Live, Laugh And Love Like A Royalty At Mayurbhanj, Maharajkumari Akshita Bhanj Deo Tells You How

Mayurbhanj was an erstwhile princely state with an interesting history. It has the highest concentration and diversity of tribal population not only in India but much of Asia. The dynasty of the Bhanjas started in 697 AD and it has been a long line of succession till today. The word Mayur got added to the place when a princess from the Maurya dynasty married a Bhanja ruler.

Some of our visionary rulers were women – for my ancestors the line of descendancy wasn’t always through males. If people chose you could also have a maharani who would not just be a princess of the region but who would actually rule the state. That’s very unique to Indian royal families.

The house that we live in today, the Belgadia Palace, was actually built on Maharani Sumitra Devi’s orders for the foreign dignitaries that visited the royal family. Right after independence, my family donated all the palaces and monuments to the public. So, the Belgadia Palace was the only one that stayed within the family.

Love conquers all

I just feel Belgadia has a rather romantic legacy. We happened to stumble across the diaries and old photographs of my great-great-grandfather Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo and his wife, Maharani Sucharu Devi. That’s how we all pieced it together.

It all began during the early 1900s. My great-grandfather’s father, Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo, the father of modern Odisha was known for his good looks and charm. He was betrothed to marry a princess from Panchkot but fell in love with Sucharu Devi, the third daughter of Brahmo Samaj leader, Keshub Chandra Sen.

She was one of the original feminists and used to call herself a supporter of women’s rights because she believed in equality of sexes. She was also the head of the All Bengal Women Federation and opened a bunch of schools because she believed that women should be learning about maths, science, religion and philosophy.

Like any truly great love story, they also faced massive opposition to their union because of the differences in class, caste and that she wasn’t royalty. He was asked to abdicate and at the time it made news in the west with British newspapers reporting about the scandal.

So, he ended up marrying the princess he was betrothed to because their respective fathers had made a pact. The girl’s father fought the British to the end and ended up getting killed. So, that’s why he had asked Sriram’s father to make sure that his daughter is taken care of.

He had three lovely children with my great-great-grandmother, two sons and a daughter. But, after seven years, at the beginning of the Bengal famine, he lost his wife and daughter to smallpox.

He ended up travelling all over the world as a diplomat and returned to Calcutta to realize that the love of his life, Sucharu Devi never got married. They ended up tying the knot much to the annoyance of his kingdom as well as the British. They told him that Sucharu was not welcome in Mayurbhanj.

So, he re-built Belgadia just for her. She was never allowed in the main palace and this became the only place where she was addressed as a Maharani.

The funny thing is that my family never knew about all this because he passed away early, seven years later, when he was accidentally shot by her brother during a hunting trip. Quite a Bollywood movie isn’t it?

Time travel

Maharani Sucharu was a big patron of arts and culture. So, the national treasure of India Hemendra Nath Majumder, artists, singers, poets all stayed at Belgadia. So, naturally, we opened up an artist residency as well. We also discovered a prohibition-era bar in one part of the palace and it's funny how we are entering 2020, so almost a hundred years later we are reopening the bar this year.

Belgadia has seen the best of very liberal royalty that was extremely self-ruled. For instance, the two Rolls Royces that we have in the family was commissioned by women. They weren’t just princesses with pocket money they were heads of foundations, directors at companies and very much more with it.

The palace has a very neoclassical architecture but the interiors are very French. It’s a leisure house and unlike other palaces, it does not have a darbar hall or a formal styled room. It’s not a massive palace conglomerate hotel it’s definitely a homestay in that comparison.

Belgadia is a house literally built for parties, events, celebrations and for people to meet and exchange philosophies. Arts and culture really get reflected here. So, while the amenities are modern and sustainable, we have replicas of the original fixtures from that era. We have a 15 pointer for sustainable living like we do not use plastic at all.

With a history like that…Belgadia Palace is probably the ideal place for a couple who wants to revisit the fabulous bohemian era the real way.