Q&A: Barbara Ramusack

Barbara Ramusack, Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History and internationally recognized scholar on South Asian history, won the 2005 Rieveschl Award for Creative and Scholarly works. In the conversation that follows she discusses her interrelated areas of research and her latest contribution to the field.

Q:

One of your major concerns has been women and gender in South Asia. Talk a little about maternal imperialism, a term you coined, and about your current work on the subject.

A:

In my initial research on British and Indian women activists, I noticed that the British women usually relied on western models and their personal experiences as guidelines for their reform programs to improve the status of Indian women. For example, British women tried to educate Indian women into Victorian domesticity in the nineteenth century and later to organize western-style campaigns seeking the franchise. I concluded that British women functioned as maternal imperialists since they, like many mothers, adopted a mother-knows-best attitude and, like most imperialists, used their power to impose ideas and programs on their daughters.

My current project focuses on the development of institutions such as maternity hospitals and child welfare centers to improve the health of mothers and infants. In an effort to link my two research interests of women and gender and the princely states, I’m focusing on a comparative study of such phenomenon in the British India province of Madras and the princely state of Mysore in colonial South India.

Q:

Beginning with

The Princes of India in the Twilight of Empire

, you’ve explored the roles the princes played in politics. Your latest work

The Indian Princes and Their States (The New Cambridge History of India)

continues that focus. How did British imperialism evolve in the late 19

^th

and early 20

^th

centuries, and what ended it?

A:

By 1858, the British ruled directly over two-thirds of the Indian population and indirectly over the other one-third through the Indian princes. Since they lacked the manpower to control all of India directly, they sought Indian allies and evolved the treaty system with Indian princes. By the late nineteenth century, elite Indians began to demand greater representation in the British government of India. They formed the core of the nationalist movement that eventually forced Britain, exhausted by the destruction of the Second World War, to grant India and Pakistan independence in 1947.

Q:

Who were the princes and what role did they play?

A:

Some had ruled kingdoms long before the arrival of the British, and many others had created their own states during the 1700s as the Mughal empire, based in Delhi, declined. As the British gained power on the seacoasts and moved inland, many princes found it advantageous to enter treaties with the British. These secured protection from internal and external rivals in exchange for giving the British control of foreign relations, defense, and communications. Remaining internally autonomous, princes could tax, maintain law courts, and continue their own internal administrative structures but were now military allies of the expanding British power. By 1900, they began to function as political allies of the British in India and abroad.

Q:

What are the greatest misconceptions about the princes and India?

A:

India and the princes are usually portrayed in novels, paintings, and films as exotic. Remember the banquet scene at the palace of an Indian prince in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”? People also tend to accept at face value the statistics that there were over 600 princely states. In reality, around 150 princes ruled over financially viable states. Most of the remaining 450 were large-scale landlords with some judicial and tax powers.

Q:

Describe some of the most fascinating things your research revealed about these rulers and their families.

A:

Some princes were cultural nationalists and fostered a sense of pride in Indian culture when the British were denigrating Indian culture as backward. They patronized Indian universities, such as Benaras Hindu University; Indian classical dance and music; sports, both Indian wrestling and cricket that is now the most popular spectator sport in India; the study of Indian languages and literatures, especially the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit; and the publications of archaeological sites such as the Buddhist stupa in Sanchi, central India.

Q:

What became of them after the dissolution of the relationship with Britain?

A:

The princes had to accede to either India or Pakistan. After 1948, several rulers received ceremonial appointments such as ambassadorships or governorships of unions or states. Some went into business, including the maharajas of Jaipur and Udaipur in Rajasthan, who transformed their palaces into hotels where tourists could fulfill their fantasy of living like princes for a few days.

Q:

Has their presence in history had any influence on South Asia as we know it today?

A:

Most tragically, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was the cause of two wars and several military encounters between India and Pakistan and remains a source of dispute between these two neighbors. More positively, some of the children and grandchildren of the ruling princes went into electoral politics, and today two of them are chief ministers of Indian states.