Lennart Bes analyses court politics in early modern south India

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Author Lennart Bes' comparative work, “The Heirs of Vijayanagara: Court Politics in Early Modern South India”, was included in a recent podcast episode at the Bangalore Inte national Centre. The book examines court politics in four kingdoms that followed the south Indian Vijayanagara Empire from the 16th to the 18th centuries: Ikkeri, Thanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad.

This study offers a fresh interpretation of political culture, power dynamics, and dynastic changes by drawing on a combination of hitherto unstudied Indian texts and Dutch archival documents in great details.

The monograph offers t detailed information and analysis that refutes preexisting literature. It challenges the historiography that sees these courts as harmonious, hierarchical, and static by underlining their competitive, fluid, and dynamic nature.

In the book, it is found that kings and Brahmins competing for power with other courtiers, far from being aloof, ritualized individuals. At the same time, this analysis challenges contemporary scholarship that views a fundamentally different kind of Nayaka royalty by highlighting historical continuity.

This study has significant implications for how we view these kingdoms and their "medieval" forebears. Lennart Bes, an Indologist, is a lecturer of history at Leiden University, and the author, is the subject of the BIC Talks episode by Anirudh Kanisetti.

Historian and Indologist Lennart Bes is interested in southern India’s political culture. He wrote various academic journal articles and the book “The Heirs of Vijayanagara: Court Politics in Early Modern South India” (Leiden University Press, 2022).

The book elucidates the fact that the common perception of academics is that Vijayanagara ended in 1565 and the Nayakas are the heirs of Vijayanagara. However, nobody knows about them and where they could be found.