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- [00:01]
Anita Anand
If you want access to bonus episodes Reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:19]
William Dalrymple
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hey, find a keto friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So so I can get in more.
- [00:29]
Anita Anand
Squats anywhere I can.
- [00:31]
William Dalrymple
1, 2, 3. Will that be cash or credit? Credit.
- [00:36]
Anita Anand
4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do. You get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account.
- [00:47]
William Dalrymple
Results may vary based on input.
- [00:48]
Anita Anand
Check responses for accuracy.
- [00:52]
William Dalrymple
What's the best time of day to get a deal? All day with Jack in the Box's all day big deal meal. You get to choose from four entrees like the supreme croat croissant and five tasty sides plus a drink starting at $5. So hurry in or take your time. You've got all day at Jack. Every bite's a big deal. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
- [01:18]
Anita Anand
Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians.
- [01:24]
William Dalrymple
These are things people say about drivers.
- [01:26]
Anita Anand
Who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [01:35]
William Dalrymple
Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Durimple. We're doing the second part of the second half of the bagel if you like the crumbage. So we were talking about the Maharaja's gardener.
- [02:06]
Anita Anand
I'm so impressed by this story I have to say that Anita has come.
- [02:08]
William Dalrymple
Up with oh wow, how sweet.
- [02:10]
Anita Anand
I spent quite a lot of time digging up in Maharaja archival stories and think I realized I'd never heard of this guy. Not once, not even a whisper of him.
- [02:18]
William Dalrymple
But that's why this works really well. Because it's the journo knows and the historian in you. And it was just the photo again. It's always photos. The gateway to me. So just to remind, mind you, if you hadn't heard the last episode, I was on a trip with Willy to Bangalore for the Litfest and even though many locals said, oh, there's nothing to see in Bangalore, just you're better off going to Seringapatnam, I was busy sending.
- [02:41]
Anita Anand
You off to Mysore, to Sri Rangapnam.
- [02:43]
William Dalrymple
Yes, I know. Just go. Go somewhere else. Go somewhere else and yet a lovely man called Vinay took us on a tour. I went with my family around Bangalore and Cubbon park, which is a fantastic park, a really beautiful park, actually interesting park in Bangalore at all the imperial whispers that have been left behind. And in the last episode we talked about Queen Victoria's statue with broken finger and this photograph he just showed me. Oh, and this was the. The man who sort of greened Bangalore. And it was a little white haired German man called Gustav Hermann Krumbeigel. And the thing about him was that nobody else I spoke to in Bangalore knew about him at all. And so you know when you get this sort of thing that just lodges in your head and you have to scratch it out and scratch it out and scratch out the story. So I did, I tried. And this is it. An amazing man who, as we're going to go into, makes his name. We talked in the last episode of how he became the Man Friday to the Maharaja of Baroda, but how Mysore is going to make his name Mysore the second richest state in India at the time, or province in India at the time. And how this is a place that transforms his life and yet he goes from being this beloved of Maharaja's to. To being a man who will die in penury and sadness because he will be interned twice during the wars because he's a German and because the British are running India and because despite any amount of protesting from the Maharaja, they can't circumvent the fact he's an enemy alien and he'll be put into an internment camp.
- [04:15]
Anita Anand
There's all sorts of stories about this, aren't there? The guy who did five years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrah, he was interned in Dehradun and his wanderings around Tibet was when he escaped from the internment camp.
- [04:26]
William Dalrymple
So the Germans who were interned, we'll come to this. Maybe we shouldn't sort of do the Dalrymple thing and tell you all about it at the beginning. But I'm just gonna say there were thousands of Germans who had been working in India, some for many, many years, and they were, you know, all interred during the war. And what happened in those internment camps, we'll come to that in a moment because that too was not easy on Herr Kronbegel. But just before we get to that, can we please could you share with the class that fabulous story you told me about my favourite Dalrymple, your daughter who has got her French exchange partner who is over. And you told me the most charming thing. Go on.
- [05:02]
Anita Anand
So this is a very Nice war story turned contemporary story. My wife, Olivia Fraser, is the great, great niece, or something like that of Lord Lovatt, the war hero. And the point of this story is that my daughter's French exchange has come to stay in Delhi and she is the fourth generation of this family that have been the French exchange for Olivia's family. And it starts the story when Lord Lovett, having famously come ashore at D Day with his clan piper, and he doesn't have a gun, he has his umbrella and the clown piper, and there's been subsequently documentaries about all this, and a German machine gunner actually had both of them in his sights and said, I can't possibly shoot a man with an umbrella and a man playing the bagpiper.
- [05:47]
William Dalrymple
Yes, yes.
- [05:48]
Anita Anand
And as late as, I think, sort of 1980s, there was some anniversary of D Day when the machine gunner was found and produced to tell the story. Anyway, about two weeks later, this famously D Day turns into this nightmare of the hedgerows of Normandy, and all the Panzers turn up, all Hitler's tank divisions that have been waiting for the British to invade elsewhere. Suddenly, two weeks later, get to the point of the invasion and there's a terrible moment of crisis when the advancing forces who've made it inland into Normandy at D Day are met with the full force of the Third Reich and all the panzer divisions, and there's massive casualties. And among them is Lord Lovatt, who, having nonchalantly walked ashore with his piper and umbrella, is now bleeding to death under a French hedgerow. And he is sitting there thinking that his end has come and that his division, I think, has moved on and he's just bleeding out, when a French priest appears on a bicycle, a cure, and finds him here, realizes he's alive and realizes that he's saveable, and so presumably doesn't put him on the back of the bike, but certainly comes and rescues him and heals him and puts him into his own bed, apparently at.
- [07:00]
William Dalrymple
Great risk to himself, one should say.
- [07:03]
Anita Anand
And then personally rows him in a rowing boat across the Channel.
- [07:06]
William Dalrymple
Oh, my goodness, this is such a good story.
- [07:09]
Anita Anand
It's a good story, isn't it? And of course, Lord Lovett lives on to become a politician. And from that point, the Frasers in this family, the de Noroy, have always exchanged. And four generations of unsophisticated Fraser men from the highlands of Scot in Venetia, have fallen in love with incredibly beautiful de Norois, French women descended from the brother of the cure. And Lorenza is the fourth generation, and she Just arrived today to come to the Jaipur Litzy festival with Ibi and.
- [07:35]
William Dalrymple
There is no apology I make. I know we're meant to be talking about Crumbagle. I do not apologise for making you share that story because when you told me my jaw just hit the ground. It is absolutely the storyline for a film. Anyway, back to Krumbagel, back to our friend Crumbagle. So he comes to Mysore and I mean, I've sort of said it's the second richest province, but can you give us a little bit of an idea of how the Maharajas lived at that time and just how when we're talking wealth, we are talking dripping with wealth. Bling gold and sandalwood smelling nice too.
- [08:07]
Anita Anand
So a fifth of India, some cognitions even make it a quarter of India, is never ruled by the British. It's ruled by the independent maharajas and princes and the zams and nawabs who've made deals with the British.
- [08:21]
William Dalrymple
Independent. Ish. I was gonna say, because you have a resident. I mean, actually I would challenge and say in name only. You know, they keep their names and title, but it is the resident who does push things around.
- [08:31]
Anita Anand
They have a British resident who makes sure they don't sort of, you know, perform anti British actions and controls their, if you like, their foreign policy, their external relations with the state. But often internally they do quite wacky things that are completely of their own. And there are some states, such as Travancore in what's now Kerala, which are incredibly well governed and have much greater literacy than parts of Britain. At this point, thanks to the very advanced education system that the Maharaja Travancore brings in, there are others who are sort of so famously dripping in wealth they don't know what to do. Most famously, Hyderabad. Hyderabad is the richest state in India and the Nizam of Hyderabad is the richest man in the world. And there are stories that he has sort of 25 men just to grind his walnuts and 55 to dust his chandeliers and all these sort of things. But one of the best and best administered is the state of Mysore, which is rich on the sale of sandalwood, of which it has not quite a monopoly, but certainly by far the largest output because the forests of the Mysore region particularly suit the sandalwood tree.
- [09:39]
William Dalrymple
By the way, even today, I mean, I've just come back from Mysore, you can't move for sandalwood gifts and scent and oud coming from sandalwood. It is a place that still smells of its past and its past wealth. It is the Wadiya dynasty who are the maharajas at the moment. And I think I might have mentioned last time that Chamarajendra Wajya is the 10th Maharaja of Mysore, is very, very close to the guy quad of Baroda. And they basically talk over the hedge and he says, your lawns are looking good. He said, well, it's my German. I've got this German. Do you want to borrow? And so, you know, he's lent out grumbagle to different, various assorted maharajas. But what Crumbagal does, so he goes over and he starts working for the Maharaja of Mysore. And he immediately starts doing these actually really forward thinking, transformative things. So I mean, what he says is that, you know, this is fabulous land to grow and he's very excited, but it's also fabulous land for fruiting trees. So he starts this system of importing exotic plants, especially trees from places like Australia. So he starts, you know, experimenting fruiting trees from Europe, the ones that he knows, the ones that he's seen at Kew, but also from Australia. He realizes that actually the Oz ones, they do much better in the climate.
- [10:53]
Anita Anand
There's two, I think, which from my memory of. I once did a botanical tour of Bangalore in the days before the 1990s when it was a city of gardens and kazarina and eucalyptus. I remember the two Australian trees that do best in my.
- [11:08]
William Dalrymple
I had an entire list of flowering. But it's fruiting ones that I want to talk about now because what he does is he realizes that they work really well. So he starts importing millions of saplings from Australia. And what he does, which is really forward thinking is he sends notices out to the Mysore farmers. Remember last time I told you he'd sort of transformed the farmers lives by telling them how to line those tanks so that they weren't dependent on the monsoon. I mean, really quite scientific breakthrough kind of stuff. He then sends notices to the Mysore farmers saying, look, come to the lalbagh, which is where he's based and we talked about the lalbagh in the last episode. And he sells them for just one rupee a tree, which is not much back then even because what he wants is a proliferation of trees throughout the province. And not only does he sell them the saplings, but detailed instructions which are translated for them both verbally and written how to grow them and how to take care of them. And that is how he creates sort of the system of orchards throughout Karnataka. And fruit becomes a thing that farmers again can have an income. They put fish in their tanks and they have fisheries. Now they've got trees. What he also does as a horticulturalist, he always goes further. This is what I love about Old Crumbagle is that he starts collating. He's got a real scientist mind. And bear in mind that this is the little boy from Lohman who worked in Hyde park hedgerows to try and get on the ladder. But he collects papers and writes papers on the pests that attack all the plants that he's introducing with these amazing drawings of the pests so that the farmers on site can recognise them and know how to deal with them. Now, this was meant to be a really detailed archive which unfortunately, over time has been lost. And so a lot of that knowledge has been lost as well.
- [12:53]
Anita Anand
Funnily enough, Mysore has a tradition of very clever botanical planting. And Tipu Sultan, who was a kind of usurper, who took over the Mysore State from the Wadiyas, supposedly as their sort of military generals. Tipu introduced sericulture, the planting of mulberry trees, and Mysore to this day is the center of the Indian silk industry.
- [13:14]
William Dalrymple
This is why this series is so great, because through the green and the colour of the gardens that you walk through, you can find imperial history. And I think that's wonderful. It's a really interesting thing. So another thing that he is instrumental in, Mysore has this amazing festival of Dasera, even. Even now. So Dasera celebrates. You burn huge, enormous effigies of Raavan, the demon king, who Lord Rama in the Ramayan defeats. And, you know, there's fireworks, there's feasting, there's the burning of this great effigy. It's, you know, here in England, think of Guy Fawkes times a thousand, because these effigies are enormous. I remember going to my first Dasera festival when I was just a kid, maybe five or six years old, not in Mysore, but in. Up in Kanpur. And I was terrified, absolutely terrified. The scale of this, the scale of the people, the burnings, it was. It was really overwhelming.
- [14:06]
Anita Anand
My kids rather loved it. I remember taking them to Old Delhi. When we first moved to Delhi, there's a famous daceras ceremony near the Red Fort and these enormous ravens that are sort of 50ft high get lit. And kids loved it.
- [14:18]
William Dalrymple
So what is fascinating again, and Crumbagle, again, being so much more than just a horticulturalist, he's also a man who knows how to get messages out. So he realizes that he's going to have basically a captive province. Everyone's going to come to the Mysore palace and come nearby to the Dasera celebrations. So he brings a display of the latest tools and machines for agriculture to show to all the farmers who are there as part of the Dasera celebrations so that they can see, learn where to get and therefore export all of this knowledge that he's brought from Europe along with sort of tools that he can help import. And he starts in 1912 after doing this very successful thing in 1910 and 1911 with the Dasera Festivals. He starts in 1912 the Mysore Horticultural Society to train gardeners from all across the state, all under his eye in the Lalbarg of how to do things properly with plants they may not recognize. And he puts into effect a thing called cereal blossoming in Bangalore. This is a way of you plant different trees along a boulevard or different plants in a bed. You will create something he called perpetual spring. All of these different trees will flower at different times. Petals will always flutter down on the Bangalore boulevards because of these trees that flower at different times in the year. And that is how, you know, people start calling Bangalore the garden city from this time.
- [15:38]
Anita Anand
There was a character when I was younger and as a young journalist going to Bangalore called TP Issar, who was the great botanist of his period in Bangalore. And he wrote a book called Bangalore Garden City. And he was very sad because I went and interviewed him in the early 90s, just when Bangalore was turning into a tech center. So it's now one of the richest cities in India, but it's lost this extraordinary legacy. And I remember Isar saying that he'd produced this book 10 years earlier in I think 1980, Bangalore, the Garden City. And he said half the trees in the book had now been sawn down in 10 years to create new tower blocks and new tech centers.
- [16:15]
William Dalrymple
And these may have been some of the trees that crumbagle plants either by his own hand or by importing and sending them out. So I mean, you know, that's sad. That feels awful when trees are cut down and when they're Krumbeigel trees, I don't know, a certain greater poignance for me.
- [16:29]
Anita Anand
Anyway, now we're all on team Crumbagle.
- [16:32]
William Dalrymple
Crumbagle, yes. Let's put his name on the map, guys. Anyway, so he started as, well again, forward thinking man that he was. And this again would have pleased the Maharaja of Mysore so much. He said, look, I come from a land of flower shows. Why don't we have the greatest flower show India has ever seen? And he creates this amazing flower show in the Lalbag, which I believe still goes on today, I'm told, and it's one of the three biggest flower shows in the world at the moment.
- [17:01]
Anita Anand
The truth, still, that's what I'm told, yeah.
- [17:03]
William Dalrymple
The transformative power of Crumbagle, though, is when he came to Bangalore, there were four public gardens. And by the time he leaves, or, you know, sort of hops off the mortal coil, as it were, there are more than a hundred. Isn't that great? What a legacy. What a legacy to leave. Anyway, just when he's at the height of his powers, though. We're getting to 1918 now. War breaks out in Europe and the entire British Empire gets pulled in. And despite the efforts of the maharaja, the British insist Krumbagel, along with all people of German origin, need to be rounded up and put into an internment camp. And this man is distraught, and he begs the maharaja, you know, I'm loyal. You know, I love India. I'm an Indian now. I'm not a German. I've left Germany, you know, when I was just 14, 15 years old. Why is this happening to me?
- [17:52]
Anita Anand
And a big Anglophile.
- [17:53]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, and an Anglophile, and so why. And he begs the Maharaja to intervene. And the maharaja talks to the resident and tries to say, look, can we do something for him? He's not. He's not an enemy alien, but the British aren't having it. It is one rule. Anyone of German origin is to be rounded up. And you can understand why they're doing it as well, because, you know, sleeper agents, special agents, spies, they're having to contend with all of this all over their empire. Because the Germans also, in an effort to destabilize Britain, will try and destabilize the empire. That's what they will do as well. So the Maharaja is absolutely powerless. And Kron Bagel, by this time is a young family as well. He's got kids, he's got his wife, you know, his English rose, Clara, who he's brought to India with him. He's made his life there. And he says, what am I going to do? All of his assets are seized, all of his savings are seized, Everything is seized. The only thing that isn't seized, which he is going to have to liquidate really quickly, are some of his stocks and shares that he's managed to put money in. So he's taken away to an internment camp with 8,000 others, I learn in Ahmednagar.
- [18:57]
Anita Anand
So that's interesting, because that, funnily enough, is where young Sam, my son is today.
- [19:02]
William Dalrymple
Really? Give him a call and tell him to try and find out where this internment camp is because I'd love to know if you know what the building was. I don't have any further details other than from his letter. It was Ahmednagar.
- [19:12]
Anita Anand
So I'd tell you what I suspect it was because Ahmedagar has this famous fort which is built by the Marathas and then refortified by the British after they defeated the Marathas. And it's famous for its enormous rock cut moat, which means that it's very difficult to escape from. It's like a Kulditz or an Alcatraz. And that's where they put Nehru in the Second World War.
- [19:33]
William Dalrymple
Oh, my God.
- [19:34]
Anita Anand
In Ahmednagar. And he wrote the Discovery of India in Abhinagar.
- [19:38]
William Dalrymple
Oh, my goodness. Right.
- [19:39]
Anita Anand
So I would imagine he was put in the fort.
- [19:41]
William Dalrymple
Well, I mean, it's a convincing argument and unless anyone listening here knows better, I'll go with that. But while he is in the internment camp, something terrible happens. Something terrible happens to him. The other Germans, and some of whom are very sympathetic to the German fatherland, you know, they stand by Germany and they hate Britain and they've come to do business in India for whatever reason, but they're one day apparently talking very disparagingly about the natives and about the Maharaja. And Krumbeckel stands up for him and gets badly beaten up and he writes a letter to the Maharaja saying, I've been beaten for standing up for you. You know how loyal I'm. Help me, get me out of here. He writes in this letter, if they deport me to Germany, what will I do? I only know about tropical horticulture. I will never work again. He's soaked, desperate. The Maharaj again goes to the British saying, look, please, please let him out. And there are two other Germans who the Maharajah is very fond of at this time. A man called Exner and another one called Koenigsberger. One's an architect and one's an interior designer and they're all interred. And he says, look, they've all been working with me for years, just please let them out. Kron Bagel in particular is getting really bad treatment in there. And the British say, no, they are going to stay interred for the duration of the war. But they come to this compromise where they're allowed to continue working on their designs for either gardens or building buildings while they're in the camps, so they're spared any kind of hard labour. And it is the absolute Best he can do.
- [21:07]
Anita Anand
This was the deal that the British came to with Nehru in Ahmedagar that he could continue writing his memoirs. And he wrote the Discovery of India and was given a full library to work from.
- [21:17]
William Dalrymple
There's something in this, the history of Ahmadnagar and all of its guests. I think there's something in this, isn't there? This is so great.
- [21:23]
Anita Anand
I think there were many other major congress politicians with Nehru. Gandhi wasn't there. Gandhi was put somewhere else. Gandhi was put in Aga Khan's house in the middle of Bombay. The house is still there in the middle of Malabar Hill. And Gandhi has ever sort of spectacularly luxurious place to be poor. In that famous quote by Sarojini Naidu that it costs us a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty.
- [21:48]
William Dalrymple
Yes, that's right. But look, the Maharaja has to also give a concession. For this concession to be made, he has to agree that whatever these three German men do when they get out when the war is over, the British are of course going to remain. And whatever work they have done there must not be their name on those edifices, those buildings, those, you know, streets of lamppost. They must be erased. And so when they do come out and you know they're in a state of poverty, Crumbagle writes that he has to liquidate all his shares because he has to keep his family fed. And his family don't know any other home other than India. His children don't know any other home other than India. So you know, they come out and you've got evidence of this. Koenigsberger, for example, who is the designer architect, he builds a place called Balba, then it's in Bangalore, but nowhere in the foundation. Normally in the foundation stone you have the name of the architect and it is not there. And Krumbego's design says there's sort of like a deletion of the man completely and he's penniless. So what he has to do again is lean on the favour of a man who holds him in high esteem. Luckily, as the Maharaja, because he's got nowhere to live, he can't afford to pay for or anything. So the Maharaja gives him a place called Granite Castle, which is fabulously named.
- [23:00]
Anita Anand
Sounds like it's an Aberdeen rather than.
- [23:02]
William Dalrymple
Mysore, even though that is his house. Whenever. I think this is also very interesting because you can see when the man's heart beats, Crumbagle, whenever he is asked for his address, just gives it as Lalbarg, his finest work. You know, the Larbarg Gardens that he inherited, the ones that Tipu had planted voraciously on. And then they pass into his hands when he starts working for the Maharaj of Mysore. That is his home. That's what he believes is his home. And in between the wars, he works on this masterpiece of his. It's a blank canvas. You know, all the other projects that he's worked on, other landscapers have worked on them before because they are royal parks or they're gardens that have been owned by the royal family for generations. But in Brindevan, he's given a completely blank canvas. And he creates, and this is, you know, after suffering quite a lot during the war, these sweeping terraces, straight avenues, it's all divided in quadrants, which is actually the Islamic sensibility, the Chabog system.
- [23:57]
Anita Anand
Yeah.
- [23:58]
William Dalrymple
And he uses everything that he's ever learned. You know, he writes the story of his horticultural life in this garden. And so from this sort of awful disaster, he creates this beautiful garden.
- [24:10]
Anita Anand
This would make such a good movie, this story. I love the idea of it. Just hear the soaring violins at this point.
- [24:15]
William Dalrymple
Yeah. And the fountain suddenly, you know, sort of being turned on for the first time where, you know, a man who has known enormous unhappiness is finally doing something again. He can throw himself into this and become happy for a while at least. And this is a place that generates wealth. You know, I think I said it was still even today, 2 million tourists a year go to the Brindavan Gardens. And he also starts talking a little bit politically at this point, but it's not politics, you know, of an imperial kind. He's not talking. He doesn't never criticize his. The British. In fact, if you remember, he's known for moving the Queen Victoria statue into Covent Park. But what he does do is he starts saying, look, can you just stop thinking about Bangalore in particular as a place of industry and what now has become a tech center? But can you just start thinking that horticulture is going to bring you wealth, look after your land, and it's a really green message. I'll read you an extract from one of his letters. The works of the horticultural department does not begin and end with sweeping lawns, roads, and planting a few flower beds, but developing its economic, scientific and educational work. The botanical gardens should be maintained not only for the purpose of advancing the study of native and other plants, but turning the varied resources of the vegetable kingdom to useful and commercial ends. And he's begging the maharaja, look, I know you're developing this place, but please develop this Place with an eye to the fact that you can do it in a green way. I mean, as we put it today, you can make money from being green. And he writes in an article, an article which is published, I believe I'm right in saying that 90% of the people who read this article would go away with the impression that our immediate need is the development of industries as against the development of agriculture. I most emphatically say the opposite is the case and that a highly developed, prosperous agriculture is essential as the only sound basis upon which a successful industrial development can be built. World I'm not sure that the higher income from industries is a criteria of prosperity and happiness of the people in any country, or is the goal to strive for, to my mind, by no means a mixed blessing. But we do not hear laments on all sides of industrial enslavement to the people, of crowding together in unsanitary tenements, of insufficient earnings to meet the higher cost of living, buying bare necessities of life, of the tragedies of child labor in factories. May Providence protect our beautiful state from such conditions. Again, these are arguments that are being held today that you. You shouldn't just measure in growth the wealth of a. Of a place, a wealth of a nation, but the happiness of its people as well.
- [26:50]
Anita Anand
It's also very much in tune with how economic historians would regard the failures of the British in India. I was having a conversation with the economic historian Tirthankaroi last year, and he thinks that the biggest failure of the British in India was the failure of irrigation south of really the Ganges. That there was an. Almost unlike the Punjab, where there was very substantial irrigation work, they transformed it.
- [27:17]
William Dalrymple
With their canal systems and their irrigation systems are extraordinary. Yeah.
- [27:21]
Anita Anand
But nothing of the sort happened in the Deccan, which is why when famines broke out in India, many of them were in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the middle of India, India. And it's one of the things that India does very well initially after independence and hugely increases the agricultural productivity of India within a decade. It's not a difficult thing to do. So Krambaga was right. His part of India particularly did need was better irrigation and better agriculture.
- [27:50]
William Dalrymple
Here he is sort of toiling away, trying to win hearts and minds as well as transforming the land. And, you know, he's back in favour, the Maharaja, you know, maybe feeling some kind of guilt for, you know, not being able to stop what happens to him during the First World War. Takes care of his gardener, takes care of his man Friday. So you know, he's there, he's working, he's happy as he can be. You know, the Maharaja is taking care of him. He's trying to put the past behind him. But World War II is on the horizon.
- [28:22]
Anita Anand
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- [28:56]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So 1945 will prove to be even worse for Herr Krum Bagel because yet again, he's an enemy alien in India and he is rounded up. And he describes being captured, beaten and thrown into an internment camp. And according to his granddaughter, by the way, his granddaughter lives just down the road in Surrey, just here.
- [29:15]
Anita Anand
You've got to write.
- [29:15]
William Dalrymple
So there was a local TV company did a short documentary about, you know, the German gardener. So they got somebody to do some research into him because they wanted to put him back on a pedestal because they're quite rightly proud of him now. You know, the man who made a huge difference. And so I think they sent researchers around who put a little advert in the local newspaper saying, do you know Gustav Herman Krumbagel? We've heard somebody might be in this area or region or if you know anyone who knows him. And this woman sort of says, well, that's my great grandfather. But what she does say in this little piece is that the British wanted to deport my great grandmother as well, and she would have been treated as a spy had she returned to Germany. Like, it would have been an absolute curse of death because she's English, remember? But they want to deport her. And she says the British never forgave her for marrying a German. So this was actually considered and on the cards to deport his wife Klara to Germany and him to Germany as well, where they would have been treated as spies and interned and put in prison there. And she legitimately, because she's British and the enemy. But this too passes, and this time around the maharaja to show how sorry he is and how much he cares. And Crumbagle is treated better in this second interment, as a precedent was set in the first. But the maharaja has a painting commissioned of Krumbeigal and he has a lifelike statue crafted. And there's this beautiful story Someone tells who knows the palace, the Mysore palace, very, very well. But he says that every morning as the Maharaja left his bedchamber, he would see two images on the wall as he exited his bedchamber. One was of the Mother Goddess, the other of his German gardener.
- [30:54]
Anita Anand
Lovely.
- [30:54]
William Dalrymple
Isn't that amazing? Isn't that lovely? The man who had sort of brought him such joy.
- [30:59]
Anita Anand
And can we see the statue today? Is it still in the Mysore Palace?
- [31:03]
William Dalrymple
I didn't get to go inside, but somebody can tell me who knows the insides of the palace. I have seen pictures of the statue and the statue is just the most darling thing. It's a man in tweed with a rolled up plan in his hand.
- [31:15]
Anita Anand
I love it.
- [31:16]
William Dalrymple
And it was made and it's very lifelike. It's like a sort of a little Oompa Loompa version of an already, I suspect, not very tall crumbagle anyway. But I suspect it was meant to be displayed in a public square. But that never happened because, you know, he was a German. He's there. He's now getting old. He's getting old is Krum Bagel and he works for the Tatars. He helps them design the jubilee gardens in Jamshedpur. He's still being passed around as a great asset.
- [31:41]
Anita Anand
We should explain what Jamshedpur is. Jamshedpur is this town built by the Parsi industrial dynasty, the Tatars, who now own both British steel and Jaguar Land Rover. And when the Tatars were trying to found a steel town, they found that many of the biggest iron ore deposits were in Jharkhand and Bihar in the northeast of India. And so they build this model city in this sort of jungle area where there is just these steel deposits and not much else. And it's a model town, rather like Bangalore once was. And Jamshedpur has the jubilee gardens which are Krumbegal's part of this plan.
- [32:20]
William Dalrymple
So he inadvertently is part of the fabric of Indian history, the Indian story as well. Because he's working with the Tatas, it's probably the first time he's working for a. Not maharaja, not a royal family. And India too is about to go through a period where it wants to forget its maharajas because independence will happen after the end of the war. Just in a nutshell, what happened to the princely states after independence?
- [32:45]
Anita Anand
William, just remind us this strange anomaly whereby between a fifth and a quarter of the Indian landmass is not actually being ruled directly but is being hived off to the old feudal families who survive from the disintegration of The Mughal Empire, whether they're Marathas or Mughal governors who've bedded ancient Rajput warrior clans in Rajasthan or Bihar. Sadap Patel, who is a great icon of the current Hindu nationalist government, the bjp, and whose massive statue has been raised in Gujarat, he's the man who, in a very short period of time, gets all these different maharajas through a mixture of charm and threats and appeals to patriotism, gets all the maharajas to surrender their princely dominions and to join the Indian Union on the promise that they're going to have a privy purse and all their privileges, but just not be rulers. That, of course, ends in 1971 with Indira Gandhi, who cuts the purse springs.
- [33:43]
William Dalrymple
But also, you know, there's the whole race to get the Maharaja of Kashmir to sign, sign, sign. There's a. That's a whole different story. Maybe we should do that actually at another time because it's, you know, the new Republic is such a. Such an interesting story, but the Republic is very, very keen to forget and put aside its maharajas or put them in storage. Get them to sign, but just put them in storage. But. But what they do, interestingly, is they do reward people who do good work. So the new Republic, the Indian Republic, appoints Crumbagle director of Agriculture in Mysore. So suddenly, and he's an old man, he's not a young man. And he actually, you know, there's this man who's born in 1865, and we're talking sort of 1947. So, you know, he's not a young man anymore. And what he does is he sort of takes this role. He's also chief architect to the Mysore State for a while. Then something extraordinary happens. After independence, an old man is shot in Delhi and India crumbles as he does too. And I'm talking about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. So this is like just such a seismic shock to the psyche of the new India and also, you know, sends shockwaves through Pakistan as well. And Gandhi had spent a lot of time in what is now Pakistan. In fact, wasn't there the great furore about where he would spend the night when independence was actually cemented?
- [35:05]
Anita Anand
It is almost to the day, 75 years since his assassination. He was assassinated on the 30th of.
- [35:10]
William Dalrymple
January, 1948, and we're recording this on the 27th. Well, isn't that funny that we're talking about this and thinking about this now? But who does India turn to at this time to talk about the way in which he's going to be commemorated. And there are these gardens, the Rajkat in Delhi. And can you describe, because you live in Delhi, you'll do this much better than me.
- [35:31]
Anita Anand
Before this point there are no guns. This is the area between the Red Fort in North Delhi and the Yamuna. And I think it's about this time that a main road is built to run alongside the Red Fort and beside the Yamuna. Previously it had been just the river and I think it's exactly at this time when the road is built and the land is extended into what had been the banks of the Yamuna that Rajgat is built on the riverbank. Just like the Red Fort is the place where the great speeches on Republic Day are made by the Prime Minister. So Rajgat is the equivalent cremation ground. It's next to the ancient Delhi cremation grounds of Nigambodhgat which go back, it is said to Vedic times and it's where the Vedas are said to have washed up on the banks of the Amana. So it's a very sacred spot. And this is where the young Indian state decides to lay its father Mahatma Gandhi to rest.
- [36:29]
William Dalrymple
Yes, Bapu, literally known as Bapu the Father by most Indians. And it is Krumbegal who is in his 80s who's asked to come and landscape the gardens of the Rajgat.
- [36:40]
Anita Anand
And it's still a place where every visiting dignitary is taken first. When my friend Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of Australia arrived he was taken literally straight from the airport to Rajgat.
- [36:50]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, to pay your respects. And it's where there are memorials for, you know, Rajiv Gandhi's memorial is there, Vajpayee's memorial is there. You know there are a few.
- [36:59]
Anita Anand
Gandhi's is the famous and the central one.
- [37:01]
William Dalrymple
It's the one that started it. But that's Krumbegel's hand. If you go and you will visit and you'll go and see it, it is impressive. You know, go and see it. And it's a peaceful place. That's the Krombagal hand at work. And maybe, just maybe this was some way of India saying sorry we didn't look after you better or it's just the new Republic being pragmatic saying this man is a genius. This man has transform an entire province. He's created some of the greatest parks we now have. Let's get him to do it. Krumbegal dies in Bangalore in 1956 and it is again the Maharaja of Mysore who takes over the arrangements for his burial and he's buried in the Christian cemetery and he's given a really simple gravestone under an African tulip tree, one of his favorite places. Now what I told you before is not quite right and I've done a bit more investigation on this. On the first tombstone it's pretty simple. It just says in loving memory Gustav Herben Beigel 1865 to 8 February 1956. That's all it said. And over the years that tombstone had degraded to the point where you couldn't even see what was written on it. And his African tulip tree was sinking into the ground. But it's actually only when the Germans rediscovered Krumbagel, they said, could you just tell us where this man is buried and the whole thing, you know, this sort of amazing man and this extraordinary story. And Mysore opened up its archives and said, yeah, this is him. They started collecting all the information from Kew and sort of started getting all of this together. And it's then the new Maharaja I think recently and I don't know the year, which is frustrating, but I think it's only in the last five years and it now constantly has marigold garlands on it and it's really well looked after. It's on top of the old tombstone. So let me tell you what it says on the new one because I think it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. So it's got a sort of an etched on black, it looks like obsidian. I don't know what the stone is, but it's big and lavish and it's got a picture of that smiling white haired, mustachioed old man on it. And it says whatever he touched, he adorned German by birth, but his heart belonged to India. Isn't that beautiful? One sad little addendum to this story is that when he died, the new republic that had asked him to do, you know, this great work even on the Rajgarh. Somehow his wife finds herself evicted from the grace and favor granite castle that he knew to live. The only home really that she'd known. The old India that she knew is dead. The maharaja patrons that they had moved with are gone. So she returns to England, a country she doesn't know. She's 90 years old when she comes back, a country she has never forgotten. And soon after the ship docked, she has a massive stroke and dies. Isn't that awful? Isn't that the awful end to the crumb bagels?
- [40:00]
Anita Anand
I know, but he is now obviously there are people making an effort to.
- [40:04]
William Dalrymple
Remember him now that's how Vinay knew about him. That's how I was able to find out anything about him at all. You know, this stuff was all in dusty archives before, but I think there's just so much more of a story to tell because, you know, it's just these sort of Cliff Notes of a life are amazing. But yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe I should do something.
- [40:22]
Anita Anand
I think you should. I think it's very nice.
- [40:23]
William Dalrymple
I love the story so much. So there we are. That is the story of Gustav Herman Krumbagel, the maharaja's gardener. Now we're getting ready. We're going to meet now, aren't we?
- [40:32]
Anita Anand
We are meeting after tomorrow. We're going to be recording a whole new series with Jane Ulmeyer on Ireland, An Empire.
- [40:39]
William Dalrymple
I'm really excited for this, which is.
- [40:40]
Anita Anand
Going to be our next big series and we're going to go on from that to the Troubles.
- [40:45]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, I'm very, very excited for this because again, it's a sweep of history, crossing continents. And I think it's going to be sort of quite relevant.
- [40:52]
Anita Anand
And you're going to love Jane Elmeyer. She is my wonderful friend.
- [40:56]
William Dalrymple
Yes, I know you keep saying, can't wait to meet her.
- [40:59]
Anita Anand
She's this very, very warm Irish historian of empire who is just a guinea minute. But after that, we've got a very exciting guest, my wonderful friend Patrick Radden Keefe, still in his 40s, but has won not one but two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his work on the Sacklers and the opiate crisis called Empire of Pain. But he also won another Pulitzer for his book on the Troubles and the ira. And it is say Nothing, which is a big new Netflix series now. Anyway, so he is going to be our wonderful guest to take us up to the present in Ireland.
- [41:32]
William Dalrymple
So join us. We've got loads of goodies for you coming up, lots of surprises. And you know what, if you, if you like binging our stuff, and I know some of you do, and we're very grateful, we love a binger, just join our club, empirepoduk.com empirepoduk.com and also for our club members, apart from the wonderful newsletter, discounts on certain books that we feature and you get first dibs on any tickets for the live shows that we do and we're doing something.
- [41:56]
Anita Anand
It also, we have to say, helps keep the show on the road. So do if you enjoy what we do, please join up, join the club and become members.
- [42:03]
William Dalrymple
Anyway, till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand, and.
- [42:06]
Anita Anand
Goodbye from me, William Durrymple.