Patiala Durbar
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To understand Patiala is to recognise it as a city born of tactical necessity and refined through cultural ambition. Unlike the Mughal metropolises of the north or the planned colonial cantonments, it emerged within the ‘Malwa’ region of Punjab, part of the cis-Sutlej tract, in the eighteenth-…
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In popular imagery, Punjab royalty brings to mind the stalwart personality of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire, under whose patronage Punjabi identity and culture saw a renaissance. Forgotten in common culture are other equally important individuals, chief among them Maharaja…
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The gharanas (schools) of Hindustani music often evoke images of established musical lineages, rooted in particular regions or courts for centuries. The association of ‘ghar’ (or house) with the term strengthens the idea that gharanas are families of musicians, found in the cities they are named…
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The political geography of the British Indian Empire was never as stable as imperial cartography implied. Alongside the provinces under direct British rule existed a constellation of princely states, whose rulers governed internally while tethered to the Crown through treaties, protocol, and the…
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If forts and palaces constitute Patiala’s architectural memory, then its food operates as the city’s aftertaste, carrying forward histories that architecture alone cannot contain. Situated within the Malwa region of Punjab, part of the cis-Sutlej tract, the culinary landscape of the city of Patiala…
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