CHAPTER 111

THE PARADISE LOST

The Anglo-Indian fiction found a new theme in the story of the

princes who were leR to negotiate the best terms they could with the

Indian government on the eve of independence. Before 1947, only one

author - L.H. Myers had really succeeded in approaching this subject

with seriousness of moral intent and depth of spiritual insight. After the

Second World War novelists began to address the political and moral

issues bearing on the disposition of the princes. 'Their fiction portrays

three types of princes: those who defy the Indian government; those who

rush through belated reforms prior to independence to win the full support

of their subjects against the Congress; and those who helplessIy fade

away. Paul Scott's The Birds of Paradise belongs to the third category

and the story of the Nawab of Mirat in The Raj Quartet, to a certain

extent comes under the second category. Z le Alien Shy contains a brief

1 04

sketch of an Indian prince who toys with the idea of remaining

independent of India and Pakistan.

The Birds of Paradise is the first novel that Paul Scott set in a

civilian lndian background. It is a bold attempt at reinterpreting the past,

and in such a manner as would make sense of the difficult years before

independence. As first person narrator Scott gives himself a fictive

rebirth as the son of a member of the Indian Political Service in an Indian

States Agency. William Conway is an Anglo-Indian, the son of coldly

ambitious civil servant and of a mother who died when he was an infant.

His childhood in the princedom of Tradura, where his father represented

the British Crown, lies at the core of his memories. In this "finest pre-Raj

achievement" (Swinden, lmages 47) the period covered is from 1919, the

year of William's birth to 1960: from the days of the British Raj firmly

entrenched on Indiar. soil to the days of the Kaj's decline and

disappearance.

Dora Salford, daughter of an English major, Krishi, heir apparent

to the princedom of Jundapur and Bill Conway had been a trio in the

halcyon days of the Raj. They had grown up together in the privileged

world of private tutors and governesses and had been waited upon by

dutiful and loyal servants. Binding themselves by a blood-faternity rite,

they enjoyed the pageantry of the princes, the tiger shoots and particularly

105

visits to an island in Jundapur distinguished by an enormous cage which

houses the birds of paradise. The pleasure and privileges enjoyed by the

trio mainly resulted from the annexation and protection policies of the

British Empire and before it the East India Company. Paul Scott's novels

with their historical aspiration narrate the conflict of the princes with the

Empire.

With the 1858 proclamation of Queen Victoria India ceased to be a

trading company's private business and became "The Raj". The East

India Company, the greatest mercantile corporation the world has ever

seen, had been conquering the various parts of hdia before this

prociamation and this process finally resulted into the great revolt of

1857. Apart from the provinces which fell under the direct rule of the

Crown, there were nearly six hundred native states know11 as the princely

states, "widely scattered and varying in size from mere estates to

provinces the size of Ireland" (Division 576). In other words, at one end

of the scale, there were states as large and populous as some of the

European countries and at the other end, units which were scarcely bigger

than a fair sized kitchen garden.

The specked and incoherent pattern of princely India was the result

of the tactics adopted by the British policy makers. In the earlier days as

the East India Company had problems with their French rival and to repel

106

local threats, the British power did not pretend to any general suzerainty,

nor aimed to extend their alliances with indigenous monarchies beyond

their immediate territorial or militev needs. Lord Wellesley's attempt to

make Britain the paramount power in 1798 is ancther factor that

contributed to this peculiar situation. I3.V. Hodson in The Great Divide

states:

A principal instrument of this policy was the system of

subsidiary alliances with the lndian rulers, whereby, in

return for guaranteed protection, a State concluding such an

alliance undertook neither to make war nor to negotiate with

a ~ y other State without the Company's knowledge and

consent and accepted in its capital a British Resident

representing the Governor General's authority. (23)

The agreement to appoint a Resident as representative of the Crown

caused many problems. The relationship between the Residents and the

princes were not always friendly or on equal grounds. According to V,P.

Menon, who played a major role in the integration of states, the Residents

"became gradually 'transformed from diplomatic agents representing a

foreign power into executive and controlling officers of a superior

government' " (integration 6) .

107

Though Conway's father, the Political Agent of six principalities

namely Tradura, Jundapur, Shakura, Premkar, Trassura and Durhat - all

fictional - appears cold towards him and cannot communicate, Conway

respects him as one of those who are above even the princes, a man

fulfilling the British imperial mission. As Mrs Canterbury, William's

Governess, explains the state of affairs thus:

'Men like your father have put down all the old feudal

injustices.' 'Men like your father have given them

standards.' 'By leaving them with the crowns and palaces

they had when we first conquered India men like your father

have show11 them that the Engiish understand true values.'

And - 'One day, William, when you're a man Iike

your father, i t will be your job to go on helping these people

to live better lives'. (Birds 32)

On another occasion, Conway recollects that the Resident was a man

"who was one of the keepers of the sacred trust laid upon a certain kind of

Briton to guide, punish and reward those whose mother's milk, lacked the

vital element that would make real men of them: fair-skinned rotters, for

instance, or dark-skinned heathen" (30) .

I08

Though by no means distinguished for their intellectual abilities,

many of the Residents were haughty, impertinent and ironical in their

dealings with the rulers - whom they often treated as their subordinates.

In A Division of the Spoils Rowan, an officer of the Political Department

describes the conflict between his uncle Thomas Crawley who was

Resident at Kotala, another fictional state and the prince:

[H]e virtually ran the state while the prince was a minor and

apart from that they'd formed an extremely close and

affectionate father-and-son relationship. When the prince

came of age a11 that should have stopped. My uncle should

have stood back and been content to let the young man

assume full respo~sibility, but he made the error of

continuing to treat him as a minor, of forgetting that he was

a ruling Hindu prince. (1 74-75)

The Residents expected unquestioning obedience and even servile

submission from these unfortunate men whose rank, honour and even

security on the gad& depended upon the Resident's favour. In order to

win the support of those powerful imperial men, the princes did every

thing. When Conway was born as the son of the assistant to the Resident,

it provided an occasion for celebration:

109

'T'he fireworks were ordered by the ruler of Gopalakand, the

Maharajah, Sir Pandirakkar Dingit Rao. He was known to

the English as Dingy Row. It never occurred to me to ask

why there should have been fireworks to mark the birth of a

son to a then junior civil servant, but I suppose Sir

Pandirakkar was in a pro-English mood and thought the

fireworks as much a proof of his own good nature as a

compliment to my arrival. (23)

The Charter Act of 1833 gave Lord Dalhousie an opportunity to

take advantage of the weakness of the Indian rulers to conquer fresh

territory and to annex dependent states on the excuse of

maladmi~istration or want of natural heirs. It was orlly when the policy

makers became convinced that the princes of India, far from objecting to

British paramountcy, actually rejoiced at their feudatory status that the

attitude of the British Government towards them crystallized into a

definite policy. The most striking feature of the policy was the complete

integration of the states into the imperial system. Nevertheless, the East

India Company maintained a rather good relationship with the princes.

On occasions, the princes in return to their internal autonomy showed

enthusiasm to help the Crown at momerlts of crisis. The Indian princes

"had been on the side of the British 'to a man,' that they had always been

110

the loyalist element in British Indian life, as had been proved it1 the Great

War when they gave money and men to the allied cause" (32).

Thus the passive acquiescence and in some cases active aid of

princely states from the Punjab to Hyderabad saved the British from

irretrievable disaster in 1857. The Mutiny always haunted the British.

Conway once had the experience of being scolded by Mrs Canterbury for

talking about the Mutiny (32). The political movements within British

India itself were beginning to dispute the right authority by which India

was governed. Assailed by the intelligentsia, the government looked

round naturally for allies and helpers. In 1857 the princes had in general

aided to resist the tide of Mutiny. The Second World War gave the

princes a welcome opportunity to make an enthusiastic demonstration of

their devotion and loyalty to the Raj and to suppress the wants and wishes

of their people with extreme severity.

The realization that the states could play a vital role as one of the

bulwarks of British rule led to a radical change of policy, which found

expression in Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858:

We desire no extension of our present territorial

possessions; and while we will permit no aggression upon

our dominions or our rights to be attempted with impunity,

1 1 1

we shall sanction no encroachment on those of others. We

shall respect the rights, dignity, and honour of Native

Princes as our own; and we desire that they as well as our

own subjects should enjoy that prosperity and that social

advar~cernent which can only be secured by internal peace

and good governmen:. (Menon 9)

Having understood that it had gone far enough with its policies of

expansion, the Crown made treaties with the rulers which secured them to

their successors, their princely rights, revenues, privileges and territories,

assured them of autonomy in all but the major subjects of external affairs

and national defence. The Empire obtained paramountcy through these

treaties which were made with each state:

'Separate though these treaties were - a series of private

formal individual contracts between rulers and crown, they

have nevertheless always been part of a larger unwritten

treaty - or doctrine: the doctrine of the paramountcy of the

British Crown over all the rulers; the paramountcy of the

King-Emperor or Queen-Empress who, through the Crown

Representative, could depose an unruly prince, withhold

recognition from a prince's heir, and generally take steps to

I I2

ensure the peace, prosperity and wellbeing of a prince's

subjects'. (Division 576)

Constitutionally the states were not part of British India nor were their

citizens British subjects, but in international status, 'British protected

persons'. Within an lndia governed by the British another lndia was

marked out and fenced off, and in the process, at an altogether new class

of rulers were created. Conway recollects this difference:

We lived in Indian India which was as different from British

India as chalk from cheese. Indian India was made up of the

princely states which one way and atlother accounted

between them for something like a third or more of the

whole land mass, which 1 have found surprises people who

always thought of India as just lndia with the British ruling

the lot from Whitehall and putting a Viceroy in to make it

look good. The states had treaties with the British Crown

and were left to govern themselves for good or i l l , except in

matters of external affairs, defence and communications; but

the British Crown represented the paramount power and so

they had to govern themselves under the eyes of British

Residents and Agents. (Birds 24)

!!3

And since the 1858 proclernatic?r! Rrltisi~ po!icy towards the stst;

had been governed by two miiin principles: a territorial ~ n d conslitutional

standstill and an intent to bring the states along with British India in

social and economic advance, subject to the ruler's rights of internal

autonomy. However, the Viceroys had to perform a dual role:

In his role as Governor-General it has been his duty to

govern and guide and encourage the British-lnoiim

provinces towards democratic parliamentary self-rule. As

Crown Repr%~entative, it !ias been his duty to ui:!:c:!dt

secure: oversee 31:d &Cet:d !he tt:ltu~raii~ rr:le uf ::eve;-::!

hundred prifices. (Llivisio.: 575 - 77)

The importance of the princes thus lay by entirely in their usefulness to

the Empire. Lord Curzon called them his colleagues and partners in

sustaining the Raj. In The Towers oj'Siie?rce Barbie is telling Sarah about

the loyalty and servitude of the princes despite the harsh treatment:

'I suppose I meant odd, difficult, to be the guest of a man

whose kinsman we'vc put in clink, but India is full of

oddities like that isil't It atid !:erl~zps !he Naweh dir::ppmves

of his politir~iar! kinman, Gr if he doesn't he at;.:iousijr

doesn't disapprov~ or" ~ s . Biit then the princes Iik.s us betier

I I4

than the rest of them do, don't they? We've bolstered ttietn

up and some of then! une gathers hardly deserve it'. (1 67)

. . hccr~rding to AniI Kumar Vema, the prillces were "as mger tn p~cp!tltitt

the British as ;he British were to pamper them as long as they did not

presumptuously strut out of their golderl cages to assert their freedom"

(Paul Scott 1 39).

The need for such comradeship grew with the rising tempo of

Indian Nationalism. "As the Congress agitation against British rule

gathered momentum, the British xealised that i11e staunchest supporters of

the Raj were the pritlces . . . ths iatter nn their part made it abundantly

ckar that they wanted ;he Rz-i tto rem:lin" ( M a l g o ~ k ~ r 'i7). Cspzin

fde~ ick * A J ~ I ~ : has studied abnui the relationship between the g[.:iies and the

Crown expresses the same t~otii:ns about the Nawab and the Mirat

ArtiiIery:

"l'he State's barely more than the size of a pocket-

handkerchief but it's run on very democratic lines and has a

tradition of loyalty to the crown. One of the Nawab's surls

is an officer in the indian airforce and of collrse the Nawab

haiided his private zrfiif over it) t ;Ell) on t h ~ Erst day cf the

r . It was r~~uste:.~ci i r l i r ; il:c indian Army as the Mita?

l ! S

I . 1 ' Artillery, and g ~ t captured by the Jcps In ivia,aya .

(Scorpion 1 53 1

31: return ! r : their money and mcn, :he prices received prniecii::x? Cr~:n ti:::

C r o w :

Independence had been a goal for so long that it had

achieved a mythical quality. It could not stand up to the

solidity of that palladian mansion or the straight roman road

down to the cantonment, the town and further, to the palace

where Sir Fandirakkar sat on the gad&- in the kind of

security kings must feel when under the friendly, protective

eye and influence af another more powerfiil king.

(Birds 152)

With no incentive to govern well, an overwhelming majority of the

p:i;lces sank into indolence and dissipari~n and squandere~ away he hard

earned resources of their subjects in frivolous and unworthy pursuits. As

the rest of India moved into the modern age, and towards self-

determination, "they became more and more of an anachronism" (Chew

105). In his fiction Paul Scott paittis cc~lourful pictures oi- thcsc Indim

rulers who were fallibie mcn, impractica!. l~ve r s ef ease sild pc:np z!~:!

inczpable coming to terms with the hard realities of life. With ihe -v~b::a!th,

! i6

the tin13 aild tile appetite 1:) irlti~llge iheir rnost imagifiative i'intasies 2

series of consurning passions ur~itecl those exfravagant gcntlemen a d

t!~ey pursued them with rare r!ev::iic:n. F1.i:lny observers felt constrained to

charncierise the princely g~vcrnmcnts as vicious and reckless \*rhich

reduced the states into wiiderness uf gppressior! and misrule. At the

public school in England, young Conway has vivid recollections of the

land of his childhood and looks forward to a career in India. On one

occasion, a teacher asks him as an "expert in Indian affairs" to comment

un words attributed to Mountsiuarl EI~hinstone as argumcnt f ~ r the

preservation oi' the princely states as cess-pits. '"We must have sink to

receive all the corrupt matter that abounds in India, ul~less we i?re willing

to taint our own system by siupf:i!~g 111:: riiscjrarge of it' " (ai;-dz 1118).

Some of the rulers like the idawab c.f Mirat were certainly

enlightened and able men, but the administration of most of them were

bad, worse and hell. The PoIitical Department, so powerful and so alert

about its paramountcy rights, watched such princely excesses with

unseeing eyes. The rulers might plunge their people into deeper penury

by building more palaces, by pampering an unlimited tlulnber of pets, by

going abroad frequently for no 1-ezsons, and by lavishly entertaining

visiting 'diceroys and iiovernorr:, .;:itE_~ui. the fcar 6 cr?y corrective

-., * weagm b e i ~ g uszd agaiast than. 1 :re 3irthday celebrztioi~s :!f young

I ! ?

Conway are an excellent exanlpje of this exuberance. !:is Iiig'lti~ess, the

Maharajah of Tradura, Ranjit Ra~singh, Lord of the Sun, Giver of Grain,

ordered ffir 8 tea - p a e j as parx of thc celebrations. Clad in the. best :.-:_rii~?

Cunwny was brought to the paiace in a carriage drawn by two black

horses:

At our gates the soldiers on sentry go presented arms, but

whether to myself or to the Maharajah's carriage I was not

sure. They presented arms to my father but never to me

except on these occasions. It must have been the

combination of palace carriage, political agent's son and

occasion which brought them excitiilgljr slap to attention,

palms ringing on wooden butts. (39)

Paul Scott's accounts reiterate the fa~niiiar courses of misrule and

maipractice which despotism promotes and which, in this case, are

intensified by Renjith Raosingh's ~bsession to please the alien rulers.

These princes enjoyed great pleasure in organisir~g hunting and

other blood sports in order to please the Crown representatives. It was an

occasion to exhibit the pomp and pageantry of the king. "The shikar was

fixed for the beginning of March and old Ranjit Raosingh decided to

cot~duct it with all the pomp and display at his command" (57). The

t 18

princes were generous enough to spend any amount or" money for this

cruel pleasure. In the states that published annual budgets the amount set

aside for shikar far exceedec! that earmarked for public works or

education. The care taken and the elaborate preparations made can be

seen in the words of William C.onway:

The Maharajah's procession marked the real beginning of

the royal shikar, the central event of which was to be the

beating out of the Kinwar tiger. The shikar was laid on with

an almost military precision. Kinwar lay some three miles

to the south of the hunting lodge. Experts had been at work

in that area for two weeks and a plan fcr flushing the tiger

and driving i t on to an open stretch of goufid znd an to the

guns had been worked out to the last detail. (60)

In Staying On old Tusker Srnalley who was Administrative

Adviser to the Commander of the State Force, also entertains the

memories of his privileged life in the state of Mudpore:

Old Luce adored Mudpore. We had that bloody great

burlgalow practically in the grounds of the palace, the use of

one of the Daimlers with a liveried chauffeur, and when we

first met the Maharajah he had on a11 his paraphernalia and

119

locked a regular bnbby-dazzler, coat of silver thread, pear!s

festooned in his turban; and Luce said, 'This is the real india,

'I'usker. (83)

The preference given to such displays naturally affected the welfare of the

people. As Malgonkar puts it, "military parades, durbars and other forms

of pageantry left littIe time or money for hospitals or road building, and

the industrial age was kept at bay as something alien, an imposition from

the West" (Princely India 92).

The Western contempt of this princely misrule has been aptly

summed up by Rudyard Kipling in his story, "The Man Who Would Be

King". In his words the princely states are "the dark places of the earth,

full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on

one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid( Wee Willie

207). As a novelist Scott's task is to expose the "vicious misfits" (Verma

139) and to draw us into the human drama. Scott achieves this by

showing, first, the corrupting effects of absolute power; and second, the

linked destinies of princeIy states and Empire.

On the contrary, the Nawab of Mirat, whose story appears in The

Quartet was also under the charge of Robert Conway, the Resident of

Gopalakand, wanted to run his state on modern lines. " ' I must be a

1 20

modern state', the Nawab was reported saying, 'Make me modem' "

(Scorpion 98). Mirat was a tiny state, a left-over remnant of the Moghal

Empire, with which the British came to terms in the late-eighteenth

century. Its dynasty was of Turkish ancestry and the ruler from C.1920

was H.H. Sir Ahrned Ali Gaffur Kasim Bahadur, whose relations with his

father were not cordial, and who was an extravagant prince redeemed by

Bronowsky, the Russian &mi@, from an embarrassing liaiso~~ with a

European woman. Paul Scott presents a very attractive picture of Mirat.

"The garden imagery surrounding the description of Mirat", according to

Janis Tedesco and Janet Popham, "is unmistakable" (Inlroduction 23 1).

The palace courtyard was bathed in briliiant sunshine and colour. Water

splashed in the fountain, and a white peacock strutted undisturbed

(Division 580). According to ancient lore, the Nawab's reign would last

as long as there was water in the Iake (Scorpion 136). Symbolically, the

Nawab's lake was the place of living waters. Mirat as a princely state

still mirrored something of the old India. The picturesque splendour and

luxury had not been completely contaminated by Western influence, and

in Mirat both Ahrned and Sarah Layton discovered that illusive happiness

in which the rest of India could not offer them.

The Nawab wiih his Paresight arld democratic sentiments appointed

Count Bronowsky as chief minister of his state. In the twenty years of his

12 1

admitlistration Bronowsky had transforriled Mirat from a feudal autocracy

into a miniature semi-deaocratic state. "Under Brunowsky's guidance,"

Robin J. Ivloore says, " t5e xbitrariness of the Nawabi darbar was

replaced by a nominated Couttcii of Stat?, the judiciary and the civi! and

criminal codes were reformed, and a chief justice from outside was

appointed" (Paul Scott's RrJj' 182). Numerically in a minority, a mere

twenty per cent of the population, the Muslim of Mirat had maintained a

firm grip on the administration since the days of the Moghals. There

were more mosques than temples "not because the rich Hindus of Mirat

were unready to build temples but because permission to build was more

often refused than granted" (Scorpion 101). For the Muslim children an

Academy of Higher Education had been established in the late-nineteenth

century, but non-Muslims had to compete for places in colleges out side

Mirat. So Bronowsky persuaded the Nawab to allocate a modest sum for

a college for Hindus and the rest of the money was provided by

prominent Hindu businessmen. The Hindu college stood as epitome of

the Nawab's broad~nindedness:

The building that was erected reflected the combination of

civic pride and sense of communal and personal grandiosity

with which the money was contributed: red brick with white

122

facings, Gothic window and Gothic arches. Coconut palms

were planted in the forecourt. (Scorpicrr~ 102)

Jimmy Stnith, the present Maharajah of Kalipur, whose story is

narrated in The Alien Sky is also a man of wisdom. Marapore, where the

major part of action takes plsce: was once part of the neighbouring state

of Kalipur, a state which had terded to absorb itself bit by bit into British

India as its ruler's fortunes wavered and cash was needed to replenish the

private exchequer. However, Jimmy could bring forth remarkable

changes and to be in good terms with the Raj :

Under the present Maharajah stability had returned and the

state's boundaries had remained intact, sorm twenty miles

south of Marapore; a phenomenon which his enemies

attributed to his being 'in with the Raj'. But the

phenomenon was, in fact no phenomenon but a clear

indication of the young Maharajah's good sense. (The

Alien Sky 3 0)

In 192 1, under the British pressure, the princes formed tllernselves

into a Chamber of Princes where it was hoped they would evolve

common policies for all the states. "'l'here was at this stage, . . . a kind of

tentative solidarity, the leftovers of earlier attempts at federation between

123

the princes" (Bin& 153). Though many states refused to join the

Chamber it was inaugurated as "a reward ta the States for the way they

had come to the aid of the British in the war of 1914 - 18" (30). By the

end of the Second World War, the British had made up their minds to

quit. The new Labow Govenunent in Britain was not prepared to let the

Indian princes act as a positive veto on advance. In fact, it was really a

violation of the Viceroy's assurance given to the Chamber of Princes that

in attempting to farm a constitution for a free and self-governing India

within the British Common-aealtlt "no changes in the princes'

relationships or treaty rights with the British Crown -,vould be made or

even initiated without their consent" (153). Earlier the Cripps Mission

brought home to the rulers the discomforting realization that if the

interests of the British India and the states came into conflict His

Majesty's Government would almost certainly let down the states.

This realization and its painful consequences are explicitly

revealed in The Birds of Paradise by the symbol of the celestial birds. A

calIection of thirty-six regal dead birds in the enormous expanse of the

cage is the symboi for the princes of India / British Raj in this novel. 'J'lle

cage was tall enough and big enough to have held several fully grown

giraffes and given them plenty of head room. Most of the birds were

male and the females were "insignificant, small, dun-ooloured specimens

124

of the species Marquis de Raggi" (83j. Or, two occasions Wiliian;, Dora

and Krishi could see the birds in the cage, first when they were young and

later, after independence at the time of their reunion. The birds were

perched on a branch, beaks pointing upwards as if hypnotized by what

was going on above them. They had been collected by Krishi's

grandfather and in his day their plumage had been worth a fortune.

"Their wings and bodies were cunningly supported on wire cradles and

braces and only the rods connecting thern to the dome4 roof were dimly

visible from below'' (84). Akbar Aii, a Muslim servant was in charge of

looking after them. Using a tail iron step-ladder, he periodicajly ciirnbed

up and unscrewed the birds from their rods cne by one, and brought them

down to inspect the wire frames. "It was the fact that the birds were dead

that gave them their special power. Their deadness was more disturbing

than the restlessness of a cage full of living birds" (85).

As the Resident of Tradura, Conway's father administers six states

which are supported by the "cradles and braces" of the British Crown.

Just like the birds of paradise these states require the Resident's periodic

attention to preserve as weH as to police them. They syrnboiize the

"special power" of the British who caged the Indian princes in the vast

confines of their India but hart lo keep a watchful eye on the

''restXe~sness" concealed in their "deadness". "The birds", says David

125

Rubin, "identified variously with the British on their way out of india,

then with the native princes themselves, their finery an3 style beautifully

preserved, but lifeless, come eventually to fulfill a greater symbolic

role" (1 12).

In a 1961 lecture, "Imagination in the Novel" Paul Scott described

the origins of this novel and the use of the bird symbol. He associated the

image of "the idea of fine feathers" with the princes of India. It was the

case that the feathers of the birds of paradise were still treasured like

crown jewels at the court of Nepal. The natives of the Pacific islands

where the birds were found always cut off their feet in the process of

removing their skins for sale. For Scott, that emphasized their celestial

origins: if they had no feet they could not perch. The princes, too,

claimed celestial origins but had been divested of power by the British:

While the British ruled, the princes were kept going in all

their feudal magnificence. Their fine feathers were kept

shiny. But when the British went and all their lands were

merged with tile lands of the new dominion, they appeared,

. . . in their true light - they had been dead all the time,

stuffed like the birds in the glass cages in the central hall of

the Natural History Museum. ( Writing 3 1 )

126

Considered footless, in fact by trappers, these inhabitants of the airy

realms of paradise are at once richly symbolic of the Raj which was dying

even then, in William's childhood, despite all appearances; of the

princely states like Krishi's Jundapur, which were to meet a similar fate ;

of elusive dreams cruelly rnetted by the realities of life, and an actual

background against which past and present are suddenly united. The

belief that they were footless emphasized this etlhreal immaterial

potentialities. "Or the suspicion that their feet were cut off by native

traders merely emphasized the brutal retribution men exact from whatever

is beautiful and strange" (Swinden, images 2 1) .

The dead birds themselves, from which the novel takes its title

provide a wonderfully phantasmagoric setting for the story of the Raj. As

Gomathy Narayanan remarks, magnificent in their rich and luxuriant

plumage, amidst the exotic flora of an island, "these birds, for all their

apparent mobility and postures of light, are only dead, stuffed birds,

carefully preserved and maintained to give an impression of life" (The

Suhibs and the Natives 72). But history had shown that the birds of

paradise in the cage were not so much the British Raj, but the princes who

were dead "in spite of all their finery and high-flown postures" and the

British "had stuffed them and burnished their fine feathers, but as princes

they were dead even if they weren't dead as men, and if not actually dead

127

then anyway buried alive in a cage the British had never attempted really

to open" (Birds 243).

The British announcement that the treaties stood abrogated and

paramountcy had lapsed, on the face of political pressure from Indian

National leaders, was a shock to the princes. As far as Britain was

concerned, the princely domains were so many independent and

sovereign countries, and it was up to them to work out their relationship

with free India. A few months later "the British cabinet mission had to

explain that independence for British India would mean the end of

paramountcy, the end of treaties the British no Ionger had the means to

adhere to. The states would be free to make their own arrangements"

(153). During the negotiations over independence, the British had not

really had the time, or the inclination, to discuss in any detail how the

princes should act when power was fmally transferred. William Conway

knew that his father had been conscience stricken by the betrayai of the

princes. In Malaya, where Bill was interned as a prisoner of war, he

realized that the fate of the princes wouId be absorption into independent

India. British policy had been to advance the princes towards integration

with British-governed India "so slowly that it was difficult not to see the

laggardly pace as deliberate, and part and parcel of a bloody-minded

game of divide and rule" (1 79).

128

After his father's death in 1950, William Conway searched the

shelves of the public library for a reference to the accession of

Gopalakand to India. He learns more about the integration from books

like The Integration of the Indilrn States; The Last Viceroy; Farmell to

Princes; and Betrqal in Delhi ( I9 6). Bill gets the historical perspective

of events from reading The Times also. The Congress-dominated

government could not preserve the internal autocratic authority of these

princes. As Michael Edwards puts it, "no popular government could

tolerate islands of mediaevalism in its midst" (Last Years 196). But the

princes could not fully grasp the situation:

Now the writing was on the wall, but it seemed that so many

of the princes had failed to see it. They actually welcomed

the British announcement that paramountcy over the states

would come to an end automatically with the end of British

rule. The old musty curtain was flung aside and revealed a

freedom and power almost greater than they had dreamt of.

But not for tong. The winds of crisis changed quarter and

blew from coIder regions. The Maharajahs ate crow. When

nearly six hundred of them they ate it in different ways, a

few eagerly, most reluctantly, some by forcible feeding.

Some threatened to accede to Pakistan even if

129

geographically such an accession would have been

nonsensical; others were as much coerced into accession by

their own people as diplomatically persuaded by the

politicians of the new India. (Birds 197 - 98)

A Iarge number of states, however, preferred to wait until

paramountcy had lapsed before they negotiated their position with the

successor governments. Dingy Row's eldest son "had a high opinion of

then Viceroy, Wavell, who, he knew, would 'sort out these chaps N e h

and Jinnah' and wouldn't 'sell the States down the river' " (151 ). For all

the service they have rendered to the Crown, the princes expected a better

deal. " 'We've stood by the Crown', Dingy Row's son said, 'and the

Crown'll stand by us. The jackals aren't going to feed on us. Wave1 will

see to it. So shall. we.' "(151). The Nawab of Mirat also expresses the

same confidence. "No, Dmitri, he says, we have supplied the British with

money and men in two world wars. And there are over five hundred little

yellow specks, and some not so little. The British are pledged to protect

our rights and privileges and our authority" (Division 183). However, the

princes failed to see the reality of their danger. There was no doubt that

"Jimmy's throne was tottering, for the States had been deserted and left as

vulnerable islands to be eaten away by hungry seas" (The Alien Sky 36).

130

The senior officers of the Political Department also covertly and

overtly supported the princes. They even tried to undermine the efforts

of Mountbatten. Sir Conrad Corfield, head of the Political Department, a

sort of prototype for Robert Conway, "an unemotional man with rigid

views" (Division 184), "was determined that", writes Michael Edwards,

"at least some of the princely states should be saved from the grasping

hands of Congress" (Last Years 199). The Resident in Gopalakand, Sir

Robert Conway, persuaded Sir Pandirakkar on more than one occasion to

go back on promises given verbally to the States Department; and

actually interrupted a private conference between the Maharajah and the

representatives of the department and threatened to tear up the draft

documents which he described as "instruments of a blackguardedly policy

of intended seizure and forfeiture, masquerading as agreements between

free parties" (Birdr 199). In his discussion with Guy Perron who is

"primarily concerned with the relationship between the Crown and the

Indian States" (Division 52 1), Nigel. Rowan expresses fear that the Nawab

of Mirat is "taking that line too" (548). Moreover, the Nawab believes

that "he would be abandoned only aver Conway's dead body and the

dead bodies of every member of the Political Department" (1 84).

The crisis in the Political Department and the dilemma of the

princes are more obviously revealed by the chess game in The Birds of

131

Paradise. While William takes the black pieces, his father Robert takes

the white ones. Bill describes the progress of the game, bringing out its

symbolic significance:

He advanced queen's pawn two squares. I blocked it. Then

he moved queen's bishop's pawn one square. I followed

suit. He brought out queen's knight and 1 brought out king's

knight and the game was on.

Within the hour his king faced death; the white pieces

I had taken were lined up along one side of the table,

temples of misfortune on the road to his defeat. (1 78)

In this defeat of his father Conway sees a suitable yet relevant

symbolism:

The symbolism of the game was striking. My black pieces

were what Dingy Row's son had called the jackals - the

Indian politicians uf British India; and the white court these

same jackals opposed and brought to disintegration was one

of the feudal courts which men like Father had lived for and

sometimes, Iike the agent in Ranpur who was murdered in

the 'thirties, died for. (i78)

132

The white pieces were the princely states and all through the years of the

British Raj, the Crown had stood by them. When independence came to

the subcontinent, the princely states big and small, believed that the

crown would guarantee their independent existence. Robert Conway

believed in it too. But in this chess game where only the king's knight

(nanlely Robert Conway) was left to defend the monarch (namely the

Maharajah). In Francine Weinbaun's words, the elder Conway "enraged

by this betrayal, had been responsible for Dingy Row's delay in signing

the first agreement of accession and the consequent worsening of the

conditions for Gopalakand" (Critical Stu& 56).

Finally, the princes got the message. Count Bronowsky tells

Rowan :

'You are all going, aren't you? One day. When? . . . .

Perhaps I shan't live to see it. On the whole I hope not,

because when you go the princes will be abandoned. In

spite of all your protestations to the contrary. They will be

abandoned . . . . The treaty . . . will be a piece of paper'.

(Divtriotr 1 82)

They complained to Mountbatten that the British were deliberately

evading their responsibiIities. " 'We are being treated as a sort of no

133

man's child' moaned the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes," quotes

Malgonkar (Princely India 98). On the eve of independence Mountbatten

called the princes to Dethi and addressed them. Michael Edwards quotes:

" 'You cannot run away from the Dominion Government which is your

neighbour any more than you can run away from subjects for whose

welfare you are responsible' " (Last Years 205). History, political reality,

the destinies of princely states and empire coalesced in the meeting

between Mountbatten and the princes. The pathos of the situation is

pointed by William Conway:

The Maharajahs twisted and turned and the old Political

Department burnt records like an embassy preparing to

evacuate. And in the end there were only the details to work

out, the quid pro quo for the surrender of ruling powers and

internal autocratic authority. One by one the states were

formed into provinces or merged with provinces of what in

our own day had been called British India. The quid pro

quo was the retention of title and prince's privileges for the

ruler and his heirs, whose successions to the in-name-only

gaddis would be subject to the approval of the President of

the Republic instead of the Crown Representative. (Birds

198)

134

Finally with independent India becoming a reality, the princes found

themselves fighting for their existence yet once more.

The British arrangement, then, threw the princes into an

extraordinary predicament as they retuctantly came to realize that non-

transference of paramountcy was tantamount to ensuring that they would

lose their power to the new India or Pakistan, and that British assurances

that paramountcy would not be transferred were meaningless promises.

Hapgood, the bank official in A Division of the Spoils advised Perrorl to

meet Sardar Patel and Sir Conrad CorfieId to get both sides of the picture:

"Have you seen Patel? He's in charge of what I call the coercing

operation. Have you seen the head of the British Political Department?

He'd give you the other side of the picture" (521).

Many states obliged to the wishes of Mountbatten, some to the

wishes of Congress leaders and some other to their awn subjects.

However, the hesitation on the part of certain princes caused tense

situations. Though he "signed every thing like a shot" (Birds 228), after

the loss of his state Krishi becomes mad enough to shoot the birds of

paradise as "a gesture to history" (243). The birds are identified

explicitly by Krishi as symbols of the British Raj, or alternatively, as the

Indian princes, implying an emptiness and unreality to their glory. There

is a tawdriness and artificiality to the image of birds stuffed in a cage that

135

has to do with the artificial presectation of illusion. They are the first of

Scott's images of the dead Raj that needs to be blown away, and the boy

Krishi wants to shoot them down.

When he is prevented from this symbolic self - destruction by Dora

he feels now "the birds would rot and fall one by one and that was

symbolic too" (243). Jimmy Smith of Kalipur also reacts violently to the

accession proposal of the British:

'The Mountbatten plan leaves the Princely States in the

lurch, my dear. He hadn't any other choice, of course, but

the lurch is the lurch. Half my subjects are Muslims and

half are Hindus. I am a Hindu. I have three alternatives, I

can become a part of Pakistan and then from the religious

point of view half my subjects will be aIiens with the right

to become refugees. I can cede to India. The same applies

in reverse. The third alternative is for me to declare my

independence. I can become a sovereign state'. (The Alien

Sb 59)

The Nawab of Mirat's understandable hesitation in signing an

affiliation with India led to communal violence. This disaster is naturally

the result of "a bloody-minded game of divide and rule". As flapgood

136

asks, "what can you expect when you draw an imaginary line through a

province and say that from August fifieen one side is Pakistan and the

other side's India?" (Division 520). As communalism infected the

populace resulting in murder and arson, the Nawab secured help from the

British-controlled States' Police and Ronald Merrick was transferred to

Mirat from Rajputana. Merrick's acceptance to serve under an Indian

prince signifies his faith in the permanency of the British treaties with the

princes. Though he was disliked by many characters in The Quartet,

Merrick, in his handling of the riots won even the appreciation of

Bronowsky :

They say he did a marvellous job. The Nawab's own police

are practically all Muslims, and that was part of the

problem, because they took sides in communal disturbances,

lashng out at Hindu crowds and mobs and turning a blind

eye if the Muslims were having a go. Ronnie stopped ail

that. (544)

The situation in many states became deplorable. The princes were like

"creatures who took it for granted they excited wonder and admiration

wherever they went and had no idea that they were dead from the neck up

and the neck down" (Birds 243). As Jacqueline Banerjee puts it: "The

birds must be rotting even on the outside now, without the elaborate care

137

their plumage used to receive, just as the real birds of paradise are dying

out in the wild because of cruel exploitation" (Paul Scott 37-38).

Learning that "the dominion had no romantic notions about

princes"(Birds 181) Gopalakand, like many of her sister states

surrendered her autonomy. The Nawab's helplessness is revealed

in Bronowsky's words: " 'Poor old dear', Dmitri said. lie's looked at

the sky and wonders what he has done wrong, or what I have ever done

right' " (Division 608). The Count knew that Mirat could not remain

separate forever. But he hoped that Hindus arid Muslims could continue

to live harmoniously under the Nawab and not Gandhi's promised

democratic millennium or Jinnah's theistic paradise state. The Nawab

believed that the British were cunning enough to ensure Mirat's

continued existence even after they withdrew. But the Count knew that

the British trimmed their principles to suit their own needs. Whereas The #

Birds of Paradise juxtaposes William Conway with his coeval Krishi,

since like the world of the Maharajahs "old Conway world had gone"

(181) with the end of British rule in India. " The Indian prince" as

Gomathy Narayanan points out, "is also shown as a victim of history, but

he is quite relieved at the chance to rid himself of his microscopic

bankrupt Kingdom" (73).

138

?'he serious historical point of The Birds of Purudise is that the

Raj's ostensible dedication to serving India masked imperial self-interest.

The rhetoric of the Raj belonged to a world of self-deception or illusion.

Had Britain been serious about unifying the two Indias she would have

followed a policy of bringing them together, rather than upholding

princely apartness. Liberal historians would laud British withdrawal, but

what about their sacred oath to the princely states which, since 1857, had

been assured of their independence and autonomy? The quandary of the

princely states at the time of independence demonstrates the fundamental

illogicality of the doctrine of paramountcy which runs "counter to the

doctrine of eventual self-government" (Division 5 76). According to the

editorial appeared in The Ranpur Gazette, the actual consequences of this

illogical situation are far reaching, leading to the "farce" in which Muslim

states attempt to join Pakistan and Hindu ones India, regardless of actual

geographical location or the religious composition of each state (Division

578). Unfortunately the uncertain future of the princely states is to be

decided by British administrators and politicians by and large ignorant of

the extent and complexity of India's political composition.

In the final analysis, the question is whether the novels like The

Birds of Paradise and fie stories of Jimmy Smith of Kalipur and the

Nawab of Mirat can be read as a document of history. Based on the

139

findings, one can definitely say that these novels bring a sense of history

to fiction. It is now generally accepted that one fruitful way of recovering

the past is through the work of the imaginative writers and it is also

evident that these novels can tell us a great deal about the painful

experience of native rulers' when the British "in the politest way, had

washed their hands of the future" (Edwards, Last years 198). The works

discussed above offer insights into particular events and in addition,

record how these events were interpreted at a later stage of history.

Coilingwood states about the nature of event and history: "For history,

the object to be discovered is not the mere event but the thought

expressed in it. To discover that thought is already to understand it" (The

idea of History 2 1 4). Therefore, the versions of history proliferate, every

version being a provisional reconstruction. Yet the actual historical

events of the period are a kind of echo in the novels, and there is more

than a little sense of history about it. One can notice in Scott's works an

interpretive richness unmatched by any non fictional account. As

Michael Gorra in Afer Empire wants to note:

[Hlis portrayal of the princely state of Mirat, whose nawab

remains always deferential to the British mi!itary power that

tacitly maintains his rule-a portrait that could serve as

textbook example of John Gallagher's and Ronald

140

Robinson's influential argument about the empire's reliance

on the collaboration of local elites. (33)

Scott's concern with history, then, is two fold: he is interested in

how it will be repeated in the future, and in how people can learn from

the examples of the past. Emerson provides hirn with a way to address

these concerns, the essay on history explaining so much of what he has

come to feel, as an individual. With' regard to its importance to his

fiction, it explains "why the characters in [his] novels usually have -

demonstrably -- personal histories whose weight they feel along with the

weight of their presents and their expectations for the future" (Writing

68). Scott found in Emerson a philosophy of history that he both felt and

thought was true to his experience cf the past.

More debatable is whether Scott's writing succeeds entirely as an

imaginative realization of a historical idea and situation. Certainly in his

presentation of the story of the princes "Paul had himself become a

formidably knowledgeabie imperial historian" (Spurling 362). The

princes, presented as caged birds, found to their shock the neglect of the

Crown when they were tom between the Political Department and the

Indian nationalists. The elegant decay of the princes is presented as an

Indian equivalent of the faded glory of the Raj. The pact between them,

their mutual dependence, their property surrounded by others' poverty,

I 4 !

and thcir rclimce oil dead cr dying I.rsriiiiorls, ai! suggest ~ G . S I J GEE :::ccid

not survive without the nther. The maintenance of tile autocracy ::f ti:::

- . . princss :vas one pccil!izr fact or ilistor);; made not less b1r.t more

unsavoury by whet Scctr saw as the betrayal at independence when the

British ''left the feudal islands to their fate and, right up to the last few

weeks, assured the rulers of those islands that no arrangement would be

reached with British India for ifidependence without there being princely

c~nsultatiotl" (Writing 3 7 1.

Chapter IV

A Patriotic Disloyalty