Princes, Anachronism and the Anti-Democratic Impulse

Presenter:

---

Abstract

The colonial relationship with princely states evolved during the nineteenth century through constant negotiation and re-negotiation. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the British Indian government sought to codify the relationship, while at the same time keeping it fluid. Following the revolt of 1857 the British increasingly relied on the support of princely rulers to stabilize their position in India. It was therefore in their interest to allow some degree of autonomy to the states. The actual extent of power that a state enjoyed was determined by various factors, most importantly by its size, the specific historical context of its incorporation into the Indian empire, and the role that it had played in the revolt. Ever since the imperial assemblage or ‘durbar’ of 1877 held in Delhi to announce the new title of Victoria, Indiae Imperatrix, princely rulers were central to royal events organized in India. Bernard Cohn has unravelled the several layers of political and cultural meaning of this spectacle, the key to which was the assertion of the sovereignty, and the status of the princely rulers as vassals of the monarch. The political importance of Indian princes was publicly recognized on all such occasions, of which the 1911 ‘durbar’, with George V’s presence, was the most ostentatious. The paper argues that the anachronism of the 1911 event, against the backdrop of nationalist politics, made the princes complicit through their conspicuous participation in archaic ceremonial, in the agenda to promote the imperial idea. In committing themselves to empire so visibly they rendered themselves historically irrelevant to the idea of a modern democratic nation.