Scholar to the Maharajas
In studying India's history, John Mcleod likes to go straight to the source.
So when he began researching Indian princes for his dissertation and a book, McLeod took up residence in the palace of one of the last surviving maharajas, Meghrajji III, who became ruler of the kingdom of Dhrangadhara in 1942.
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In 2002, India scholar John McLeod and his wife Mary Hora visited the Taj Mahal and a palace in Delhi called the Red Fort (top), among other sites. As a historian of Indian princes, McLeod often visits surviving maharaja Meghrajji III.
Prince Meghrajji is now 80 and still lives in the palace in the western Indian state of Dhrangadhara. Meghrajji translates as "cloud king" in the ancient Sanskrit language. Like many Hindu royals he traces his lineage back to Hindu gods. But like other maharajas, he lost his power and privileges when the British left India and the nation became a democracy after World War II.
"I still address him as 'your highness' as a sign of respect," says McLeod of Meghrajji, who still lives in the old palace. Today, the prince's sons are successful businessmen and scholars.
McLeod, associate professor of history in U of L's College of Arts and Sciences, has spent more than a decade digging into untapped areas of Indian history. Talking firsthand to former Indian royals and poring through previously unstudied documents in Indian archives are just part of his quest.
"A lot of my scholarship is about seeing behind the myths and the stereotypes about India," McLeod says. "Many people in the West still think of India primarily as a backward and violent place—mostly a spiritual country with lots of poverty. Those things are part of the story, but India also is the world's largest democracy and a secular industrial power."
A result of McLeod's studies of Indian princes was the book Sovereignty, Power, Control: Politics in the State of Western India, 1916-1947 (Brill, 1999).
The book earned rave reviews among scholars, who credited it with opening up new areas in Indian historical scholarship.
"I would rank John McLeod as one of the most prolific, responsible and accurate scholars of the princely states," wrote one reviewer. Another praised McLeod's "wise assessment of sources, his penetrating insights into complex issues, which mark his work as of major importance."
McLeod's honors include the U of L President's Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity in 2003 and the title of Honorary Rajvansi Geneologist from the Rajvara Heritage Institution of Rajkumar College in the state of Gujarat. He is the only Western scholar to hold the latter title, which is a modern adaptation of an ancient Indian custom. It was given for his scholarship on the old royal rulers of India.
Although McLeod's scholarship runs the gamut of Indian history, his expertise on Indian princes has won plaudits and helped him shatter stereotypes.
"The common image of the maharaja is one of a wasteful, extravagant idler, spending money on parties and gambling and jewels as well as being a sellout who collaborated with the British colonial rulers," he says.
"In fact, many maharajas did a fairly good job at governing their kingdoms," McLeod adds. "I think my work offers a fuller, more balanced historical view."
In a 1995 article ("A Model Prince? Bhavani Singh and the End of India's States") in the journal History Today, for instance, McLeod writes about the achievements of Prince Shri Bhavani Singh, who ruled Danta from 1925 to 1948. Singh brought telephone lines, electricity, roads, railroads and other modern amenities to his state.
When rains caused crop failure in 1939 he subsidized a massive irrigation reservoir project from his own purse to ensure jobs and safeguard future harvests.
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U of L honors program students learn about India firsthand. From left: Jonathan Ballard, Beth Payne, Emily Nall, Heather Doolittle, Eric Kennedy and Brenessa Matney.
Singh became defiant in the late 1940s, when post-colonial India was converting to democracy and the central government began to strip the maharajas of power. India's new rulers claimed the princes were inefficient and outmoded in the modern world.
To avoid a possibly bloody intervention of government troops, Singh reluctantly but peacefully gave up his power in 1948.
"These maharajas were not all inefficient or ineffective at governance," McLeod says. "One of the real reasons they were phased out was because their popularity among the people was seen as a threat by the new democratic rulers of India, who saw them as possible power rivals."
McLeod also is interested in how Indian culture pervades British society.
McLeod is now working on a biography of Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree (1851-1933), an Indian who served in the British parliament as a Tory (conservative) and was a staunch advocate of British imperialism. The book should be finished by 2005, he says.
"No one has ever really studied him, even though he lived through an eventful period of history and was an interesting example of a native-born Indian who assimilated fully into British life and politics," McLeod says.
McLeod is spending the early part of 2004 on sabbatical in India, poring through archival records about Bhownaggree in New Delhi and Bombay. The American Institute of Indian Studies is funding the trip and obtaining access permissions so that McLeod can study rare government records.
"I have been lucky enough to conduct research in three languages, in archives and libraries in four countries on three continents," McLeod says. "I know the thrill of reading documents that no one has looked at for 50 or 100 years and of applying historical analysis to achieve understanding and to tell a story."
In 2002, McLeod was able to tell the story of India itself in the book The History of India, part of the Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations series published by Greenwood Press.
McLeod's previous book, Sovereignty, Power, Control…, was so successful that a paperback version is in the works.
Part of what makes Indian studies rewarding, McLeod says, is that the subject is wide open and full of unexplored scholarly territory.
"Both in India and in the West, the study of the Indian princes is a small enough field that I've been able to get into it at the ground floor," he says. "There are probably 15 to 20 people who actively study it in the whole world."
McLeod's students also benefit from the research. Honors program scholars in McLeod's course on royalty in Indian history recently traveled with him to India as guests of Meghrajji III. They saw the Taj Mahal and other Indian sites.
Even as he questions myths about India in his scholarship, McLeod says there is a mystique about the country that makes it interesting, which he cannot fully explain.
"All I can say is that I've been bitten by the bug," he says. "India is a fascinating place with a long and complex history. You have a billion people in such a relatively small area and all these cultural, religious and political forces blending together: Hindu, Muslim, British and so on. How could you not be interested?"
McLeod, who can muster up Hindi when the need arises, says it's fortunate for his scholarship that most educated Indians speak English.
In any case, McLeod keeps in touch with his friend, Meghrajji, via the new universal mode of communication.
"We e-mail each other."
