A spectacle of debauchery

The book is packaged as the story of a salacious scandal, but it is much more than that.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a story about princely India must begin by quoting this stark observation by Rudyard Kipling: ‘Providence created the maharajas to offer mankind a spectacle.’ And the enduring truth of this is once again highlighted in The Bawla Murder Case by Dhaval Kulkarni. Subtitled ‘Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India’, it is that and interestingly, it is more. The subtitle does not do complete justice really.

The core of the story is simple enough. A young Bombay businessman, Abdul Kader Bawla, is murdered in January 1925. At the time of his murder, he is on a drive with his mistress, Mumtaz Begum, who is witness to what happens. Investigations reveal that the murderers were working for an illustrious client — the Maharaja of Indore, Tukoji Rao Holkar III. Much pressure is applied on an incorruptible officer, Sir Patrick Kelly, to stop well short of linking the murder to the princely personage. But, Kelly plods on nevertheless. And the Maharaja is eventually forced to abdicate to avoid an inquiry, which would have formally revealed his hand in the affair and embarrassed him to no end.

What was the provocation for the Maharaja to embroil himself in such a dastardly deed? As it happened, Mumtaz was his former mistress who had spurned him and made off for Bombay where she became linked with Bawla. Furious at being at the receiving end and no doubt, triggered by the fact that a ‘mere woman’ had defied him, Holkar attempted to have her brought back by force in the course of which the murder took place.

While the details of the story are straightforward enough, what is shocking is the extent of the Maharaja’s debauchery. That many of the erstwhile princes were unabashed hedonists and given to personal gratification of the extreme kind is not news. But to read the details of the profligate lifestyle and the extent of neglect of administrative duties of one of them, both shocks and makes one thankful for democracy, howsoever flawed it might be.

Jewellery, trips to Europe, fancy cars, several palaces and absolutely no accountability for anything — the life of the Indian princes was indeed a spectacle for those who were privileged enough to partake of their ‘generosity’. But for the subjects of princely states, life must have been a misery. Money collected through taxes was being spent on activities that made little difference to their lives. The cycle repeated itself endlessly as those who succeeded were not too different from those who were gone. ‘The debauch is dead! Long live debauchery!’ or so was how things unfolded.

Dens of intrigue

The Holkar dynasty comes across as being spectacularly incompetent from the middle of the 19th century. Nothing changes for more than a century as one lackadaisical monarch follows another. Contentious adoptions, several marriages, cases of mental deficiency all served to make the palaces dens of intrigue and conspiracy.

Kulkarni places before us all of these details without seeking to judge. He doesn’t have to. It is not difficult to read between the lines. He competently sketches out how the colonial police force went about its business. Parts of the book almost read like a police procedural. It is also amusing to read how the print media went to town with this case, to the extent that a couple of the accused requested that the trial be transferred to another state, since the frenzied reporting had almost ensured that the public and the jury had made up their minds even before the trial could be completed. Given how the media behaves today, it is not out of place to say, the more things change, the more they stay the same!

The last third of the book is a digression. It is not directly connected to the main storyline. But it is nevertheless interesting. It is an account of the many goings-on on the religious and caste fronts in Maharashtra in the first two or three decades of the 20th century. Even Ambedkar makes a brief appearance. It is a portrait of a society in deep ferment, torn between the diktats of tradition and the demands of modernity.

The book is packaged as the story of a salacious scandal. It does offer that for those who are looking for such a read. But for those who want more, there is that too, which makes it noteworthy and useful.