‘Monarchical modern’: the making of Mysore city, 1880–1940

Abstract

Abstract The unique status of the city of Mysore arose from the fact that it was divested of all administrative functions save that of the Palace establishment. Principles of city planning were innovatively pursued, through a combination of sovereign authority and diverse forces, techniques and devices more properly associated with ‘governmentality’. It was among the first cities in India to have a City Improvement Trust in 1903. An investigation of the work of the Mysore City Improvement Trust in its negotiations with the municipality on the one hand and the Palace establishment on the other foregrounds the ‘monarchical’ as a specific form of power. What were the specific forms of material and temporal ‘ordering’ that came to distinguish Mysore city from its counterparts? This article looks at four distinct moments of this journey, related respectively to sanitizing, botanizing, ornamentalizing and spectacularizing, together producing a ‘depth of historical distance’.