luboshinsky

The Indian Diary of Vera Luboshinsky narrates life at the Indian princely court of Bhopal, during the 1940s. Vera was the daughter of Professor M. J. Herzenstein, a member of the State Duma in pre-revolutionary Russia, and married to Count Mark Luboshinsky. After the Bolshevik revolution, they emigrated to Czechoslovakia where they met Hamidullah Khan, Nawab of Bhopal, an important political figure during the last decades of the British Empire and India’s fight for independence. Impressed by Mark Luboshinsky’s managerial abilities, the Nawab invited him to come to India to manage his estates. The couple spent seven years in India (winter 1938 - winter 1945). They stayed in and around Bhopal taking part in palace business or travelling across India accompanying the Nawab’s family on long journeys. The Diary is a unique and completely unknown text to the Anglophone world: a rich primary source for historians of India’s princely states, providing an interesting and uncommon depiction of the Nawab, his family, acquaintances, associates, and more generally, the life of Indians and foreigners in India during World War II. With literary flair, Vera describes not only her life in India, but also her intimate relationship with the Begum and British residents of Bhopal as well as meetings with well-known people like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Fatima Jinnah, or Anandamayi Ma, and Paul Brunton. Importantly, the Diary also offers an extremely rare Eastern European female voice in late colonial India: a voice that both submits to and transgresses the Orientalist moods of its time.

Vera Luboshinsky

Vera Luboshinsky (1897-1978) was a Russian lawyer and writer. Emigrating to Czechoslovakia after the Bolshevik coup and Mark’s subsequent friendship with Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal, gave Vera the chance to live in one of India’s most prominent princely states from 1938 to 1945. Fascinated by life in Bhopal, Vera was inspired to write her ’Indian Diary’. After returning from India to Czechoslovakia, Vera and Mark lived under another Communist power takeover. Vera’s life ended in obscurity with no hope of returning to her earlier fortune.

DuÅ¡an De’ak is Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative Religion, Comenius University in Bratislava. His research focuses on the social and religious history of Western India, and on the reception of Indian ideas and practices in Central Europe.

Rowenna Baldwin obtained her PhD in Sociology in 2011 from the University of Warwick. Her thesis focused on patriotic education in Russia and she has spent time teaching and researching there. Since 2016, Rowenna has been training in the field of documentary filmmaking and now works as an independent filmmaker.