Manu S. Pillai is the author of the critically acclaimed The Ivory Throne (2015), Rebel Sultans (2018) and The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin (2019). Formerly chief of staff to Shashi Tharoor, MP, he is also a winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar (2017). His essays and writings on history have appeared in Mint Lounge, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Open, New Statesman and other publications. This is his fourth book.
<p>India’s maharajahs have traditionally been cast as petty despots, consumed by lust and luxury. The British circulated the idea that brown royalty needed ‘enlightened’ white hands to guide it, and many Indians, too, bought into the stereotype. In this brilliant book, Manu S. Pillai disputes this view. Tracking the travels of the painter Ravi Varma through five princely states, he uncovers a picture far removed from this cliché. We meet maharajahs obsessed <span style="font-size: 1rem;">with industrialization and rulers who funded nationalists. Good governance became a spectacularly subversive act, by which maharajahs refuted claims that Indians could not rule themselves. By refocusing attention on princely India, False Allies reminds us that the maharajahs were serious political actors – essential to knowing modern India.</span></p><div><br></div>
