The empire and the protocol

Composed during the peak of the empire, Edward Elgar's ''Pomp and Circumstance Marches'' is symbolic and harks back to the elaborate rituals involved in keeping the Empire together.

Namely, the need to have and keep the colonial domination over the nominally independent princely states. An example of this can be seen in princely Mysore with the introduction of railways and state visits by the viceroy.

Colonial visit

The Mysore Gazetteer of 1930 notes that the first railway in Princely Mysore was a broad-gauge section of the Madras-Bangalore line, which was opened to the public in August 1864 during the administration of the Mysore chief commissioner, Lewin Bentham Bowring. The station at Bowringpet, now Bangarapet, in Kolar district, was (and is) the first principal railway station in Mysore and the line enters from Madras.

Frederic John Napier Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, visited Mysore in 1919 taking the viceregal train from Madras and arriving in Bangalore on November 27, 1919. On November 28, 1919, he unveiled a statue of King Edward VII, located between Cubbon Park and Chinnaswamy Stadium. On the occasion, the Viceroy expressed his thanks to Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, Maharaja of Mysore for "his generous contribution to the cost of the statue, the canopy and the completion of the surroundings."

Since the viceregal train was traversing from Madras Presidency into Mysore, colonial protocol required that a senior serving British official in Mysore, the resident, depute himself or another senior official to receive the viceroy on board, with due honour and accord, as it entered the Mysore territory.

After the ceremony in Bangalore, Lord Chelmsford arrived in Mysore on December 1, 1919. He was met at the Mysore Railway Station, as he detrained, by a retinue of senior Mysore officials lead by Yuvaraja Kanteerava Narasimharaja Wadiyar, heir apparent to the throne. Protocol required that a serving senior royal in Mysore, after the Maharaja, had to meet the viceroy on his arrival, to escort him and his entourage in procession through the city to one of the palaces, where they would stay.

The record notes that the streets were thronged with people who had come to greet the viceroy. Once safely ensconced in the temporary viceregal residence, there would occur a very interesting gift ceremony going back to Mughal times, known as (mizaaj or mijaz pursi) loosely translated as 'the wishing of health' ceremony. When the British had established their suzerainty over India, they utilised time-tested methods to seek allegiance from those they had subordinated, akin to what the Mughal rulers had utilised to demonstrate their authority.

Emma Martin notes in her article, 'Gift, Greeting or Gesture: The Khatak and the Negotiating of its Meaning on the Anglo-Tibetan Borderlands', notes that the colonial administration "relied on a fixed inventory of Persian terms; a practice commonly applied to ceremonial etiquette and its construction by British Residents based in the Princely States."

Welcome ritual

There are two types of such ceremonies nazr, the Persian term for a tribute or gift of money namely, a tangible, financial thing that was understood as a subordinate act proffered by a subsidiary power to the paramount British power.

And, mizaaj pursi, the ceremony that the British often employed between a nominally sovereign entity and the colonial state so as to keep up the appearance that despite the subsidiary nature of the alliance, it was "regarded as a simple salutation, a lesser, non-binding offering," unlike a nazr which sidestepped any issues of reciprocity.

On the evening of December 1, 1919, once the viceroy's party had settled a mizaaj pursi ceremony was conducted. It was described as a "most pleasing, peculiar function" four of the Maharaja's principal officers would call at the viceregal residence to enquire after the viceroy's health; they would be received by the viceroy's principal and military secretaries and "wait on" the viceroy. After exchanging a 'few civilities', including the giving of itr (perfume) and paan to the Maharaja's principal officers by the viceroy's political secretary, the Mysore delegation would 'withdraw'. On December 2, 1919, an official state banquet was hosted for the viceroy, preceded by a formal reception with the Maharaja in the Mysore Palace.

Here, a nazr of five gold mohurs (coins) each was offered, to be 'touched and remitted.' This was in keeping with ceremonial etiquette; since mizaaj pursi had already been employed in favour of the viceroy, wishing him well, it appears that the offering of nazr would be the culmination of the felicitation by the host Princely State.

The question of reciprocity does not seem to have arisen or was perhaps side-stepped. At the end of the state visit, the viceroy addressing the official banquet including the Maharaja said, "Mysore rendered most valuable help by [providing supplies] for the use of His Majesty's armies...Your Highness unhesitatingly placed all the resources of your state at the disposal of the Government of India...in the great crisis (World War I) the Maharaja of Mysore and the Mysore State proved once again to the fullest extent the strength of their traditional friendship and loyalty to the Crown."