspapers and periodicals and they required typewriters to be registered. This forced activists to print political newspapers and pamphlets in neighboring states and then smuggle them into Jaipur.

[00:15:42] Despite the Royal's best efforts, by the 1930s, independence was all but inevitable. Always the savvy bunch, the Royals recognized this shift and they wanted to make sure that they were on the right side of history. Their big break came in 1937. The British asked their friend, the Maharaja of Jaipur, to arrest Mahatma Gandhi, who was conducting a rally in Jaipur. The Maharaja refused to arrest the leader of the independence movement and made sure that lots of people knew about his heroic feat. His wife Gayatri Devi, the last Maharani of Jaipur, even made sure to write about the event in her autobiography.

[00:16:28] This idea that the Jaipur Royal family was a big supporter of democracy before the fact is...it’s interesting. Considering the fact that when the people of India gained their freedom, the Royal families lost everything. Okay. Not everything.

[00:16:44] They did still have a couple of palaces and a stipend, but they lost their sovereignty, their ability to collect taxes, and most of their land. Furthermore, the new Indian government wanted to lean hard into the new idea of democracy. They made it clear that the Royal families were irrelevant and should fade into history. But Jaipur's Maharani Gayatri Devi was not going to take this loss sitting down.

[00:17:10] While many of the former rulers began selling off jewelry to secure revenue or fleeing the country instead of bearing the humiliation of being stripped of their throne, this former queen set her sights on a new form of political power. And she knew the only way to obtain it was to rely on the Jaipur Royals tried and true strategy.

[00:17:33] Before marrying into the Royal family, Gayatri was a princess in her own right, hailing from a small kingdom in north India called Cooch Behar. Having been a Royal since birth, independence and the loss of power hit Gayatri pretty hard.

[00:17:49] Gayatri Devi: Our little son Jagat came home from school one day bewildered. The other boys had told him that his father was no longer the most important man in Jaipur. How much of all of this he followed, I really don't know, but he understood the other changes that Jai was making. Jai had for instance decided that we must reduce our expenses and as a first step, give up our private plane. Having had a private plane at my disposal ever since I was 21, I was rather spoiled. Jagat, aged about seven, comforted me. And I soon resigned myself to the idea that we would no longer have a private plane.

[00:18:39] Niki: Gayatri Devi was frustrated by the Indian government's priorities. She thought that they were snubbing the former princely states. But she didn't think to enter politics immediately upon independence. It was only after something she cared deeply about was at risk: the mythical legacy of the Jaipur Royal family.

[00:19:01] I'm not at all politically minded. I never thought I'd go into politics. And then they started to knock the walls of Jaipur down. Jaipur is a very beautiful city and its got its traditional Rajput architecture and without the walls it would be nothing.

[00:19:17] She left out the part where the royal family would also be nothing.

[00:19:22] So the event pushed Gayatri Devi to run for a seat in parliament. She set about campaigning, which took her into villages that the Jaipur Royal family had never set foot in before. She learned lots of things about her former subjects out on the campaign trail. Like in her autobiography she wrote, and I quote, “I learned immediately that water was the most important element in their lives.”

[00:19:54] Keep in mind, before independence, the majority of the royal family's treasury was filled by taxes from the peasants. She was out of touch, to say the least. But she won the election anyway. And she didn't just squeak by. She set the Guinness World Record for the largest majority in any democratic election in modern history. International papers from Time magazine to the New York Times marveled at this accomplishment. They didn't realize that Gayatri Devi had merely borrowed from the Jaipur playbook: How to get from Myth to Monarchy in Five Easy Steps.

[00:20:41] If we win, do you know what they expect? They expect that suddenly their taxes will vanish, prices will drop, water will miraculously appear in the wells, and everything will be wonderful. I knew that it wasn't much use trying to tell them that they were now living in a democracy. That the most we could do was to air their grievances and try to get some action from the Government. But that, unhappily, we could guarantee nothing. They couldn't believe these harsh truths, their response was apt to be the traditional—almost feudal— one of saying, in effect, “You are responsible for us. You are our mother and our father.”

[00:21:26] Huh. I wonder where the Jaipur residents got those archaic feudal ideas.

[00:21:33] Maharaja: For generations my family has ruled you, and we have built up many generations of affection. The new government has taken my state from me, but for all I care, they can take the shirt off my back. As long as I can keep that bond of trust and affection.

[00:21:50] Niki: That was a speech Gayatri Devi's husband, the former Maharaja, gave while campaigning for her. Both he and his wife Gayatri spent two months reminding their former subjects of the good old days. It paid off dividends because after her historic win, Gayatri went on to win two more elections making sure to rep the Jaipur family at every turn.

[00:22:16] So in the 1960s, it was looking like this family had done the impossible. They had employed myths at opportune moments to hold onto power for centuries, figuring out how to game the Mughal empire, the British Raj, and now even post independent India. But then the rules changed.

[00:22:36] In 1975 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a constitutional emergency. This gave Gandhi unbridled power to censor the press, trample over civil liberties, and jail almost all members of the political opposition, including Gayatri Devi. After being released, Gayatri Devi didn't run for parliament ever again and she led a much quieter life until her death in 2009.

[00:23:06] The legendary Jaipur Royal family still live in the Pink City and are quite wealthy. They make a killing off of tourists who visit the City Palace every year. But the myth of the pink city no longer serves them. They don't need to impress the Mughals or the British.

[00:23:23] But someone else has now taken up the story of the pink city.

[00:23:30] The Jaipur city government run by the Congress party - the party of Indira Gandhi - loves the Pink City myth. They spread this story through government-trained tour guides, and the fake history is plastered all over their websites. Because they know white tourists love that ish. Two million people visit Jaipur every single year, many of whom are from America, Canada and Europe. But it's not just the city of Jaipur that's in on this myth. Fifteen years ago, the central Indian government launched the Golden Triangle campaign, encouraging tourists to visit what they say are three of the great Indian cities. The first two are Delhi and Agra, which were the two capitals of the Mughal empire. And the third is the Pink City.

[00:24:22] It only took two hundred years, but the Jaipur Maharaja’s original reasoning for painting the pink city finally paid off.

[00:24:30] Myth imitates life imitates myth.

[00:24:46] If you enjoyed this episode, there are two things you should know. First who created it. Our sound engineer and designer is Hanisha Harjani and fact checking was done by Ranvijay Singh. And I, Niki Aggarwal, am your host as well as producer. The music that tied this episode together was created by multiple artists, including MALFNKTN and Nickodemus and the Maharaj Trio.

[00:25:09] And the voices you heard at the very top of the episode were interviews with your peers, other Misrepresented listeners. The second thing you need to know is that you sharing this podcast with friends is a huge deal. If every single person listening today shared the show with two people, Misrepresented would become a top 20 history podcast in India and possibly make the top 100 in the UK.

[00:25:34] If that doesn't motivate you, I don't know what will..but I will keep trying to figure it out. Talk to you soon.

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