Negotiating Modernity in the Princely State of Jaipur

Abstract

This paper questions established accounts of national identity and modernity in Indian art in the light of the experience of a princely state. The princely states were regions under indirect British control, ruled by maharajas, nawabs, etc., and their officials. The most prominent role in the story of India's artistic modernity is commonly assigned to the Bengal School, but the implied equation of India with one part of it may be misleading. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contrary to the experience of British India, the boundaries of nationhood were already in place for the many princely states, large and small, which numbered well over 500 and together constituted nearly two-fifths of India. In many of these states the chief factor in the fashioning of identity was not nationalism, but modernity. Paradoxically, while the nationalist artists looked ever deeper into India's limitless past to define an Indian identity that stretched beyond current boundaries of time and region, in the princely states Indian-ness was an unselfconscious living reality. My study explores identity and modernity in one political and social context very different from, but concurrent with, the Bengal School – namely the state of Jaipur during the reign of Maharaja Madho Singh II (1880–1922). What were the terms for negotiating modernity and tradition in Jaipur? How was this particular negotiation reflected in the art and architecture patronised by the maharaja, and how did it compare with the contemporary architectural vision in British India? In exploring these questions, the sources used reflect indigenous voices of both British and Indian India.