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April 25, 2004
Iron horses, camels and elephants
Sharada Dwivedi and Manvendra Singh Barwani write about the extraordinary modes of travel used by India’s royalty in the days of yore
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the primary modes of transport for the Maharajas and Nawabs of India comprised ornate palanquins, pedigreed horses, bedecked camels and magnificently decorated elephants.
When the Prince of Wales visited Gwalior in 1905, for example, in the words of Sir Stanley Reed, “The march of gorgeously caparisoned elephants through Gwalior was the real Imperial India”.
In her Autobiography of an Indian Princess, published in 1921, Maharani Sunity Devee of Cooch Behar similarly records that “the pilkhana (elephant house) at Cooch Behar is under the management of the state superintendent and, in 1900, 52 elephants were installed there. I have known 80 to be used at a shoot. The huge animals are beautifully trained and are so intelligent. The Maharaja always fed his own elephant with bananas and bread. The faithful animal knew his voice”.
Palanquins and animals were followed by a variety of carriages drawn by animals — elephants, horses, camels, bullocks and zebras and, occasionally, even by human beings. Maharaja Madho Singh of Jaipur, for example, who reigned from 1880 to 1927, was very stout and had rather an unusual wheeled carriage, vividly described in Time of the Mango Flowers by Roderick Cameron, who visited the sprawling Jaipur City Palace in the 1950s, two decades after His Highness’ death:
In the private apartments I noticed that there were no stairs, only long ramps. I asked the reason for this and was told that the late Maharaja had been portly and not over fond of walking. He circulated in a rickshaw or what looked more like a goat cart in lacquered wood with yellow and gray curtains. It took four men to draw it. It was amusing to learn that when he was on his way to visit his wives in the zenana, he would only allow himself to be drawn thither by women.
Cameron saw more than fifty carriages in the Jaipur coach house, dating from this Maharaja’s reign. There were pony traps, landaus and two grand state coaches upholstered in gold and silver brocade with silver fittings.
After the British brought the railways, locally called aggadis or fire carriages, to India in the 1850s, the princes vied with one another for the choicest luxury saloons and special trains, now to be seen only in railway museums and the luxury train, ‘Palace on wheels’, run by the government of India. The Mysore rail museum, for example, showcases among other exhibits, the Maharani of Mysore’s eight-wheeler saloon, including the kitchen and dining car, built in 1899 and adaptable to both the metre and broad gauges. Also on show are a 1914 Austin car that used to run on rails, together with smaller items including a telephone used by the Maharaja of Mysore. The Maharaja’s saloon was fabricated from the finest teakwood, with artistic bronze railings on the verandas. It was embellished with gold and ivory fittings, furnished with wall-to-wall carpeting, a regal four-poster bed, chairs upholstered in the choicest brocade and ornamented with his silver crest.
In sheer contrast to the opulent saloons of other Maharajas and Nawabs, the railway saloon of the wealthiest man in the world, the Nizam of Hyderabad, was so simple that it had no furnishings except for a wall-to-wall carpet on which he read the Quran and offered his prayers.
Just half a century after the railway came to India the motor car made its appearance and completely transformed the variety of transport then available in royal India.
As motor cars gradually gained international acceptance and popularity, the Indian Maharajas and merchant princes began to import them in large numbers — limousines that were the epitome of comfort, elegance and luxury, exemplifying the leading international marques of the time. Other cars were also bought in all shapes and sizes — coupes, cabriolets, landaulettes, tourers, speedsters, station wagons and even omnibuses and trucks. The animals that had served the rulers for several centuries in drawing their resplendent carriages were gradually replaced by the ‘horseless carriage’ except for hunting and for use on formal ceremonial occasions. Wrote one observant poet:
Now that mechanization is rife,
There’s a limit, it seems, to the life
Of the four-legged creature
That’s been such a feature
In the field of the world and his wife.
The proud owner of the first automobile brought to Bombay in 1897-98 was Mr Forster of Greaves Cotton and Company and the first car imported by an Indian in 1901 belonged to the eminent Parsi industrialist, Jamsetji Tata. It was the British and other European residents who brought many of the very early cars to Calcutta and Bombay and the Maharajas initially began buying them, not for transportation, but out of sheer curiosity and the urge to possess a new-fangled gadget.
The enterprising ‘Ranji’, the renowned cricketer, Jamsahib Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji of Nawanagar (ruled 1907-1933), was one of the first Maharajas to acquire a motor car during his student days at Cambridge in England between 1889 and 1893. His biographer, Roland Wild, recounts the alarming occasion when his highness’ tutor, Mr Goodchild, looked out from St Faith’s School ‘to find the roads blocked and a vast concourse of people gathered in admiration round a spluttering and self-willed automobile, with Ranjitsinhji in partial control’. His passion for cars endured. Wild recounts that from 1907 to 1909 ‘at Shillinglee, Brighton and Gilling, he held high holiday. Three professional cricketers were engaged to bowl to him at his Sussex place. He bought motor cars, and engaged the services of an English mechanic to come to India to look after his garages’.
The Jamsahib’s garages by this time were already well stocked with a variety of marques that specially included his favoured Lanchesters, one of which, a 12 hp, he had driven in the Delhi to Bombay trials held in December 1904. The car, according to Chris S. Clark’s The Lanchester Legacy, had performed exceedingly well during the eight-day trial and the Jamsahib, driving at an average speed of 30 mph, lost only one and a half points — and that too, for pumping up his tyres!
In 1907 he acquired two more Lanchesters, one, a short wheelbase tourer with an intricately designed cape-cart hood with folding screens. An extra screen was also provided to seal off the rear compartment to ensure privacy. The other car was a splendid state carriage with luxurious fittings and rich upholstery. Over the following years the Jamsahib acquired no less than 42 Lanchesters.
Simpsons’ press advertisements of the time stated, ‘For Motor Bodies. By Royal Appointment to HIM King Edward VII. We build motor bodies of artistic design and first class material to suit Indian conditions. We will import any make of chassis to customer’s order and fit bodies to suit their requirements whether for business, pleasure or public service. Existing bodies altered, and chassis lengthened and light and neatly designed heads and canopies fitted to them. Designs submitted estimates free. 201 Mount Road, Madras, PO Box 21’.
The first De Dions in the country, according to a letter written by a 1904 car owner, Rustom Cama, reproduced in the Automobile Magazine of India, had ‘a steering rod in place of the wheel’.
The crank handle knob was on the seat, the clutch under the heel of the foot, the foot brake in front of the foot board, the weather apron in the curve of the splash boards, the switches on the inside of the right hand and the handbrake to be pulled up next to the seat. The heavy flywheel could be seen under the front seat. The car had a chain drive, the wooden panels of a dogcart and ordinary kerosene lamps. The body was high-sprung on dogcart springs. The cost of running cars in those days was very cheap — petrol could be had at eight annas per gallon, oil at two rupees eight annas per gallon and tyres at about 30 rupees to 40 rupees each. Tyres did not last long; there were no arrangements for automatic pumps and hand pumps were used. Cars were made of a single cylinder; carriage wheels were made of wood, the ignition system was crude and no electric or mechanical horns were used; gears were on the outside of the cars and difficult to control.
Among members of the Indian royal families, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala was an early owner of the first French De Dion Bouton to enter the country in 1901. His grandson, Maharaja Amarinder Singh remembers, ‘Four De Dions came to India around the same time, one for my grandfather, one for the Maharaja of Mysore, one for Hyderabad and one for the Viceroy. I remember seeing the car as a child — it had a numberplate that read “Patiala O”. His brother, Raja Malvinder Singh, adds his own memories:
The De Dion was a Cauttereau Dijon and that Company eventually amalgamated with Peugeot. My great-grandfather ordered the car before he died in 1900 and a 1901 model arrived in India that summer or early winter. It was a single-stroke, rear-drive, wooden wheel and chain-driven car. That was the first car that we ever had and possibly the first car bought by any of the Maharajas, but it was hardly ever used and just stayed in the garage.
The Raja of the small, western Indian state of Aundh was another buyer of a De Dion acquired in 1906. ‘I don’t remember the De Dion,’ states Apasaheb Pant of Aundh. “But I well remember the magnificent Mercedes that my father bought in 1911, which had a top speed of 15 miles an hour.’ The young Maharaja Tukojirao Puar of Dewas, Senior (in Central India) also owned a De Dion, immortalized by the Maharaja’s tutor, Michael Darling, in his reminiscences, Apprentice to Power. He recorded from personal experience the shenanigans of this car on the rough roads of Central India. “Calls had to be paid in Indore. This gave me my first drive in a car,” he wrote:
In the India of 1907 cars were both a novelty and a luxury, and up country, with no tarmac, they could be very expensive in tyres. The Raja’s De Dion was also expensive in time: it was constantly breaking down, and the chaffeurs of those days were not the efficient motor mechanics of today. It was in this that I set out one morning for Indore, twenty-two miles away. I got as far as the Residency without mishap, but there at the front entrance the car stopped dead travailing with titanic pangs, and with the sentinel at attention.
The remaining courtesy calls, of course, had to be paid on foot and on his return to the car Michael Darling found the De Dion still blocking the entrance, but fortunately for the writer, “now at least silent”.
Excerpted with permission from
The Automobiles of the Maharajas
By Sharada Dwivedi and Manvendra Singh Barwani
Eminence Designs Pvt. Ltd. Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi. Tel: 021-5683026.
Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk
Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 81-900602-8-7
324pp. Rs4,900
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