India’s Hidden Treatise on Statecraft

Rahul Sagar returns to Grand Tamasha to talk to Milan about the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India and the man behind them, Madhava Rao. Regular Grand Tamasha listeners will recall that Milan had the scholar Rahul Sagar on the podcast several months ago to talk about his new book, To Raise a Fallen People: How Nineteenth-Century Indians Saw Their World and Shaped Ours. That book was a look at the nineteenth-century intellectual roots of India’s foreign policy strategy and its approach to great power politics. And now Rahul has another book out—this one is called, The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government. Rahul returns to the podcast this week to talk to Milan about an important but largely forgotten set of lectures that represented the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India. Plus. Milan and Rahul talk about the legacy of India’s princely states, the unique historical figure of Madhava Rao, and why the latter’s treatise has been largely ignored—until today.