The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  “Prem Kaur, that will be your new name. ‘Princess of love …’ Not bad!”

  Anita seems satisfied with her new name, which is now being passed from mouth to mouth outside the tent, like an exhalation, into the nearby villages, along the roads, across the fields, and even into the city. The most extravagant of the rites is the last one. It is a rite of Hindu origin, adopted by the Moghul emperors of India and finally by almost all the princes of the subcontinent. The raja sits on a cushion on one tray of the scales. On the other, a Sikh places gold ingots until it balances his weight. That gold will be used to buy food to be distributed among the poor; that is the way the monarch has of allowing all his subjects to join in his joy. They do the same with Anita, who thinks, Not very many people are going to be able to eat my food, because I only weigh fifty-two kilos.

  That afternoon, from the height of her splendidly caparisoned elephant, when Anita enters the city to meet her subjects, she cannot help but remember that day in Madrid when she saw Queen Victoria Eugenie in procession after she married Alfonso XIII. Anita had a glimpse of her own future then, like a fleeting glimmer that she immediately banished from her mind. However, as in the most extraordinary of dreams, that vision has materialized. The girl, who is still not yet eighteen, looks at the spectacle wide-eyed and with a calm she has not enjoyed in the recent days. People she has never seen before bow to greet her and laugh enthusiastically for her and pray for her. The flowers, the perfumes, the music, the faces full of emotion turning toward her … How amazing it all is!

  The procession of elephants goes into the city and is welcomed with thirteen cannon shots, the number of salvos designated to the raja of Kapurthala for his loyalty to the British Crown. The English have found an original way to set the protocol for the number of salvos fired for princes. The nizam of Hyderabad has twenty-one cannon shots. The emperor King of England has a hundred and one. The nawab of Bhopal gets nine.

  The reception is held at nightfall on that intense and exhausting day in the old palace of the raja where his adopted mother resides, in the center of the city. The myriad of guests enjoy the most exquisite dishes of Punjabi cuisine, such as partridges with coriander, cubes of chicken with ginger or pieces of white cheese with spinach. Other buffets offer European food and all kinds of alcoholic drinks. After greeting the guests, the raja asks Anita to go upstairs with him. It is the first time Anita has been into a zenana,3 as they call the parts of the houses and palaces reserved for the women. Anita is in the dreaded harem, as Doña Candelaria called it. The raja hugs the eldest of the ladies with great emotion. She is his adopted mother and she brought him up since his real mother died when he was a baby only a few months old. Among the ladies of the court Anita recognizes the ayas who came to get her ready and dress her.

  “They will teach you everything you need to know to become a good Indian princess,” the raja tells her.

  Other women surround the Spanish girl immediately, all of them very beautiful or looking as if they had been in the past. They form a circle around her and look at her with great curiosity, making comments about her sari and jewels. The raja makes the introductions:

  “Anita, this is Rani Kanari, who has been to Europe several times with me.”

  Both women try to exchange a few words, but Rani Kanari’s English is even more rudimentary than Anita’s. Another two of the raja’s wives greet her shyly. They are Indians from the Kangra valley, a lineage that goes back to the rajput,4 pure-blooded Hindus. They do not speak a single word of English or French.

  “Anita, let me introduce you to Harbans Kaur, maharani number one; that is her title. She is my first wife.”

  The girl bows her head respectfully before an elegant, middle-aged woman, who does not, however, give her even the slightest smile. Anita feels a shiver run down her spine. She does not need to know the local language to guess she is standing before an enemy. When the raja turns round to speak to other guests, Harbans Kaur stands staring at Anita’s jewels and, with a challenging look, allows herself to touch the pearl necklace, to feel the brooch of rubies and the diamond earrings. Then she pulls on a little gold chain that is barely showing out of her corset. It is the chain that holds the cross the Spanish girl always wears round her neck. The maharani laughs and leaves her standing there, turning back to her companions and the other wives, who are still involved in their comments and gossiping about “the new girl.”

  When there is a space around her and she is left alone, Anita feels afraid—and wounded by the insult of the first wife. Although Mme Dijon has always told her about the “raja’s women,” the young Spanish girl has not realized what that meant until she came face-to-face with them. Suddenly she thinks that each of those women has had a day like this, that they are her husband’s wives, and that she is the fifth. Overcome with grief, she leaves the room looking for a place to hide and dry the tears that disfigure her face as they make her makeup run. Mme Dijon, who has witnessed what happened, goes out after her, chasing her down a long corridor lit by candles placed in little niches in the walls; she takes her by the arm and manages to pull her into a little balcony whose latticework allows them to see what is going on outside without being seen. Anita’s body trembles like a reed with the shaking of her sobs. In the background the sounds of the party can be heard.

  “Don’t let them spoil the happiness of this day, Anita. You have to understand that for them this wedding is an insult, because you are a foreigner and because you are young and pretty. Each of them is twice your age. They are jealous and afraid of you …”

  “Afraid?”

  “Of course. Because they think you have stolen the raja’s heart away from them, which is true …”

  The Frenchwoman’s words manage to calm Anita, who gradually recovers her composure.

  “In this part of the world,” Mme Dijon goes on, “having several wives is normal. Tradition dictates that the men have a duty toward them and must look after them always. That is what the raja does … I always thought they’d explained that to you.”

  Anita shakes her head. Mme Dijon continues.

  “The important thing is not the number of wives, but being the one that really matters … Do you remember the story of the emperor who built the Taj Mahal?”

  Anita nods as she blows her nose in her handkerchief.

  “… He had many more wives than the raja has, but he loved only one of them. I can assure you that he loves only you.”

  “I don’t want to end up in a place like this …”

  Mme Dijon smiles.

  “Don’t be silly, you’ll never end up in a zenana … with your temperament! You’ll live as you do now, in European style. He promised you that and he is a man who keeps his word. Listen to me, Anita: as long as you can make him love you, you’ll be the real maharani of Kapurthala, even though his other wives don’t like it.”

  Anita’s face lights up with a slight, melancholic smile, as though she were aware that the fairy tale is over. Now she has to face up to life seriously.

  Thanks to the skillfulness of her companion, the little drama Anita is going through passes by unnoticed by most of the guests, including the correspondent of the Civil and Military Gazette, the newspaper of Lahore, which in its edition of January 29,, 1908, would publish the following article for posterity:

  “The young bride is of the most perfect and refined kind of beauty, and looked magnificent in a crimson sari edged in gold. The jewels she wore were extraordinary for their splendour. The wedding scene was of the most picturesque owing to the magnificence of the clothes worn by the guests. The festivities were celebrated with great éclat.”

  2Shamiana: a tent, generally of embroidered material, which is used for celebrations in India.

  3A word of Persian origin. Zen means “woman” and zenana could be translated as “women’s paradise.”

  4The word rajput means “son of a prince
.”

  PART TWO

  The Lord of the World

  13

  Pomp and luxury have gone with the raja’s life since the very moment of his birth. The inhabitants of Kapurthala remember clearly how they were woken by cannon shots announcing the long-awaited news of the birth of a Crown Prince at two o’clock in the morning on November 24, 1872. Forty days of festivities followed, which cost the treasury a million rupees and which were attended by the governor of the Punjab and the maharajas of Kashmir, Patiala, Gwalior, and other neighboring states. The authorities distributed alms among the poor and declared an amnesty for the twenty-eight prisoners in jail. The joy with which the people celebrated his arrival was proportionate to the long wait and uncertain situation created by the sovereign at the time, Raja Kharak, who suffered from attacks of transitory dementia. The doctors had forced him to spend long periods in an asylum near Dharamsala, a small city in the foothills of the Himalayas. Everyone who thought that he was incapable of procreating had a surprise when the baby’s birth was announced.

  The surprise was especially unpleasant for a branch of the family that claimed the throne and immediately questioned the veracity of the news. According to them, the baby’s father was not Raja Kharak, but an aristocrat from Kapurthala called Lala Harichand, who had given his own son to the maharani in exchange for being named state finance minister. The British were believed to have thought up the plot to avoid the members of this branch of the family taking power. They were categorically opposed to this for one simple reason: that branch of the family had converted to Christianity a few years earlier thanks to the good offices of some English Presbyterian missionaries. For Christians—even if they were from the royal family—to sit on the throne could have very dangerous consequences in the always complicated ethnic and religious puzzle of an Indian state.

  Whether true or not, the fact is that these members of the family took the matter to the highest authorities of colonial power, even getting as far as the office of the viceroy, who ordered a report from the official doctor in Kapurthala. Dr. Warburton carried out a little investigation by questioning the midwife and nurses who had attended the maharani. He was also able to hold a direct interview with the latter by means of a female interpreter, since it was totally forbidden for men to go into the zenana. In his report he concluded that the maharani was the real mother of the infant, paving the way for formal recognition of the heir. The offended branch of the family reacted by saying the doctor was corrupt and had been paid off, and they did not cease in their efforts to denounce the affair. They became so impertinent that they were expelled from Kapurthala and forced to go and live in Jalandhar. By way of compensation, the colonial government allowed them to use the title of raja and gave them titles naming the recalcitrant members of the family Knights of the Star of India and of the British Empire. The matter was settled with the official explanation that it was only a matter of the usual disputes that occur in royal families over succession. But the family division would end up having interesting consequences.

  Five days after the birth, the women of the house celebrated the traditional ceremony to protect the child from the evil eye. For a whole night they intoned religious chants while the soldiers of the regiment banged big drums at the palace gates. On the tenth day, hordes of servants set to cleaning the walls and floors of the palace and the members of the family poured huge jugs of milk down the entrance steps, thus celebrating the moment when the mother was no longer “impure.” On the twelfth day, in another ceremony also inspired by Hinduism, the official state astrologer made his appearance. He read the child’s horoscope, making a large number of comments about his star chart, on which he had written four names. Instead of the father doing it, as he was shut up in the asylum, it was the child’s aunt who chose one of the names, which she then whispered in the baby’s ear: Jagatjit—“Lord of the World”—would be his name. At the end of the ceremony, the astrologer read out the complete name of the heir to the throne of Kapurthala: Farzand-i-Dilband Rasik-al-Iqtidad-i-Daulat, Raja-i-Rajagan Jagatjit Singh Bahadur. For the English: Rajah Jagatjit Singh.

  The little boy was brought up in the zenana, surrounded by ayas, servants, and nursemaids in an atmosphere of comfort and luxury unimaginable for any European child. Being the only son and, therefore, the heir, from his earliest childhood he grew accustomed to being the center of attention and to being treated with the honors due his rank. There was always someone fluttering around him to prevent him falling ill or to deal with any of his needs. It was enough for him to hold out his foot, and a servant put his shoes on. He raised a finger, and another came to comb his hair. He never raised his voice because it was not necessary. A look was enough to transmit a desire, which was immediately interpreted as an order. Even the oldest servants prostrated themselves before the boy, touching his feet in a sign of veneration. His health was followed with the greatest attention. An aya took the boy’s chamber pot daily and scrutinized his stools most carefully. If she found anything strange, he was immediately treated with medicinal herbs, and, if it was more serious, she called the official doctor. Every day, during his entire childhood, he was bathed, and his hair was washed and then dried with him lying on a bed of plaited string, under which there was a little oven where there were embers and incense burning, leaving his hair perfumed. Then he had to submit to a complete massage with cream of almonds that were ground up fresh every week. Then he had his first dealings with corruption: he tried, unsuccessfully, to buy off the ayas in order to skip the massage that bored him so greatly. Throughout his childhood he was always accompanied, at all moments, by servants, and later by tutors and teachers, to the point that he was not alone for a single instant. Perhaps for that reason he traveled so much as soon as he was older, in order to find his true self on the roads of the world.

  He did not know his father, who lived locked up in the asylum. The only thing he remembers about him is his death, because it was followed by days of mourning during which professional mourners invaded the palace halls with their weeping. Jagatjit was five years old and he was to inherit a kingdom. He inherited the thirteen-cannon salute of honor that the English had granted Kapurthala, the title of His Highness, and the fifth position in order of precedence among the sovereigns of the Punjab. But above all he inherited a colossal fortune, which was out of all proportion to the size of Kapurthala—six hundred square kilometers, tiny in comparison with the six thousand kilometers of the neighboring state of Patiala. That fortune he owed to his grandfather, Rajah Randhir Singh, who had made the right choice when he opted to side with the English when the mutiny broke out in 1857. It was a revolution, during which the Hindu and Moslem soldiers who made up the regiments of the Indian army rebelled against their superiors, the British officers in the pay of the East India Company. Although the reasons for the rebellion had to do with their fear of being converted to Christianity and the increasingly authoritarian attitude of the all-powerful company, the immediate pretext for the mutiny was based on the rumor that the new gun cartridges were greased with animal fat. That represented an insult both for the Hindus, who thought it was cow fat, and for the Moslems, who feared it was pig fat. The atrocities committed by both sides during the months the mutiny lasted became a landmark in the history of the British colonization of India. Considered by the Indians as their first war of independence, the mutiny favored the emergence of Indian nationalism and opened a breach that would culminate ninety years later in independence. For the English, who took several months in putting down the rebellion, it meant the end of the supremacy of the East India Company, which had handled matters in India as a private business since the seventeenth century. Queen Victoria took control of the government of the immense colony, and, in a proclamation made in 1858, attempted to ensure the loyalty of the princes. The English—barely a hundred and thirty thousand of them in a country of three hundred million—needed the princes to administer such an immense territory, as long as they could
control them and keep them happy in some way. “We will be the guarantors of the authority and future of the native princes as governors of their states,”ran the proclamation. “We will respect their rights, their dignity and their honour as if they were ours.” It was a historic moment when the kings of India stopped being kings and became princes. Protected by the British umbrella that guaranteed their borders, their earnings, and their privileges for them, the sovereigns lived from then on in security and peace of mind, unlike their forbears. They no longer had to answer to their people, but to the supreme power of the British Crown, which showered them with honors, titles, and salvos of cannon shots so that each of them was situated in what was considered the correct order of precedence. Very skillfully, the English placed them like satellites, each in his own orbit.

  The stability provided them by the Pax Britannica made them malleable and corrupt. They ended up relying more and more on the English, convinced they were essential for their own survival, when in fact it was the princes who had been essential for the survival of the British in India. In that way the rajas gradually moved away from their people, forgetting the precepts of simplicity and humility inherent in Hindu society and beginning to live in an ostentatious manner, competing with each other and emulating the colonizers. They also wanted to be English, but it was hard for them to achieve because they came from a feudal society.

  For having allied himself with the British during the mutiny, Randhir Singh of Kapurthala was rewarded with enormous stretches of land confiscated from the raja of Oudh, who had opted for the rebel side. And so, the misfortune of one made the prosperity and happiness of the other. Those lands provided Kapurthala with a huge annual income of two million, four hundred thousand rupees, which went directly into the raja’s pockets. At the age of five, Jagatjit Singh was already rich.