Indira Devi Dhanrajgir
Born (1929-08-17) August 17, 1929
Hyderabad, Telangana, British Raj
OccupationPoet
NationalityIndian
Notable worksReturn Eternity (1965)
Partings in Mimosa (1968)
Memories of the Deccan (2008)
SpouseGunturu Seshendra Sarma

Indira Devi Dhanrajgir (born 17 August 1929), better known as Rajkumari Indira,[1] is an Indo-Anglian poet and photography enthusiast from Hyderabad, India. She was nominated for the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature.[2]

Biography

Early life

family and literature
Rajkumari Indira's husband, Seshendra with their son and grandchildren

Indira was born to Raja Dhanrajgirji Bahadur, a philanthropist, and his wife, Rani Premila Devi.[1] Her father was noted for having introduced many Western ideas and the game cricket in Hyderabad, and was of service to the court of Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad.[1] She was the oldest daughter of four and was tutored at home by an English governess.[3] Her paternal grandfather, Raja Saheb Narsinghji Bahadur, was regarded "as the Rockefeller of the South."[3] The Dhanrajgirs owned palaces in Bombay, Hyderabad, and Poona.[3][4]

At a young age, Indira met influential people: she played carrom with Kishen Pershad who served twice as Prime Minister of Hyderabad, Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III gifted her a Shetland pony on her first birthday, and listened to recitations of noted poet Allama Iqbal which inspired her to engage herself with poetry.[3][4]

In the late 1940s, she befriended in an unlikely way Makhdoom Mohiuddin, a member of the Communist Party of India and the Progressive Writers' Movement. For a while, Mohiuddin refrained from attending Raja Dhanrajgir's parties due to his leftist views. Mohiuddin did, however, manage to make regular visits to Gyan Bagh Palace. One of Indira's poems and Makhdoom Mohiuddin's were published side by side with their photos in The Siasat Daily. To his great shame, the latter suffered greatly at the hands of his fellows for having a friendship with a "Maharani."[3]

Literary career

Rajkumari Indira taught herself how to type and started composing couplets in Urdu on the lawns of Gyan Bagh Palace, having been inspired by the works of Allama Iqbal, Ghalib and Sri Aurobindo.[3] Since her teenage years, Indira was also a photography enthusiast and started making good collection of photographs, which she says, are worth being shared in the book.[1]

In 1964, her first volume of poetry was published under the title The Apostle, followed later on by Return Eternity and Yearnings and Other Poems in 1965 and 1966 respectively.[1] During these times, she created a group of poets around her and turned the Gyan Bagh Palace a place for local poets, which included her future husband Gunturu Seshendra Sarma, Aziz Qaisi, Makhdoom Mohiuddin and Jwalamukhi, to meet, read, discuss and translate poetry.[5]

Excerpt from Partings in Mimosa

Time, a singing continuity, sings it way,
Cutting back at unhealed wounds. Into this
Wounded dawn we sigh a pain,
To be lifted by the arms of a summer madness
And watch the echo retract, renunciate,
Disclaim and give up bordering away from proximity
Into the yesterday...

She later gained recognition among literary circles with her fourth publication, Partings in Mimosa. Literary critic Usharbudh Arya described it as "a really promising talent demonstrably conscious of the restraint which the use of free verse demands... [she] gives to her 483 lines a sense of enactive rhythm, a lingering, thoughtful gusto, [and] a corresponding control of structure."[6]

At a time of increasing literary success, she suddenly gave up writing poetry after marrying Gunturu Seshendra Sarma in 1970. She did this, affirming: "There can't be two poets in one family."[3] For that, Osmania University professor Kousar Azam said of her "as a poet belonging to the Aurobindo School of Poetry, she received some critical attention but now remains known, sadly, only to a select few."[5]

The latest publication she wrote was a coffee table book about her family and the palace titled Memories of the Deccan which was dedicated to the eighth Nizam, Prince Mukarram Jah on his 7th birthday and Princess Esra Birgen, Princes Azmet Jah and Shehkar, in October 2008.[1]

Personal life

In 1970, she was married to Gunturu Seshendra Sarma, a Telugu poet.[1] She currently resides at the Gyan Bagh Palace.

Honors

She became the first President and Chairperson of Hindi Academy Government of Andhra Pradesh, and vice-president of the Telugu Writers Conference in 1968.[1] She has been also on the advisory panel of the Sahitya Academy, Urdu Committee, Andhra Pradesh and State Handicrafts Board, Government of Andhra Pradesh.[1]

In 1973, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Krishna Srinivas, president of the World Poetry Society Intercontinental (WPSI).[2] She was the first Indian woman to receive such honor.

In November 2019, the Rajkumari Indira Devi Hall (originally the Golden Threshold) at University of Hyderabad was inaugurated in her honor, transforming it into a cultural and literary hub.[7][8][9]

Publications

Poetry collections

  • The Apostle (Ajoykumar Mitra, 1964)
  • Return Eternity (Ajoykumar Mitra, 1965)
  • Yearnings and Other Poems (N.P., 1966)
  • Partings in Mimosa (M.L. Dhawan, 1968)[10]
  • Poems of My National Memory (Indian Languages Forum, 1976)
  • Wind Blows from the Scaffold (N.P., 1976)

Private distributions

Non-fiction

  • Memories of the Deccan (Visual Quest India, 2008)

Translations

  • Seshajyotsna: Telugu Modern Indian Classic by Guṇṭūru Śēṣēndraśarma (Indian Languages Forum, 1974)[12] (translated into English)

Notes

  1. 1 2 Commitment and Tide were published for private distribution only.[11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Manjulatha Kalanidhi (21 March 2020). "Rare glimpses of Hyderabad, as seen by Rajkumari Indira". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Nobelarkivet-1973" (PDF). svenskaakademien.se. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeenath Khan (20 November 2022). "Exploring a royal past: In conversation with a Princess". The Siasat Daily. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  4. 1 2 Swati Sharma (8 May 2020). "We had cooks, guards, butlers, says Rajkumari Indira Devi Dhanrajgir". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  5. 1 2 Kousar J. Azam (ed.). "Language and Literary Cultures in Hyderabad" (PDF). Routledge. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  6. ↑ "Mahfil Vol. 6, No. 4 (Winter 1970)". JSTOR. Asian Studies Center of Michigan State University. pp. 80-83 (4 pages). Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  7. ↑ "UoH to convert Golden Threshold into cultural hub". The Times of India. 6 November 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  8. ↑ Saima Afreen (7 November 2019). "Cultural and literary Hub at Golden Threshold". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  9. ↑ "UoH to convert Golden Threshold into culture hub". The Hindu. 7 November 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  10. ↑ Naik, M. K., Perspectives on Indian poetry in English, p. 230, (published by Abhinav Publications, 1984, ISBN 0-391-03286-0, ISBN 978-0-391-03286-6), retrieved via Google Books, 3 January 2024
  11. ↑ "Bibliographies for South Asian Studies: Poetry Written by South Asian Women". University Libraries | University of Washington. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  12. ↑ Dhanrajgir, Indira Devi, Seshajyotsna: Telugu Modern Indian Classic; English-Telugu Text – Guṇṭūru Śēṣēndraśarma (published by Indian Languages Forum, 1974), retrieved via Google Books, 3 January 2024
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