The City Palace at Udaipur is part of an exemplary living cultural heritage that has survived in an unbroken line of custodianship from medieval kingship to modern democracy. This volume traces the cultural lineage of the palace through its art and architecture to arrive at a conservation model to preserve this magnificent structure for the future.

‘Rajputana Chronicles: Guns & Glories’ has a Compelling Visual Style In a world obsessed with the future, this fascinating book delves into our glorious past through the intriguing stories of the brave Bachhawat clan. Rajputana Chronicles: Guns & Glories has such a compelling visual style; you feel you're a part of the beautiful anecdotes, watching it all unfold before you. - Rajeev Masand, Film Critic for CNN-News 18 The Book is a Welcome Addition to Rajputana History & Literature Histories of Rajputana have been chronicled mostly from the perspective of ruling dynasties, with relatively few accounts of other communities and professions. Commander Mehta's book attempts to fill a gap in so far as the contribution of his ancestors of the Bachhawat clan is concerned and is a welcome addition to Rajputana history and literature. - Admiral VS Shekhawat, Former Chief of the Naval Staff Candid, Compelling & Occasionally Controversial Candid, compelling and occasionally controversial, ‘The Thousand-Year Story of the Bachhawat Clan’, by Commander Mehta provides useful information on the history, sociology and culture of our land and helps understand our past better. - Dr Pushpendra Singh Ranawat, Geo- Heritage Writer and Activist It is a Gripping Book Comprising Interesting Episodes of History It is a gripping book comprising interesting episodes of the history from someone whose ancestors held high positions during the medieval period as nobles of various rulers in Rajputana and were often principle figures in these episodes. Lovers of heritage & culture should find this book engaging on account of not just the content but also the simple writing style. - Uday Singh Mahurkar, Deputy Editor, India Today The Untold Stories of Valour & Morality at their Most Educating & Entertaining Level In a world getting increasingly intoxicated by technology, social media and Pokemon Go, Commander Mehta goes back in time and comes up with a book that celebrates our culture and legacy through some really insightful anecdotes from the great Rajputana. He takes the reader on an informal journey where he is not afraid of getting off the highways of history and taking them through the bylanes of Rajputana heritage where we find some incredible, yet untold stories of valour and morality at their most educating and entertaining levels. - Anupam Kher, Film Actor, Producer & Director

A look at the painting traditions of northwestern India in the eighteenth century, and what they reveal about the political and artistic changes of the era In the long eighteenth century, artists from Udaipur, a city of lakes in northwestern India, specialized in depicting the vivid sensory ambience of its historic palaces, reservoirs, temples, bazaars, and durbars. As Mughal imperial authority weakened by the late 1600s and the British colonial economy became paramount by the 1830s, new patrons and mobile professionals reshaped urban cultures and artistic genres across early modern India. The Place of Many Moods explores how Udaipur’s artworks—monumental court paintings, royal portraits, Jain letter scrolls, devotional manuscripts, cartographic artifacts, and architectural drawings—represent the period’s major aesthetic, intellectual, and political shifts. Dipti Khera shows that these immersive objects powerfully convey the bhava—the feel, emotion, and mood—of specific places, revealing visions of pleasure, plenitude, and praise. These memorialized moods confront the ways colonial histories have recounted Oriental decadence, shaping how a culture and time are perceived. Illuminating the close relationship between painting and poetry, and the ties among art, architecture, literature, politics, ecology, trade, and religion, Khera examines how Udaipur’s painters aesthetically enticed audiences of courtly connoisseurs, itinerant monks, and mercantile collectives to forge bonds of belonging to real locales in the present and to long for idealized futures. Their pioneering pictures sought to stir such emotions as love, awe, abundance, and wonder, emphasizing the senses, spaces, and sociability essential to the efficacy of objects and expressions of territoriality. The Place of Many Moods uncovers an influential creative legacy of evocative beauty that raises broader questions about how emotions and artifacts operate in constituting history and subjectivity, politics and place.

This book surveys the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures in early modern, colonial and contemporary South Asia. Bringing together contributions by eminent artists, architects, curators and scholars who explore the connections between the environmental and the cultural, the volume situates water in an expansive relational domain. It covers disciplines as diverse as literary studies, environmental humanities, sustainable design, urban planning and media studies. The chapters explore the ways in which material cultures of water generate technological and aesthetic acts of envisioning geographies, and make an intervention within political, social and cultural discourses. A critical interjection in the sociologies of water in the subcontinent, the book brings art history into conversation with current debates on climate change by examining water’s artistic, architectural, engineering, religious, scientific and environmental facets from the 16th century to the present. This is one of the first books on South Asia’s art, architecture and visual history to interweave the ecological with the aesthetic under the emerging field of eco art history. The volume will be of interest to scholars and general readers of art history, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, urban studies, architecture, geography, history and environmental studies. It will also appeal to activists, curators, art critics and those interested in water management.

More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas, and cities provide the setting for contemporary challenges such as population growth, mass tourism and unequal access to socio-economic opportunities. Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability examines the impact of these issues on urban heritage, considering innovative approaches to managing developmental pressures and focusing on how taking an ethical, inclusive and holistic approach to urban planning and heritage conservation may create a stronger basis for the sustainable growth of cities in the future. This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular reference to the conflict between, and potential reconciliation of, conservation and development goals. A global range of case studies detail a number of distinct practical approaches to heritage on international, national and local scales. Chapters reveal the disjunctions between international frameworks and national implementation and assess how internationally agreed concepts can be misused to justify unsustainable practices or to further economic globalisation and political nationalism. The exclusion of many local communities from development policies, and the subsequent erosion of their cultural heritage, is also discussed, with the collection emphasising the importance of ‘grass roots’ heritage and exploring more inclusive and culturally responsive conservation strategies. Contributions from an international group of authors, including practitioners as well as leading academics, deliver a broad and balanced coverage of this topic. Addressing the interests of both urban planners and heritage specialists, Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability is an important addition to the field that will encourage further discourse.

Upinder Singh urges us to abandon simplistic stereotypes and instead think of ancient India in terms of the coexistence of five powerful contradictions-between social inequality and promises of universal salvation, the valorization of desire and detachment, goddess worship and misogyny, violence and non-violence, and religious debate and conflict. She does so using a vast array of sources including religious and philosophical texts, epics, poetry, plays, technical treatises, satire, biographies, and inscriptions, as well as the material and aesthetic evidence of archaeology and art from sites across the subcontinent. Singh's scholarly but highly accessible style, clear explanation, and balanced interpretations offer an understanding of the historian's craft and unravel the many threads of what we think of as ancient Indian culture. This is not a dead or forgotten past but one invoked in different contexts even today. Further, in spite of enormous historical changes over the centuries, the contradictions discussed here still remain.