Who owns India's palaces?

In July, Dholpur Palace found itself in the headlines and not for all the right reasons. The Congress party alleged that Dushyant Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of Parliament and son of Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, was in illegal possession of the palace and the property actually belonged to the government of India.

Dholpur is an erstwhile princely state in Rajasthan. Its ruler was Udaibhanu Singh and his seat was the grand Dholpur Palace. Today it is better known as the Raj Niwas Palace, a luxury heritage hotel, one of the several that dot Rajasthan. The property today is run by Dushyant Singh, the son of Hemant Singh, who was the heir to Udaibhanu Singh.

The Dholpur controversy was political, and seems to have receded from public memory (and prime time news broadcasts) but it does highlight a controversial issue that raises its head time and time again, usually in the courts—just who owns India’s palaces?

That’s a pertinent question to ask in a country where there are a lot of palaces.

In 1947, at the time of India’s independence, the country had 555 princely states. These kingdoms covered 48% of the area of pre-Independence India and constituted 28% of its total population, senior advocate Arvind P. Datar wrote in an opinion piece for The Hindu on 22 November 2013.

Soon, 216 of these princely states were merged with adjoining provinces, 61 were converted to centrally-administered areas and 275 were merged to form larger unions (in all, five such unions were formed, such as Madhya Bharat, Patiala and East Punjab States).

Effectively, all joined the Union of India over a period of time.

Some did so reluctantly and the ownership of many of the royal assets continue to be a point of contention between the state and the respective families.

One such battle which is being fought is between the Wadiyars, the Mysore royal family, and the Karnataka state government.

In 1950, the Union government recognized Mysore Palace as the personal property of the Wadiyars. But with the introduction of the Land Ceiling Act, the government took over parts of the palace. In 1988, Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar moved the Karnataka high court to get back the areas of the palace that the government had taken over. In 1997, the court directed the state to hand back the property and land to the family. The state filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court, but that too was dismissed. The Karnataka government then introduced the Mysore Palace Acquisition Act in 1998, through which it intended to occupy the properties in lieu of compensation. That case has been pending before the Supreme Court since 1999.

There is also a case pending before the Karnataka high court since 1997 on the state government’s efforts to take over part of the Bangalore Palace through the Bangalore Palace Acquisition Act of 1996.

Maharani Pramoda Devi Wadiyar has since then accused successive state governments of hostility towards the royal family and claimed the cases were one of the reasons why she had to adopt an heir after her husband’s death. In an instance that reeks of palace intrigue, this adoption has become controversial and the eldest nephew of the late Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, Mysore’s 28th maharajah and the husband of Pramoda Devi, has filed a case asking for the royal estate and properties to be split equally among the entire family. That, though, is a different story.

Some erstwhile kings signed away their palaces.

“Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, the ruler of Patiala, gave away old forts, palaces, vast tracts of land as well as accounts with the Bank of England as he did not consider them his personal wealth,” said a member of the Patiala royal family who asked not to be identified. Some even gave away family heirlooms and luxury cars.

Others chose to bargain with the Union of India so as to retain some of their properties.

“The kingdoms signed an instrument of ascension with the Union of India and then there was the covenant which, among other things, established a list of private properties which were the Maharajas’ and the rest which vested with the state,” said Arvind Singh Mewar of the Mewar dynasty, Udaipur.

Dholpur’s maharajah did just that.

In 1949, Udaibhanu Singh signed an agreement with the Indian government that the palace was to be with the royal family for the lifetime of the king, though they had to pay a maintenance cost.

This was the basis of the charge levelled by the Congress. However, in 1958, Urmila Devi, widow of Udaibhanu Singh, sought a transfer of the property back to the family.

In exchange, she offered Kesar Bagh Palace and that is how Dholpur Palace came back to the family. “All the documents that were drawn up dividing the properties were ironclad,” says Mewar.

Such instances aren’t rare.

Touching a raw nerve

Udaipur’s City Palace complex, for instance, was with the state government after Independence, but in 1969 it was returned to the family. “There was a proper notification for it. The point I am trying to make is that there is no room for confusion as to who owns what property,” said Mewar. Today, City Palace houses a museum, a trust and the living quarters of the family as well as hotels.

Indeed, the controversy over Dholpur seems to have a touched a raw nerve among people descended from these erstwhile royal families.

“How can you say that what was built by the family for them to stay in is not theirs anymore? If citizens don’t have a right to their own houses, then it’s worrying,” said Randhir Vikram Singh from the former royal family of Mandawa in Rajasthan and part of the Indian Heritage Hotel Association (many such people have turned hoteliers).

“The royal families were custodians of all properties of the state. After Independence, rules were changed but the residential properties were private properties. To simply try and take it away is very unfair. You must remember that for us these places are a labour of love, it’s our heritage, our identity,” said Raja Jamal Rasul Khan of the erstwhile kingdom of Jahangirabad.

Vikram Singh says that the covenants laid down clearly what was state property and what was private property. “It is much later that courts were approached if one wanted the status quo changed.”

Or if one of the two parties—the government or the family—disagreed.

For instance, another palace which has been in the eye of a legal storm is Tripura’s famed Neermahal, which was built along the lines of the Lake Palace in Udaipur in 1930. Neermahal is built on the Rudrasagar Lake and is one of the biggest tourist attractions of the state.

“The state signed a covenant on 15 August 1949, according to which, except for the palace (Neermahal), the entire state was the property of the government of India,” said historian Jawahar Acharjee. The family claims that the state government only had the right of occupation, and that too on the fulfilment of the condition of proper upkeep of the property.

The government on its part claims that Kirit Bikram Kishore Manikya, son of the last king of Tripura, had donated the property to the government and that the family is seeking to get it back after his death.

In June, a senior division civil court restored the property to the family. The government now plans to challenge the order in a higher court.

And the Patiala royal family is involved in a legal battle with the government over ownership regarding forest land around the palace in Chail, a hill town.

“We cannot club all royal cases over property under one umbrella. Each case has to be looked at in its own individuality, but in a nutshell, the essence of any dispute is what is private and what is not,” said the member of the Patiala royal family cited earlier. The case concerning the forest grounds is pending with the Himachal Pradesh high court.

Some of the cases have interesting features.

Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan, the son of the former raja of Mahmudabad, is seeking a return of his property from the government of India after it was confiscated under the Enemy Property Act of 1968 owing to his father’s decision to shift to Pakistan at the time of Independence.

The properties, spread across Lucknow and Nainital, are estimated to be worth crores and Khan sought them after his father’s death. Interestingly, Khan and his mother had stayed on in India when his father moved to Pakistan. In 2010, the Supreme Court restored Khan’s properties to him but the government had by then passed an ordinance restraining courts from ordering the state to return enemy property.

Nothing has moved since.

Owning a palace may seem like fun but it comes with its own set of challenges, say the owners.

Maintenance is extremely difficult, which is why many choose to convert forts and palaces into hotels. “In our case, income from our museum helps us maintain the palace. Parts of it have also been converted into a hotel. However, not every destination is a tourist destination,” said Mewar.

Smaller havelis and palaces are routinely leased out for film and TV show shootings in order to generate revenue. The decision on what to do with the property, according to Vikram Singh, depends completely on the owner. “Each one sees it according to their requirement, some continue to live there and some convert it into a commercial property.”

For many ordinary royals convinced of their extraordinariness, converting a property into a hotel or a film set remains a better proposition than giving it to the government. As they stress time and again, it’s not just bricks and mortar to them but a way of life—albeit, one that ended in 1947 when India stopped having kings and maharajahs, and then again in 1971 with the abolition of the Privy Purses, payments made to the rulers of erstwhile princely states in lieu of their decision to integrate with India.

The names and the palaces are all they are left with now.

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