Royal Patronage, Power and Aesthetics in Princely India

'this book is a welcome and lively analysis of how women associated with the princely states have shaped, experienced, and projected to broader audiences in India and abroad the material culture of the princely states in colonial and postcolonial eras.' American Historical Review 'Jhala gives us a complex picture of the lives, material conditions, and representations of court women, fascinating in itself and invaluable to anyone plotting a novel or film to be set in the so-called native states.' Victorian Studies

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Cosmopolitan Collectors; Chapter 1a The Dholpur Jewellery Dispute, c. 1913: State Jewels, Stridhana and Zenana Patrons; Chapter 2 Trans-Regional Chefs, Kitchens and Cookbooks: Food in the Colonial and Postcolonial Zenana; Chapter 3 The Tawa’if and the Maharani: The Influence of Royal Aesthetics on Indian Cinema, Tourism and Popular Culture; Chapter 4 The Pardah Princess: Orientalist Portraits of the Zenana in Merchant Ivory’s Films; Chapter 5 Epilogue;