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Retelling a royal saga
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Vikram Sampath’s book on the Wodeyar dynasty is a collector’s item
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History retold (From left) S. Muthiah, Prof. S. Venkateswaran, Vyjayanthimala Bali and Vikram Sampath
What does a sixth-standard student do when a TV serial incorrectly portrays a royal couple, sparking off protests from the people of Mysore? If the 11-year-old in question is Vikram Sampath, the answer is 15 years of research culminating in a 760-page book on the Wodeyar Dynasty. The author of ‘Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars’, published by Rupa & Co didn’t expect his childish curiosity to snowball into this gargantuan project.
The launch in Chennai on Friday, attended by pianist Anil Srinivasan, vocalist Sikkil Gurucharan and flautist Sikkil Mala Chandrasekhar, began with a documentary on the royal dynasty, following which theatre personalities Karthik Srinivasan and Anuradha Ananth read excerpts from the book.
Chief Guest Vyjayanthimala Bali commended the “spirited efforts of the young author” and joked that her favourite paragraph was one that highlighted “the trustworthiness of the Iyengar community.”
Sampath, who graduated from BITS Pilani and SP Jain Institute of Management Research, believes that not being a historian by profession was an advantage: “Since I don’t belong to any ideological school of thought, I could be analytical and objective.”
He pre-empted doubts about the credibility of his research by having it evaluated by a historian — a process that took an entire year.
What can a book on monarchy teach contemporary India? In some ways, it’s more than a mere narrative of events that unfolded over a 600-year time span. Stating that Mysore was the first princely state to have a democratic system in place, Sampath says that present-day administrators have a lot to learn from the royals of yesteryears about eradication of social evils and infrastructure. “The development we see today isn’t the result of a magic wand waved by a multinational company.”
On the face of it, the book is a collector’s item, but Sampath says that it’s also an exhaustive encyclopaedia that could be used for academic reference. Noted historian and journalist S. Muthiah observed that while India is a country that’s rich in myths, legends and oral storytelling, it’s about time we “started writing down our stories so that our descendants can know about our lives and the times we lived in”.
With this book, the author hopes that he has at least “partially succeeded” in plugging the gaps in our knowledge about this dynasty and its contribution to modern India.
SRIYA NARAYANAN
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