Lessons in etiquette at Gwalior court

BN Goswamy

His Highness Ali Jah, Umdat ul-Umara, Farzand-i-Arjumand, Maharajadhiraj Maharaja Sahib Subadar Shrimant Shinde Bahadur, Shrinath, Mansur-i-Zaman, Naib ul-Istiqlal-i-Maharajadhiraj Sawai Madhav Rao Narayan, Maharaja Shinde of Gwalior (His Highness the Exalted Dignity, Pillar of the Nobility, Worthy Son, Great King over Kings and Lord Chieftain of the Brave Shinde, Lord of Fortune, Victorious of the Age, Permanent Deputy of the Peshwa, Shinde King of Gwalior). — Official titles of the Scindia rulers as granted by the Mughal court 1790-1794

It is not every day that a Professor of mathematics writes a book on the history of a powerful ‘native state’, and evokes for us, through meticulous, intimate detail, the rich cultural ethos of its court. And yet that is what Professor Anant Rao Rajwade — in many ways a tireless historian also — has done by putting together his book on Gwalior, Scindias & Their Sardar Oligarchs. In some ways it seems natural that he should have been the one doing this, for he himself comes from one of these ‘sardar oligarch’ families. But there is no self-glorification in the book, no ‘pushing his own case’ so to speak: the work represents an effort to save, shore up, a piece of history that is all but teetering on the edge of being lost. If it were to sink into oblivion, the loss would be sad, for there is richness in it and a glimpse, even if a fading glimpse, of the fabric, the ‘architecture’, of a segment of the past.

One knows Gwalior from the outside: the magnificent rock on which its great fort stands — that ‘pearl in the necklace of the castles of Hind’, as a Mughal historian put it: ‘the summit of which the nimble footed wind from below cannot reach and on the bastions of which the fast moving clouds never cast their shade’; the delicately carved temples, the massive Jaina images cut in the rock, the tomb of Tansen and the imli tree over it the leaves of which every aspiring singer longs to chew. One might even have heard of the intrepid Mahadji Scindia (1730-1794), who fought valiantly, reinstated the Mughal emperor Shah Alam on the throne of Delhi, and who became a household name ‘from the Sutlej to the Narmada’. But did one know that when he was wounded on the battlefield of Panipat in 1761, it was a Muslim water-carrier, Rane Khan by name, who carried him away, hidden inside his water-holding leather skin, nursed him back to health, and then took him to Pune, where the great Peshwa, undisputed chief of all Marathas, lauded him? Or, further, that Rane Khan was never forgotten. 

Throughout the rest of his life, Mahadji kept him by his side, treating him as his brother, and giving him the title of Sardar Rane Khan Bhai Khawasiwale. Again, did we know of the exalted and unusual respect accorded to a Sufi saint, Hazrat Mansoor Shah, by the Scindia court? Apart from the fact that Mahadji’s mother, Chimna Bai, used to visit the saint to gain his ‘darshan’ and seek spiritual solace from his very presence, Hazrat Mansoor Shah made predictions all of which came true and because of those Mahadji was able to escape from, and ward off, several threats to his life. In the eyes of the great Scindia, this man of God deserved every possible honour, and, therefore, those honours were conferred. If one speaks of the members of the Gwalior oligarchy — as many as 37 Sardar families, among them the Shitoles, the Patankars, the Phalkes, the Angres, the Jadhavs, and the like, are named and written about in detail by Professor Rajwade — at the head of them all, to this day, stands the family of Hazrat Mansoor Shah who was given the title ‘Sardar Shree Saheb’, something that belongs to his successors to this day.

  It is things like this — providing insights, deepening our understanding of the way things were — that the study is rich in. One can lose oneself in it. What held my attention specially, however, was the way the whole matter of establishing hierarchies was handled at the Scindia court. Honours and titles and privileges mattered at every court, of course. At the Akbari court, for instance, as one reads the great chronicler, Abu’l Fazl, everything had been worked out in great, crisp detail. The aadaab-e nishast-wa barkhast were laid down: how one enters the court, when is it time to leave, within how much distance of His Majesty is a noble permitted to stand, what are the different manners of doing ‘salaam’: and so on. At the Scindia court also, real feelings apart, there were countless symbols of status and power, all conferred with great care by the ruler himself upon a Sardar. If it was the matter of sitting on an elephant in a procession, thus — not everyone was permitted to — it depended upon whether you were allowed an ambaree, or a howda: the former denoting higher status since it consisted of a canopy, and the latter was left open to the sun and rain. Who was allowed to have, in respect of music played on an occasion, a nagara, or a tasha; a naubat or a danka, depended upon what the Scindia chief permitted. In an official gathering who eats from a thali of gold, and who of silver, or of brass, was all clearly established. In the royal procession, there were chharis and sotas and laths, and each had a significance attaching to it. The Toda — a gold string or chain, worn on the turban, next to the forehead, and the Gashia — a red and yellow square carpet on which an oligarch sat in the Darbar — were distinctions conferred upon those who were related by marriage to the Maharaja. The list is endless: jaree-patka, bhagwa jhanda, kalghi, kantha, sirpech, pagdee. The khadi tazeem — respect offered while standing — was a matter of great importance. At a durbar, when an entering Sardar entitled to khadi tazeem was announced by the usher, he paid respect to the Maharaja, his greetings were acknowledged, and then all Sardars stood up too, in acknowledgement of his status, even if he was a boy of nine. 

All of this, orchestrated and utterly fascinating as it is, also tells us things. That Maratha practices and Mughal terms had become inextricably mixed, for instance? That all power was concentrated and authority flowed from above downwards? That the room for manoeuvre was severely limited and so much had hardened over time? All this, and more?