Synopses & Reviews
Here is a rare glimpse behind purdahs curtain into the lives of four brilliant maharanis-the wives of Maharajas-who helped shepherd princely India into the twentieth century. Tracing the lives of these influential women from the final days of the raj and the British Empire to the present, Lucy Moore vividly re-creates a splendid lost world as well as describes the growing pains of the emerging democratic society in India.
Educated, nationalist Chimnabai, born in 1871, in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, began her marriage in purdah but broke it in 1913, and spent the rest of her life campaigning tirelessly for womens rights. The comparatively demure Sunity Devi was a favorite of the British aristocracy and made Queen Victoria the godmother of her son, Victor. Her prim demeanor belied a passionate social activism on behalf of the poor and uneducated. Chimnabais ravishing daughter, Indira, broke off an arranged marriage so she could marry Sunity Devis dashing son, Jit. But when her beloved husband died young, far from committing sati, she became the regent of his state, a job she took on with gusto though she maintained a sybaritic life abroad. In fact, among the jet set in which she traveled-including Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, Jimmy Stewart, and the Prince of Wales-she was known as the Maharani of Couche Partout because of her penchant for scandalous love affairs. Ayesha, Indiras equally fashionable daughter and friend to the Kennedys, was elected-with the greatest majority ever recorded-to the Parliament of an independent India in 1962. She remains a social activist and benefactress to this day. These women have lived in a lavish, if sometimes tragic, fairy tale-their palaces were modeled on Versailles; they wore sunglasses carved out of emeralds and saris made of chiffon. They kept jewel-encrusted turtles for luck, went on tiger hunts with the European royalty, and socialized with the chic and infamous. With exhausting frequency they lost husbands and children to alcoholism. But throughout their glamorous lives they fought tirelessly for civil rights and were able to turn a tradition of noblesse oblige into a progressive democracy.
It is through their struggles that we begin to understand the nuance implicit in any interaction between the rulers and the ruled, race and class, subservience and independence, Eastern and Western ideas, and ancient and modern ways of life. Maharanis is the unforgettable story of four magnificent queens who defied centuries of tradition to embrace lives of adventure, passion, and political engagement.
Review
Exotic in detail yet clear in its historical treatment, this is a fascinating picture of a vanished world. (Sarah Bradford, author of Americas Queen) With this exotic and flamboyant story Lucy Moore brings India to life in a way rarely achieved by English historians. (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar)
Synopsis
Until the 1920s, to be a Maharani, wife to the Maharajah, was to be tantalizingly close to the power and glamour of the Raj, but locked away in purdah as near chattel. Even the educated, progressive Maharani of Baroda, Chimnabai--born into the aftermath of the 1857 Indian Mutiny--began her marriage this way, but her ravishing daughter, Indira, had other ideas. She became the Regent of Cooch Behar, one of the wealthiest regions of India while her daughter, Ayesha, was elected to the Indian Parliament. The lives of these influential, immensely colorful women embodied the delicate interplay between rulers and ruled, race and culture, subservience and independence, Eastern and Western ideas, and ancient and modern ways of life in the bejeweled exuberance of Indian aristocratic life in the final days both of the Raj, and the British Empire. Tracing these larger than life characters as they burst every known stereotype, Lucy Moore creates a vivid picture of an emerging modern, democratic society in India and the tumultuous period of Imperialism from which it arose.
Synopsis
Tracing larger-than-life-characters, Moore creates a vivid picture of an emerging modern, democratic society in India and the tumultuous period of imperialism from which it arose in this study of four Indian queens and their journey from Purdah to Parliament.
About the Author
Lucy Moore was born in London, raised in Massachusetts, and educated at Edinburgh University. She writes for a wide variety of British magazines and newspapers as well as The Washington Times. She is the author of two previous books of British history.