Hey, hey, hey! Welcome to another episode of MISREPRESENTED. I’m Niki Aggarwal, the founder of Kahaani, a project to put the world back in world history.

If you’re new to the podcast, we have our regular episodes, which are 30-ish minutes and single stories about an event or a person from South Asia that can tell us more about world history. We also have these footnotes episodes, to provide cut scenes and additional context and interviews with experts.  

Today we’re providing the footnotes for the Myth of the Pink City. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, go do that, because this won’t make much sense otherwise.

Even if you did listen, that episode aired a month ago, so here’s a one minute recap courtesy of one of our Instagram followers:

It starts with a bit of a masala. The story that we hear in Wikipedia is Albert, who is prince of Wales. He came to Jaipur and the king wanted to impress him. So he decided to paint his city pink. But that is just a fake story. That's not, how Jaipur turned out to be a pink city. The origin story goes back two centuries.

Jai Singh decided to make Jaipur his capital and decided to build with a cheap terracotta stone, which just happened to be pinkish and reddish. And then he thought of modeling it according to the Mughal structures the Agra Fort, and all of that, he thought people would be like, oh, look, he's just like Mughals. That's the thing.

Even if you're in power, you have to impress the people. So maybe he would have told prince Albert that, see, I did this for you. How do you like it? It's amazing, and all of that, but this podcast is very interesting because it's not just about something that a king did to impress somebody else. It's about why did that rumor come

Thank you to Shitriga for that summary. Our thesis as to why that rumor was created was that the Jaipur dynasty relied on mythmaking to consolidate and maintain power. They then were able, as a state, to punch above their weight during the Mughal and British eras. A few weeks ago, I asked author John Zubrzycki what he thought of that argument.

Yeah, I’m here. Are you there?

Great, great, great

John is a writer of South Asian historical nonfiction. His most recent book is The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family.

So, John, would you agree with our assessment that that family relied on myths to legitimize their rule?

Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Pretty much. Yes. Yes. And,  still works to a degree. And it doesn't quite have the pull, but I do, you know, when I did, uh, interview Diya Kamari,  who's the princess of Jaipur now and a BJP politician

Diya Kumari is the granddaughter of the last reigning Maharaja of Jaipur, the one who was king at the time of India’s independence.^[1] 

She described how, when she would visit a village, the people would take their coats off and lay them on the ground so that her feet wouldn't have to touch the earth. She won by, you know, a half a million votes in an electorate that she had barely visited before she was nominated for take their coats off and lay them on the ground so that her feet wouldn't have to touch the earth. She won by half a million votes in an electorate that she had barely visited before she was nominated for it.

That anecdote definitely reminded me of one from our episode in which, Gayatri Devi went to the villages in the 1960s and swept the Jaipur elections. Another similarity is that a couple of years ago, Diya Kumari brought national attention to the Jaipur royal family’s origin myth - i.e., they are direct descendents of the Hindu deity Ram.^[2] So yeah, pretty fair to say that the family is still profiting off of those myths.

But of course, it wasn’t solely the myths and the jaipur family’s political prowess that allowed them to reach the highest echelons of power.

John, what were the other factors?

Some of these other states were bigger, but they're also, you know, right out in the middle of the desert, where there was nothing at all. Jaipur, state was right on the important trade routes leading from Delhi down south. It was a denser population, agriculturally it was much richer and all those sorts of things contributed a lot to its importance.

John also pointed to Jai Singh, the founder of Jaipur, and his contributions to science.

I mean Jai Singh, who built these fabulous astronomical complexes to measure angles of the sun and stars and who employed scientists from Europe who he engaged with. You know he was tremendously curious and wanting the best for his state.

John and I went on to talk about the Royal family's controversies, but I want to pause here so we can talk about the science stuff.

That complex that John just mentioned is the Jantar Mantar, an entirely outdoor astronomical observatory that was built in the 18th century. It's still there today, so if you go to Jaipur, it's this incredible complex of towering angular structures made completely out of stone. The tallest one is almost 100 feet.^[3]

It wasn’t a common practice at the time, to build observatories, But Jai Singh and his chief scientist realized that the astronomical tables they were using were inaccurate. These tables were used across South Asian and middle Eastern kingdoms, so this was a pretty big deal^[4].

Jai Singh realized that everyone's tables were inaccurate because they all relied on observances from 300 years prior, so they hadn't taken into account planetary and solar movements over the last three centuries.^[5]

He concluded that the long term solution would be to build observatories at home so that the tables could be updated regularly and more easily.

Orientalist historians have questioned why the Maharajah didn't choose to use the most cutting edge technology of the time. Jai Singh was alive at the same time as Isaac Newton, and he was pretty worldly. In fact, the Maharajah  sent a research expedition to Portugal to fetch astronomers and texts.

But what these critics failed to realize is that Jai Singh built this observatory for a very Hindu Indian context.

For example, most Western instruments at the time were built with brass, which would not survive in the Rajasthani heat. So the Maharajah commissioned all stone instruments, which would not expand or contract in the harsh climate.^[6] Second, he wanted to make instruments that could enable measurements to be made with the naked eye so that the observatories were accessible to the public and the measurements were easily verifiable.^[7] 

This misunderstanding of the Maharaja’s intentions brings us back to the ultimate point of why we told the story about the Pink City. As our name indicates, this podcast is about misrepresentation - how do false narratives enter our collective history? And how does the mainstream narrative influence the way individual, local stories are told?

On its surface, the myth of the pink city was a very specific contained narrative: How did a dynasty leverage myths in order to legitimize their reign. But one of the reasons they may have been so successful, in other words, why these myths are still presented as history today, is that they also served a larger Eurocentric narrative. That of the accommodating Maharajah, delighted to align himself with the powerful, British and all do excited to show them loyalty and respect.

Right? That's the story that got us all started here.

Hey Google. Why is Jaipur pink?

According to Wikipedia during the rule of Sawai Ram Singh I, the city was painted pink to welcome HRH Albert Edward Prince of Wales in 1876.

This idea of the Jaipur royal family’s needs aligning with British goals goes beyond their manufactured history. One scene that didn’t make it into the podcast was the backstory of the Jaipur and British alliance. We had to cut it for time reasons. So I’m going to play that cut scene for you now. For context, the Mughals’ power is waning, and the British East India Company has been steadily gaining economic power over the subcontinent.

John Hancock has just signed the U S constitution in Philadelphia^[8]. Audiences in Austria are enjoying Mozart's The marriage of Figaro,^[9] and indigenous Peruvians are fighting against Spanish colonizers.^[10]

But the Jaipur Royals didn't care about any of those things. See, they had gotten themselves into a little bit of a pickle. They'd been so focused on expanding their kingdom, that they entered into some questionable alliances. Most recently, they made an agreement with a neighboring territory, much more powerful than them: the Marathas.^[11] But in the 1780s, the Jaipur king was freaking out. He wasn't able to continue paying the tributes promised^[12] and he had seen what had happened to his fellow Rajput Kings that could not pay up.^[13] So he did what one does when facing a bully bigger than one's size: Find a bigger bully.

The Jaipur king sent a secret letter to the British proposing an Alliance.^[14] No one knew it at the time, not even his own court. We only know about it now, because the postman wrote a letter of his own.^[15] 

My dear sir, I enclose a letter for you which the Raja of Jaipur confided to my brother, who doesn't inform me whether he knows the contents or not; but as the Raja did not choose to trust his vakeel here with it, you will probably think it alright that none of his interpreters should see it. ^[16]

So the British agreed to help Jaipur in exchange for tribute…but then abruptly abandoned the treaty two years later when the going got tough.^[17]  One would think that this would be insulting to the Jaipur Royals, but they must have been very forgiving people because ten years later, the king tried again.^[18] And this time, he came with friends. the Jaipur king lobbied two of his Rajput peers and together all three issued a proposal to the British: tribute in exchange for military defense.^[19]

That was a very common type of deal at the time, but negotiations broke down quickly over the exact terms. So what would make the Jaipur Royals come up to bat a third time?

Well, in 1818, the world looked dramatically different for the British. In the east, they had defeated the Marathas, and in the west they had defeated Napoleon. All of a sudden they had a lot more resources and attention at their disposal. So it was actually the British this time that proposed an Alliance with Jaipur.^[20] From then on, the Jaipur royals became some of the British Empire's staunchest allies.

I really loved this scene about how the Jaipur royals got themselves in bed with the British because a) it shows just how persistent they were when it came to holding on to power and b) it helps debunk the idea that the British Empire was this inevitable and intentional force of nature.

Today, the British Raj is portrayed as a preconceived mission intended to bring the benefits of Western Civilization to the East. Historian Dr. Jon Wilson, a professor of South Asian history at King’s College, gave a talk a few years ago that dismantled this myth:

Scholars explain the growth, survival and demise of British Imperial power with a variety of reasons, of course. Some focus on economic interest, explaining Britain's expanding political role in the sub-continent with reference to merchants, search for markets or bureaucrats for revenue. Others, look to geopolitics, identifying a grand strategy whose goal was British dominance in the subcontinent.

And the defeat of rival European powers. Still more attribute empire to ideology or discourse tracing British actions back to different ideas about the well-organized economy or intellectual schemes which exalted European and denigrated Asians' capacity to rule. In each of these arguments, the growth of Imperial institutions is attributed to the actions of individuals who had a clear idea of empire in their minds. Even historians, who emphasize the importance of Asian agency in creating the conditions for empire,

do so by tracing the rational economic or political arguments. But in all cases, empire is seen as a project. And then perhaps also as a system, and most importantly, it's a chain of rationally conceived actions, which are supposed to connect the two and turn a project into a system. This way of viewing empire would have puzzled all but a very few of the people entangled within the institutions of British Imperial power in India. With very few exceptions, British civil and military officers had a far narrower perspective. They were concerned with their survival, their reputation, their income, their immediate work. And most importantly, their return to Britain rather than grand Imperial projects. For the 18th to the 20th century, a few political leaders took a broader view, articulating one Imperial idea or another to parliament, to the British public, or to British Imperial offices.

But as they recognized themselves, those projects did not get very far and were blunted by the dispersed and chaotic real life of Imperial institutions.Frequently almost invariably the idea of an Imperial plan or system was little more than a rhetorical device used by men who wish to defend their immediate position against criticism at particularly acute moments of crisis.

Our next episode will be specifically about how, once the British government accidentally created this Empire, the sneaky ways in which they retconned a purpose for it.

Exciting, I know! I can barely wait for it myself. But you do have to wait a couple more weeks. In the meantime, I have a couple of suggestions for other podcasts to listen to.

First is a podcast that's going to be for all of you folks with unquenched wanderlust. Many roads traveled is a podcast hosted by Tamera Bee in which she takes you on her overland trips across the world. Tamra has been solo traveling for 30 years and has been to 76 countries. So she knows a thing or two about traveling. She'll also offer insightful travel tips in each episode.

The other show you'll want to check out is sufficiently black. It's a podcast hosted by three friends, Jeanae, Omari, and Kia, who manage to make deep dives into identity and culture through a critical lens, fun and enjoyable, and makes you feel like you're in on the conversation as they navigate their way through adulthood as black women

Check out our show notes if you want links to those. And you can also find the music that we used as well as the research that we referenced. Otherwise, if you want to be like Shitiga and get featured on our podcast, you should follow us on Instagram at kahaani dot IO. Or if you aren't much for Instagram, you can sign up for our newsletter on our website kahaani dot IO. Yes, they are the same. Isn't that convenient. So that's  K A H A A N I dot. I O. Hope to see you all online. Take care.