Indo-Saracenic Roccoco

The minor but influential state of Bikaner entered a spree of building palaces in the late 19th century CE. Samuel Swinton Jacob, an architect from Bombay, and later, Jaipur, was responsible for a series of extremely ornate palaces built in the characteristic Indo-Saracenic for Maharaja Rao Ganga Singh. They are mostly accessible to the public now, since they have been turned into hotels. I’ve never before been in a car which drew into a portico as ornate as the one that belongs to Laxmi Niwas Palace (photo above). The madly decorative sandstone work throughout this building would force me to call it roccoco if it was not so clearly Indo-Saracenic.

The first two photos in the gallery above are details from the portico (I liked that door to a guard’s changing room tucked between pillars). I could see two shades of sandstone. One, the dull pink one was probably Jaipur sandstone, which is still widely quarried and used. I wonder where the deeper red sandstone came from. The sandstone carvings that you see here are as elaborate as some of the more elaborate wood carvings I’ve seen from northern Gujarat. Bikaner had been a courtier at an imperial court since the time of Akbar, and Maharaja Ganga Singh, who would go on to serve in Flanders during World War I, was already an influential adviser to the Viceroys. The state was wealthy due to its enterprising merchants, and the Maharaja wanted to spare no expense for this palace, built between 1896 and 1902. Interestingly Swinton Jacob was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind during the time this palace was coming up, a few years before the Maharaja got his.

We sat in the inner courtyard and sipped our teas. It was served stylishly, and accompanied by interesting biscuits from the hotel’s bakery. We’d found other interesting tidbits in Bikaner’s bakeries on our walk around the town. As The Family nibbled on a biscuit, I took a few photos. The corridors on the upper floors were completely covered with carved sandstone jalis. Perhaps this was a zenana, a place for the women of the palace. The Maharaja’s grand daughters had left behind this tradition of women being tucked away out of sight, but it is yet to die away completely around Bikaner.

The Family was deep in a conversation about her plans for the next week, so I took the time to wander away along one of the corridors. Heads of Barasingha (Rucervus duvaucelii) were mounted on the walls, flanking the doors of every apartment. They did not come from the game reserve of Tal Chhapar, I thought. Barasingha require immense amounts of water, and even a hundred and twenty years ago this area was a parched desert. One of the men at the reception told me that the chandelier hanging from that amazing ceiling was imported from Belgium. So were the doorknobs! That was the era of another globalization, when people could pick and choose their luxuries from around the world.