Remembering the Maharaja in Florence

Remembering the Maharaja in Florence

A conversation with Nandita Ghatge

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Wed 23 Oct 2024 1:57 PM

In the early hours of December 1, 1870, crowds of curious Florentines lined the river at the confluence between the Arno and the Mugnone as a funeral pyre bade a final farewell to Prince Rajaram Chhatrapati, Maharaja of Kolhapur. The 20-year-old had succumbed to pneumonia less than 24 hours prior in his lodgings at the Grand Hotel Royal de la Paix (now the St. Regis hotel in piazza Ognissanti). Nandita Ghatge, an enthusiastic historian and relative (her husband is the prince’s great grandfather’s cousin), is now in Florence to present her book A Maharaja in Florence. Nandita speaks to The Florentine ahead of the presentation on Friday, October 25 at 4.30pm at San Niccolò Church.

Painting of the Cenotaph, 1911. His Highness Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur with his brother Sir Pirajirao Ghatge, Chief of Kagal and courtiers

Nandita shows me a copy of a painting in the Kolhapur Palace Museum that originally piqued her interest in family history. Aglow with colour, the image depicts the historic visit of Prince Shahu I, Maharaja of Kolhapur, to the Monument of Prince Rajaram Chhatrapati in 1911. So many years on, having just half a day to visit the chhatri in the Cascine Park, Nandita set off to find the cenotaph based on the vague advice that it was somewhere on the banks of the Arno. “Luckily, we had this Dutch friend who had friends in Florence who told us where the chhatri was because if you search on the internet you don’t see Maharaja, you see India. We had a taxi drop us off, but at the other end of the park. It was October and I was trying to be very Italian with my fancy shoes!” Nandita jokes. “So, we’re walking with no one to ask and my husband is kind of cursing me, ‘What are we doing here?’ I remember that there was this cart with wood, my legs were killing me, so I thought, ‘nobody knows me here’. We get into this truck, both of us, and he drops us at the other end. Luckily, the person who’s in charge of the garden happened to be there and he got so excited. He said, ‘Nobody has come in so many years.’ At that point in time, we had no clue that he was so closely related at that point of time. I was just excited to see an Indian monument.”

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How did Nandita and her husband, Pravinsinh, feel on seeing the chhatri? “As I’ve written in the book, when I went there, I felt a sense of grief that this boy had died here alone with nobody. The family normally pays tribute every year to the dead. We have that custom. No one came to visit his chhatri on his death anniversary. There was a connection at that moment.

The story of the death of the young prince is a truly tragic one. Inspired by the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Bombay in February 1870, the Maharaja of Kolhapur made it his mission to travel to Europe in a sort of “grand tour”. Nandita’s book contextualizes his short life and demise based on the diary he wrote during his travels (“he maintained this diary, which was published in 1872 by his guardian, Lieutenant Colonel Edward W. West”), explaining how the Chhatrapati arrived in Marseille by ship before taking the train to Paris, meeting Queen Victoria twice and beguiling the English, Scottish and Irish high society (“he was there with Mr. Pender, the first person to lay a telegraphic cable from England to India, when the first message was sent to the Viceroy”) before journeying to Belgium, Germany and Austria (“it was the first time he and his people had seen snow, so they were all trying to get it into a little matchbox to carry it back home”). His entourage were in Cologne when the prince started to feel unwell, a situation that deteriorated in the cold of Innsbruck, when a fever became a serious case of rheumatism and he was confined to a chair. Given that the party intended to take the ship from Brindisi, the journey continued to Venice and then Florence, where Prince Rajaram finally agreed to be visited by a western doctor. Although he initially appeared to be responding to the treatment, his health took a turn for the worst and he died during the night aged 20.

Cremation was banned back then in Italy. You could go to jail, I think, if someone was cremated. So, there was a lot of red tape and diplomatic exchanges happening. Being a high-caste Hindu, there was no way we could do anything but cremate the Chhatrapati. There was a lot of sensitivity from the people here.”

The British Minister Sir Augustus Paget certainly applied pressure on the Mayor at the time, Ubaldino Peruzzi de’ Medici, who set out certain conditions: that the prince was to be buried at 1am because the mayor thought there would be nobody there. Instead, word spread about the cremation of an Indian prince and, on a bitterly cold night, Florentines flocked to the riverside to see the young royal adorned in red robes, an elaborate turban and precious gems. At 7am, when the pyre had burned down, the embers were extinguished with river water and the ashes were placed in a porcelain jar to take back to India.

In recent years, the Monument to the Indian, as the chhatri is known locally, was restored to its former glory. Designed by Charles Mant and sculpted by Charles Francis Fuller, the cenotaph remains the inadvertent destination for Sunday walkers and morning joggers along the River Arno as they pause for a few minutes and consider the figure beside the distinctive red bridge “all’Indiano” dating to 1978.

“I think it was a lesson for all of us 150 years down the line that they were so sensitive to other religions and beliefs. It was a large-hearted gesture by the government and the people of Florence to give the Maharaja a place here.”

The Florentine columnist Deirdre Pirro did the research in the city archives, wrote the foreword to the book and is involved in organizing Nandita’s book tour in Florence. Deirdre explains: “Nandita is giving a presentation at The International School of Florence in the morning, which is solely for the students. Then at 4.30pm on Friday, Nandita will give a public presentation at San Niccolò Church, complete with an organ recital. The presentation will be followed by an aperitivo provided by textile weavers Busatti at the palace across the road from the church, which has an amazing garden to the rear.”

When Nandita’s not deep into researching family history, she works as an interior designer and artist. “I’m very drawn to the architecture. My father was an architect and planner, so we have imbibed a deep love for different architectures since we were children. You visit a lot of countries and they are OK, but then you don’t want to go back again. Italy instead has always been somewhere I feel I could come back every year if I had the chance. It’s just not the country. It’s the people, the food, the warmth that you sense. It’s the whole energy of the place.”

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