From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on accounts from the waning days of the Raj and the British Empire to the present, Moore (
The Thieves' Opera) brings exhaustive research to bear on the stories of four Indian queens who used their power to help forge social change. Her fly-on-the-wall approach gives their triumphs and struggles immediacy. Refined Chimnabai began her marriage to the maharaja of the northern city of Baroda in purdah, which kept married women hidden from men other than their husbands, but after breaking purdah in 1913, she became a champion of women's rights. Sunity Devi, maharani of Cooch Behar (near what is now Bangladesh), forged a close friendship with Queen Victoria and wrote books on India's history for British audiences. Chimnabai's gorgeous daughter, Indira, rejected her arranged alliance in order to marry Sunity's son, and later ruled in her late husband's place as regent of state. Indira's daughter Ayesha defied her parents' wishes so she could become the third wife of the man she loved and was elected to India's parliament in a 1962 landslide. Today, she breeds polo ponies, works on conservationist campaigns and serves on the boards of schools she founded. "In their different ways," Moore writes, "they were icons, modernizers and revolutionaries... inspiring a redefinition of the role of women in modern India." The book's rich details make up for its sometimes stiff prose, as Moore explores everything from the women's elaborate fashions—silk chiffon saris, magnificent jewels and spangled veils—to the politics and strict traditions of India's aristocracy.
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A maharani is the wife of a maharaja, and through the lives of four such Indian queens, in two linked families over three generations, Moore demonstrates the changing currents of Indian politics and customs. The story starts with Chimnabai, the first queen to break purdah, in 1913, and ends with her granddaughter Gayatri Devi. Devi was the third wife of the maharaja of Jaipur, but after Independence stripped the princes of most of their power she ran successfully for Parliament. She was also a socialite—Jackie Kennedy was a friend—and the book is generally as concerned with parties and polo matches as with politics. The changes of the twentieth century seem to have been easier on the women than on their husbands and sons. With only a few exceptions (including Devi's husband, who had a heart attack during a polo match), the men died young, from complications of severe alcoholism.
Copyright © 2005
The New Yorker
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