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COSMOPOLITAN CROSSINGS: THE ARCHITECTURE OF BEGUM SAMRŪ [Draft of article for submission to the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians]

The Begam usually gives a grand fete, which lasts three days, during Christmas, and to which nearly all leading the society of Meerut, Delhi and the surrounding stations are invited. I have by me one of her circulars: “Her highness, the Begam Sumroo requests the honour of _____’s company at Sirdhana on Christmas Eve at the celebration of High mass and during the two following days, to ‘nautch’ and a display of fireworks.”1

Cosmopolitanism posits the option that fidelity to a particular place and tradition can be understood, like Aymara-speaking Bolivian rappers, as simultaneously and successfully participating in the global, modern, and the innovative.2

In 1820 a Delhi artist by the name of Mūhammad ʿAzam painted "The Household of Begum Samrū". [Fig. 1] Made in the contemporary Delhi Company style, the painting blended elements of Indian art (such as the flattened perspective of Mughal miniatures) with European norms of representation (realistic portraiture). The paintings were mainly created for officers of the East India Companies (Dutch, French, and English) or for Indian elites allied to rising European powers in the subcontinent. While the style of the painting was similar to others of the Delhi Company genre, its subject was remarkable for the time as it shows a begum (a title held by noble or high-ranking woman in Mughal India) at the center of an entourage of Indian and European officers. The artist's positioning of Begum Samrū in the center of the painting and holding the hookah is a clear sign of her authority in this particular domain.3 Even more remarkable is the environment that the begum and her male retinue occupy. While a large Indian carpet defines the foreground, neoclassical pilasters, pediments, and wide glass doors frame the background of the painting. The first of many large European mansions that she built and lived in during her life, Begum Samrū's mansion in Delhi was a clear expression of the manner in which she consolidated power in early nineteenth-century India. It employed bold European forms such as neo-classical façades, carriage porches, and formal salons, alongside more traditional elements of the Indian Muslim household such as the zenānā (women's quarters) and the hammām (bathing rooms). Contemporary accounts describe the ostentatious parties that the begum hosted for European officers and Indian royalty, replete with

1 Thomas Bacon, First Impression and Studies from Nature in Hindostan (London: Wm. H. Allen, 1837), vol. II, pp.52-3. A nautch refers to the tradition of North Indian dance performances by women (usually courtesans) for the pleasure of both male and female audiences. 2 Bruce Robbins, Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism From the Viewpoint of Violence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). Pg. 33. 3 The hookah was a symbol of power in Mughal miniature and later Company paintings as well. In these representations the subject shown holding the snake of the hookah was understood to be the authority figure or of the most importance in the ensemble.

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entertainment, feasting, and fireworks. In this essay, I argue that the begum’s architectural projects were not merely

representational facades of her station and rank but rather a key instrument by which she consolidated and maintained her political power in nineteenth-century India. More specifically, I analyze the begum’s architecture as a form of strategic cosmopolitanism—a form of socio-political cunning that allowed her to reimagine the dichotomies between masculine and feminine space; domestic and political realms; European and Indian décor; and local religiosity and global networks of piety. I focus on the three most ambitious architectural commissions of the begum: her mansion in Delhi (built c. 1815), her last mansion (built 1834-36) and a Catholic church (built 1822)—the latter two which were located in the independent territory of Sardhana (60 km northeast of Delhi).

My interrogative lens of cosmopolitanism departs from its traditional definitions as either a boundary-less imagination of the world, as advanced by the Stoics, or the particular capacity of Enlightenment man to participate in publics outside of his own orbit, as per the submission of Immanuel Kant.4 In these early articulations cosmopolitan subjectivity was imagined almost exclusively via a literate male subject whose border-crossing ability and cultural fluency was predetermined by racial and social rank. In addition, like the public sphere of the post-Enlightenment world, the cosmopolitan milieu was imagined as an external world—the arena outside of both the domestic as well as the interior, which was the affective realm of the personal. In contrast in more recent discussions scholars have strenuously identified a variety of subaltern subjects (migrants, women, children, refugees, and global laborers) as modern cosmopolitans. They have also argued that rather than being the enfranchisement of male elites, cosmopolitanism might be understood as a conditional process of exchange such as the inevitable frisson between hosts and guests, or the phatic communicative labor between neighbors, or the ethical tensions embedded in cultural trespass and political negotiation.5

In this essay the theoretical framework of cosmopolitanism intersects with a historiographical challenge of understanding the role of a woman builder in the global South. Recent scholarship on female patronage in South Asian, Islamic, and East Asian architecture has revealed the agency of women builders and the valuable contributions that they made to the built environment in these world regions. Much of this scholarship has focused on the patronage of architecture by royal or elite women who sought political power and social capital through their buildings. For example, scholars have argued that elite women built monasteries, churches, and mosques as a means to display piety and thereby consolidate their role within

4 The recent theoretical literature on cosmopolitanism is rich and offers a varied recalibration of both the Stoic and Kantian articulations of the concept. Nevertheless critical summaries of these older conceptualizations can be found in: “Introduction” in Anthony Kwame Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006). Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (New York: Routledge, 2005). Pheng Cheah, “Introduction Part II: The Cosmopolitical—Today” in Bruce Robbins and Pheng Cheah, eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). And “The Philosophical Foundation of Cosmopolitan Norms” in Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006). A comprehensive overview of cosmopolitanism with particular application to social theory can be found in Delanty, Gerard, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory” in The British Journal of Sociology (Vol. 56, No. 1, 2006). 5

See for instance Seyla Benhabib’s treatment of the “scarf affair” in France and revisions to German citizenship laws in the 1990s in “Democratic Iterations” Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism. See also Nikos Papastergiadis’ exegesis on contemporary art and war and hospitality in “The Global Orientation of Contemporary Art” in his Cosmopolitanism and Culture (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012), pgs. 105-115.

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patriarchal societies.6 Another body of scholarship has focused on women as the patrons of luxury objects and supporters of avant-garde art.7 Several scholars have also explored women’s strategic appropriation of the domestic realm or the family space as an arena from which to exercise political power and control.8 This scholarship has rightly resisted the portrayal of women as passive recipients or mere consumers of architecture, and instead developed an understanding of them as active creators of cultural spaces, social etiquette, and artistic practice. The bulk of this research, however, perpetuates the belief that female patrons commissioned architectural products to reinforce their positions within prescribed social norms and milieus. In other words, Buddhist nuns built Buddhist monasteries to consolidate their role as stewards of their own religious traditions, while female Pharaohs appropriated existing models of patriarchal authority in order to secure their own political position in ancient Egypt.9 This body of literature on women builders may be seen as echoing Gayatri Spivak’s concept of strategic essentialism, where essentialized feminine categories such as “mother”, “pious woman”, “domestic role models” are strategically co-opted by women in order to stake political claims and gain legal rights. Spivak argues that such strategic self-essentializing allows women to enter, navigate, and even challenge patriarchal hegemony.10

At a cursory glance the architecture of Begum Samrū stands in contrast to these examples for the simple fact that she was an outlier to many of the categories available to women at the time. She was never entirely a pious woman (originally Muslim the begum converted to Catholicism but continued to be a friend and patron of the Anglican church); nor was she a morally chaste widow (she had married once after the death of Reinhardt and after the death of her that husband she was rumored to have lovers or at least close male confidants); nor a devoted mother (the begum had no children but she did adopt Reinhardt’s great grandson as heir towards the end of her life); nor even a wily whore (although she did little to hide her past as a dancing girl or her romantic interests as an older woman the begum’s rise to power had little to do with her sexual cunning). If we are, however, to employ Spivak’s concept of strategic essentialism as a political tactic enabled by the space of alterity and difference then it indeed appears that the begum strategically manipulated aesthetic forms and cultural norms across religious, ethnic, gendered, and political divides to advance her own

6 Howayda al-Harithy, "Female Patronage of Mamluk Architecture in Cairo," Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 1(1994); Gavin Hambly, Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998); R. Stephen Humphreys, "Women as Patrons of Religious Architecture in Ayyubid Damascus," Muqarnas 11(1994). 7 Elizabeth Lillehoj, "Tōfukumon'in: Empress, Patron, and Artist," Woman's Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1996); Leslie Orr, "Women's Wealth and Worship: Female Patronage of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism in Medieval Tamilnadu," in Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India, ed. Mandrakanta Bose (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 8 Padma Kaimal, "A Man's World? Gender, Family, and Architectural Patronage in Medieval India,"

Archives of Asian Art 53(2002/2003); Antoinette Burton, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 9 Patricia Fister, "Sanmi no Tsubone: Ashikaga Wife, Imperial Consort, Buddhist Devotee and Patron," Japan Review 23(2011); Ann Macy Roth, "Models of Authority: Hatshepsut's Predecessors in Power," in Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, ed. Catherine H. Roehrig, Renée Dreyfus, and Cathleen A. Keller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). 10 Spivak, Gayatri, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography” in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak ed. Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). See also Sangeeta Ray’s treatment of Spivak’s concept of strategic essentialism in “Chapter 3, Reading Woman, Reading Essence: Whither

Gender?” in her Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

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interests. Through her architectural projects Begum Samrū was able to cleverly inhabit multiple, assumedly incompatible, realms of power as well as publicity. This was neither an architecture of “passing”—i.e. one based on the rote recitation of European models of masculine power—nor was it an architecture of radical subversion. Instead the success of Begum Samrū as well as her architecture might be understood as coming from the clever deployment of familiar spaces, rituals, and aesthetics, and even her own body in profoundly unfamiliar ways. The Begum Who was Begum Samrū and how did she come to acquire such social capital as well as political rank in early nineteenth-century India? A woman “distinguished by abilities of no common order and a daring seldom possessed by her sex” was how her contemporary Sir Thomas Metcalfe, British Resident at the Mughal Court, described her.11 As with other women in history, little survives by way of reliable records regarding the begum’s birth or early childhood. Most popular histories present her pedigree as elite, yet forced into poverty when her family fell on hard times.12 Farzānā, as the begum was called originally, probably entered a house of courtesans to become a nautch (dancing) girl in Delhi when she was eleven or twelve years of age. It was through her occupation that she caught the eye of a wealthy European by the name of Walter Reinhardt, and entered his harem at the age of fourteen. An Austrian, Reinhardt had come to India in the early 1740s on board a merchant vessel. Arriving on shore in South India he jumped ship and worked as a military officer in several European armies before going on to establish his own mercenary army that he supplied to various warring factions (French, Mughals, Marathas, and Jats) who were constantly locked in territorial skirmishes. During his long tenure in India he acquired the nom de guerre of Sombre mostly due to the cruelty and lack of mercy that he showed his enemies. Sombre, said in the Indian patois, quickly became Samrū, which is the name that Farzānā inherited along with the title of begum, as she became much more than Reinhardt’s concubine—accompanying him into battle and advising him in all matters of military strategy and political intrigue. After Reinhardt's death in 1778, the begum inherited his estate in Delhi and the large territory of Sardhana granted to him by the Mughal Emperor. His mercenary army also pledged allegiance to the begum (rather than the son he had had by his major wife—also an Indian) who went on to expand the battalions and lead her troops into battle for the next fifty years.

Late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Northern India was wracked by internecine warfare with several political entities (Indian as well as European) vying for power. The Indian factions included the waning Mughal Empire (still based in Delhi but reduced to puppets of the British East India Company (EIC)), the Marathas, Afghan Rohillas, Jats, and the Scindias. Although the British had successfully defeated the other European power—i.e. the

11 M.M. Kaye, The Golden Calm: An English Lady’s Life in Moghul Delhi (New York: Viking Press, 1980), pg. 111. 12 The begum and her colorful life has inspired countless literary portraits ranging from the popular and sensationalist biography to the more historical accounts. The most reliable of these are: Aditya Behl, "Articulating a Life, in Words and Pictures: Begum Samru and The Ornament of Histories," in After the Great Mughals: New Light on Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Painting, ed. Barbara Schmitz (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002). Julia Keay, Farzana: The Tempestuous Life and Times of Begum Samru (Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2013); Nicholas Shreeve, Dark Legacy: The Fortunes of Begam Samru (London: Bookwright, 1996). A brief history of the begum can also be found in the excellent biography of her adopted heir Dyce Sombre by Michael Fisher, The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Ochterlony Sombre: Victorian Anglo Indian M.P. and Chancery 'Lunatic' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

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French East India Company by the very end of the eighteenth century, their own power was far from complete as they were constantly challenged by Indian rulers. The territory that was most prized for these various political entities was the area referred to as the doab (literally the land of two rivers: the fertile belt between the Yamuna and Ganga rivers), which produced food for armies, handsome tax revenues from the farmlands, and also customs revenue from the boats that plied the rivers. Most importantly the navigable rivers were key to avenues of territorial expansion and maintaining military domination. Begum Samrū’s independent fiefdom of Sardhana was located within the doab and by the time of her depiction by Mūhammad ʿAzam her territory yielded a luxurious annual income of Rupees 600,000 in agricultural revenues.

Reinhardt was hated by the English for ruthlessly murdering several EIC officers when he was in the employ of the Mughal king (in fact it was they who had nicknamed him Sombre when his other epithet of “the Butcher of Patna” was perhaps proving difficult to roll of the tongue). Despite Reinhardt’s troubled history with the British and the begum’s conscious invocation of his legacy through his name, she eventually made strong alliances with the British and by 1803 the EIC had negotiated with the begum to secure an exclusive use of her troops. By 1805, when the begum started her major building programs she was the one of few independent rulers of an extremely fertile territory of land between two rivers. She was the commander of nine battalions of an extremely well organized military outfit comprising both infantry and cavalry and a respected political intermediary between the Indians and the English as they vied for complete control over the Gangetic plains.

It is in this context of extreme political flux—where each day brought a new reckoning of politically dominant powers—that strategic cosmopolitanism was a vital strategy of diplomacy, negotiation, and most certainly political manipulation. Historians have discussed the utility of cultural cosmopolitanisms during this period in South and Central Asia as a means of political and diplomatic negotiation. Some examples of this include the sharing of food between European and Islamic embassies; the adoption of Indian dress by Dutch and later British East India Company officials; and the patronage of a hybrid Indian and European art in the Mughal courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. For example Nile Green has shown the intimate conviviality established through the sharing of food between Iranian embassies and their English hosts in the eighteenth century. He argues that in this case cosmopolitanism was a face-to-face dialogue at a time when “empires were still in negotiation”.13 Similarly, in her history of sexual and familial arrangements between European men and Indian women in early colonial India, Durba Ghosh has brought attention to the quotidian, corporeal, and domestic negotiations of empire. Speaking specifically of Begum Samrū, Ghosh brings attention to her savvy appropriation of “multiple cultural images in order to fashion herself as a Mughal noblewoman, a pious Christian, and a woman of substantial wealth and political power.”14 Ghosh has shown that the begum’s political success was fundamentally based upon such border-crossings and her confident inhabitations of multiple and often disparate milieu. The many acts of sharing and hospitality that defined eighteenth and nineteenth century North India should not, however, be mistaken for sanguine cultural relations or placid political dynamics. Indeed, such cosmopolitanisms were fraught with political, ethnic, and religious tensions that threatened to, and often did, erupt in violent conflict. The strategic cosmopolitanism of Begum

13 Nile Green, "Kebabs and Port Wine: The Culinary Cosmopolitanism of Anglo-Persian Dining, 1800-1835," in Cosmopolitanism in Muslim Contexts: Perspectives from the Past, ed. Derryl N. Maclean and Sikeena Karmali Ahmed (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). 14 Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Pg. 163.

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Samrū’s architecture should thus be understood as a self-conscious yet risky intervention in a volatile milieu. The Mansion in Delhi A nineteenth-century map of the walled city of Shahjehanabad (Delhi) shows the prominent position and scale of the Red Fort—the seat of the Mughal Empire. [Fig. 2] Other prominent elements of walled city include the Chandni Chowk (the main commercial thoroughfare that ran from East to West from the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort to the Fatehpuri Masjid at the other end of the city. The main mosque of the city, the Jama Masjid, where the Mughal Emperor himself offered Friday prayers, can be seen to the South west of the Red Fort and the British EIC Resident’s house and gardens are to the North of the Red Fort. Located just off of the Chandni Chowk and equidistant from the British Resident’s house as well as the Red Fort is the house and mansion of gardens of Begum Samrū. This large estate was granted to Walter Reinhardt in recognition of his service to the Mughal king, but since it was the begum who had in fact built the mansion and its adjoining gardens, by the early nineteenth century maps of the area had begun to identify the property as “bagh Begum Samrū” or the estate of Begum Samrū. The begum’s estate is remarkable not only for its immense scale (comparable to the British Resident’s quarters) but also its proximity to the two major powers (the EIC and the Mughals) controlling Delhi at this time. Begum’s Samrū’s association with both these political entities (not exactly warring factions but also maintaining an uneasy cordiality between themselves) was clearly inscribed into the contested political geography of Delhi. She was not only able to situate herself within close distance of the two powers but also project her own power on the Chandni Chowk—the most public thoroughfare in Delhi.

The begum was not the only woman who marked her presence through architecture on the Chandni Chowk. Indeed, the Begum Sahiba Jahanara—princess and eldest daughter of the Mughal Emperor Shahjehan who was the patron of the walled city of Shahjahanabad—had already established such as tradition of female patronage in the seventeenth century.15 Jahanara had commissioned a large sarai (rest house for travelers) on the Chandni Chowk and some historians credit her for the larger “Moonlit Street” or the Chandni Chowk, which functioned as part emporia for luxury objects from around the world as well as housed the mansions of nobles and public gardens.16 Stephen Blake also identifies six congregational mosques commissioned by Mughal patronesses within (or just outside) the walled city of Shahjehanabad. [Fig. 3] The Akbarabadi Mosque (c. 1650) was commissioned by one of Shahjahan’s wives along the Chandni Chowk. The mosque was destroyed by the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and its foundations have only recently been discovered by the

15 Afshan Bokhari has submitted a sturdy argument of Jahanara’s use of architecture as a ways of self-edification especially with the building of mosques in Agra and Srinagar. See Afshan Bokhari, "Between Patron and Piety: Jahan Ara Begum's Sufi Affiliations and Articulations," in Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200-1800 C.E., ed. John J Curry and Erik S. Ohlander (London: Routledge, 2011). 16 Scholars who credit Jahanara with the building of the sarai as well as the larger Chandni Chowk include: Stephen P. Blake, "Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Ṣafavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad," in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin Hambly (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998); Stephen F. Dale, "Empires and Emporia: Palace, Mosque, Market, and Tomb in Istanbul, Isfahan, Agra, and Delhi," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53, no. 1/2 (2010). Catherine Asher, on the other hand, only credits Jahanara with the building of the sarai. See, Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, 4 vols., vol. 1, The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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Archaeological Survey of India. The Fatehpuri Masjid built by another wife of Shahjehan (Fatehpuri Begum) around 1650 was located prominently at the Western terminus of the Chandni Chowk. Sirhindi Begum (yet another wife of Shahjehan) built an eponymous mosque in 1650. A wife (Aurangabadi Begum) and a daughter (Zinat-ul Nisa Begum) of the Emperor Aurangzeb both had mosques (Aurangabadi Masjid and Zinat-ul Masjid) named after them. Noble women of slightly lower rank such as Fakr al-Nisa Begum (wife of Shuja’at Khan) and Sahib Sultan Begum (daughter of Hakim Nizam al-Din Muhammad) were named patrons of the Fakr al-Masjid and the Ilchi Mosque respectively.17 The Sunehri Masjid (Golden Mosque) near the Delhi Gate of the Red Fort was commissioned by Qudsia Begum—mother of the Mughal Emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur—in 1747 and completed in 1751. Qudsia Begum also commissioned her own palace (Qudsia Bagh) in old Delhi.18 As Blake points out it was not only noble or pious women who built prominent architecture in early modern Delhi. He notes the example of Nur Bai a famous courtesan and singer who had a large mansion in the walled city (its exact location is unknown) where she entertained large crowds of men as well as women.

Given the concentration of architecture patronized by women in the walled city of Shahjahanabad it could be argued that the Begum Samrū was not just inserting herself into a male history of building but also a female history of building and creating public facades in the walled city of Shahjahanabad. Although it should be noted that with a few exceptions, such as Nur Bai and the personal residence of Qudsia Begum, most of these women were building either spaces of public service (sarais, gardens, etc) or mosques, in order to exhibit their piety. More importantly the few ostentatious palaces and mansions built by Indians during the begum’s time would have been built in a typically “introverted” fashion where an opaque public façade would have led to one or a series of courtyards for various manner of socializing.19 In contrast, Begum Samrū’s mansion in Delhi was defined by a large portico on the South (facing Chandni Chowk) and a carriage porch and verandahs to the North. Indeed, by the time that this mansion was built the begum had stopped observing purdah (the custom of women veiling when they appeared in the company of men) and it was of utmost importance that her private residence portrayed her willingness as well as ability to participate in a male public sphere. [Figs. 4 & 5]

Mūhammad ʿAzam’s painting of the begum in her mansion20 can be compared to a similar Company painting of her friend and ally David Ochterlony in Delhi. [Fig. 6] Ochterlony was the first British Resident at Delhi (1st tenure: 1803-1806 and 2nd tenure: 1818-1820) and in this likeness of him he is dressed in Indian clothes as he watches a nautch (dance) whilst enjoying his hookah and surrounded by his Indian entourage. As with the portrait of Begum Samrū, European traditions of building and décor are evident in the large windows and doors in Ochterlony’s mansion. Despite his sartorial and other cultural appropriations of Indian behavior Ochterlony’s house accommodates numerous portraits of his English forebears, several of whom seem to look askance at him for having gone “native”.

17 Blake, "Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Ṣafavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad." Pg. 411-412. 18 The life-story of Qudsia Begum bears resemblance to that of Begum Samrū’s in that they both seem to have risen from the lowly station of dancing girls to the rank of begum through marriage. See Tahera Aftab, Inscribing South Asian Women: An Annotated Bibliography & Research Guide (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 19 Mirza Sangin Baig, Sair-ul-Manāzil (Delhi: Ghalib Academy, 1982 [reprint]). 20 Although it is believed that this painting is of the Begum’s mansion in Delhi it is difficult to know this for sure. By the early 1820s (to which time the painting is dated) the Begum was residing in Meerut (in a mansion that is no longer extant and for which there are no archival records) and her mansion in Sardhana was still a decade from being built. Nevertheless it is important to note that she chose to portray her interiors and her domestic realm in a particularly Europeanized manner.

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The painting commissioned by the begum of her household quite consciously appropriates many of these tropes of masculine power seen in Company paintings. Like Ochterlony the begum is shown holding the snake of the hookah—a clear sign of her authority in this setting. Whilst Ochterlony’s importance in his own milieu is conveyed by the exaggerated scale of his body vis-à-vis the other subjects in the painting; the begum’s superior rank is represented by her central positioning within painting’s frame and the arrangement of the other subjects (all men) such that they radiate outwards from her. The begum’s court as represented in this painting includes: her adopted heir Dyce Sombre (great grandson of Walter Reinhardt through his liaison with his major Indian wife or badi begum) to her right; George Dyce (father of Dyce Sombre and husband to Julia Anna (grand-daughter of Walter Reinhardt)) to her left; Jan Sahib (son of George Thomas an Irish mercenary soldier, close ally to, and rumored lover of the begum) to the right of Dyce Sombre; Lalah Gokul Chand (her munshi or secretary) sitting at her feet taking notes; and her Italian engineer/ architect Antonio Reghellini sitting away from her to the right in a red coat and blue trousers. In addition to the treasurers, accountants, ministers, and of course military personnel pictured there is also a convoy of foreign delegates (the four men seated at a diagonal to the left of center). Despite its formal similarities to the Ochterlony painting the content of the begum’s painting conveys a rather different message. Rather than depicting her mansion as a space of leisure or entertainment as Ochterlony does, the begum presents her place of residence as a space of political and military action (guards and officers mingle with ministers and her advisors); global connections (as evidenced by her foreign visitors); and her own agency in communicating to powers outside of her immediate domestic realm (her secretary taking notes).21 Unlike Ochterlony’s complete appropriation of male Indian dress, the begum’s sartorial choices straddle male (a turban underneath her shawl and loose trousers of the sort worn by men) and female (her delicate shawls and her kameez (tunic)) and Indian and European (like her European counterparts and foreign visitors the begum wears shoes inside the house and sits on a chair).22 As mentioned before the begum frequently hosted nautches in her own mansions (in Delhi and Sardhana) yet in this painting she chooses to represent her domestic realm not as a realm of leisure, as Ochterlony does, but rather one of political and military power.

The global crossing of colonial and indigenous motifs seen in the Ochterlony and Samrū homes was a persistent trope of European expansion in the global South. Such architectural manifestations have been most thoroughly examined by Anthony King in his history of the transformation of the bangla (a vernacular domestic unit in pre-colonial Bengal) to its global proliferation as the bungalow.23 King has traced the evolution of the bungalow as a tectonic representation of colonial hybridity (in terms of materials, formalism, and architectural vocabulary) as well as a site for the social reproduction of empire through the reinforcement of served and servant spaces and racial segregation within the colonial home. Even when scholars have attempted to subvert the dichotomies at play in King’s analysis, for example by calling

21 A few years before she died, the begum narrated her biography to Lala Gokul Chand and some scholars have read the munshi’s (secretary’s) posture in this painting as being representative of that particular transmission. Yet considering that throughout her active political career the begum communicated often and articulately to her European and Indian allies, it seems reductive to assume that this act of the begum speaking and the munshi transcribing could only be related to the creation of her biography. 22 The begum’s sartorial choices and deliberate appropriation of European and masculine norms of dress has been examined by Alka Hingorani. See Alka Hingorani, "Artful Agency: Imagining and Imaging Begam Samru," Archives of Asian Art 53(2002/2003). 23 Anthony D. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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attention to the persistent mixing of races in domestic space as Swati Chattopadhyay does in her article on colonial Calcutta she reaffirms the spatial condition of master and servant in these homes.24 More importantly, in these studies the primary agent of domestic space is always the European colonizer—he or she is the primary inhabitant as well as organizer of the social and spatial qualities of the colonial home. Yet the architecture of the begum reveals a more tenuous and fluid relationship between the spatial segregation of European and Indian, and master and servant, masculine and feminine. Indeed, the very public façade of the begum’s mansion on the Chandni Chowk, the deliberate staging of herself as a political and diplomatic authority within her domestic space, and her androgynous sartorial choices allowed the begum to consciously subvert established praxes of habitus and domesticity. In other words, the begum’s mansion in Delhi was cosmopolitan not only because it allowed her to operate within a larger world outside of her own local or regional belonging, but to frame entirely new terms of engagement with local as well as foreign agents. The architecture of the mansion as well as in the pictorial representation of it in Mūhammad ʿAzam’s painting essentialize difference: the scale and style of the begum’s architecture as different from their urban context and the difference between the begum’s female body and that of her male court allow the begum to claim power, position, and intelligibility within nineteenth-century Delhi. Mansion in Sardhana A few years before she passed away, the begum commissioned another mansion for herself in her independent territory of Sardhana. This mansion took over two years to complete (1834-36) and was to be even grander than her quarters in Delhi. [Figs. 7 & 8] Like the mansion in Delhi generous carriage porches led to columned verandahs on two of the broadest facades in the mansion at Sardhana. The verandah on the main entrance of the mansion led to one large living room and two smaller salons. Unlike the mansion in Delhi, where the proximity to the Mughal Emperor as well as the British Resident was key, in Sardhana the begum was the reigning sovereign until the time of her death and as such her mansion served as the administrative center of her territory. Therefore, it is curious that she did not build a new mansion until she was so close to her death—choosing to live instead during the major part of her rule in Meerut (the nearby British cantonment town) and in another mansion acquired from the Marathas in Sardhana. It is my contention that unlike the mansion in Delhi, which served as an active space of political negotiations, the begum’s last architectural commission—her mansion in Sardhana was meant as a façade that would ensure her political legacy long after her death. In 1803, the begum had struck a deal with the British EIC: she would allow them exclusive use of her mercenary army in return for sovereignty over her territory of Sardhana. The deal, unusual for this time and for such a prosperous territory as Sardhana, also stated explicitly, however, that following the begum’s death her territorial and other assets would become the property of the EIC. Towards the end of her life, especially as her health began to fail, the begum appealed to her British allies to pass on at least part of her assets to her adopted heir Dyce Sombre. These numerous appeals were rejected. The only concession the EIC made to the begum was the use of personal property (in continuing use of her descendants—i.e. Dyce Sombre) as well as any charitable or religious institutions that she may have established. Dyce Sombre had already proved himself as unpredictable, lethargic, and politically clumsy when it came to dealing with the EIC. Although the begum could not predict the eccentric life-choices that her adopted heir would make after her death, his decadent lifestyle of drinking, enjoying the company of women,

24 Swati Chattopadhyay, "Blurring Boundaries: The "Limits" of White Town in Calcutta," The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59, no. 2 (2000).

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and entertaining himself could not have inspired much confidence in a woman whose own adult life was spent in the strenuous and calculated acquisition of military and political power. I therefore suggest that the commissioning of this large mansion towards the end of the begum’s life, albeit ostensibly for the “use” of Dyce Sombre, was in fact an architectural strategy by which she would perpetuate her own legacy beyond her death. The motivation to build the mansion at Sardhana as a permanent façade to herself and for posterity is further borne out by evidence that despite the opulence and grandeur of her mansions the begum’s own needs of comfort and indeed her notions of propriety were often at odds with the architectural spaces that she had commissioned. For instance, in his diary Dyce Sombre remarked that despite the comforts of the mansion in Sardhana the begum preferred to sleep, host visitors, and administer her duties from tents pitched in the back gardens of the house. When she briefly utilized her bedroom in the mansion it was remarkable enough for Sombre to make the following observation: “H.H. for the first time slept in her new sleeping room; had nautch and fireworks in the night; I went to sleep knowing that H.H. would stop in the house, but she called for her tonjon and went to the tents about 12 o’clock, so no one was aware of her going, & no one went to hand her . . .”25 At numerous other instances Dyce Sombre remarks that despite the rains and the damp weather outside the begum could not be convinced to move inside the new mansion and spend more than a couple of hours indoors.26 It is therefore safe to assume that the begum saw the house less as a functional space providing domestic comfort or even shelter but rather as a stage from which to project her political, charitable, and administrative duties. Despite the fact that she herself did not observe purdah and freely passed between male and female spaces, the begum also ran her large household along the traditional lines of segregated spaces for men and women. Dyce Sombre records in his journal entry of July 18th 1834 that he invited his favorite concubine, Hoosna and their infant daughter (Josephine Urbana) to stay in his room. In addition to the fact that Dyce Sombre was fond of Hoosna, the infant was experiencing health difficulties and it was thought that the better conditions of Dyce Sombre’s apartments would cure the child.27 This form of cohabitation between couples was not the norm in Muslim or Hindu households in nineteenth-century India and the arrangements were made without the begum’s knowledge or permission. As soon as the begum found out about it she expressed her displeasure at Sombre’s decision and pressured him to send Hoosna back to the zenānā. It is also quite clear from Sombre’s diary that the married couples in the begum’s household (including the European “sons-in-law” married to Walter Reinhardt’s great grand-daughters) did not share their living spaces with their wives, but rather followed the Indian custom of “visiting” their wives in their zenānā and returning to their rooms as a matter of course. Quite obviously the begum was selecting European and Indian customs as per her convenience and without much regard to consistency. Whilst her mansions in Delhi and Sardhana boasted extravagant public facades and she herself projected a public persona even within her domestic realm, she also maintained her power as a matriarch of her household by

25 [India Office Records, British Library] IOR/L/L 64 (441). Pg. 222, diary entry of 1 January 1834, Wednesday. When Sombre says that H.H. would stop in the house, he means to say that she would stay in the house. A tonjon= litter or palanquin. 26 [India Office Records, British Library] IOR/L/L 64 (441). In his diary entry of May 17th 1834 Dyce Sombre says: “H.H. sleeps out in the projecting verandah of the Western side, & I hope finding it cool; however, she must like it better than being shut up in room.” Pg. 242. 27 The child passed away when she was a year old. Dyce Sombre also had three children by another concubine called Dominga, all of whom passed away before the age of 3.

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enforcing strict Indian norms of companionate behavior and living arrangements. She alone, however, passed easily between male and female spaces, her presence and position unquestioned in otherwise strictly segregated spaces. Perhaps the most striking feature of the begum’s mansion in Sardhana was the approximately twenty five paintings of various European officials and the begum herself that hung in the central hall and two eastern salons. Some of the more important of these included: a portrait of the begum seated on a throne and holding a hookah (8ft. 3 in. x 6ft. 3 in); her adopted heir David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre (7 ft. 10 in. x 5 ft. 6 in.) wearing formal dress with the Insignia of the Papal Order of Christ28; an enormous equestrian portrait of British Resident at Delhi Sir David Ochterlony (dimensions unavailable); presentation by the Begum of a chalice to the Bishop and clergy at Sardhana (6ft. x 7 ft. 8 in.); and the Begum receiving Lord Combermere after the successful siege of Bharatpur in 1826.29 Other important portraits included those of the French General Allard and the Italian General Ventura (both of who fought for the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh who enjoyed cordial relations with the EIC); the Italian bishop Reverend Julius Caesar of the Church of Sardhana and his later replacement Father Murray; a portrait of the Armenian Aga Wamus/ Wanus (father-in-law of the previously mentioned John Thomas/ Jan Sahib the son of George Thomas who appears in Mūhammad ʿAzam’s painting seated to the left of Dyce Sombre in Indian dress) and the begum’s Italian officer Antonio Reghellini (the engineer from Vicenza credited with the design of the church as well as the last mansion). Out of the approximately twenty five portraits in the mansion only four featured the begum but these were prominently placed in the central hall. All of the other portraits were of European men (or at least men such as John Thomas and Dyce Sombre who had some European blood and whose allegiance lay squarely with the EIC). In contrast the salons of the mansion did not house portraits of any Indian sovereigns nor the begum’s trusted Indian servants such as her treasurer or her secretary. These paintings allowed the begum to stage her domestic space as political tableaux—one where she shared rank and station with her most celebrated European male counterparts. Through this presentation she quite literally inserted herself in the masculine sphere of political and military conquest—once again turning her bodily difference into a form of currency.

Recent scholarship in feminist theory has overturned the simple dichotomy of the public, male and urban as the political sphere vs. the domestic, female, and interior realm as the affective or apolitical milieu.30 Instead feminist scholars argue that the domestic is deeply political and at times the very locus of powerful social and cultural critique if not change. The fact that Begum Samrū’s mansions also served as her court and salon where she received and strategized with European officers leaves little doubt that her domestic realm was deeply political. But I would like to argue something else here, which is that in this case “home” was not

28 Rev. A. Saunders Dyer, Chaplain at Meerut, says that this painting was completed in Italy in 1839 when Dyce Sombre was traveling through Rome. Dyer reports that during his time in Rome, Dyce Sombre also organized “a solemn mass in memory of the Begum to be celebrated in the Church of San Carlo on the Corse.” Calcutta Review, April 1894 (p. 312) by the Rev. A. Saunders Dyer. Also cited in IOR Mss Eur F82/64. 29 Combermere was the Commander-in-Chief of India (stationed by the EIC) from 1825-1830. During the battle of Bharatpur the begum joined him with her battalions in order to show her support and to further prove her allegiance to the British over the Indian factions that controlled parts of the Doab such as Bharatpur. See Maj. Edward C. Archer, Tours in Upper India, and in Parts of the Himalaya Mountains (London: R. Bentley, 1833). 30 Mona Domosh and Joni Seager, Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).

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only the site in which cosmopolitan agency was exercised but it was the very mechanism through which it was consolidated and perpetuated. In other words, while the extravagant neo-classical facades proclaimed the begum’s wealth and power to her male European counterparts, her accommodations to the women in her household and other Indians also established herself as matriarch of her army and subjects. Indeed, the begum’s self-fashioning can be seen as an example of cosmofeminism as theorized by Pollock et. al. in their exegesis on cosmopolitanism. They press for an understanding of the intimate domestic sphere as an essential site of cosmopolitan production by arguing that, “domesticity itself is a vital interlocutor and not just an interloper in law, politics, and public ethics.”31 The begum’s mansions were precisely such a savvy appropriation of public and private traditions, political and personal affect, and masculine and feminine realms of power. Cosmopolitanism was not simply a condition of cross-cultural conversation but a vital strategy of it. The Church at Sardhana In 1781 (3 years after Walter Reinhardt’s death) the begum converted to Catholicism. In 1822 she began the construction of a large church in Sardhana with the help of her Italian officer Antonio Reghellini, who had been trained as an engineer in Vicenza. [Fig. 9] No doubt the church was meant to be a grand statement of the begum’s piety, but more than any of her other projects it was meant to ensure her lasting legacy after her death and her participation in other global circuits of power defined by religious affiliation. It was the realization that her legacy might be wiped out without a trace after her death that the begum began to invest in Christian endowments such as the large church at Sardhana.

Popular legend has it that Reghellini fashioned the church at Sardhana as a replica of the St. Peters in Rome although even a cursory observation of the facades of the former show that it was designed quite differently from the latter. Instead, the prototype for the church at Sardhana was, in all likelihood, the Roman Catholic Church at Agra commonly known as “Akbar’s Church”. The Mughal Emperor Akbar had laid the foundation of that church in 1598 as a tribute to the Jesuits missionaries in his court. The church suffered destruction and looting first during the reign of Shah Jahan (1635-36) and later during the siege of Agra by the Persian Ahmad Shah Abdali (1758). In 1769 Walter Reinhardt, then Commander of Agra Fort (and in the employ of the Marathas) rebuilt and expanded the church. It is extremely likely that the begum was baptized as Catholic in 1781 in “Akbar’s Church”.

The church at Sardhana, although much larger and grander than “Akbar’s Church” at Agra, replicates some of the latter’s most visible elements such as the neoclassical portico, the central dome, and the minor chapels off the main nave. It is also likely that the Agra Church carried steeples, similar to the one at Sardhana, that were taken down when the church was further refurbished in 1838. While Reinhardt cannot be credited for building as prolifically as the begum, she was clearly emulating his patronage of religious institutions as a means of establishing her own patrimony. Interestingly, however, it was (and continues to be) Begum Samrū’s church that is remembered and visited as a religious destination rather than the one patronized by her husband. Like her large estate and mansion in Delhi, which bears her patron’s name, it functions as a signifier of her far-flung alliances with power centers such as the Vatican—who sent a bishop (Fr. Julius Caesar Scotti) to preside over the church in Sardhana.

Like her residences the church at Sardhana shows a somewhat unrestrained mixing of

31 Sheldon Pollock et al., "Cosmopolitanisms " in Cosmopolitanism, ed. Sheldon Pollock, et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002). Pg. 9.

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traditional styles. [Fig. 10] The domes of the church stand next to oversized steeples that evoke Islamic minarets rather than Christian bell towers. On the interior the central dome is supported by squinches and the plaster detailing recalls the delicacy of muqarnas from the Islamic architecture of Central Asia and the Fertile Crescent. The central altar of the church features pietra dura ornamentation, which is a style of ornamentation commonly found in Mughal architecture most famously in the Taj Mahal. In terms of aesthetic style then the church was unabashed in its cosmopolitan invocations of Indian and Islamic architecture as well as European typologies of the cross-plan church.

Like her mansions the church was a site of cosmopolitan crossings through the religious officials that served there. The first bishop to serve at the church, Reverend Julius Caesar Scotti, was an Italian from Rome and the second was an Irishman named Father Murray. As a rare Catholic religious institution within a largely Protestant milieu, the church also enabled the begum to attract non-British Europeans into her religious community and thereby into her service and loyalty. This was an advantage considering that she was a military and political ally of the British but still desired to have access to the European continent. For example in the year before she died, she gifted a small ivory portrait of herself to King Louis Phillipe of France.32 He acknowledged its receipt by sending her a portrait of himself in return; unfortunately the gift arrived after her death and the portrait was confiscated by the British customs who only transmitted the accompanying letter to Dyce Sombre. While it cannot be known for sure if the begum had known about the French sovereign from a fellow congregant at the Church it cannot be ruled out that the church was a space that facilitated such alliances and was seen as a refuge by Catholic Europeans who passed through the doab. The begum attended mass here every Sunday and as mentioned in the epigraph to this essay, she held a great feast following the midnight mass on Christmas. She also, however, distributed monetary gifts to her subjects on the Islamic festival of Eid and the Hindu festival of Diwali—practices that vexed her resident bishop a great deal who urged her to come to confession and beg forgiveness for her religious transgressions. There is no evidence that the begum did his bidding and plenty of evidence to the contrary that she continued to be ecumenical in her charities and endowments. For example, in 1834 she made a generous donation of 150,000 Sonat Rupees to the Pope and a smaller donation of 50,000 Sonat Rupees to the Archbishop of Canterbury (head of the Anglican Church).33 Most surprisingly in 1835 just before her death the begum built a modest Anglican church neighboring Meerut. [Fig. 11] By this time Meerut was a large British cantonment and the church was built for the military officers of the EIC who were lacking a space for their congregation. By building a church for a denomination other than the one that she belonged to the begum once again asserted herself as belonging simultaneously and comfortably to many different worlds.

The figure of the cosmopolitan has necessarily privileged mobility. It assumes an itinerant or traveling figure usually in the form of a literate European male who has the prerogative as well as the means to cross borders and converse across cultural borders.34 Yet the

32 [India Office Records, British Library] IOR/L/L 64 (441). 33 Sonat Rupees were a higher denomination of the Indian currency at the time, carrying more value than the regular Rupee. 34 This was especially true for the early modern world where tourists, traders, emissaries, and missionaries were seen as the proto-cosmopolitans of a globalizing world. For examples of this see: Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India Before Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Denis Cosgrove, "Globalism and Tolerance in Early Modern Geography," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93, no. 4 (2003); Pamela Fletcher, "The Grand Tour on Bond Street:

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begum subverted this notion of peregrination as a crucial condition of cosmopolitanism. Instead she managed to make crucial global alliances and create an intelligibility (sphere of influence) for herself outside of her local domain by using architecture as a strategy of cosmopolitan communication. Through her church, the begum was able to mobilize the local and the particular (Sardhana) in order to reach out to a cosmopolitan global and universal (the Catholic Church and continental Europe). It bears noting again that this was not simply the case of a pious woman inscribing her piety onto the masculine built environment. Nor is the church at Sardhana a capitulation to a predominantly Protestant European hegemony. Instead through her patronage of a grand religious structure, the begum kept alive a frisson between her Anglican allies and herself a Catholic, while making global alliances beyond her political territory. Her singular and rooted location in Sardhana did not stop her from belonging in multiple overlapping and often antagonistic worlds. Cosmopolitan Legacies Shortly after the begum’s death in 1836, her adopted heir Dyce Sombre left India and traveled to Southeast Asia, where he reportedly met fellow travelers who had heard of the begum’s charity and generosity especially to the Christian community. He later left for England, where he married Lady Mary Ann Jervis, and briefly served as a Parliamentarian. The Jervis family, however, soon labeled Dyce Sombre as a “lunatic” and forced him to leave England and take up residence in the continent. While in Italy, he commissioned the Italian sculptor Adamo Tadolini to create a large monument of the begum for the church in Sardhana. [Figs. 12 & 13] The piece which was brought to Sardhana in 1848 shows Begum Samrū seated on a throne flanked by Dyce Sombre on one side and her chief advisor on the other. Behind them are the treasurer and Bishop Julius Caesar. Allegorical figures representing time, prosperity, death, and suffering surround the base of the monument. Of the three friezes at the base of the monument, the most prominent facing front shows the begum handing a chalice to a Bishop while her own Fr. Julius Caesar (not yet Bishop then), Dyce Sombre, and Antonio Reghellini (allegedly holding the plans to the church) look on. The frieze on the left side of the base repeats the court scene depicted in Mūhammad ʿAzam’s painting, with fewer members (the large number of the begum’s Indian staff are edited out). The panel on the right side of the base has been read as either the begum processing towards a durbar (royal court) or as her march to Bharatpore to show solidarity with Lord Combermere when he was laying siege to the fort there.35

There is only one panel in the monument that does not include a likeness of Dyce Sombre. Because he was the patron of this monument, because he is as prominent a figure in it as the begum, and because he commissioned it a time of great personal duress when his future

Cosmopolitanism and the Commercial Art Gallery in Victorian London," Visual Culture in Britain 12, no. 2 (2011). 35 My own inclination is to read this panel as the begum’s march to Bharatpore in 1825. The reigning monarch of Bharatpore was an infant whose uncle was about to stage a coup. Having vested interests in the territory of Bharatpore, the British EIC had requested their Indian allies to send military reinforcements but specifically stated that the Indian rulers themselves should not appear on the battlefield. This may have been to avoid the possibility of large-scale warfare. The begum, however, decided to accompany her troops and joined Lord Combermere at his camp in order to show her unwavering loyalty to the British. The begum spoke often of this event, had her munshi record it in her biography, and supposedly even had a painting of her meeting Lord Combermere at Bharatpore commissioned for her mansion in Sardhana. It would, therefore, not be surprising that Dyce Sombre chose to edify this particular event in the begum’s monument.

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was uncertain, it is safe to say that Dyce Sombre wished to memorialize himself as much as the begum through this monument. Indeed, when he died only three years later in 1851 his remains were brought back to Sardhana and interred at the base of the monument. What is perhaps startling though is that despite Dyce Sombre’s cosmopolitan experiences of traveling through Southeast Asia and Europe, living in England, and having an elevated social station through his marriage to a European woman and his rank as a Parliamentarian, he chose to leave a record of his cosmopolitan legacy in the sleepy backwater of Sardhana. If the begum had entered a cosmopolitan world first through conjugal relations with a European man and later by making savvy political alliances with European powers; the same modalities of marriage and political maneuvering had ensured neither security nor power to Dyce Sombre. In the symbolic and corporeal “return” to Sardhana following his death, Dyce Sombre instead announced his own cosmopolitanism via his matriarch the begum in a church that she had built. Here he is able to stand proudly alongside Indians and Europeans, Catholic priests and an Italian architect, a woman ruler and her multiple subjects. Noticeably, however, he stands in the shadow of Begum Samrū who created vibrant cosmopolitan architecture for herself, for her adopted heir, and various others during her extraordinary life.

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Fig. 1: The Household of Begum Samru by Mūhammad ʿAzamGouache on Paper, approx. 60 cm x 40 cm, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

Fig.2:MapofwalledcityofShahjahanabad showingtheclosespatialrelationbetweenthe1.RedFort(seatofMughalEmpire),2.theBritishResidency,and3.theestateofBegumSamrū

1

2

3

Fig3:MapofwalledcityofShahjahanabad showingthestructuresbuiltbywomenpatrons1650-1750

Fig.4:TheNorthfaçadeoftheDelhimansionofBegumSamrū[WatercoloronPaperfromtheMetcalfeAlbum,BritishLibrary]

Fig.5:TheSouthfaçadeoftheDelhimansionofBegumSamrū[WatercoloronPaperfromtheMetcalfeAlbum,BritishLibrary

Fig.6:SirDavidOchterlony inIndiandress,smokingahookahandwatchinganautch inhishouseinDelhi,c.1820

[Watercolor,35cmx25cm,BritishLibrary,London]

Fig.7:TheBegumSamru’s PalaceatSardhana.NowSt.CharlesIntercollege—aschoolforindigentChristianboys.

Fig.8:TheBegumSamru’s PalaceatSardhana.NowSt.CharlesIntercollege—aschoolforindigentChristianboys.

Fig.9:St.Mary’sBasilica,Sardhana,byAntonioReghellini (1822)

Fig.10:InteriorofSt.Mary’sBasilica,Sardhana,byAntonioReghellini (1822)

Fig.11:St.Joseph’s(Anglican)ChurchinMeerutfoundedbyBegumSamru in1834

Fig.12:ThemonumenttoBegumSamrū intheSardhana Church.DyceSombre isshownbelowherandtoherright.

Fig.13:CentralfriezeofthemonumenttoBegumSamrū intheSardhana Church.Thebegumisshownpresentingachalicetothebishop.