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Princely Mysore before the Storm: The Statelevel Political System of India's Model State 1920—1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

James Manor
James Manor
Affiliation:
Universities of Sussex and London
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Extract

More than one-third of the area of Britain's Indian empire and over one-quarter of its population were ruled by the Indian princes. But despite its size, princely India has largely remained the province of the pulp journalist to whom we owe our hackneyed view of the princes as a bizarre assortment of spendthrifts, torturers and voluptuaries. Recently, serious scholars have begun to publish material on the princes, but the focus has mainly been upon the more backward states.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 31 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 Of particular interest are the following articles: Rudolph, S. H., ‘The Princely States of Rajputana: Ethic, Authority and Structure’, Indian Journal of Political Science, 24 (01, 1963), pp. 14–32;Google Scholar

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4 For a discussion of the various levels of social organisation within these categories, see Manor, J., ‘The Evolution of Political Arenas and Units of Social Organisation: The Lingayats and Vokkaligas of Princely Mysore’, in Srinivas, M. N. (ed.), Aspects of Change in India (Bangalore, 1973).Google Scholar

The economic and social structures in rural Mysore contributed to the survival of the discontinuity between the state and local arenas of politics in that they tended not to throw up leaders with power in supralocal arenas. Land holdings tended to be small and the state had one of the highest proportions of owner-cultivators in the sub-continent. Great zamindars with influence over wide areas were almost unknown in princely Mysore. The economic integration of some local arenas with market towns via road and rail had begun to gain momentum in the 1930s, but this process did not become a general phenomenon until after 1947. Social linkages tended to remain congruent with the rather localized economic ties and, until the late 1940s and early 1950s, marriage networks among almost all Lingayats and Vokkaligas extended no further than a day's walk from home. (More recently, the extension of these networks has become much more common in response to the growing importance of supra-local political and economic arenas.) Until Indian independence, then, the most crucial political, economic and social unit for Mysore's landed élite was spatially quite small.Google Scholar

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13 The best examples of this are the two great Dewans of twentieth century Mysore, Sir M. Visvesvaraya and Sir Mirza Ismail. Among Sir Mirza's most cherished possessions was a photograph of Gandhi with the Mirza family during one of his visits to Mysore: interview with Humayun Mirza, Bangalore, 18 August 1972. See also: Mirza Ismail papers, the Mirza-Gandhi correspondence, Nehru Memorial Museum Library, New Delhi [NMML]; M. Visvesvaraya papers, Institute of Kannada Studies, Mysore University, on his appointment to the Congress National Planning Committee;Google Scholar

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27 I am grateful to L. A. Knight of the University of London for this information.Google Scholar

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79 In 1910 the Raja of Bobbili was placed on the Executive Council of the Governor of Madras.Google Scholar