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‘Monarchical modern’: the making of Mysore city, 1880–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2022
Abstract
The unique status of the city of Mysore arose from the fact that it was divested of all administrative functions save that of the Palace establishment. Principles of city planning were innovatively pursued, through a combination of sovereign authority and diverse forces, techniques and devices more properly associated with ‘governmentality’. It was among the first cities in India to have a City Improvement Trust in 1903. An investigation of the work of the Mysore City Improvement Trust in its negotiations with the municipality on the one hand and the Palace establishment on the other foregrounds the ‘monarchical’ as a specific form of power. What were the specific forms of material and temporal ‘ordering’ that came to distinguish Mysore city from its counterparts? This article looks at four distinct moments of this journey, related respectively to sanitizing, botanizing, ornamentalizing and spectacularizing, together producing a ‘depth of historical distance’.
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References
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5 The concept of the ‘monarchical modern’ advanced here differs from Stephen Blake's discussion of pre-modern sovereignty as expressed in the imperial capital of Shajahanabad. Blake elaborates the idea of the city as an expression of a ‘patrimonial-bureaucratic’ empire, in which the city itself was modelled on the imperial household: ‘From the micro-perspective, the sovereign city was an enormously extended patriarchal household, the imperial palace-fortress writ large.’ S. Blake, Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639–1739 (Cambridge, 1991), xii, also 86. As we shall see, the Mysore bureaucracy blended the modalities of an independent, rational governing structure while simultaneously supporting modern principles of town planning for the general population, with a commitment to extending the Maharaja's aesthetic vision of Mysore as a royal city. I inaugurated the discussion of the ‘monarchical modern’ as a concept and the successful creation of the depth of historical distance in ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’, in Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (Minneapolis, 2011), 127–63. I continue this discussion here, foregrounding the quotidian practices of power, particularly in the planning of layouts, gardens, roads, returning to the development of Mysore as the site par excellence of ‘spectacularizing’ a monarchical modern power.
6 D. Scott, ‘Colonial governmentality’, Social Text, 43 (1995), 191–220, esp. 205.
7 R. Chandavarkar had warned against such proliferations in ‘Urban history and urban anthropology in South Asia’, in History Culture and the Indian City, 206–35, esp. 217.
8 Metcalf, Imperial Vision, 5.
9 P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003), 14.
10 P. Chatterjee, ‘A postscript from Calcutta’, in M. Reiker and K. Ali (eds.), Comparing Cities: The Middle East and South Asia (Lahore, 2010), 312. Chatterjee, however, uses the examples of popular culture (theatre and football) to suggest that ideas of equality were nevertheless actively translated into the Calcutta context, often through the practice of illegality, ibid., 319. See also Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, 209.
11 A. Ikegame, ‘The capital of raajadharma’, in Princely India Reimagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to the Present (London and New York, 2013), 132.
12 B. Hettne, The Political Economy of Indirect Rule: Mysore 1881–1947 (Delhi and Malmo, 1978); S. Chandrasekhar, Dimensions of Socio-Economic Change (Delhi, 1985); Nair, Mysore Modern.
13 Kidambi is exceptional in taking on the question of caste and space and preference of people for caste wise residential patterns, The Making of an Indian Metropolis, 80–1, 91. On caste itself being considered injurious to public health ‘because [it was] prejudicial to public happiness’, see P. Datta (citing R. Martin), Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta, c. 1800–c. 1940 (New Delhi, 2012), 93.
14 Agraharas are settlements exclusively for Brahmins.
15 Ikegame, Princely India Reimagined, 125.
16 Major C.A. Elliot, Correspondence relative to the Maharaja's Palace Affairs, Karnataka State Archives (KSA).
17 Palace Administration Report 1868–1918, KSA, 5.
18 Proceedings of the Dewan to His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore, General, dated 26 May 1884, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–78, Municipal, KSA.
19 Proceedings of the Dewan to His Highness the Maharajah of Mysore, 18 Jul. 1886, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–78, Municipal, KSA. This set of Fort clearances was quite different from strategic transformations undertaken in Delhi and Lucknow following the revolt of 1857. See Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 1–38; and V.T. Oldenburg The Making of Colonial Lucknow: 1856–1877 (Princeton, 1984), esp. 27–144.
20 Note on Important Public Works in Mysore by Mr Krishna Iyengar, file no. 25 of 1913, sl. nos. 1, 2, 3, Maramath, Divisional Archives Office (DAO), Mysuru.
21 Dewan K. Sheshadri Iyer, memorandum, 19 Jul. 1886, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
22 H. Nanjundaraj Urs, memorandum, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, 19 Oct. 1896, Municipal, KSA.
23 It is not clear whether this refers to members of an Afghani Pathan tribe, or ‘to an exogamous sept of Kamma and Muka Dora’, in E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, vol. III (Madras, 1909), 44.
24 Memorandum, 19 Oct. 1896, file no. 12 of 1892, Municipal, KSA.
25 Memorandum, camp nos. 35 and 36, 29 Oct. 1884, Dewan K. Sheshadri Iyer, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–78, Municipal, KSA.
26 Municipal Boards’ Office to secretary of the Dewan of Mysore, 25 Feb. 1885, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–78, Municipal, KSA.
27 Memorandum, Dewan, 7 Jul. 1886, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–78, Municipal, KSA. We hear no more of the convict labourers, and whether they too were absorbed into the city.
28 H. Nanjunda Raj Urs, secretary, Building Committee, 19 Oct. 1896, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
29 A. Rangaswami Iyengar, deputy commissioner, Mysore, to chief secretary to Dewan of Mysore, 21 Jun. 1894, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
30 The Mysore Municipality objected to a Brahmin widow who rented her house to a ‘professor’, clearly non-Brahmin. ‘Occupation by other castes of houses built in localities intended for specified castes in the Western Extension of the Mysore city’, file no. 298 of 1893, sl. nos. 1–5, Municipal, KSA; extract from the proceedings of the Building Committee at Mysore, 8 Jun. 1894, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA; office of the secretary of the Building Committee, Mysore, to deputy commissioner, Mysore District, 16 Jun. 1894, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA. As the municipality specified, grants would be given only against a statement that sites in Chamarajpura and the Western Extension ‘clearly define the castes and classes of the community’ who are to occupy the houses in the specified localities. Extracts of the proceedings of the Building Committee at Mysore, 8 Jun. 1894, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
31 Improvement in Mysore City, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
32 Marginal notes, deputy commissioner, Mysore District, to secretary to the Government of Mysore (GoM), General and Revenue Departments, 22 Jul. 1896, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
33 Executive engineer, Mysore Division, to chief engineer, Mysore, 18 Aug. 1896, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
34 Proceedings of the GoM, order no. 3621, 15 Sep. 1896, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
35 President, Mysore Municipal Board to chief secretary to the Dewan of Mysore, 31 Jan. 1893; A. Rangaswami Iyengar, deputy commissioner and municipal president, to chief secretary GoM, 6 May 1893, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA. The Holagere (sometime spelt as Holageri) denoted the space occupied by Holeyas, who were regarded as an ‘untouchable’ caste in Mysore.
36 President, Mysore Municipal Board to chief secretary, 31 Jan. 1893, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
37 S.M. Fraser, tutor and governor of His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore, to H. Nanjunda Rao Urs, vice president, Mysore City Municipality, 6 Feb. 1897, file no. 13 of 1896–97, sl. nos. 1–15, Municipal, KSA.
38 Correspondence for health camp at Chattanahalli, file no. 2 of 1902, sl. no. 23, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
39 Ibid.
40 Proceedings of the sub-committee for the improvement of the city of Mysore, 22 Feb. 1903, file no. 2 of 1902, sl. no. 23, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
41 Proceedings of the sub-committee for the improvement of the city of Mysore, 17 Sep. 1903, file no. 2 of 1902, sl. no. 23, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
42 Proceedings of GoM, 3 Mar. 1903, file no. 2 of 1902, sl. no. 23, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
43 Proceedings of the sub-committee of the Sanitary Improvement Committee Mysore held on 10 Mar. 1903, file no. 2 of 1902, sl. no. 23, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
44 C.S. Krishna Swamy Aiyar, municipal engineer, ‘Report to accompany the estimate for opening out congested parts of the city and providing them with drains’, file no. 459 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–34, Municipal, KSA. A mohalla is a neighbourhood in which forms of informal power exercised by ‘big men’ would continue well into the period of late colonialism. On political mobilization within mohallas, see J. Masselos and S. Legg, ‘A pre-partitioned city? Anti-colonial and communal mohallas in inter-war Delhi’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 42 (2019), 170–87; D. Baul, ‘Redefining cityscapes: spatial reorganisation and urban life in late colonial Delhi’, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University Ph.D. thesis, 2018; S. Sinha, ‘Crime and the city: Delhi 1911–1956’, Jawaharlal Nehru University Ph.D. thesis, 2020.
45 The ‘Holeyas’ were housed in Jalapuri, ‘Pindaries’ in the Idga Extension, where the inhabitants of Patanadaganagakere were also housed. Replies to queries of the Dewan by the president of the Mysore Municipality, 16 Nov. 1901, file no. 459 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–34, Municipal, KSA. See also J. Nair, The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore Twentieth Century (Delhi, 2005), 50–4; and R. Vishwanath, The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion and the Social in Modern India (New York, 2014), 65.
46 Proceedings of the Building Committee of Mysore, 25 Sep. 1893; proceedings of the Building Committee of Mysore, 12 Jun. 1895, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
47 Extract from the proceedings of the Building Committee at Mysore, 8 Jun. 1894, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
48 Mr Standish Lee, superintending sanitary engineer, to chief engineer, GoM, file no. 47 of 1900, 20 Jun. 1900, sl. nos. 1–6, Municipal, KSA.
49 J.E.A. D'Cruz, assistant engineer, report to accompany plans and estimates for the drainage of Jalapuri and Idgah Extensions, 2 Jun. 1903, file no. 106D of 1903, sl. nos. 1–9, 1903–04, Municipal, KSA.
50 H. Nanjundaraj Urs, memorandum, 19 Oct. 1896, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
51 Indian Engineering, 14 Jan. 1889, 24.
52 Charles T. Martin, director of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine to Sitarama Rao, chairman, Mysore Municipality, and president, Mysore CITB, 7 Oct. 1906, file no. 455 of 1905, sl. nos. 5–6, 1906, Municipal, KSA. A few years later, a more sobering assessment of the achievements of the Improvement Trust was made by the memorandum of D. Cruz, executive engineer, Mysore Improvements Division, 23 Nov. 1909, file no. 365 of 1909, sl. nos. 1–7, 1909, Municipal, KSA.
53 Ikegame, Princely India Reimagined, 121.
54 Ibid.
55 Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
56 As the administration report of the Maramath Department had it: ‘The construction of grand bungalows for important Ursu gentlemen, is also entrusted to this department.’ Sirdar Gopalraj Urs, Chammappaji Urs, Subrahmanyaraj Urs Golahalli Devajammani and Bakshi Basappaji Urs were among those who occupied ‘comparatively handsome and decent’ houses in the period between 1915 and 1920. Administration Report of the Maramath Department, 1919–20, 19, Administration Report of the Maramath Department, 1920–21, 19, file no. 1 of 1921, sl. nos. 2–66, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
57 M. Ismail, My Public Life: Recollections and Reflections (London, 1954), 49–50. For greater detail, see Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
58 James Holston elaborates on the relationship between solid and void in the modernist city of Brasilia, where solids (buildings) were placed in and surrounded by large open spaces (voids), undermining the more fluid, interchangeable, relationship between solid–void, or figure–ground, that was a feature of the pre-modern city. J. Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (Chicago, 1989), 101–44.
59 File no. 260–24, 1917, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
60 On Jaipur Maharajah Ram Singh's pet public garden project, see Metcalf, Imperial Vision, 131, 133.
61 On Benjamin Heyne and G.H. Krumbiegel, see A. Mathur and D. Da Cunha, Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore's Terrain (New Delhi, 2006), esp. 171–83. See also Bowe, P., ‘Lal Bagh – the botanical garden of Bangalore and its Kew-trained gardeners’, Garden History, 40 (2012), 228–38Google Scholar; M. Jagadeesh, ‘Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel, 1865–1956: renowned horticulturist and landscape architect’ (Bangalore, 2016), https://archive.org/stream/Krumbiegel/Krumbiegel_djvu.txt, accessed 29 Jan. 2021; Annapurna Garimella, ‘Labors of a park’, www.academia.edu/42956869/Garimella_Labors_of_a_Park_ROUGH_DRAFT_of_Published_Paper (Marg, 2019), accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
62 Krumbiegel to Dewan of Mysore, 11 Jun. 1907, file no. 315 of 1906, sl. no. 87/91, General Miscellaneous, KSA.
63 Dewan K. Sheshadri Iyer, memorandum, 19 Jul. 1886, file no. 12 of 1892, sl. nos. 1–57, Municipal, KSA.
64 ‘History of Kavals’, file no. 2 of 1917–18, sl. no. 43, Palace Estates and Gardens, DAO, Mysore.
65 Administration Report of the Estates and Garden Department 1924–25, file no. 6 of 1925, sl. no. 137, Palace Estates and Gardens, 1925, DAO, Mysuru.
66 ‘History of Kavals’, 9, file no. 2 of 1917–18, sl. no. 43, Palace Estates and Gardens, DAO, Mysore.
67 Administration Report of the Working of the Palace Estates and Gardens Department for the Year 1923–24, file no. 6 of 1925, sl. no. 137, Palace Estates and Gardens, 1925, DAO, Mysuru.
68 For instance, he declared opposition to the ugly Rani Chattram, demanding it be pulled down. Selections from the Records of the Mysore Palace, vol. II (Bangalore, 1997), 94. His marginal notes were equally imperious: ‘The EE has got his own way of making buildings attractive. He must aim at simplicity and not make building gaudy in appearance as he is inclined to do.’ Another comment: ‘I have no respect or admiration for the Mysore PWD and their ways of constructing buildings are neither economical nor useful.’ And vis-à-vis the stables and outhouses of railway quarters, Mirza said: ‘These are a standing disgrace to that department. Let us avoid any reference to them at all!’, 25 Dec. 1919, file no. 2 of 1893, sl. no. 05, vol. I, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
69 Lakshminarasappa, assistant engineer, Mysore, to Mirza Ismail, private secretary to the Maharaja, 3 May 1917, file no. 10 of 1916, sl. no. 203, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
70 Proceedings of meeting held on 3 Jul. 1915 with His Highness the Yuvaraja, Kantharaj Urs, Campbell, Krishna Iyengar and G.H. Krumbiegel, file no. 24 of 1915, sl. nos. 45, 46, 47 135–81, Municipal, KSA; Mirza Ismail, private secretary, to His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore to Dewan Visvesvaraya, 14 Dec. 1915, same file. Acquisitions continued for three years, and were paid for by the GoM. Note by Dewan Visvesvaraya, 17 Dec. 1917, file no. 24 of 1915, sl. nos. 73, 118, 124, 128–30, Municipal, KSA.
71 File no. 10/1916, sl. no. 203, Mysore City Inspections by the Dewan on 23 Oct. 1916, Maramath, DAO, Mysore.
72 There is acknowledgment of work in ‘economic botany’ that references ‘hybridizing and plant breeding’, but the larger discussion is of the Public Gardens and Parks in Hayavadana Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, vol. IV, Administrative (Bangalore, 1929; reprint 2011), 694–712.
73 Mathur and Da Cunha, Deccan Traverses, 182–3.
74 ‘History of Kavals’, 12, file no. 2 of 1917–18, sl. no. 43, Palace Estates and Gardens, DAO, Mysuru.
75 For details, see Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
76 ‘History of Kavals’, 9, file no. 2 of 1917–18, sl. no. 43, Palace Estates and Gardens, DAO, Mysore.
77 Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, vol. IV, 712–13: Gardens and Parks.
78 G.H. Krumbiegel to secretary All India Dasara Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition, 18 Jun. 1930, file no. Exhibition Committee 9 of 1930, sl. nos. 1 and 2, DAO, Mysuru.
79 Mysore Information Bulletin, vol. II, no. 10, Oct. 1939, 250.
80 Memorandum of instruction from G.H. Krumbiegel, file no. 2 of 1917–18, sl. no. 43, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru.
81 For instance, the dislocations caused to the supply of fuel and fodder to the Palace by the predominance given to ornamental gardening had to be managed as well. Administration Report of the Estates and Garden Department 1924–25, file no. 6 of 1925, sl. no. 137, DAO, Mysuru.
82 The Dasara Exhibition, however, included a ‘Horticultural and Economic Botany’ section, as well as a town planning section, both hailed as attractive in themselves. ‘Dussera in Mysore’, Times of India, 23 Oct. 1928.
83 Ismail, My Public Life, 40–1. I am not discussing here the design and ornamentation of Brindavan Gardens, credited to the visions of Mirza and Krumbiegel: see, however, Narayanswamy, S., ‘Sir Mirza's contribution to ornamental gardens of Bangalore and Mysore’, Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society, Special Number, 38, no. 4 (1997), 51–4Google Scholar. It is interesting that models for garden building that drew from the symmetrical Mughal Garden, as in Dariya Daulat at Srirangapatnam, appear to have been relinquished in favour of European-style parks and gardens, except in Brindavan Gardens. M. Jagadeesh says ‘He prepared the landscape plan [for Brindavan Gardens] on the lines of Charbagh, a Mughal Style Garden’, ‘Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel’, 19. By the late 1930s, Brindavan Gardens had become an important part of the tourist circuit, a veritable ‘Fairyland on the Cauvery’. See, for instance, the lavishly illustrated SALAR-E-HIND (a special number on Mysore) published by Saif Azad, (Bombay, Sep. 1938).
84 Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
85 The Maharaja's detailed interventions on matters ranging from Palace furnishing and architecture, acquisition of property for construction of royal homes, design of new Palaces, avenues and public parks and memorials, reveal as keen an interest in the development of Mysore as the bureaucrat and the expert. This ranged from approval of designs for houses in the syces lines to designs and decisions on the Palace building: Mirza Ismail to V.V. Karve, Mysore Municipality, 11 Jul. 1914, file no. 18 of 1913, sl. no. 116, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru. The Maharaja's personal interest in city planning was testified in many writings, for instance M. Vivesvaraya, Memoirs of My Working Life (Bangalore, Published by Author, 1951), 87.
86 The Mysore Dasara had attracted between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors by the 1930s; ‘Mysore city would not thus have benefited if it was not made so attractive, and if the festivities were not held on such a grand scale.’ Ismail, My Public Life, 50. Also Narayanswamy, ‘Sir Mirza's contribution’.
87 GO no. 221–5 Ml 51–14–63, dated 12 Jul. 1915, file no. 265 of 1914, sl. nos. 1 and 2, Municipal, KSA.
88 By 1910, the whole city was provided with underground sewage, thanks to the efforts of the then chief engineer, M. Visvesvaraya. Hayavadana Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, vol. V, part 1 (Bangalore, 1930), 766, 772.
89 Metcalf, Imperial Vision, 105–40. On the cities of Saurashtra, and especially on the aspiration of Jamnagar to be Paris, see Spodek, H., ‘Urban politics in the local kingdoms of India: a view from the princely capitals of Saurashtra under British rule’, Modern Asian Studies, 7 (1973), 253–75Google Scholar, especially 261.
90 M. Vivesvaraya: 6 Jan. 1916, file no. 24 of 1915, sl. nos. 16 and 42, Municipal, KSA; similar arguments were made for the Chamundi Extension to the south of the Fort. T.G. Lakshmana Rao, chairman CITB, to V.R. Thyagraja Iyer, secretary, Revenue Department, GoM, 7 Jun. 1916, file no. 24 of 1915, sl. nos. 101, 113, 117, 126–7, Municipal, KSA.
91 I have discussed this in detail in ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
92 File no. 15 of 1915, sl. no. 175, Building Sites for Certain Ursu Gentlemen, Maramath, DAO, Mysuru. I have elsewhere described this process, from which I also draw here: ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
93 Dewan K. Sheshadri Iyer, memorandum, 29 Oct. 1884, file no. 24 of 1879, sl. nos. 1–7, Municipal, KSA.
94 On the challenge to the acquisition of his land for the Third Maharajkumari's mansion by Murti Rao, see Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’, 148.
95 File no. 76 of 1901–02, sl. nos. 1–16, Municipal, KSA.
96 Concluding speech at the Dasara session of the Representative Assembly on 22 Oct. 1937, by Diwan Mirza M. Ismail, in Address of the Diwans of Mysore to the Mysore Representative Assembly from 1913 to 1938, vol. III, 333, as cited in Ikegame, Princely India Reimagined, 158.
97 Nair, Mysore Modern, 150–7; Ikegame, Princely India Reimagined, 135.
98 Metcalf, Imperial Vision, 8.
99 Selections from the Records of the Mysore Palace, vol. II, 73–5.
100 I borrow the term from A. Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
101 See, for instance, S. Srinivas, Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India's High Tech City (Hyderabad, 2001), 38–43.
102 Nair, ‘The museumized cityscape of Mysore’.
103 Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, vol. V, 780.
104 Rao, B.R., ‘The Dasara celebrations in Mysore’, Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society, 11 (1921), 301–11Google Scholar.
105 The Magnificent Mysore Dasara (Bangalore, 1994).
106 Rao, ‘The Dasara celebrations’.
107 L. Rice, Mysore and Coorg: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, vol. II: Mysore by Districts (Bangalore, 1876), 256; Rao, Mysore Gazetteer, vol. V, 750.
108 On the liberal ordering of Vienna, see C. Schorske, ‘The Ringstrasse: its critics, and the birth of urban modernism’, in Fin de siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), 24–111; D. Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (London, 2006).
109 Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires; Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 27–144.
110 S. Liddle, ‘The city as the site of spectacle’, Unit 35, Colonial Cities 1, Urbanisation in India, Indira Gandhi National Open University, School of Social Sciences, Delhi, 2014, 34–7.
111 C. Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, 1980); N. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, 1988).
112 Mysore Star, 4 Jul. 1915.
113 I would like to thank Ajantha Subramanian for urging me to emphasize this point. In Oct. 1927, Mirza Ismail was asked by Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV to travel behind him in the most important Hindu festivals of Dasara. M. Bhagwan, Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education and Empire in Colonial India (Delhi, 2003), 160.
114 M.A. Sreenivasan, The Last Mysore Pradhan (Bangalore, 2005), 109.
115 Mysore Star, 2 Jul. 1922. It is interesting that the Mysore Star discussed municipal matters only in terms either of elections and representative questions or of water supply, drainage and sewage, clean surroundings, etc. There is a singular absence of interest in questions of city aesthetics, or even architecture; certainly there is no discussion of the new extensions and their monopoly by upper castes. There are, however, detailed bromides on the municipality itself as a site of unjustifiable Brahminical dominance, corruption and deceit. For instance, Mysore Star, 2 Aug. 1924, 10 Aug. 1924, 17 Aug. 1924, 25 Aug. 1924, 9 Oct. 1929.