In this gritty Indian city, a crumbling palace and a few church graves whisper the curious history of Muslim queens who allied with scions of a French royal family.
It is a tale that Balthazar-Napoleon Bourbon, a portly lawyer and part-time farmer whose family traces its lineage back to the Bourbons who began ruling France in the 16th century, knows well.
"As soon as I could have consciousness -- when I was six or seven years of age -- it [my royal heritage] was instilled in me," says Bourbon at his house next to a church founded by his great-grandmother, Isabella.
PHOTO: AFP
The doorway to the house is emblazoned with a brass sign -- "House of Bourbon" -- and the fleur-de-lis, the heraldic crest bearing a lily that has been associated with the French monarchy for centuries. In the church, stones engraved with the Bourbon name mark the graves of Isabella and her children.
The Bourbon dynasty ruled France from 1589 until the bloody 1789 French Revolution.
"We regularly had guests coming from Europe, so time and again the [family] history used to be repeated," Bourbon says.
And what a history it is -- even if some details are murky.
According to family accounts, a man named Jean-Philippe de Bourbon Navarre arrived in 1560 at the court of Emperor Akbar, the third king of the Mughal dynasty, which ruled from the early 16th century until the mid 19th century.
"The young adventurer was tall, his bearing gallant," said the writer C.A. Kincaid, in a 1946 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India.
The 16th-century was a time in India's history when "there were plenty of Europeans of all nationalities roaming about ... trying to make their fortunes in one way or another," notes English history lecturer Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, who has written about the Bourbons.
The family accounts say Jean-Philippe, the hot-blooded son of a duke who was a cousin of King Henry IV, had fled France after killing another French nobleman in a duel.
He ended up in Goa on India's southwestern coast after being kidnapped by pirates and escaping their clutches. From there, he made his way to the royal court where he ingratiated himself swiftly.
In the 18th century, descendants of the family moved to the princely realm of Bhopal, now capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Louis Rousselet, in India and its Native Princes, first published in French in 1875, describes a visit to the poisoned Balthazar's wife Elizabeth.
"I was at once struck by her type, which is evidently European," wrote Rousselet who was "received by a number of armed domestics, who, after having assisted us to dismount from our elephant, conducted us to a large salon."
With the abolition of royal titles and privileges in 1971 in India, the Bourbons lost their royal patrons -- but retain their memories of grander times.
"The jagirs [lands] which the Bourbons had were confiscated. Then the Bourbons took up jobs. Prior to my father nobody did," says Bourbon, who bears no resentment over their change in circumstances and often jokes that he and his family are "Bourbons on the rocks."
The descendants of the Begums, meanwhile, have become royalty in other walks of life in modern India and Pakistan.
The family counts former captain of the Indian cricket team, the Nawab of Pataudi Mansur Ali Khan, and his son, Bollywood superstar Saif Ali Khan, along with former Pakistani foreign secretary Shaharyar Khan among its luminaries.
For the Bourbons now, their name and Roman Catholic faith are the family's only legacies of their French past. Bourbon does not speak French, though his children are learning the language.
"I'm totally Indian, I have to live in this country, I was born here, I was bred here and I have to suit my place," says Bourbon. "I have to earn my bread, I can't rest on my fortunes, which anyway are gone."
In November, Bourbon finally met a relative from a European branch of the family, Prince Michael of Greece, who lives in France.
"Daddy was just delighted," says daughter Michelle, 16, recalling the visit. "It was the first time he met another Bourbon."
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
RSS