¹ Lytton to Salisbury, 11 May 1876. Balfour, Lady Betty (ed.), Personal and Literary Letters of Robert First Earl of Lytton, Vol. II (London, 1906), p. 21.Google Scholar

² Fergusson wrote to the Thakur: ‘My motive for offering it [the Legislative Council seat] to you is my sense of your abilities, acquirements and good administration, and my desire to mark that sense in a public manner.’ Quoted in Sharpe, E., Thakore Sahib Shri Sir Daulat Singh of Limbdi Kathiawar (London, 1931), p. 43.Google Scholar

³ Hunter, W. W., Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study in Indian Administration (London, 1892), p. 93.Google Scholar

⁴ Clarke to Morley, 28 October 1908. Morley Papers, Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), India Office Library [hereafter IOL], London.

⁵ Clarke to Morley, 10 July 1908, Morley Papers, Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), IOL.

⁶ Clarke to Morley, 31 July 1908, Morley Papers, Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), IOL.

⁷ Lamington to Morley, 13 September 1905, Lamington Papers, micro. 675, IOL.

⁸ Clarke to Morley, 25 December 1907, Morley Papers, Mss. Eur. D (42C), IOL.

⁹ Claude Hill of the Bombay Political Service, and Louis Dane, Foreign Secretary, Government of India 1902–05, had begun to react against Curzon's restrictive policy towards the feudatories. But the change was marked once Minto became Viceroy and Clarke Governor of Bombay. H. O. Quin, Political Secretary, Government of Bombay 1908–09, and Harcourt Butler, Foreign Secretary, Government of India 1908–10, were able to carry out a more liberal policy towards the princes.

¹⁰ Clarke to Morley, 28 October 1908, Morley Papers Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), IOL.

¹¹ Chirol, Valentine, Indian Unrest (London, 1910), pp. 189–90.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., p. 188.

¹³ Fraser, Lovat, India Under Curzon And After (London, 1911), p. 215.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Kesari,3 October 1905, Bombay Native Newspaper Reports [hereafter BNNR], 1905.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Gujarati, 17 December 1905, BNNR, 1905.Google Scholar

¹⁶ A Bangalore Correspondent, ‘The Mysore Press Act: How to Deal with Indian Seditious Writing’, The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, Vol. XXVII (01–04 1909), pp. 282–3.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The Annual Register (London, 1909), p. 387.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ See, for example, a speech by the Raja of Dewas (senior) another Mahratta prince, quoted by Forster, E. M., Hill of Devi (London, 1965), pp. 39, 55.Google Scholar

²⁰ In 1896 Kolhapur was raised to the status of a first-class Political Agency. A decade later it was gazetted a Residency. Minute by J. H. du Boulay, Acting Political Secretary, 23 February 1909, BP, 1909, 51, C706, MRO.

²¹ Prime responsibility for this lay with Rao Bahadur Barve, Diwan of Kolhapur in the 1870s, who ‘filled almost every public office in the State with his caste-fellows’. Times of India, 26 October 1906. However, the British, who administered the state between 1866 and 1894, did nothing to discourage Barve's activities.

²² The Public Service Commission found that in Bombay Presidency 41.25 per cent of the deputy collectors were Brahmins, as were 75·5 per cent of the mamlatdars; and seventy out of 104 subordinate judges were Brahmins. Proceedings of the Public Service Commission (Calcutta, 1887), IV, Sect. I, B, 71, 91.Google Scholar

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²⁴ Minute by Lee-Warner, 11 May 1894, BP, 1894, 93, C181, MRO.

²⁵ Lamington to Morley, 13 May 1906, Lamington Papers, micro. 675, IOL.

²⁶ Minute, 4 January 1911, Foreign Department of the Government of India [hereafter ‘Foreign’], Internal A, March 1911, 5, National Archives of India [hereafter NAI], New Delhi.

²⁷ Minute, 28 September 1910, Foreign Internal A, March 1911, 5, NAI.

²⁸ Lamington to Morley, 13 May 1906, Lamington Papers, micro. 675, IOL.

²⁹ Vishalgad paid Rs 5,000 per annum in tribute to Kolhapur, Bavda paid Rs 3,420, and Kagal and Ichalkaranji each paid Rs 2,000. Campbell, J. M. (ed.), Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XXIV (Bombay, (1877–1904), pp. 245–6.Google Scholar

³⁰ Latthe, A. B., Memoirs of His Highness Shri Shahu Chhatrapati Maharaja of Kolhapur, Vol. I, (Bombay, 1924), pp. 23–6.Google Scholar

³¹ The chief of Vishalgad was styled the Pant Pratinidhi, and his family name was Jaykar. Malkapur, his headquarters, had once been the capital of the Kolhapur raj. Bavda's chief, the Pant Amatya, belonged to the Bhadanekar family. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency Vol. XXIV, pp. 245–6.Google Scholar

³² Ichalkaranji, which was only eighteen miles east of Kolhapur, was held by the Chitpavan Joshi family. The ruler was styled Ghorpade. The jagirdar had been raised to the status of a First Class Sirdar, and had the right of addressing the Bombay government directly without going through the Kolhapur Darbar. Ibid., p. 246.

³³ Rajwade, V. V., ‘A Feudatory State of Western India’, Asiatic Review, Vol. XXV (April 1929), p. 194.Google Scholar

³⁴ Latthe, op. cit., p. 97.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., p. 261.

³⁶ The phrase was Northcote's. Latthe, op. cit., p. 262.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., pp. 262–5.

³⁸ The controversy began in October 1900, when one of the court priests omitted to purify himself by bathing in the river Panchganga before administering to the Maharaja's party. He alleged that they were mere Sudras who did not deserve a purified priest. Ibid., pp. 186–7.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 193.

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 194.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 198.

⁴² Ferris to the Darbar, 19 February 1903, Ibid, p. 204.

⁴³ Chirol, op. cit., p. 68; Latthe, op. cit., pp. 154, 243–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Mahratta, 17 June 1906, BNNR, 1906.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ There was good reason for their apprehension. In 1894 the Brahmins held sixty out of seventy-one posts in the General Department of the Darbar: by 1922 they filled only thirty-six out of ninety-five. The figures for the Khasgi Department show the same trend: forty-six out of fifty-two in 1894, and only forty-three out of one hundred and fifty-three in 1922. Latthe, op. cit., p. 152.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Samarth, 8 August 1906, BNNR, 1906.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Clarke visited Kolhapur in March 1908; he was not greatly impressed by the Maharaja, describing him as a ‘large, simple, kind-hearted creature’, the very ‘antithesis of his ancestor Sivaji’. Clarke to Morley 26 March 1908, Morley Papers, Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), IOL; Malcolm Darling also considered him ‘heavy and stupid’, see Darling, M. L., Apprentice to Power: India 1904–1908 (London, 1966), p. 246.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Lamington to Morley, 17 August 1906, Lamington Papers, micro. 675, IOL.

⁴⁹ Darling, op. cit., p. 183.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ An employee of the Darbar was accused of conspiring to poison the Political Agent during a ceremonial dinner in the Darbar Hall. It was afterwards proved that the ‘conspiracy’ was staged by a Brahmin clique in an attempt to discredit the Darbar. Foreign Internal B, April 1898, 264–336, NAI; Latthe, op. cit., pp. 116–23.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 122–3.

⁵² Disciplined for inefficiency in 1892 by the Political Secretary Lee-Warner, Ferris was ‘exiled’ to Amreli in Kathiawar. His promotion in consequence was slow. In 1896 he was again reprimanded for ‘indiscretions’ committed while in Somaliland. Memorandum by W. Lee-Warner, 3 November 1892; Ferris to Lee-Warner, 4 December 1892, BP, 1893, 161, MRO.

⁵³ Samarth, 9 May 1906, BNNR, 1906.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Mahratta, 2 December 1906, BNNR, 1906.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Indu Prakash, 24 October 1906, BNNR, 1906.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Lamington to Morley, 17 August 1906, Lamington Papers, micro. 675, IOL.

⁵⁷ Minute by L. W. Dane, Foreign Secretary, 7 September 1906, Foreign General B, September 1906, 156–8, NAI.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Foreign General B October 1907, 3–4, NAI.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Clarke to Morley, 26 July 1909, Morley Papers Mss. Eur. D 573 (42F), IOL.

⁶⁰ Maharaja to Ferris, 12 May 1908. Extracts from letters from and to His Highness the Chhatrapati Maharajasaheb of Kolhapur (Private: Printed at the Kolhapur Record Office, n.d.), p. 2.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Maharaja to Wodehouse, 16 July 1908, ibid., p. 7.

⁶² Clarke to Morley, 16 July and 24 July 1908, Morley Papers Mss. Eur. D 573 (42E), IOL.

⁶³ Wodehouse was chosen ‘in preference to any of the officers above him on the list although the post … was considered to be next in importance to that of Agent to the Governor … in Kathiawar and … [was] generally filled by one of the most senior officers’. J. H. du Boulay, Political Secretary, Bombay, to the Foreign Secretary, Government of India, 28 June 1910, Political and Secret Subject Files, 1912, 4391, Pt I, IOL.

⁶⁴ Maharaja to Sir George Clarke, 23 August and 9 September 1908, Extracts…, pp. 11, 20.Google Scholar The charge was mainly based on an article in the Vishvavritta in which Bijapurkar exhorted his compatriots to ‘take up arms and protect religion’. Chirol, op. cit., p. 71.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Chirol, op. cit., p. 70;Google ScholarLatthe, op. cit., pp. 328–9.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Maharaja to L. Robertson, 7 September, 1908, Extracts …, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Robertson, L. to Maharaja, 8 September 1908, Extracts …, p. 15.Google Scholar An encouraging response was also elicited from Muir-Mackensie, a member of the Governor's Council with whom Shahu was on terms of personal friendship. You may ‘rely on having a perfectly free hand with your enquiries’, he told the Maharaja. ‘I recommend you to confide with equal freedom with other members of the Government. I can assure you that we are all prepared to support you and have every confidence in you.’ Muir-Mackensie to Maharaja, 8 September 1908, ibid, p. 17.

⁶⁸ Maharaja to Muir-Mackensie, 18 December 1908, Extracts…, p. 39.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Maharaja to Wodehouse, 3 October 1908, ibid., p. 24.

⁷⁰ Bijapurkar was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, Joshi three years' rigorous imprisonment, and a third man, Joshirao, one and a half years’ imprisonment. The subsequent prosecution of Joshi on a charge of conspiring to murder Ferris did not go so smoothly, and it required an appeal court to return a verdict of guilty on the accused, for which he received a further sentence of seven years. Maharaja, to Fraser, S. M., 22 January 1909, Extracts …, p. 61.Google Scholar See also Latthe, op. cit., pp. 334–6.Google Scholar

⁷¹ ‘It is said therein’, he wrote, ‘that if all Chiefs help them [the nationalists] like the Chiefs of Ichalkaranji and Vishalgad, the cause of the country would succeed much sooner. Taking this into consideration along with the entries in Vijapurkar's [sic] diaries I think it would be better for both parties if they be asked straight by the Political Agent to explain them.’ Maharaja to Clarke, 21 April 1909, Extracts … p. 64.Google Scholar

⁷² Ferris to Maharaja, 15 September 1909, Extracts …, p. 80.Google Scholar

⁷³ Maharajato Muir-Mackensie, 4 December 1909, ibid., p. 89.

⁷⁴ Clarke to Maharaja, 13 December 1909, Extracts …, p. 92.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Colonel Ferris to Maharaja, 7 April 1910, Extracts …, p. 106.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ ‘Opinion of Sir L. Scott re-claim for supervisory control by Kolhapur over Ichalkaranji’, 28 November 1928, Records of the Diwan's Office, Kolhapur, Political and Feudatory Branch, 357 of 1929.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ This trend coincided with the return to favour of Appa Sahib Rajopadhaye, who resumed office as a stipendiary palace priest in 1917. Latthe, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 459.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ In June 1918, the hereditary office of kulkarni was abolished on the grounds that many of these officials were stirring up opposition to the Darbar in the villages. Latthe, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 508–11.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Cf. Mahratta, 25 July 1920. See also The Passive Resistance in Kolhapur State (Private and Confidential. Published by the Kolhapur Record Office, n.d.).