False allies: India’s maharajahs in the age of Ravi Varma

Includes note, bibliography and index

The World of India’s Princes

In 1887 a young man of ample proportions climbed on to a tricycle to pose for a famous painter. On his face was a look of doleful seriousness, and in the background were rolling hills and wiry trees. His gaze was directed at the viewer, and the hint of a double chin betrayed both solemnity and the advent of fatal obesity. On its own, the scenery around could belong to any part of the world really, but the subject himself was clearly meant to flaunt a picture of the modern Indian, in step with the times and its impulses. He wore English trousers and shiny shoes, with a dreary dark coat and pocket watch. Indeed, besides ear studs and an embroidered cap, there was no concession at all to the Western stereotype of Eastern opulence here – the brown Victorian was swathed in bureaucratic blandness, not silk and colour; if he was exotic, it was only as much as the English queen in whose name starchy civil servants – in matching uniform – governed his country. In fact, the whole purpose of the portrait, it would seem, was not so much to capture the sixteen-year-old’s likeness or flatter his features as to parade his assumed personality. That the effort was received poorly is another matter: in Simla, the summer capital of the British Raj, a critic savaged the subject’s ‘matriculation examination kind of expression’ and the anxious effort to project ‘a modern and progressive air’. Instead, he sniffed, the artist – the celebrated Raja Ravi Varma – ought to have preserved convention. After all, our distinguished tricycle rider was an Indian prince, and ‘flowing white robes’ with a jewel or three would have served him far better than this ‘European travesty’.

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