Indian Royalty

This is an excerpt from the coffee table book named 'Treasure Trove' published by Gem and Jewellery Promotion Council of India and Art of Jewellery published on 28.7.2017 in Mumbai. I have authored this  particular excerpt which is on the jewellery belonging to royal family of Cooch Behar, an erstwhile princely state in Bengal, famous for their highly Anglophile lifestyle. You can buy the complete book from online.

Athamallick was a Zamindari under the statehood of Boudha in the early days of British ruling.  Both belonged to the South west frontier Agency and transferred to the Odisha Division in 1837.
Present family referring to some local literatures claimed that the 37th successor named Raja Laxmidhar Deo Samant has stopped the importance of Boudh on him and claimed himself as an independent ruler. The commissioner of British East India Company named Mr. Robbert has supported the Raja of Athamallick and granted it as a princely state under East India Company with a condition to pay a tribute of Rs.480 annually and other terms and conditions in the Sanand. So it may be said that Athamallick’s independent existence came to force in between 1785 to 1802. But The Sanad of 1874 issued by the British India mentioned the ruler Raja Jogindra deo samant as the Zamindar of Athamallick under the state of Boudha. And the Raja of Boudha is treated as the Raja of both Boudha and Athamallick.

Edited volume summary:  This volume is one of the first comprehensive contributions to the rapidly developing cross disciplinary scholarship that connects visual studies with South Asian historiography. The key purpose of the book is to introduce scholars and students of South Asian and Indian history to the first in-depth evaluation of visual research methods as a valid research framework for new historical studies. The volume identifies and evaluates current developments in visual sociology and digital anthropology relevant to the study of contemporary South Asian constructions of personal and national identities.

Owing to its wide-ranging theoretical methodology, from concepts of visual perception to media semiotics, Visual Histories of South Asia covers a rich thematic agenda with contributions ranging from ethnographic research to gender studies, fine arts analyses, theoretical and methodological questions, economic structures, international politics and contemporary cultural patterns.

In charting the theoretical and historical advances in visual and historical studies dedicated to South Asia, and by addressing issues of private and national memory within regional, national, and contemporary South Asian iconography, from the mid-seventeenth century to the early twenty-first century, and the thirteen contributions selected for this volume are of immediate relevance to visual theorists and historians, sociologists and cultural anthropologists, as well as to students and scholars of South Asian history and culture.

A pesar de la relevancia demográfica y geoestratégica de los principados de la India, la historiografía sobre estos territorios de la India no británica no los ha considerado hasta el momento como espacios determinantes en la configuración de categorías de raza, género y adscripción religiosa en el subcontinente. Las aún persistentes dicotomías entre “tradición” india y “modernidad” británica han relegado a los principados al rol de islas de conservadurismo, meros contrapuntos políticos e ideológicos a una India británica de categorías fluidas y cambiantes. El objetivo de este texto es sugerir una línea de investigación que entienda a los principados como espacios en los que se imaginó y se puso en práctica una modernidad india. El punto de partida de esta investigación se encuentra en el principado de Baroda, donde en las primeras décadas del siglo XX el maharajá Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III impulsó una serie de reformas sociales que buscaban forjar un hinduismo “moderno” a base de descartar algunas prácticas religiosas y promover otras. Esta modernidad no europea, ejercitada tanto en el terreno del discurso como en el de las prácticas corporales, suponía un desafío cultural y político a la continuidad del poder británico en la India.