- This event is over. However, time travel possible through our Audio & Video! See upcoming events
223. India’s Rulers (with Manu S Pillai)
In the Shadow of British Imperialism
Speakers
India’s colonial experience was a complex phenomenon, which often took different shapes in different places, through layers of caste, religious identity, and much else. In this episode of BIC Talks, Manu S Pillai will explore how India’s princely states and their rulers negotiated their political identities and ideas of kingship, both while facing pressures from the British Raj, as well as while resisting it.
Looking beyond the stereotypes in which princely rulers have been trapped, he will investigate their experiments with transforming kingly identities, balancing relationships as much with the British as with their subjects, in constructing political visions for their states–sometimes of great ambition–and their ultimate disappearance from India’s political map, even if not public imagination.
This lecture is an extract from the 3rd Prof Satish Chandra Memorial lecture that took place in October 2021.
Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast and Stitcher.
Speakers
Manu S Pillai
Manu S Pillai is the author of the award-winning The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore (HarperCollins India, 2015), Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji (Juggernaut, 2018), The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History (Context, 2019), and most recently, False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma (Juggernaut, 2021).
Formerly Chief of Staff to Dr Shashi Tharoor MP, he has in the past worked at the House of Lords in Britain, with Lord Karan Bilimoria CBE DL, and with the BBC on their Incarnations history series, assisting Dr Sunil Khilnani. Written over six years and researched in three continents, Manu’s first book, The Ivory Throne won the 2016 Tata Lit Live Prize for best first work of non-fiction and the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. For three years, Manu also wrote a weekly column for Mint Lounge. His other writings have appeared in The Hindu, Open Magazine, the Times of India, Hindustan Times, The New Statesman, and other publications.
Manu is an alumnus of Fergusson College, Pune, and holds a PhD in history from King’s College London.
