At the turn of the 20th century, a number of British and American journalists made the long journey to India. Their assignment was straightforward: to feed the Western reader’s curiosity about the wealth and opulence of the country’s princely states. But what they also ended up doing was to propagate the stereotype of India as a land of maharajas, mystics and snake charmers.
One city that received a fair deal of coverage in the Western press was Jaipur, which in the winter of 1905, hosted the Prince of Wales as a guest of Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II.
A special correspondent of The Daily Telegraph wrote a detailed article about Jaipur in November, describing floridly its ecology and its balance of modernity and tradition. “The City of Victory is less than 200 years old,” he said. “Five miles away, among the mountains to the north, Amber, the old city, waits, patient and half-ruined, for the day to come when the long-delayed tide of desert sand shall sweep round into the recess where Jaipur hides, and the dainty gardens and wide pink-washed streets of balconied and latticed houses shall at last become part and parcel of the great Indian desert.”
The correspondent added: “Even now the long levels stretch interminably, dry and arid, choked with drifted heaps of grit where a fold in the ground or a scorched boulder has arrested the running skein of windblown sand and seamed with the thirsty nullahs where no plant blows. Only a few bebel thorns find beside the road a scanty catchment of water in the hollows dug out to provide the embankment of the fiery rails, and the loose-petalled wild cassia alternates a yellow with the faint lilac and grey-green of the inevitable aak plant.”
While the correspondent praised Sawai Jai Singh for carving out a new city with wide roads, gardens and orderly squares, he envisioned a serious threat to Jaipur from the desert. “Only here and there the high bastions of the city gates, the dainty finials and cupolas of the palace, or of Jacob’s museum, or a flame-like temple tower, rise high over the sea of banyan and neem and straggling acacia,” he said. “But up from the southwest creeps nearer year by year the vanguard of the desert waves into the very mouth of this haven of refuge, which lies unprotected and assailable from just the one quarter from which the danger comes.”
The correspondent was impressed by Jaipur’s rough beauty. “Of all cities of India, Jaipur may claim the pride of place for sheer colour,” he wrote. “Burmah alone in this matter can hold its own with Jaipur, and it needs the crowded slopes of the Shive Dagon [Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon] to afford this single parallel that the world has to offer to the sight of the main street of Jaipur.”
Rapid modernisation
The beauty of Jaipur was also what struck the writer of a wire report carried by Canadian newspapers in December 1905. “Except perhaps the white marble hall of audience in the centre of the Maharaja’s huge palace, seven stories high, Jaipur can boast of no marvels of Indian architecture to compare with Udaipur, but the delicate pink madder tone in which the walls and houses of the city are uniformly distempered imparts of the whole scene a distinctive beauty, especially in the subdued light of early morning and late evening, quite unlike anything else in India,” said the report published in the Moncton Transcript, New Brunswick. “Admirably, therefore, does Jaipur adapt itself to unrivalled displays of Oriental pageantry.”
The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent took note of the rapid modernisation taking place in the city: “Museums and health regulations, drainage, gas-lamps, police, all are here from sunrise to sunset. The well-watered roads and kindly tended gardens and schools, the notices innumerable dealing with every kind of municipal and sanitary duty, all these things are of the new regime.”
The correspondent was in awe of Amber, which, he said, had resisted the “subtle teeth” of age and neglect. “Indeed, were a palace all that is needed, the Maharaja of Jaipur might transfer himself to his old capital with as little delay as attends the flitting of the Viceroy from Calcutta to Simla year by year,” he wrote. “All is here still – the courts of audience and the gardens of repose, the women’s apartments and the long galleries for the men and beasts.”
Another thing that the correspondent really liked about Amber was its palace: “Excepting always the Imperial palaces of India, there is not in the peninsula a more exquisite structure of marble inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones, of sandalwood inlaid with ebony and ivory, than this deserted home of long-dead and forgotten chieftains.”
While walking around the palace corridors, he heard fables from the past. “Indeed, the story goes that Jehangir himself, the pettiest of soul of all the Mogul emperors, sent peremptory orders that his vassal’s beautiful home should be pulled down, as being more beautiful than his own,” he wrote. “His emissary arrived at Amber only to find the exquisite carvings of pillar and corbel and bracket plastered and overlaid with an inch-thick coat of rough cement and whitewash, and he could only report with amazement to his Imperial master that rumour had strangely exaggerated the beauties of Mirza Raja’s new palace and return.”
There was a rebelliousness in Jaipur’s nature, he felt, despite its modern roads and electricity. “Eastern it is and Eastern it must remain,” he said, “in spite of the flood of Occidental inventions and visitors which have been frankly accepted by the Maharaja himself, one of the staunchest of the old guard of Rajput chiefs.”
Sawai Madho Singh II’s regard for tradition was recognised by other Western newspapers as well. “While accepting in his administration all the scientific, economic and political advantages of Western enlightenment, he has refused in his private life to depart one jot or little from the customs of his forefathers,” the Daily Express said in a 1902 article.
The British daily added that the “high castes” of India were increasingly getting Westernised in their tastes. “The Maharaja of Jaipur has set an example, alike to princes and to nobles, how to become and enlightened and progressive ruler, and yet remain and orthodox and pious Hindu,” the Daily Express said.
The wire report in the Moncton Transcript also showered Sawai Madho Singh II with praise while describing his attire when meeting the Prince of Wales. “The Maharaja was dressed with great simplicity in an almost black, green robe but with one diamond of extraordinary size and lustre, flashing in his turban,” the report said. “With his stately presence and fine, commanding features, with beard and moustache just turning gray, brushed out on either side in true Rajput fashion, he looked a worthy representative of his ancient race.”
Naga sadhus
Even when generally pleased with what they saw, Western journalists could not stop themselves from focusing on things that would reinforce the stereotypes about India.
“One only has to scratch Jaipur to realise that the modern commercialism and the dull municipal excellence of the city is hardly more than a veneer,” The Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote. “The Nagas [sadhus] represent the true spirit of Jaipur more than the Parsee merchant or the truncheoned policeman at the palace gates. The Naga is a more-than-semi-naked devotee, who carries a scabbard-less sword, and is sworn to give up his life in the first rush upon the battle ranks of the enemy.”
The wire report in Canadian newspapers described Naga sadhus as “wild” and “half naked” people “whose dark skin and long black hair set off the brilliancy of their scanty crimson or emerald-green vests or short clothes”. They brandished their swords, it said, and performed a war dance while participating in a procession to welcome the Prince of Wales.
The Daily Telegraph report went to the extent of praising Naga sadhus for helping the British during the 1857 Indian War of Independence. It said the English “must not forget that it was owing to these painted fanatics of Jaipur that the flank of [Brigadier General] John Nicholson’s march on Delhi was clear. We owe much to the City of Victory.”
The assistance provided by the Jaipur royalty to the British in 1857 was a recurring theme in the Western media. In an article about Sawai Madho Singh II in 1902, The Philadelphia Times said, “For his great services in the mutiny the present maharaja’s predecessor Sawai Rama Singh [Ram Singh II] was created a knight grand commander of the Star of India, and, on the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, was give many additional titles.”
This could also explain why the Western press coverage of Jaipur at the turn of the 20th century often painted the Pink City in a positive light.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
