CHENNAI: Who was the last Maharaja of Mysuru?” If you were a student who did their schooling in Karnataka, then at least once in your GK test or a quiz competition you would have encountered this question. Author Deepti Navaratna too had gone through this.
Apart from the name – Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar — nothing much was offered even in the History textbooks. But Deepti, a musician and neuroscientist, decided to delve deep and find out more about the man behind the shiny spectacle of royalty, and wrote his biography, The Maverick Maharaja: Life and Times of Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar.
Musician par excellence
Initially, Deepti was drawn to the Maharaja’s music. A postmodern composer, his compositions often reflect the east meets west sensibilities. “So many of the western classical music ideas are incorporated in his Carnatic compositions. After the Trinity of Music, it is the Maharaja’s works that stand out as an innovative body of work. It was his music that drew me to his personality,” she shares ahead of her discussion organised by the Madras Book Club that was held recently.
His first composition that Deepti learnt was Brahmanda valaye maaye in the raga Maand. “It is a very western-sounding tune which has chaste Sanskrit text. He has also used a very rare taala. That is a unique feature of his music; he often used rare ragas and taalas in his compositions. This interesting melange was fascinating to me,” she adds.
So, Deepti set out on a mission to present the life of the Maharaja beyond the personal aspects, especially for youngsters to take pride in and break the regressive notion that we have of Indian kings – that they were pawns of the British empire.
Documenting discoveries
The Maharaja passed away 48 years ago and his life has never been documented. “In many ways, his music mirrored his sensibilities, and the ethos with which he ruled Mysuru – with grace,” she notes, adding that it took her about three years to collate data and another year and a half to edit.
As a princely state of India, Deepti found that Mysuru was well-documented. “There were administrative reports that the Maharaja used to document every year. These were published documents in the public domain. The speeches of the Maharaja, when he was king, a governor, and a Rajpramukh…all these are in public domain. As the last Maharaja of Mysuru, his political journey, of his joining the Indian union and then later adopting the Constitution of India are documented too. The book is based on all these sources,” she shares, adding that the Maharaja’s daughters in Bengaluru shared their familial archives of photographs with her and were very supportive in her journey. She also met people like Bharat Ratna recipient Dr CNR Rao, who had seen and met him.
Though Deepti has revered the Maharaja as a musician, during the course of documenting the book she discovered that he was a prolific scholar of Advaitha Vedanta and has written over ten books. She went on to uncover several interesting vignettes and the impact he made on the world. “In the late 1940s, sitting here in Mysuru, he revolutionised the destiny of European classical music in London. He started the Philharmonia Concert Society in London, which still functions with King Charles as the patron,” she informs. The Maharaja also funded the documentation of composer Nikolai Medtner’s works which could not be documented due to the World War. He also started the Medtner Society in Germany that continues to propagate his works.
The Maharaja was an adroit ruler and statesman who had a five-year plan in place for Mysuru in line with the current sustainable development goals of the Modi government, ten years before Nehru did. But strangely, very little is written about these aspects of his rule. An empathetic man, the Maharaja was someone who helped dreams come true. Be it funding the travel of tennis player Ramanathan Krishnan to Wimbledon or convincing spinner Prasnna’s father to send him to West Indies to play cricket for India, he was a benefactor.
Through this biography, Deepti wanted to create a new way of looking at our kings and a new way of writing biographies which are respectful — of the work they had done for India, and for the world. Taking a leaf out of this experience, Deepti’s next book is on documenting the inter-cultural musical encounters in south India. “Thanjavur has a band which became the Madras Corporation Band. Similarly, Mysuru also had a full-fledged orchestra which now is the Mysore Police Band. There are many stories in a song, stories that only music can tell. I am interested in those stories,” she signs off.
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