Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Ken Robbins: May I have all of your attention? We're ready to start again, and it is my great pleasure to bring to you one of the distinguished historians of India and not only of maharajas but of women, and that is Barbara Ramusack from the University of Cincinnati. Barbara? [ Applause ] Barbara Ramusack: I want to add my thanks and appreciation to the Friends of the Asia Division of the Library of Congress for organizing this symposium, and for the Sackler [phonetic] and all the people who put together that absolutely marvelous exhibition of paintings from Marwar, and particularly for Ken and Joyce Robbins who have been close friends, as well as colleagues, and interested in princely state things since I met them in 1984. And on this very pleasant day I'm also glad that you're willing to sit inside. Today I'm going to talk about forts, palaces, and museums. And I want to talk about how perceptions of them have changed, and how -- what travelers and then tourists expect and want to have when they go to India to see the palaces, forts, and museums. And I will focus on Rajasthan, so my apologies to people in Mysore, and Hyderabad, and a variety of other states which I have studied. And today I'm going to focus on three particular states, but I want to say in terms of travelers, and I'll talk about travelers from the 19th century until the present, initially in the 19th century there were three Rajput states that people tended to go to, Amber, Mawar, and Malwar. And, of course, this is the picture of the Fort of the Zunana and the Sheesh Mahal there in the Amber Fort which is famous to many of you and was always the prize. It was the first state that most of the travelers would go to if they wanted to see a Rajput state. Then there is the city -- this is the city palace at Udaipur, and I'll talk about when people started to go to Udaipur, and what their expectations were, and then, of course, the Fort at Jodhpur. Then there was the development of a second tier from the '30s, but particularly the '70s, the so-called desert states, and Jodhpur was considered a desert state. But also we have Jaisalmer, and here is the Fort at Jaisalmer which many of you have seen. And then the other thing that Jaisalmer is particularly noted for were the Street of Havelis, and this is in the street looking out over the archway there, so that we had the desert -- and I don't know, when I was there in the 1980s it seemed like the place was overrun with French tourists. And I talked to people, and they said, "Well, the French really like Bikaner, and Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer. The Americans don't come out here because the rail connections were poor, and you'd have to take bus rides across the desert." Then I don't have pictures of the third, but I'll just refer to it. In the 1990s people started particularly to go to Orcha, Bundy, and Kota. And I know people who would go for a whole week in Orcha because they thought they got a fuller experience of princely India. This slide I'll talk about shortly, but it's Ram Singh of Jaipur, who was Maharaja in the late 19th century and welcomed a lot of people. One of the things that I want to make clear at the beginning is that in much of the literature people talk about travelers and tourists. Travelers were sensitive people. Scholar Paul Fussell said that there were three types actually of people who visited. First of all, there were the explorers who seek the undiscovered. Then there were travelers who seek what is discovered by the mind working in history. And other commentators on tourism and travel say travelers are adventuresome and they work at something because travel comes from traval [phonetic], the French word. And then tourists -- this is Fussell again -- say seek what is entrepreneurship discovered, and they're responding to publicity. And I'll talk about publicity. And the general tenor of work on tourism is that they're passive, that they go to see things to see them but also to gain things like social status or to play another role. And where else can you play at being a king than in Rajasthan? I mean, in England you're just a lord or a prince in France if you stay at a chateau, but India has that. As I said when I started, there were relatively few travelers to Rajasthan in the early 19th century. They tended to start coming by the 1870s, and there were various factors. First of all, the Suez Canal opened, and that enabled a much shorter timeframe to get to India. And then there was the opening of railways which made it much easier to go internally. And as you might remember, "Around the World in Eighty Days" came out in 1872. And the thing that Phileas Fogg wanted to do in his travels was show how technology had contracted the world, that you could go in 80 days, and one of the things was the Suez Canal, the great India Peninsular Railway, as well as the Union Pacific in the United States. And so that we had this increase of travelers, and also people say tourists, who become the globetrotters. And if you read about travel to Rajasthan, people are very upset about the globetrotters who just want to come and sort of collect stamps in their passports, although passports really didn't come into full use until the 20th century. In my work on princely states in travel, initially in the 19th century after the 1870s, people wanted to see one of each of princely states. They thought Hyderabad was a Muslim state, Mysore was a Hindu state, also you had the elephant roundup or elephant hunts in Mysore which they really liked, Baroda was a Maratha state and was progressive, Rajput state, as I said, Jaipur. Gwalior was a very popular stop in the 19th century because for its great fortress. And then sometimes, if you were really adventuresome, you'd go to Jammu and Cashmere for a mountain state. Now, who were these travelers who came to India? One of the things which really sparked interest in India was the Imperial Assemblage and the tour of the Prince of Wales in 1876, '77 because people accompanied him, and Queen Victoria wanted to have a pictorial record of this assemblage where she was crowned Empress of India in absence -- or let's say she was recognized as Empress of India -- and so Val Princep went around to the princely states to paint the portraits of princes for a painting he was going to present to the Queen Victoria. And so, this is his -- he also wrote a travel book and illustrated it with his paintings done as etchings. So here we have Ram Singh. Here is Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur, who became very famous not only from this but from various photographs of paintings of him. Then besides people -- British, you did have someone who's becoming more prominent, American artist, let's see -- oh, I know, I have this on there because he also went to Alwar. Alwar was a relatively new state, a break-off from Jaipur, as many of you know. And it seemed to be visited because it was close to Delhi. It was on the way to Delhi, and everybody wanted to go to Delhi. And this is a picture of the guesthouse outside of Sariska in Alwar. Another artist who went to India was Edwin Lord Weeks, and he was what you could call an American Orientalist. Most of us are familiar with the British Orientalist painters and the French Orientalist painters, who focused primarily on the Middle East. A few did do India. Weeks lived for an extended period in Paris, and he went to the Middle East, but he also went to India. And this is a painting of Jaipur, "Feeding the Sacred Pigeons at Jaipur." And he was someone who wanted to do both architecture and the people in princely States. I had two slides of paintings in Jodhpur, and when I was working feverishly on this they somehow disappeared into outer space, so I apologize for that. And here is a group, the Maharaja of Gwalior leaving his fort, and I just want to show that there was a lot of emphasis on Gwalior. And there were some in the 20th century who described the fort as a huge battleship in a calm sea. In the 19th century there was an emphasis that the fort was begun by a Rajput Man Singh Tomar, 1486 to 1516, so that it had Rajput origins but then, of course, was captured by the Marathas. And in the 20th century relatively few tourists go to Gwalior, and I think there are physical reasons, accommodation and things like that, that people complain about, or lack thereof, shall we say. In terms of other travelers, there were journalists and authors. And we have references to Rudyard Kipling whose works are ubiquitous. I went yesterday to the Freer Bookstore because the Sackler wasn't open, and they have two volumes of Kipling's works on the shelf. Kipling, as many of you know, was born in India, went back to India as a very young man to work on the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, and then went to work on the parent newspaper, the Pioneer in Allahabad. And when he was in Allahabad, he got to do more, let's say, special reporting. And he would go to various princely states. And Jaipur -- oh, here's another picture of the contemporary Fort at Gwalior, which really is a magnificent fort. But, as I say, these things drop off the tourist circuit. In Kipling, when he goes to Jaipur, he praises Jaipur as both modern and traditional. He claimed that if any part, and I quote here, "of a land strewn with dead men's bones has a special claim to distinction, Rajputana, as the cockpit of India, stands first," so that you have this growing beginning of an emphasis on the centrality of Rajputana to Indian history. And in terms of his praise of modern things, he praises Jai Singh for moving the capital from Amber down onto the plains, and then his descendants for such modern things as the Royal -- or the Albert Hall Museum. And this museum is in what's known as the Indo-Saracenic style, which is the style that the British evolved that they thought was appropriate for Indians to build in. And many of the Indian princes built their palaces in the Indo-Saracenic style. The Maharaja of Jaipur did not. He did build the Royal Albert -- or, I'm sorry -- the Albert Hall Museum with the Indo-Saracenic style. He also built Ram -- or had Rambagh Palace, which was originally a guesthouse I'll talk about later, modernized by Swinton Jacob in the Indo-Saracenic style, but he did not think it was appropriate for his own personal things. So that Kipling thought Albert Hall -- and this was opened in 1881 so it's a very early museum -- was superior to many government museums in British India in its collections, in its display of them with gilt-edge informative labels, elegant display cases, clean floors, and superior fittings that included doors true to jam, and so that this is -- if you've been -- well, I haven't been recently, but things have not progressed well or it's not been as well preserved as some other places. And another thing that happened, Thomas Henley, who had helped develop some of the exhibits there, produced a guidebook to the Albert Hall Museum. And it's interesting that this is one of the first guidebooks that starts to provide information on shopping and on churches, so it was obviously developed for a European market. Now, Kipling, at the same time, while he really liked the Royal Albert Hall and various others signs of modernization, found the Maharaja's palace, city palace, is arrogantly gay, overwhelmingly rich in candelabra painted ceilings, gilt mirrors, and other evidences of a too hastily assembled civilization. What he particularly disliked, and you'll find this in many travelers' reports, were the very elaborate chandeliers in princely palaces. They thought this was a poorly assimilated aspect of western civilization. They never talked about all the British merchants who were selling these chandeliers to the Indians. And, of course, Gwalior is famous because it has the largest chandelier in the world, and the Maharaja took an elephant up on the roof to make sure that the roof of his palace would hold the chandelier. When many of the travelers came to Jaipur, they would compare Jaipur to Paris, so Jaipur was seen as modern, as elegant, as traditional, at the same time where you had things like Amber for the romantic fort on the top. Kipling also went to Udaipur, and he proclaimed it as backward as Jaipur is advanced if we judge by the standard of civilization. And that was Kipling's work. These were published, and they were letters of marque [phonetic]. They did influence people. At the same time, Kipling said -- you know, he traveled by tonga for 70 miles from Chittoor, which was very -- to Udaipur. And even though the tonga broke down, he commended the Maharana for not having a railway to Udaipur because he said it could bring, and I quote, "the tourist who would have scratched his name upon the temple of Garuda and laughed horse-laughs upon the scene." Now, he also referred to the white marble palaces floating on the lake, and he asserted that if the Venetian owned Pichola Sagar he would say with justice, "See it and die." In the 19th century there was notice of what became the Lake Palace Hotel but that was closed to tourists, so that they tended to focus on Jag Mandira [phonetic]. This is a 19th photograph at the British Library, and it's particularly attractive because they could go and have a picnic lunch, and there was the romantic story of how the Maharana of Udaipur sheltered the future Shah Jahan ruler, Emperor of the Mughals, when he had rebelled against his father. In Jodhpur, Kipling found Maharaja Jaswant Singh to be informal, and said that the Rock Palace Hotel blended rock and masonry so completely that the traveler felt as if he were walking through mountain gorges. And here is a picture of what he was referring to. Another very influential writer who came from England is Edwin Arnold. Now, he had been Principal of Deccan College in Poona from 1856 to '61, and then subsequently was a journalist on the "London Daily Telegraph." And he's probably most known as the author of "Light of Asia," an epic poem on the Buddha. He toured Jaipur and Alwar, had very profuse praise for Jaipur, the setting of the mountains, the colorfully -- and we start to see people talking about the colorfully dressed people and the romantic architecture. And he talked about Jaipur, that if a conqueror could dream of building a capital with rouge, royal, marble, or pink coral, this is how it would look. It is an interminal perspective of roseate house bathed by soft sunlight, nowhere ungraceful in style of building. But what he's particularly noted for is the way in which he started the use of the Hawa Mahal as an icon for the romantic architecture of Rajasthan. His words are, "It's a vision of daring and dainty loveliness, nine stories -- " it's actually seven -- "of rosy masonry, and delicate overhanging balconies, and lattice windows soaring with tier after tier of fanciful architecture in a pyramidal form, a very mount of airy and audacious beauty through the thousand pierced screens and gilded arches of which the Indian air blows cool over the flat roofs of the very highest houses." And I don't know if you can see on the screen, but on the upper levels you can see blue sky through the screens. And this starts a major controversy about why Jaipur is the pink city. And Giles Tilson [phonetic] says Jaipur was constructed in less than a decade and dull gray stone was used, so the buildings were painted pink to give the atmosphere of weathered sandstone, and that in 1868 Ram Singh II, whose portrait we saw, restored them to an earlier pink color after experimenting with other colors. But he doesn't really talk about what other colors were. Now, there's a second level of -- well, a third level of professional travel writers, and I'll be more brief on this. These travel writers all quoted liberally from Tod, that my colleague John McLeod will talk about shortly, from James Tod, a British official from Kipling, and from Arnold. But in their books they would add advice on souvenirs, enamel -- like Jaipur, they talk about enamels [phonetic], and garnet jewelry, and they would also praise the princely states because there was less evidence of western educated Indians, which is interesting in relation to the talk this morning. Now, I show this slide of -- this is from the book of W.S. Kane, who was a professional travel writer. He published his book in 1891. And so, what we have to realize is that people didn't have color, and it would be the paintings of people like Edwin Lord Weeks that would give them color because this was what they would see of it, and it's very different compared to that picture. By 1900 we start to get photographs instead of engravings in books, but again, they're black and white photographs. But they give people a sense of actuality. Another thing about travel to princely states is that in the 19th century it meant hunting. Now, this is a slide that was from Petioles [phonetic] State, a state that I've worked on in earlier years. And it gives you the idea that if you went to a princely state you could have a hunt laid on for you where you could have beaters, and hopefully get a tiger. So that you have people talking about how no -- and even in the 1920s, that if you knew a Nawab or a Maharaja it meant you'd probably get a good hunt if you visited the state. Now, I don't think Maharaja Gaj Singh is going to be able to arrange that for you now. But anyway, that was one of the reasons why you wanted to go to a princely state. Another thing that began to promote tourism to the princely states was Thomas Cook and sons and their subsequent tour operators. From 1872, '73, Thomas Cook arranged around-the-world tours, and they were very expensive and relatively small. So that they started but it was not their main business. Actually their main business was to handle the travel arrangements for Indian princes who were going to Europe. And these could be quite complicated. There was a hiatus because of the First World War on travel to the princely states, but in the 1920s it started up again. We have Americans increasingly coming, and women, too, and writing about it. Agnes Rush Burr was enchanted with Jaipur that was as modern, as well as medieval. So we keep seeing this characterization of Jaipur as modern but medieval. And interestingly enough -- I hope it's not just women who do this because that's why I pointed out Thomas Henley -- she said, "Albert Hall Museum was like all the fascinating shops of India rolled into one," so shopping becomes a major enterprise. Now, she was someone who didn't like Udaipur. She said, "The lake and the palace are not exceptionally beautiful," and she complains that the visit involved a long and exhausting trip, and the tourists were at the mercy of service extended at the one hotel in Udaipur, which is why palace hotels are so important. Then we had what I think is one of the first coffee table sized books that was produced by C.W. Waddington in 1933. He was a former principal at Rajkumar College in Rajkot, which [inaudible] talked about, and Mayo College in Ajmer. And his book is entitled "India as Seen by a Guest in Rajasthan." And he said he wanted to recall happy experiences of those who had visited the princely state and to provide other readers, quote, "some inducement to exchange a winter in Egypt or on the Riviera for the exhilarating climate of the land of the princes." He visited Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner in the desert, Bundy, Kota, Orcha, and Gwalior, too. And he too quoted freely from Tod, Arnold, and Kipling. This slide is of the Fort at Jodhpur and somewhat tragically he also portrayed the Gypsy Moth which the Maharaja of Jodhpur had. And he claimed -- this is Waddington in 1933 -- that the Rajput states were the only indigenous political institutions which have shown stability and are worthy of free men. He dismissed the Maratha rule states such as Baroda, and Gwalior, and Mysore as a despotism of the ordinary Asiatic kind established in lands which had been seized and held by the power of mercenary armies. Neither Baroda or Mysore would've liked this because they had the reputation for being progressive princes. Now, by the 1930s, Thomas Cook started to begin tours -- or by the '20s -- specifically to India. And this is the poster from their 1936, '37 season, and these weren't tourists specifically to Rajasthan. But the Indian princes and Rajasthan increasingly become associated as India, and wearing traditional garb. And if you think of Man Singh II of Jaipur, he would be more likely to be wearing polo clothes and driving expensive cars rather than riding an elephant. Now, finally, travel to Rajput states after independence, we -- and because during the Second World War obviously there was no travel there. After independence there was the development of palace hotels. As I mentioned earlier, Rambagh Palace had first been built in 1850 as a guesthouse for European guests. And then it was modified later in the 1870s and '80s in Indo-Saracenic style, used as a guesthouse, and then in the 1930s, Man Singh, II, modernized it and had it as a palace for himself and Gayatri Devi after their marriage. And then in 1959, I think, yeah -- or 1958, Man Singh said he no longer had need -- he needed more income, he was no longer Rajpramukh, and, also, they couldn't keep up with the stream of visitors. And so, they turned it into the hotel. And this was the first of the palace hotels, and quickly Jaipur became one leg of the so-called Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. And there were -- Jaipur was within easy driving distance of Delhi, and there were good train connections. Now, the real boom of travel to India, of course, came with the advent of jet planes, which could move much larger numbers of people, and greater economic growth, and greater leisure after the Second World War, so that the expanding American and European middleclass had the time and money for group travel, and you had people who could go on the more traditional luxury classes. In the 1970s you had the influx of so-called overlanders and hippies. And by the 1980s, I found it interesting that the rough guide which was originally for overlanders and hippies now began to talk about accommodations at all price levels from the Lake Palace down to small quaint places in the city in Jaipur. And there was another factor which increased is that there was significant government support at both the central and state levels for tourism in Rajasthan. And in 1962 the Lake Palace was opened in Udaipur. In 1972 Maharaja Gaj Singh opened Umaid Bhawan Palace. And what's noticeable in a survey of government tourists is that the category of princely states becomes focused on Rajasthan. No one wants to go to Baroda and see the petrochemical plant there. People don't want to go to Mysore's state. Bangalore was a garden city. They don't go to Hyderabad anymore. And the government does not promote these. There's been some change in the 1990s, but not really major as far as I'm concerned. Now, as more people came to Rajasthan they expanded what were the attractions for the tourists, so we have museums. Albert Hall was already mentioned. When I visited it in -- actually, it was 1987 when there was a conference of Rajasthan studies, and I visited since then, it was interesting, at Albert Hall you had non-elite villagers, peasants, and Jaipuri [phonetic] citizens going through Albert Hall looking at dioramas of peasant life, which I -- Albert Hall is a city museum in public and it was -- at that point I think it was, like, two rupees for the entrance fee, so you went there. Well, then you go to the city palace which has the Maharaja's collections, that was much more expensive. And so, it was mainly foreign tourists or -- it was interesting, I was with an art historian and there were Indians who had tour guides telling them about their heritage. We didn't have a tour guide, we felt sort of naked, but, anyway, I had a tour guide -- so that you had the Maringar [phonetic] Fort Museum, the museum in Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, you had a museum at the city palace in Udaipur. And what also started to happen, these museums helped to preserve the material culture of princely families, while at the same time obtaining some financial support and increasing numbers of tourists, but you have the development of specialty museums now. There's the Bharat Lok Kala [inaudible] in Udaipur for puppeteers and folk art. There is the Anokhi Museum of hand block printing in Amber, very difficult to get through, through the village streets, but it's a wonderful restoration of a haveli, and promoting the products of Anokhi, but also their commitment to maintaining the block printing. And then, of course, Kutari [phonetic], who arranged the music for the gala last night and also the bard to come and give the genealogy, and his distinguished father, they have the Desert Museum of Rajasthan in Jodhpur, the Arna-Jharna Museum there, so that we have a range of specialty museums because if you come to these places, you want to see other things. Oh, I threw in the Polo Bar capitalizing in the Rambagh Palace. I don't know if it's still there because I haven't been there lately. But, anyway, that was a favorite meeting place. That was the only place I could afford to go in the place, and then, of course, the Umaid Bhawan Palace, which is both hotel, museum, and residence of the Maharaja. Another thing which started to happen is that aristocratic relatives, like Tokwers [phonetic] and Jankidas [phonetic], of the Maharajas began to open up their residences and palaces as smaller places, like Samode [phonetic] was one of the first ones in Jaipur, Havelis, and houses in Shakir Vate [phonetic], a variety. A third thing were Palace on Wheels. And then a fourth thing is conservation efforts. If in the 1920s it was still -- you wanted to meet a Maharaja because they were going to organize a hunt for you, starting in the '70s, '80s, '90s, and particularly contemporary, there are -- conservation efforts led to the development of -- how much time do I have, five minutes, okay -- conservation, the famous water bird preserve at Bhaktapur, the hunting preserve of Jaipur at Ranthambore Fort, which now has a project tiger thing there. Oh, actually, I'm getting done quickly. And then we have festivals, Pushkar, everybody asks me, you know, what happens at Pushkar? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to go to it. There's also the desert festival in Jaisalmer, so that the range of experiences for tourists has expanded, which is, you know, an economic proposition but, at the same time, it does extend the knowledge of Rajasthani culture. Another thing which I think is very important are they become locales for movies, television series, documentaries. If you think of all of the James Ivory and Merchant films like -- "Shakespeare Wallah" was filmed in Alwar, "The Guru" in Bikaner, "Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures" in Jodhpur, and then the one that my students know about is "Octopussy" which was in Udaipur in 1983. And this did a lot of things in that it fulfilled western ideas of exotic sexuality of oriental potentates, but it's no longer an oriental potentate, it's a very modern man, James Bond. And all I can remember from the movie really is the autorickshaw ride through the backstreets of the city because I've been in some autorickshaws where I think they were going like that. So these extend the thrust of what a princely state looks like to a variety of audiences. And then my last one is that increasingly you see princely palaces used as shoots for various kinds of features including fashion shoots. Now, this is a very early one from 1989, and the model is in the Maharaja's bedroom at Umaid Bhawan Palace. We don't see any Maharaja there. Okay, and thank you very much. [ Applause ] Ken Robbins: Thank you, Barbara, thank you. Now I get a chance to introduce the other side of my heart, the man I've been working with for a long period of time, and I continually inveigle into working on strange projects relating to Maharajas and Nuaps [phonetic] and other assorted people, the person who knows more about princely genealogy than anybody else in the world, the Chairman of the History Department at the University of Louisville, John McLeod. [ Applause ] John McLeod: Thank you, Ken, and I don't know if I can live up to that introduction but it is a great privilege and a pleasure to be here, and to see some old friends, and to meet new friends. I'm very glad to be here. [inaudible] Male Speaker: She wants it covered [phonetic]. Just shut it [phonetic]. Male Speaker: Don't worry about it. John McLeod: Okay. Ken Robbins: Don't look. Cover your eyes. John McLeod: That's right. Just listen to me. No conference on the Rajputs would be complete without a mention of James Tod. In two great works, "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan," which was published in two volumes in 1829 and 1832, and "Travels in Western India," which was posthumously published in 1839, Tod brought the Rajputs and their kingdoms in Rajasthan and Gujarat to the notice of the English-speaking world. His books are a combination of travelogues of his journeys through the Rajput states with tales composed by court bards about Rajput monarchs and nobles. And the travelogues are still evocative even today. If you've ever retraced any of Tod's footsteps, you really do notice this. While I was writing this talk, I glanced through Tod's books. And in his Western India I found his description of scrambling down the side of Mount Abu to the Ashram of Vashishta in 1822. This is the place, as some of you may know, where the Agniku [phonetic] Rajputs were created in the hawan kund. And Tod's description of this very vividly brought back to me the time that my wife Mary and I made the same trek in 1994. Much of it is still the same. Tod actually had an advantage over us because after we had finished at the ashram, we had to climb back up the side of the mountain, whereas Tod went on down to the plain and didn't have to make that trek. But he's very evocative in his travelogues, and his Bardic tales are also very evocative. Let me just read you a sample here. This is the description of the death of the Rana of Mewar in the siege of the great Fortress of Chittoor in 1303. The Rana, satisfied that his line was not extinct, now prepared to follow his brave sons, 11 of whom had already given their lives. And calling around him his devoted clans, for whom life no longer had any charms, they threw open the portals and descended to the plains, and with a reckless despair carried death or met it in the crowded ranks of the enemy. And in the almost two centuries since they were published, Tod's books have provided many readers with their first introduction to the Rajputs. My earliest explorations in the field came 30-odd years ago when I discovered "Annals and Antiquities" in the Toronto Reference Library. The same book was required reading for British political officers, the officials who represented the paramount power of the courts of the Indian princes, although if you've ever read Sir Edward Wakefield's memoirs, he gives a humorous explanation of how the requirement to read Tod actually could be evaded. But it's not only foreigners who turn to Tod. Mahatma Gandhi was only one of many nationalists who looked to Tod as the source of his references to Rajput heroism and independence. In the 1950s a Rajput maharaja who was studying at Oxford became a friend of L.G. Pine, one of the greatest British genealogists of the 20th century. And to introduce Pine to the genealogy of his own people, the Maharaja presented him with a copy of "Annals and Antiquities." And I think it's very likely that the present day Indian picture of such Rajput heroes as Prithviraj Chauhan or Queen Pugmini [phonetic] come not directly from Bardic literature but through the medium of Tod. Indeed it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Tod is ultimately responsible for two images that are now firmly embedded in popular consciousness around the world, or at least in that part of popular consciousness that pays attention to things like this. The first is what now seems to us to be almost the natural habit of seeing the history of Rajasthan, and to a lesser extent the history of Gujarat, as the story of the Rajput dynasties. And the second thing that Tod did that has now become almost second nature to us is the depiction of the Rajputs as first and foremost as chivalrous warriors and kings. That, of course, has always been current among the Rajputs themselves, but Tod has made it part of the general image. Now, of course, Tod was not perfect. Ever since the first publication of the first volume of "Annals and Antiquities," Tod's characterization of the Rajput sociopolitical order as feudal has been criticized. It's also been misinterpreted by both British officials and Indian Marxist professors, whether out of ignorance or out of willfulness. Now, in fairness to Tod, he was not the first to say that the Rajput kingdoms were feudal. Rather he was taking a position in a debate that had already been waging for a quarter of a century among Britons who knew the Rajput world far better than their British or Indian Marxist successors. Tod has also been subjected to criticism for often going completely wrong when he tries to explain the roots of Indian words, although admittedly the science of etymology was in its infancy when he wrote. A more apt criticism is that Tod saw Rajput history and culture exclusively through the eyes of Rajputs, although, that being said, recent scholarship recognizes that his work has a lot of value even when he goes beyond the Rajputs. But fundamentally there will always be a place for James Tod in any study of Rajputs, 170 years after his death Tod and his works continue to be the subject of scholarly study. And what I'd like to do now is to speak briefly about James Tod, to introduce him to those of you who have not met him yet, and perhaps to say something new about him to those of you who do know him. I'll start with a brief biography, I'll then turn to the way Tod depicts Rajput history and culture, and finally I'll discuss an aspect of Tod's background that has been completely overlooked, but that I think may be relevant to understanding his view of the Rajputs. First of all, his biography, James Tod was born in 1782. At the age of 16, through the influence of an uncle, he was appointed a cadet in the East India Company's Bengal Army. Six years later he accompanied a British Embassy to the powerful Maratha King Daulatrao Sindhia, who at that time was living in the Rajput kingdom of Mawar. And this was Tod's first contact with the world of the Rajputs. From then until 1818 he was on the staff of the British Resident Sindhia's court, which was a first peripatetic, and then in 1812 settled down at Gwalior. And during this period of being attached to the British residency, Tod showed himself to be an indefatigable explorer and gatherer of information. Among other things, he surveyed and mapped central India and Rajasthan. He also tirelessly collected legends, history, and artifacts including paintings, manuscripts, inscriptions, and coins. In 1817 his local knowledge was put to good use in the British campaign against the Khandari Freebooters. The following year, 1818, Tod became the first political agent in the Western Rajputana states, and that made him the highest ranking British official in an area that covered more than half of present day Rajasthan. He used his position and the British power behind it to remodel Mawar, which was his favorite among the Rajput kingdoms, because in Mawar years of civil war, usurpations by the nobility, and Maratha incursions had reduced the power of the Maharana to almost nothing. To a large extent Tod succeeded in his aim of transforming Maharana Bem [phonetic] Singh into an effective sovereign of Mawar and a secure vassal of the British power. Tod was political agent in Rajputana for four years. In 1822, possibly due to quarrels with his superiors, though officially because of ill health, he retired from the service of the East India Company, left India, and returned to London. He devoted himself to scholarship, writing books, and acting as the First Librarian of the Royal Asiatic society, and he died in 1835. Let me have some water, and then I'll continue. So that's James Tod, himself. Now, his depiction of the Rajputs, of their history, and of the Rajputs themselves, a few moments ago I said that Tod may be regarded as responsible for our habit of seeing the history of Rajasthan and Gujarat as the History of the Rajput dynasties, and for seeing the Rajputs as chivalrous warriors and kings. And his books are structured around histories of the Rajput kingdoms. The historical portion of "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan" includes long sections that he calls the Annals of Mawar, the Annals of Marwar, the Annals of Bikaner, of Jaisalmer, of Amber, and Harote [phonetic], that is, the Kingdoms of Bundy and Kota. And his "Travels in Western India" include shorter histories of the Rajput dynasties of Bhavnagar, Porbandar, and Kutch. And in Tod's telling, the dynasties of all of these Rajput kingdoms are extraordinarily ancient, and their stories are full of heroism in defense of the kingdom, of the people of the kingdom, and their faith. And let me give you an example which both shows how Tod structures his histories and also gives a flavor of his prose. This is from his account of Marwar, the history of the Rator [phonetic] ancestors of his Highness of Jodhpur, and the maternal ancestors of my friend, Jababa [phonetic]. Tod writes: The pristine locale of the Rators is Gadaipur or Kannauj, where they are found enthroned in the fifth century, and though beyond that period they connect the line with the princes of Kosala or Iodia [phonetic], the facts rest on assertion only. From the fifth century, their history is cleared from the mists of ages, which envelope them all prior to this time. And in the period approaching the Totar [phonetic] Conquest of India -- that's the term he uses for the coming of the Muslims, -- we find them contesting with the last Turen Chohan [phonetic], kings of Delhi, and the Balikaris of Unhilrata [phonetic], the right to paramount importance amongst the princes of Indh [phonetic]. The combats for this phantom supremacy destroyed them all. Weakened by internal strife, the Chohan of Delhi fell, and his death exposed the northwest frontier. Kanaj followed. And while its last prince, Jai Chand, found a grave in the Ganges, his son sought an asylum in Mar Rustavi, the Regions of Death. Shioji was the son, the founder of the Rator Dynasty of Marwar, on the ruins of the Parihars of Mandir [phonetic]. Here they brought their ancient marshal spirit, and a more valiant being exists not than can be found amongst the sons of Shioji. The Mughal emperors were indebted for half their conquests to the Loktarar Retara [phonetic], the 100,000 swords of the Rators, for it is beyond a doubt that 50,000 of the blood of Shioji had been embodied at once. And that's typical of Tod's style, typical of the kind of heroic narrative that he uses. And his story of Marwar, his annals of Marwar from which that section is taken, is largely a tale of kings who combine bravery and cunning. Tod introduces us to Shioji, who in the 13th century twice defeats the Jadeja Rajput Lah [phonetic] Kapulani, then by guile seizes Pali, and lays the basis of the Ratora Kingdom of Marwar. He introduces us to Jodhaa [phonetic], who follows the advice of a hermit to build the new capital of Jodhpur, to Udai Singh, called Mota Raja, who initiates the alliance of the Rators with the Mughal emperors. Tod, I may say, is as ambivalent about Mota Raja as many modern Rators. We move on to the great 17th century warriors Sur Singh and Jaswant Singh I, the turmoil of the 18th century, conflicts with the Marathas and other Rajputs, and finally British intervention in 1817. And it's a stirring tale told well. Equally stirring is Tod's depiction of the Rajput character. I'll take a typical example from his annals of Marwar. Here, Tod is describing the heroic Durgadas, the Rator noble who led the resistance against the Mughal occupation of Jodhpur from 1679 to 1707 and is credited with saving the kingdom. Tod describes Durgadas thus: This model of a Rajput, as wise as he was brave, who was the savior of his country, what a splendid example is the heroic Durgadas of all that constitutes the glory of the Rajput: valor, loyalty, integrity, combined with prudence in all the difficulties which surrounded him, and his qualities which entitled him to the admiration which his memory continues to enjoy. But there was not a clan or family that did not produce men of such worth in this protracted warfare, which incited constant emulation. So there you have the two sort of themes that I'm trying to bring out, the history of the Rajput kingdoms is the history of their kings and of their great deeds or their sometimes not so great deeds and the character of the Rajputs. He certainly has Rajputs whom he criticizes, but this is the sort of typical picture that he gives us of the model Rajput. And these are unmistakably the words and the sentiments of a man who greatly admired the Rajputs. I've mentioned that as political agent, Tod worked to make Maharana Bem Singh the real sovereign of Mawar. And after his retirement from India, Tod remained devoted to the interests of the Rajput monarchs. For example, in the dedication of the second volume of "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan" he made this appeal to the British King, William, IV: "The throne has always been the watchword and rallying point of the Rajputs. My prayer is that it may continue so, and that neither love of conquest nor false views of policy may tempt us to subvert the independence of these states, some of which have braved the storms of more than 10 centuries." Now notice some modern scholars have argued a stable and centralized Rajput government served the interests of the British paramount power in India, but any reading of Tod's works makes it clear that at the same time he sincerely believed in the inherent value of the Rajput polity, and at least in India, the superiority of that polity over institutions imported from Britain. For him, the bravery of the Rajputs and their devotion to their lands and their religion made them the natural rulers of Rajasthan and Gujarat. In a recent doctoral dissertation on Tod, Jason Freitag sums up Tod's thinking in this regard: Ideologically, Tod represented the romantic conservative answer to the call for complete reform of Indian governance in society by the British. Tod argued for the integrity of Indian social, cultural, and political institutions, and for a staunchly indirect approach to Indian administration. For Tod, the ancient royal position and honor that were the legacy of the Rajputs served to legitimate their modern royal position and honor. The British, therefore, far from bringing an alien system of administration, were duty bound to restore, foster, and protect the ancient customs of their imperial charges. Now, this leaves us with a question of the reason for Tod's devotion to Rajput history, and culture, and Rajput society. On one level I could say that I'm not sure any explanation is needed or even possible. We could simply say that Tod happened to like and admire the Rajputs, or perhaps, as many Rajputs will tell you, this was because Tod actually was a Rajput in a previous life. You can give different explanations, but in recent years, a number of scholars have referred to Tod's background to explain his pro-Rajput sentiments. In my opinion, the explanation that these scholars give, and I can name at least four of them, is unconvincing. I'd like to propose an alternative explanation for Tod's viewpoint, one that is also rooted in his background, but that I think is both more plausible than the conventional one and also particularly relevant at this conference here held in the United States. The prevailing view that you'll find in modern scholarly literature is that Tod felt the way he did about the Rajputs because he was Scottish. The idea seems to be that Scots of his generation either had an innate romantic conservatism that drew them to kings and warriors or else they were naturally attracted by any martial community that they could equate with the highlanders of Scotland. Now, I can see several problems here. One is that it seems unlikely that something like romantic conservatism is actually inherent in particular nationalities, another with reference to the idea that all Scots naturally like the highlanders of Scotland is that Tod's Scottish ancestors were lowlanders who were culturally, linguistically, and socially completely different from the highlanders, and who often despised the highlanders. But my biggest objection to this conventional explanation is quite simply that Tod was not Scottish. [laughter] He's certainly of Scottish blood, but he also had English blood, he was born and died in England, and I'm not even sure he ever visited Scotland. Admittedly, his father was born in Scotland, but he left the country as a young man, and as far as I can determine, never went back. I've never seen any indication that Tod thought of himself as Scottish. And unless the tendency to romantic conservatism or an affinity with highlanders is far more powerfully ingrained in the DNA of people of partial Scottish decent than I imagine, I cannot see Tod's Scottish heritage as particularly relevant in understanding him. But I would like to propose that another part of Tod's background very likely did play a role in his outlook, not because of genetics but because of the atmosphere in which he grew up. And as far as I can tell, this part of Tod's background has been completely overlooked. This is the fact that Tod's parents were American Loyalists, the people whom American history has derisively named Tories, that is to say, Americans who remained loyal to King George III after the declaration of independence in 1776. Not only that, Tod's family represented some of the bluest blood in the 13 colonies. And they were prominent in public life in New England for over 150 years before the American Revolution. And let me just give two examples that are in the style of Tod's genealogies, or in the style of the recitation that the bard gave us this morning. Tod's four greats grandfather, Thomas Talmadge I, who was born about 1592 and died in 1653, was one of the earliest English inhabitants of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. And in 1634 he was enrolled as a freeman. Freemen in colonial Massachusetts were members of the colonies' small ruling elite. Over a century later, one of Tod's great grandfathers, Swinton [phonetic] Grant, who was born in 1702 and died in 1744, was a prominent citizen of Newport Rhode Island and was a founder of what is now the Redwood Library in Newport, which is the oldest surviving lending library in the United States. I could give other examples of this, but the point I'm trying to make is that Tod's father may have been born in Scotland, but Tod's mother came from well-established American aristocracy, and the fact that Tod's father could marry into this sort of background shows that he shared the outlook, as well as the wealth of this colonial American aristocracy. Now, with the Declaration of Independence, Americans had to choose whether to support the king or the revolution. Many families were split including Tod's own. However, both of Tod's parents were loyalists. And, in fact, when Tod's parents were married in 1780, their marriage took place in New York City, and that's not a coincidence. New York City in 1780 was the last city in the northeast that was still under British control, and it was a magnet for loyalists from across New England and the middle colonies. The newlyweds had probably left New York for England even before Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown doomed British rule in October 1781 because James Tod was born in the London Suburb of Islington the following March. With the end of the American Revolution a year after Tod's birth in 1783, most loyalists -- and incidentally, President John Adams estimated that loyalists made up about a third of the American population -- most loyalists did make their peace with the United States. But many went into exile, in Britain, like Tod's family, in the Bahamas, or in Canada. And there, they nursed an image of themselves as brave men and women who, thanks to their devotion to their cause, that is to say, their king, had lost everything. And both to justify this cause that they had supported and to insure that they did not lose out in another Revolution, many loyalists were highly conservative. They wanted a world where a benevolent king, aided by a loyal aristocracy, themselves, governed a contented populace that had no need for democracy. And loyalist Americans tried to create just such a world in Upper Canada, what's now the Canadian providence of Ontario, which was established as a home for loyalists in 1791. And one such man was a guy called William Dummer Powell, who was one of the founding fathers of Ontario. Powell was born in 1755 and died in 1834. He was born in Massachusetts. He was the first trained lawyer in Upper Canada or Ontario. And he served there as a judge for almost 40 years, and rose to the office of Chief Justice. He was a self-consciously an exiled America. A half a century after the declaration of independence, Powell cultivated a New England accent, and he had his clothes made in Boston, but he was also a diehard supporter of the British Monarchy. And he was convinced that Upper Canada should remain under the social and political dominance of aristocrats like him. Now, the reason that this is relevant is that William Dummer Powell was a very close relative of Tod's. Tod's grandmother was a sister of Powell's mother. I don't believe that a sense of having been defeated and exiled in a good cause or political conservatism is transmitted genetically in loyalist families any more than romanticism or a love of highlanders is passed down through Scottish genes. Nor have I seen anything where Tod refers to himself as an American loyalist, just as I've not seen anything where he calls himself a Scott. But close relations often do share similar political and social values. And these can be inculcated both directly and through stories of a family's past. Even today, descendants of American loyalists still tell their children stories of life in pre-revolutionary America. Many of them are also strong royalists, though nowadays they seem to be less in favor of aristocratic government. But we know that James Tod was a believer in both monarchy and aristocracy. And although there is no evidence either way, it seems reasonable to assume that James Tod's parents raised him with values and stories emanating from their immediate American loyalist past rather than from the more distant Scottish background that his father had rejected as a young man. And during Tod's time in India, the outlook he thus acquired may well have been reinforced by his Uncle Patrick Heatly [phonetic]. Patrick Heatly was an officer of the East India Company's army, and he was the man who actually secured Tod his cadetship in the Bengal Army. And Tod's Uncle Heatly was also an American loyalist, and he was a first cousin of William Dummer Powell, the man who I talked about a moment ago. And if -- and I have to emphasize that it is only an "if" -- Tod was raised with this American loyalist outlook, I think that his affinity for the Rajputs becomes easy to explain, certainly much easier to explain than if we were to assume some sort of mystical Scottish link. Tod would have instinctively shared a lot of Rajput values. There's the idea of sacrificing everything for a good cause, just as his family believed that they had sacrificed everything for King George III. There's the yearning for a peaceful world ruled by a king and his aristocracy. Even the theme of exile seems relevant here. Just as Tod's family had been exiled from America, so many of the Rajput dynasties, whose histories he told, claimed descent from refugees who found new homes in Rajasthan: Pushpalata [phonetic], the ancestress of the Sesodias, who escaped the destruction of the Valopi Kingdom [phonetic] in Gujarat, the Rator Shioji, who fled after the Muslim conquest of Kanaj, and the Jadones [phonetic] who were repeatedly driven from their kingdoms before settling at Jaisalmer. I think that Tod with stories in his family background could have felt a strong sense of identity with Rajputs who have the same sort of stories in their background. And so what I would like to argue is that it was actually Tod's American background that drove him to support the Rajput kings, to study their history, and to introduce them to the world outside of Rajasthan and Gujarat. We can't really say that Tod was an American, given that he was born in England. We can't really say that he was a Rajput unless he was a Rajput in a previous life, but I think that my friends of the Rajput Association of North America may still look on Tod as the first American Rajput. And I will stop there. I'm right on the time I'm meant to end, so thank you very much. [ Applause ] Ken Robbins: Well, I'm glad I didn't ask you -- my question was do you think that he recast the Rajputish image of the Scottish people?" [laughter] But, you know, we have all sorts of strange ideas of who Rajputs are. When I first became interested in India, I thought the Rajputs were a very small group, they probably extended from a couple of kings, and there were probably about maybe a couple 100 of them in the whole world. And we seem to be equating the whole Rajput community with the various rulers. Our views of things are shaped by a lot of different things. And Bollywood and Hollywood shape a lot of things, and give us very interesting images which are very often correct, but more often than not incorrect, and just because they're more entertaining or infuriating, depending on what's being said, they seem to have more cogency. And that's why we've asked Frances Taft, who you should all know, as the President of the Rajasthan study group, to talk about the controversial new movie and to talk about real Rajput princesses. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] Frances Taft: I'd first like to thank Dr. Ken Robbins and the other organizers of this conference for the invitation to speak about the film, "Jodhaa Akbar," and about Jodh Bai, the Mughal Queen from Jodhpur. Were it not for the invitation, I would probably never have seen the film. [laughter] Fortunately, I was able to watch a DVD at home because I spent most of the film jumping up and down and shouting, How many of you, by the way, have seen the film? Oh, okay, that helps, most of you. I'd like to cover briefly a number of topics this afternoon, first the film itself, the confusion about names, Mughal Rajput marriage alliances generally, Akbar's Rajput wife from Amer, and finally Jodh Bai, herself. The film, let's be clear on this, is almost entirely bad history. It would take all afternoon to deal with this in detail. Let me mention just one thing. There's a voiceover at the beginning which says that Akbar was the first of the Mughal Emperors to be born in India, in fact, in Rajasthan. Where was Akbar born? Anybody. [inaudible] Sind, yeah, and where in Sind? Male Speaker: Umarkot. Frances Taft: Umarkot, right, not in Rajasthan. Here we are specifically interested in the portrayal of Akbar's marriage to the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer. It's well-known that Akbar's first Rajput marriage was, in fact, to this daughter from Amer. There's no question about that. By the way, it was not Akbar's first marriage. Like all Temerids [phonetic], he was married young to a Temerid cousin and made two other early family marriages, as well. Now, the problem about the film is that the name of the Amer daughter who was Akbar's first Rajput wife was not Jodh Bai or Jodhaa. It's not clear why the producers of the film used the version Jodhaa. Actually this woman was known familiarly as Jodh Bai. As her name indicates, Jodh Bai was from Jodhpur, and she was the daughter-in-law, not the wife of Akbar. She was married to Akbar's son, Sultan Salim, who later became the Emperor of Jahangir. There is a Rajput group headed by one Lokendra Singh Kalvi that objects to the film, and as a result of this it has not been shown in cinema halls in Rajasthan. However, it's on DVD, and anybody in Rajasthan or anyplace else who wants to see it can see it on DVD. When I first heard about Rajput objections to the film, I assumed the reason was longstanding objections to Mughal Rajput marriages. This is an interesting subject. But, again, it would take us all afternoon. But actually it seems that this isn't so. There is an interview with Kalvi available on the Internet, and he says that the objection of his group is to the bad history shown in the film. Somewhat to my surprise, the history as cited by Kalvi is correct. [laughter] And he says, quote, "If the producers of the film can change the name of the main character, that is, Jodhaa, then we have no problem," but I'm sure it was far too late by then, and for whatever reasons it wasn't done. Now, why and when did confusion between Akbar's first Rajput wife from Amer and his daughter-in-law, Jodh Bai from Jodhpur, arise? It's not clear, although no one familiar with Mughal history would ever have made such a mistake. As far back as early in the 19th century, Britishers who lived in Agra and other travelers visited Fatehpur Sikri as tourists, and of course demanded from their guides to know what the meaning of the various buildings were all about. Fatehpur Sikri, as most of you undoubtedly know, is the huge palace complex not far from Agra built by Akbar around 1870. He left for Lahore and Kabul in 1885 after the death of his brother, Hakim and never returned to Fatehpur Sikri. Questions about Fatehpur Sikri are not easy. Fatehpur Sikri is a strange place, very different from the Mughal architecture of the Forts of Agra and Delhi that we're all familiar with. It seems that even Akbar's contemporaries who lived in Fatehpur Sikri were puzzled by it. Guides, of course, never like to say they don't know. And the 19th century guides evidently or clearly responded with names and functions for the buildings at Fatehpur Sikri that were clearly wrong, but these names continue to plague us. The Harem building at Fatehpur Sikri was recognized as such, but it was dubbed Jodh Bai's palace, although Jodh Bai never lived there. Akbar left Fatehpur Sikri in 1585. Jodh Bai was married to Sultan Salim in Lahore in 1586. I remember quite a few years back seeing the blockbuster film of the day, "Mughal-E-Azam," where in this film, Akbar calls his wife Jodh Bai. I was surprised and puzzled at this, but I suspect that Jodh Bai, as Akbar's wife, became a permanent part of public consciousness at that point. At the beginning of the film, "Jodhaa Akbar," there is a disingenuous historical note. "It is conceded that the name of the Amer daughter may not have been Jodhaa but," the note says, "over centuries her name has reached the common man as Jodhaa Bai." This appears to be true, and now with the "Jodhaa Akbar" film I have to assume that we are never going to be rid of the popular association between Akbar's first Rajput wife from Amer and the name Jodh Bai. Akbar from early on had a policy of marrying daughters of Rajput rulers. The daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer was the first followed by many others. It's clear that with an acute sense of the difficulties inherent in establishing rule of a foreign dynasty over a large and diverse territories and peoples, the young Emperor made an early decision to use political marriage alliances as important means of building and consolidating local, in particular, Rajput, support. Akbar perceived that if Rajput rajas were brought into his imperial framework on the basis of alliance rather than subjugation, not only would he be able to dominate territories they controlled without extended and costly campaigns, but the substantial military strength Rajputs represented would be available to serve the purposes of imperial expansion and rule elsewhere in India. Let's not misunderstand, Akbar was an imperialist and a thoroughgoing imperialist from the beginning and remained so to the end. It's also clear that the Emperor desired personal ties, as well as political alliances with Rajput rajas, in furtherance of his efforts to create a joint Islamic Hindu court culture that could bridge the religious, cultural, and social gulfs that perennially threatened the unity of his expanding empire. Extensive marriage ties then were at the heart of what has become to be known as Akbar's Rajput policy. Anybody, how many marriages did Akbar make? [inaudible] Anybody else? Okay, the answer is more than 20. Of these, more than half were with daughters of Rajput rulers. In fact, all of Rajasthan was represented as giving a wife to Akbar, with the exception of Mawar and Bundy. These Rajput wives must have come to dominate Akbar's harem. So what is the story of the Amer daughter who was Akbar's first Rajput wife? What was her name? And how did the marriage come about? Akbar's marriage with an Amer daughter was by no means the first such alliance between ruling Muslim, that is, pre-Mughal houses, and Rajput houses. The Jodhpur Rators from Rajoda [phonetic] onward made Muslim marriages when it seemed politically advantageous to do so [phonetic]. And there are also references to pre-Mughal Muslim marriages by Jaisalmer, Mawar, yes, Mawar, and Amer. In 1562 the young Emperor Akbar, he was 19 at the time, was on his way from Agra to the Chesti Shrine in Ajmer [phonetic]. Through a Mughal intermediary, Raja Bharmal of Amer was introduced to Akbar at Suldaner [phonetic], a village close to what's now Jerpor [phonetic]. The Raja offered his submission to the Emperor, and through the intermediary he proposed a marriage alliance to Akbar, who accepted. From his side, Raja Bharmal had good reasons to wish to make an alliance with Akbar. His hold on the Amer throne was not secure. He was in conflict with a number of his relatives. And some of his family members had been taken hostage by Sharafeddin Mirza [phonetic], then the Mughal Governor of the area. The marriage was celebrated on Akbar's return from Ajmer at Samber [phonetic]. Not long afterwards, both Raja Bharmal's son, Bukvantas, and his grandson, the famous Man Singh, joined Akbar's court. This was the beginning of a long and, for Amer, very profitable association with the Mughal court. This woman, Raja Bharmal's daughter, who was Akbar's first Rajput wife, is known to history by her Mughal title as Miriam Zumani [phonetic], the Miriam of the Times. What was her original name in her father's house? The Amer genealogical or Kiat [phonetic] sources were less plentiful or are much less plentiful than those for Jodhpur. According to an 18th century Kiat from the time of Sulije Singh [phonetic], this women's peher [phonetic] name, that is, her name from her father's house, was Harka. She was an important figure in the Harems of both Akbar and his son, Jahangir [phonetic]. Only one of Akbar's Rajput wives is mentioned in the "Akbar Nama" by Abu-l-Fazl, other than the mention of marriages themselves, and in one case the birth of a child. The Akbar Nama records that Bhopud Singh [phonetic], a son of Rajput Bharmal, was killed in Akbar's conquest of Gujarat. And in 1873, after Akbar's return from Gujarat, and here I'm quoting, "His auspicious sister, that is, Miriam Zumani, who held high rank in the imperial harem, was given permission to be present in Amer at the mourning for Bhopud." This was absolutely unheard of. These women did not leave the harem to return to their father's houses. The highest position in the Mughal harem was held by the mother of the emperor. In Akbar's time, this was his mother, Hamida Begum [phonetic], whose title was Miriam Makani. She died at about the same time as Akbar, himself, did. Under Akbar's successor, Jahangir, this position as the head of the Mughal harem was assumed by Miriam Zumani. Important court ceremonials such as the celebration of marriages and the weighing ceremony of the emperor were held in her quarters. We know about her, Miriam Zumani, for instance, that she had a mosque built in Lahore, a garden and well built in modern Upi [phonetic], and that she was involved in the lucrative indigo trade. The harem women were not by any means shut out from the outside world. They had intermediaries and contacts and they did things like make themselves some money in the indigo trade. Miriam Zumani died in 1623 in Agra and was buried in the vicinity of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra. It is often written that Miriam Zumani was Jahangir's mother, and she was clearly regarded as such by Jahangir and his court, that is, she had the position of his mother, and she was the head, therefore, of the harem. But I am among those historians who believe that she was not actually his biological mother. Why? There are quite a number of indications, above all, Abu-l-Fazl, the author of the "Akbar Nama," who waxes eloquent for many pages about the glorious birth of an heir to Akbar, never mentions the name of his mother. Now, to go on to Jodh Bai, Akbar's daughter-in-law, there's a great deal of Jodhpur Kiat, that is, genealogical material from the 17th century in the time of Maharaja Jaswant Singh. In particular, we have a very, very detailed genealogy of the Jodhpur ruling house in a Kiat now known as the Urabon Chempava Ple Kiat. This Kiat tells us that Jodh Bai was born in May of 1973, the daughter of Mota Raja, that is the fat raja, Udai Singh, who was granted the rule of Jodhpur by Akbar in 1583. Her peher name, that is, her name in her father's house, was Manavati Bai [phonetic]. She was the full sister of Maharaja Suraj Singh, who was Udai Singh's successor. And their full brother, Kishan Singh, became the founder of Kishangarh. She was married to Sultan Salim, who later became Jahangir, in 1586 in Lahore. She was 13 years old. Her Mughal title was Jagat Gosain, but she was evidently known in the harem as Jodh Bai, that is, Bai, the sister from Jodhpur. She seems to have been a favorite of Jahangir in his earlier days. She bore him a daughter who did not survive and a son, Karim, who became Shah Jahan in September of 1592. She died rather young at the age of 46 in 1619 in Agra, and was buried in a garden in Agra, evidently according to her wishes. Jahangir writes in his memoirs that, quote, "I went to my son's house," that is, to Shah Jahan's house, "to offer all sorts of consolations on the death of his mother, consolation, and sympathy, and took him back with me to the palace." Chroniclers in Shah Jahan's time recount anecdotes of rivalry between Jodh Bai and Nur Jahan. Nur Jahan being Jahangir's last and very powerful wife. In these anecdotes, Jodh Bai's quick wit lets her get the better of Nur Jahan. But these anecdotes are probably apocryphal, reflecting animosity against Nur Jahan in Shah Jahan's time. Curiously, Jodhaa shows up in Salman Rushdie's new novel, "The Enchantress of Florence." Here in the novel, she is Akbar's imaginary ideal wife, an image that he creates in his own mind, not a real person. What the connection between the novel and the film might be, if any, I don't know. But I suspect that there probably is one. Perhaps Salman Rushdie knew about the film or saw it at the time he was writing the novel or something like that. In conclusion, I'd like to return to the film. For all its historical inaccuracies, a friend of mine at lunch called the film a historical fantasy, and that strikes me as a good way of thinking about it. For all the historical inaccuracies in the film, in the end the makers of the film have portrayed their underlying theme accurately. And this is, of course, important. It is historically correct that Akbar endeavored to structure his empire on the basis of tolerance for religious opinion and belief. This is not a later interpretation. It is quite clear in the contemporary sources. The name used for this policy was the Arabic phrase, sulh-i-kul, variously translated as general peace, universal tolerance, universal concord, and so on. It is this policy of sulh-i-kul for which Akbar is above all famous, and rightly so. I've got some pictures I'd like to show, if I can manage to make this work. Now, let's see, I'm supposed to do this, and then I'm supposed to do -- hmm. Male Speaker: [inaudible] Frances Taft: Oh, okay. I'm supposed to do some -- anyway, this is the first one. I have pictures here of -- we have no pictures of any of these women, needless to say. Male Speaker: Slideshow icon, there's a slideshow icon. Frances Taft: Slideshow icon, which is -- Male Speaker: It's like a little pull-down screen. Frances Taft: Yeah. Male Speaker: Is that -- is this the one? Frances Taft: Well, I'm not sure. This one? Male Speaker: Yep, that one. Frances Taft: Okay. Male Speaker: And then that. Frances Taft: Okay. Male Speaker: Just go right, left [inaudible]. Frances Taft: Yeah, then I can use this. Okay. There are three pictures. Whoops, that's the second one. Let me go back. Hey, it worked. There are three pictures here of Jodh Bai's father. We don't have any pictures of her, of course, but there are three pictures here of her father, the fat raja. Now, this is advancing without my doing anything. So I guess I'll have to -- Male Speaker: Slow it down. Frances Taft: Slow it down? Male Speaker: Yeah. Frances Taft: Oh, well, what we have now is pictures of Fatehpur Sikri, of the so-called -- Male Speaker: Here, I'll fix it. Frances Taft: -- Jodh -- okay. Male Speaker: You can keep talking. Frances Taft: Okay. The first three pictures are the Mota Raja Udai Singh. Then we get to so-called Jodh Bai's palace in Fatehpur Sikri. No. These are all previous ones. Male Speaker: Previous [phonetic] ones? You want this one? All right. Frances Taft: Yeah, that's one, two, next one of Mota Raja, right, and the third one, Mota Raja? Okay. Male Speaker: Yeah, they're on automatic -- I can't take the timing off. Frances Taft: Okay, no, that's -- he can't take -- that's okay. This is Fatehpur Sikri. This is the outside of the harem building, the entrance to the harem building. It's substantial. Inside the harem building looking down at the courtyard, it looks rather grim nowadays, but when it was lived in it must have been full of textiles, and canopies, and color. And it must have made a very different impression. Another picture of the courtyard looking out along the side, there's a blue tile roof there, two of them, opposite each other, which are very pretty. This is a little [inaudible] for the ladies, attached to the main building. They also had a garden, and this is the water feature from the garden. Looking from the inside, the famous Panj Mahal, but in Akbar's day it was screened. All of the, what's now open space was screened, so that the ladies behind it could look out into the main courtyard and still not be seen. Here we go. Inside, this is where it gets really interesting, these niches and other features, of course, if you looked at this without knowing what it was, you might even think this was a Rajput palace, and it's been suggested that Akbar specifically had it built this way to make his many Rajput wives feel comfortable and at home, and similarly around the corner, a balcony, and niches, which undoubtedly would have been familiar to the Rajput women who lived there. Thank you. [ Applause ] Ken Robbins: Thank you for telling us about how important it is to get the facts straight. If any of you are Jewish and have been to Fatehpur Sikri you would've had a very interesting experience. If your guide figured out you were Jewish, he would take you to the grave of Miriam Makani and tell you that she was, in fact, the Jewish wife. [laughter] Now, its facts are always very difficult for people. Right now I'm writing about the founder, Syrian, 14th century, quote, Saed, who founded one of the largest Sufi orders in India, Shar Madar [phonetic], more than 1,400 shrines in India." The only problem is his disciple and his earliest biographers, Shisti [phonetic] biographers, all say that he was born Jewish, very inconvenient fact. I'd like to call up the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Bhabshi [phonetic], and our speakers to answer any questions from the audience. Male Speaker: Please, would you come to the stage? Thank you. Why don't we get them started with this? You [phonetic] can sit down [inaudible]. Any questions? Do you have a question? Anita, please take the microphone. They're bringing it to you. Female Speaker: Hi, Frances, I'm assuming that many of the characters in the film, "Jodhaa Akbar" were -- were they pure fantasy? I mean, like, the character Sujanmal, the alleged cousin that a lot of the plot centers around, is he a historical character? I don't remember running across this, but I didn't really look into it either. Frances Taft: Most of them are invented. Do you remember at the beginning there are all these supposed Rajput maharajas who receive messages, letters from Akbar, this is all -- these aren't real people or real places. And he hasn't got her family right -- that is, Miriam Zumani's family right, either. Sharafeddin Mirza, on the other hand, is a historical character, the one Akbar fights the battle with, but that -- Female Speaker: Brother-in-law? Frances Taft: Hmm? Female Speaker: The brother-in-law? Frances Taft: No, no. Sharafeddin Mirza, who rebelled against Akbar, and there's a battle between him and Akbar. Female Speaker: I thought that was his sister's husband. Frances Taft: That's correct. Akbar's sister was married to him, but the rest of it is all not right. Ken Robbins: Next question, sir? Male Speaker: My question goes to Mr. John. First of all, really appreciate what you are taking interest in this one, and you brought Mr. Tod in, but same time, what gets you into going this particular situation about Rajput, and the last thing, at same time, can you put something for the kids, [inaudible] with kids over here, what would you see, or what would you like to see in the Rajput young generation? John McLeod: I don't know whether I am qualified to answer that question or not just as a historian. Obviously, you know, there's no doubt that the characterizations that Tod gives to the Rajputs is a great ideal for anybody to live up to. Over the centuries, many Rajputs have certainly tried to live up to the code of honor, the code of chivalry, and the pride in the heritage, and that I think is probably the most important message that you can teach to your children, I think, to continue to try to keep pride in themselves, to know their history, and to be honorable people. I think that's a great part of Rajput culture, and something Tod certainly was very taken with, and I think something to be very proud of, and to be preserved. Ken Robbins: Next question, sir, in the back. Male Speaker: I have a question for Frances. Were the 10 wives of Akbar, historically were they all given as a token of submission for alliance or were they actually forcefully taken, because historically we know that Muslim invaders were known to -- since Rajputs were holding their womenfolk in high honor, they were known to take away womenfolk to dishonor the Rajputs. And so were the 10 wives all an alliance or -- Frances Taft: Akbar had more than 20 wives. Male Speaker: No, the Rajput wives is what I'm talking about. Frances Taft: The Rajput ones, yeah. Well, this question applies to some of the Hindu ones, just as well -- I'm sorry -- some of the Muslim ones or other Hindu wives who were not Rajputs. It's clear that Raja Bharmal proposed an alliance, and it was accepted. And as I mentioned, this was by no means the first time in the history of Muslim India where there were marriages between Muslim houses and Hindu houses. Raja Bharmal had some very good reasons for wanting to ally himself very firmly with Akbar. And it worked out very well for him. So he gave his daughter. And it soon became very clear that Akbar welcomed such Rajput alliances, and a number -- in fact, all of the fathers involved gave their daughters. Some of them may perhaps have wished not to, but it was politically a very advantageous thing to do. And the women -- and this undoubtedly became known as well -- the women were very welcomed into Akbar's establishment. Does that answer your question? Male Speaker: Yes, yes, thank you. Then I'd like to invite -- oh, sir, Joe. Joe Miller: My name's Joe Miller, and this -- Bhabshi? This is sort of a question for you, and I don't really know how to phrase it because what I was interested in is more your ideas about how things are the same or how they're different for you and your generation now. And we talked about a little bit of the history of Rajputs. And I'm just kind of trying to get an idea of what you think about, you know, contemporary times, these times, maybe times that are something in the future, but in comparison to things that we know about the history. Bhabshi: I'm not quite sure. Are you asking about historical interpretation or -- no. The things now basically for Rajputs are an uphill task, an uphill task, and have been, because Rajputs are one community that were heavy talked about in the morning. They were used to ruling, and they always have ruled. They didn't have associations of Rajputs. They were individuals. [laughter] And they fought against each other. And the way the politics worked post-republic was anti-feudal, anti-Rajput, land reforms, so whatever Rajputs knew was taken away from them. And then they fell into a situation where they began to fall upon themselves, and what little property they had there were legal problems, and they were fighting over the same patch of land. And basically their conditions were not good. I mean, there were -- and I'm saying there were the stratified Rajputs, some of them better than others. But even today, I mean, those -- many Rajputs have moved on, thank God. So the [inaudible] have come abroad, are doing well, or even in India they're getting into other professions, and into business, and moving ahead and getting ahead. And I think as Ken phrased the thing, that -- [inaudible] -- What's that thing you said? Male Speaker: [inaudible] Bhabshi: The return of an education, we're [phonetic] afraid that -- [low audio] Yeah, Rajputs right [phonetic] back, so this is something -- this is very important because we actually, once the states collapsed there was no one to speak up for them. We had history that was written by the British, we had history that was written by the princely states, the formal history, and then we had the republican era. But at that time there was no one to speak about the real history, and there's a lot of material still available. There's a whole archive which sits in Bikaner where all the archives of the Rajasthan states were dumped unceremoniously, and they still sit there. And if you go there, well, I think now they're being looked after, but they're not being properly codified. And if you ask for copies, you see [phonetic] there's some archaic rule that says you can only have four pages at a time. You know, so, I mean, like, our museum tries -- we've asked several times to get copies and have a whole set of the Jodhpur [phonetic] records with us, but it doesn't work. It'll happen sometime. But my point is that currently, especially this fall, the De Pura [phonetic] Rajput agriculturist has to struggle very hard. He's in -- you know, and we have these reservations at different levels, and some of them are in real bad state because they have the Rajput values, they have the -- still the pride. The women will not go into labor camps which are provided by the government during periods of famine. Sometimes they do. Some of them don't come forward even in the political process. They're still very conservative. It's happening slowly but -- so the whole thing now revolves around what we try to do, is try to push across the idea of women's education, and get the women educated. And I think that's going to make the big difference, and change attitudes, but you have to work within and through the system through their own set of values, and that's what works. I hope I've answered your question. Thank you. Male Speaker: Good answer. Ken Robbins: Bhabshi, I know that people say that the Rajputs in India were individuals, but they have formed an association here in North America. If they didn't conquer India, maybe they'll conquer North America. [laughter] Yes, ma'am. Female Speaker: This is for Frances. Does history indicate that any of Akbar's Hindu wives were allowed to continue to practice Hinduism? Frances Taft: The indications certainly are that in Akbar's time they could. Later on it became stricter. By Shah Jahan's time, a women who was marrying into the harem, although they were by no means so many of them, was formally converted to Islam. This did not happen in Akbar's time. Ken Robbins: One last question or -- well, I'd like to invite the Maharaja of Jodhpur to just say a few closing words. And thank you all for coming and staying. Thank you. [ Applause ] Bhabshi: Thank you, Ken. I'm sorry I've missed part of the latter session, and the obviously very interesting questions and answers that shows that a conference like this is interactive and people are interested in the topic. Just going back to that last question, too interesting to read the other day in the newspaper that some of the fundamentalist Islamic schools that evolved can endeavor [phonetic] -- still continue and now are getting a lot of paid and encouragement from other parts of the Arab world, began the existence in Akbar's time because it was a whole school of thought which held that Akbar was going in the wrong direction and was not the real thing. And the roots in this particular article said they'd go back that far. And it's just an interesting point of view. And, in fact, there was a group of people who went and created a jihad somewhere in Cashmere, which failed, but they went and they did that. But anyway, I must thank Ken and all the speakers. And I'm particularly happy to have my cousin, Jababa [phonetic], and really thank his daughter, who I must call professor now for the wonderful presentation she gave because I think it was very difficult to do because -- being so closely associated with the family, she brought up part of her family history, but presented it in a overall sociological historical framework, and I think she did that very well. And I think that's what we need to be doing today in the current world where things are changing so rapidly. There are historic, sociological, and social islands of sanity, islands that provide the glue to society. And we need to recognize them. And I think a conference like this is something very valuable, and all the archives that Ken has presented, and created, and is preserving, something of great value not only to all of us who initially are part of it, but I think to historians all over the world. Thank you so much. [ Applause ] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.